Mikey and Louisa

The inevitable has happened, as predicted by, erm, everyone. We've had a rather nice time over here this year and have decided to stay. MMC did its best to turn us into nervous wrecks and eventually made the decision for us. Last time I posted, I was still making the decision whether to accept an offer should it be made. Presumptuous, you might say. Well yes, because they didn't offer me a job. The guy who was my registrar when I was at kings didn't even get a job, so there wasn't much chance for me it seems, despite what my boss said.

 

As you know, Lou didn't get a job and given that everyone was offering us jobs left, right and centre in Australia the choice wasn't difficult. Except that we have mothers. It seems that no matter how old a boy (man) gets, he still needs his mummy. Apparently, my wife does too. And so, a good month was spent in turmoil, both of us thinking that we wanted to stay in Oz, but becoming depressed at the thought of upsetting those at home. In reality, I think the biggest fear was actually telling them that we were staying. I woke Mum and Dad up to tell them early in the morning and I think the surprise attack made it easier. Lou's folks had been in constant touch with us and knew the trouble we were having and had been well prepared for it. Not that it made Lou keen to tell them when it finally came to it.

 

To make it clear, we're staying here for good. Not coming home. Our children will be little Aussies, with surfboards instead of teddies and bronzed skin. We're both very happy, now that we've made the decision, for so many reasons. Our careers will be better, our family life will be much happier, our children will be healthier and grow up in a friendly environment and we'll have more time for each other and the things that we love. I've made the decision to give up on a career in surgery - strangely, I'm quite happy about it. The only person who I know to have done something similar is Alex C. He became a GP when everyone thought he would be a surgeon, and he did it for the same reasons. It would make no sense for me to train to be a surgeon - the whole point about being here is for the life outside the hospital and surgical training and a career in surgery would preclude that.

 

The next step is Emergency Medicine training in Gold Coast up in Queensland. Their training is excellent and they have a dedicated revision programme for the primary college exams which we'll sit in April 08. I'll finish my MRCS at some point, for the sake of completion, and then I'll have loads more letters after my name. We’re going to flog our flat in Frimley and buy a house with five times as much floor space for the same price, ship the car over and finally unwrap the wedding presents! The last bit is what we're most excited about I think.

 

We're coming home in August, to have Lou's, mine, Lucy's, Fraser's and Cris' birthdays. Gemma's getting hitched and there's a niece and a bump to say hello to (the bump does not belong to me). Belgian grand prix should be a hoot; I've just got to make sure I don't do any driving in Belgium. Been practicing in a Cortina all year, so god help whatever little car I get my hands on for the weekend. 

I know, again I haven't written for ages, but then new fangled ideas are always like that. We've even cut down our surfing hours. But realistically, we couldn't really have surfed much more without needing to wear board shorts to work. Mind you, I'm not sure anyone would notice - most patients turn up in shorts, no shoes or sandals, occasionally sporting a T-Shirt, but no sign of a board in ED yet. Its only a matter of time, i'm sure.

So the trip back to Blighty could have been better. MMC did what it was supposed to do and messed with everyone's lives. Thousands got no interview at all. Thousands got three or four interviews. Obviously suitable candidates were skipped over and the system began to look a little shoddy. Then stories from consultants marking papers started to surface - for example, consultants were sent answer papers from people not even applying for their job. Marks that consultants had given to applicants were randomly altered after being submitted, some papers never even got marked in the first place.

 

So eventually, the government decided upon a review, Patsy Hewitt retained her job and several high-brow medical bods resigned. Now it looks like everyone is going to get an interview, so everyone has to choose just one job to interview for. The date that jobs are announced has been moved from April 19th to June 28th. Two months delay means just 33days for every doctor in the country to organise moving house, moving kids to other schools, finding wives / husbands jobs inthe region to which they're moving, but we just get on with it as we always have - being dictated to and towing the line.

 

In other matters, I failed my exam and ended up in hospital needing plastic surgeons to reconstruct my finger after a i caught my ring on a spike on top of a fence i was climbing over! Skiing was awesome, but there could have been more snow and Lou had great fun with a new kitten down in Devon. Ultimately though, I think we had enough of sitting around not working and not having enough money to do the things we'd have liked while at home. We did get up to London to do the tourist thing - its amazing what you ignore when you live somewhere for 10years!

 

So the clocks changed and now its dark by 6pm back here in Sawtell, but its still hot and the beach is just where we left it. As were the surf boards - they've had ample workouts already. Dom comes out later this week with Lee, and we've got a bit of time off while they're around. I expect we'll have to go back to Byron and possibly to the Gold Coast, but wherever we drag them, the boards will come and beers will be drunk after dark. It looks likely that i'll have to come back to the UK early May (for the interview) and i'll probbaly book the same flights that Dom and Lee are taking home on the 7th, then fly back to oz 5days later! It'll almost certainly be the most expensive interview ever! Glad to be home, but we're keeping fingers crossed for jobs in London starting in August...

I know its been a long time since I last put anything up here, and I cant really remember what i did between the last entry and christmas. I'm pretty sure we just worked and shopped for presents for people on either side of the globe. I think we managed to get everyone's presents without having to send anything by post as well, which was nice. God bless the intyweb thing.

 

Worked pretty hard leading up to Xmas - when the boss suggested that this was a busy time of year, he wasn't joking. Average daily attendances went from about 80people to 120. He did add an extra person onto the rota from 10am till 7pm, but only on weekdays, which makes weekends hell obviously. The record for 2006 was something like 145 attendances in one day - sort of pales into cpomparison with the record of 420people in Mayday A&E department, but this place is so little that it seems so much worse. So saying, the facilities are better and nursing staff are infinitely better trained and have much better attitudes than the average English nurse. Getting CT scans is easy and orthopaedic registrars actually believe you when you say you need their help. One thing not so good about the system here is that so much of the outpatient work here is private and so surgeons and paediatricians are always on call for their private patients and readily admit them to the ward when they're getting paid the readies. Guess who has to do all their monkey work for them though! There are huge numbers of people who turn up saying 'Dr So-and-so told me to come to be admitted' wih no letter from said Consultant and no advice as to what they want doing with them. Also, because a lot of specialist work (bypass grafts, valve replacements etc) get done in sydney, when they need rehab / respite, they get sent back to Coffs for a period on the ward. Now, in the UK that gets organised by the people who will be looking after them on the ward when they get there and they see them on the ward when a bed becomes available. Here, they just get sent up when a plane happens to be flying past and dumped in the ED. Again, guess who has to do all the monkey work.  Of couse, being the happy season as well means that all the drug addicts / alcoholics have been hard at it and now they all want to kill themselves and / or each other. Soon after they kill us.

 

Worked all over christmas but had the evenings off to have festivities with Adrian, MJ, Sarah, Fraser, Bej, Sarah, Emma and her boyfriend Chris (does every Emma have a Chris?). Christmas Day dinner was an absurd feast done with as much Ozzy-ness as possible for a group containing only 2 Ozzies (one of which is fully Dutch by heritage) - we ate Crayfish (BBQd), Kangaroo (BBQd), Emu (BBQd) and Crocodile (BBQd) for starters. Then for mains we had a giant Ham (baked!), sausages (BBQd) all the trimmings and some green stuff that i gather is called salad. We opened our pressies before dinner - I have graduated from CDs to DVDs - I got 4 DVDs, all surfing movies as well as two books describing the intimate details of every good surf spot on the Australian coast - confusing when your new religion has more than one bible!

 

Boxing Day was again spent at work, but the evening provided probably the most spectacular sunset I have ever seen. If anyone has ever had a better backdrop for a game of beach cricket than ours that evening, then they deserve Australian citizenship. It was one little activity we were really looking forward to, to cap off an awesome Ozzie christmas cooked on the BBQ and it couldn't have been more memorable - check out the photos - none of them have been photoshopped at all, I promise!

 

Boxing Day marked the start of our holiday and our last night with Bej and Sarah before they headed home to NZ to get married. Sweetly, they did some shuffling and invited us to the wedding at the last minute, but there was no way we could get there for less than 4000dollars so we opted to just see some photos instead. Got a great phone call from them while they were in the 'wedding car' on the way from ceremony to reception which was nice, just a shame that we got it while at work!  Needless to say the girls shed some tears and there were some big manly hugs at the end of the evening.

 

The mammoth trip up the coast started the next morning - first stop Byron Bay - couple of nights there and days spent wandering shops and sitting on the beach. Unfortunately the weather was pretty poor the whole week - overcast most of the time that we weren't in the car and raining a bit more than we'd have liked. Typing this sitting on the deck at 3pm looking out to sea in just a pair of board shorts reminds me what normal weather is though. Just missing a beer.....

 

Noosa provided the third evenings accommodation - a stunning town north of Brisbane with a large French influence. Its allegedly the most sought after postcode in all of Australia and its obvious why. There are many rivers and lagoons all through the town with huge waterfront houses all with their own jetties and large motor-cruisers moored outside. Serious money makes this town the Knightsbridge of Australia - the high street is small but only has the big international names on it. Went for a surf in Noosa as well and had my first brush with nasty marine creatures - Bluebottle jellyfish, what we call Portuguese Man-o-wars i Europe. Paddled through a wave trying to get out the back and felt sudden burning down my left arm. Went back to the beach and saw hundreds of the little bastards washed up on the sand. About an hour later the pain had gone but big linear welts appeared on he inside of my arm. They're still there now in fact. Apparently they've closed the beaches in Surfers Paradise this week because of all the jellyfish - doesn't bode well for the surf competition going on up there next week. Oh, and did I mention that we're going up to Surfer's on Monday? Not a coincidence in fact, simply the first place we're seeing Lucy and Paul when she gets over here.

 

One night there and off to Fraser Island, the biggest sand island in the world, formed from sand blown north from New South Wales and south from Queensland. Its basically a big World Heritage Site that is used by big Australians in their big 4x4s as an off-road theme park. Fortunately we had a Land Rover Defender that coped with all the ridiculous elements we threw at it, but it wasn' the most comfortable way to travel. Fraser's Mitsubishi Challenger was much more luxurious with its traction control, soft suspension and air conditioning. MJ and Sarah spent a considerable amount of time in there especially when Adrian was driving! We did get stuck once however in very deep sand as we came off the beach and a I suspect a little bit of clutch was sacrificed in getting us out. The lakes on Fraser are mostly freshwater and truly amazing; the whitest sand you've ever seen and such clear water to swim in. We couldn't swim in the sea water around Fraser because of the currents and Tiger sharks - advice I was going to heed carefully. The hotel was nice enough and we even had a hot-tub on the deck to sit in and drink Lychee Martinis (Fraser...) and bubbly stuff.

 

On the drive back south, we stayed in Brisbane for a night and then went to a wildlife sanctuary where we saw our first Koalas and a wallaby tried to box with Sarah. The best bit was the way MJ didn't try and get the Wallaby off her daughter, but (eventually) managed to get a photo of the assault. Outstanding.

 

Fraser sloped back off to Byron for some Salsa classes and the out-laws went home to the UK leaving us to get back into our tedious routine. Light at the end of the tunnel is Lucy and Paul coming out nest week - off to Surfer's and then 3nights in Byron before coming back to Sawtell to do some diving, surfing, wine tasting etc....

 

We're both looking forward to coming home in March, but are in the process of renewing our Visas so we can work here again from April to July. March should be a big month for us with my final MRCS exam (again), Skiing and job interviews for August. For you who know what I'm talking about, there's an ST2 post with full run-through training to CCT for Paed Surgery - never to be offered again - so I'm keeping all fingers and toes crossed for that one. MMC has fucked us all this year and its just another thing that makes life that little bit more difficult to relax in to. Hopefully some wuestions will be answered in April and then the fallout will begin. I just hope Lou and I are lucky enough to get what we want, where we want it. Being married to another doctor looks like it may cause problems if we actually want to see each other occasionally, and even more problems if we actually want to live together. Heaven forbid we have children and want to bring them up together.......