Time to Grow Up

Been a while since I last wrote anything, for a variety of reasons, the main ones being my engagement, and laziness. Am currently in the Brisbane Conn (no idea what that is short for – Convention Centre?) where Jen and the band are practising. Not in the usual band hall (handy for being down the road from our place) as some brass band bigwig from the UK is here so apparently they need to drive into the middle of the city centre to somewhere where it costs $9 to park for two hours and they have to transport all the gear (percussion etc.) across in a van. Now, the guy who's visiting is staying at Greg's anyway so I have no idea what all the away venue action is about.

Anyway, I've spent the last half hour trying to get the laptop to piggyback on the wireless network here but to no avail, so instead I thought I'd type this and post it later. I'll soon get bored and start playing solitaire.

So, the recap of recent significant events:

Engagement

Impending sproggage (responsible for bringing wedding forward, but not engagement, which was already planned, for all the cynics out there). Likely to be around September for anyone interested.

Wedding May 20th. Plans underway.

And that about sums it up. Obviously wedding is a bit last minute considering just about everyone I know is in the UK, so at least everyone who has just been pretending to be my friend has a good excuse not to turn up. This all changes my plans somewhat (the millionaire playboy gig seems, again, to be outwith my reach) but no big deal in the scheme of things.


The new Campbell kidney bean

I have been playing with the departmental ultrasound scanner and have the unofficial pictures (should be posted when I put this online) with an edited guide for all the non-medicos so they can all understand the subtleties of the developing embryo.


The areas of interest have been highlighted

Now the thing about being a soon-to-be-dad is that it's not all that hard. I can take satisfaction in several things – that the shock experienced by all my acquaintances when Ryan produced an offspring will take the edge off the surprise; that at least, unlike my mother, I have a career already before I start; and that I can't possibly make anywhere near as much of an arse of fatherhood as mine managed. Not the ideal yardsticks, I'll admit, but yardsticks nonetheless.

So tomorrow we have the official twelve week ultrasound. This is a milestone for two reasons – considerably reduced chances of miscarriage, and we will soon be able to detect any abnormalities. What this means in layman's terms is that a baby with a head like a football is now almost a sure thing. Jen has just as fat a head as I do.

Other news includes the fact that my dear brother still cannot maintain the discipline in his household, as evidenced by his two girls' steadfast refusal to regulate their bowels as is good and proper. It seems barely a week goes by without one or both of them being trundled to the hospital Emergency department, stool samples duly collected and on display, in order that the Indo medical profession can agree that they do, indeed, have the squits and rather than the re-assurance and discharge that a modern, public health service would offer in the absence of significant illness, instead swipe the BUPA card through their till and investigate every symptom until the poor bubs are properly sick. Admittedly this is an easy statement to make given that I am a doctor commonly dealing with sickie babies, and also that I don't live in a third-world country where death from dysentry is not an uncommon occurrence. Despite this I still think it is worth pointing out, seeing as Ryan never goes more than two days without telling the family that he has some explosive diarrhoea, and if he was to expect the same standards of health from his arse as he does from his progeny, he would be forever rectally violated by some over-keen Indo squits doctor desperate to do a thorough examination, either by gloved finger or colonoscope (again for the non-medicos, medical arse telescope).

Work remains the same. Will actually have to start looking for a proper job in September I suppose. Have emailed the Royal College of Surgeons here to see if I need to re-train completely, but I think the likelihood is that I get a surgical post here, return home for exams briefly, come back here for a year or two, then return home for specialist training – it depends on what they say though. The chances of getting a registrar number tend to decrease as the years go by but hopefully I will be abe to blag things as per usual.