Well, not mine really! Brian and I got a chance to go into the surgical theatres in the Princess Alexandra over the break, thanks to some help from a family friend of Lisa, Brian’s girlfriend. It was a great experience for exposure to the environment and seeing some really neat things happening. Brian was able to attend a bunch more than I, including two open heart procedures for bypasses. The day I went, we saw first up a man with a diabetic foot amputation, of his left toes, second and third, having already had his big toe taken off earlier. That was really neat, and we were more involved in that one than I expected. After that, I went and saw some other procedures, including being involved in a bunch of Electro Convulsive Therapy sessions. I didn’t know stuff like that was routine, but it was happening, so I was in there. After the first one I took on the role of ventilator, which was kinda fun. Then we moved on to an abdominal hernia, a gastric bleed and a shoulder repair/bone plating. What a good experience, I am really looking forward to being able to do more. The doctors were amazingly willing to chat, even though we knew practically nothing, and they showed us what was going on.
Actually I’ve been back for a few weeks now. This is the end of the second week back. I took a break from writing that just seemed to get longer and longer. Initially it was cause I was tired and nothing was really going on, then it sort of morphed into because I was lazy and nothing was really going on. Now, with class back in session the ball gets rolling again. Got my scores from the mid year exam, by the way, and I’m happy. Hopefully I can keep it up.
My break was good and interesting, and I should have really written it all down as it was happening, since it’s harder to recall and write out now. I took a few trips to the Sunshine Coast, once to visit Steve Reny at his university housing, once to climb a mountain, and once to see Steve again with Brian. We went to Caloundra that time and just took it easy playing frisbee on the beach. At sundown by the mouth of the river we saw a dolphin jumping right out of the water around some boats that were coming in. The sun had already gone, so it was basically black and yellow outside and the sillouette looked really cool.
I will put up some pictures up here in an entry that predates this one for the trip to the Glasshouse mountains.