30th January 2000

I just did my first arterial blood gas yesterday, well actually it's the third of February and I did my first arterial blood on the 29th. But I started this article on the 30th so to all intents this is the 29th. I had nobody to tell it to, I suppose that makes me quite a sad person, but only another medic would understand what it means to have done your first arterial blood gas, unsupervised, and be successful at it too. I was on take and had to stick a needle into an old gentleman's radial artery in his wrist; he'd had a stroke and wasn't very with-it and kept trying to rip his hand away. It wasn't easy by far, and when I got it done, with minimal trauma to his hand I felt incredibly satisfied (and somewhat surprised that it had gone so well) but in a funny, resigned way. I didn't really know the other medics on take and there didn't seem to be a point in telling them. My radiographer friends have all gone home for good. I seem to have lost touch with the other medic friends I know... there wasn't anyone to tell. So I told P and A and gang on Monday, and that was all right. In another life, I would have picked up the phone at around 2 am and made a very expensive phonecall, but, well, that was another life.

Actually I just watched Othello at the Barbican tonight, with P and A and A's flatmate. It was simply brilliant. I hadn't expected it to be, I went to the Barbican dreading that I'd see the play through someone else's eyes. I'd never till tonight stepped foot into the Barbican and what faint memories I have of that area aren't extremely pleasant, but tonight's performance was good enough to take all the silliness out of my head and capture my undivided attention, and that was a wonder in itself. I did think the ending was just a bit draggy though. For God's Sakes, she's dead. Stop making her come back to life... but yeah it was good. We ended the night eating curry in some Indian restaurant. Walking home I tried to formulate my thoughts into some form of coherence, and I obviously still haven't managed to. There's something in here about feeling relieved I watched that show and enjoyed it, and there's something in here about how content I am with my life right now, and there's something in here about memories that keep flooding back and making me feel bemused and rather wistful and perhaps just a tad sad, memories I recall in vivid - too vivid - detail, and I can't put any of it to paper, at least I haven't got time to it's almost 3 am and I have to go for a post-mortem tomorrow morning at 8.45. I'm glad I've met P and A though, and that they've taken to asking me out with them.

A's got lovely grey eyes, I just noticed that today. For some reason I'd kept thinking they were brown, and that they ought to be blue, but today when I looked I saw they were grey, rather like a cat's. Well, at least my cat had grey eyes. I don't know about other cat's. My cat was real to me. She used to scratch me when she was cross or hungry, and she was almost a little person behind those feline eyes. I'm grateful to A for asking me along tonight; I'd never, ever have gone to the Barbican otherwise, and never, ever have seen the grandeur of the place, because part of me never wanted to step foot in that area again, and it was a childish fancy due to something that occurred there some time ago; but I've been and I'm glad I went.

In other news. P fancies A. I can see it in his eyes, and in the things he says. I know I'm right; I'm always infuriatingly right when it comes to intuitive stuff; it's an almost female trait I seem to have been born with, and when the gut feeling is that two people will end up together it always seems to turn out that way. Except, of course if that gut feeling is any closer to home. I think it's kind of sweet, they're both medics and good friends; I can't read A as easily as I can P, so I'm probably way off the mark, but it's good and fun and I'll laugh about this in some other article when I've been proven right. Sometimes I rather wish the ability extended to me as well, but I don't dare to use my intuition on myself; then it becomes all about second guessing and reading too much into things and that's the last thing I'd ever want to do; paranoia is a dark spiral downwards I've learnt. Cynicism and paranoia... my friend's boyfriend thinks I'm quite the cynic, and someone else used to call me cryptic and obtuse, but I'm neither. I want for things to be simple and understandable, and that's why I have the naive beliefs I do... the world's screwed up and confusing enough as it is; I don't really need to add to it. As I've so often written before, I don't mean to be cryptic, it's just the things I say sometimes, they come out wrong. And so I don't dare to intuit myself, partly because my gut is screaming out an impossibility that cannot possibly ever be, and listening to it would lead nowhere. Perhaps it would be best just to feed it and ignore it.

I had a wonderful morning today; there weren't any lessons and I woke up at 11 am and went to the park, or rather to Russel Square. There's a little place that does fryups and drinks, and I sat there for an hour and a half drinking a huge cup of hot chocolate and eating spaghetti bolognaise. I also read some Pathology and watched the pigeons doing their thing, and I loved it. I was watching some showy male pigeons wooing their rather disinterested female counterparts when someone chucked a piece of bread at them, and from the cooing gentlemen they were they suddenly turned into greedy, snatching, every-pigeon-for-himself jerks... much like human males, I thought, and I laughed. That's the reality isn't it... it's all about selfishness. Rare is it to find a pigeon who'll let his lady love eat first; rarer still to find a human male who would do the same.

Of course, I reckon there are some of them out there, like my best buddy Kenneth. :)

Thus ends today's ramble.