Juicy Juice

The house I am renting this year has a few huge orange trees in the back. And now they are all fully laden with ripe oranges and mandarines. Everyday, a dozen or so of them drop from the trees. As my housemate is not big on citrus fruit, I now find myself with more oranges piling up than I can shake a stick at. I have to get through them in a more efficient way than simply eating them. I can eat until I get sick and still wouldn’t make a dent in the pile. Besides giving them away, juicing them would be the most efficient way of consuming the mountains of oranges before they become part of the compost pile.


Ah, drinking freshly made orange juice is one of the simple pleasures in life (I know, I don’t ask for much). I can’t drink the stuff from the supermarket anymore. Even the “not from concentrate” version tastes “preserved.” One and half liters of the juice wouldn’t even last me two days. I am drinking so much of it that I am sure I pee vitamin C every day. But here’s the good news: no scurvies for me!

Ride Up Mt. Coot-tha

After a few days of doing not much more than turning pages of a book – I am reading Three Worlds Gone Mad by Robert Young Pelton – I am getting really restless. The weather isn’t all that great, but I will have to go outside and do something.

So I hop on my bike and head toward Mt. Coot-tha, a hill just west of the city center. It’s a good climb to the top at about three hundred meters in elevation. I breeze through the familiar bike path along the Brisbane River, go through a couple of suburbs, and start the steady climb at the six-kilometer mark, according to my cycling computer. The climb isn’t that steep, just enough to make you aware that you are doing a good cardio workout. After six kilometers and a three-hundred meter climb, I reach the observation point with a nice view of Brisbane and the surrounding suburbs.

This is what the city of Brisbane looks like today:

This is what it looked like in February, 2003, when I came to Brisbane as a backpacker:

That’s quite a few more tall buildings just in the span of five years.

All that hard work to come up only means an exhilarating coast back down. The road, devoid of any cars, is all mine. I lean forward with hands just touching the brakes, and let gravity pull me along the surface of the road at speeds up to 55 kmph. In just a couple of minutes, I am at the bottom of the hill, back to where I started. And I continue on my leisurely ride home along the river.

What a good work out. Now that I’ve worked up an appetite, I can’t wait for dinner.

Tonight’s dinner: that old standby during my college days - rice, black beans, and salsa. Except this time, the rice is not instant rice, the beans are cooked and not out of a can, and the salsa is not from a jar – I made that yesterday.

Full Moon Cake

Around this time every year is the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Chinese culture. The exact date is the 15th of the eighth month – on the Chinese lunar calendar. So, just like Chinese New Year, that day shifts around every year, which means I have no idea when it is in any given year. All I know is that, for this year, the Festival has just passed. It still feels a little weird to have the Mid-Autumn Festival in the spring, but then again, it can’t be weirder than Christmas in the middle of summer.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, much like the Chinese New Year, is a time for families that have scattered all over the land to re-unite, feast together, and reinforce the familial bond. For families like ours in which one member of the family seems to move farther and farther away from home, that tradition has long ago died an unceremonious death, along with the family get-together during Chinese New Year, ancestral tomb sweeping during Qingming, and various other family activities that are, per tradition, spread throughout the lunar calendar year. Now we squeeze what activities we can into the couple of weeks every couple of years when my family actually gets together. During those couple of weeks, we’d make up for the reunions and family feasts we missed in the previous couple of years, visit the family grave plot, and do everything else completely out of season.

Okay, I am the guilty party in all of this. Whereas I used to be “only” at the other side of the country, now I am at the other side of the world from my family. My annual visits to my family are now taking place about every eighteen months. And now that, for several major reasons, I am planning on staying in Australia for good, we will have to make up for lost times every eighteen months or so. In the mean time, my mom will have to be content with my weekly phone calls.

Actually, the only reason I know that the Mid-Autumn Festival has passed was that, while picking up my ethnic grocery supplies at one of the Asian grocery stores in Chinatown today, I saw all those moon cakes on sale. I always have a soft spot for moon cakes, even though I can only eat about half of one before the sickly sweet cake becomes overwhelming.

This moon cake contains sweet red bean paste and a whole preserved duck egg yolk in the middle.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Whenever that was.

Book, Blanket, and Blues

It’s been raining since last night. I woke up to the sound of a fine drizzle that seems to be here to stay, at least for the day. Gray, wet, and cold – not exactly the normal warm and dry winter days in Brisbane that I am used to. Now to think of it, it has been raining quite a bit lately, which is good for the water level of the reservoirs supplying Brisbane. We may actually see the loosening of water restriction at some point. But for me, being on my precious one-week break between rotations, the rain is a major bummer. I had originally planned to do a sixty-kilometer cycling trip to a couple of mountains nearby today. But the rain basically just killed that plan.

So I have to settle for the next best thing – brew a cup of hot tea, queue up some blues music on my computer, curl up in bed under a warm blanket, and read a book, one that has nothing to do with medicine.

~~~~~~~~~~

Today’s lunch: pita pockets filled with guacamole and sautéed chicken and mushrooms with a side salad.

Match, No Match

Getting out of bed, the first thing I do is to check my email. Today is the day when every state releases their internship match results. New South Wales and Victoria put all of their applicants together, so I will hear from them today. Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia will release the results for domestic students today; the riff raff like us international students will have to wait for a couple more weeks.

I am not too anxious about the results. A rumor has been floating around that New South Wales had more internship spots than they did applicants, which means everyone who applied would get a spot. If that’s true, I am fair confident about at least getting a spot somewhere. Chances are it will be somewhere outside of Brisbane, which is fine by me. After being based in Brisbane for three years, I am ready for a change of scenery. So I am very excited to fine out where I will potentially end up next year.

Being in the electronic age, that excitement of anticipation is somewhat dampened by the instantaneous access to information. Instead of checking the mail everyday for the arrival of the “fat envelope” – acceptance – and dreading the sight of the “skinny envelope” – rejection – like back in the day of college application, now I just go online and click on a few buttons. There’s no heft of the weighty brochure accompanying the acceptance letter or the flimsy one-page letter that flutter in your wave of disappointment. The results now just glare coldly back at you just the same, regardless of outcome.

With fingers flying over the keyboard, I log on to each website.

Victoria, the state with the most complicated application process, one that required the most effort from their applicants – no match.

New South Wales, with the easiest application requiring little more than demographical information on their online application – “Congratulations, you have been allocated to Network 11”. Woohoo! Where’s Network 11? A quick check reveals that it’s based in Wollongong, the third-largest city in New South Wales, just ninety kilometers south of Sydney.

Phew! I will have a job next year after all. Now I just have to sit and wait to see what kind of offers will come from Queensland, SA, and WA.

I walk out to check the mail at lunch time, and there it is – the fat envelop from New South Wales sticking out of the mailbox. Ah, the satisfying ripping open of the envelope, the reassurance of ink on paper. Thank you, NSW.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight’s dinner: vegetarian fettuccini with pumpkin sauce and grilled haloumi.

Eight Down, Two To Go

Yay, it’s the end of another rotation. This rotation, without an exam at the end, more or less fizzled out rather than having a “proper” end, which is just fine. Now I’m looking at the two hardest rotations for the next four months: obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics. In comparison, the first three rotations of this year were mere holidays.

I will be enjoying the break next week nonetheless. This is the first break since starting of third year when I don’t have anything planned. No camping trips, no going anywhere. I will be hanging around Brisbane, with maybe a day trip here and there. But it will be a good and relaxing break before I have to buckle down for the next four months.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight’s dinner: wonton noodle soup. Yes, that’s a sauce pan. And yes, it’s just for me, myself, and I. Oink.

Local Foods

I have been eating local food since I arrived in Lubwe. The local staple is called nshima. It is made from ground maize boiled into a porridge, which then sets into the consistency of cake. This bland staple is normally eaten with side dishes the locals call “relish,” which can be vegetables and meat or fish. Locally, vegetable side dishes are normally made from cassava leaves, pumpkin leaves, sweet potato leaves, or a leafy vegetable related to canola called rape. Because Lubwe is next to a large lake, fish is a major part of the local diet.

Today, my lunch features nshima, bream from the lake, and cassava leaves. Yummy!

Eating Native

I went to the village market to buy some vegetables today. One of the things I bought was a bag of, I was told, mushrooms. In the dim light of the market, I thought what was in the bag looked too small and not at all like mushrooms, but I bought it anyway. They must have played a joke on me, because later I found out it was actually a bag of caterpillars, which is a common source of protein for the locals. So for tonight’s dinner, I am eating caterpillars as the “meat” dish. They are kind of crunchy, and not at all squishy as I expected. And they actually don’t taste half bad, although I am constantly reminded that I am eating caterpillars as the little spikes on them keep tickling my mouth as I chew.

What's the vegetable doing next to my caterpillars?

It's Only A Five-Step Job

I see this sign everyday. It is posted in one of the staff toilets on the medical ward at the hospital where I am doing my medicine rotation.

It only takes five-steps!? And with illustrated instructions!! To change a roll of toilet paper? I wonder how many toilet-paper-roll-changing mishaps it took for someone to take the time to make and post these instructions. But it gets better. Someone else must have thought, “Five steps? That’s too complicated. I’ll simplify things a bit,” and wrote down the “Alternative Directions” next to the printed instructions.

Every time I look at it, I feel like I am reading a manual for defusing bombs. Okay, maybe not, but this is definitely the first time I’ve seen a toilet paper roll holder that needs an owner’s manual.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight’s dinner: herbed chicken risotto with green beans, and a salad.

Shamu!

After a week of gray and wet weather, the sky cleared up again today and the weather returned to the normal winter day in Hervey Bay - dry, sunny, and warm. I felt like I was coming down with cabin fever after a week of being indoors - I tried to study but I couldn't sit still and had the attention span of a nat. So I went to the pool and had a swim to get it out of my system.

The Hervey Bay Aquatic Centre, with a 50-meter pool open for the summer and a heated 25-meter pool open year-round, is where I go for a splash every few days. A lot of people consider swimming pretty boring. In a way, I guess it is: all you see is the black line at the bottom of the pool, all you hear is water sloshing around, and you don't get to listen to your tunes during the work out. But that's the appeal for me; it's a sort of sensory deprivation that I find therapeutic. Also, you don't get sweaty as your sweat is constantly being washed off. No music? No problem. I just set my mind free and let it wander. At some point, a soundtrack would come out. I don't pick the tunes, it just plays. Today's soundtrack consisted of the leitmotif of Requiem for a Dream, which morphed into Carmina Burana, which then turned into Santana, and then Branford Marsalis popped up, which carried me through the cooldown lap. See, who needs an iPod when you've already got one built in?

Feeling spent after the 2-km swim, I made myself a protein shake, then started making dinner. I know I am going to sleep like a coma patient tonight.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dinner: simple but tasty stir-fried lamb and broccoli

What Am I?

It seems that people sometimes don't quite know what to make of me - Chinese? American? Recent immigrant to Australia?

How about all of the above?

In conversation, sometimes people would ask me,

"Are you a Yank? You sound like one."

or

"Where are you from? You don't sound like you're from around here, by the sound of your accent."

Other times, the conversation would go like this:

"Where are you from?"

"California, but I'd lived in Washington, DC, for seven years before coming to Australia."

"But, where were you born?"

"China."

"Ahh," as if a mystery has been solved and they now know exactly what kind of a person I am.

I've also gotten comments like:

"I didn't think you're American; I thought you got your accent from your parents."

or

"I thought I heard an accent when you speak, but it's not Asian."

or

"You were born in China? But you're so American." (as if they are mutually exclusive.)

Over time, I came to understand that the question "Where are you from?" means one of five things, depending on the person asking the question:

1) Where were you born?

2) Where do you consider home?

3) Where do you go to visit your family?

4) Where have you lived the longest?

5) Where did you grow up?

With me, people are rarely satisfied with the first answer I give. They tend to ask any of the above five questions in different variants until they get the answer to what they really mean.

So, how about this when someone asks me where I am from:

"I was born in China. I lived there until I was fourteen, when my whole family moved to the US. I spent the next fourteen years between California and Washington, DC. I then moved to Brisbane for med school and am planning on staying in Australia afterwards. I consider myself Californian because it feels like home, that's where my family is and that's where I'd spent my formative years when I developed my self-identity. I respect the Chinese tradition of family hierarchy and filial duties, at the same time I embrace the American ideal of individualism but reject the wanton consumerism and materialism; I also identify with the Australian sense of egalitarianism. I'm Chinese; I'm American; and I'm becoming Australian."

I suspect not too many people have the patience to listen to all that as a response to a seemingly simple question.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dinner tonight: pizza with a base of Lebanese bread topped with mozzarella, garlic, artichoke, sundried tomatoes, olives, and fresh coriander, rocket, and basil.

Tonic for Perpetual Health

As part of the GP rotation, I had a visit today to an audiologist, one of the allied health professionals in town. An audiologist does hearing tests, fitting and fine-tuning hearing aids for people with hearing loss.

I sat in on a hearing test on a young man in his mid twenties who had lost most hearing in his right ear after a few years of working in a saw mill with only occasional use of hearing protection. Afterwards, the audiologist took out the file for the next patient.

"This next patient is a very interesting lady. Now, just take off your medicine hat for a minute. Other than needing hearing aid, Mrs. S____ is in exceptional health. She told me her secret on her last visit. There's something she drinks every day to keep her health, and she swears by it. Whatever ails you, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, anything, her drink cures it. She gave me a small bottle of it."

Okay, it must be another one of those juice of the month that claims to do everything for you. I waited for him to pull out some exotic juice from a far-away land.

Beaming, he opened a drawer and pulled out a clear bottle with a red label containing some clear fluid. The label proudly declared "Stolichnaya Russian Vodka." "Vodka?" I said incredulously. "Yup." Well, I guess you could call Russian vodka an exotic juice from a far-away land.

The audiologist opened the door. Mrs. S____, an elderly woman walked in and sat down. "Did you drrrink the vodka today?" she asked the audiologist in her thick Russian accent. "No, not today," the audiologist confessed.

Giving him a disapproving look, Mrs. S____ then turned to me and asked, "Do you drrrink?" "Not vodka," I answered. "Why you don't drrrink? It make you strrrong! One cup a day, I drrrink."

After the session, Mrs. S____ turned to me as she walked out the door and said, "Next time, I brrring you some."

Where else but in primary care would patients offer health advice to their doctors?

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight's dinner: broiled salmon with Chinese five spices on Chinese cabbage and blend of jasmine/brown rice.

GP Land

It's been two weeks since the start of GP rotation and I'm digging it. Coming out of mental health rotation, I am glad to get back into the medical side of medicine. Dr. R., the GP I am following lets me see patients on my own (under his supervision, of course) and do a lot of the procedural work like cutting out skin lesions. Sitting in my own room seeing patients is the perfect way for me to try out this whole GP thing.

One aspect of general practice that appeals to me is that you never know what's going to walk through the door next. One patient could just have a cut that requires suturing, the next patient could come in with four chronic conditions that require full reviews. Another aspect that appeals to me is the continuity of care. When a patient comes in with something that probably requires an operation, you refer them to the surgeon. When they come back later for a follow-up visit, you get to see the patient in recovery and check whether your clinical suspicion was right in the first place.

~~~~~~~~~~

Today a patient came in complaining of bumps on his back that had been there for years. One of them grew bigger and painful over the last week and he was concerned. After taking more history and examining the bumps, the big one being about three centimeters in diameter, I made the diagnosis of sebaceous abcess, or in layman's term, a giant inflamed zit. I called Dr. R. into the room and presented to him my findings. He agreed with my diagnosis and proceeded to explain to the patient that it was not anything bad and the best way was to leave it alone. Standing next to Dr. R., I asked, "In what situation would you decide to drain it?"

He looked at me, as if thinking "ooh, you're going to be sorry you asked." Then said, "We can do an incision and drainage now, do you want to do it?"

Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I said, "Sure!"

Up the patient went onto the procedure table. After I injecting the local anesthetic, Dr. R. explained to me, "Just use the scalpel to lance the abscess, but watch out, it could be under a lot of pressure and the collection of pus could come out with a lot of force." Handing me the scalpel, he said, "You'll know when you've lanced it. You'll smell it. If you need anything, just come get me in my room," then walked out to see the next patient.

I was left holding the scalpel thinking about the giant zit exploding in my face. Gingerly, I positioned myself to be out of the possible trajectory of the pending explosion, then pushed the scalpel down the center of the abscess. No explosion happened. I breathed a sigh of relieve and my nostrils were filled with the sour and acrid smell of pus. Yup, Dr. R. was right. For the next ten minutes, I poked and squeezed the abscess and wiped away the cheesy blood-tinged pus. Finally, having squeezed the last drop of pus from the abscess, I put the scalpel down. Dr. R. walked in, checked my handiwork, and said, "Good job, Tony." Now I knew why he had wanted to leave it alone and let it pop by itself. I asked an innocent question but got the answer the hard way.

Well, it was all part of the learning process. At least the patient felt better right away and did not have to deal with the pressure on his back anymore. Though next time I may want to do it in a place with better ventilation.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight's dinner: broiled mackerel in ginger marinade on Chinese cabbage and sweet potatoes.

What Exams?!

It's the weekend before another round of exams. And for the life of me, I just can't get motivated to study. So I do what I do best under these circumstances - procrastinate, something I have skillfully mastered after spending most of my life as a student. Cleaning, doing laundry, fixing up my bike, day-dreaming, reading about photography, going to the marina for coffee, making dinner, and blogging about procrastination - it's been a success! I have avoided looking at anything that has anything to do with psychiatry for a whole day.

Perhaps this is the manifestation of my ambivalence towards psychiatry. I'm ready for the rotation to end, not that I have any ill feelings about the specialty. To the contrary, I think it's a very important field without which medicine wouldn't be complete. From what I've seen, it's the only field in conventional Western medicine that treats its patients with a holistic approach, the whole biopsychosocial model med schools are so desperate to teach to the next generation of doctors. During this rotation, I have seen plenty of patients whose debilitating mental illnesses have been treated and managed well enough to allow them to initiate steps toward getting their lives back on track. So I don't think psychiatry is not "real" medicine, it's just that I don't think I can hack it.

Many people say, and I also believe, it takes someone with a certain personality to do psychiatry. By "certain personality," I don't mean crazy. Talking is of paramount importance in the field. Because there is no lab tests for most psychiatric illnesses, results from history-taking, or interviews, are the only information available to diagnose them. Conversational and interpersonal skills are essential for a successful interview. The ability to make people relaxed, to accurately read people's body language and their tone of voice, to ask questions in a way to solicit useful answers are all qualities in this "certain personality." A psychiatrist would have to be, in a way, manipulative to get the information he needs for an accurate diagnosis. I'm the first to admit that I'm not a great conversationalist. Sure, that's what the years of post-grad training program is for. But why train a monkey to walk on two legs when he's really good at swinging from branch to branch?

Another reason for psychiatry to be not my cup of tea is that I find its inadequacies frustrating. The mental health inpatient unit works in a somewhat revolving-door fashion. Patients present acutely, they are treated until they are well enough, then they are discharged, only to present again soon after with another acute episode that requires admission. Part of it is that psychiatric illnesses are chronic conditions, and part of it is a reflection of our social problems. Most of the patients reflect a cross section of society that is in many ways confounding their treatment: homelessness, neglect, abuse, self-harm, social isolation... Often times, psychiatry warps into social work, balancing the safety of the patient and the community against the need for an empty bed that will be filled by the next admission waiting in ED, knowing the patient will probably re-present acutely before his next outpatient appointment. In this regard I am impatient, I want instant gratification, I want tangible results now. I prefer surgery where the patient presents with a problem, a diagnosis is made, followed by surgery, the patient makes a recovery and is discharged; case closed. The idea of presentations that end with definite results, whether good or bad, appeals to me. That's something psychiatry tends to lack.

This rotation not only gave me new-found respect for psychiatrists, but also helped me put psychiatry lower on the list of possible future careers. Like they all say, it's not you, psychiatry, it's me.

And with that, I have killed the remainder of today. Good job.

~~~~~~~~~~

While ruminating on the topic of psychiatry, I cooked up tonight's dinner: vegetarian fettuccini topped with grilled haloumi and avocado.

Happy Fourth of July!

Fourth of July, just another day on the calendar over here. I showed up to the morning hand-over meeting where the staff gave a progress report on patients on the ward, sat in on ward rounds where patients were interviewed and their mental states assessed, and followed the psychiatrist on duty to outpatient clinic. During the consult with a patient with psychotic depression, the psychiatrist observed,

Oh, it's Independence Day.

Patient (in a flat monotone):
What's that?

Me (helpfully):
It was on this day in 1776 when the people living in America decided to become their own country; they didn't want to be British anymore. America used to be a British colony like Australia was.

Patient (realizing Fourth of July had nothing to do with him):

Oh.
(silence)
I still hear voices and I can't get them to stop.

And that was the only time Fourth of July was ever mentioned the whole day.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight's dinner: lamb and spinach lasagna

Eating Disorder?

I may have an eating disorder I didn't even know existed. I came across this article today, ironically, at dinner time. After reading it, I thought, "Hmmm, maybe I have orthorexia."

Simply put, orthorexia is an unhealthy obsession with what the sufferer considers to be healthy eating.

A lot of people consider me a health nut. It's true, I don't eat most fast food anymore; I avoid red meat, shellfish, and really spicy food; I do eat more fruits and vegetables than I used to; I shop for organic food when I can; and I cook the vast majority of my meals. Does that make me orthorexic? I don't judge what other people eat. If you want to chow down on a Big Mac for lunch, I'd say I wouldn't eat it, but if you like it, knock yourself out, I'd just eat a Subway sandwich with you. I have no problem spreading butter on my toast; I don't feel self-righteous or evangelize about the supposed "virtues" of my eating habit; I don't get anxiety attacks about how "pure" is the food I eat. I don't eat out much, but it's more for financial reasons than for not wanting to eat "bad" food. Does that still make me orthorexic? OK, like one of the orthorexic subjects in that story, I post pictures of my meals on my blog. Is that so weird?

Coming from the world's fattest country and currently living in the world's second fattest one, I can't help but ask, is it so bad to want to eat more healthfully? As the every-expanding waist line of the population makes being overweight the norm, our fast-food culture makes thoughtlessly shoving junk food down our throats the norm, is it so bad to be outside the norm in these regards? Must we pathologize everything "abnormal?"

Plus, maybe all I have is just the boring MSH - med student hypochondriasis.

~~~~~~~~~~

This was what I was eating while reading that article on orthorexia: baked pork sausages with quinoa and assorted vegetables.

Going Mental

Last week was the first week of mental health rotation. The mental health inpatient unit has fourteen beds and they've been full most of the time. Mental health service has come a long way since the days of Bedlam. The big institutions are all gone; no one gets committed anymore. What's left now are acute services and patients are discharged to the community. And then there are the rules. All the rules and regulations that ensure the proper treatment of patients while they are at their most vulnerable directly translates into mounds of paperwork. I know paperwork is an unavoidable part of medicine, but mental health definitely takes the cake in this aspect. The doctors are constantly writing in patients' charts and filling out forms.

I sat in on patient interviews all week. Listening to their stories and hallucinations, hearing them describe the way they perceived the world around them, I felt like a voyeur peering through a keyhole into their psyche. This catatonic patient who worried about every minute details of daily living, that floridly psychotic one having a complete breakdown, this one with delusions of grandeur who absolutely believed in his story, that schizophrenic one who was constantly arguing with the voices in her head - it was like watching a drama, a comedy, a tragedy, and a film noir all rolled into one. From day one, the med school has been teaching us to empathize with patients, to understand where they are coming from. But it looks like psychiatry wound have to take exception to that rule. The hardest part of psychiatry is probably learning to not empathize so much that we start to identify with the patient - in order to maintain insight into the patient's problems, but more importantly, for our own sanity.

It's going to be an interesting rotation.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight's dinner: chicken cacciatore on cous cous with silverbeet.

Friendly Fire

It was just another day in the operating theater, anther lap chole. I scrubbed in with the surgeon. My role was, again, to hold retractors and cut sutures, etc., which I didn't mind. I've always enjoyed assisting surgeries, no matter how minor they were.

As I stood next to the surgeon holding a retractor, he released a flap of tissue with the pair of toothed forceps he was holding and bumped against my hand. "Sorry," he said and proceeded to the next task. As I handed the retractor back to the scrub nurse, I noticed a nick in my glove. "I think I have a nick in my glove," I told the scrub nurse. "You'd better change that," replied the scrub nurse. As I took off the glove, I saw a bit of blood right where the nick was. "You're bleeding," said another nurse. "That's a needlestick incident. You'll need to unscrub, fill out an incident report, and go to A&E to get your blood tested."

That was how the rest of my afternoon was taken up by writing an incident report, opening a patient file for myself at A&E, getting blood drawn, etc. I didn't even feel the forceps puncturing my skin and the blood on my hand may or may not have been mine. The chances of picking up diseases this way is extremely small. But to follow protocol and for safety's sake, I'll be having my blood tested for Hepatitis B and C, syphillis, and HIV, among other nasty blood-borne bugs. And again six months later.

Well, I'm not going to lose sleep over it because sometimes, shit happens. Plus, I need my sleep so I can study for the end-of-rotation exam this Friday.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tonight's culinary experiment: pita wrap with baba ghanouj, chicken, zucchini, roasted mushrooms, and yoghurt sauce. It wasn't too pretty, but was highly edible. I made baba ghanouj with extra garlic a few days ago and the garlic flavor has definitely intensified since. Hmmm, postprandial garlic breath...

The Joy of Blood and Guts

Oh, surgery! Every morning when I check the surgery list I'm like a kid in a candy store - eyeing it up and down and trying to decide which ones to see while checking what emergency cases have popped up. The ritual of changing out of the professional wards attire, the dress shirt and pants, and into theater getup, the always ill-fitting scrubs, is like metamorphosis of the caterpillar. The lowly medical student goes into the changing room and emerges as the ever-ready surgeon's assistant, sprinting to the scrub sink at the slightest sideway-glance from the surgeon. Hold up the patient's leg while he's being draped? No problem! Hold back retractors for hours on end until my fingers fall off? Sure! Suction? Slurrrrrp! Cut open that grossly-distended section of resected bowel and examine the consistency of its content? Gladly! Do I want to come in on Saturday to assist on an amputation? You don't have to ask twice!

So it's too bad the rotation is going to end in less than three weeks. It's a pretty hard act to follow, and I'm not sure if mental health rotation that follows is going to do it for me. Sigh...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dinner tonight: chicken and potato curry with raita

Where's the Seafood in Hervey Bay?

Ok, so you live in a place next to the ocean, I mean the beach is within walking distance. Is it too much to ask for a decent selection of seafood? Why is it that I've yet to find a shop with a good variety of fish and seafood? I actually had better luck down in Brisbane. I guess the fishermen can sell their catch to Brisbane at a better price than they can in a small town like Hervey Bay. So I'm left with having to check the fisherman's co-op every now and then for their intermittent delivery of fresh catch. Arghhh.

I'm in luck today. The fisherman's co-op just got a fresh load of fish this morning. I picked up a giant whole red emperor. For dinner tonight: steamed red emperor in ginger and scallions with silverbeet cooked in garlic, served on a blend of jasmine and brown rice.