Shorts from Chertsey

I sometimes find myself watching the animals that I stumble upon here like a nature documentarian! There are rabbits all around the hospital in Chertsey, and lots of little baby rabbits with their mothers (cue awws and sighs of delight!). My window looks out to a little copse and out of that come prancing the cutest bunnies, foraging for food. More that once I've found myself peering slowly from behind my curtains trying not to startle the rabbits as I watch them. They come out in droves in the late evening, and running away from you with their little white tails bobbing up and down. I can definitely imagine how Beatrix Potter could conjure up such entertaining stories about Peter Rabbit and what not!

But spring sees an explosion of wildlife, even in the city. As I made my way back to my Tooting home just now, I saw a fox who stopped right outside my door, on the road, in broad daylight. We exchanged a long stare, while I admired his guts and lithe build, and he was probably guessing if I were a threat or not. He unfortunately decided that I was, and ran off, goodness knows to where.

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Doing a geriatrics firm before finals is useful as I get to see all kinds of different signs, and this being a stroke team I see lots of neurological signs, which is something I'm not very good at elliciting. But geriatrics is a sobering thing to do! I felt it before, on my geriatrics rotation, and I feel it now - that I don't ever want to grow old. Actually, I don't mind growing old, but it's the growing old AND SICK that's the problem. The isolation that you get when your senses fail makes being alone most of the time harder to bear, as when they are people around you it's hard to see or hear them, let alone interact with them. And many of the elderly with dementia are disinhibited, which is a terrible thing to be - they strike out and are abusive to those who try to help them, or continuously moan and groan. The memory problems that come with dementia are saddening too - not knowing where they are, or what's happened to them; and everything coming together makes them very frightened indeed. Many of them just need someone to sit with them and remind them of where they are, what they're doing, and most importantly, who they are, and unfortunately in this era the people who are most likely to do that - the family - can't be there. I'm not faulting the Western culture here, but I'm glad that things are still done the Eastern way back home.

That being said, there are little pockets of satisfaction in geriatrics. The little old mute lady who was diagnosed and treated for large bilateral pulmonary embolisms suddenly responds "No" to our question "Are you in pain?" and puts a smile on our faces; we are amazed to see the learning-disabled woman who pushed everything and everyone off and lay on her bed grimacing, sitting on the chair grinning away and responding sweetly to all our questions; the confused old man who came in off his legs now smiling and chatting away, walking well with supervision, after his infection was treated; the distressed old lady pleading for help now enthusiastically thanking you after you talked to her a while and allayed her fears.

Above all else, geriatrics (and I suppose all of medicine) teaches one to be thankful for the small things in life - the fact that you can breathe, and eat, and sleep, and talk, and live out one's life for now with the littlest of troubles.

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So, on the verge of my last week of my "preview" of the hospital I am to spend my first working year at, I find myself liking the prospect. And it's not just the bunnies (and the fact I'm not doing geriatrics)! It doesn't seem too busy or too big, and the people are friendly, and it seems a good place to ease myself into the working environment. All I need to do is pass my finals!