Things have been especially busy since our Easter Holidays. We’ve studied migraines/headaches, brain tumours/space occupying lesions, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease- and now we are working on Alzheimer’s. Three more weeks and I’m supposed to know all there is to know about Neuro… eek! We’ve seen a lot of interesting patients in the hospitals over the past weeks as well… and although I find it all amazingly fascinating, I’m not sure I could be a neurologist or a neurosurgeon. It’s a little depressing to see how little they can do to help some people with neurological conditions and how complex and disabling the diseases are. I definitely like this block better than cardiology and respirology though!
We also got to spend a day at the Sydney Eye Hospital downtown Sydney- which is an amazing place. It is a beautiful old building on Macquarrie St. overlooking the Royal Botanical Gardens. We learned to use ophthalmoscopes, had one of our pupils dilated (for the day!), looked at each other’s eyes through slit lamps, inverted each other’s eyelids and tested each other’s vision. It brought back a few awful memories about the bacterial infection/ulcer I had in my eye a few years ago, but was really interesting nonetheless. 
These are my pupils 7 hours after being dilated. (You can see my left one is still much bigger than the right.)I haven’t been doing much exciting on the weekends lately. The first week of April was our birthday, but I tried to keep it quiet cause I didn’t want to celebrate this year. A few of my friends did actually end up dragging me out for some drinks that night tho- which was unexpected, but nice.
That same weekend, my friend Heather brought me to the Sydney Bridal Show at the convention centre. It was actually pretty good and I got lots of good ideas for January! I'm also planning to go look at some dresses this week with Heather, Amy and Janice - since this week is Anzac Day and we have Thursday off school!
Last weekend I ended up going to a New South Wales Medical Association cocktail party in the CBD (downtown). All the medical students from New South Wales were invited, so it was a pretty big gathering. I met a bunch more Canadians who are at Sydney U in first year MED. It seems like there are more and more Canadians here every year. The general consensus is that you pretty much need to have a Masters degree before you can get into medical school in Canada now- which seems pretty ridiculous since most of them will never use it. 
Some exciting news (if you haven’t heard from me already), is that my good friend Brooke (from Toronto)- who went home to do medicine at the University of Toronto last year (after starting med here) is coming back to study in Australia. She will not get credit for her time at U of T, so she’ll be a year behind us in school now- but she’s coming back!! :) I couldn’t believe it. I think she thought she had to at least try U of T since it is SO crazy to get accepted to these days- but once she was there she realized it’s not much different from Sydney after all! So I’m VERY happy about that!
I’ve been really enjoying being back in the pool here as well. It is really amazing to be able to swim in an outdoor 50m pool anytime of year! And now, with my bike, it only takes me about 5 minutes to get there. The last two times I’ve gone swimming I’ve had my own lane for over an hour!- completely unheard of anywhere in Toronto. It is just amazing and it never seems to get old. I have to say that I do REALLY miss training with a team though. :( This is a picture of my McGill team in 2004.
Not much else is new here. I’m a little bummed that I’ll be missing Nana and Nono’s 60th anniversary party next weekend- but I’m sending Brent along in my place. :) Dad and Norma will be arriving in less than a month and I’m planning to meet them in Melbourne their first weekend here- so I’m definitely excited about that!
I’ve been really enjoying being back in the pool here as well. It is really amazing to be able to swim in an outdoor 50m pool anytime of year! And now, with my bike, it only takes me about 5 minutes to get there. The last two times I’ve gone swimming I’ve had my own lane for over an hour!- completely unheard of anywhere in Toronto. It is just amazing and it never seems to get old. I have to say that I do REALLY miss training with a team though. :( This is a picture of my McGill team in 2004.Not much else is new here. I’m a little bummed that I’ll be missing Nana and Nono’s 60th anniversary party next weekend- but I’m sending Brent along in my place. :) Dad and Norma will be arriving in less than a month and I’m planning to meet them in Melbourne their first weekend here- so I’m definitely excited about that! Hope everyone is doing well! Miss you! And Happy Birthday to all the April-ers! :)
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