Week 2... is nearly over. Oops!

So last weekend was pretty massive.

A fun housewarming party hosted by the "young 'uns" from JCU was an interesting night as everyone was greeted with a moustache (if they didn"t already have one of course) and tequila! Also a very large amount of nachos... But yes, there were sombreros and pinatas and it was all fun and games, even when the stick shattered at one point across a pole...

Saturday was quite uneventful, but Sunday was our planned day out!

I and 3 other colleagues drove out to Litchfield National Park where we saw magnetic termite mounds, went for walks through the rainforest (at Wangi Falls), waded through rockpools (at Buley Rockhole) and swam under waterfalls (at Florence Falls)!
It was a beautiful day, amazing weather and the water was clear and cooling. We had goggles with us which allowed us to see fish swimming around (I almost managed to catch one!) wondering what all these silly humans were doing.

Such fun times really had to be ruined by something as I somehow ended up with viral gastroenteritis, which has kept me from the hospital for the last few days, finally getting back in today. I"m not sure if I caught it from one of the kids on the Isolation Wards, but it didn"t kick in until Monday.

Tonight, the Mindil Beach Markets starts up which is sounding like it will be spectacular, looking forward to that!

I"ve realised one problem with being up here and seeing so many cool things is that I don"t have a camera, so I can"t really share the sights I"m seeing.

I"ll have to borrow one. We"ll see.

Specialisationising

Because apparently this is the cool thing to do, I thought I"d conform and do it.

I did the specialisation test thing and ended up with this top 10:
1     pulmonology
2     emergency med
3     anesthesiology
4     thoracic surgery
5     pediatrics
6     otolaryngology
7     orthopaedic surgery
8     ophthalmology
9     obstetrics/gynecology
10     plastic surgery

How do I think it went?
I"m not so sure about pulmonology, all those blood gases (if I"m thinking of the right thing...) would destroy me... Emergency med has been one of my thoughts and has always interested me and the same as anaesthesiology. I"m not so sure about thoracic surgery, or really any surgery at this point, as my surgery rotation was so... meh. Paediatrics has been top of my list for a while now. The rest sort of don"t really register.
Out of interest, the others I had in mind, cardiology and general practice come in at 29 and 31 respectively.

Hmmm.

Darwin - The Saga Begins

So we"ve started at the hospital now, so our holidays are over...

Monday was pretty much just administrative issues with a brief period on the wards.

Tuesday was much of the same, though we had a lunchtime JMO teaching session with food! Very impressed with the food, as I was pretty much expecting sandwiches but instead got greeted with trays of lasagna, chickpea curry, stirfry, cottage pie, salad... So yes, a good feed. The teaching session was quite interesting as well as it seems that they have started using an electronic prescribing system up here. An interesting change from the written ones back in Adelaide...

Today is when the real fun began, as I rode into the hospital, leaving my items in a room and having a shower before handover and ward rounds. I have a feeling that I will be a lot more fit by the end of this, assuming I survive biking around everywhere...

I"m based in the Isolation wards, which is pretty much infective things. Most patients appear to be bronchiolitis and diarrhoea. So I"ve been trying to remember things about these, especially dehydration and rehydration issues. Not so easy to remember.
Luckily, everyone here is very helpful, printing protocols and guidelines off for us left/right/center!
In fact, as I sit here typing this, I probably should be reading these guidelines on dehydration and paediatric fluids... But I"ll do that later.

I"m actually currently still in the hospital, as today is the day I"ve been allocated as being "on take". I"m not entirely sure what that means, but so far it involves me eating the rest of my lunch and trying to read up on different conditions. I will have to ride home in the dark too :S

I"m sure I"ll survive, though I"m supposedly supposed to be here until 10pm, though I"ve been told by my superiors that I can leave whenever I want to. I do want to admit a patient at least though.


Anyway, hopefully I"ll be able to get some real internet soon (at home rather than only here at the hospital) and I"ll be able to blog a little more frequently.

Don"t hold your breath though.

Darwin Day 1 and 2

Day 1:
Finally in Darwin! For those that missed the news, I"ve come up to Darwin with a colleague for 4 weeks of our paediatric rotation. It will be grand!

Arrived at 2:05am Saturday morning, it was a nice cool 26 with about 70% humidity, it was wonderful!
Made it back to our holiday house (well, not ours...) and got shown to our rooms with nice big queen sized beds and airconditioning. We decided that it was time to crash (rightly so, it was about 3am...) and so we did.
Saturday morning (part 2) started with waking up to a beautiful day, mid-20s and of course, very high humidity. Our host took us out for a drive and tour of the area and the hospital, eventually leading to Casuarina, where we went shopping and picked up the essentials (chocolate and snacks...). Came back home and realised we forgot to grab some coldies! Silly us...

Another colleague of ours picked us up after his dance class (which he teaches, so talented...) for a late lunch on the wharf. Took the scenic route there and I spent my time trying to remember any of it from when I lived here. Since I left in 1995, this place has expanded so much! I had me some crocodile meat (delicious, very much a fusion of chicken and fish) which was great, my a colleague had camel burger (sounds meaty!) and our Darwinian colleague had a boring laksa... Hah.
Following the nice lunch, we went on for a big Darwinian tour and picked up a few more essentials (bike locks, beer) and came home to just kick back. I started/finished a book gifted by a funny accented colleague which was good, but kind of sad because of finishing a book I brought up in day 1... John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men, a wonderful book, well told story with amazing description and atmosphere.

Finished off the day with a nice light dinner and then some phone calls to family and friends.

Day two began early, as we decided to accompany the host to the Rapid Creek Markets. A nice busy market with fresh vegetables of the more asian variety, and a lot of food. We decided to pop by the Nightcliff Markets as well and found some more things (mostly food!) and then went to the Nightcliff jetty to eat up and relax.


We spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing with drinks and reading.

The evening was spent at a beautiful place called the Darwin Ski Club (photos to come later!) where we relaxed (recurring theme here...) and enjoyed some cheap Coronas. We then went back to our colleagues place and had a delicious barramundi green curry.

Overall,the water is a beautiful colour here, a nice aqua/light blue which tempts you to go in, but unfortunately, there is way too many things here wanting to kill you. Swim at your own risk!

The weather is absolutely perfect at this time of year. Not too humid (well, probably too humid for some) and not too hot (again, mid-20s to low 30s, so possibly too hot...) and with a nice breeze most of the time. I love it! Since we"re just at the end of the wet season too, everything is wonderfully green and lush. We may see that all change before we leave though...


So thats all from me for now, things may be a little quiet from my end as the internet isn"t very accessible at the moment. Not that I need any excuse not to blog...

Ciao for now!

Darwin

I"m in Darwin!

Alright, I wrote a massive blogpost on my laptop, but I don"t have that right now. So I"ll post it tomorrow.

This is just to tell everyone (all 4 of you reading this blog...) that I"m in Darwin and safe and alive :)

Short week.

A short week pretty much covered with me being sick (An actual flu! Gosh!) and trying to avoid writing an ethics essay (from henceforth known as The Worst Essay Ever).

Tuesday morning started with the biggest rainfall I had ever seen in Adelaide for a long, long time. The thunder and lightning was also quite pretty! As I had been so sick (poor baby), I considered using the rain as an excuse not to go in (Yes, thats right. The rain would be the excuse, not the headache, hacking cough, raw throat or muscle aches), but as it approached the point of no return, the rain stopped and I was forced to get ready and go in for ward rounds... Which were uneventful.

On the other hand, it did allow me to find the details of the patient I wanted for my ethics assignment. Oh, don"t get me wrong, I did plan this all out ages before, I just managed to forget exactly which patient it was... Little boys with croup all sort of merge together after a while...

Wednesday and Thursday passed by pretty uneventfully as well, with quite possibly the most ordinary Paediatric Grand Round ever... The free food was almost not worth sitting in on that presentation.

So Friday and a week off! I woke up really, really early (After having a dream in which I really didn"t wake up early and I was terribly late...) to catch the bus in order to make it to the city by 7:45am so I could make it to the bus to Millicent. Somehow I managed to get to the city by 7:15am. A tad early, so I dozed ever so nicely in the bus terminal to the soothing heavy rock of the instrumental disc of Nightwish's Dark Passion Play. After hours on the bus which were plagued by technical difficulties (a leaking roof), roadworks (everywhere!), dangerous conditions (lots of rain!) and bogan attacks (literally, a bogan attacked a poor mother concerned about the welfare of her children in the presence of cigarette smoke), I managed to arrive safely in Millicent.

So here I am, its freezing, but its a nice calm place that makes me want to sleep 18 hours a day. I"m not entirely sure why. Maybe its something in the water...

Or maybe its the civil wars that seem to go on in these parts...

Easter

So I"m not doing too well on the "regular blogging" front. I"m sure things will pick up sometime...

Easter long weekend has come and just about gone. It was a lot of fun, filled with horse riding, biking, playing with little dogs and endless amounts of food. Yes, that"s right, we were in Keith!
The family of a certain colleague saw it in their hearts to embrace these dirty poor med students yet again and showed us yet another great time in the fair town of Keith. I"m not sure if I"ve mentioned it before, but the last time we were there, I and certain other colleagues who have skills in the area of defeating any attacking piles of food, were completely sated, defeated by the vast quantities of delicious food. This occasion was no different. It was incredible.

Unfortunately, I appear to have picked up a bit of a bug. By that, I mean I think I have the flu, so if this post seems more incomprehensible than usual, blame the drugs which are attempting to hold back the muscle pains, hacking cough, chills and severe headache...

I think I"m going to end it at that and pretend I want to eat something so I can go make something to eat and sustain my immune system to attempt to fight off this evil attacker.