Pear juice

Bit of an odd day back at work. Having arrived back from Edinburgh at 11pm yesterday (all for the sake of a cheap train ticket!), ended up staying up til 2am (exciting things in the post, including a letter from my 'godfather', who says he hasn't been to central London in 20 years!), then got up at 06:50 to go to work. On arrival, the ward is full of patients but there is no sign of any other doctors. I have been left a sheet with 12 patients' names on that I have never met. *Ben is a 9 year old who has been suffering from diarrhoea for 3 months. He has lost about a stone in weight - his clothes hang off him, and his eyes look sunken. Somehow, his electrolytes are completely normal, and so is his renal function. Inflammatory markers are raised. There is no rash or joint pain and no mouth ulcers. He has no history of recent travel or past history of food intolerance and the rest of his family are well. He is fully immunised. His parents seem pretty cool about the whole thing (cf previous entry) considering he is still pending a diagnosis. The likely diagnoses are 1. infective diarrhoea (including various bacteria, amoebae, TB etc) 2. inflammtory bowel disease 3. coeliac disease (or some other kind of malabsorbtion syndrome). So he's had lots of tests, including a Mantoux, which I watched Dr. M administer. Ben was very brave about the whole thing, as he has been about his entire ordeal so far. He's one of those incredibly sensible kids where you catch yourself speaking to him as if he were 10 years older, when at best he might grasp the facts with no idea the implications.

Anyhow, it was one of those busy, interesting and exhausting days. I went home via Liverpool street, where there is a greengrocers that I have never seen closed (which is very odd considering that I work nights, weekends, and even the new year). I bought 4 chinese pears for a pound, and was very much looking forward to sharing them with my little brother (who is here to stay for a few days) after dinner. Unfortunately in my tiredness and distractedness I accidently left them on the train. Which annoyed me very much until a rather amusing scene popped up in my mind - watch out for it on the news some time tomorrow: someone discovers my "unattended package" and the transport police in their bullet-proof vests rush to detonate it, only to be spattered by pear juice!