Christmas, and beyond ...

Back in India, my observance of Christmas was more a kind of lip-service and some innocent enjoyment of the festival that Christmas represents. In my lane, there were a few influential Christian families who got together during the last few weeks of each year, and created magic out of decorative items, conifer trees, paper stars and lights, etc. The house that is known in my lane as "Lion's Den" would come alive during those days. The Christians would deck up their large conifer, hang a large Merry X'mas lighted star between the branches of two trees that stood, one on each side of the road, play some kind of music, and so on. I would drive past their house as I proceeded to work (in the day) or to return home (in the night). 

On  Facebook, I would post a Merry Christmas greeting and later, a Happy New Year wish, to all my Christian friends in India and abroad. 

On New Year's Eve, my family and I would go out somewhere reasonable, and spend the evening having good food and a drink. 

And, on the night, we would join some of the kids in my housing society to burn effigies of the closing year. 

And that was it.

Now ... I am in a land where more than 90% of the people are Christians of some shade or the other. Christmas is their biggest festival. It is here, in Blackpool, that I am finally learning what the meanings of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, Christmas and New Year really are. Each of those days, my inbox was filled with emails from various shopping companies, advertising huge sales during the holidays. It was very tempting to spend "just 9.99 pounds" to get a voucher of 50% off on the next purchase - or buy something at throwaway prices - something that I would never, ever need or use. I have, so far, not entirely managed to stay away from those alluring deals. Although, Jesus knows I have tried to, and tried very hard indeed to resist temptation. 

The result is that my room is filled with cheap stuff bought at even cheaper prices. I have a complete drawer full of biscuits and chocolates - things that my diabetic body can certainly do without! And farsans, and chivda, and what not! 

I worked all the three days of the Christmas weekend, and into Monday. This prevented me from going out and splurging money. It did, however, in the absence of the consultants, give me a good chance to learn how to manage a Paediatric ward in a much better way. I kept trying to learn the ropes. Whether it was taking a successful history from a fretful and worried parent, or cannulating a vein in the presence of anxious parents, running to the emergency department in response to a crash call, or finding the time to rush to the doctors' room for a quick bite of the sandwich I had brought with me on duty, helping a colleague to undertake a blood collection, or searching the internet or the pharmacy book to find the correct doses of a rarely used medicine for a rarely seen illness, clerking a new patient (taking the basic history and examining the child), or coordinating with an outside hospital in the management of a complex patient, ordering investigations on an online platform and taking printouts from a printer inside the ward, or discharging a patient, dictating a letter on the online automated system to a consultant's secretary so that she could send the letter onward to the patient's G.P., or escaping the ward to go to Costa's for a coffee ... I guess you are getting the idea, right? I did all this, and more. 

In the process, I have left my footprint and initial impressions on all the people who work in our department. Whether these impressions have been favourable or not, only time will tell. However, it does look like even the junior doctors have realised that I have a very steep learning curve ahead of me, and they have so far been very kind and benevolent towards me. That does not mean, however, that they will do something only a registrar is supposed to do. Then, they mercilessly chase me and get me to see a patient or give my opinion, a task that I get absolutely scared to do. So far, I have managed not to paint myself into a corner, but that is thanks to the very efficient nurses and my colleagues - from my co-registrars to my consultants, who have been very, very understanding and have helped extricate me out of every tight spot.  

And that is how I celebrated my Christmas this year. How did you all do it? Do share your experiences with me. Thanks so much for reading this, and I wish you and your families a very, very Happy New Year (there I go!!!)                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

A week gone by, II: A buffet meal at Michael's, an Indian restaurant, with my friend Michael

Okay, so it's just a co-incidence. The Michael I went out with is not THE Michael after whom the restaurant is named! I discovered this place during my visit to the Whitegate Drive Health Centre on Monday, the 21st of December. Let me back up a little, though. The diabetes nurse who saw me at the local GP's clinic about a fortnight or three weeks ago set up a routine visit to the aforementioned centre to get my retina checked as a part of diabetes care. I had gone for this. The Centre is located about half a kilometre from the gym I visit (Helio). It is a huge place indeed. There is a GP-led centre, a Children's Centre, a general area for community services, children with learning disabilities, and several others that I did not visit or see. 

The nurse who dealt with me explained everything beforehand, including the information connected to her use of dilator eye drops to be able to shoot photos of my retina. The actual photography took hardly two minutes. I was in and out of the centre in about half an hour. On the way back to the hospital, I came across many restaurants and eating places on Whotegate Drive. One of them was Michael's, which had an imposing facade and a lovely byline: Indian food. I sort of wondered if I'd ever be able to afford eating at such a grand-looking place. 

Then, when I had reached the hospital, and was about to go to Costa for a cup of coffee, Michael called me up and asked me if I was free to join him for dinner the same evening. Originally, I had plans to have my coffee and go back to my room to change into my gym kit and go to the gym. However, Michael joined me within a few minutes at Costa. I agreed to go with him, and when he said he was willing to go anywhere, I, sort of half-heartedly, mentioned that we could go for an Indian dinner. He agreed immediately, and I then asked him his budget. When I realised that he was happy with spending up to 25 pounds between the two of us, I offered to go to Michael's. 

We walked all the way to the restaurant, and arrived there at half past seven. To our pleasant surprise, we discovered that they had a full Indian buffet dinner service with 15 varieties of starters, soup, main courses (rotis, nan, rice and about 8 different gravy preparations) and dessert (sadly, not Indian) - unlimited - all for just 12.50 British pounds per person! 

And thus. we had a stupendous dinner, chatting about each others' lives, sharing thoughts and generally getting to know each other better. 

Mike and I

Enjoying the food

The food plate

We finished at about half past nine, and then walked back together until at a certain point, we parted as he went towards where he stays with an Asian room-mate. I walked back from there, skirting Stanley Park, till I arrived at the point where there was a road that went on towards the hospital, from where I reached my home by half past ten.

This would be recorded as one of my favourite days since I came to Blackpool last month. 

A week gone by, I: A visit to Blackpool zoo

Eventually, blogs have a way of going slow once a routine sets in. Even so, there are highlights in anyone's life that can brighten up not just the blogger themselves, but also the reader, who is their well-wisher and a "participant" in their life by virtue of being an avid follower. Hence, dear reader, fret not. I haven't found the time to write, but there have been events in my life that I wish to report here ... and so, here we go. 

On the last Saturday (the 19th), I went out in the morning to visit the local zoo. I took with me my old faithful - my Canon DSLR camera. The morning was chilly, but not overly so. There was a mild drizzle. I reached the zoo at about half-past nine, and had to wait for about 30 minutes before the zoo opened. I used the time to go through their leaflets, and to get myself a penny memento (for which you need to put a pound coin in a machine and press a particular handle to get an imprint of a zoo animal on to a penny coin template). 

The zoo is a good one, but it was almost empty as this is an off-season period for Blackpool. There is a big section where they have made plaster statues of dinosaurs. Their dinosaur walk is quite interesting. Statues are distributed on land masses as well as on to water bodies to depict the dinosaurs in their natural milieu. An audio recording of grunts and growls continues to charm the visitor from background speakers. A few non-dino animals such as a huge crocodile replica also hold the centre-stage, while the trip ends with a few large mammals such as the mammoth.

The big zoo begins a little ahead. Along the way, you encounter free-roaming peacocks and peahens. Then you are past the walking corridor and upon the various zoo sections. As there were no crowds of visitors, I was able to walk in peace, watch the animals in relative quiet, and meet with the zoo workers without any pressure. The zoo has a fair number of mammals, but I can't say the same for birds, of which there are not more than 30 species. Tropical birds are, of course, not there in the zoo at all, but even sea-birds (pelagic birds) are few and far between. I did see a lot of waders, especially the red ibis, the duck species, the greater flamingos and some others. However, there were few birds from among other water birds, and very less of the raptors. 

The best enclosures were those of the gorilla, the orang-utan, the giraffe, the Magellanic penguins, the sea-lions, the Bactrian camel, the reindeer, the reptile den, the Amazonia display and the small monkeys and related animal cages. In particular, I was enchanted by the common squirrel monkeys, which were a bit too friendly, the lemurs, the capybara rats, the wallabys, the mamosets and a few others that I cannot recall.

I had my lunch of rice and kheema in the cafe. It was pretty tasty. 

About photography: my camera screen misted over with fog after about an hour of taking good snaps. I continued to click photos in the "Auto" mode, and the result was all right, I guess, but, because the screen was not displaying anything, I was unable to see what I was clicking except through the viewer window. I decided to take photos with my phone camera as well, and the overall result was a collection of about a hundred odd photos, some of which look good, some, average, and some, spoiled, because I could not control their quality or adjust the various settings.

The sea-lion show: There was a twenty-minute show with three sea-lions. The trainers obviously spend thousands of man-hours training the sea-lions in various ways, and this is something one can tell just be watching the show. These cute animals needed little prompting other than a kind word and a promise of dried fish goodies thrown at their mouths to perform an amazing repertoire of activities that would put our parenting skills to shame! I shot a long video of the show, but I think it got erased before it could be saved. 

And now, the photos. I have chosen just a dozen here. However, I have posted some on my social media, and you might want to see them there by visiting me on FB.

Apatosaurus

Tyrannosaurus Rex

Tanystropheus

The penny memento I made from their memento machine

The red titi monkeys

The gorilla family

One of the female orang utans

The Magellanic penguins

Emperor tamarins

Common squirrel monkey

\Giraffe

Red Ibis

That's all for now ... Thanks for reading.  More on the past week in my next post. 

P.S. All the photos are untouched, except for cropping.

Clinical work begins ...

I took my second dose of the MMR vaccine and the first Chickenpox vaccine on the 15th of December. With this, I became eligible to join the wards to see patients and handle them in other care areas as well. This means a lot to me, since clinical experience is what I am looking for. Now that I am eligible to see patients, I was posted to the out-patient clinics on the 16th, i.e. today. I was quite worried, since I have no previous experience of working with patients in the NHS, and do not know exactly what protocols are to be followed, which forms need to be filled, and so on. However, it turned out far less complex than I had thought it to be. The presence of my consultant colleagues helped me to check with any issues that I felt needed to be addressed. Both of them, Dr. Raj Verma in the morning session, and Dr. Rabin Mohanty in the afternoon session, were extremely understanding and cooperative and helped me through all the difficulties. 

In addition to the clinics, I was in the hand-over sessions both in the morning and in the afternoon. This helped me to understand the patients as they are in the wards and in the Neonatal Unit. In some days, I guess, I would be seeing ward or newborn patients as well, so I should brush up on my day-to-day clinical knowledge. 

Which brings me to my studies ... well, this is not the study studies that formed a part of my life when I was in Saudi Arabia. These are studies that I can do at my own pace, for my own professional development. There are literally hundreds of things happening around someone who looks to take up studying in any form. I have begun walking on this path, and have already taken part in several activities, such as attending a leadership course, presenting a case in a meeting, and so on.

In other news, I have got used to the cold weather here, and am comfortable with the temperature hovering around 6-8 C as well as I was, in India, with a temperature of 18C. The other news is that I have begun to workout at the gym under the guidance of a personal trainer, who has reduced his charges to a level where I can feel easy enough to pay him. In the process, my exercising has increased, I feel sore in many muscles each evening after my return from the gym, and I have begun to lose weight. It isn't something really big - the weight loss, I mean - but it's a start, and I hope to go on with this until I am at a comfortable 75 kg or less ... even if that takes a year. In tandem with my exercising, I have also reduced my intake of carbs and have increased that of proteins and fat. This, the current recommendations say, will help not only to lose weight more scientifically, but also control that deadly disease that I have - diabetes, Type 2. 

And with that, I sign off today's entry. I hope you liked it. I would appreciate if you signed up to receive updates on your email whenever I wrote a new entry in this blog. Thanks once again, and BYE.

Completing the final steps needed to work

I have had a glorious first month here, and I am still awaiting being placed on the wards as my "occupational health clearance" has taken a little more time than I had anticipated. However, now the final few steps are due this week. Even as I write this on the evening of Monday the 14th, I am counting the hours before I get my second shot of MMR vaccine tomorrow; on the 17th, I am due to visit the National Insurance office to complete formalities for joining the governmental insurance scheme as per their mandatory requirements. 

Thus, within a few days, all formalities will get sorted out and I will be working with patients and in all the areas of the paediatric department. Currently, I am only working in non-clinical work, such as seeing files, completing paper work, etc. I have also begun to take online courses required for improving my C.V. Tomorrow, I would be presenting a case in the monthly morbidity and mortality meeting of the Ob-Gyn and Paediatric department. I took courses on self-development, and attended one event at the Royal College HQ in London some days back. Thus, on the whole, I am keeping myself busy. 

My colleagues are gradually getting comfortable with me and speak cordially with me. I hope they sustain this spirit of friendship once we begin to work together as a team. The head of our department, Dr. Peter Curtis, is a very understanding person, and tries to help me whenever there is a genuine need from my side. The other consultants are nice as well. We have two consultants who are of Indian origin, one Dr. Raj Verma and one Dr. Mohanty. While the former is one of the big guys on the Royal College's examination committee. Dr. Mohanty is an educational counsellor and has taken a keen interest in my professional development. The other consultants include Dr. Nigel, of whom I wrote in my previous post, Dr. Kate Goldberg, Dr. Chris Rawlingson, Dr. Wing, Dr. Rowlands, and a few others. We also have a few consultants who are community Paediatricians, and their duties mostly encompass their work in the clinic and in the community. 

Every Wednesday, we have an educational program in the educational centre, while Friday afternoons are designed for academic meets in the Meeting room of the Women and Children's wing of the hospital. In the latter, house officers and registrars present clinically relevant topics related to recently managed patients from the department. Attendance in such internal meetings is recorded and counts towards "continuous professional development" credit. 

I know today's blog post is a bit technical in nature, but I expect it will interest those of you who are already doctors in the NHS, doctors elsewhere, or those who understand how the NHS works. It might also interest non-medical readers who are my well-wishers and wondering what I am doing and who I work with. Well, this post might have helped them as well!

Thanks for reading, and as always, taking interest in my blog.

Paediatric Department Christmas party

The various stake-holders of the department of Paediatrics (mostly the Paediatric Ward) had pre-organised a Christmas party and I was fortunate to be a part of it. The venue was the Park House Hotel on the northern promenade of Blackpool, a road mostly dotted with hotels. From the ward, all of the nurses were there, and from among the staff, we were just the three of us - Dr. Nigel Laycock, one of the consultants, Dr. Letty Ene, my co-registrar, and myself. 

I arrived there by bus, having to walk about a km before reaching the hotel. It was an extremely windy evening with intermittent rain and, at a few points, the walk through the extreme wind was so difficult I almost turned back! However, once I had reached the warm interiors of the hotel, and had been escorted to the Pavillion, a sort of basement restaurant, my mood improved considerably as I found both the doctors and a clutch of nurses already present, and all (except Dr. Nigel - who was presentable, but not formal) dressed formally and looking great. Dr. Nigel brought me a drink, and as we sat there, I thought to myself - hey, the party is on!

After some time, we were all taken to our tables. Three 8-seater tables were booked for us out of the nine that were set up. The waiters then began to serve us as we sat there, admiring the arrangements and I getting to know the others. 

Dr. Nigel and Dr. Letty

The first course_ a prawns starter

Christmas mood

The room filled up gradually, and we were then served a vegetable soup as the second course, a turkey breast roast with sides as the main course, a chocolate with cream cake as the dessert and a cup of tea to round off the meal. In the mean-time, a DJ took over the music arrangements, and presently, yielded the stage to a young singer who began to entertain us with his voice and the digital paraphernalia at his disposal. He used clever combinations of synthetic music, karaoke and his own vocals to create a beautiful medley of songs from the present and from the past. As guests began to dance to his songs on a well-designed illuminated floor, I watched Dr. Nigel groove with the nurses in a state of gay abandon, and decided to also step up and dance a bit. 

The main course of turkey and sides (potato, brussels sprouts and cranberry sauce)

The chocolate cake, which none of us could really finish as the portion was too large

The central decor at the round table ... each table had different arrangements

The ceiling over the dance area 

For the rest of the evening, we danced, we sat and enjoyed, had conversations with each other, and had fun. Dr. Nigel and I left together in a cab, and he dropped me off at the hospital before proceeding to his own place. All in all, a very enjoyable evening was had by me. 

Here is a video of the dance floor happenings that I shot with my mobile camera.

I also tried a selfie video ... which isn't so good, but here it is. 

And that's about it. 

How the job goes on

Since I last wrote in this blog, I have had a somewhat busy schedule. Sunday was easy-peasy. There was no work to be done. I relaxed, visited the town centre, even did a bit of gymming in the morning and mostly slept. I haven't cooked much since the past several days, as I have yet to finish some of my previously cooked food.

Monday and Tuesday were hectic, as I had to attend the full-day Trust induction program. This meant attending several sessions in the close confines of a meeting room with about 30 other new employees working either in the hospital itself or in one of the outdoor clinics in the community. The only thing that kept these sessions interesting was the chance to make new friends, which I did. I also used the induction days to gain insight into the way the NHS works. A few sessions were actually entertaining, such as the theory session on "Moving and Handling" things and people while working in the hospital, and the session on "Fire Safety" which enabled us to understand how to behave if you see a fire incident in the hospital or any of the Trust properties. 

On Monday evening, I went to the gym and attended a free training session conducted by Jamie Evill, one of the personal trainers who work in Helio Fitness. I thoroughly enjoyed the session and am considering hiring his services for getting back into shape. 

On Tuesday evening, I visited the home of one of the registrars I am working with - the very pretty Romanian Letty Ene. She had invited all the co-workers to her place for a party. Expecting a bohemian atmosphere, I was quite surprised to meet a bunch of sober young people who sipped on fruit juice and partook of some delicious ethnic baked stuff such as spinach pouches and cheese tacos made by Letty herself. Letty stays at Lytham St. Anne's, a suburb that is over 16 km away from the hospital, and I was fortunate to get a ride with my colleague Ms. Evelyn Chia on the way to the party, and another colleague Ms. Jessica on the way back. The others who attended included a Pakistani girl Fatima Hayat, a Ghanaian girl Akua, Englishmen Joe and Michael and a Canadian girl Sherin. Some of the invitees brought their own food as well to share with the others. I felt awkward initially because a) I had not taken anything to the party b) I was the newest resident joining the hospital and they don't know me as well and c) I am almost or, in some cases, over twice their age, However, we all gelled well with each other. After dinner, we all sat to view some videos on You Tube beamed on the smart TV (Panasonic - maybe Viera) that Letty has. Each of the invitee was asked to share a video from their own choice and culture. In the event, I shared the song "Ek Do Teen ..." from Tezaab, and it was enjoyed by the attendees to some extent. After this round of watching videos, we all sat down to a group board game called "Articulate" where players form teams and each one draws a card from a pile, and then articulates a word using ideas from among the words listed on that card. A spinning arrow provides the "articulator" with the word he/she has to articulate. The other team members must guess what the word is. A timer shaped like a sand-clock runs while the articulator tries and gets as many word guesses as possible until the sand has run out. We had great fun with this game. I returned home with Jess and Sherin around half past ten.

On Wednesday, I resumed work in the department, filling e-discharges. These are online statements that you need to fill for each patient that was kept in any part of the Paediatric department. The statements become part of the patient's record and can be accessed by any healthcare worker with the NHS who looks after the patient any time in the future. Earlier, in the morning, I went for a long walk-cum-run of just over 5 km; in the evening, I visited the gym and did a little workout, with intermittent cardio on the cross trainer and some upper-limb free exercises. 

All in all, I spent a busy three days, as I had mentioned earlier in this entry. Do leave your comments and be part of the interaction on this blog. Thank you, dear reader.