Here’s to your health!

As I am sure most South Africans are aware, many doctors working in the public sector have decided to strike. I am a striking doctor. Is this a moral and ethical dilemma? Yes! It most certainly is! Should we be striking? No!!! We most certainly should not be striking. We should be treating our patients in well staffed, well equipped hospitals. We should be working humane hours. We should be valued and respected employees in public service. Instead we have been demeaned and reduced to working the streets with loud speakers and cardboard posters and vuvuzelas. After years of studying and sacrificing, this is what it has come to.

I most certainly do not enjoy striking. To the contrary I have mentioned numerous times this year that I am loving my job. I am also in the process of studying to write my diploma exam in less than two months’ time, so standing on the street corner is not helping me get there!!!

So why am I striking?

Well, in June 2008, there was an agreement in parliament that doctors would be granted occupation specific dispensation as a means of increasing our packages and making jobs in the public sector look more attractive to doctors, who are leaving in droves for greener pastures all around the world, most popularly Canada, Ireland and England at present. To date, not one doctor in the public sector has seen even a cent of this money which was supposedly budgeted for. Instead there are new cabinet positions being created…Inauguration parties are thrown… Employees of the government with the right contacts and the right businesses are awarded million rand contracts…
When I check the classifieds in the newspaper I see that a parliamentary clerk earns around R700 000 per annum plus benefits. I wonder how many years he had to study in order to be qualified for that position.
I then see that a chief specialist in the field of surgery is paid around R450 000 per annum. I know how long it takes to become a chief specialist. The buzz is that doctors study for 7 years. What hogwash!!!
My seven years are up a long time ago and I’m still studying. All good doctors are constantly striving towards excellence and so need to keep up with an ever developing field. Good doctors never stop studying, even if they’ve been in their field for 12 years or 20 years. A specialist will have completed medical school and internship, will have studied to specialise while working full time (plus overtime) and possibly having to deal with a family as well. Specialisation takes a minimum of 4 years, during this time you write 3 major exams: Primary exams, Intermediate exams and Secondary or Final exams. I know for anaesthetics, the primary exam consists of 3 papers: Physics, Pharmacology and Physiology. These are huge subjects. You are expected to pass these exams while studying after hours and if you’re lucky you may have lectures once a week. We also pay thousands of rands to write these exams, there is no subsidy or reimbursement from the employer. And even after these 12 years, you are still not qualified enough to be a chief specialist, you may be a junior specialist. One of the surgery specialists in our hospital is being paid the salary of a principal medical officer. There are people who completed their community service at the end of last year who earn the same amount of money! It’s preposterous!!! He was promised a specialist position, but now he is told there is not enough money and he doesn’t have enough experience! After 12 years of working towards it!

I could go on about how an ex teacher was the MEC for health in KZN. She was in charge of provincial health even though she had never worked a day in a clinic or hospital in her life. She had no idea what it meant if there were no syringes in stock at a hospital. She would say something like “We need to use our resources more carefully” meanwhile the yearly calenders, handed out at hospitals and clinics, are covered in photos of her from different angles and in different outfits and she travels by helicopter when visiting hospitals.
With no idea of the implications of ARVs in pregnancy, she condemned doctors in a little rural hospital for taking the initiative to comply with WHO recommendations and rapped them over the knuckles for “insubordination”. Insubordination to whom may I ask? Does this not imply a figure of authority? Excuse me if I do not regard an ex teacher as an authority in medicine!!

So why are we striking?
We’re striking because we’re fed up. We are burnt out. We work 32 hour shifts and are thrown peanuts for which we are expected to be grateful. We are expected to work withouth the proper equipment. When patients wait in line for 6 hours, it’s not the politicians they get angry with, it’s the health care workers. When medication runs out because there is no money to buy more, the doctors have to explain it to the patients. When there is no transport for a patient to be referred to the next level of health care, when there is no intravenous fluid, when there is no electricity, no politician has ever come and apologised to patients for the poor level of service they received, it’s the health care workers who have to deal with this and be blamed for it and have to work around it.
We see death everyday. We deal with the reality of HIV and AIDS and we stand and cry when children die and we have to tell the parents that all our efforts were futile.
So I am striking. I am saying that I am worth more. I deserve more. I work damn hard, in fact I work 3 jobs to be able to survive. I deserve more!

For this year I have already picked up a few good habits:
I run! Yes, the running where you pull on a pair of takkies and hit the road and see how far you can get without your lungs bursting out of your chest or before you keel over from hypoxia or lactic acidosis. I’ve even bought the “thingie gay” Nike plus running shoes that have space for a little sensor that transmits information to a receiver attached to your ipod that records your runs! Yes, I run. Furthest distance so far in one run is a measely 4,3km.

I try to study for at least 2hours per day. I have a diploma exam to pass soon. Two written exams in August and two practical exams in September.

And a few bad habits:
I enjoy a mini vanilla cigar with a glass of red wine. I’ve started smoking, I think it’s cool. I’m giving in to peer pressure a little later than the norm. But in my defence I don’t smoke that often. I bought two tin cans of mini cigars in march and have only smoked about 3 mini cigars since then! I’m a social cigar smoker.

I’m learning how to make alcoholic cocktails, they usually have some fruit in them, so it’s not all bad!

I think I’m going to hold onto my new habits for the year, good and bad. I’m going to get rid of old habits.

I want to stop dreaming so much. I want to try to live in the present, in reality.

I want to stop being the poor little girl whose father didn’t love her and who dreams of the possibility of happily ever after with any man who looks twice at her.

I want to stop analysing everything and trying to find a hidden meaning behind things, I want to take things as they are.

I want to stop apologising for the things I want, I want to be clear about what I want, ambiguity sucks balls.

I want to stop needing outside approval, I want my own approval to matter most to myself.

I want to prove to myself that I can do this on my own, completely. I don’t want a friend who’s going to turn me into Julia Roberts in “My Best Friend’s Wedding”.
I want to prove that I can do this on my own, without “good night” calls or “how was your day” smses.

I’m saying good bye to dreaming. Hello reality…

Is there really any point to me working so hard?
How much did I actually help the people who’s lives I think I helped to save last night? Am I crazy to think that I can handle a patient with his trachea cut in two? Am I just lucky that both of the patients with stabbed necks and tracheal injuries survived on the operating table without dying last night?
What is the point of all of this?
Am I going to be alone for the rest of my life? Is what I have enough to call a life? Is this it?
Am I strong enough to die alone?
Will I ever be able to fix my relationship with my mother? Will I ever be a mother? Am I capable of being a good mother?
What is it that I really want most of all?

I wake up after 90 minutes without any answers and starving. I pour myself a double shot of Amarula and make a toasted cheese sandwich. And I decide to blog about it.

Now let me pick my old brain about my personal experience of first love. I suppose in love, there are many firsts.
The first crush I remember having was when I was 7 years old!!! I started very early. I think I daydreamed a lot, I lived in my own world. I suppose I didn’t like the real world. I believed all of the fairytales: Cinderella, Snow White, etc. I was sure I would meet a knight in shining armour and live happily ever after. I didn’t think 7 was too young. Obviously I didn’t see myself as a mere child, I was always very serious and thought I was completely capable of being in love. I saw this boy on the school playground one day, I think he was a year younger than me. I thought he was the best looking boy around, so I went to the tuckshop and bought him a sticky pink fizzer sweet! I think I saw him once or twice after that, but I don’t really remember much else about him.

My first kiss was behind a broken down bus in the rain. We were teenagers doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing, so it  was all exciting and secretive leading up to the kiss, but when we eventually did kiss it wasn’t that great, his mouth tasted funny. I think we kissed once on another day after that and it was even worse, because all of the excitement was gone but the awkwardness was still there.

The first time I had sex was terrible. It wasn’t all about love as I had imagined it would be. It was just about physical desire. I suppose I did it, as many girls do, because I thought that if I didn’t the guy would lose interest. And of course I was curious about it. Afterwards I bled so much, I thought I was going to die. He got quite scared too, I passed out and he carried me to the shower and opened the cold water on me! I don’t remember much about the next day, but it definitely wasn’t all love and romance.

I think I’m not so comfortable commenting about love itself, because I have to admit that I’m not quite sure exactly what love is. Of course I’ve gone throught times when I thought I was in love, but at the moment I have lots of doubts about love. I don’t know if I’m capable of real love. Looking back I think that most of the time I’ve managed to mess up relationships or potential relationships. Mostly it’s by the things I say. But I think that’s part of who I am. I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, I put my foot in it all the time. I’m awkward and tactless and I don’t do well with innuendo and hints and suggestions.
I remember the best kiss I’ve ever had. It was at a birthday party and I was a bit drunk. It was an intense kiss. This particular boy, it was almost eerie, it was as if he could read my mind when he kissed me. When I pulled away from him it was just too much for me to deal with, I said something stupid to detract from the moment and the intensity of it all.
What if, like in the movies, I had said exactly the right words at that moment? Would the right music have started playing in the background at exactly the right volume? Would we have lived happily ever after?

The biggest stress is the amount of money that a new car costs. I just feel it’s a total waste to spend so much money on something that depreciates from the moment it leaves the showroom. And at the end of the day I know that the car salesman is coming out tops in the deal, not me! There are plenty of excuses I have to console myself about this:

1. My old car was starting to be somewhat unsafe to drive. I do a lot of driving on my own. It’s not safe for a woman to be stranded on the side of the road in the dark in South Africa, etc…. A bit lame, the stranded woman line, but hey, this is South Africa after all.
2. I was paying to fix my old car every month, so I might as well pay an installment on a new car.
3. I drove an old car for more than 3 years, while most of my peers bought brand new cars straight out of university. I deserve a new car and it’s about time I bought one.

Worker’s Day (1 May) was the perfect day. I woke up and looked out to the sea which was a perfect blue, the wind was absolutely still and the sun was gloriously bright. I headed to the little beach in St Michael’s about 12km from my home, it’s small but quite popular. There are swimming beaches nearer to home but my efforts were definitely rewarded. On the beach was every class of South African stereotype you can imagine. I got a full three hours of undisguised people watching, interrupted only when I went for a swim.

Let me describe and label some of the colourful characters. Once I found myself a spot, got out of my clothes and got some sunscreen on, I took out my book and I got right to it.

To my right and slightly in front of me was your conservative Afrikaans family: the ‘pap en braaivleis’ variety. The mother’s face looked like she might have been in her early 30’s, but looking at her from the back you couldn’t tell. All you could see was ass!! She never moved from her spot, she was as fully dressed as you could be on the beach on a hot day without being Muslim. Her role was to keep the food coming, while her husband fished and the children played. It took her double the normal time to make a sandwich for her husband, because everytime she spread a bit of cream cheese onto the bread she had to spread an equal portion onto her tongue. She finally got some rest from all that strenuous work and sprawled across the sleeping bag and tried to read her home decor magazine “Idees” but it was just too much, she passed out.

Behind me were the two blondes. One in her early 20’s. She had EVERYTHING necessary for the beach: perfect body in a beautiful bikini, matching accessories, perfectly ironed hair, perfect posture. She never got wet.
The other ‘blonde’ was in her late 40’s and she believed she “still got it”- she wore a brightly coloured bikini and flaunted the extra padding she’d acquired around her middle region, her lipstick matched her bikini, her hair was bleached and frizzed so it could look just like it did back in the 80’s and she had quite a collection of gold on her arms, which she probably started accumulating around the time of her hairstyle.

To the right of the blondes were the young and trendy Afrikaans family, the rugby playing variety, that came complete with jetskis and Toyota Fortuner.They ran up and down the sand either with a rugby ball or to get back into the water with their boogie boards. I frequently heard phrases like: “Die water is net flipping amazing vandag!” (The water is just flipping amazing today!)

To my left were the slightly new age English family. The 3 year old son rolled around naked in the sand and the 5 year old daugher was allowed to run into the water all by herself. It was obvious they were from Gauteng, the province with the highest crime rate in South Africa. Those poor children hadn’t been allowed to run around outside of the house for quite some time. The beached whale, I mean, conservative Afrikaans mother, to my right was NOT impressed, I heard her say to her husband: Kyk vir daai kind, hy loop popkaal! (Look at that child walking around stark naked!!)

As if I wasn’t being entertained enough, I looked up from my book to see your typical Indian family walk by. The young man at the front carried the huge breyani pot, big enough to hold enough food to feed his entire extended family. They were leaving and the pot was still half full. Tailing at the back of the family was the old drunken uncle. He was being very responsible and had decided not to just leave all the empty bottles on the beach. He was trying to carry about 5 empty beer bottles in each hand as well as his shoes. Everytime he dropped one bottle onto the sand he almost fell over trying to pick it up, only to walk 2 metres and drop another. At one point he did fall over as he bent to pick up a bottle, after which he decided that it would be wiser to wear his shoes, then he’d be able to hold onto the bottles a bit better. Amazingly, once he left the sand and got onto hard ground he didn’t drop one bottle until he got to the bin. There he realised that there were just too many fine motor skills involved in getting the bottles into the bin, so he eventually just left them standing next to the bin.

My two favourites were:
1) The old couple in their sixties still holding hands and looking healthy. Gran wore a blue bikini top with black shorts and Gramps wore plain black shorts. They didn’t try to look younger than their age, but they were current enough to know that a Speedo was no longer appropriate swimming gear for Gramps.

2) The 10 year old boy who was… what’s the politically correct term now- intellectually challenged? Well, he seemed to have an element of ADHD and maybe some mild cerebral palsy. But he was just so happy. He danced around at the edge of the water continuously. He bumped into people all the time. Little things on the sand caught his attention for about two seconds and then a wave came along and made him dance again. I’m sure he must be a handful for his parents when it comes to normal everyday things like going to school and playing with other children, but while I watched him I was almost envious of the utter bliss he appeared to be in.

I can’t help but wonder, do other people people watch too? And if they’re watching me, what label do I get? Lonely girl? For today, I’m ok with that label.

In any case, there is one topic which is vast and deep enough to be blogged about despite extensive discussion. My friend is atheist, I believe in God…

The fact is that most of my close friends these days are either atheist or agnostic. It certainly does seem to be the intelligent thing to realise that there really is no God. It’s all a myth made up by society, etc, etc. Most of my friends have read books on the subject and can quote reliable and convincing sources and evidence.

I can’t quote evidence, I just believe in God. I don’t want to change anyone’s beliefs, this is just my belief. John Mayer has a beautiful song called “Belief” which starts off by saying:
Is there anyone who
Ever remembers
Changing their mind from
The paint on a sign?
And my favourite part goes:
Belief is a beautiful armor
That makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching underwater
You never can hit who you’re trying for.
Basically I think he’s trying to say that we all believe in something and it’s no use killing each other over our differences in belief.

I believe in God and that’s what’s real to me. What I DON’T believe in is religion. Many religions advocate blind following and discourage questioning. Religion does not equal God. Religion is a man made institution. Well, at least that’s what I believe.

Well, enough on the deep and heavy stuff, what a load!! I’m post call, I shouldn’t be using so much brain power.
For those interested in the days of my life, I have decided to buy a new car. Can’t carry on fixing up old Clio every month… Maybe more on the stress involved in buying a new car in the near future.

Anyway, I’m not going to waste anymore time trying to recall my profound reflections and say this: I must admit that I really did enjoy the movie, I like that it didn’t really follow the dried out Hollywood formula for romantic comedies. Also, I have to mention that Scarlett Johannson was absolutely steaming hot! I love that she’s curvaceous and so sexy! There are two major things I’ve been wondering about since watching the movie-

1. Is it true that in this day and age a woman should wait for the guy to make all the first moves? Should we really sit back and say, “Well, if he’s really into me he will do WHATEVER it takes to be with me, so I’m not going to make it easy for him.”? Now I get the whole idea of not throwing yourself at a man and not acting out of desperation, but what’s the matter with a little encouragement to let the guy know that his efforts would be welcome?
2. What is the right thing to do if you feel the way the married guy felt for Scarlett in the movie? Are those feelings just lust? Well, I do think that when you’re married, it’s a whole other ball game, but let’s say you’re in a long term relationship and you meet this other person who just makes you feel things you feel guilty about feeling, but just can’t help feeling? Is that just lust or could it be that you’re with the wrong person?

So when we do have a free weekend, there’s a lot of thought that goes into what to do with it. Getting a good balance right can be tricky. You often want to forget about work completely, and especially when you work in a rural area, you want to get out of the area completely. But you don’t want to get back to work on Monday morning feeling more tired than you did on Friday afternoon, because most likely you’re not going to get much sleep during the coming weekend. The point is that, for me, a lot of thought often goes into what I do with my weekends. My free time has become most precious to me.

This weekend gone by, was a particularly interesting one for me:

I did quite a bit of traveling. A good friend, whom I worked with for two years during my internship in Worcester, got married this weekend. The wedding was in the Midlands in KZN and three other friends flew in from the Western Cape. We had a mini reunion in KZN. I met the bride for the first time at the wedding, quite honestly I wasn’t impressed. This wedding convinced me, even more, that I don’t want a traditional wedding. I just want to elope to an island where the rand can buy me 5 star living for two weeks, come back and announce I’m married and then have a huge party to celebrate and show everyone the pictures. So many brides just look so unhappy at their weddings, except when they’re plastering on the smile for the pictures. And oh how I hate those posed pictures!!! At this wedding the bride had a list of pictures that needed to be taken, who would be in them and in what order they would be taken! During this time I amused myself by trying to figure out the family dynamics, assumptions are often more entertaining than the truth.

I added one year to my age- I am now officially 26 years old. It’s such a big number! I can see the wrinkles starting to appear, mostly my smile lines are more visible, but I’m telling myself that’s not a bad thing. I spent my birthday swinging between trees in Karkloof forest. It was an amazing experience. (Check it out at www.karkloofcanopytours.co.za)  I thought I’d be scared, but you wear a full body harness and helmet, you’re strapped in tight and you feel so safe. There are about 4 guides with you and the view is so beautiful, that when it ended I was disappointed. But we seemed to have had perfect timing. As the last people in our group crossed the last slide, we heard thunder and saw clouds rolling in. We had a short walk back to the base camp through the forest and over a stream. In aid of holding onto my youth (and not slipping and hitting my head on a rock) I took off my shoes and squelched my toes in the mud and put my feet into the cold stream water. We ended off with a light lunch on the verandah watching the rain pelt down.

I added three books to my personal library: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (a birthday present); Shataram by Gregory David Roberts and Before Mandela was Mandela by Eric Myeni. Unfortunately I have to hold off on starting any of them just yet, I’m really chomping at the bit for Shantaram because I have been meaning to do it for a while, but it’s 933 pages long and I can’t NOT finish a book, so I had to be sure I was ready. For now I have to exercise self discipline and stick to Clinical Anesthesiology, in particular the chapter on Local and Regional Anesthesia, because I have a presentation to do soon and also there’s the whole ‘Diploma in Anaesthetics’ (DA) thing that I decided I was doing and I can’t back out now. The problem with studying is that procrastination only makes it harder. ( But I suppose procrastination is a bit of a problem with anything that needs to be done.)

I added Tracy Chapman’s “Our Bright Future” to my music collection, but I was fortunate not to have to pay for that: I be a girl from the Caribbean!!
So far my favourite track is Conditional. I must agree that love IS conditional; there ARE strings attached. And that’s the way it should be. Only God, parents and dogs can be expected to love unconditionally.