watch out or else

A friend of mine was telling us all about being pulled over by a police officer directing traffic (they don’t use stoplights) the other day. He quickly realized he didn’t have his seatbelt on and was understanding of the cause. Until she told him it was illegal to drive without a shirt. And while he is getting out to talk to the officer, a person on the road yelled that he better turn off his car, because it was illegal to get out and leave a car running. Apparently, it doesn’t matter if you’re: a) not wearing your seatbelt, b) drinking and driving, c) driving while intoxicated, d) driving like a maniac or e) passing up to six cars on blind turn. BUT don’t dare leave your car on, or not wear a shirt while driving. I can’t imagine the thought process for that one. Are they thinking that a shirtless person will distract those doing b, c, d or e??? No telling around here though. At least its not like Grenada though where the have a sign saying “Drink Safely, Drive Slowly” (or something very similar…with the basic message, be careful when you drive drunk).

Next time.......

There is always an adventure with this kid in our class. (I won’t name names).Well he wasn’t the one who had the adventures but I’m sure his presence was enough to cause problems! Lately, everyone has been going to climb the volcano. Well a small group went today and ended up spending four hours at the top because of a mishap. One person set his bag down about 2 feet from the rim and all of the sudden a gust came and took it away. See the picture to the right and imagine a bag floating all the way down.....I can see this happening because I too was terrified mine was gonna fly off to South America when I was up there. (I did almost lose my jacket while trying to put it on at the top.) Turns out that in his bag are his cell phone, wallet and keys. Loosing the keys makes it hard to get back from the little over an hour drive to the volcano. He and his friends climbed down the rope into the crater and spent the rest of the afternoon searching for it, back and forth, up and down. Keep in mind it is a serious drop into the crater probably about a 1,000ft. During one of the trips, he slips, feet hanging about 800 ft over the edge and was barely caught by a rock. He sure is lucky to have survived. They never found the bag and were able to get home after about a 7 hour hike. When he returned all he could say was “the volcano beat me”.

check, check

I had my second and third hospital visits this last week in ER and Anesthesiology. They both went well. In the ER we were given a patient to do a history and vitals on. Our differentials came down to either ectopic pregnancy or ovarian cysts. (Can’t give too many details about our patient because I have this confidentiality thing that I must maintain!!!) But things I can tell you are…that I won the rock, paper, scissors contest between my other four group members. I choose scissors and beat them all in one go (everyone else had paper). Winning meant I got to go in with the doctor. I thought, Ohh I’ll just watch while she tells me what she is doing. The famous “see one, do one, teach one”. Well she must have figured I had done the “see one” and hands me the speculum to do the pelvic exam. So now I have a procedure written down in my green hospital card.

The visit for Anesthesiology went fine, it was just talking about the drugs used for surgery. Was a bit crowded though since another group decided they wanted to watch the plastic surgery that was taking place. Imagine 10 medical students in addition to the five or six members of the surgical team in one room. Keeping in mind that the A/C is not that powerful. Next week we have Peds and Medicine. No telling what we might see.

so much for that

just found out my hairdryer is dead. no warning that it was gonna go kaput or anything. it was working on thursday and now, notta. too bad there isn't a target or walmart close by to get another....... this makes two hairdryers that i have had die on me. the first was one aquired while i was in london. since we have british plugs here and in grenada, it meant i didnt' have to have a transformer, but overuse by 4 girls meant it only lasted about a year and a half. so for now it is back to airdrying till i find another or till i get back to the states.

Bequia

I have pictures from Bequia. My favorite is to the right. A few are in the flicker photo thing below but the rest are on ofoto. I emailed them out but if you didn't get them let me know and I will send them to you. Too big to put them all up here. The trip was amazing. About 30 students (not an organized trip) went to one of the biggest of the Grenadines, Bequia, on Sunday for the Blues Festival. It is 9 miles south of St. Vincent. It was a very rough ride over there and even worse coming back. I did get a bit sea sick on the way back but it was short lived thankfully. The ferry ride is only an hour port to port and costs $8 dollars roundtrip! Spent from 9 to 6 there and had a wonderful time. Plan to go back as soon as the first round of exams is over. It is the picture of island living. Perhaps the pictures will entice some of you to come visit me!!
I'll try to post more later about my second hospital visit. There was lots! Right now I'm off to hear more lectures. They must think we are superstudents. We have two evening lectures today and Thursday. That makes 6 hours of lecture for one day! Normally we have four, which is pleanty enough. But we must make up for those "holidays" when we can't have lectures!

life in the tropics

total bug kills in last 2 days:
1 very large palmetto bug (aka cockroach)
2 mosquitos (filled with my blood)
1 ear ringingly loud cricket (who almost drove me to insanity before i found him)
bunch of baby sugar ants (attracted to my ant hotel)
1 earwig like bug

perhaps he should be our transportation up the volcano

had to drive through the "dry river", mind you we have a car, not a jeep....

the hike up was no joke

wheww...we made it!

jenna, julie and me at the top

Young Island

 

deadly alarm clock

In case anyone cares to know.....this AM when my alarm went off I hit the snooze grabbed it to see what time it was and then somehow....it managed to fall and hit the corner of my eye (yes, it has very sharp corners on this alarm clock). I now have a slightly swollen and on its way to being bruised eye (blue according to JZ). Just Great. If only I had a nightstand, this might not have happened.

First Hospital Visit

I had my first of 22 hospital visits yesterday. It was in anesthesiology and went well. I wasn't nervous, only anxious about what we (me and my other four group members) would be asked especially since we have not learned any drugs this early in the term. In line with SGU tradition, we were given very little, if any, direction about where to go and what to expect. We arrived early to figure things out and a kind member of the staff assisted us. He directed us (three girls) into the "dressing room" to change into our supposedly sterile scrubs. (sterilizing consists of dropping our scrubs off for the school to launder and they wash in the dorm washers and then place in a plastic bag. I have serious doubts that this really certifies them as sterile.) We change out of our professional attire in what appears to be a very small locker room with lots of shoes lined up along the wall, mostly white wellies. Just after changing into my scrubs, two male doctors walk in with the "WHAT are you doing in here" look. They then proceed to tell us that we are in the wrong room and need to go next door. I currently have one dress shoe and one tennis shoe on I walk lopsidedly to the other room and finish changing. There is a lady in there appropriately dressed in her scrubs. She gives us a "where did you come from" look and we try to explain our situation. Turns out a few minutes later when we go out to meet our doctor, it is the same lady as in the locker room. All of us had assumed she was a nurse but we quickly found out otherwise. She then talked to us while a orthopedics surgery was going on and all was fine from there on out. All of us were curious about the surgery but she told us, no, that is not the focus of this visit, you can do that when you have your orthopedics rotation....needless to say we didnt' get to find out what the patient was being operated for. Next week we have an emergency and another anesthesiology visit. Good news is we will know which dressing room to use.

My favorite picture right now

I took this picture on the drive back from the volcano.

Communicating at last

This is my attempt to let my friends and family know what I am up to while living in the Caribbean. The post on this blog will most likely be my random thoughts and stories of my adventures as a medical student and new resident of St. Vincent. And will likely continue when I finally return to the states after being out of the country since August 2003 to continue my last two years of clinical rotations. Please bear with me as I do not enjoy writing (this is why I send so few emails to my family and they are always wondering what I am doing).

Life in St. Vincent has been treating me wonderfully so far and hopefully will continue to for the next 4 months. Since I arrived, I have further perfected the art of procrastination (this being one of the products). I have hiked 4,048 ft to the top of the volcano and still feel some of the effects in my aching muscles. I have gone to Young Island and dined on their pricey lunch buffet (which I didnt' think was all that great except for the amazing cinnamon bread) and lounged on the sand. Since we were not hotel guest we were banned from using the "hotel facilaties" (ie. hammocks, lounge chairs). I do have a bit of color on my skin (don't worry mom, I'm not burned) now too which is far better than my pale skin I had from hours spent studying last term in Grenada.

I will try to post fairly often, but we shall see how that goes when the pace picks up and my free time is non-existent. Until then......