Cheers to 2010

Here’s to the people who packed up their lives and handed it over in boxes and bundles to brothers or movers or your new hospitals HR department (as was the case for a few friends). To people who said goodbye to places they loved and good friendships they had fostered and went where everyone was a stranger. Here’s to the ones who gave up hospitals with CT scans and department calls and seniors!

Here’s to those of us who found themselves the most qualified on more than one occasion. The ones who taught themselves how to do forceps deliveries and then taught themselves how to suture a 3rd degree tear.
To the unsuspecting anaesthetist who landed up resuscitating a newborn or 3 at the same time as the mom was dropping her blood pressure dangerously.
Here’s to surviving 24 hour calls, end of the month calls, calls when the anaesthetist was 45minutes away or the surgeon’s phone went to voicemail.
Here’s to surviving the theatre sisters and their diet week; 90 patient wellness clinics, Ventersdorp, HR, management.

Special mention goes to Valium and Ketamine, to the genius that figured out intraosseus access and staple guns! How did people survive Saturday night without staple guns!
That being said, thank goodness for smart phones and Google, for Woolworths Food and 24 hour Wimpy Coffee.

Here’s to the glue that keeps all of this from falling apart… The friendships that come from staying in casualty until the last folder is discharged, the bonds forged on long clinic days. The memories made around dinner tables or drinks tables or theatre tables.
I loved working with you. I wouldn’t have anyone else second rounded in your place. I hope this is not the end of our stories although realistically I know a lot of us collided only for this season.
I wish you well – a lifetime of good calls, minimal J88’s and successful resuscitations.
Mostly though I hope wherever you land up, I hope you land up with a great bunch of people, like us.