Friday, August 03, 2007
I'm back from rural week! I just spent the last 5 days in Bairnsdale and it was without a doubt, the best week I've spent this entire academic year!
On Monday, I woke up at 5 something to catch a cab down to Southern Cross station to catch my train, which was at 745am. The train station is in the city, so there was no way I could take a bus down. I was really panicky as well, because I booked the cab and if it didn't come, we would have to call another cab, and we weren't sure how long it would take to arrive. Thank goodness it was there just as I was coming out of halls, so shu, xf, sheryl, chai and kh took the cab down to the city. It cost us $66. The metre was jumping every 3 seconds, and I think it didn't go up in intervals of 10 cents but 20-30 cents. It gave me a neckache trying to look at it. In the end we arrived early and some of us wanted to eat something, so we sat at the food court for a while. I was so tired. Eventually we got onto our train. The V line train is quite nice. It's very comfortable! It was quite hard getting in and out though, because I was fighting a losing battle with my orange bag. The train ride was almost 4 hours long. Most of the time was spent playing bridge but we slept for a while before arriving, so when we arrived at the train station, we all had bed hair.
Bairnsdale was gorgeous though. It was quiet and small. Some of the staff from the rural school, Deb and Jenny, came to pick us up and drove us to the supermarket to get some lunch and to buy some groceries. The town was so nice! but the sun was so bright! I could feel my retinas burning hehe and I forgot to bring my sunnies. Ah well. Deb and Jenny drove us to the rural school and we had a short briefing. After that, we had a talk by the people from the SES, following which we went were driven to our accomodation at captain's cove. The place was absolutely amazing! The houses were clean and overlooking a lake. The link is here xf, shu, sheryl and I rushed upstairs, and we abandoned chau and ryan downstairs. The place was so so nice! and shu and I took PLENTY of stupid photos. We had a really nice dinner of roasted chicken with garlic bread and soup, all bought from the supermarket because we didn't want to spend too much time cooking.
On Tuesday we all split up into smaller groups and went to different places, be it a primary industry visit or a hospital. I went to forestec and it was pretty interesting. It was this place that not only produces timber, but also conducts courses on woodworking and tree climbing. It was really cool because our guide, rick, brought us to the workshop to see some of the furniture that the students made, and they were lovely! The workshop had lots of gigantic pieces of machinery for woodworking. It was like a high end D&T workshop. Rick was also telling us that the forest in the area stretched for about 100km and the SES used the forest to train for bush fire rescues. It was quite interesting! The place also had spaces for their students who had already finished the course, but couldn't afford to start up their business just yet, so they loaned them some space to store their items and let them work from there for a while. The building itself was absolutely gorgeous! It was made up from timber from the surrounding forest and it was so nice! In the afternoon, we had PCL with Jess, a 4th year student, and she was telling us a lot of stuff about the first couple of years of med school, which was highly entertaining. After that we went back to captain's cove and relaxed a bit. Then we discussed our assignment >.< which is this shadow hovering over our trip to bairnsdale, but ah well. THen in the evening, Trevor, our driver, drove us to Raymond Island, which supposedly has a gigantic population of koalas. It was really cool because there was just a track which you could drive along. It was like a safari. THe road was really bumpy and we kept on stopping to see koalas in trees. They were really fat. At the northern part of the island there are many kangaroos and as we were driving through, all these kangaroos kept on hopping across the road. They were so cute!
On Wednesday I had to leave the house at 7am because we were going up to Buchan, which is one hour away. It is in a remote area of Victoria, and we could see the difference between the remote and rural areas. The remote areas were so nice! In the rural areas there were these smal clusters of towns but in the remote areas, there houses were all few and far between. The land was all green and there were so many cows and sheep. It kind of reminds me of J1 when we went to Ireland and were kept on seeing sheep and cows. Jennifer and I followed a bush nurse around. It was so amazing because everyone in that town knew each other. They were all so friendly! I spoke to some of them and they were really really nice. Then Anne, the bush nurse, drove Jennifer and I to go sightseeing in between patients, and she brought us to various high points in the region and the view was absolutely fantastic! The grass was so green, and there were many streams and brooks running through the land. We also did home visits and visited this old couple, who were so sweet. When we arrived, the lady already had the table set with cakes and drinks ready for us. We were just talkig about random things and she just had her 4th great grandchild and was showing us photos and various clothes that she knitted for her great grandchildren. Her husband was really amusing too! Along the way, Anne stopped by one house to pop some cigarettes into the occupant's mailbox. Apparently this woman smokes 100 cigarettes and drinks 5L of wine in a day. Anne was telling us she didn't want to provide the cigarettes and alcohol to her, but if she didn't do so, this woman would drive to town, drunk, and try to get her stuff. It was very alarming! I realised that technology in the rural areas is not as backward as most people think. Towards the end of our visit, Anne had a video conference. Deb was telling us today that the technology was potentially even higher because they need to be contactable. The nearest doctor was in Bairnsdale, which is more than an hours drive from Buchan. Occasionally a doctor would go into the region, but other than that, in emergency cases, patients have to be helicoptered to the hospital. After the visit, Anne managed to get us some tickets to visit the Buchan caves, which was so nice! It wasn't a very long tour, but Sheryl and Megan, who went to Gelantipy, which was even more remote than Buchan, joined Jenn and I and we went to see the caves. There was one part where the tour guide switched ALL the lights in the cave off and it was pitch black inside. The darkness was so.. thick, I felt like I could cut through it. I couldn't see a single thing, which was so cool. I was so exhausted at the end of the day though. On the drive back, Deb pointed this house to us in the middle of a field and she said that during the recent floods to the Bairnsdale and Sale area, that house floated down the river.
Yesterday was the most fantastic day of the week! I went to the Bairnsdale hospital. When we arrived in the morning, David, another 4th year, was there. I realised that he's so gentlemanly! Whenever there was a door in front of us, he would walk ahead and open the door for us. So sweet. :) He brought us to the hospital. Jenn made this comment about how medical students are seriously the bottom of the pile and the lowest of the low, what more a first year student. Ah well. I was attachd to the midwife unit in the morning. It was sad because a lady delivered a baby just before I arrived. I didn't do much, but I have a newfound respect for nurses. They showed me around, explained things to me and taught me a lot of things. They kept on asking me whether I wanted a break, if I wanted anything to eat; I learned how to make hospital beds and pretty much made beds for the whole morning. But the nurses there, Colleen and Susan especially, were wonderful! Whenever they had something else to do, they would let me know and not just abandon me in the ward. I met some really nice people there. There was this cute old lady who kept on forgetting who I was, so every time I popped in to say hi to her and to see how she was doing, she would think that I was one of the doctors to check up on her, even though I told her I was just a student about an hour ago. The morning was quite slow, but the afternoon was wonderful! I went to the emergency ward and the first thing I did was learn how to do an ECG for a patient who came in with angina. The nurse showed me how to do it, then she told me to go do it for another patient in another consultation room. I cannot describe how terrified I was, since I know absolutely nothing about ECGs. I don't even know how to read them. So I tried to stall and told the girl to change into a gown and just waited outside the consultation room. One of the interns, Emma, walked past when I told her my predicament, she told me to just stick 2 leads on the arms, 2 on the hands and 6 on the chest. I did the arms and legs first and stuck them in all the wrong areas. WHen the nurse came in, she showed me where to stick them and asked me to connect the leads to the ECG and described the graph to me. That was quite scary. When I came out, Emma asked me to go into another consultation room to see this other patient who got a nasty gash on his thumb. She was showing me how to bandage the wound and how to clean it up. She used this dressing called a condom dressing, which is this roll of dressing that you unroll onto your finger. It was quite cute. She then asked me whether I knew how to give injections and when I said yes, she told me that I could give this guy his tetanus shot, which is intramuscular. It was quite scary and I was convinced that I was going to jab myself with the needle instead. I realised it's not as scary as I thought it would be and I got to sign for it! I think IVs are going to be absolute hell, but that will come another time. The nurses and interns were so so nice! There was this old man whose BP was supposed to be taken, so one of the nurses let me use the sphygmomanometer to try and after 2 times I couldn't hear a single thing, so she did it on the other arm and then let me listen. She then allowed me to try on her, and I almost took her arm off because I released the pressure too slowly. Soon after another patient came in who had a 2 inch gash across his scalp because while he was working, a strong wind blow a door into him that caused him to crash into a forklift. It was very scary because he had blood all over his hands and running down his face. He didn't look like he was in a lot of pain though. Cleaning him up took a while and the cut was actually quite deep. He had to have stitches done and I got to watch the process! It was quite painful to watch though. When Vlad, the resident, was injecting the local anaesthetic, the poor guy kept on flinching because it was so painful. And the LA was oozing out of the wound as well along with some more blood. Vlad was telling the patient and myself that when he was doing his elective in moscow, he got into an accident and had to have stitches, the doctor injected the anaesthesia and immediately started suturing, without allowing the anaesthesia to take effect. It was really funny because the patient's boss's wife came in to see him and she made a comment about how if he had to have the hair around the wound shaved, there wouldn't have been much hair to shave anyway. :) Watching the suturing made me feel slightly woozy though, because vlad had to use the forcepts to pick the skin up and stick the needle through. It was well-done though! The afternoon was very very interesting and I was sad to leave! That night, we walked to Paynesville town, which is where our accomodation was, and we had fish and chips, which was amazing! It tasted very good and was very cheap.
This morning, we had a man with Down Syndrome come in to talk to us after which we boarded the train and headed back to school. Met chai and kh on the train at sale. We played bridge almost the whole way back. In fact, we played bridge every night for the past 4 nights. It took us more than 4 hours to get back to school!
This week was unbelievable! I'm so glad I got to go on this rural placement. I think I learned a lot this week and I feel very happy! I'm sad that I had to leave, but I'm kinda glad to be back in my room as well. I checked my EOS results and I'm happy with them :) When I checked them on wednesday, i almost got a heart attack. According to that result, I almost failed the paper. I felt so depressed after that, but I was trying to convince myself that I should be glad that the screw-up occured for the paper that was 5% and I felt slightly better. After that I got a call from kh who told me that the result I got may not have been my own because the system screwed up or something like that. I was kinda relieved, but my stress levels went up again. I just want to thank shu and xf and sheryl and kh for all their support though. They were very encouraging and they made me feel a lot better when I was down. :) thanks you guys. -beams-
Ok this entry has been long enough. I want to watch Indiana Jones! After Wayne Hodgson's lecture on tubacurarine where he showed us a clip from Raiders of the Lost Arc with the tribal people, I feel stimulated to watch indy woohoo. :) take care and God bless~
6:13 PM
