Snipergirl's Web Log

Here begin the tri­als and trav­ails of that one known as “The Bat­man” “The That Damned Sniper Girl” in the col­lec­tion of cit­ies known as “greater” $ydney– sworn arch-enemy of $mell­bourne, and much out­rank­ing the crop circle/roundabout known as “¢anberra”.

$ydney is in fact a city par excel­lence, fit­ting the defin­i­tion by the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­istic that is found in Lon­don and other great world cit­ies: If one is lost and con­fused and asks for help, one is inev­it­ably going to be ask­ing someone in exactly the same boat as all you can find are tourists.

Such cases are not isol­ated to the gen­er­ous beaches of Bondi and Manly. Wit­ness this fol­low­ing event that I exper­i­enced at work:

Me: I’m sorry to ask, but I’m from Mel­bourne and I don’t know my way around– I was won­der­ing how we go about organ­ising X?

Other regis­trar: I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m from Edin­burgh via Singa­pore and I have no idea!

In fact, such an exper­i­ence is not lim­ited to fel­low staff mem­bers. It seems that even patients’ fam­ily mem­bers often know as little as I about the patients’ pre-existing state of being:

Me (while see­ing patient whose only verb­al­isa­tions are word­less groans): So, your mother, is she nor­mally quite with-it? Does she know what is going on? Is her mind usu­ally ok?

Patient’s daugh­ter: Oh yes! She is usu­ally very sharp, knows what’s going on around her…

Me: What other med­ical prob­lems does she have?

Patient’s daugh­ter: Dia­betes, blood pres­sure, some dementia…

And in another case:

Me (dur­ing fam­ily meet­ing): So I under­stand your mother has been rather unwell for the last few months, and has had increas­ing prob­lems with her memory?

Patient’s daugh­ter: Oh no, she has abso­lutely no prob­lems with her memory, all she has is some forgetfulness.

“Where is my mind”, indeed? Dur­ing such con­ver­sa­tions I cer­tainly feel way out in the water, though not quite as out of my depth as the above fam­ily mem­bers, it seems!

My only Mel­bourne example that I can add to such things is a recent time on the Sur­gical ward late at night (while appro­pri­ately wear­ing my “Fol­low me in case of Zom­bie Apo­ca­lypse” T-shirt)- a patient sneezed quite loudly and all the deli­ri­ous patients woke up with a start and called out sim­ul­tan­eously in response!

As I said today to my consultant:

Me: I’m sorry I’m from Melbourne…

Him (inter­ject): So am I!

Approx­im­ately exactly my point!