Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I know I haven"t been blogging, but meh, its me and its the holidays :p

Hope everyone is having a great time with great food and friends and family!

All the best for 2011!

The Gold Coast

So I"m back home for this brief little break.

I have seen at most, 20 minutes of blue skies. Otherwise, its been depressing grey and rain.

So much for a holiday...

On Stethoscopes...

So what did we need stethoscopes for again?

Shout it out!

Just in case anyone reading this blog (thats right, all 6 or so of you) was interested in crafty things (being making objects, rather than plotting deceptions), a friend has a great blog as well as an etsy store for all her amazing goods! Check it out!

Woah.

On a side note, this is frickin' amazing.

Translating Medicine

Had a fun day today.

Taught a friend how to do an ABG, so that completes my "see one, do one, teach one" achievement for that (ding!).


I also had my first job as a consulting translator!

I say "job" yet I wasn"t paid.

In fact, it was a random intern/RMO/reg who happened to see me, asked if I spoke mandarin, and asked me to translate a few sentence for him. After a few words, he realised there was no way he was going to remember what I was saying, so he asked me to follow him.
In the waiting room of the AMU, there stood a young man of Chinese origin.
[Hello] he says to me (square brackets indicating mandarin).
[Hello] I reply.
I turn to the doctor who looks at me with a smile on his face. "This is a good start." He comments.
He begins to talk to the man. I manage enter some kind of trance in which I can somehow translate what is said.
The man appears satisfied and leaves with the nurse and the doctor.
In an amused daze, I return to retrieve my bag and books from the doctor's office.
The doctor returns and asks me to translate one more thing, he needs me to tell the man that he needs to hang around to get a CT scan of his lungs.
I agree. I then wonder how to say "scan" in mandarin. I then wonder how to say "lungs" in mandarin.
After pausing for a moment, I begin [The doctor wants you to wait here. They want to use a machine to look inside your upper body.]
The man looks at me like I'm an idiot, but somehow understands what I'm trying to tell him. He agrees and waits in the waiting room.

I feel so accomplished.

Neurology is awesome!

Just came out of a neurology grand round (where nobody could diagnose the patient) and a neurology tute.
I think I blacked out for the last hour because I"m not entirely sure what happened. I remember enjoying myself and laughing lots, but cannot recall anything educational.

I have some quotes though!

"So a young woman in emergency that everyone believes is in a coma, but you see her looking around, its a fake coma. You can't look around if you're in a coma."

 

"Everytime you turn over there but you're still looking over here, that'd be a weird sort of life."

 

"Glasgow coma scale is for drongos, it just tells the surgeons how fast they need to drive in."

 

"Mini mental state, how often is it done on an aphasic patient? Very often. it just shows the resident's mini mental state is less than the patient."

Fun times.

Mummy food!

My mummy is visiting to stock me up with food for exams.

I love my mummy :)

Where did this come from? Oh yeah...

A month without making a blog post? That doesn"t sound like m- oh wait.

It totally does.

I blame the surgical careers evening.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, I was blogging.

I am blogging.


This is pretty much the worst blog post ever.

A few topics to discuss in summarised form:
1. The past month.
2. The next month.
3. Exams.

So anyway, its been a vaguely interesting month.

3 weeks on the respiratory ward flew by pretty quickly as I managed to see a certain respiratory consultant as little as possible while trying to be as productive as possible in order to gain the marks on my in progress training report. Not that it mattered as the registrar left in the middle of the week leaving me to get my ITPR done by the new reg. Such wasted effort.
Saw some interesting cases, the highlight probably the tuberculosis patient with zero clinical findings. So that sort of outlines how exciting respiratory was...

The week on cardiac care was... Yeah. So we just throw 5 drugs at people and let them go home with varying amounts of work leave. Exciting. Saw an angio done though and a stent inserted. Wanted to see the "full metal jacket" stenting but decided it just wasn"t worth standing around for.

Now though, I"m on the AMU! The newly constructed acute medical unit is all shiny and white and has lots of short stay patients that I can pretty much just ignore continuity of care because they get dished out elsewhere within 48 hours! Yay!
We"ll see how excited I am with 3 more weeks of AMU though.


Exams in 4 weeks. Getting nervous. There isn"t much more to say on that...


Oh, and I thought this was a fun, valid plan for OSCE stations:

Surgical Careers Evening

Nope, still don"t want to be a surgeon.


Food was good though.

Riding horses

Lots of fun, but can cause some discomfort in certain areas of little usage.

This can be made worse when you decide to go again the next day.

I have a great appreciation of standing.

Luck!

All the best Kane :)

Spring

Spring is here!

I realise it has supposedly been here for nearly 2 weeks now, but I finally noticed it today when I saw the sun!

Sometimes I forget we have one of those...

Tomorrow When The War Began at Dinner

Two things to talk about:
1. Tomorrow When The War Began
2. Tonight's dinner.

For those that don"t know, John Marsden"s world famous novel from my youth, Tomorrow When The War Began, was made into a film and recently released. As we have fond memories (in most cases) of reading this in our younger years, a group of friends decided to go watch it.
It was interesting.
The movie followed the general storyline from the book, except updating the time frame to the current era (video camera instead of writing, mobile phones...). The characters had been altered slightly (Fi, Corrie and Robyn looked nothing like I had imagined) and some scenes skipped.
Oh, and they gave it the Michael Bay treatment. There were a ridiculous number of explosions. Not just any normal explosions either, but super explosions involving multiple explosions of something that would normally not even nearly explode.
I think I should have used the word "explosions" more in that last sentence.
Anyway, it wasn"t a horrible movie, but it wasn"t great either. Summarised by one of the conversations in the movie itself which went something along the lines of:
Ellie: "How is [that book]?"
Corrie: "Better than the movie."
Ellie: "That's the usual case."


I started cooking dinner today intending to make my world famous* turkey mince spaghetti bolognaise. I started by preparing the ingredients (carrots, mushrooms, onions, turkey mince) and started to fry the carrots (because I like my carrots well cooked rather than crisp).
I went to my cupboard to pull out the spaghetti to get it ready while the carrots cooked.
There was no spaghetti.

Dinner fail.

On things to come...

Because everybody else is doing it, I thought I might as well too.

So most people in my year have just found out their rotations (well, "just" being 2 days ago) but I"ve been one of the totally lucky ones who knew over a week ago. I was one of many who was left with a missing term 1 due to the totally fair and perfect algorithm the magical School of Medicine computer uses to allocation rotations. Working fast, I managed to get what I thought was the best of the worst, but others were not so lucky. My heart weeps for the two people who had to do Chronic Condition Self Management, and my Respected Associate who had to do Neurological Rehabilitation.

Outlined below is what I like to call (for the first time) The Grand Plan:

Term 1: Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation
Location: Repatriation General Hospital
Probable job description: Fractured hips, femurs (heads, necks) and knee replacements I should think.
Personal thoughts: Could be hit or miss but its ok, I have company for this term and we"ll make the most of it. *sigh* At least the year can only get better...
Career opportunities: Physiotherapist, Masseuse

Term 2: Urban (Legend) General Practice
Location: My new favourite GP's practice. 
Probable job description: Being Awesome!
Personal thoughts: Very excited about this one, I"ve been having my GP placement here and from previous posts, you can probably tell I enjoy it very much.
Career opportunities: GP, Batman

Term 3: Critical Care Medicine
Location: Flinders Medical Centre Intensive Care Unit
Probable job description: Watching and waiting. Then waiting more. Also watching. 
Personal thoughts: Should get some good physiology and medicine knowledge here. Maybe do some management things.
Career opportunities: Intensive Care Specialist, Dr Robert Chase

Term 4: Emergency Medicine
Location: Flinders Medical Centre Emergency Department
Probable job description: Running around like a headless chicken.
Personal thoughts: If rotation quality was proportional to number of people wanting to do it, this would probably be the best rotation ever. It should hopefully be exciting. Alternatively, this could be so much work I might lose my mind. We"ll see.
Career opportunities: Alcoholic, George Clooney

Term 5: Unconfirmed
Location: Hopefully, Singapore General Hospital
Probable job description: Messenger boy
Personal thoughts: Hopefully I"ll be doing anaesthetics and general surgery.
Career opportunities: National Service, Ending sentences with "la"... la.

Term 6: Cambodia
Location: National Pediatric Hospital
Probable job description: Picking on little kids, stealing pocket money, etc.
Personal thoughts: This one should be fun! I like paediatrics :)
Career opportunities: Paediatrician, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Term 7: Vacation
Location: Asia
Probable job description: Being on holiday
Personal thoughts: This will be a lot of fun, aiming to go to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.
Career opportunities: Dumpling King, Communist

Term 8: General Surgery
Location: Mt Gambier
Probable job description: Generally surgerising. Some surgery on generals?
Personal thoughts: Surgery is the topic I"m least excited about, but who knows, rural general surgery may be more exciting than urban general surgery (which consists of hernia, hernia, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, hernia, colonoscopy, colonoscopy, colonoscopy, colonoscopy, endoscopy, endoscopy AND colonoscopy).
Career opportunities: Obnoxious Pretentious Twat Surgeon

There we go. The plan is out.

So who"s excited?

Lucky sevens!

So I"ve just gotten the seventh (acceptable) miniCEX done.

Maybe I should explain myself in classic style.

-fzztwhirkdsafh;gssssssooooooooooooooooo-

The year is 2010, the month is January. We"ve just started 3rd year. Things are exciting!

Of course, to pass 3rd year, there are some small things to do. One being the dreaded miniCEX. I forget what it stands for (What"s that you say? It"s written on the top of the form? Don"t be silly.) but it seems that the powers of be have decided we must get these done.
A minimum of 8 of them.
From 4 different assessors.
From 4 different disciplines.
In the fires of Mt Doom.
Naked.
Without a spoon.

Anyway, basically the assessors grade us on basic skills such as history taking, examination skills, communication skills, clinical judgement and barking like a dog.

This is marked out of 7 for each category (7 in all) and that mark is averaged to give us a score of which they will take our best 8 (Why not another 7? Why suddenly 8?) and that average is worked out of a measly 10% of our final mark.

Hooray for jumping through hoops.

-fzztwhirkdsafh;gssssssooooooooooooooooo-

Flashforward, its August 30th, 2010.
I"m at my GP clinic for placement. Its great here! I"m enjoying a peppermint tea while slamming down a double coated Tim Tam (Amazing! Its choc-mint-melty-glory in my mouth!). My GP decides to brief me on the next patient. Briefly.

"Punch biopsy, its all yours!"

I try to appear cool, calm, collected as I"m licking the melted chocolate from my fingers and looking for a safe place to put my antidepressant branded mug.

My GP calls in the next patient.

I do what I have to. I ask my GP to kindly prepare a trolley while I clean my hands and find the necessary materials. Only moments later, I"m ready. I glove up and take a look at the patient"s back. There is a nice little mole in between some feathers. Wait. What?

"Don't ruin my tattoo!"

Oh goody. I clean the area and allow to dry. The gloves are off. Well, now they"re on again. Sterile this time.

As my GP supervises, I clean, get a biopsy and begin to suture.
After one suture is in and trimmed, I pause and see what the wound is like. I decide that it probably needs another suture (Well, I don"t really get the chance to suture all that much, so maybe it was more for my benefit...) due to the slow oozing of blood out of a tiny area. Moments later, I step back and start putting the instruments away for cleaning, the sharps in the sharps container and the rest in the bin.
My GP is still wiping the betadine off the patient and examining the wound. He says nothing.

After we send the patient off and tell her to call in a couple of days for results, he turns to me.

I almost flinch. Almost. I"m enjoying my cup of tea too much.

"How did you do that? The wound fit in with the tattoo perfectly!"

"Buh?" I eloquently replied.

"Natural talent!" He exclaims and pulls out the miniCEX form.


-ooooooooooooooooossssssg;hfasdkrihwtzzf-

And so that gives me lucky miniCEX number 7. Well, I think its the 11th in total, but lets not talk about the Unworthy Four.

I"m on a horse

Would you believe I only just found/watched this?

I"m so behind on the times.




Swan dive!

On benders

Patient presents to ED fearful of his life following "assault" by a prostitute.

Background: Patient was sad and bored and went on a 2 week binge during which he partook* of alcohol, illicit drugs and prostitutes of over $6000 worth.

What a dude.




*isn"t that an awesome word?

Ellicia

*hugs*

Miss you dearest!

Elections

So the election is over.

OR IS IT?!?

I don"t even know any more. In fact, I don"t even care. I just want someone to get in so I won"t have to vote again. That was 15 minutes of my life I will never get back.
Also, all the snail mail spam is irritating.
How about you just deposit some money into my account and say "Yes we care!" and I"ll be interested in voting for you.

That is all.

THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER

What does that even mean?

Breaking New Ground

So I"ve just had a nice productive day (I did my washing, I had a giant lunch and I watched a movie) and I thought to myself, why not let everyone else in on it?

Well too bad for you, it was my day and you can"t have any.

Well, maybe a bit. Why not a review of the movie? I mean, just because everyone else is doing it/done it, why can"t I?

 The movie I watched was Scott Pilgrim vs The World.

Say what you will about Michael Cera (he only plays one role, he hasn"t changed his look in 30 years, isn"t he gay? He"s Canadian!) but he plays his awkward Michael Cera role very well. I guess that makes sense because that"s how typecasting works.

Anyway. Scott Pilgrim vs The World is about a 22 year old Canadian, Scott Pilgrim (apparently Michael Cera is 22 too, I honestly thought he was in his 30s) who is some nerdy bass guitar player in an indie band. He"s kind of a dick actually and currently dating a 17 year old asian chick who"s in high school. Apparently that is quite an issue.
Anyway, while he"s dating this chick (named Knife) he dreams about (yeah, not weird at all) and meets another chick (Ramona, which is two letters off the name of one of my deodorant brands. The letters that are off? EX. This will make more sense in a minute) who... wait. I lost my train of thought. That was a frickin" long parenthesis interlude.
So he meets this other chick who he decides he wants, but doesn"t tell the first chick that he"s over her. Something something he breaks up eventually and drama happens.

Aaaaanyway, so this other chick comes with baggage. Like, super baggage (one in the form of Superman) in that he has to fight off her seven evil exes (and there"s the sense!). The exes consist of: Bollywood fire hands man, Hollywood skater guy, Super psychic bass player, Lesbian ninja chick, Techno Japanese twins and finally, Megamusicproducer smiley guy.

Battles are ridiculously over the top, but you begin to expect it with all the comicbook like effects that occur throughout the movie.

Overall, the movie is great! If I had to pick at things individually, I"d say there were quite a few flaws, but meh, it was a hilarious movie, so go with that!

TL;DR guy, two girls, seven exes, good fighting movie.

The Return of the... Von.

So its been a while since my last post. I have a feeling there are far too many posts that begin like that...

Just leaving a quick note to say that I am aware I have a blog and I will indeed still be blogging all the interesting things that happen in the zzz....

I"m sorry, I may have nodded off there. Long sentences are long.

"Hi!" to all the new followers! Sorry this blog is so boring...

Wolfhounds

I spent all of Tuesday and this morning dealing with eyes.
Tuesday morning was spent in a regular eye clinic, which seemed to mostly involve people who had cataracts and wanted to get rid of them, or people who had previously had cataracts and had gotten rid of them.
Tuesday afternoon was spent in eye theatre, which involved people who had cataracts and was in the process of getting rid of them.
So yeah, I saw the whole spectrum of a day in the life of a cataract.

Today was slightly more interesting as I was in an eye emergency clinic. There were patients presenting with a range from common normal age related problems such as posterior vitreous detachment and entropions to less common problems such as symblepharons and autoimmune iritis/uveitis to environmentally caused problems like foreign bodies and attacks by Irish Wolfhounds.

That"s right. This patient had asked the owners if it was safe to pat and got the affirmative. Bent down (this person was very tall) to give a pat and the dog lunged, bumping the person"s forehead with its nose and managing to get a tooth on the bottom eye lid. Luckily, no real damage apart from a bit of scarring that may cause irritation.

Gotta love the interesting stories that arise in medicine.

Ears

Just thought you"d all like to know that I think you are all disgusting.

Was at my GP placement yesterday (which is generally good fun), but a man came in to get his ear syringed. He had tried to clean out his ears using cotton tips but had only managed to compact things more. So out came the warm water and water gun. It"s really a lot of fun in theory if you manage to ignore what you"re actually trying to achieve. The wax that does come out kind of reminds you that you"re degunking someone"s ear, and not just playing with a squirt gun.

Ugh.

On Birthdays

So its been a few days since my last post, but its been busy times.

In the last week there has been: a trivia night, a birthday, a movie night, a house inspection, a sort of games night and finally, a quiet night.

I also got presents! Thanks guys! You know who you are :)

To celebrate, I"ve decided a layout change is in order. I"m getting bored of these cool blues, its time for some hot fiery reds! Woo!

Lazy day of SUPER STABBINGS!

Ah, clinics. Those little rooms where, as a student, you sit within and are expected to be quiet while the grownups are talking.
I managed to, out of sheer stupidity, fail at signing up for clinics (as mentioned previously). Oh, I did put them down in my timetable, I just managed not to write my name in the clinic sign up sheet.

Good work.

So instead, I slept in.

It was wonderful!

Wednesdays, like most Wednesdays (well, like most Wednesdays from now on) involve whatever I manage to get done in the morning, followed by my GP placement in the afternoon.

I was quite excited about my GP placement, though also a little nervous as the GP mentioned after our first session, that he would be having me helm the remaining consults. He seemed to think I was ready for it, but I certainly didn"t think so.

In order to calm myself, I decided to do some reading and revision. After making this decision, I went to the kitchen and cooked myself an elaborate pasta dish. It was delicious and I now have lunch for the next few days... By the time this was done, it was time to leave. In fact, I was late. Instead of a nice leisurely stroll to catch the bus, I sprinted and found that the bus was late anyway. Hooray for Adelaide public transport!

On arriving at the GPs, I found that he indeed wanted me to sit in "the big boy chair" and take charge of the consults. Using all my training as a Flinders medical student, I managed to look confident as I said "No problem!"

Surprisingly, it really wasn"t a problem.

Covering crazy situations from musculoskeletal causes (?tricompartmental osteoarthritis, carpal tunnel, whiplash injury) to inflammatory causes (plantar fasciitis, peritonitis, dermatitis) to simple surgical follow-up for workcover (inguinal hernia). I managed not to stuff things up too badly. Probably the most difficult was the young lady who came in with tiredness (who knows, she was tired!).

I even managed to do a few procedures, seeing as I was in charge. With an experienced GP as my personal assistant (he gave me examples on what I could tell assistants to do, such as cut things, pick up things, shine my shoes and get me coffee), I again made use of my super Flinders training and made myself appear to be a seasoned veteran, as I did my first flu vaccination.

The practice sessions at looking confident helped even more when I had the chance to do my first punch biopsy (just like an apple corer!), as well as my first suturing of something that wasn"t the refrigerated amputated trotter of a pig (oh my, its so much easier!).

All in all, a successful day of firsts.

Dreams

I don"t normally remember my dreams, so when I do have ones I remember, they are quite interesting to me.
A few months ago I had a dream that I was late for a bus, like, really, really late. In fact, 15 minutes before the time that the bus was scheduled to leave from the Adelaide Central Bus Station, I was still at home. In fact, I was in my old home that I used to reside. In Melbourne. Yeah, I was just that late.

A few days ago, I had another dream. Hold onto your seats.

It had been a long day, but work was finally over.
So there I was, walking home from work, when I noticed in the distance, an old friend running as fast as she could.
"You"re laaaate!" I called out to her, realising immediately what a Captain Obvious statement it was.
"I know!" She replied and ran past.
I shrugged and continued walking along.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a dog (a Golden Retriever if anyone is interested...) appears and tries to leap up, perhaps to lick my face, perhaps to eat my nose, who knows? I didn"t want this to happen so I fended off the dog by waving my bag at him and kept walking.

As I continued, I turned into a park, which seemed to be a shortcut home.
Another dog appeared, this time a poodle thing who also seemed to want to lick my face/eat my nose, but I was well versed in the fending off of canines by now, so I waved my bag at it and away it went.

I then noticed a scruffy little kitten, bedraggled and wet. I surmised that the poodle must have grabbed it and had been carrying it around, finally dropping it when I scared it away.
I looked around for help as for some strange reason, I had lost the ability to pick things up. It was like I had lost my arms, but I"m pretty sure I used my arms to fend off the dogs...

I noticed a cat walking by and I called pointed out the kitten to it.
The cat made its way over and started to clean the kitten.
I decided that things were alright and started to walk away, but was stopped when the cat called out. I"m not sure how I knew, but somehow I understood that the cat was telling me to stop.

I really shouldn"t have stopped.
This led to a long conversation with the cat about who should take the kitten. The conversation continued into a debate and an argument, with my main statement being that the kitten and the cat were more closely related, as they were from the same species. I even happened to pull out a magazine which coincidentally had cat family trees. The cat seemed to have a very valid rebuttal in which the cat said this was a common misconception and was simply untrue. She continued into an in depth analysis into genetics, concluding that I was more closely related to the kitten and thus, I should take it.

For some reason, I then recall the opposite page of the magazine, which went into being stuck on a boat or a desert island with a number of people. It said that one person should make a pair of headphones and share it with everyone. The conclusion statement was that this would result in only one person looking crazy.

[EDIT: As reminded by Sarah] It seems that the whole point of making one person looking crazy at any one time is so that when the food source ran out, there would be a definite choice on who to eat. Obviously, the crazy person.

I have to admit, I slept pretty well though.

Tuesday. So tired...

Two days into the week. I"m ready for the weekend.

As part of O&G, we"re expected to attend about eleven (11) clinics over the course of the rotation. Somehow, despite failing to sign up to things properly, I"ve managed to attend four (4) in the last two (2) days. I"m not sure how that even worked but dang, I"ve subsequently ended up with a long, long list of things I need to read up on.


Just looking at the list is tiring me out.


So I"ve managed to attend a high risk pregnancy clinic, a menopause clinic, an antenatal clinic and a colposcopy clinic. All in all, pretty educational, though I"m kind of getting over all this icky women stuff.

Haha. Kidding.




OR AM I?

Market day

Its so good to have a sleep in.

I slept in until 8 o'clock which was amazing! I felt so rested...

Did my shopping then went to Central Market with a colleague. We spent way too much time looking for a parking space but managed to find one (ages away!) and did our shopping.
Juice was on special, so for some reason, I decided I needed 6 litres of fruit juice. Fun to carry. Then I found a 5kg bag of potatoes for very cheap. So I got that too. Then came the apples and tomatoes. I felt like a weightlifter...

After all that shopping, we were famished, so we decided Laksa would be the best choice to revitalise us. Oh it was good.
Picked up some Breadtop (custard bun and peanut twist) for dessert tonight (which I"ll have soon! Woohoo!) and finally headed home.

Exciting afternoon, I went for a run!
I"m so very unfit :(

Anyway, forget that for now.

I attempted to make gnocchi for dinner, which went atrociously the first attempt...

Ok, it wasn"t that bad. It held together, but it had no firmness to it. It was like eating a soggy lump of mashed potato.
Attempt number two went slightly better, but more of the same.
Attempt number three was better, not great, but significantly better as it had a bit of firmness to it. I decided that was good enough for today. So I cooked up a batch for dinner. I also fried it to give it a bit more firmness, which worked wonders.

The pasta sauce was fun. I had a few ideas which I wanted to try out. Mainly, a pasta sauce that didn"t need a ton of garlic/onion to actually be good. Not to say I don"t like garlic or onion, in fact, I love them. I eat way too much of them in fact. But I had to test this out...
I browned some thin strips of chicken breast and added diced tomatoes, pineapple juice, orange juice and diced mushrooms. I prefer my mushrooms a little on the mushier side, which is why I added them so early. I let it cook well with some salt and pepper to season and turned down the heat a little to let it simmer and reduce down. Once the sauce was thickened, I added my fried gnocchi, threw in some baby spinach, and took it off the heat.

The verdict? It was delicious! I"ll have to work on my gnocchi, but I"m going to try this sauce again later this week with perhaps a linguine.

Hmmm, I hope this doesn"t turn into a food blog... There are way too many of those already...

Fridaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

7am starts are bad.

So very bad.

Finally getting to scrub into an operation though? So good.

I"m sure I"ve mentioned before that I"ve been through 8 weeks of Surgery without having the chance to scrub in to assist with an operation, its a pet peeve of mine.

Today, I happily got to scrub up and assist the doctor on a caesarean section. It was all I imagined it to be. Well getting sprayed and being soaked from the waist down in amniotic fluid was a surprise, but otherwise, it was great!

This time it was a baby boy. He was so cute!

Post-hump day

Hump day was big.
Basically spent the morning organising our own timetables for O&G.
This involved organising changes in PBL dates/times and booking in with clinics and GP placements, though some of us didn"t have our GP placement dates/locations yet, which made things really annoying as we tried to keep the afternoons free in case our GP placement was on one of those days.

Worst organised rotation ever.

I ended up spending the afternoon trying to chase up my GP placement and finally managed to.

Today I had swapped with a fellow student to be on the Birthing and Assessment Suite for the day.
I wasn"t expecting much to happen, as many previous students had mentioned that they had gone through all of O&G without seeing a NVB (or normal vaginal birth for those that aren"t up to date with the TLAs).

So I showed up at 7am, totally awake and ready for a long day of sitting around (I wasn"t really). The midwifery handover was as to be expected, lots of names and things I hadn"t heard of before. The medical handover at 8am was the same.
Soon afterwards though, following the medical team around, we checked on a woman who had her membranes rupture 2 weeks ago (PPROM) when she was about 31+2.
Apparently the thing to do in this case is just to chill out and balance the risks of infection vs the problems of prematurity. So they chilled.

Flashforwards to today and the expectant mother is at 34+3, over the majority of problems and probably more at risk with infections, so it was decided that it was time.

The registrar introduced me to the husband and wife and asked if it was alright for me to tag along with her for her birth. She was quite non-committal (apparently she had been hounded by medical students for the 2 or so weeks she"s been in hospital), but I got a vague consent.

Approximately 10:30am, I went in to properly introduce myself and ask again for consent, and she was quite agreeable. I think it was partly due to the NO gas.

Not long after, her contractions got stronger and more frequent. Action time!

Long story short:
At 10:57am on Thursday the 20th of May, 2010, a beautiful little girl weighing 4.2 pounds was born as a normal vaginal birth. Apgar scores were 8 and 9 for the healthy pink looking baby, though there was slight nasal flaring.

That was the pretty part.

What came next was the placenta. Not so pretty.
Did you know that they keep the placenta (double bagged) in a fridge in case the parents want to take it home? Not weird at all. Totally not weird at all.

Back to it...

So it seems I haven"t blogged in so long, I don"t even know where I"m up to.

Quick summary of the last week or so (if you want more info, you"ll have to ask for it...)
Tuesday, 11th of May: Handover. Wards. JMO teaching - A visiting ophthalmologist gave a quick spiel regarding outreach clinics - I jumped up as soon as he was finished to talk to him and spent the afternoon making the necessary arrangements.

Wednesday, 12th of May: Handover. Journal Club. Wards. Bedside Teaching. Tried to get a miniCEX done, consultant was busy. Went out to the Beachfront for drinks at trivia night.

Thursday, 13th of May: Woke up at 5ish to catch a taxi at 5:45am to the airport. Flight was slightly delayed but had a nice chat with the ophthalmologist during the wait and eventually got into a little 2-engine (pressurised) 9-seater plane that carried the pilot, the ophthalmologist and myself. I felt like I had my very own private plane. Continued chatting with the ophthalmologist about life, the universe and medicine, while the pilot did his thing. A short flight later (20 minutes or so), we arrived in Daly River and got into the 4WD to take us to the clinic. The little town was cute and quite developed, though we learned that it had a very high suicide rate. A little sad there. The morning was spent waiting for patients to come in (which they didn"t until 10:30 or so) so during that time, I learnt the basics of ophthalmology, how to do visual acuities, how to take intraocular pressures, how to visualise the optic disc using the indirect method, and the basics of the slit lamp. It was fun. Over the course of the day, I proceeded to assess each of the patients in these things, with the ophthalmologist giving them the slit lamping and calling me over to look at things. We ran late as is the norm with these things, finally getting into the plane and getting back home around 6:30pm. It was a fun day and the ophthalmologist was amazing. Total mancrush.

Friday, 14th of May - Handover. Teaching rounds with miniCEX, did well. Finished up on paperwork and went to chat to the ophthalmologist again. Learnt to spell ophthalmology (you think I"m kidding...). Renewed mancrush. Finished up with the NTCS and handed in all my ID and pager. Went out for drinks at the Trailer Boat Club and Ski Club. Managed to get to the airport way too early. Checked in. Napped.

Saturday, 15th of May - Caught the flight at 2:40ish am. Got to Adelaide at 6:15ish am. Got home and accompanied a friend to the airport and to Ikea for breakfast. Went shopping. Came home and decided not to sleep, but to clean up my room. For some reason, it looked like someone had broken in and messed everything up. I realised I had left it like this when I left, a month ago. Oops. Went to a friend"s house for dinner. Slept, wonderful, wonderful sleep.

Sunday, 16th of May - A blur of sleep and nothingness.

Monday, 17th of May - O&G begins. Long day, lots of bajingo. Giggling at naughty words.

Tuesday, 18th of May - O&G continues. Still giggling at naughty words.


Tired. Sleep.

Science!

Ok, I realise that it seems that this blog is starting to be more of a collection of websites I like, but I"ll get to real blogging at some point when I have something real to blog about...

Fake Science!

A very amusing website. Well, to me at least :p

Another: Canucklehead

Hilarity.

Best. Site. Ever.

Ellicia, you"ll love this.

Asian teens, you"ll love this.

Racist people, you"ll love this.

Asian parents, you"ll wonder whats so good about this site.


Funny because its true.

Happy brithday Ellicia!

Dearest Ellicia,

Hope you have a great day with lots of presents!


Best wishes and lots of love,

Me

A long day

Well, yesterday was the long day, with today really being quite a short one. Actually now that I think about it, yesterday only felt long while today felt short. In fact, today was the longer day but it went easier than yesterday which was the shorter one.

Get it?

Anyway, a colleague and I went for a massive ride (on pushbikes) around Darwin, starting from home we rode out towards the beach and down the coast to reach the Museum.

I was quite surprised by the amount on display at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. The displays were very pretty and the exhibit on Cyclone Tracy was quite moving. Sweetheart the crocodile was massive and a good, but sad little tale. They had displays on the wildlife from the aquatic life to the amphibious to the terrestrial. From ages long past to the modern era. They also had a massive exhibit on crocodiles which discussed how things changed since time began. All in all, a great way to spend a few hours and I kind of wish I had a few more hours to spend there as it felt like we rushed through a lot. Did I mention that it was free? Darwin seems to be great on my wallet... Well, apart from the food part.

After the Museum we decided that lunch was in order. This made sense as it was about 1:30pm and we had done a lot of riding in the morning. So we got on our bikes and went searching for food. Unfortunately, due to it being a public holiday (May Day), most shops were closed. We rode into the city (or is it "town"?) and after much cruising around with a few stops (such as one of the 2nd hand bookstores), we finally decided to stop into a pub (amusingly, Shenanigans) for a fine pub meal of a burger and chips. I, feeling like I was lacking blood, had a beef burger with chili jam which was really good (of course I would say that, I say that about just about anything with chili in it...) and my colleague had himself a barramundi burger.

After that we went for a short tour of the Esplanade and then started the long ride back home.

The ride turned out to be approximately 35km. We were very impressed by that until our hosts mentioned that they used to ride more than that in a much, much shorter time.

Well, my legs feel impressed by the distance we rode, as does my behind. My legs are very... Happy.

Topped the day off with a big meal and a bigger dessert of banana cake, chocolate icecream and home made peanut butter and chocolate chip biscuit crumbs. Yum!


Also, *big hugs* to my favouritest person in the whole world, Ellicia. Just thought everyone would like to know that she"s the best! (P.S. Love you lots!)

Big weekend

So another weekend come and just about gone.

I say "just about" because it seems that this weekend is yet again a long one.

Friday night was a bit of fun with a small group of us going to see Iron Man 2 at Casuarina.
It wasn"t too bad I guess. Incredibly cheesy lines though.

We went out afterwards into the city to meet others who decided that dancing had better appeal than a man in a robot suit breaking stuff. Crazy kids nowadays.
Got home preeeeeetty late, so Saturday was a very lazy morning and day. So lazy in fact that I felt that I needed to redeem myself and went into the hospital until midnight.

Actually it was a pretty quiet night too.

Sunday began a little late due to the late night before, but soon grew as a colleague and I decided to go visit some crocodiles. We made our way over to Crocodylus Park, just in time for a guided tour.
It was very impressive as we got to see some jumping crocodiles, violent territorial females, little tiny baby crocodiles (yearlings), turtles, monkeys, emus, lions, a tiger, a wombat and more. It was a lot of fun as I got to feed a crocodile (actually I was meant to yank the meat away but I failed and it got me) and also to hold a little tiny baby crocodile!

I have a heap of photos which I"ll do something with at some point.

The afternoon was spent in Leanyer Recreational Park, where there was a swimming area, a playground with water guns and the like (and a giant that slowly fills with water before tipping the lot out in a giant rush!) as well as 3 big water slides!

After a few hours on the slides, we decided it was time to go home and with a couple of colleagues, had a wonderful dinner of crocodile burgers, crocodile sausages and crocodile skewers.

Started and ended the day with crocodiles, delicious!

Of lonely halls

It is late in the day, silence overcomes the sounds of activity.

The halls darken to close the long day, doors close.

A lone figure wanders on, footsteps echo into darkness, searching for signs of life.

There are few.

Hallways stretch on with minimal lighting and locked doors. A swipe of a card gives access, but what lays beyond?

Nothing. Always nothing.

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.

Oops!

So its been nearly two weeks since I last blogged... My bad.

But seriously, its my blog, meaning that in theory, I can blog whenever I damn well want to and should not have people bugging me about not blogging right?

Unfortunately not, it would seem.


Anyway.

So 2 weeks of paediatrics down, and I still love playing with children and distracting them and receiving that little look of gratefulness from the doctor. It almost makes me feel like there is a point to me sitting in the corner of a little clinic room, sneakily asking questions to the mother/father when the doctor needs to go out to find something or clumsily poking and prodding a small child when the doctor asks me to perform an examination or take blood pressures.

Children have such small arms, yet they manage to make so much noise with them. Curious isn"t it?

The past week has been a lot of fun, with another week in clinics.

I sat in on the Child Assessment Team ( or the CAT team if you wanted to make use of the silly way in which people like to make use of silly repetition in such acronymerised names, such as like in ATM machine or BAT team - Brain Attack Team for you people not in the business.) which seemed interesting. Interesting in that it seemed like the most expensive play session you could organise with your child without actually investing in diamonds or a circus. 6-8 specialists sitting in to watch a child play with toys and draw.

I also sat in on a less expensive version in which the child was assessed by the speech therapist, physiotherapist and occupational therapist.

I was lucky to sit in on a Renal clinic as well, which happens only once a month at FMC. The consultant was a hilarious man with a very relaxed attitude and amusing manner. His questions to me were straightforward and naturally difficult (especially to me, as I discovered that I had managed to forget just about everything about the kidneys...) but was quite willing to teach me when there was time.

The most exciting thing about the past week is that my daddy was here!
Lots of good home made food (which were I less lazy, I could also make, but the laziness usually pulls me to quicker, just as delicious meals...) as well as a restocking of my freezer. I should be set if the Australian Army decide to come over for dinner.

This weekend was quite a bit of fun as well as Friday afternoon started off with a feast put together by my dad, and continued with the celebration of the birthday of a Britannian/Prydein colleague in true boozer style starting at some bar and leading on to some indie bands, most notably Flat One which stars a current intern of Flinders. Very inspiring and really ruins my excuse of not having time to do anything...
This was very enjoyable but the late nights and moderate alcohol consumption made the next day quite troublesome. Pancakes (with bacon, caramelised bananas and real maple syrup) on Sunday was thoroughly enjoyable as I didn"t even need to go anywhere as another fellow colleague (this one from Canadia) brought everything over to my house to make!
Definitely fun as we poor sAdelaide residers were graced with the presence of a very much loved colleague who usually resides where the general human population is probably outmatched by the population of horses and livestock.

So yes, a thoroughly enjoyable weekend to top off a quite enjoyable week!

This week: Inpatients!
Ward rounds and history taking seems to be on the menu.

Which reminds me, what should I make for dinner?

Kids

I am thoroughly enjoying paediatrics so far (so far being Day 4 has been completed) and have decided that it is definitely in my shortlist of future specialities.
The last few days have been clinic after clinic, which has been good to see the range of paediatric disorders coming in.

Day 1: Introduction to paediatrics

Day 2: General paediatrics clinic
 - Hemangioma follow-up (infant)
 - Constipation follow-up + thalassaemia concerns (adolescent)
 - Pertussis (whooping cough) follow-up (infant)

Day 3: Neonatal clinic
 - 6 week (corrected) checkup (twins, one still in NICU, 10ish weeks premature)

Day 4: General paediatrics clinic
 - Developmental delay and unknown disorder with left sided abnormalities in the left ear, left eye, left kidney, left brachial artery (child)
 - Failure to thrive/coeliac follow-up (child)
 - Night terrors and language assessment (child)
 - ADHD medication reassessment (pre-adolescent)
 - Trisomy 21 follow-up (infant)
 - Sotos syndrome check-up (pre-adolescent)

Grand Round = Free food. It"s great!

Tomorrow will be an immunology clinic and then another general paediatric clinic with the Paediatric Super Consultant.

Its been a great few days, especially as I"ve been asked to do simple things like taking blood pressure and listen to breath sounds or heart sounds. They actually go quite well, it seems children seem to like me. I base it on my funny eyes.

Anyway, most of the time I"m just playing the part of a fly on the wall, but quite often I"ll have to step up to play the part of "clown" in order to distract the patient. It works surprisingly well. I may have missed my calling in life.

Paediatrics

Looks like I"m falling back into my poor blogging habits... Gotta get on top of that.

So I"ve just started paediatrics.
First day down and I"m quite liking the fact that paediatrics is so organised.
Surgery was a poorly organised and poorly maintained rotation in my opinion. Sure, the coordinator is very nice, but as stated by another surgeon "JW needs to learn to email and stop living in the 70s".
We"ve got plenty of teaching sessions in paediatrics and the first day was buffed with introduction to history taking and examination in the paediatric patient, as well as community health. Both lectures were quite interesting and very relevant.

Anyway, I should probably go get ready. I don"t want to be late on my second day!

Wait, its Sunday already?

So I"ve achieved two of my goals for this weekend reasonably well.
Shopping is done and my fridge is fully stocked up again for the coming week, though I was quite disappointed in the price of broccoli, it seemed to have doubled in price...
The sleep front has gone alright as well, not an overly large amount, but very restful, which is good.
The study side of things hasn"t gone so well. The weather has been dreadful which, though would normally help the study along (since there would be no point going out), has actually made things harder as it has been quite chilly and just overall poor conditions for study.

Maybe I"m just making excuses.

TGIF

I"m looking forward to the upcoming long weekend. I have many, many plans. One involves sleeping lots. Another involves grocery shopping. The final plan involves catching up on a ridiculous amount of study.

Oh yes, gotta love the little breaks we get.

A tasty day.

Today started as any other, with my rising before the sun. I was annoyed, but that was usual. I was actually annoyed slightly less today as I knew there would be a group meeting with FREE BREAKFAST!

I cheerfully arrived at ward rounds, right on time and eagerly awaiting breakfast. I knew we could fly through the 4 patients we had in a flash and move on. Unfortunately, we managed to acquire 4 more patients overnight. I really can"t complain as everyone else I know of seems to have 20+ patients on their wards. Oh well.
That"s when the Registrar started playing with my emotions. He told us there wasn"t a meeting today.
My fellow students and I cried. Or at least, we were greatly disappointed.
After dragging ourselves through ward rounds, taking our time, our resident super nurse told us that we should be getting to the meeting. My eyes lit up, there was indeed a meeting today! My Registrar was wrong!

30 minutes later, I was satisfied (though not as much as I could be, there were bacon and egg wraps last week!) with mini pancakes, muffins, strawberries and yogurt. It was time for theatre.

Laparoscopic bilateral inguinal hernia repair, laparoscopic umbilical [EDIT: or rather, para-umbilical] hernia repair, zzz...


I managed to eventually escape so I could waste my time travelling to Centrelink for an appointment just so I could tell them things I could have told them on the phone...

Blah.

Squash in the afternoon was fun, as was a little bit of gym work.

I had decided yesterday that for dinner tonight (and for lunch tomorrow and probably the next day...) I would make pasta. I had purchased pasta sauce (because I cheat like that) on special (2 jars for $3!) and some fettuccine on special (500g for $1!).

Recipe as follows:

Ingredients:
500g beef mince

500g jar of pasta sauce (any flavour)
3 tomatoes
2 carrots
2 onions
1 head of brocolli
4 little chillis
as many mushrooms as you can find in your fridge (in my case, 4)
salt
pepper
tomato sauce
bbq sauce
500g fettuccine

Directions:
1. Brown beef mince. During this time, dice tomatoes, carrots, onions, brocolli, chilli and mushrooms.
2. Add tomatoes, carrots, onions, brocolli, chilli and pasta sauce. You may need to transfer to a pot as I did.
3. Add 250mL of water (half fill the pasta sauce jar and shake) and the mushrooms. Allow to simmer.
4. Boil water, adding some salt. Add fettuccine.
5. Taste your pasta sauce, add salt and pepper to taste. At this stage, the sauce should taste good, but quite mild. I like my sauce with a bit of zing so I added some tomato sauce, bbq sauce and lots and lots of pepper.
6. Check your fettuccine, I like mine slightly more on the solid side, but cooked.
7. Drain your pasta and serve in a bowl with a generous serving of sauce, with grated cheese.

I omitted some details in my preparation such as dancing around my house meeting and ending up with a ridiculous amount of pasta and sauce. I think I have enough for the next 3 lunches.

Of course, I"m not complaining. It"s good.

:S

Its been a long day. Failed a cannulation on a patient which was quite the contrast to yesterday...

Also, one of our patients passed away early this morning at 2:30pm due to complications of sepsis.
This is kind of the first time I"ve really experienced death in the hospital.
I"m not really sure how I"m supposed to feel, is that bad?

The Hat-trick

It was an awesome day today.
It was also a long day, but we"ll come to that later.
Let us, for now, begin our story from where most stories begin, at the beginning.

I woke up fresh (what does that even mean?) and well rested (vaguely) and kind of freezing. The single sheet I had failed to protect me from the sub-zero (or 14 degrees Celsius) temperatures and thus it was quite difficult finding motivation to leave the bed which was cold-but-not-as-cold-as-not-being-in-bed-with-a-sheet.

After taking a shower and inhaling some cereal (not at the same time), I eventually made it to the RGH (Repatriation General Hospital or "Repat" for short) for Ward Rounds.
 At some point, I remembered that I was following (or is it shadowing) an anaesthetist in attempt to observe the fabled "Pain Round", so I told my Intern (who's awesome) and left to find this anaesthetist. I found him, but he had other commitments so he handballed me to another anaesthetist, which was performing the anaesthesia of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy, an archaeic treatment) patients.

Now, it has occurred to me that almost every anaesthetist I have ever met seems to really enjoy teaching students, whether it be because it takes a certain type of person to be an anaesthetist, or perhaps because all they do all day is sit around watching vital monitors and injecting white stuff into people. Anyway, anaesthetists are good.
This particular anaesthetist told me to put in a cannula and to bag and mask the patients. Since it had been months since I had last put in a successful cannula, I was not confident enough to attempt the first one, but following that, managed three successful one-shot cannulations in a row. Oh, it did wonders for my confidence. The "Pain Round" that followed was less exciting, as there was just one single patient to assess.

Returning to the ward following the "Pain Round" (which was a quick trip because the patient was actually one of our own patients on the ward), I learnt that things had gotten a little more exciting, as a fellow student had managed to diagnose AF (atrial fibrillation) in that patient we had just assessed. I was suitably impressed as our team burst into action, taking blood, doing examinations, writing in case notes and discussing the weather.

Hours (or hour, singular) passed uneventfully (but if you must know, I had lunch) and I eventually wandered up to the patient I had decided to take a history and present to the Registrar the following day (tomorrow). A lovely 80 year old lady, she seemed to be the perfect history. A simple elective surgery following a colonoscopy, how bad could it be? Oh, it could be bad. It was bad. There was blood. In Admiral Ackbar"s famous words:

She was not only a malingerer, but also a meanderer (as in she waffled on). She had much to talk about, some of it actually relevant, most of it describing the unending, diffuse, vague pain she felt, as well as every symptom under the sun. I don"t believe I had a single negative to the questions I asked. I exaggerate, there was one or two.
She was also the first person to have hit upon a positive for the third question in the "SADA" series of questioning. She had 1/2 a biscuit in an attempt to relax, 15 years ago. I was amazed. I felt the same way when we eventually reached the medication questions.

All in all, she was an interesting lady who I found was quite the experience taking a history from. I gained a lot of experience on interrupting and asking other questions, while sometimes repeating the same question I had just asked to see if it actually prompted an actual answer...

The afternoon was quite good as well as I was able to sit in on my CoC (continuity of care, an assignment) patient's outpatient appointments. They involved a follow-up with the surgeon as well as a follow-up discussion regarding stoma care with the stomal nurse.

Upon returning home, I found I had two packages waiting for me, one being the free glasses I had managed to order (which works, but kind of make me a little nauseous) and the other being amazing cookies!

After a quick visit to the university to deliver some things, I went on a run with a friend. We managed 6 kilometres of dangerous, unstable terrain along with the usual mix of push-ups, chin-ups and abdominal-work-outer-things.

A dinner of curry and toast (don"t diss it until you"ve tried it), finished with a dessert of chocolate cake and ice cream. Marvellous.

All in all, a wonderful day.

In the words of my favourite author:

And so, the time has come to close this post. There will be other days and other stories, but this tale is finished.

[Under] the Fire and the Flames

Fireworks are pretty.
Pretty dangerous when they are pointed in your general direction, but oh so pretty when they burst and shower sparks everywhere in the sky.
So we went to see fireworks last night as part of the Adelaide Festival, a show called "A Little More Light" which was put together by Group F of Eiffel Tower fireworks fame.
It wasn"t bad, but I wanted to see more blue fireworks. They"re just so pretty.

The morning was good as a nice group of us went into Central Market for breakfast, which was a bit of an chore as we had to somehow manage to acquire enough tables and chairs for everyone to be seated comfortably for breakfast. Naturally we managed it and eventually sat down to a very filling brunch.

Friday night was a bit of fun as a few of us went to a friend"s place and spent the night rocking out and getting in touch with our heavy metal, classic rock and poppy sides of ourselves. If only we could do the same on real instruments rather than just on a video game...

Conservative Treatment

My intern and consultant discussed "conservative" treatment (ie. not surgery) of a patient"s prolapse today.

It was an interesting discussion because the main treatment options were:

• Sprinkling sugar on the prolapse.
• Taping the patient"s buttocks together.

No, I am not joking.

I don"t think anything more needs to be said.

Great Exceptations

I typed the title of this post last night intending to blog about stuff, instead I ended up changing it and leaving the below post. Now I forget why I wanted to use this title.

On new housemates:
My unit is now a bustling suburban bedroom mini-community. From the first year aquaculture/marine biology students to the first year health science student to the German exchange psychology student, we"ve got it all! A friendly bunch indeed, mostly away from home for their first time, getting used to not having the roving parental eye of control over them.

On a failure of a Monday:
For the second time this rotation, a certain consultant has been away and unable to give us our eagerly awaited lecture. This is getting to be quite annoying, as they get their lecture times in advance by quite a few weeks, certainly enough to tell someone if a conference happens to be on that week...

On free food:
Ahh, O-week. With the new students coming in, the great annual welcome begins, with BBQ lunches, dinners, morning teas, afternoon teas, ice cream... All free! All it requires is a few omitted truths or small lies, and you"re free to munch away! Alternatively, you can do what I do and make use of the most important piece of information I learned on the wards: Look confident. As long as I look as if I should definitely be doing this and that it would be pure stupidity on anyone else"s part if they were to interrupt and question me about this, I can do (or eat!) just about anything.

On the gym and associated activities:
The annual free week from the gym, a time to stock up on exercise and activity to make up for the lack of these over the remainder of the year... I don"t know where I was going with this topic. All I really needed to say was that I"ve been going to the gym for the last week and now I will stop due to outrageous membership prices. Outrageous.

On surgeries and complications:
So being on the Surgery rotation, it would be expected that I should be going into theatre and seeing some interesting surgeries. Yesterday was one of those days with a laparascopic anterior resection. The initial preparation of detaching peritoneum (sigmoid mesocolon?) from the colon went smoothly enough, until the surgeon started exploring higher and managed to nick the splenic artery. This obviously wasn"t quite too big a problem as the surgeon deadpanned "Oh. No no no, don"t do that." and proceeded to clamp off the artery and asked for sutures, prodding on the nurse with an equally unexcited "Sutures, sutures, we have a bleeder." As I then expected the surgeon to cut open the abdomen due to the complication (which we were trying to avoid due to the patient being quite old and having an open surgery would make recovery a lot longer), I was very impressed with what happened next. The surgeon proceeded to suture laparascopically, which looked very difficult (much like trying to have dinner using 50cm cutlery) but it was done and the surgery was continued with no further complications. The patient looked well and in good spirits this morning. Wow.

On the musculoskeletal workshop:
Now, I don"t expect this to reach anyone that this will matter to, as I don"t believe I know of anyone placed locally in the course that actually reads this blog... I could be wrong of course, but judging by the lack of hits and the rare comments only by fellow bloggers in other areas, I"m probably quite accurate.
We had a musculoskeletal workshop yesterday, lead by a doctor who I believe gave us a spine examination session during GP week last year. It was brilliant. The notes given would have been worth their weight in gold (and a significant weight indeed) had they been given to us last year for when we were doing musculoskeletal clinical skills last year, but for now, they are just incredibly useful. These notes cover the various musculoskeletal and rheumatological examinations and include a DVD with clinical examinations. We"ve also been given an almost definite OSCE station, so that"s a good start too. For anyone who has yet to sign up or go and was considering skipping it, don"t, it"s well worth the four hours it takes (unless you"re a physio, then you know everything anyway...) and a lot of good practice too.

On expectations:
I"m not sure what I wanted to relate regarding this topic. It probably had something about the need to be in two places at once, but the consultant this week (the proper consultant, not the evil substitute one, mentioned previously... or not, that seemed to have been on a power trip as the main one was on holiday) was cordial, in fact I would say almost soft drink.

We had theatre this morning (a simple stoma reversal) followed by a tutorial on evaluation and causes of post-operative fever and presenting a surgical history. The consultant was very good actually, pushing for knowledge but not criticising the lack of it. I"m quite sure that I am seen as a moron as after a few seconds of silence and possibly a look of fear in my eyes, the consultant proceeded to answer the question given moments earlier. This consultant is also the first one to have given a set system for presenting a surgical history to a surgeon. In a nutshell (Oh help! I"m in a nutshell!): keep it simple. They don"t want to know all the "crap"* physicians care about, they just want to operate, "because honestly, its a lot of fun"*. So they just want "a history, not a bedtime story."*

All in all, an interesting week and it"s not even Friday yet!


Oh darn. SMS from Intern says Ward Rounds will start at 7:30am tomorrow. Not a good start.



* Indicates actual words/quotes from the consultant. Wonderful!

Note to self:

I have to blog about the following things:

• New housemates
• Monday fail
• Free food
• Gymming
• Laparascopic Anterior Resection + complications
  
• Musculoskeletal workshop
• Expectations

Maybe tomorrow...

Fringe Go-er's Lung

Friday was a big day.
Friday morning was, as an understatement, annoying. Apparently being able to be in two places at once was a requirement for medicine, one that I seem to lack.

Friday afternoon definitely got better, with a crazy gym session that left me in quite a bit of pain (and especially now as I am typing this a day later...) but in a good way. Like when you scratch mosquito bites, even though in this context it is actually a good thing, rather than a bad thing. Perhaps I started with a bad analogy. It"s my blog, if you don"t like it, go write your own.

Friday evening was quite interesting as I went out with some friends to see the Adelaide Fringe Festival opening parade as well as the free concert. I do not recall ever seeing so many people in one place in Adelaide before, which made actually seeing the parade quite difficult. So we went and had a beer.
Following the failed parade viewing, we met up with some other friends to find this concert area. It was then we noticed that with the combination of dry heat and thousands of people, there was quite the amount of dust raised. There was pretty much a constant haze in the air that tickled at your throat and made you cough. I dare say the cigarette smoke didn"t help matters.

Being the group of nerdy medical students we are, our conversation inevitably turned back to medicine, and an amusing topic. We had previously learnt about interstitial lung diseases of amusing aetiology, such as cheese worker's lung and pigeon fancier's lung. With the amount of dust and cigarette smoke in the air, it was only a matter of time before the blame game continued and passed the cause of interstitial lung diseases to Fringe Festivals. Perhaps attendance of Fringe Festivals should be added to the "common medical problems" section of a history.

So the bands were quite interesting, a particular Canadian friend was quite taken by the rap group "Killaqueenz", laughing almost continuously at the amusing lyrics. Personally I was quite impressed by the energy of our English classmates as they danced and jumped and got lost. It really was quite amusing with the number of times we lost people.
Our overly excited, high pitched and fascist hating friend was in her element, criticising those who left early, smuggling drinks into restricted areas and making friends with random German medical students.
Eventually, we called it a night and wandered through half the city looking for an available taxi before finally managing to catch a bus back home.

The shower I had once I arrived home was heavenly, finally being able to scrub the dust and smoke off, before finally being able to fall into bed after being awake for 20 hours or so.

This morning was warm, but delicious. Oh wait, I missed a part there. The scrambled eggs with mushrooms I made for breakfast was delicious.
The trip into Central Market for groceries was a chore as the temperature had decided to skyrocket, with a good percentage of humidity.
There was a celebration going on in Chinatown, making it very difficult to get around. I"m not entirely sure what the celebration was for, but I"ve decided that it was a 1 week late celebration of Chinese New Year. Which I blame on Adelaide always being just that little bit behind the rest of the world...
Bumped into a certain colleague who was shopping with his "smaller half" as he likes to put it. I always enjoy putting links in my blog, though I never seem to be able to do it much, so a mention of him and a link to his blog (even though anyone that reads my blog most probably reads his anyway) is always fun.
Decided to have lunch in the market and finally after 2+ years of wanting to go but never actually making it, Lucia's was the place to be. It was as good as rumour had it, with a delicious bolognaise and rich, creamy mushroom sauce.

All in all, its been a good day (though very hot) and I"ve spent way more than I should have. Oh well, not every day is a weekend, gotta make the most of it!

Thorsday!

Sometimes I wish I had a big magical hammer I could use to smash things and throw around a bit of lightning.

Today started as any other day (any other day where I wake up while its still dark anyway...) with a trip to the RGH and ward rounds. Following the ward rounds I managed to acquire the signatures necessary to lock in a patient as a CoC patient. This was exciting for a while, and I spent quite a while talking about all aspects of his care.

After hours and hours* of chatting and various examinations, I decided that I had probably done quite enough on the wards and decided it would be a good time to go home for lunch. I decided to call this "good time" lunchtime. I thought it seemed quite apropos.

Our PBL was uneventful, though very informative as one of the consultants shared a little bit of the amazing amount of information that senior medical practitioners seem to pick up along their careers.

The trouble came afterwards when I happened to bump into the registrar from the ward I am attached to at the RGH. He was quite surprised to see me, wondering why I was even at FMC. I told him we had a tutorial from a consultant. He told me that they (the RGHers) wanted to give us tutorials but could never find us. I was amused at that considering I had not seen him since midway through ward rounds. I told him that we had our scheduled classes to be at. He told me that one of the consultants at the RGH wanted to give us a tutorial, tomorrow morning at 11am. We were also to prepare a patient to present. I asked him if there was any way we could reschedule, as we had an orthopaedics tutorial at FMC at that time. He repeated that the consultant would give us a tutorial at 11am, as if there was nothing to contest, and then walked off.

I stared off into the distance, with a slightly perplexed frown which deepened into a full blown contorted look of horror as I realised I had to somehow bring this subject up with a consultant that I personally thought was more than a little frightening.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day.



*With slight error from a time dilation effect

It"s been a long day

Ah, Matchbox Twenty...

Where was I?

Oh yes, blogging. Just to switch things up, lets Tarantino this a bit. I"m going to start with the end of this story:
I had a nap. This morning. Before lunch.

Now lets flash back to the beginning:

-fzztwhirkdsafh;gssssssooooooooooooooooo-

Waking up at while its dark is not good.

Ward rounds was uneventful, though there were some quite interesting patients (with one a possible CoC subject!), the fact that it was bloody early kind of toned down my interest.

We then attended a presentation by our very own registrar, who was amusingly anxious about the whole thing, though us students didn"t really mind, we were kind of more interested in the breakfast that was provided...
A very impressive breakfast spread it was, with sweet pastries, mini quiches, a large variety of fruits and what I"m going to call "slices of closed pizza" (otherwise known as toasted focaccia).

Afterwards I went to have a chat with one of the interesting patients, taking a history and performing a basic physical examination of all systems. As a random point of interest which came up during our conversation, we found out (despite the over 40 year difference in ages as well as residence in different states) that we had previously shared the same GP! Small world indeed...

Such a long day, in fact, I"m quite tired...

-ooooooooooooooooossssssg;hfasdkrihwtzzf-

Good mor- ITS STILL DARK OUTSIDE

Waking up and getting ready for ward rounds doesn"t feel right when the sun isn"t even ready for the day yet...

Oh well. Beach later today!

RGH day two

Another overall good day, which is surprising because I don"t usually have two good days in a row...
An interesting ward round with some nice patients, a good mix of simple and crazy super complicated. A nice fun chat afterwards over coffee and cake (a black forest style birthday cake, yum!) and then some paperwork.
Managed to survive another scrubbing tutorial session (just because the RGH seems to prefer one of their nurses teach how to scrub, despite everyone already having done it at FMC...) without too many mishaps, and ended it all with an uneventful afternoon. Of course, I"m not sure of that last bit, since the afternoon is still going, I"m just getting ahead of myself.

Oh, exciting news! I have a new housemate! From what I"ve determined from a phone message from the Associate Dean of the Village, she is a 22 year old German student. From what I"ve determined from items in the fridge, she like anticoagulation.

I really should probably clean up the place...

The Repatriation General Hospital

First day at the repat, and it was a good one!
Great intern, friendly and very willing to teach! She taught me and a fellow student to put in a NG tube which was an experience... Especially with the 315mL of lime green aspirate...
Great RMO, friendly and laid-back! Was very relaxed and welcomed us and explained how things worked (before the intern arrived).
Great registrar, friendly and with a good sense of humour! Also very willing to teach and has already organised a teaching session with us.
We haven"t met the consultant yet who, from what we"ve heard, may be quite scary and intense, but also a good teacher.

Overall, I"m looking forward to the next four weeks, especially with the free coffee (which will be a bit of a change from FMC) and occasional breakfasts and lunches that will be provided to us!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy 4707, 4708, 4647 or whatever year it is various groups of Chinese people think it is!

Hope everyone gets the chance to pig out on the various Chinese New Year celebration foods in whatever city you"re in!

Except Adelaide. Nothing happens here.

Oh and Valentine"s. Hope everyone is out there having fun with their loved ones, though maybe not at the same time as pigging out on various foods.

Chinese New Year's Eve!

It"s nearly Chinese New Year!
"What does that mean?" you ask?
Well clearly, it means a celebration with food and pretty colours and loud noises!
Yay!

Alternatively, its just another slow, quiet day.
Started off the day with doing the washing and a trip to the market. The market was packed with silly people wanting to see the "lion" dances. Or the "Nian" dance. Ah, traditions.
Unfortunately, this meant that customer service at the stores came to a standstill, forcing me to go elsewhere to do my shopping first and hope that things moved on when I returned. Things definitely moved on when I returned, but unfortunately some of those things were the groceries I was after. Drat.

Oh well, enough to survive the week, that"s about all that"s needed.

Maybe I should see to this "study" thing that is all the rage at the moment...

Friday! Finally!

4 weeks done, meaning that next week, I start on General Surgery at the Repatriation General Hospital.
This could be a good thing or a bad thing, I haven"t quite worked it out yet.

Today was a good day though, waking up for the first time in 3 or 4 days not feeling like absolute crap. I think this cold is finally moving on, so in the next few days I should be all good.

Made it to ward rounds on time, which is always a good start, especially when you"ve missed the last two days (illness, breast clinic) and it being the final day on this ward. The Senior Fellow was really cheerful, and usually in these cases, its a trap.
And it was.
She had decided that we would do a mini-CEX (or "mini sex" as she pronounced it) after ward rounds. Oh hooray.
Surprisingly, I did quite well. Sure, it didn"t feel like it when I was under the spotlight, with her firing question after question at me during the history. But afterwards she gave some very good feedback and gave me good marks! I received a 6, which is quite a surprise because in our introduction lecture when they explained the mini-CEX, they told us to expect the initial few to be very bad...

So I"ve been pretty happy.

Thursday lunch

I made fried rice!
Partly due to laziness, and partly due to having a lot of rice leftover. Well its delicious, thanks for asking.

So this google "buzz" thing is a surprise in that it just popped up, but not much of a surprise as everyone was probably expecting google to try something like this. Now it seems a lot more people have found out I have a blog. Which could be worrying...
A quick shoutout to the Daily Melbourne Spam team (Fushan, Oda, Gary -lawl, Joshua -double lawl), to That Guy, to Miiiii and the Lone Sydneyer.

So yeah, Breast Clinic was really well done. Turns out its a combined Breast/Endocrine Clinic and I sat in with a doctor that I think was the head of the clinic. I"m not entirely sure, but the way he walked into another room for a consult and introduced himself by saying "Hi, I"m Dr ___, I"m the boss here." kind of leans towards my conclusion.
Saw part of an ultrasound guided FNA, didn"t see all of it because I got called out to see some radiology of a thyroid nodule. I saw a mammogram done, and had my hand squished by a mammogram machine (a mammogrammer? or perhaps just an X-ray thing.) so I would vaguely know of how hard breasts are squished in this thing and how uncomfortable it is for the patient.
The clinic was amazingly busy! They had booked about 30 patients in just for the morning, with two doctors seeing them all. By around 11, they were about an hour and a half behind. So yeah, busy.
So yes, learnt about breast examination and performed some. Learnt some big long words I"ll have to look up at some point, and learnt about some cool techniques not approved by the FDA.

All in all a good morning.

Possibly made better that I now have some cold/flu meds which will help the afternoon, as well as getting to sleep tonight.

Yay!

Thursday morning

Slept in. Who cares about ward rounds right?

Its all good, I have breast clinic at 9, so I can make that and use that as an excuse as to why I didn"t go to ward rounds. Despite the reason that ward rounds started at 8...

But I"m sick!

I"m out of drugs, so I was up half the night coughing :(

Gotta go buy some hard drugs* after this clinic.






*Note: Hard drugs mentioned include something containing codeine phosphate and pseudoephedrine hydrochloride. This phenylephrine crap doesn"t do anything.

Wednesday, fin.

Still sick, ginger tea is starting to annoy me, but butter menthols (with honey centres!) are as delicious as ever. They also kind of help my sore and irritated throat.

So I made it into the CoC (teeheehee) introduction/tutorial.
Not the most exciting, or informative of sessions, but nice to find out that I won"t be in the state for the 2nd tutorial.
I still have to do my work though, just submit things early and liaise via email.
At least I vaguely know what to do now, just have to find a patient with a chronic illness, get consent from them and follow him/her as they are treated and attend follow-ups for 5 months. This includes visiting them in their own home, as well as visiting their GP, preferably while they are there, with a maximum of 6-8 meetings.
I take this to mean that I have to improve on my stalking skills, raising them to a comparative level of a ninja or perhaps Batman. I"ll have to hide in bushes and on stone gargoyles and the like, hoping that my patient is just like every other person in those movies and that they never look up just as I"m somehow holding myself in the upper corner of a room. Luckily the SoM has understood that we"re not all as physically active and able as others, and have given us the leeway of a maximum of 6-8 meetings. I assume that we"ll start with 6-8 credits (I guess they haven"t decided yet) and when (or if! HAHA!) we get "caught" by the patient, we"ll have to hand over a credit and continue from the last save point.

You know, now that I think about it, Continuity of Care could be quite fun, and besides, I still have that imaginary cape.

Wednesday

Today isn"t much better.

Woke up at 6:30am to get ready for ward rounds. Decided that it was a bad idea and sent a message to one of the interns letting him know there was no way I was going to make it. I promptly fell back asleep and have just gotten up, wondering where my immune system went. I swear I"m supposed to feel better over time... I can"t really say this with any certainty though, since IMD sort of flew by in a blur...

Time for lunch, and then to figure out whether I feel up to making it into uni for a "Continuity of Care" orientation and tutorial session.

Bleh.