It's been a week, and in order to not receive hate mail from my younger sister I bring you another scintillating update!
After my amazingly long night shift on Monday, I slept for most of Wednesday aswell, and then we headed out on a big adventure in town. We went to an area called Greenside and drank ourselves stupid in a bar called Mama's. DRINK IS SO CHEAP HERE! Thursday was then of course a COMPLETE write off, but when a round fo 8 beers and 8 sambuca shots is £12 why wouldn't it be?!?!?
Alan (the doctor who I'm living with) left for Kruger national park early on Saturday morning. Leaving us with a "free house" (not that we're really going to do anything with it) and an afternoon of (disappointing) rugby. After that we then hit (yet another) bar and made friends with loads of people and played a lot of pool (well I didn't play because I'm an absolute liability!)
Because I was doing a 24h shift on Sunday I toddled off home at about 11pm, or would've if the taxi driver hadn't said he couldn't drive me back so I waited AN HOUR (with our new housemate Gio from Cambridge) for a cab to take us back.
Sunday morning was a painful wakeup. Luckily I was hangover free, but after finally getting to bed at about 1am I was super duper tired. We arrived at the hospital for about 7.45 (technically an hour late for the ward round) and got stuck in! There were jillions of people left over from Saturday night, and the pit was SO full! The nice thing about having been there for a while (and having done a victory dance in the Drs room after finding out I made it into 5th year) is that everyone trusts you to just get on with it, and is more than willing to just countersign without too much history. Because it was so crazy, I was only getting countersigned when I wanted to discharge someone, or decide definitive treatment... Everything else I was just sending for investigation etc. on my own!
So the run down is pretty much the same as last time I did a long long shift including but not limited to:
- A woman who thought she may have been pregnant and was stomped and jumped on by her (now ex, good for her) boyfriend - luckily she wasn't pregnant, and suffered no serious damage on FAST, but was sent for further Ix by gynae just in case
- A man who had 2 cuts put through his lower lip, which was the only case plastics were willing to take
- A man who was hit with a bottle that sliced through his nose TO HIS SINUS but neither maxfac or plastic would take him
- Several other facial stabs/slices that we were left to deal with
- Several gunshot wounds
- A man with severe burns, who needed an escharotomy - his chest looked like a chess board afterwards! But he's alive, unlike lots of the burn patients here who are just left to die!
- A woman who'd fought with another woman and had been scratched in the eye, after forcing her eye open there was no light reflex, and she couldn't see the light... Silly me, I thought that opthalmology on call might take a referral at 9pm BUT NO it's Sunday so she'll have to wait until they can see her at St John's Monday morning!
And so so much more. I ran my first resus on a guy who I thought has an exacerbation of COPD, but actually had that and a haemothorax after having the crap kicked out of him. Got to do my first chest drain, ON A FLAIL CHEST it was awesome. And made all the more awesome buy the fact that I had done the diagnosing!
Tuesday was a cheeky day off (or happy fun day) as I was shattered, but Gio (the new guy staying here working at Bara) took a cab in. It was a guy who we knew and does us all "special deals" but it was stil 450rand! (That's about £40) SO MANY MONIES it's ridiculous!
For the past two days I've been "observing" on an ATLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support) course, and by observing I mean they're letting us take part in everything - yes we don't get the certificate at the end, but they're going to give us a letter saying we took part!
The Wednesday night we went out for a course meal (paid for by them) in a lovely hotel with a ridiculous buffet. I skipped all the mains in favour of a whole plateful of delicious smoked salmon and asparagus (all chased down with a couple of glasses of delicious sauvignon blanc of course).
Tomorrow is the last day, which is exams for the people getting the qualification, and we're being the actors! They've got a makeup artist coming in to make the "patients" look realistic, so it looks set to be a really fun day!
I got a call from one of the interns at Bara while I was on the course, which I obviously couldn't take, and I had no idea what it was about until I talked to one of the other students there, and apparently the unit is really thin on the ground, and just can't function with 4 of its students on a course. The bad thing is only two of us are coming back! I guess that I'm going to have to work at some point over the weekend, which of course means at least £45 on cab fare (hopefully I'll get a lift back)
AS SOON AS I GET BACK TO THE UK I AM LEARNING TO DRIVE.
Loves xox
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