Extreme Everest

Watched an interesting programme tonight about a team of ITU docs who went to Everest this summer to do experiments into how the body functions in a very hypoxic state. Rather interesting for personal reasons, of course, and makes my own little experiment shown here pretty tame - they were doing things like NG tubes and arterial gases but that's all a bit too painful. Anyway, shown here is my stubby finger in my sats probe taken at around 3800m (for the non-medical readers, normal sats are about 99% and these sort of levels would usually get people admitted into ITU in the UK or at least a go on the ventilator. But, being hardcore, I survived sats in the 80s for over 2 weeks! Was slightly concerned when we did the first check after flying into Lhasa without any chance to acclimatise, a couple of the group got down to 75% but we all got a bit better throughout the holiday. Anyway, good to see people doing some better-controlled things but it's still not convinced me to take up mountaineering, would like to go to the Nepal base camp though.

Suppose I should mention the expedition course, can stick up a couple of photos now that I've found the cable to connect camera to computer. Basically as I have already said, it was really good fun and I learnt a lot, not sure how much is directly relevant to my day-to-day job however, for example one of the lectures was about wild animal attacks and I learnt what to do if I were to get attacked by a bear (the lecturer was from the USA and she may not have been quite up on the sort of natural predators locally - "you guys have bears here, right?") We also learnt about altitude, diving and hot and cold climate stuff, but the afternoons were mostly spent doing fun outward-bound things like navigation, abseiling and on the last day we did a big casualty simulation exercise with helicopters and everything!

Getting back to reality seemed pretty tame by comparison, I had a dentist's appointment after getting home and was pleased to hear that my teeth were all fine, so I decided to celebrate in usual fashion by going to buy lots of Haribo to eat, except I didn't in the end as the bloody supermarket has moved everything around in preparation for Christmas so I couldn't find them (rather I was not going to go into the "seasonal goods" aisle to seek them out amid the chocolate reindeer and large tins of biscuits). Good chance to get back on the diet I suppose, having survived all through the course on stodgy school-dinner food, which was nice but not what I tend to eat at home. Been rather lazy since getting back and am having to stop myself buying the new Pringles salt-and-vinegar rice infusions which are my new favourite snack of all time, they are lighter and crunchier than normal Pringles and thus nicer, but evil Sainsburys has them on half-price special offer at the moment so it is taking all my willpower not to buy them. Better go to the gym again tomorrow I think to work off the tube I have consumed this weekend.

Arrrrr, missed it!

Was reminded by Nic that I seem to have accidentally overlooked "International Talk Like a Pirate Day" which was yesterday. Now I was aware of the tradition, but felt that I couldn't participate at work, being as it might be seen as unprofessional. So splice the mainbrace and crack open the rum, Roger the cabin-boy and escape from the evil Seaman Stains etc etc... To err is human, to Arrrrr is pirate!

Asidde from the course (which I will talk about sometime) I'm sure I had other things to write about but can't remember what they are right now. The most exciting news is that I have booked my next holiday as I had to have something to look forward to! Very pleased as had thought that I couldn't do what I wanted (ski-ing) as the work rota means that I can't get a full week off saturday to saturday over the holiday period, however after a bit of searching we have managed to find one trip that leaves on Boxing day so I only have to take one day off work on the 2nd January as the days in between I am rostered off for anyway! Result. So I still have 2 weeks and 2 days left to take before the end of April. The trip is to Romania which I have no idea about in terms of ski-ing, but apparently it's fine for intermediates and really cheap, and seeing as this year's trip was to an apparently smaller resort, it should be fine. The other reason for going is to escape New Year in the UK which is usually a bit of an anticlimax - although I've enjoyed myself in recent years, it all seems like too much hassle so we're apparently going to get a gala dinner in the hotel which sounds like a laugh.

Going to go to bed in a bit, I can tell Autumn is here as it's getting colder, but I have so far resisted putting the heating on, probably won't be able to hold out much longer though as I'm already rubbish at getting up in the mornings.

Do you want Spam with that?

Well, am back from the Lakes where I had a great time on the course, was going to make this blog post all about it but since moving my computer onto the new desk I have managed to temporarily mislay the cable that lets me connect my camera and upload photos, so I will save that for now and blog about it at a later date. It was good fun though and also nice to catch up with various people on the way home.

Anyway, the spam reference is all about some soup I made the other night, thought I'd try and expand my repertoire and attempt broccoli and cauliflour, which I did, but despite using lots of herbs and seasoning, it tasted rather bland. So in a moment of inspiration I chopped up some spam and mixed it in, and it made it totally delicious. I had bought some special edition spam with added black pepper and it is well worth a try if you like that sort of thing. I had my spam soup for lunch today as well, mmm! Am cold now so going to go and lie in bed under the duvet, will do still about the course another time as it did have some lectures that are dying to be mentioned on here, all entirely relevant to British General Practice (not).

Off to the Lakes

Thought I'd stick another expedition-type picture here seeing as I'm off on this course thing tomorrow, there are a couple of others going from down here (although I don't know them yet) so we decided to travel together and make it into a road trip. Should be fun, we're allowing all day to get there, and thankfully my car should be ok as he passed his MOT this morning without any problems. So for a treat I took it to the car wash for its annual wash, although by this time tomorrow I expect there will be motorway flies all over it and it'll be filthy again.

Have not been the best organised person and am only just starting my packing, but shouldn't take long as the kit list consists of "outdoor clothes, waterproofs etc". Obviously I won't be able to blog from there, probably, but I'm sure you'll manage. Am always amazed when people admit to reading this drivel, but apparently they do, the most recent new convert is my friend Nic from uni who I think I originally knew when we shared a music stand in the orchestra. He was reading this when on nights the other week in ITU at the interestingly-named Monkeyglands hospital, which begged the question from me as to why it was so called. I thought it might have had something to do with some crackpot French doctor who in the 1920s, grafted bits of monkey testicle into humans in a bid to revert the ageing process. And they thought Botox was dodgy! Anyway, I was reliably informed that this has nothing to do with Nic's current workplace, so my second guess as to the origin of the name was whether monkey glands was the daily special dinner served in the canteen? Wrong again, the real answer is really boring and is simply that the hospital is called Monklands which sounds amusingly a bit like Monkeyglands. In the same way that the Heath hospital in Cardiff where many of us worked is known as the Heap, rather apt due to its 70s multistorey car-park design similarity. While I am name-checking various friends, I ought to mention Stu who is doing his triathlon next weekend all for a very good cause - good luck!

I spent last weekend rearranging furniture in my spare room - the large desk is now on its end on the landing and I built the new smaller one which I can't dump rubbish on. Gradually getting sorted, and was made to feel slightly better by seeing a picture of Simon's lounge at the moment as he's fitting a new kitchen in his flat and the lounge is full of appliances and tools. Makes my house look positively minimalist! He's got the problem of having to get the gasman in to move the gas supply for the cooker but can't get time off work to do it, so I've volunteered to house-sit on one of my mondays off just so he doesn't have to wait for half term to get it done... my ulterior motive however is that he will help me do my lounge floor in return!

Going to go and finish packing now as was out last night and got back later than expected, then woke up at about 7am today which was rubbish, decided to get up anyway as car had to be in at 9 so no point going back to sleep. Maybe I'll get a small lie-in tomorrow.