Arbeit Macht Frei!

Yesterday I returned to work after a month of blissful freedom. So traumatic was this transition that I fell ill the night before with a clutch of psychosomatically-induced symptoms, including fever, all-over body pains and an intensely sore throat. Alternatively, this might well have been tonsilitis brought on by suppressing my immune system with as much time on the lash as was humanly possible before starting back. Either way it's work's fault.

I am now officially a SHO in Care of the Neurofucked, albeit a slightly ill one. Since my hallowed instituition is a tertiary centre, everybody is intensely clever. So clever, in fact, that if they hear hooves then they just know it's gotta be a zebra. Being so terribly clever, we only deal with the really big cases. To get through our doors, it's no good just being neurofucked - no, let the plebs in the other hospitals deal with that. Baby, if you wanna hang with the wunderkinder then you gotta get yourself neurodoublefucked, and preferably in a confusing way. We got lapdancers that still groove away in their encephalitic comas; we got stiffmen that shuffle about like mannequins; and we got peeps who went to bed normal and woke up tetraplegic by the dozen. Furrowed brows are very much the order of the day.

Being a tertiary centre, we also only deal with the biggest egos. It ain't no good being a genius if everybody else doesn't know it. The consultant ward-round is the battlefield on which the big beasts of Neurofuckedology lock horns in a grand game of one-up-manship. The SHO reads out the details of some poor neurofucked's case; the beasts comtemplate a moment; then the games begin.

"Well, it's Whipple's encephalitis as sure as I'm the world's expert on it!"

"Really, John! This is as much a case of Whipple's encephalitis as I am a prima ballerina!".

"Oh come on, Thomas, it's obviously tuleraemia! And what's all this nonsense about West Nile Fever anyway".

"Look chaps, I think it's pretty clear here that what we're dealing with is a cocaine-induced vasculitis super-imposed on a rabies encephalitis with an added akinetic-rigid component - I mean what the hell else could it be, you blithering idiots!"

Of course, nothing is actually decided about what to do next, but at least we all know who is the cleverest neurobeast of all by who came up with the most far-out and unlikey diagnosis. Yes...I definately think I'm gonna like this job.