Superglue

Who knew Superglue could create so much of a problem?

As usual, I get a head of myself. I’m halfway through my term here in Alice Springs; three weeks of working in the Emergency Room, making snap decisions, prescribing treatments, injecting drugs and saving lives.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

As a student, I get to see the sickest of the sick patients – but only from across the room. My time is spent working on the folks who have coughs-and-colds, strained backs, and – if I’m really nice to the nurse at the front desk and promise her chocolate – suspected fractures on occasion (they like to throw me a bone every once in a while…). I work up the patients, come to some kinda logical conclusion of what’s wrong, and write down a plan of what should be done. I then talk to a senior doctor who cocks their head at me, tells me my logic is flawed, how my plan will only tell me how foolish I was in the first place to even think of medicine as a career, and how maybe I should see if the traveling circus needs any extras for their Dwarfs-on-Parade act.

But maybe that’s just my interpretation of their laughing at me.

One of the things they do let me do in the ER is a lot of suturing; other than the occasional drop-stitch, it’s really hard to screw up – therefore, safe for me to do. While the first 10 patients were neat – I found a neat little backstitch that speeds things up – the next 10 became a bit of a bore. It was then one of the nurses suggested I try this medical-grade Superglue on this kid who came in with a cut to the side of his forehead. I say medical-grade with good cause: this is pretty-much the same stuff you can get at any local store, just packaged for doctors and sold for about 10 times as much. Anyway, always one to enjoy a good industrial-grade adhesive, I put on gloves, cleaned the kids boo-boo, and got to work with the glue.

Things were going well. The kid had quit crying, mum had calmed down and was out using the phone, and the gash was closing nicely. It was when I got to the end of his cut that I realized where the little finger of my glove was:

Stuck to the kid’s wound.

I tug my hand, his head comes with it. While normally this would have provided hours of amusement, I decided removing my hand from the glove might be a better idea. I knew I needed to move fast to get this glove off of him – not so much that the glue was setting, but I didn’t know when mum would get back. I grab the box, read the instructions and realize this stuff isn’t meant to come loose. I look around and realize I am surrounded by tons of medical equipment, none of which is going to help. With the kid screaming, and sweat pouring off my forehead, I took the most logical course of action possible:

I yanked ‘til the glove came loose.

And with that, it’s the weekend. Some of the more observant among you may have noticed this hitting your inbox a little earlier than usual; I’m heading out this morning to go to Uluru/Ayers Rock with a classmate. I’ll have tons of pictures and stories next week, but for now I need to go and pack my gear. Not to mention getting this glove off my hand…

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

Green Zone

I live in the Green Zone.

OK, not the *real* Green Zone; that one is a few hours to the West. But I stay within a gated, fortified compound with people from all over the world. It’s not unusual to be sitting out back and hear a conversation in Norwegian, or accents from Scotland, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Wales, some African nations and a whole slew of countries in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific region. Not to mention the odd American.

Which are two words that pretty-much define me: odd and American.

Anyway, while I get to stay in the nurse’s quarters for free, it comes at a price. After living in my nice little flat with plenty of room for 2 years, I now have a *room* about the 1/3 the size of my old bedroom. And I have to share the kitchen and a unisex bathroom with about 20 other people. It’s led to a few problems, as you can imagine. First, it has taken away on of the great pleasures of my life: singing in the shower. I know I don’t have that great of a voice (Pavarotti himself once said that I should have any dog who howled along with my singing put down out of mercy for the poor animal. But I digress.), but I enjoy it. Jimmy Buffett, pop hits, even the odd show tune have been known to emanate from behind the flowered curtain in my bathroom. But no more.

The facilities here are institutional; while they are cleaned every day, it’s not unusual to have young ladies in the stalls to either side of you. Not really the audience I hope for, and I can’t quite seem to get them to join in to fill out the tune in four-part harmony, complete with doo-wops and sha-na-nas. And it’s not for lack of trying. But even worse than the lack of artistic expression in the shower, worse than the noise from the hall at all hours and even worse than sharing a sub-optimal kitchen is the other great absence in my life: no more naked time. No more running around my little domain wearing only a smile while checking emails, writing these missives and watching TV on the couch.

Which I’m sure is a mental image most of you don’t need.

And all of you will need years of therapy to get over.

A good story on Alice Springs: in the beginning of the year while doing my psych rotation I was talking with one of the doctors; her family had lived in Alice for a few years. When she first moved here she had a break-in; they grabbed a few things and left. About a year later, they had figured out she was a doctor; they broke in and took her well-hidden doctor’s bag (which had a small supply of needles, syringes and drugs) while she was out of town with her family. Tired of living in fear of crime and rising insurance premiums, they did a few things for peace-of-mind: installed an alarm system on their house and got a guard dog. Despite these measures, her family was robbed again a few months later:

They stole the guard dog.

And with that, it’s the weekend. I’ll spend the weekend relaxing, getting out of town with my classmates, and trying to keep busy. Not to mention trying to find ladies to doo-wop with me…

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

Kansas

G’day, mate and Welcome to Alice Springs!

After a few beers and too many tears (mostly mine), I left Adelaide last Saturday to head off to the Outback and my last term here in Oz. (Many people offered to take me to the airport; while I would like to think it’s because they were all being polite and wanted to see me off, I’m suspicious they really just wanted to make sure that I left. But I digress.) After I made it to the hospital and dropped 150 pounds of luggage (no kidding!) in the room where I’ll be staying, I went for a walk to take a look around town. 5 minutes later, I was back at the hospital.

And I took the long way.

Yes, the place is that small. It’s supposedly the geographic center of Australia and definitely out in the middle of nowhere. Alice is used by many tourists as a jumping off place to the Outback, Uluru/Ayers Rock and by many Aussies as a great place to hide from their parole officer. To say this place is different is an understatement. And I don’t mean just from Adelaide – I mean from just about every place I have ever been. It is an outpost town that has collected a random sampling of tourists who refuse to leave, Australians who can’t leave, and Aboriginals who have their own culture that seems to run parallel – but not a part of – the white culture here. With all this in mind, I give you my first impression of Alice Springs:

We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

These 6 weeks are to fulfill the rural medicine requirement for my degree; I get to spend my time in the Emergency Room. Just for some compare-and-contrast: Flinders Medical Centre serves the southern portion of Adelaide; it has 400 beds and the ER sees 40,000 people every year. ASH (Alice Springs Hospital) has 160 beds, serves an area larger than France and the ER treats 32,000 people every year. This is a place that Doctors without Borders – who sends their medical staff into war zones – brings people for their training. It’s considered a third-world area within a developed country. There is a large Aboriginal population; they account for 80% of the patients in hospital. It’s not unusual for a middle-aged Aboriginal to wander into the hospital and see a white man for the first time in their life. There are diseases seen routinely here that I have only read about, and usually in some advanced form you would never imagine in Adelaide, Washington, DC or even some backwater place like Cincinnati.

Think I might learn a few things?

My address – remember I’m only here for 5 more weeks; if you send anything I’d suggest you do so before June 4:

Bryan Canterbury – Medical Student
Stafford Accommodation
Alice Springs Hospital
PO Box 2234
Alice Springs, NT 0871
Australia

And with that, it’s the weekend. I’ll spend a few hours this weekend in the ER, hoping to treat a few patients and get in good with the ER director. Some classmates from FMC are up here doing rotations as well; we are hoping to do a day trip to see some of the Outback as well. Not to mention gathering up the Tin Man and the Scarecrow to follow that yellow brick road…

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

30 Weeks

So how long have I lived here in Adelaide?

3 years, 3 months and 14 days – not that I’m counting or anything – and it took until this week for me to see my first poisonous spider. South Australia has exactly *one* variety of spider that is dangerous. It’s called a ‘Redback’ and it’s really quite small – about 1/4" is all it gets – but it has one heck of a bite! (Which just goes to prove it’s the little guys in life you have to watch out for – they tend to be the meanest ones, always trying to prove something. Like me, for example. But I digress.) The only way you can tell if it’s a redback is to get up-close-and-personal and look at its back which is – imagine – red.

So I washed my sheets the other day (once a month, whether they need it or not) and put them outside on the line to dry. Made my bed later that night. Was about to jump in when I saw this spider crawling across the sheets. Not one to be afraid of spiders, I just about flicked him across the room when I saw he was sporting a very nice shade of crimson. Yep. I had a poisonous spider in my bed. So I did the most intelligent thing possible in that situation:

I slept in the bathtub.

Anyway, by the time most of you read this, I’ll be down to my final hours in Adelaide. From here I head off to Alice Springs for 6 weeks, then back to the US for about 5 months of rotations. Most people ask me how I feel about leaving, and the only way I can put it is ‘Happy to go, but sad to leave.’ While I am really looking forward to seeing new things in Alice and have made a lot of friends here in Adelaide (I took some pictures in the past week and put them on the blog, if you want to see me). I’ve lived in my little apartment here longer than *anywhere* since I was growing up. But the other side of all those things is that that is that have lived a long way from my family for a long time.

Not that they complain about me being gone, mind you.

But the staff of the renal unit have been wonderful. They gave me a few days off to finish things here in Adelaide; they even found a few bottles of wine for me to take with me as going away gifts. Even one of the patients got into the act: she decided to have dangerously low blood sugar! So low, in fact, that they called a ‘code blue’ for her. Emergency bells going off, people running everywhere, equipment being pushed to her room. I ran to see what was going on and if I could help. I look around the room

And I was the closest thing to a doctor there.

And with that, it’s the weekend. Term 3 is over, which means I have 30 weeks left until I’m a doctor. On Monday I start my Emergency Medicine rotation; more on that and Alice Springs next week. (Before I forget, Happy Mum’s day to all the Mum’s out there – you brought us all into this world, and you sure could take us out of it, too!) I fly out on Saturday morning for Alice, so I need to finish my packing and cleaning tonight. Not to mention getting a good nights’ sleep in the tub…

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

Sure - I'll Have Another Drink!

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