Wednesday, March 18, 2007

I had another interesting day at the hospital on Monday. We had a replacement tutor (cause Dr. Miller was away). He was a 6th year Pediatric Fellow (a fellow is a doctor who is just about to be totally finished all his training). He was really helpful to have cause he was fairly fresh out of school and he gave us lots of good feedback. The tutorial was also kind of interesting because two of the students in my group (of 5 people) got in a HUGE yelling match- which was obviously totally unprofessional, but somewhat entertaining. I really felt like I was on Gray’s Anatomy or something. He he he

In the afternoon we were supposed to be learning “Scrubbing, Gowning and Gloving” for surgeries, but the session was cancelled because our teacher was sick. We didn’t find out it was cancelled until about 25 minutes after it was supposed to start- so we were all dressed up in our scrubs already. We figured we should take advantage of the fact we were already changed- so Josh, Nick and I went around looking for some interesting surgeries. We couldn’t find anything too exciting going on (I think it might have been their lunch break), so I went down to the outpatient clinic with Nick instead. We met two interns (interns are first year medical graduates fresh out of school, so they don’t really know what they are doing yet…) running the plastics clinic and they seemed happy to have us around to help out.

They were SO busy. Their attending doctor had been called away to an emergency surgery, so they were stuck running the whole clinic alone. They had patients with broken ankles standing up in the waiting room, so they were pretty desperate for help! They pretty much let us do anything that we wanted to do! I didn’t want to do too much since I don’t have much experience, but Nick jumped right in and I followed him around and did the easy stuff (like bandaging and cleaning wounds). We got to see patients by ourselves and take their histories. Nick took out tons of people’s stitches (on faces, legs and hands mostly) and I cleaned them up and bandaged them.

Some of the most interesting patients we saw were:

-a 45 year old man with severe 2nd degree burns all over his body. The worst of it was on his tummy and he refused to look at it. He had been burned by radiator fluid while he was trying to turn it on with a broom.

- a 63 year old man who had a double facial skin graft where a giant carcinoma had been removed. Nick took the stitches out of a little sponge thing that was sutured onto his face over the graft after surgery. So we were the first people who got to see how the graft was taking- and it looked great. It still looked like a big hole in his face- but at least there was skin over top of it. He was complaining of his leg (where the skin was harvested from), but we couldn’t take the bandage off to look because you have to wait until 10 days after surgery to remove it.
- a 37 year old lady who had a giant skin graft on her leg (around her knee). She had been kicked by a horse and had a big flap of skin missing on the side of her leg. Since her surgery was done more than 10 days ago, we got to take the bandage off her upper leg where the skin had been harvested from. I think we were all expecting it to look really bad, but it really just looked like a bad sunburn in the shape of a square. I was imagining it would look like the hole in her leg where the graft was. This lady was (understandably) very vocal about the pain she was experiencing!

- a facial fracture in a 13 year old boy. He fell off his mountain bike and did a faceplant into the ground. His face was very bruised, but his vision was ok and his CAT scans looked ok (apparently), but for some blood in his sinus areas.

- a 33 year old man with a broken, dislocated, and badly cut finger. He was playing cricket and wearing his wedding ring and somehow he almost ripped his finger off. Nick took out his stitches and I cleaned it up and bandaged it with some steri-strips and a splint.

- a 24 year old man who had had his Achilles tendon recently reconstructed. He had his leg in a cast after the surgery until this Monday- but when the cast and bandages were taken off, there was a huge area where it had gotten infected. Bad news since there isn’t much in between the skin and then tendon there. Nick and I couldn’t deal with this one, cause if the bacteria eats away at his tendon he is in HUGE trouble. A few doctors from upstairs had to come to look at him, but we left before we got to find out what happened.

- a 19 year old man who had somehow put his leg through a window and managed to cut up his calf very badly. We took his stitches out and cleaned him up so he could get another cast put on. No one even checked this patient before we put the next cast on, so we are hoping we got all the stitches out! Eeek!

After seeing all those patients (and more) it was about 4:30pm, so I decided to head home since I was going to have to walk from Redfern Station alone and it takes almost 2 hours to get there. Daylight savings is gone now, so it is getting dark around 6:30pm or 7pm these days.

Tuesday was a very full day. I had lots of classes and dropped by the travel agent to finalize our Fiji plans. It’s only a few days away!! In the evening Janice and I had our scuba diving test. Everyone passed. Afterwards we went to the pub with our instructors and our class and had a beer. -Just incase anyone is interested in doing their scuba stuff before coming to visit- The school that I went to can arrange for you to do your classes and pool diving at home and then do your 5 ocean dives once you get here! That way you don’t have to waste time in Australia in a classroom or a pool AND you get to do your learning dives in the real ocean instead of a cold lake somewhere.

Today I only had one lab, so I spent the afternoon trying to find a few little things for all the birthdays coming up. My friend Josh took me to Bondi Beach on his motorbike (bad idea I know- but it saved me about 1.5 hours of bus time and about $10!) cause there were a few things I wanted to pick up there for some birthday girls!

Tomorrow I have another long, busy day- but I have no class on Friday- so that will give me some time to pack and get ready for Fiji!

Hope everyone is doing well at home. Miss you!