Alright… it’s been way too long since I’ve properly updated here. So much has happened. Really I haven’t written since med school finished and that seems like a while ago now. Actually it seems like a world away. Plainly, I’m in Townsville, working as an intern at the hospital. Simply, I’m loving it. These last four months have been a blast in a lot of ways. Mum and Dad were here for the end of my program, and we had a holiday down in Byron Bay, then we were on a cruise through New Zealand. Some of the photos are on the site already. That was a fun time. New Zealand is a pretty amazing place. Then we hustled up to Townsville where I was sick, then I got Dad sick, then Mum… But thankfully everyone got over it.
After that, I started my internship, with a week of orientation, where you learn about all the forms and procedures in a blur of new faces and paperwork. Then I started in the Emergency Department. My first patient had chest pain… I walked into a NSTEMI at 1830h on a Wednesday afternoon. Within a few minutes the nurse asked me for morphine. It was daunting at the time, but in the time since then I’ve got used to a lot of things.
I have worked in Emerg for two and a half months now. My time there is done, for now. It was an incredible experience, with great support and good exposure. I’m really going to miss it. We worked 10 hour days which easily and often stretched out to 12 or more, and rotated through all hours of the day and week. We had dedicated training once a week on relevant topics and in the day hours we had dedicated staff for answering interns’ questions. The crew in Emergency is very international, as it seems all the travelling doctors do ED. I will miss them and the department very much! It is like a whole other world. We don’t mix with the rest of the hospital because we don’t (can’t) leave the department at all… the only time we would see someone from the inpatient teams is if they came down to pick someone up from ED. Anyways, that’s how it worked, and that’s what my life has been for a while. I’m on call tonight for the last time, but I don’t think I’ll be called.
Now, I’m looking at seven weeks of gastroenterology. It will be totally different, working mainly as support instead of the front face of the treating team. And I’ve found a place to live, my stuff is all moved in and I’m settling in to how it works around here.
Still lots to get used to, still lots to set up and starting Monday my work world will be totally different. I’m still looking forward to it all though.
This is the view from the apartment the hospital has put me up in. That’s the Ross River and it is Saturday today so there are people waterskiing up and down.
It is definitely tropical up here. The sun sets in the south these days, and I think the plumeria are out all year.
For some reason all the photos didn’t upload. Might have something to do with us sailing out into the open ocean. I’ll try add some more now.
We are in port at Mount Maunganui and we rented a big van with some of our cruise friends and headed out to Rotorua. It was pretty great, and a wild world.
A few photo to show what it’s like.
We are in a little town called Napier. Gorgeous day.
We are on a boat, pointed at NZ… Should be good. Rough seas predicted so we’ll see about that! I’ll be out of contact for a bit.
We had a visitor here on Boxing Day, just after lunch. It’s a Blue Tongue lizard. It moves kinda like a snake but they are pretty harmless I think. A reminder of where we are.
Here are a few snaps from our first Australian Christmas. The kids were great fun and were very excited about it all.
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