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.