The British are coming!

Every other week we have clinical skills lectures given by English doctors or misters (that’s what they call their surgeons). To use an expression of my mother’s - “it’s a hoot” to listen to them talk. The Mister opened up his lecture with a rather unPC joke:

‘How can you tell if a Chinaman is jaundiced?’

We were all laughing at the fact that he actually said it (thankfully there weren’t any ‘Chinamen’ present in the lecture). Anyways, some other great words and phrases that made me swallow my giggles during lecture were:

- calling genitalia ‘bits’, as in ‘covering the bits’

- patients coming to you with their ‘woes’

- something about ‘having the vicker over for tea’

Along with funny English expressions, I absolutely love it when I see words spelled in the English way - like foetus, anaemia, or haemoglobin (I know it's kind've of weird and nerdy, but it gets me a little excited).

We also seem to be finding out the truth about ‘percussing’ during the physical examination, which was so vehemently stressed in Grenada. It sounds like it’s rarely used in UK/US. Perhaps one day they’ll drop it from the teaching……kind of like how doctors don’t taste their patient’s urine anymore…..because there are waaaaaaaaaay more effective and accurate tests to diagnose. But as mentioned by the doctor – being here in a place where they do not have access to a lot of the fancy equipment and tests, is a great place to build a strong foundation of the basics.

House:SVG

*SVG – St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Just like they have shows like CSI: New York, and CSI: Miami, they should make another version of House. Only it should be set in a third world country, where they don’t have even half of the tests that can be run, and patients that have to be shipped to another island in another month for an MRI (if they can pay). Then we’ll see how many cases House can solve. Or maybe they should just make a show called Medical MacGyver, that would be way more interesting - he could perform open heart surgery with duct tape and a pocketknife. Now that’s a show I would watch…..

We saw a patient today that possibly had Guillain Barre syndrome, but they didn’t have the tests that could be done to confirm it, and they didn’t have MRI to rule out multiple sclerosis. Compound the case with no recent respiratory or gastrointestinal illnesses, or any other sickeness for that matter, and cerebral spinal fluid indications of bacterial infection with no meningeal signs…..it was totally like an episode of House….House:SVG “where your guess is as good as mine”.

Random happenings

Get ready for some disjointed, unflowing reading, because these are all random thoughts and experiences of my week.

This is what is left of what I found in my bed this morning when I woke up. It was huge, gross, and totally creeped me out. I’m gonna rate this newest ‘bed bug’ finding more disturbing than the beetle incident from last summer. On the bright side, at least I know what those bizarre looking bites on my legs are from.

Anyways, the days here fly by and we have a ridiculous amount of material to keep up with. I read an article this week about the punishment of a Muslim man for drug use - it was to memorize the Koran in 6 months. Then I thought they should have just sentenced him to our pharmacology course.

……………….okay, I just chased a little gecko out of my room………..

While in Grenada on campus, there were an abundance of stray cats. Here in Vinnies, I can’t say that I’ve even seen one, but there are stray dogs everywhere! Most of them seem pretty docile, but every now and then you’ll see one growling as you walk by. In Vinnies, we have to be a lot more careful with our surroundings. There has already been an attempted assault on a student while she was out running, and a thieving incident while the person was in her home. So even though my walk to school is a mere 5 minutes, and I can see the security booth for half of the walk I do feel hyperaware of my surroundings.

The other day while walking home from school, in my hyperaware state and ready to fight any potential attackers, I saw one of the growling dogs in the distance. Because I was in human attack mode, I started off ready to stare the dog down with the best impression of my father’s ‘I will kill you’ look and then boot the damn thing into the bushes if I needed to……but then I remembered, you’re not supposed to stare animals in the eye because it will threaten them. I’m glad I avoided that fight.

An exhausing week

I'll be honest, I have lots of things I could write about, but frankly I'm feeling tired, and I have no witty sarcasms to add to my post. My week was extremely busy and exhausing, and it ended with a challenging and awesome hike of the island's volcano : La Soufriere. I could describe the hike for you, but I'm truly feeling lazy so here are a couple of pics from the event.

Looking down into the crater

Resting after a 4000 ft climb

My writer's juices don't seem to be flowing like they were last semester - hopefully once things get really busy and I don't have time for anything I'll feel like writing more.

Back to my reality

I’m sitting here on my balcony writing this blog. The view from the balcony is absolutely breathtaking, and my bedroom has a door that leads right onto it, so while I’m studying I can glance out to coconut trees and the sea.
Every time I look out into the distance, this is what I see:

And then I think to myself – ‘this is the life’. Click here to view some apartment/balcony/walk pics, and pics from the Seven Sisters hike.

I arrived in Vinnies last Sunday evening without my luggage, and not surprised in the least. St. Vincent’s has a totally different feel from Grenada. It is such a beautiful island, and the people seem nicer here than in Grenada. There are definitely more amenities on the island, especially downtown where most of the shops and markets are located. Vinnies isn’t as touristy as Grenada is, which is nice because the downtown vendors are definitely not as pushy.

The driving here is a little daunting being on the left hand side, sometimes only in single lanes. Complex this with wind-ey, twisty roads, no traffic signs, and some unavoidable potholes, and it leads to an adventure every time you get in the car (this island would be a great location for some good cart racing). My apartment is wonderful, and is probably one of the nicest places I’ll have lived for a long time after I leave the island, so it’s too bad no one is coming to visit (ahem).

My housemates and I got up early Saturday morning to go to the fish market. The catch of the day (the only fish they had) was tuna, so I’m excited to try it tonight on our little charcoal grill. I’ve joined the local gym, which has just about everything except AC and clearly readable numbers on the outside of their dumbbells. The scanty gym on campus surprisingly has 2 Everlast bags hanging up, so I’m back in business for all of my training needs.

Well, that’s all for today – once we get internet to our apartment I’ll try to post more frequently. Plus, I’ve been busy watching the sailboats go by.