Vaseline

Firstly, hello to all the new followers. I don't think I've said that yet,which was rude of me.  It means a lot that you like reading my waffle :)  So I haven't been able to do any suturing yet but I was given a very important job to do in the last surgery morning I was in.  You know on Grey's or Holby where the Surgeon yells "suction, I can't see!!" well that was my job last week.  Except since I'm on Dermatology which is slightly less invasive it was more here is a tissue pad, dab the wound clean.  But I still got to scrub in and be useful which was awesome.  The first surgery of the day I saw was removal of a pigmented lesion (mole) query malignant melanoma (possibly cancerous, probably not, better to be safe).  This operation was performed by a fifth year from start to finish with the Surgeon stood observing.  What an amazing thing to aspire to!  He made a really good job of it as well.  I know it only seems like small fry, but I don't really have a lot to compare it to, so it seemed pretty awesome to me.  The surgeon was really nice in explaining what he was doing and pointing things out.  He asked a load of questions, some of which I could answer, some were for the fifth year, and some were for the fifth year but he couldn't answer them and I could :)  There's a lot more surgery scheduled for next week so hopefully I'll get to see some more.  There are fourth and fifth years on the ward as well so we're sort of competing with them to see things and they have priority.

As for the title of this post - I have seen Vaseline used in a variety of ways over the last week; it really is a wonder substance.  The consultant tells the patients on isotretinoin (an acne treatment, it used to be called Roaccutane) to use Vaseline on their lips as one of the side effects of the treatment is very sore, cracked, dry lips.  The surgeon was using Vaseline to cover incision wounds and fill in holes in nails where he'd removed them before dressing.  This is apparently because the wounds heal better and faster in a moist environment.  Finally I was at a rowing race yesterday and in order to transport a rowing eight on a trailer it was be split in half.  We used Vaseline to waterproof the two halves of the eight before we put it back together.  A little whimsical but I figured it deserved a mention since it seemed to crop up a few times too often in my life recently.  Clever stuff apparently.

I have spent the morning lazing in bed, knitting and catching up on my TV programmes because last week was hectic.  To be fair it was my fault it was hectic, I may have possibly taken on too much.  Again.  Bit of a mantra for me recently :-/  But it won't be for very long.  SSU blocks are notoriously slack, so when I saw a job advertised for over Easter holiday and two weeks of SSU paying good money, really good money, I jumped at it.  The selection process was long and fiddly.  There were lots of emails saying you must do this 3 hours of online assessments in the next 48 hours, but at each stage I got through, and finally heard a month ago I got the job.  After going through all that I wasn't going to say no, and besides, it's only four weeks.  Then I found out my timetable for SSU and the 3 hours a week I was told it would be morphed into a good 4-5 hours everyday.  I have to do token efforts at the GP surgery, but they don't mind if I'm in clinics and can't work.  Job number 2 is mainly to be done outside of normal working hours 5-9 and weekends.  I am a census collector.  One of the smiley, friendly but menacing people who go door to door and remind/bully people into filling in their census forms.  I'm a nice one, don't worry, I'm not mean at it.  They get a half jokey "fill it in or you'll have to put up with me keep knocking on your door".  I am pooped!  I started Wednesday and did clinics or surgery 9-12, GP's 1-6 and census 6-8.30.  I have 3 patches and have done a first pass on two of them.  It's going well and it's lovely to have an excuse to be out in the sun but my did I need to spend some time doing nothing.  Now I have some errands to run and to start the essays.  Back to it!