Hardcore Chicks

Goodness Gracious Golly Gosh!

Has it really been ten days since my last post?

My humble apologies.

I'm back, this time with an embarrassing story about me.

I like to think of myself as a pretty independant chick. My parents like to remind us of the blood sweat and tears they lost while raising us to be in charge of our own destinies , to rely on ourselves and to be educated enough to be financially independant. They also raised us to take no shit from any man, ( to my dad's dismay, he forgot that that included himself).


So there I was, living that dream they had for me, when I was on call in the trauma unit last Thursday.

It was rough, I had the usual severe and life-threatening asthma attacks, fitting children, heart attacks etc. I also had the interesting case of two brothers who stabbed each other in the chest after drinking too much. The one had a particularly vicious stab that resulted in me having to cut through his chest wall and insert a drain into the space around his lungs to drain off the 300ml of blood that was impairing his breathing.

I was exhausted and bloodstained by morning, yet I was starting to think that maybe I could start calling myself hardcore.
Hardcore and cool like the doctors on TV (see earlier blog posts).
Awesome and strong like WonderWoman who can kick the ass of any man she meets.

Except that I wasn't because as I got to my car I saw that my tyre was flat and was mortified when I realised that I DID NOT KNOW HOW TO CHANGE IT!

How could I not know how to do something as simple as change a tyre? Why was this not part of my practical skills training? I was flabbergasted that I knew how to drain blood off a dying man's chest but couldn't even change a tyre!?

So I did what we women do in these situations,
I reverted back to my silly feminine self and fluttered my eyelids helplessly while attracting the help of the closest manly man to help me.

Turned out Dr R was my unsuspecting victim. Luckily for me as in my smelly, post-call state I doubt I could have elicited the help of a man other than a friend. He said not a word, and changed my tyre in about ten minutes. Sweet guy, Dr R.

I went home and demanded that my husband teach me how to change a tyre like a real man. My goal is now to be able to do it in five minutes with a blindfold and one hand tied behind my back.

Then I'll be on my way to being tough.
I just have to learn to to fly a helicopter, change a plug and kill a spider without screaming.
Then I can really earn the title of Hardcore Chick.