Wednesday, May 9, 2007

I’ve had another pretty busy week! My weekend ended up being pretty full even though I didn’t have much planned. Friday was Stuey’s birthday, so a big group of us went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant right around the corner from me. Stuey had gone to the campus bar straight after class (for a few hours before dinner), so he showed up to the restaurant already drunk. After dinner we went to the Marly Bar (right around the corner from my apartment too), but only stayed there for about an hour because Stuey kept getting kicked out. Eventually his luck ran out and changing his clothes didn’t fool the bouncers anymore. :( We had just finished our week on Alcohol abuse, so Janice, Brooke and I found the whole thing pretty entertaining. He should have been our binge drinking case study! Slurred speech, motor ataxia, loss of inhibitory control, super talkative and emotionally labile…! On his walk home he apparently stepped on some glass that went right through the sole of his shoe and cut him really badly. Luckily, Len and Janice were with him (and noticed the blood before he got into bed), so they wrapped his foot up with a sock and some tape to stop the bleeding. We were all home before midnight! He he he.

On Saturday I went for a swim and then ran some errands with Sabiha. We decided to have some dinner in Glebe that evening at a cute little Italian restaurant. I had some really yummy prawn and avocado pasta!!

I stayed in Saturday night since Janice and I planned to get up early to go to Coogee beach on Sunday. Brent was working at the Marine Unit on Saturday and while I was talking to him, the Headguards all came into Bruce’s office for Headguard training! So- I got to talk to Bruce and Jessica and a few of the others! Unfortunately, I didn’t get off the phone till past 3am (my time), so it made getting up at 7am not so easy.

Coogee was great, though! It is a smaller beach than Bondi- and has a much steeper shoreline. There were no waves, which wasn’t very good for body surfing, but was really nice for swimming and a quiet morning at the beach. There were lots of surf lifesavers around- practicing on paddleboards, surf skis and swimming and running up and down the beach. I think it might have been a club practicing. We stayed at the beach till about 2pm and then headed back to the city on the bus.

Monday was my longest day at the hospital yet. I left my apartment at about 6:30am and got home at around 8:30pm. It was pitch black out when we left the hospital to come home.
In the morning we had a long session on Basic Life Support. It felt like 3 weeks of headguard training squished into about 3 hours. It was a really good review, though! We had manikins hooked up to machines which told us if we were compressing the patient properly (hard enough and fast enough) and if we were getting the right amount of air into the lungs. It’s amazing how much energy it takes to do the new CPR standards properly! No wonder you have to switch every two minutes now. We also learned a lot more about AEDs and about the pericardial thump (which can apparently work)!

After our usual lunch and lectures (grand rounds), we went down to plastics again to see some more suturing. The registrar/attending doctor there is really nice and he pretty much lets us do whatever we want! He told me to take out some stitches, but I didn’t think I was ready. I think I’m going to go back and do it next week though- cause it really doesn’t look very hard.In the afternoon we met our new tutor. His name is Dr. Sew Hoy and he is an orthopedic surgeon based in Manly. He was really organized- gave our group of 6 a personal power point presentation, handouts and then did an example hip examination on me for the group. After that we got into partners and did examinations on each other. He gave me all kinds of tests that I could do on Dad, but I don’t think I’ll be able to now that Dad’s surgery has been pushed up to June 7th!In the evening, we had another 2 hour lecture on ‘party drugs’ (mostly about GHB, ecstasy, and methamphetamines). It was really interesting, but didn’t finish till 6:30 pm!
Our case of the week is ‘Heroin addiction’, which we should be finished tomorrow. Next week is a motor vehicle accident, but we don’t know what happens yet!

I’m going to bed early tonight because I am going swimming at Coogee beach with my friend Martha at 6am tomorrow morning. I found out that she drives there every Tuesday and Thursday mornings to go swimming- so I’m going to try and tag along from now on.

Hope everyone is doing well at home. I miss you all so much!! xoxo