O2 are going to kill me...

Ok, so the thing is- I'm not actually having an amazing time here. Yes, the sun is shining, the skies are a glorious cloudless blue and looking out the window it's hard to see anything that isn't a palm tree. Yet I want to get away.
I suspect it is a combination of tiredness, being somewhere completely different where I don't know anyone, feeling like I'm in everyone's way and not knowing how to work the washing machine. So I am leaving.

A friend of mine from my first uni who now lives in Australia is coming over for a week, so I changed my flight with the intention of touring the North Island with her for a week, then returning home, cutting the trip short by several weeks, and finishing my elective in a hospital back in the UK.
However...
A new option has presented itself: it may very well be possible to finish my elective in one of the bigger cities in New Zealand. I've been put in touch with a couple of guys who seem very keen to have me there and are happy to set something up for the remainder of my time, which is pretty damn decent of them.

So, the plan: I'm meeting these chaps on Wednesday to discuss the options and if it sounds workable, I shall be switching hospitals, putting a whole new swathe of patients in danger!
The upside being if I do take them up on it, I will have first spent a week doing touristy stuff round the North Island with a friend, so it can't be too bad.

The bigger issue is I've been using my phone so much to try and arrange things that O2 felt the need to send me a text this morning to the following effect:
"We thought you'd like to know you've spent £39.59 over your line rental so far this month"
It seems kinda like their way of saying:
"WTF are you doing?! Stop calling people in other hemispheres you moron!!"

As an aside, did you know that Kiwi keyboards do not have a pound sign?? I had to Google pound sign just to find one. £. Just to make a point.

Other than trying to sort things out and coming to terms with my general idiocy, things have been pretty average. I attended a clinic yesterday afternoon (my first since getting here) and spent most of it tapping people's wrists in order to cause them pain (there was a medical reason so it's ok). What I've learned from it is that a lot of people in New Zealand seem to have carpal tunnel syndrome. Also had a chat with an ex-pat Liverpudlian, really nice bloke, who'd been living out here since about 20 years before I was even born. Still hasn't shaken that accent though.

Today I went to a fracture clinic and tried desperately to remember all the different ways of classifying all the different fractures that I once knew and have since forgotten. There's Salter-Harris, Weber, Lisfranc, Jones, Mason, Monteggia, Galeazzi, Hume, Holstein-Lewis, Smith, Colles, Bennet, La Fort, Greenstick, Hangman's, Boxer's; Fractures can be transverse, linear, oblique, spiral, closed or open, complete or incomplete, comminuted, impacted, they may be displaced or undisplaced, angulated, shortened etc etc....

Basically, the bottom line is- it's broken.

This afternoon I got to assist with a hip replacement- ACTUALLY assist, rather than just holding the odd instrument or adjusting the light, or trying not to trip over the portable X-ray machine (Possibly the most embarassing way to de-sterilise yourself AND ensure you aren't invited back to that theatre). Well, I say assist, I mostly just held the patient's leg, but dammit it's a step up from a retractor!

And thus concludes my time at this hospital, tomorrow I shall be boarding a bus for Auckland to meet my friend and see what happens from there I guess.

On the upside, if I do have to return to the UK to finish I've already got a snappy new name for the blog- "Clouds, concrete and casts" Whaddaya think??

Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?

Hitchcock was right...

So it's coming to the end of the weekend here in New Zealand. We've apparently had a storm with gale force winds, which would explain why there's been roofing tiles, bits of tree and small children whizzing past my window all weekend.

I decided to wander down to the local town/city on Saturday to see what it was like. Turns out it's kinda like Weston-Super-Mare but with palm trees really. I did find this amazing little fresh fish market though which served up the best fish and chips I've ever had (even if the chips were just deep fried McCain's oven chips. Seriously, I saw the box!) and for $5.40, it was a bargain! I thought I would take a walk along the water front and eat there overlooking the bay, so I took my F&C - wrapped in actual newspaper no less! - and found a comfy spot to sit and enjoy my delicious and healthy meal.

It was then that I was overcome with this bizarre feeling like I was being watched. I slowly looked up, chip in hand and, essentially, this is what I saw --

"Mine"

I had to fight off about two dozen sodding seagulls for my dinner, who'd followed me (on foot) all the way down from the market. I'd wondered why people were giving me funny looks as I walked along the waterfront, I must've looked like some kind of Pied Piper with mystical influence over seagulls.
Anyway, I emerged victorious, with only a few minor beak-shaped lacerations.


But goddammit, it was worth it.

Best laid plans and all the King's men...

Yesterday I actually finished early, for the first time all week I finished before 5pm. I had every intention of going to the little hospital gym for an hour or two, coming back, cooking some food then going to check my e-mails. And possibly write something in this.

'Well, 5 minutes nap first can't hurt'

4 hours later and it's 9.30 at night, I've finally woken up from my 5 minute nap having done bugger all, all evening. No gym. No dinner. No blog. Frankly, I was too tired to actually care so I just went back to sleep.
Yesterday was actually pretty cool, I finally got to do SOMETHING rather than just stand there desperately trying not to desterilise the operating table and wind up with an angry orthopaedic surgeon chasing me around with a big hammer. Granted all I actually did was cut someone's foot open then stitch it back up after, the registrar did most of the stuff in between but I like to think my contribution mattered.
I'm sitting here trying to think what else I did yesterday but I haven't got a clue. Ah well, can't have been that important.

Today, however, I do have some minor recollection of what happened! Actually got to assist with a mammoth operation (that is to say, an operation that was lengthy in duration rather than an operation on an actual mammoth. I would definitely be up for assisting on that too, though). The patient apparently took on a truck in his car and, needless to say, lost. The X-rays of his legs looked like...have you ever seen one of those 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles all jumbled up? Yeah, his legs looked like that, not pretty. The ortho team had the fun job of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

All in all, it took about 6 hours. For one leg. Which, considering both femur and tibia were shattered, is pretty good going. My huge part consisted of putting traction on the leg (pulling like buggery) to try and help re-align the shards of bone; normally not a problem, but when part of the tibia is sticking up out of the skin and every time you move a milimetre it makes a horrible crunching noise and blood starts bubbling out, you do tend to feel pressured to keep still. And then, naturally, the urge to sneeze strikes. One leg down at least, which means (if 4 years of medical school has taught me anything) only one more to go. And the best part was, early finish! Which means I can now try and get down the gym and actually cook a meal.

I might just have 5 minutes nap first......

Today I was a spaceman...

So today I went down to the theatres in the hopes of getting in on something cool, which semi-panned out. Found a consultant who seemed happy enough to let me stay in and watch a shoulder replacement; I was psyched, I've never seen one before so was thinking "Woo, good start to the day!". I've still not actually seen one. Between the consultant surgeon, his registar and the scrub nurse assisting, there wasn't a great field of view. I had to keep running back and forth as they moved around just to see. If you ever did the dreaded "bleep" test in school, it was kinda like that. But with blood and broken bones. So, exactly like the bleep tests at my school (the kids were competitive).
BUT!
I did get to scrub in on the following knee replacement, which meant I got to wear one of these --

"That bit goes...erm... oh hell, I don't bloody know. Someone Google it."

I didn't actually get to do anything, I think I might have handed the surgeon a knife at one point while the scrub nurse was busy doing something else. I don't care though, I got to wear a frigging space suit!!! I could've just pretended to float around the room warbling "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE AM I SITTING IN A TIN CAN!!!" at the top of my lungs and I'd have been happy. I should probably point out that we don't wear this fancy get up in the UK, well not in any hospital I've been in anyway, so the whole thing was something of a novelty.


If there is anywhere back home that does use these then sign me up, I feel another rendition of Space Oddity coming on....

Initial musings

It's raining.

I've travelled almost 20,000km to New Zealand and it's raining. I've just realised the irony of that now, given the name I chose to give this blog.
So for anyone reading this who doesn't know, I'm a final year medical student and I'm currently on my elective. For anyone reading this who does know... I'm not sure where that was going so let's ignore it and blame it on jet lag.

I finished my finals on Thursday, Friday night I got on a plane from Heathrow, Sunday afternoon I got off said plane in Auckland (There was something about a Saturday and being in Hong Kong briefly in between that but there's no way to be sure). From there, I took an AirFix model down to the town my placement is in. To be honest, I'm not even sure how I got from the airport to my accommodation at the hospital, all I really know is I was shown around the accommodation by a very friendly security guard who insisted on showing me every single frying pan in the kitchen, seemingly oblivious to the loud voice in my head that was screaming at him "GO AWAY, I WANT TO SLEEP!!!". I promptly keeled over at about 6pm and slept for almost 13 hours.
I had to meet the admin lady at 7.30 Monday morning (apparently she has a sense of humour) and she took me down to the trauma & orthopaedic team meeting. -- This is probably as good a time as any to mention that my elective here is 6 weeks with the trauma & orthopaedic team -- to meet the consultants I'd been assigned to. Now, it's always frustrating when you turn up somewhere to find you aren't expected. However, travelling almost 20,000km to find you aren't expected does tend to give one the odd apoplectic seizure.
Fortunately, they were fine with a random stranger from the UK turning up. The next hurdle was trying to get them to let me actually do something.
I'll let you in on a little secret- elective is, amongst medical students, generally pronounced 'holiday'. It is a time to forge signatures and bunk off for a few weeks. However, when you actually planned to get involved with the team (thus did not budget for a great deal of bunking off), it's kind of frustrating when the consultants spend more time telling you where to go and what to do in New Zealand than what you can do in the hospital.
Sad, I know.
Fortunately I manage to sneak into theatres and, once you've got a facemask and theatre gown on, as long as you look like you know what you're doing, no-one really questions you.

I've decided to start writing this because, I'm here on my own. I've met one local medical student and one radiographer, not a single other elective student, so combined with not being able to use my phone for fear of O2 selling my organs on the black market to repay a hefty bill, it's rather isolated. The most social interaction I've had so far has been with a vending machine. I will update this when I get the chance and will hopefully become more coherent and more interesting as the time passes.
I've decided to stop writing this because I'm now stupidly tired. I've reverted back to being 6 years old and being in bed by 8pm.

At least it's stopped raining.