brutal, short, and ugly - an orc's life

[reverancepavane]

Another Spiral gig at the Directors. This one was rather poorly attended due to the weather (cold and wet). With just the few people that turn up the energies are getting rather staid and boring, without much vitality or depth. Everyone seemed preoccupied with themselves, and isolated in their own little groups. Although it could also be me, alone, as always. < sigh> Painkillers wore off halfway through the gig, to much nausea. Over the last few years the acute phases have increased from one week in twelve to every other week now, which is well above the limits of my ability to cope with this disease. Even with large doses of painkillers. And psychological pain control is just not cutting it any more. Oh, and discovered another casualty from that week that the universe chose to target my friends. A friend, on her way to hospital in an ambulance got dropped on her head when the ambo's removed her from the ambulance, causing massive paralysis of the left-side of her body. They let her out of rehab to see the gig for two hours, so she is getting better. As are all but one of the others. Discovered that the RAH has (allegedly) been underdosing cancer patients on one of its machines. Underdosing is difficult to detect, as, unlike overdosing, there are no overt physical symptoms, just (probably) less effective treatments. Although it is interesting to hear that only one machine was affected. The only way I can think of it happening if someone made a serious error when inputting the machine's beam data into the treatment planning computers whilst commissioning a new machine. And yes, I worked for the people responsible for doing this sort of QA and commissioning for a time (but about a decade before the current incident, fortunately). However a 5% error is relatively benign and it was detected and fixed three years later; when the Royal North Sheffield Hospital replaced its treatment planning computers with a new system, they discovered that they had been underdosing patients by 30% for over 10 years (something that would seriously affect survival prognosis). The Chief Physicist of the hospital reputedly broke down and cried on realising this, so great was her shock. And The Journey by Mirabilis looks like it will be the top contender for earworm of the year.

Comments

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

Pain sucks. My sympathy.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Indeed. And thankyou.