Friday, March 30, 2007

I can’t believe that Fiji is here! I’m just packing up my stuff and getting ready to leave. My plane leaves in about 10 hours and I’m so excited!
Brent is already on his way there. Actually, I guess he is somewhere over the south pacific right now. I got to talk to him while he was in LA since he had a 7 hour layover there.

I hope everyone has a great few weeks and I’ll write again when I get back to Australia! Miss you!

Ps. Happy Birthday to everyone!! (There are so many birthdays in the next few weeks- I’m sorry I’m missing them!)

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!

Saturday, March 24, 2007

I just got back from another very long day full of scuba diving! I figure that I have no excuse not to write my blog tonight since daylight savings ends at 2am and we get an extra hour of sleep! (We are in the “fall-back” mode- So now Sydney is only 14 hours ahead of Toronto!... just in case anyone wants to call me (other than Brent, Jamie and Uncle Tom ;)…) he he he.

We did two dives today- both over an hour long!! According to the dive charts, we should all have the Bends right now- but we used computers and apparently they give you some more time underwater!?!? Not sure how the computers work- but I’m feeling ok right now at least.

We went diving at a place called Bare Island at La Perouse today. Part of Mission Impossible was filmed on Bare Island, but I don’t remember the movie well enough to recognize it. Here’s a picture in case any of you guys do!

The dives were fun, but it was so SO hot outside and we had another very long walk to get to the water (from the vans). The wetsuits we wear are so thick and the gear is so heavy, so we were all dripping sweat by the time we got to the water. The first dive was mainly a skills dive- We had to share air, go up and down a bunch of times and switch our weight belts. We also had to take off our masks at the bottom, drop them in the sand and then find them, put them back on and clear them. We also had to work on diving with a buddy. Janice was my diving buddy and she had a few buoyancy issues (as in she kept floating to the surface). So, I would look at something for a second, turn around and she’d be gone! The first time it happened I was so worried because the visibility wasn’t very good and I hadn’t realized she had just floated to the surface. Eeeek. I lost my buddy! but Brent- don’t worry- I think I’m a good dive buddy otherwise :) he he he.
The second dive was more exciting. We swam around the whole island and got to see all kinds of neat stuff on the reef. The most exciting things we saw were a giant cuttle fish, a stingray and some black reef leather jackets (which I really liked cause it looks like they have googley eyes!) Here are a few pictures of a cuttle fish and a stingray. I think Mom would like this sport cause you can keep LISTS of all the animals and plants you see underwater. It’s like birdwatching, I guess, but much more exciting. He he he.

On a side note, I really think that Janice could give Georgia a run for her money on her vehicle-induced narcolepsy. I can’t get over those two! Sorry for this picture Jorgey! I had to!! (I will get one of Janice soon too!)

The end of my week wasn’t very exciting- just lots of class and PBLs. Our patient of the week has a urinary tract infection and is pregnant so it’s pretty interesting. We are learning a lot of basic stuff about pregnancy and what can go wrong, etc… and about UTIs- which are very common in women (apparently account for about 10% of the visits to see a GP). This next picture probably seems random, but it was in lecture we had on communicable diseases. It is a flow chart on how SARS spread from the hotel in Hong Kong to the rest of the world. I hope it comes up big enough so you can see it!
On Thursday afternoon, my friend Josh and I went looking for a pig’s heart since we wanted to work on our anatomy- but all the butchers were sold out of them! Apparently people buy hearts for their dogs to eat!?! We did find out that they only cost 40 cents here though- good news for when we make it to the butcher in the morning!

On Thursday evening Janice and I went over to Josh’s apartment for a BBQ. Josh told us that he lived in an apartment, but really it was an off-campus rez and it was FULL of a whole bunch of very drunk 1st year undergrads (no offence, Jules ;). It wasn’t exactly my idea of a fabulous time. We stayed long enough to have some sausages and pasta salad, to find out why Josh never shows up to class and for me to meet another person named Joss. (Except he was a really chubby, drunk guy wearing a tight pink shirt and his real name was actually Joss, not Jocelin.) We left a few minutes after meeting him.

Friday we had 7 hours of straight lectures in a boiling hot lecture theatre, so we were all pretty wiped after it was over. Sabiha and I went out for dinner to a ‘bring your own wine’ Italian restaurant called ‘Twelve’. Sabiha doesn’t drink and I was feeling drunk after one small glass of red wine, so needless to say it wasn’t a very crazy night. I miss L’academie.

Tomorrow is our last day of diving before our test on Tuesday (when we will be certified open water divers). The weather is supposed to be pretty bad tomorrow, so we might just be diving in the Sydney Harbour. Our instructors didn’t sound too keen on the idea, but I’m kind of looking forward to it - cause they said there is a shipwreck that we’re going to get to see!

Oh- also, a friend of mine in Med 1 (from the UK) is starting an underwater hockey club. His girlfriend is on the Australian national team for underwater hockey and she is going to come and teach us to play. I think I’m going to join cause it sounds pretty fun! I’ve got the swimming experience and the hockey genes, so it can’t be that bad! He he he. It’s also been pretty easy to recruit other Canadians to come and play since everyone is missing hockey so much. I guess they’ll take whatever they can get! :)

At this time next week, Brent and I will be in Fiji. I can’t wait!

Miss you guys!

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Monday was a pretty relaxed day at the hospital- as they go. We only saw 2 patients all day. Dr. Miller sent Nick and I looking for a cross-cultural patient (as in one that didn’t speak English very well). We looked everywhere, but the best we could do was a lady from Holland who had been in Australia since 1959. He he he. She had a slight accent, but I wouldn’t have exactly called her cross-cultural. She was 71 years old and had just had an operation for diverticulosis. She was really friendly, but was infected with MRSA (a bacteria resistant to most antibiotics) so we had to wear gowns and gloves when we went in to see her. She had the operation only 4 days ago and was healing really well!

After that we saw a man who just had part of his esophagus and stomach removed because of cancer. We didn’t take a full history from him, so I don’t really know his story- but we did all get to do an abdominal exam on him. It wasn’t particularly exciting though- cause everything was normal- which means you can’t really feel anything!

In the afternoon we had our clinical skills lab and learned how to deal with sterile procedures/fields and wound care. You wouldn’t believe the process you have to go through and the amount of material that is required to bandage a small (or big) cut. We had to use forceps, saline solutions (or others if the wound was really dirty) and piles of gauze. Everything has to be prepared before you start and there is a very strict procedure that you have to follow. We had fake cuts on manikins that we had to clean and bandage while making sure not to contaminate our ‘sterile field’. If we made a mistake we had to start over! They also gave us a long talk about the kinds of infections you can get and how they are caused. Apparently, one of the biggest mistakes made by intern doctors is that they suture up animal bites right away. So, make sure if you get bitten by an animal that the doctor doesn’t stitch you up for a while! You have to make sure the bacteria gets out of there first!

I didn’t stay for surgery afterwards because I was too tired and wanted to get home. Plus, we are learning to gown and glove for surgery next week, so hopefully after that we won’t have to sneak into the surgery ward illegally. :)

Tuesday I had classes and a PBL. The problem of the week is on Dental Caries (Cavities) causing infections. Our patient had a caries which resulted in a very severe oral infection (know as Ludwig Angina) and a systemic infection. This is what happens if you don’t get your cavities filled! Apparently we have to know how to deal with and reconize some dental problems since a lot of patients will come to doctors will dental issues if they don’t have dental insurance. We will still usually have to refer them to a dentist, though.

I had another scuba diving class last night and learned about reading dive tables, residual nitrogen in the body and dangerous animals in the oceans! It’s a much more relaxed class than any of my other ones. :)

I also visited my travel agent yesterday to finalize our plans for Fiji. I’m starting to get really excited! We have a really fun itinerary and we should be able to see and do lots of stuff! Brooke leaves tomorrow to go to Toronto for a week and then Hawaii for 2 weeks after that!

I’m starting to miss having a kitchen these days. There is really only so much you can do with a microwave and toaster. (And we’ve been learning about how bad it is to use microwaves in our classes, so it is not helping matters… he he he). It will be SO nice to have some real meals in Fiji… and even better to have some home-cooked meals if I come home in June!

Also- just to give you another idea of the price of some things here- I went to buy shampoo today and the cheapest I could find was $6.50 a bottle for a 375mL bottle of Vo5. If I wanted my usual Tresemme shampoo from home, I would have had to pay $12/bottle! Crazy, eh?

Today I had a couple labs on inflammation and appendicitis. Here is a picture of acute appendicitis in case you're interested. I’m sorry if you find it horribly disgusting, but it gets much worse- trust me! This is a picture of Sadiq. We caught him sleeping in between classes. he he he.
That’s it for now! Miss you! Hope the weather is getting better at home :)

Sunday, March 17, 2007

I’m sorry it has been so long since I wrote last, but I wasn’t home much this week at all! I’ve been SO busy!

My week was full of classes and PBL’s as usual, but I also started my open water scuba diving course Tuesday evening which made things even busier!


This is a picture of the quad area where we usually eat lunch in between lectures.
Thursday night I went to a “Welcome Party” for a student club that I joined called MIRAGE. The club focuses on rural medicine and plans lots of (subsidized) trips around the country doing medically related things. (I figure it might be kinda similar to what I was doing in India??) Anyway, I know lots of people in the club and it was only $5 to join (for my entire degree), so I thought it sounded like a good idea. The ‘Welcome Party’ was at a bar right around the corner from my apartment- so it was also very convenient.

I tried to avoid doing anything too exciting on Friday since I knew I had a long weekend ahead of me! Len, Jacqui and I went downtown after classes and had dinner at Darling Harbour. After dinner we got some Lindt ice cream which was SO delicious!! But I seriously haven’t been hungry since I ate it. It was so filling and so rich that I think the calories from it lasted me all weekend!

Both Saturday and Sunday were FULL days of my scuba diving course. We met on campus at 8am both mornings, where we were picked up and taken out towards the coast (where the dive shop is located). Saturday morning was spent in the classroom and then in the store- fitting (and buying) gear. Janice and I didn’t realize that we would have to buy so much. We had to buy all of our ‘personal gear’- which is a mask, snorkel, fins, boots and gloves. Not cheap! (but apparently will last a long time…). It better!

Saturday afternoon we went to a big outdoor pool and went scuba diving in the deep end. It was pretty neat, but all we got to see were a bunch of bloody bandaids :( . yukky. It is a very strange feeling to be able to be underwater for so long. I just can’t believe the amount of equipment that you need… and how much it weighs!

It took a while for us to get through all the required skills since there were a lot of people who seemed pretty uncomfortable in the water. We didn’t get back to the city till well after 7pm, so I just stayed in and tried to get to sleep early. There were lots of parties going on (since it was St. Patrick’s Day), so I was woken up a lot- by the drunk people outside and by my friends who weren’t very happy with me going to bed so early on St. Patrick’s Day. :(

Sunday was another long day. We had a little bit of classroom work in the morning and then headed to the ocean for a snorkel and our first dive. We went to a place called Inscription Point in Kurnel (towards the southeast end of Sydney). We were in a national park called Botany Bay. Unfortunately, because it was a national park, access to the shoreline by car was not very convenient and we had to walk over a kilometer will all of our gear on (each way). If you haven’t been scuba diving before it probably doesn’t sound too bad, but it was! I have massive bruises on my hips from my weight belt being grinded into me.

The snorkel was ok, but the dive was much better. The visibility wasn’t very good (especially for the snorkel) because it was overcast and there was a fast current stirring up the bottom. Plus there were LOTS of bluebottles in the water and a few people got stung.

The dive was good, even though the visibility wasn’t great. We went down to about 12m and we saw lots of neat things. Our instructor (Bill) caught a sea dragon (looks like a giant sea horse) and let us all hold it. He also found us a little octopus hiding in between the rocks, but it wouldn’t come out very far. There were also really BIG blue groper fish everywhere and we broke big sea urchins open and fed them to the blue gropers. The one I got to feed was about 2.5 feet long. Towards the end of the dive, we were all kneeling on the sandy bottom of the ocean working on some skills when Bill came swimming at me quickly and told me to move. It turns out I was kneeling about a centimeter away from an electric ray that was hiding in the sand. You can’t touch the top of them or else you get a shock (which can really be dangerous if they are big enough!). Bill got his knife out and started to tease it a bit so that it completely burrowed itself under the sand and you couldn’t see it at all. EEEK.

This is a blue groper (like the one I fed)!


Anyway, I survived. We have 4 more dives next weekend and two more Tuesday class sessions. I really think that anyone who is planning to come to Australia to visit (hopefully lots of you!) should try and do an open water diving course before you come (or plan to do it while you are here). Everyone who I talk to says it would be a shame to come to Australia and not dive, and now I can understand why.

Off to bed early tonight- I’m at the hospital tomorrow! Only 2 more weeks of school till the holidays! I can't wait for FIJI!

Monday, March 12, 2007

Today was another 12 hour day at the hospital. But, I have to admit that time goes by fast when I’m there!

Our tutorial this morning with Dr. Miller was spent seeing respiratory patients. The most interesting one we saw was a pneumothorax (punctured lung) in a 65 year old man. Twelve years ago he was poisoned by a gas mixture of formaldehyde and potassium. He accidentally walked into a fumigation room at work while it was in progress and has had severe respiratory problems ever since. He was in very rough shape- bruises all over his body, tubes coming out of everywhere and very short of breath. He was also attached to a machine called an underwater seal (which allows him to breathe even though he has a hole in his lung). We got to listen to his lungs with our stethoscopes and it sounded like velcro being pulled apart when he exhaled.

After our tutorial we got another free lunch from MDA National (a medical insurance company) and then had a talk on hernias. We saw some really crazy pictures that I wish I could show! (Search “inguinal hernia” on google images if you are curious- but beware!)

In the afternoon we worked on some more clinical skills (like washing hands and wearing masks) and talked about contact, droplet and airborne transmission. We also got fitted with N-95 masks which are used when you come into contact with anyone who might have an airborne disease (such as SARS).

We finished pretty early today, so instead of going home we decided to go and see if we could get inside the surgery ward. The receptionist at the ward had already turned down one group of students who tried to get in, so Nick thought we should just go through the changerooms and see if the doctors would let us in. So we did! We changed into scrubs, put covers on our shoes, hats on our heads and headed up into the surgery ward. We wandered around for a bit and found some interesting cases on the white board. We thought we’d only be able to watch from the scrub rooms, but the doctors were always more than happy to have us come right in. We had to wear masks (and gloves if we wanted to touch anything)- which was (along with pretty much EVERYTHING else) extraordinarily different from the standards in the operating rooms in India!

We watched a little bit of an ectopic pregnancy operation and a bit of an operation to remove part of a man’s lung (who had lung cancer). For most of the time though, we were in an operation to remove a giant malignant testicular tumour from a 17-year old boy. They cut the whole tumour out of him and then put a prosthetic testicle back in. We saw the whole operation from beginning to end and also spent a while talking to the anesthetist (who seemed happy to talk to us rather than reading his novel).

We didn’t end up leaving the hospital till well after 5pm, so I didn’t get home till around 7pm. I went to King St. to get some sushi with Sabiha and now I’m heading to bed since I have another 12 hour day tomorrow!

Miss you guys!! Thanks for the emails :)

Here are a few more pictures from Janice-... @ Cronulla Beach again.

Surfing at Bondi Beach

Here are few of Janice's pictures from our day of surfing at Bondi...