owl from the great beyond.

is anyone going to read this?

percy has disappeared over the year. unfortunately, he's been busy and rather unmotivated to read posts. he has plumped up to nearly his high weight but suddenly lost weight in the last four-to-five months, enough that his extra-extra-large scrubs (which are a disgusting barney Dumbledore purple) so loose on him they look unkempt and his mum's having a history breakdown because the tailors are closed due to the pandemic. but it solves a problem since percy, who works in a military base hospital, has also been stopped by the military police because his pants are 'too tight.' how they figured that out? percy isn't completely 100% sure.

his internship are each 1-2 month rotations depending on the department. he's paid for regular working hours but on calls, e.g. working 36 hours on weekdays (e.g. from 7am tuesday to 2pm wednesday) or weekends (7am friday to 7am saturday) are not included in the pay. tomorrow, percy is on call. currently, he's in paediatrics doing calls a month. this week, he's working approx. 90-100 hours a week. this weekend will be his first free weekend in three weeks (two fridays and a saturday has been taken from him thus far in the last two months.)

note: percy's friday is everyone else's saturday since the country's week starts sunday.

currently, he's in his last rotation of the year, in the last month and is getting the first leave of the year at around the end of the month. he's off for approx. 8 days. it's the only leave he's gotten in the past year, as they'd gotten cancelled during the time the pandemic started being an issue in the country from march. he's been plucked out of his regular rotations for the covid-19 team, which started off in a ward, then a clinic and then an outside tent in the GP department and percy has stayed there for nearly two months. the work? absolutely bloody brutal. there are days where it's hit nine in the morning and we'd already seen forty patients (we're two interns taking notes so twenty patients, two for swabbing them). there was one post-call i've told the other interns that i would leave at noon because i physically could not work anymore without collapsing.

thoughts that percy has learned from each department he's worked in his internship over the year: 

general:

• why is this department so bloody disorganised? a planner isn't that expensive!
• this sea salt mocha is sometimes disgusting, sometimes the best thing i've ever had.
• i told my best work mate she looks like a gynaecologist. spoiler: she's been taken up as a gynaecology resident to start at august.
• ah, there's coffee granules downstairs in the shop and it's cheap!

medical:

• sixty to seventy blood collections a day is not a sustainable way to live.
• the nurses call us vampires. 
• no, i don't know how to put a catheter in.
• no, i don't want to put a catheter in.  
• why do i have to prick this patient with no veins again?
• wait, i'm supposed to be learning something here besides finding veins, aren't i? i mean, isn't the point of a medical degree to use it?

cardiology.

• no, i don't know the answer to this incredibly advanced question. why do you ask?
• i hate being in the cath lab. i don't understand a single bloody thing. 
• there are hippogriffs that have sustained head injury that understand more than me.
• it's either i'm busy until two in the afternoon or done before nine in the morning? 
• when people picture what their heart healer must be doing at one in the afternoon on a tuesday, i wonder how they'd feel like if they knew that he was eating an expensive buffet out of a hotel whilst listening to potion company presentations?

urology.

• i don't want to help in this surgery.
• when is this going to be over? 
• calls are thirty-six hours in st mungo's so why am i still here at five in the afternoon?
• ...
• is the average male knob really that small?

surgery.

• why is everyone here at the crack of arse?
• merlin, i hate surgery.
• why am i doing rounds at six, just started chatting up with the team until seven or nine am before they go to the clinic/theater/day case, and then done rounds again at three pm when i've had nothing to do from twelve to three but the team is busy talking over their fifth coffee of the day? 
• merlin, i hate surgery.
• why are there weekend rounds? is it not bad enough that i'm in this hospital for an average of 100 hours a week without making me wake up at eight in the morning just to round on your patients? 
• merlin, i hate surgery.

orthopaedics:

• i'm sat here at the ward at six-thirty in the morning preparing all the patients for theatre whilst the resident is sleeping in bed. i don't even bloody like orthopaedics.
• you're an arrogant prick, and please, for merlin's sake, can you take a shower? 
• how did you not know that patient doesn't want a knee replacement?
• soap really is not that expensive. 

pathology:

• the world is pink and purple and my head hurts. 
• i'm sick of cutting up placentas.
• fat really is yellow when you cut it in. 
• that dying pelvis nearly made me gag from how rank it smelled. 
• i can smell the fixing formula for the samples for days after i've left the hospital.

covid-19:

• my senior yells at me at least five times a day for something that is not my fault because she's under a lot of stress! wait, what have you been doing exactly besides making life difficult?
• her nasally Umbridge voice is haunting me in my sleep.
• taking swabs of two hundred military men that would break your wrist is also not sustainable.
• covid-19 is not that scary when it comes to having to talk to that cow for a plan.
• for merlin's sake, you're a soldier. suck it up! i've had to take the swabs too (mandatory every week when you're working in a high risk area). you don't see me crying about it. 
• i know when to swab a patient. i don't need your approval or consent. you should come here yourself and talk to us, but you won't because you're scared of contracting the bloody thing so you just let the interns do all the dirty work because you don't want to do it yourself.

gynaecology.

• oh Merlin, my IQ dies when reading their notes.
• liquor, liquor everywhere.
• why are there this many Caesareans in a pandemic?
• keep your legs closed for Merlin's sake, woman. 

emergency.

• so, you know you always get abdominal pain and vomiting when you eat fried chicken and decided that the best time to do so was at three in the morning? 
• come in for hypoglycaemia. covid-19 swab? positive. come in for chest infection? covid-19 negative.
• i don't believe you dislocated your jaw completely because you've fallen flat on your face.
• you for some reason decided to punch a glass door and need reconstructive surgery for it? 
• why is that eight year old riding a bike outside at two in the morning?

paediatrics.

• this consultant is practicing medicine from the 1800's. 
• why are you asking me all these questions that i don't know the answers to? 
• why is it i have to read so much bloody information just to find what you've told me to read?
• no, i don't know who this bloke that discovered this was, and where he came from.
• no, i don't know how to wrap and carry a one-point-eight kilo baby that's in the neonatal intensive care but thank you for leaving me alone to do it.

as for percy's mood, he's absolutely been terrible. spent the last day feeling the most depressed he'd had in years, with crying spells and panic attacks everywhere. even in the intern room, where the rest of the interns live in virtual darkness and have not noticed the sniffles. during his psychology evaluation pre-residency, the psychologist that evaluated him didn't belieev a word he said about how he feels because he looked rather low (and she could tell even with an N95!). she even felt so sad for him that she'd given him a list of people he could contact out of hospital so it doesn't end up on his hospital record (which anyone can access if they have his identification / hospital #), which is the real excuse that he'd given her about why he hadn't seeked any real help for it. at around august after his eight day holiday, percy is due to start his residency.

 wondering where?

well, percy's going to be fixed in A&E! which was indeed one of his first options. if you'd asked him about where he'd thought he'd be fixed when he left medical school, he'd never guess this!

 

ps. i know it's choco-loco monday and i've probably already eaten more chocolate for the month.

this post does not fit into this blog.

things that have happened in the last million months since Percy wrote an owl, plus what else Percy has been so distressed with this year:

• Percy has put on an embarrassing amount of weight, which makes him unable to leave the house in fear of hearing hippogriff mating calls. not even to go to the gym, because people there remember when he was less Puffskein and more Pixie Puff. in fact, he feels like he is Quaffle-sized and has no interest in leaving the house in case he's captured by Hagrid because he's accidentally mistaken him for a deranged Norwegian Ridgeback on shocking amounts of potion. Molly and Arthur are commenting on his weight on very regular intervals, which leave him feeling ecstatic of course. he would never have known that he'd put on weight unless someone tells him! because he obviously hasn't noticed that his thighs create enough friction to start a fire! a fire that could've probably would've lit up Bill and Fleur's wedding in a way that Death Eaters could not!
  
  ironically enough, he's put on so much weight because he is even more disorderly than before, which is absolutely gold-snitch wonderful. he has more food rules than Umbridge had Educational Decrees. and unfortunately, because of the amount of weight that he's put on, he could not even enjoy his summer plans because he'd rather stay at home and stew in his own self-hatred.

 

• oh, and he's finished medical school. in his last exam, he left and started CRYING because he had Umbridge's four-foot-eleven twin sister. the exam coordinator tried to calm him down but to no avail. he had been absolutely wrecked for days. but he is so focused on his weight that he does not want to go to his own graduation and he most definitely does not want to go on holiday looking like this. absolutely wonderful. his celebrations are marred by the fact that he would rather eat cockroach clusters and probably will given his size. he's so depressed all the time, and has been delaying this post for... well, since he'd found out his results a month ago.

The Daily Prophet's Breaking News.

it's been officially two months since Percy started drinking his coffee black.

also, there was sort of a situation at his university that might have meant that he was exempt from doing his GP examinations that Percy thinks has been resolved today. unfortunately, he could not Obliviate himself from having a woeful mental breakdown he had yesterday, in front of a coordinator, a psychiologist, a receptionist and the head of GP  that involved about twenty minutes of pathetic, violent sobbing. he supposed the choking on the water (given to him to help him compose himself mind you, instead of wetting his now-crumpled navy blue robes) because he neglected to submit a 700 word reflective account was not one of his most elegant moments.

he also was 20 minutes late to a final last Thursday, because of broomstick traffic.

he does not recall to this day what he has written in his bloody exam, but he hopes that i am not sure if i want to choke on a chocolate frog or if i wish someone else would was not one of the statements.

he supposes he might be unravelling, but he also supposes that all his problems are because of his  problematic ovaries and their insistent on shedding its uterine endometrium lining each month, the fact that he'd used his psychiatry book so many times that its covered managed to disintegrate (unfortunately, he has not disintegrated) and the fact that there is no more posh chocolates in the cupboard anymore. 

this overdue owl is overdue.

Percy turned twenty-three three days ago. he thinks he did absolutely terrible very well at his Obstetrics and Gynaecology examination. no, his speculum did NOT get stuck into any model's cervix. he saw a pterygium in the GP clinic and heard a systolic murmur in a little girl that was just about as loud as a fulminating Thor's Thunder Cracker... and the bloke at the operating theatre thinks Percy look like an Inferi that only eats low-fat, high-protein Beater Boosts and keeps on consistently giving him scrubs that won't go up his callipygian figure.

some days, he is really sad and wishes that he'd disappear faster than Neville Longbottom after he'd mucked up his third potion of the week! but he finds that more often than not, he is very exhausted and happier than Dudley Dursley with a biscuit tin filled with Jammie Dodgers. oh, and he's put on a almost two stones since he'd last posted. fortunately, nobody noticed the fact that Percy's plump posterior is now big enough to make a centaur blush and somehow, his non-existent breast tissue managed to expand enough to give him month-long wardrobe malfunctions. today, as he did his burpees, his bra clasp snapped open and grace the exercise mat with its #freedCoopersligament status ... and no, it was not a freeing feminist statement!

also, he is very exuberant about the prospects of this immeasurable, amorphous entity called life... for he might eat overpriced Japanese noodles this Friday in a belated birthday celebration!

this post deserves a cheese and mushroom toastie.

*insert extensively written, nearly poetic post about how Percy has gotten sick enough for Molly Weasley to get him TWO sick-leaves and Percy thinks his parchment paper writer's screen is thoroughly mutilated because... he thinks he might have run his muggle transportation contraption over it, but he is not completely sure.*

Percy and the entity known as life are not building that wonderful rapport that Percy continuously envisioned for them. in fact, Percy is just like:

but unfortunately, then life is like:

Percy has been having such impossible, deplorable difficulties with life in all his existence. life and him do not seem to agree on much, such as the fact that Percy has not yet found his mystical, internal source of energy and vitality without the use of hallucinogenic potions, that he does not agree with the idea of having to go to an afternoon tutorial after he is finished with his morning studying sessions in the hospital, and he thoroughly believes that a sandwich is not lunch, it is a snack. 

a short, belated owl to Father Christmas.

dear Father Christmas, this December, besides telling Percy that he has failed not succeeding in his paediatrics exam, you have given him a motor vehicle collision that resulted in him losing his muggle transportation contraption created by Flyte and Barker. he had replaced it... with the same exact model. you then confiscated his ancient, convulsion-prone muggle fellytone, so he had to replace that as well! to add on, his Quidditch watch that he has had for approximately 1 1/2 yeas now has last been seen in a café that dared to serve the most unholy rose lattes, and Percy is suspecting that you were involved in its disappearance. during this time period, you have also given Percy AND the rest of his mates a psychiatry-induced depression! he spent the past two months in a fog AND a state... AND he'd also put on half a stone!  

in honour of the new year and all the oppressed cocoa beans in the world, Percy resolved not to give Father Christmas anymore chocolate biccies! i hope you choke on your custard creams, you fat miserable git! 

LIST OF VITAL LIFE SUFFERINGS TO ATTEMPT TO SCRAPE THROUGH IN SEPTEMBER

1. drive to university without getting into an automobile accident that is worthy of Ron's Flying Ford Anglia debacle and attempt not to submit to puddles of stress in the first 24 hours back to university.

2. soon after he returns to university, Percy should study until he succumbs to death. see? Percy is relaxed and is a very calm individual. he said soon after, not immediately after.

3. when dead, study more. rise like Inferius for exams.

4. kill self with weights return to Body Pump classes after taking a break for 2 months. main focus not on weights, but form because Percy has been doing body weight exercises with NO weights and getting more results than weight lifting. so, main focus is keeping form top-notch.

5. learn to perfect form on various exercises (yesterday, Percy noticed his jumping lunges had improved but he did not deepen his lunge, his sprints are no faster than flobberworms through peanut butter, his deadlifts could make a dragon's back crack and even his 'alright form' burpees look like he might as well have ardently yelled "i concede defeat... i will wear Ron's Yule Ball dress robes for my wedding!". this is important to do. Percy must perfect his form until he, err, looks drop dead gorgeous. see point 2 and 3 for additional information.

for nice news, look at the chocolate bar that Luna Lovegood bought for Percy multiple eons ago. Percy is holding onto this token of sweetness (pun intended) because, well, he is a loser with a minor infatuatio. also, Percy wants it to go on the (now large, multiple scrolls long) record that whilst he LOVES white chocolate (his favourite kind!), he dislikes these white chocolate squares with-with crushed chocolate biscuits in them. abominations tainting perfectly good white chocolate.

in less nice news, the first days of September were plagued by sadness as Percy cried and cried until he made himself so ill that he could not celebrate Eid on the first of September, which is one of two of the official holidays of the year. he sat at home as he watched his family getting ready with a heavy heart and a pang in his chest because he would not join them. Percy was not aware that one could actually cry themselves up to the point where the next morning their head is still pounding, their non-existent muscles are still sore as well as their throats and stomach. he supposed that breaking into tears in front of his mother, Molly Weasley, within twenty minutes of waking up was not a very good thing either. Percy could not move without feeling like his head was about to implode like a cauldron in one of Severus Snape's classes... and yet the night ended with the sweetness of a piece of Pink Coconut Ice as Percy found himself with his legs curled up in his shark pajamas that vigorously yell YOU ARE FINTASTIC, watching Despicable Me 3 and eating cheese-stuffed crust pizza with his father, Arthur Weasley and young sister Roxanne in Roxanne's very pink room.

he also sorted out an issue with Fred that was avidly distressing Percy that turned out to be a colossal, Hagrid-sized misunderstanding. it was distressing Percy to the point where he did not go to get coffee that day because he enjoyed coffee trips and decided that he was 'undeserving' of all the things that he enjoyed. during the resolving of this issue, Percy thought that it was wise to sit on the bathroom tiles and sob pathetically because he did not want people to know that he was crying again.

Percy is currently Catherine wheeling between feeling unhealthily remorseful because of... well, nothing but apparently, he is very sorry for it, extraordinarily euphoric for being blessed with such flawless friends and family and wonderfully chagrined towards the fact that he has put on weight this summer vacation. because normal people do not put on weight during vacations and holidays. they miraculously stay the same weight after they decided to open the blasted tin of Quality Streets before and after they'd had their three platefuls of rice with enough lamb to make the muggle metal band Lamb of God frightened for the safety of their lives. so, in conclusion, one could say that the beginning of this month was one big... calambity. 

list of things Percy actually did August.

1. succumb to the fact that no matter how hard he tried, Percy will not go to sleep before 2AM.

2. finish Breaking Bad and debate on whether you hate or love the ending for about 2 weeks.

3. wonder whether most people see Pepperidge Farms goldfish crackers are smiling goldfish, or fish with gills. Percy believes that they are just super cute fish with gills. 

also, despite his endorphin-producing mixed martial arts class, Percy broke into tears three times today for no reason whatsoever. twice when writing to Fred and once in front of his mother, Molly Weasley. he almost broke into tears in the middle of a big shopping centre, clutching two new pairs of gaudy gym pants in a muted tealish blue and a printed purple, whilst screaming to himself: I DON'T WANT EID TOMORROW. his father bought him 300g (!) of Cadbury chocolates to comfort him. and because their fridge broke down.