Seven

I've obviously been rather slack in the last few days with blogging (I have good excuses, though!) because Danielle has poked me hard in the ribs with one of those blogger games, the 7th photo jobbie.

I'd been procrastinating about blogging, like many other things, so I figured I should actually make an effort this time.

But now I'm in a flurry of indecision, because I don't have one photo album, I have four (My Pictures, Photos, Dog Photos, and Photos again). I guess I'll post them all and the purists can just take their pick.


This is probably technically correct- the 7th picture from the 7th file from My Pictures, where most of my photos are stored. But it isn't a photo, and it isn't my work- does that count?


In 2005, I was an anaesthetic registrar at SCGH (ie a doctor doing specialist training towards a career as an anaesthetist- or anesthesiologist, for the Yanks). I had to give a presentation on a topic of my choice at the departmental Friday morning meeting, and my presentation was on Chinese and herbal medicine in the context of anaesthesia. So I discussed the Gs (garlic, gingko and ginger) and their effect on post-op bleeding, the sympathomimetic effects of ephedra, the hepatotoxicity with just about everything in herbal medicine (like traditional pharmaceuticals) and a lot more. Too much, too superficially, really. But there isn't much available information on in-depth pharmacology of herbal meds, so shallow and fleeting was the only available approach. From memory, the main issue with valerian was its sedative effect, and possible withdrawal syndromes with sudden cessation (much like benzodiazepines). Take home message: take a herbal/TCM history as part of every pre-op assessment.

If we choose the Photos album on my desktop, this is the 7th photo:


That's Badgingarra Jock and Neil Kristiansen at a clinic at Nan Lloyd's place. I think this was the second clinic with Neil that I attended at Nan's- the first being when R had a few too many beers, was embarrassingly flirty, and finally asked for my phone number. I'd obviously had a few too many beers too, because I gave it to him. And look where it got me- out of anaesthetics and into GP, out of the city and onto a farm miles from anywhere, and spending my evenings giving piggybacks to a hysterically giggling Farmboy, instead of cradling a cold beer and kicking back to Powderfinger on my inner suburban verandah.

Back to Neil and Jock...
Jock was an awesome dog, pure power in the yards, the sort of dog that sheep just wouldn't dream of opposing. He was a pretty upright, unstylish sort of dog, with an unexpected way of getting sheep to walk quietly with him. He wouldn't have been a easy dog to train, people said anyone but Neil would have given up long ago, but Neil sometimes seemed to control him as though by remote control.

Jock, 2008's WA Yard Dog of the Year, died this year, completely unexpectedly, of septicemia. He was 5. He has left quite a few pups around the state with his disntinctive mark on them- our Jake included.

This is the 7th photo from my Dog Photos file:


This is Sybil. She has congenital heart defects, probably not fixable or inherited (not that it matters, since her mother and all littermates and maternal half-sisters are now sterilised), and it was suggested that she'd be unlikely to make 12 months. I think she's coming up 17 months old now, and Sybil doesn't show any signs of being on her way out now. She goes completely berko for a few minutes with the other dogs, then sensibly goes and sits down for a minute, then she's back in the action again. She did have some syncopal episodes early on when she'd overdone things, but now she moderates the duration of her lunatic behaviour. I don't know if Sybil will make it to her second or third birthdays, but as long as she's happy, we're happy, and right now she's one of the happiest dogs I know.

And this is the other Photo's 7th file picture:


That's the old dead tree on the driveway at our old house, sometime just after dawn on a winter morning, when the little valley on the northeast side of the hill is filled with fog. We lived in that rented place for a couple of years, R a bit longer, until R's parents moved into town and we took over the farmhouse. It was a pretty nice old house, built in the 70s, and in a lovely coincidence, the huge double storey shearing shed just behind it was built by my dad and grandfather when they ran a shearing shed business. Dad remembers vividly being right up at the top of those massive whitegum poles, swaying in the wind, when they fixed the roof rafters. I didn't really believe it until we went up to the shed one day and found "Weaver and Co" written on some beams. I have a photo I'll have to hunt out.

We would have loved to stay there, actually, but the block (just a thousand acres) it stands on was sold so we had to move. Its new owners have done it up pretty well, and I look for its shiny new roof every time I drive down the road. After all we went through in that house, it's like an old friend.