Another term.

So I tried to post this ages ago, but it wouldn"t work, so its not my fault I haven"t blogged in a while...


Ok, I tried yesterday. Its still my fault for being really late. But blog issues is a much better excuse...


I"ve had to go through and re-edit to change my tenses and some dates. How irritating...


So anyway, I"ve been slac- err... busy.

ICCU has come and gone, and though I said it was ok with little hands on, it definitely picked up in the last couple of weeks.

1. Saw an Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) being setup on a patient. Basically a heart AND lung bypass, where the blood is taken out from the venous system, oxygenated in a machine then pumped back into the arterial system. It only happens once or twice a year, so we were definitely lucky to see it.

2. Also tried out a night shift. I figured that at some point in my career, I would probably need to do one, so I might as well try it out to see what all the hype was about. Of course, I probably should have slept a bit more during the day...
Summary: Saw a patient with a complete whiteout of the right lung due to a tension haemothorax. 1.6L of blood/clots were drained and then I accompanied that patient to theatre. Was invited to scrub in with the cardiothoracics team and stood at the patients hip while the surgeons pulled out handfuls of blood clots and suctioned what seemed like an endless flow of blood. Total blood/clots removed in theatre: approximately 4.5-5L. Patient improved dramatically and went to the ward a few days later.

Yesterday I started on ED.

That is to say, I would have started had the ED consultant bothered to come in.. Instead, we waited for 40 minutes then I finally found someone to give him a call. He said he wasn"t coming in, and asked for another consultant to give us a tour. Considering the ED is pretty much mostly still under construction, it wasn"t a very long tour. Then we got to see a little baby"s laceration of her brow being glued. I then went home.

I then went to the airport to see off my girlfriend. A sad day indeed, the bad news that my girlfriend has left the country, not to return for 18 weeks. Four and a half months! The good news is that luckily, I will be meeting her in Singapore in around 11 weeks, spending 7 weeks with her, then not seeing her again for about 5 weeks. Everyone else will have to survive without her for 18 weeks.

So she"ll have 7 weeks in Zambia, doing some mixed discipline hospital stuff and some safari stuff, then she flies to Europe to meet up with her sister and tour around for 4 weeks, then to Singapore to meet me and hang around for a week before the both of us go to Cambodia for 6 weeks of paediatrics.
So yes, exciting times ahead, just have to survive this term...