Believe it or not, at the last minute I decided to hop on a Greyhound bus, ride 16 hours through the outback over night and arrive back in Brisbane this weekend.  I am here for a couple reasons, including “Sports Day” which is the biggest cross-class get together of the year.  That’s on Friday, but today is the day that we actually get keys to our apartment.  So I am going to rent a car, grab my scrubs from storage, and then cruise up to the Sunny Coast to get keys and check out the new apartment.  I will also be able to move my stuff out of storage, which will save me the storage fee, which was pretty close to the cost of the bus!

Tags: Australia, Life by David Graff
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Here I am, sitting here in the middle of the outback, watching the start of the Vancouver Olympics.  I see the Canadiana on the TV, but when I look outside it’s a completely different vista.  I went for a walk today, just to get out of the house.  I walked for about 10 minutes north of where I’m staying, and was already out of town.  The town I’m in is maybe a kilometer across.  The crazy thing is that there were kangaroos just chilling in the grass out there.  It just highlights how different my experience is here today than it would be if I lived in Canada still.  Anyways, missing home big time today.

Tags: Australia, Canada, Life by David Graff
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Today something happened that is hard to get used to.  Someone used the phrase “because we’re doctors” to me.  Directly to me.  Now, usually when this happens I feel a real obligation to say, “Well, I’m still just a student.”  But there was literally nobody else around, and the speaker knew fully that I am a student.  It felt a bit odd, but I suppose it will be true eventually.

Tags: Australia, Life, Medicine by David Graff
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For this year at least, classes are over.  I am a little uncertain if we will be having regular classes next year or not.  I think it will depend on the rotation.  There are five main divisions next year, Rural Medicine, Surgery, Mental Health, General Practice, and Medicine.  I think they will all run a little differently, and have heard rumours of PBLs next year as well, but run on one day instead of two (separated by study on the topic) and that there might be days or half days of lecture next year.

Anyway, it’s a little sad to realize that the student life as it is formally recognized has come to a close for this campus, right when I started to feel like I knew what was going on.  I am really excited about next year though.  It will be a lot of learning as it is a paradigm shift moving into the hospitals on a full time basis, but I’m looking forward to it.  Now I just need to get through these next exams.  I have three rounds of assessment coming up, called the MSAT, PSA2.1 and PSA 2.2 respectively.  The MSAT is a Multi-Station Assessment Task, which is a live exam of five different stations, as the name suggests.  There are: Clinical Reasoning, Examination, History Taking, Ethics and Advanced Life Support stations.  The idea of this exam scares me, as I feel as though there’s nowhere to hide.  Just you and the examiner.  And the patients I guess… they usually are actors at this stage, but some might be patient-actors with real signs.  This test is on November 8 for me.

Then on the 10th and 11th I have two more exams, the first being PSA2.1 (Progressive Summative Assessment) which is based on material from this last semester.  Then the next day is based on all material covered up until now.

Then my plans are to recover a little from the exam, clean up and go check out the Sunshine Coast, as that is where I will be living next year, and then I’m headed to New Zealand for 10 days.  I will be home in the beginnning of December.  I am looking forward to being home very much.

Tags: Australia, Life, Medicine, UQ by David Graff
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On the way to the grocery store, I often take the back path, which leads through a bit of scrub. Just after leaving the fenced back yard, there is a bunch of bushes. When I pass, there is usually a scurry sound in them. It sounds like it is made by something bigger than the ubiquitous geckos. I figured it was probably a snake, and despite always looking, I’ve never seen anything. Well today I almost stepped on this guy, maybe he is the noisemaker.

PS.  Even though it kinda looks like the suspected snake, it’s actually an Eastern Blue-tongued Lizard

Tags: Australia, Life by David Graff
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I know I haven’t updated this in a while, but I have been spending less and less time with my computer on.  I have recently bought a few text books that I am really getting into and have printed out my student notes.  This means that I have not been updating as much, since it hasn’t been in front of me.  But life is pretty good, I am currently preparing for my final exams which are coming up in a few weeks.  In the last little bit I had a party for my birthday which was lots of fun, we had a holiday for a bit, and now I have been back at class for a few weeks.  My life has settled into a zone where I know what is going on.  I know how to be a second-year med student.  That has made day to day life feel like it isn’t as report-worthy as before.  The adventure is becoming more commonplace, but I am still loving it.  I miss everyone at home so much, and am sad for the good times together that have been forfeited.  I am living.  Here.

Tags: Australia, Life, Medicine by David Graff
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All the year 2 med students have a list of examinations that they need to perform for a clinical tutor this year.  I finished my list today with a cardiorespiratory examination.  I know it’s a small victory but finishing the list was a huge relief, and a little bit of a marker in the sand.  I have been previously going through the clinical examinations wondering if that’s really what is done in practice, as it all seemed like a little bit of an abstract song and dance to me.  But today I felt like I knew what I was looking for, and why.  I felt as though I was, despite being a bit nervous, able to balance talking to the patient as a human being, being aware of what they needed while still doing what I needed to do.  And it felt great.  The tutor I was with was very encouraging and more than willing to teach while examining.  Also, in the actual examination I was able to discern what was happening to the patient, which is one of the first times I have done that without really asking the patient what is going on, or knowing the background from the history.  I know that it’s a pretty minor thing, but as I said, it’s a little victory.  And with years and years of training ahead of me, I need to take the little victories.

My reward after all this? Three written words:

It’s a small step I know, but I find it pretty encouraging.

Tags: Australia, Life, Medicine by David Graff
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Every now and then there are really great days.  It wasn’t particularly special today, but I had a great day.  I am currently on holidays, and today was perfect.  It is Monday, and everything went my way today.  I woke up at my leisure, took it easy with a coffee in the morning, found out that I am going to the Sunshine coast next year (more on that later), had lunch with a friend, relaxed all afternoon, then went out for a steak dinner at a cook-your-own restaurant with some friends of John’s.  We had a bunch of laughs, a great steak I cooked myself, and then went to Southbank for a swim in the somewhat cold and deserted pool.  Tossed the ball around a bit in the water too.  Then I threw on the shorts and hopped over to the theatre to meet another friend for a movie.  He’s also going to the Sunshine coast, so we were able to share a bit of joy about that and enjoy our time watching “The Inglourious Basterds”.  It added to the poetry that I went with a guy that, I am certain, gets told he looks like Quentin Tarantino by every person he meets (It was a Tarantino film).  Anyways, it wasn’t till the end of the day that I realized, this was basically a perfect day.

Tags: Australia, Life by David Graff
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Gave blood again.  This time I didn’t stock up on fluids before hand as much.  It seemed like I couldn’t even feel it last time, so I thought it was no big deal.  Within ten seconds of sticking the needle in the nurse growled at me “How much have you had to drink today?”.  Umm…  some? She said she could tell my blood was slow.  You would think that they would want to get as much blood as they can from me, I mean, they can get salt water elsewhere.  But it did seem to take longer to get out as well, so maybe that’s what she was annoyed about on a busy day.

Tags: Life, Medicine by David Graff
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A half world away, lives most of the ~100 people with whom I graduated high school.  Except one of them lives here.  I met her, randomly, at the gym tonight.  It was good to see someone from so far back in my past.  So far back that when I think about that time I feel like it (I) was a different person living then.  At the same time, she was not surprised at all to hear that I was studying medicine, or the course of life I have taken.  It goes well with the feeling that I am being more true to who I am now than ever before.  Having someone else recognize that after all this time and distance was really great.

Tags: Australia, Canada, Life by David Graff
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