Monday, February 19, 2007

I’m not going to write an entry for Sunday since I didn’t really do anything exciting (or at least anything that is exciting to write about)! I mostly organized and cleaned my place and spent some time hooking up my printer and putting notes together… etc.

Also, I might not be able to write every single day anymore cause I do have to start doing school work sometime soon (I’m not sure my hour countdown studying methods will work so well for med school, Heather… he he he)- plus most of my days now might not be that interesting anyway! :)

I think Mondays are going to be the most tiring day of the week. Not only am I at the hospital for the entire day, but I add on two hours of travel to each end (which I’m not used to) making the days easily over 12 hours long. I left my apartment at about 6:30am this morning with Nick (from my building). We decided to walk to Redfern train station today (the dangerous one) since it was closer- but we picked up about 4 other people on the way. It really didn’t seem that dangerous to me, but I guess I’m oblivious to that kind of thing sometimes. I’m still going to try to steer clear of that area if I’m alone.

We got to the hospital at about 8:30 and our first session didn’t start till 9am, so I had some time to find my locker and relax for a bit. From 9am-11:30ish we had a session with our doctor (who will be in charge of us for this entire Block- about 3 months). I am in a group of 5, and the doctor in charge of us (Dr. Grant Miller) is a retired general surgeon from Australia. He worked as a surgeon for 34 years- but didn’t want to retire completely, so now he is teaching us! He also told me that there is a surgical instrument named after me called the ‘Desjardins forceps’ he he he. I think they are used for some kind of bladder or stomach operation, but I can’t remember for sure.

My group is pretty good- everyone is nice at least. There is one guy from Ottawa, one girl from New York/Australia, and two guys from Australia. The girl from New York is kind of irritating it seems, but pretty nice. One of the Australian guys is also a nice kid, but a serious piece of work. He rode his motorbike to the hospital the last Wednesday and carried around his helmet for the whole day. Today he was wearing dress pants with “Rip Curl” written in white across the butt and kept his sunglasses on the back of his head the whole day. Plus he was on his cell phone practically the whole time- when Dr. Miller was talking to us and even when we were seeing patients! I couldn’t believe it.

Anyway, the 5 of us spent the first part of the day with Dr. Miller learning about medical histories, myocardial infarcts and a bit of background about DVTs and diabetes…etc. He took us to see two patients and we watched him do histories with them. The first patient was 83 and had been in the hospital for a while for various reasons (including angina, heart attacks and prostate problems). He was very hard to hear because he had been intubated recently and had bruised vocal chords. His family came in part way through our visit with him and we were able to get much more information from them. The second patient was also there for heart problems and he was only 59. He had really bad oedema (Australians put an extra ‘o’ in a whole bunch of words here!) in his legs. After that, the Ottawa guy and I went to take histories of two other patients in the cardiology ward. All the people we got to see were men and they are all pretty old. Plus all of their histories were really extensive and complicated and took at least 40 minutes for each one!

At lunch time, we got free lunch (from some medical insurance people) and then heard a lecture from some 4th year students on projects they have done or interesting cases they have seen. (This lecture is always given on Mondays and we always get free lunch if we go! They call it the Grand Rounds.) One girl did her project on leeches and maggots in medicine. I heard about that while I was in India, but I didn’t know that they used it here (and in North America). Apparently they have even been using leeches in our hospital for people who have had a finger or toe amputated. It helps restore venous blood flow once it is reattached (but they haven’t been able to isolate the active ingredients, so they are still using the actual leeches)!

After lunch we had another session with the nurse who is in charge of Med 1 students. We just learned about some basic things like taking height, weight, BMI…etc. and then she took us around to all the different wards in the hospital. We even got to see where the ambulances come in!! (So when Brent comes here I will know where to find him :) Also, our hospital has the biggest ER in the state, so I think that will be fun to spend some time in. We are also allowed to watch operations starting in a few weeks (once we learn how to ‘scrub in’ properly).

After that session was done, a few of the students and I went and found a few more patients to interview. Nick and I found one in the ER who had some kind of infectious disease. He had been admitted to the hospital on Thursday with some kind of infection and rash, but the doctors still haven’t been able to figure out what is wrong. First they thought it was a staph infection, then maybe toxic shock syndrome and then maybe measles- but they still really have no idea. Nick and I shook his hand, so we are hoping it was nothing contagious (that we aren’t vaccinated against)! He he he.

I got back into the city at about 5:30, but I got really lost since I tried getting off at a different station (I wasn’t with anyone going my way, so I didn’t want to get off at Redfern). It took me about 30 minutes to get back to the right side of the station and then I got some groceries on the way home- so I didn’t get home till about 7pm. What a long day! Hope everyone at home is doing well! I miss you guys lots! xoxox