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.