36 Weeks

Welcome to Good Friday and the end of Anesthetics!

Yes, I (and therefore you and the patients) have survived 6 weeks of mind-altering drugs, noxious gases, misplaced IV lines, blown catheters and even a few attempts at regional nerve blocks!

And that’s just the stuff I did outside the hospital…

But the most worrisome part about being done with Term 2 is that I only have 6 terms left until the end of the year. For those of you playing along with the Special Edition Home Version, I am 36 weeks from being a doctor. (Is it cold in here or did you just have a chill run down your spine with that thought?) It can be a disturbing thought to most – like the woman at the post office the other day. The friendly clerk asked how long until I finished; I told her in December I would be a doctor followed with my usual, “I know – it scares me, too.” The elderly lady in the next line looks me up and down and says, “Not as much as it scares me.”

Trust me; I *wish* I was making that up…

Last weekend, I flew over to Sydney to meet the intrepid travelers from Up North, my family. Or at least a good portion of it. Mom and Dad, Brother and Nancy decided to brave Vegemite and that nasty hole in the ozone layer to see Australia and, if I was available, me. While the three days we spent together went quickly, we had a lot of fun. Plenty of laughing, joking, wandering around, getting lost, and explaining the Aussie version of English. (Who knew the word ‘pissed’ could mean so many things – most of them contradictory?) Lots of pictures were taken; at one point, my darling brother thought it would be a good idea to get a Canterbury Family Picture with the Opera House as the background. You know, something nice to be used on Christmas Cards and commemorative tea towels for years to come, to remember how fun the trip was?

Of course, he asked me to take it of them…

After too much fun, responsibility reared its ugly head and I needed to head back to Adelaide to finish my term. However, I do have proof that I have a family and they did come to Australia to see me: photos from their visit are available at my blog – www.downunderdoc.blogspot.com – proudly brought to you by Ezi-lube Surgical-Grade Lubricant:

Ezi-Lube: for all those times when you need to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

And with that, it’s the weekend. With it being Easter, not much is going on. Good Friday saw everything closed – including the bars and bottle shops – not sure what the Aussies do to fill their time. As for me, I’ll spend the weekend resting and getting ready for my return to the renal ward for Term 3, which starts Tuesday. Not to mention getting tea towels made…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan

Bridge Climb

The Canterburys Downunder

We lost mom...

Happy Birthday to Me!

Very, very scary - but 9 months from being correct.

Camping

Camping

Did you ever go camping when you were growing up?

You know, pack up the family, put the dog in the back, and drag a camper/trailer up and down the East Coast, stopping to see the sights, set up camp, cook a few hot dogs over the open fire, (occasionally pulling over at the side of the road to beat the youngest child for touching his sister, even though to this day, he swears he wasn’t on her side of the car), only to get home after three weeks and immediately put a ‘For Sale’ sign on the afore mentioned camper/trailer and vow to never speak of that trip again?

Or are those just repressed memories from *my* childhood?

What brings this up? My parents, brother and sister-in-law have decided to take a vacation. Not just any vacation, mind you. After 3 years of begging, pleading, tantrums, meltdowns, holding my breath until I turned blue, and even out-and-out bribery, I have finally convinced them to escape from work, take that long plane ride, brave the International Date Line and come to Oz. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Canterburys are coming to Australia.

Don’t worry; the authorities have been informed.

(I’m hoping they can catch them at the border and turn them away at the door; maybe suggest a nice country in the area that may not be booked out: ‘Oui, monsieur, we are open – but we have no more room, and your reservation got lost! Perhaps a quick flight over to New Zealand would be to your liking. And I hear Fiji has some wonderful sunsets…’ I probably won’t get that lucky. But I digress.)

But between my experiences of that dumb camper while growing up, and the stories from other vacations my parents have since taken which include being lost in England, losing purses in Vegas, and somehow – and I’m not making this up – Dad boogey-boarding in Hawaii, I cannot *wait* to read the travelogue of their little jaunt. You know, tales of trying Vegemite, chasing kangaroos, being chased by koalas, trying Aussie beer, trying to understand the Australian language, not to mention seeing their favorite child. I can almost see it becoming a book:

National Lampoon’s Down Under Vacation.

Maybe get Chavy Chase to star in the movie version – he bears a resemblance to my Dad. My brother could be played by Gary Sinise. As I’m heading to Sydney for a long weekend to hang out with them, maybe get Brad Pitt to play me.

Of course, you’d have to pretty him up a bit to make him look as good as me…

And with that, it’s the weekend. With the relatives on the continent, I’ll head over to Sydney to spend some quality time with them, seeing the sights, touring around, trying the local delicacies (read: beer). Not to mention repressing the memories of this weekend…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan

Heaven

Heaven

Maybe I have gone to the netherworld.

I mean, the people around here talk funny, I’m 10,000 miles away from friends and family and rarely see them, and the locals keep trying to feed me vegemite – which I am fairly certain doubles as axle grease – not to mention how hard it is to find a decent burger around here. What brought all this up? Let me explain.

Anesthetics isn’t just knocking someone out so they can have all kinds of invasive things done to them; I once heard you don’t get paid to make the patient fall asleep – you get paid to make sure they wake up afterwards. So we have a ‘Post Anaesthetics Care Unit’ at FMC; it’s what we would call post-op or recovery back in the States. It’s where the patients – just having something rather impolite done to them – come back to the land of the living. As part of my rotation, I have to help watch over patients; make sure they can move air, give them a warm blanket or a cold compress, hand them a bowl if they need, and make sure nothing untoward happens like swallowing their tongue or divulging State Secrets.

(It’s here I should mention that some of the drugs used to knock people out are also used by various countries of the world – Egypt comes to mind – as truth serums. I have heard some amazing tales and deep inner secrets from some of our patients. Darn those confidentiality rules, or I could implicate a lot of people for a lot of things! And that’s not even including one patient who looked at me and in a very slurred voice said I was cute – she was obviously delirious. But I digress.)

Anyway, a few days ago I was in the PACU when one of the patients starts to come around; the first thing he does is look at me and asks, ‘Did I live?’ Now, while *I* would like to think that all angels look like *me*, I have a sneaking suspicion that heaven looks nothing like the recovery room at FMC. And if that is what heaven looks like, why have I been living such a pure life only to end up someplace like this? (Mom, no comments from you.) If I could be *bad* and end up in someplace like FMC – where I have seen neither fire *nor* brimstone – why not start living large? You know, rock-and-roll all night and party everyday? Then it dawned on me:

Maybe I’ve already died and gone to heck. And it looks like FMC. And I have brought ALL OF YOU WITH ME.

Hey – you’ve laughed at these emails; you have only yourself to blame…

And with that, it’s the weekend. I have to get a lot of work done for my paper/presentation that is due next Friday, plus there is a bit of a going away bash on Saturday at which I really need to make an appearance. Not to mention getting my halo and wings dry-cleaned…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan

Medical School is So Hard...

Swoon

Just call me Elvis.

Or maybe the Beatles - either way, I would need to grow my hair out. I know just how they feel, having people swoon when you enter a room. And while I know I’m a cute medical student, it’s a little much of a reaction for my arrivals. Even for me. Let me explain.

Twice in the past week, I have had patients do a ‘Vasovagal’ in my presence. While I could give you some flashy explanation as to what that means, complete with graphs and charts, a four-page research paper and a diagram or two, all it really means is someone passed out. This can happen for lots of reasons; in fact, my dear friend Dubya had one a few years ago when he swallowed a pretzel and it got stuck in his throat.

You’d think Dick would have taught him to swallow by now.

Anyway, the first patient was an older gentleman having a Roto-Rooter job, uh, down there. He was sedated but awake for the procedure (what was he *thinking*?) and mentioned to the doctor that he was feeling a little funny. Next thing you know the panel listing his statistics goes blank: No pulse, no breathing, no blood pressure.

It’s not often you get to see an attending doctor sprint.

The second patient was young – younger than me, anyway. Like most people, he wasn’t a fan of needles being poked into him. That said, he still needed to have an IV line put in, and I was asked to do the deed. So with needle in hand, I went for the vein.

I missed on my first try.

And my second try.

At this point, Junior is looking about as pale as the sheets on his bed. Next thing I know, the doctor takes over, puts in an IV line into the kid’s other arm and starts filling him full of fluid and drugs. The outcome was the same in both cases – after some fluids and some injections, they were fine. After a little swoon and some support, both were chatting happily with the nervous doctor and scared medical student.

Ya know, now that I think about having two guys faint in my presence – not exactly my target audience…

One thing we have to do in this term is a morning ward round with the Acute Pain Service. Now before anyone gets excited, you don’t get to go around giving people ‘noogies’ and asking ‘Does this hurt?’ (My brother – if my years of experience growing up with him are any indication – would be a natural for *that* particular service. But I digress.) The APS folks go around to the patients after major surgery and see if they are comfortable – getting enough of the right drugs, sleeping comfortably, fluffing their pillow, singing bedtime songs if need be. It was an interesting morning I spent with them, but while they talked about morphine drips, injections for pain, and sleeping pills, they managed to miss the most important treatment for a boo-boo: Kissing it and making it better.

And somehow they didn’t seem too thrilled when I offered it up to the cute young lady who just had her appendix out…

And with that, it’s the weekend. I’m halfway done with Anesthetics, which seems weird. I’ll spend some time at FMC this weekend gathering info for the paper that’s due in a few weeks; I’ll also spend time away from the hospital socializing with friends. Not to mention getting my polyester jumpsuit out of the closet…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan