All About Chris Lowry - the blog
Chris Lowry: Web designer, punk, doctor and passionate follower of Jesus.
All the livelong night
Aug 18th
This weekend, I worked the Freudianly named “graveyard shift” at Chesterfield hospital. Three nights, 9pm until 9am, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Whilst a great time to get some real hands-on experience, there is a key problem in working nights. It goes thus:
- Most of us are not naturally nocturnal.
- Most of us have jobs in the day time.
- Night shifts usually only have a day’s grace between day shift and night shift.
- It takes more than one day to completely upend your circadian rhythm.
- Therefore, you always feel completely, exhaustedly, hungover-jetlagged-coma-after-a-trainwreck tired.
There are two methods for attempting this changover. One is to try and stay up as late as possible the night before, sleep all day, and go to work (hopefully) refreshed. I tried this. The result was that I was so tired on the first shift that I started having visual hallucinations about 4am, attempted to wear a commode around 5, and woke up the next morning completely naked in the middle of the M45.
The other method is to sleep normally the night before, stay up all day, and have a two hour nap before the start of the shift. My SHO used this method. The result was that he became so tired that he began to have paranoid delusional beliefs around 3am, attempted to order the demolition of the hospital library about 6, and woke up the next morning on a ferry to Bergen, with a new tattoo. Of the Queen. On his face.
Obviously there’s a bit of exaggeration there, and neither of us actually developed first rank symptoms of schizophrenia, but we were very tired. Aside from this, the weekend was actually fairly enjoyable. There’s a bit less red tape and paperwork on the night shift, and less distractions.
One highlight was a tired A&E clerking on Friday night from another doctor, who had written “Patient is a resident in a residential home” twice in three paragraphs. Some would say that this is not particularly useful information, even when written twice. The doctor had failed to mention that the woman was profoundly deaf, and severely demented. Which would you rather know?
My most memorable event of the weekend came at about 5:30am Monday morning. I was hungry, so I went to the vending machine to get a packet of crisps.
5:30 I put in my 45p, and selected some Prawn Cocktail Walkers. They fell out of the holder, and got stuck halfway down the machine.
5:31 I got annoyed, and tried to shake the machine. A lot. It didn’t work, the crisps remained stuck.
5:32 Rammed the machine again, and another packet of crisps fell out, Cheese and Onion this time. It also got lodged. Right next to my other packet. Nudged it again, to no avail.
5:34 Tried ringing the vending machine company, asking for a refund of my 45p. Oddly enough, no one there when its barely dawn.
5:36 Decided I *needed* crisps, so used my might again. This time a Capri-Sun fell out.
5:39 Having drained the last drop of the Capri-Sun in a contemplative manner, I hit upon an rational plan of action – purchasing the chocolate bar directly above the crisps will cause it to fall, thereby dislodging my crisps!
5:40 The Kit Kat chunky holder turned, and then the chocolate bar twisted out, began to fall and then… got stuck in the mechanism.
5:42 I finished screaming, and decided to whack the machine again.
5:43 Still whacking.
5:44 Another Capri-Sun fell out, but still neither crisp packet nor chocolate bar is released from the vending machine’s iron grip…
5:45 After a final heave, the Kit Kat fell, dislodging both packets, and I left the machine clutching half a newsagent’s in triumph. (Feeling a little guilty at my windfall, I later went to the reception desk in the hospital, who congratulated me on my honesty, but told me to keep the food!)
There ends my summation. At 9:15am Monday I left the hospital after 36 hours of attendance, with mild tooth decay and a mite more experience as recompense. Plus I think I’ll get paid at some point too, but right now I’m more excited about the Capri-Sun.
NB. I am thoroughly committed to being a great doctor, which includes respecting patient confidentiality. All information about patients on my website is anonymised, and often altered drastically so that whilst it still makes a good anecdote, it is unrelated in sex, time, location, age and/or ailment from the original facts.
Fixing file previews
Aug 12th
If, like me, you have Windows 7 (or Vista) 64 bit installed, you may have noticed an annoying glitch – whilst the file previews are much better than they ever were in XP, they can’t quite manage PDFs. 
You get a funky message in fact:
This file cannot be previewed because of an error with the following previewer:
PDF Preview Handler for Vista
To open this file in its own program, double-click it.
For the last 6 months, I’ve just kind of ignored this. But I finally got annoyed enough with it to try and find a solution. As with most of these things, 3 seconds on google found me the answer.
- Go to this website.
- Download the patch.
- Run it.
Sorted. It will update your registry to make thumbnails and previews work, making your life at least 3% better.
In the War(d)s
Aug 7th
On Wednesday, after five years apparently spent preparing for the experience, I started work as a doctor in Chesterfield hospital. A real doctor. With a stethoscope and everything!
My first job is a four month stint in Cardiology, and my first ever day as a doctor was a 12 hour emergency on call. It was a sharp learning curve, with little prior explanation of even the simplest proceedings.
My first hurdle was the “bleep”. Your bleep is your electronic dog lead; anyone can use it to make you heed to their beck and call. Obviously that’s good if someone has a heart attack, and you are needed for resus. It’s less good if a secretary the other end of the hospital wants your signature on some mildly unnecessary form, whilst you are trying to finish a ward round.
This combined with my non understanding of the system on the Emergency Admissions unit to make me look an absolute idiot in my end of day handover. Day rating: 7/10.
On Thursday, I wasn’t on call, but I did have to conduct the ward round and all the ward jobs all on my own, with my SHO, Registrar and Consultant all on leave or busy. Whilst this was mega intense, and frankly not a lot of fun, I did manage to get everything done, and went home (nearly) on time. My Consultant seemed happy enough, so I’m not too worried, although I would like to have lunch at lunch time more often, rather than eating a sandwich on the toilet at 3:30pm, combining two time occupying jobs into one. During the last hour of my shift, I turned on the CD player in the nurses station: the only CD we had was one of Christmas hits. The tacky music alone made this an 8/10 day.
Friday started out very well. By lunch time – and it says a lot that I was even having lunch – we had finished the ward round, and started on the patient care endless paperwork. And then I discovered I had to attend a compulsory 2 hour introduction, hand washing and blood taking lecture. I got back to the ward, and almost immediately got bleeped to go write a TTO for a patient I’d never met, who needed a slightly complicated bit of warfarin prescribing. I was also approached by rather a large man, looming over me as he asked:
Large man: Are you a doctor then?
Me: Well, yes, just about.
Large man: Can you write me a prescription then?
Me: Err… are you a patient here?
Large man: Yes.
Me: In that case, what for?
Large man: Can you prescribe me a hug?
Needless to say, both of us ended up with a hug. Unfortunately, by the time I had finished on that ward, returned to my own, and finished seeing all the patients, reviewing all the drugs, and filling out all the bits of paper, it was 6:45. I only get paid until 5, but I suspect the NHS aren’t too bothered about that. Despite the lateness, I got a hug off a somewhat threatening man, so the day has to get a 9/10.
So far, the best thing about the ward is all the wonderful nurses, pharmacists, receptionists and porters. Without them, I would actually still be in the hospital, probably gibbering quietly, and completely naked except for drug charts sellotaped all over my body.
Stay safe kids, and remember – don’t get sick in Chesterfield!
Dr Lowry, I presume.
Jul 26th
It happened. I have graduated. View some more pictures over in my facebook photo album.
I’m going to listen to the Slackers now, and drink some coffee. See you soon!
Evidence vs Email
Jul 21st
As a doctor in the NHS, we have to use official Nhs.net email accounts – as in dr.lowry@nhs.net. Unfortunately, the NHS has caught on the the fact that email accounts allow a level of anonymity that could cause opportunity for abuse. So they have increased the security.
A lot.
Here are some examples of how it’s an ugly mess, totally inconsiderate of users:
- Your password must contain uppercase and lowercase letters, and numbers, and be more than 8 digits. This makes it extra fun trying to remember your password.
- The first three digits must be typed on an on screen keyboard with a mouse, then the rest by physical keyboard (see picture). This makes it inaccessible for phones, or those who are visually impaired. The latter is, of course, illegal.
- The password must be changed every month. And you can’t repeat passwords until you have used 4 others.
- There are no contact details online, no “forgot your password?” links, and no contact numbers.
- In fact, it’s surprisingly hard to find who to contact at all. It took me 6 calls to get through to the right department (you need to call 01422 222600), and then I was put on hold for 20 minutes with a song that suddenly cut, and restarted, every 30 seconds! As you can imagine, that was very annoying.
- When I finally got my password changed, I was told I needed to be on an NHS computer to log in for the first time. I work at a hospital 16 miles away. Is this a good use of my time and money?!
In a health service that is striving to be evidence led, surely we should apply this to wasting employee’s time as well? There is a reasonable amount of argument that the trade off that increased computer security entails is not cost effective, that password content is often irrelevant, and that changing passwords frequently has little security value. Some security experts even recommend writing down passwords – but this clearly harms security; I know someone who accessed the Hallamshire computers for two years, using a user and password account they read on a wall!
What’s more, we were told that we must use the NHS accounts over personal email accounts for the reason that “sometimes it can be difficult to get hold of people if they change them“.
Since I have not been able to access my email, and will not until I go to work, I think that’s a pretty shoddy reason.
Since if I have an issue with my password, I will never be able to access my account from home without first visiting the hospital, I would even say that it is quite a bad reason.
Since there is a compulsory need to frequently change my password, the stringent conditions for each password mean there is a a high likelihood that I will frequently forget my password and need to have it reset. The fact that this dramatically increases the risk that I will not have access to my NHS email account on frequent and inconvenient occasions, thus being impossible to get hold of, means that I would go as far as saying that the above is a terrible, irrational reason. If we aren’t going to pay for homeopathy, we need to stop wasting everyone’s time with misguided, discriminatory, out of date security nonsense.
Eventually I rang the hospital directly to obtain my rota. They emailed it to my personal email account.
Well brewed
Jul 19th
Many, many years ago, I had my first true encounter with the refreshing, hydrating glory of the “cuppa”. I won’t pretend to remember exactly when it was, although I suspect it was in my early teens, and I may have been spending too much time with my friend (and intrepid internation explorer) Jon.
It happened something like this:
Jon: Fancy a cup of tea?
Me: Actually, yes I do.
[5 minutes pass, then, after taking the first sip]
Me: Ahh… That’s better!
And, indeed, better it was. The beverage that won us an empire – surely no cigarette to a dying man ever achieved so much, no heroin addict ever gained so much release from a hit as I do every single time from the day’s first cup of hot stewed leaves.
Following on since that brewful day, there have been so many moments of timeless memory, stapled into my grey matter with the cold steel of an “Ahh…”
The result of this is that when coffee was first mentioned to me, I responded like a 16th century Anti-Reformationist when asked “fancy some moveable type?”. In that I was rather unimpressed, stopping however, just slightly short of strangling and burning the coffee offerer (or cofferer).
And I felt my reaction was right; because how could it ever replace tea?! What I now realise (obvious as it sounds, and stupid as it makes me look) is that it doesn’t have to.
Coffee (and indeed, hot chocolate, bovril and battery acid) are just other options. And if, as I believe, tea is the king, then surely it needs some contemporaries to reign over. So to any one I’ve ever ranted about coffee (or battery acid) too – I apologise. Not only is coffee not evil, it can actually be quite nice too. (Although you won’t ever persuade me that a £17 coffee in Starbucks even comes close to the humble power of a 50p cup of well brewed tea in a builder’s cafe).
Below are some shots of me brewing and drinking some tasty coffee with the help of a traditional stovetop expresso maker – also known as a macchinetta (meaning “small machine“), or a moka express.
Using a Macchinetta
(Click on pictures for hi res versions)
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| Step 1 – Get a stovetop coffee maker, clean it, buy some coffee, and find yourself a kitchen. | Step 2 – Top up the bottom chamber with water, then fill the basket with coffee. The more you put in, the stronger the resulting brew. |
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| Step 3 – Screw it together, and chuck it on the hob until the top chamber is full. Keep the lid on, or it sprays everywhere! | Step 4 – Pour into a mug, add milk, and (lots) of sugar, then drink. This photo was taken just as I realised the milk was off. |
Might have taken me a while to get round to writing this post, but I got there in the end. In my defence, I actually wrote this on the flight home, it’s just taken me 4 days to getting round to downloading photos.
x Chris
Viva España!
Jul 14th
This is my final post from the Canaries, since we are getting the plane home in a couple of hours. For now, I will briefly tell you about our experience of the world cup final.
Anyway, on Sunday we were invited by some friends to go to a locals’ Canarian bar to watch the match. We arrived, and were immediately decorated with red and yellow facepaint, and greeted with cheers of “Viva España!” One chap had an old car horn that made a vuvuzela sound like a penny whistle – it was loud, irritating and wonderful.
Before the match began we were treated to Spanish warmup coverage. This was quite a contrast to the staid, balanced coverage we get in the UK, with discussion of tactics, previous performance, the plus sides and weaknesses of both teams and predictions. Instead of that, they had half an hour of shots of Spaniards scoring amazing goals, footage of crowds in Madrid, and atmospheric interviews with backlit players explaining just why Spain are going to win. And didn’t mention the Netherlands once.
Then we watched the game. It was pretty poor, I imagine most of you watched it too, but the crowd in the pub added a level of excitement, noise and expectation.At the end, when Spain scored with 5 minutes to go, the footage immediately started showing the crowds in Madrid again, and the wild celebrations. This was despite the fact that the match hadn’t actually ended yet, and Netherlands even managed to get the ball into Spain’s box a couple of times.
All in all, whilst the standard of play was so bad that I think neither team deserve to be called Champions, it was also fun afterwards driving back round the island hooting the car horn, cheering and feeling like we belonged.
That’s all folks, see you back in England! (I would love to tell you all about my coffee conversion, as promised, but I’m in the cheap internet cafe in town, and uploading photos is just not going to happen. Tomorrow, I promise!)
Removing my bushel
Jul 11th
So, as you probably know, myself and Katherine are currently on holiday in Corralejo. We have been here about a week and a half, and go home on Wednesday.
Before we set out, we vaguely looked up churches in Fuerteventura, and discovered, to our mild surprise, that there is an English fellowship in the town of Corralejo itself. Faros Christian Fellowship meets each Sunday in the building of a Spanish evangelical church.
So we went, and met some lovely, friendly, swimming-pool-owning people. And last week, they were chatting about music at church, and how in 7 years, they have never had any english people who have been able to lead worship. Feeling a little self conscious, I volunteered. Katherine always hates “loves” it when I do something like volunteering to sing and play guitar poorly in front of a group of strangers.
So I led worship this morning and it went really well. In fact, in my preparation, I ended up writing a worship song, which is something I’ve rarely done before – usually everything I write ends up almost invariably as a punk song.
The most encouraging thing was something pointed out at church, the well known verse about not hiding your light under a basket – the point being that if we have things of value to share, we should do, even if it might be embarrassing, hard work, or even not very good.
Anyway, that’s all for now. I will leave you my my song, sans tune:
Forgive my slowness
Lord I spend my days struggling.
Trying to get my brain around your being.
I can’t control my faith.
I need you to inhabit me, take “me” away.Jesus, come into my soul.
Make me for granted, firebrand me yours.
Jesus, come make me whole.
My heart is yours, my will is yours,
Forgive my head – it’s way too slow.And every day’s filled with what I want not to do.
I find myself, again and again, appalling you.
Is this battle for my actions won or – lost for me?
Can these good intentions pave something heavenly?Jesus, come into my soul.
Make me for granted, firebrand me yours.
Jesus, come make me whole.
My heart is yours, my head is yours,
Forgive my will – it’s way too slow.When my neighbour hurts me,
My instinct never expresses itself gracefully.
My thoughts, my cares, desires – all my love inside -
So easily overuled by this hateful tide.Jesus, come into my soul.
Make me for granted, firebrand me yours.
Jesus, come make me whole.
My will is yours, my head is yours,
Forgive my heart – it’s way too slow.
Honk! Honk! HOOOOONK!
Jul 8th
I´m writing this on the balcony of our new apartment in Corralejo. Well, technically I´m writing it on a computer in an internet cafe, after having written it old school style last night on a piece of paper. Currently rather hoping the owner of said cafe doesn´t notice how much sand there is on the floor, chair and keyboard.
Anyway, we are here having moved from out (pretty shoddy) previous apartment, a move paid for entirely by our travel agents. Considering that we have only paid €320 for two weeks in our old apartment and the new one is €300 for just one, I´d say that they´ve helped us out nicely. Another proof that complaining works.
So I´m sitting out here at about midnight´and I´m listening to the noise. Because it´s crazy loud. This sleepy Spanish coastal village is full of people driving around blowing vuvuzelas out of car windows, hooting horns and cheering. If you have even the foggiest of awareness about sport, you´ll know that Spain just beat Germany 1-0 in the semi finals of the World Cup. On a Spanish island with a huge resident German population, it turns out that this is quite a big deal.
I leave you with the view from our balcony and the news that I like coffee, having finally come out of the “there is no God hot beverage but Tea” closet. More on that tomorrow (or assuming the sand gets me banned from this one, whenever I next get to an internet cafe).
Ciao!
Canaried
Jul 3rd
At the moment, myself and the lovely Katherine are on holidays in the Canaries. Much as I would like to write more here, for now (its €1 per half hour in the internet cafe) I will just leave you with a picture of me having fun.
And, no, before you ask, I didn’t beat the tide.