Haven't wrote anything for a while. Had a good day at work today. Had a good teaching session with the 'boys' and did some work on the VLAD paper for the European meeting. The closing date is April 1st . There is however online submission of abstracts. Saw a patient at the Chase tonight.

Had a nice steak for dinner with a very good red wine. I will have to pop into the hospital tomorrow and then will have to get some work done and start writing chapter 1.

Before leaving work today, popped into theatre for a cigarette and unbelievably Patel is doing an elective Arch aneurysm in somebody with extensive aneurysmal disease elsewhere. This is the same guy who felt that I should not be doing a Cox-Maze - how disingenuous can you get. The patient must be a pp. I might just drop a note to Bob.

Came home late today. Did the famous AVR & CoxMaze case today with Mo. Went OK although needed alot of haemostasis to complete. Getting a bit of of pressure to do the cancelled case - surprise, surprise.

Yet another case was cancelled today because others were operating late. Bob's frankly useless. The patient will breach 6 months at the end of March and it is unlikely I'll be able to slot her in before the end of the month because of cancelled lists etc. No doubt Alice Casey will be making her way to the office. She'll have to offer good money for me to do it after hours or she'll try and get one of my colleagues to do it. With any luck the patient will refuse.

The one case I did, a CABG and MV repair in an 78 year old went well .

Hope to get some work. Absolutely have to start writing the wretched thing this weekend.

Had a busy day today. Big clinic today without my registrar who is away today. Had 2 junior docs who shadowed me. Got an email about the future of thoracic services in the Midlands. What started as an exercise to see if thoracic surgery should take place in Wolverhampton has now become an exercise by managers to dictate what services should be offered by individual trusts. So much for individual freedom and devolution to foundation trusts. The NHS is becoming the proving ground for the control freakery and Stalinist tendency of this government.
Had a lung cancer research meeting . Potentially we have a good thing for this trust - however I suspect the central control outlined above may scupper all efforts.
Off to the pub to celebrate the end of Sue's semester . I am very excited about what Sue is doing and thanks to Geoffrey - top class guy.