FINISHED!

placements successfully completed: 1
flea bites sustained by living in skanky student accom. during said placement:34

we are done. and passed. and now in joburg and leaving for kruger park tomorrow, hurrah!
it certainly was an interesting 4 weeks, i think i enjoyed learning about the burns most. very interesting although as one of the physio asked me, will i really use much of that knowledge back home?

so will not get a chance to update the blog over next 5 days as will be tracking the big 5, sleeping in stilted huts and observing the watering holes...

i have changed the setting so now you can leave a comment without having to sign up to the blogger site- so please leave me a comment or 2!

oh.

and now i have just spotted 2 mor worms in the bar. maybe that littlep piece i ate wasn't so safe after all.

ewwwwwwwww

ok, THE most disgusting thing has just happened to me. i am in the internet cafe and have just been to the pick and pay ( supermarket) to get a card for the physios to go along with the box of biscuits we bought them as it is our LAST DAY OF PLACEMENT tomorrow. i also bought a chocolate bar. a cheap one. so as i was waiting for the page to load, i opened my choc bar. actually it was already opened at one end, but i ignored that as i really wanted some choc. i bit into it. and found a hair stuck to it. so i took the hair off and put the bar down on the desk. it was only then did i notice the WORM in my choc bar. no joke- a tiny little worm in MY chocolate bar. having only taken one bit of the end of the bar that the worm was not in, i am sure i will be fine. however i am feeling slightly sick as i am looking at the little worm crawling over and nibbling its way thru my choc.

anyways, we're off to lara and the Honeys house for tea tonight, so i need to go now.... just thought u should no about the worm. and that its my last day of placement tomorrow. bring on the holiday!

are you Young and Restless? or perhaps Bold And Beautiful? are these the Days of (y)Our Lives?...

yes, those are in fact titles to the awful american soaps we ahve become engrossed in. the upside of starting work early is that we're home in time for Oprah and about 3 different soapies, as they like to call them here. they all feature attractive but stupid people and one of them even has its very own island, with mysterious creature and strange forcefield. sounds a bit like Lost... some thing else we enjoy watching (actually watching, not laughing in disbelief at, like the soapies) is Heroes. one of my (many)flatmates in glasgow has said its really quite a good show, and i agree. its got unlikely heroes, mysterious ppl trying to stop them and one of the guys from the first (and best) series of Ultimate Force.

asides from watching tv i like to spend my time here attending lectures about hyperbaric oxygen. the lecture, while mildy interesting, was too involved with diving medecine (yes, there is really such a thing) for my liking. but it def held my attention more than the nutrition one did last week. thinking back to the lecture, im actually quite skeptical about it, but ah well. im probably more ignorant that skeptical.

its been beautiful weather here lately, so beautiful in fact i ate my sandwiches outside yesterday at lunch time. was lovely and i was enjoying myself- i had to laugh a little when a local walked passed in his coat, scarf and wooly hat... and people have been complaining about the cold aswell. ah well, i suppose it is their winter, and their houses don't have central heating.

ok, time to go home for Oprah, yesterday she was making peoples dreams a reality. i wonder what sh'es up to today.

p.s...

...i also meant to add in that post that tomorrow i will be attending the surgical lecture - last weeks was that boring nutrition one- this week..... an introduction to hyperbaric oxygen- and, actually theres no sarcasm here- im lookin fwd to it...

The Final Countdown

its the final week of placement...week 4... today was my last monday. i am not sad. its not that i dont enjoy mondays, but when i think about next monday, today pales into insignificance (you see, next monday i will be in kreuger park doing things that are completely unrelated to physio).

so a brief update on last week then...

• had our midplacement assessment, looks like we're all passing (provided we don't do anything stupid in this last week)
• attended a very boring lecture about protein in nutrition
• had a very exciting lecture about burns with some nursing students - during which i answered a question about escharotomies. no one else knew what they were. i do. kudos to me.
• had that patient swear some more at me
• went home sick on thurs afternoon
• watched a physio induce some sputum in the sputum induction room

and now for the weekend update ( i promise this will be much more exciting)

• fri afternoon...half day! market then to the V&A Waterfront where i had springbok AND ostrich for dinner (didnt really like the ostrich, horrible texture, but the bok was amazing) then to cinema to see oceans 13. another marvellous film, i love the way brad pitt and george clooney interact with each other, its hilarious.
• sat morn...lie in! well, we were still up by 9.30, but considering we usually get up at 6.10, it was a biiig lie in
• sat aft... kirstenbosch gardens, fabulous weather, scones with cream and jam and a loverly cappuccino for lunch, nice walk (got blisters now) then back into town
• sat eve..ah... walked to the irma stern museum. it was closed due to Youth Day. went to UCT campus. also closed due to Youth Day. im not very happy by this point considering we've already spent half the day walking. loverly weather though.
• sun...church- rosebank methodist this time. i arrived 30 mins early (not on purpose) but was lovely weather so sat outside and waited. then into town to green point market, lots more walking, and cheese and bacon pancakes for tea (with 2 loverly large lattes this time)

and now it is monday. exam results are out, good news, i passed. more good news, that patient who swore at me last week, today was actually compliant (and NOT sedated!) and he even smiled. more than once. and, as far as i could tell, he didnt swear at me.

good times.

a weekend of Honeys

so we spent the weekend with a family of Honeys. (as in their surname is Honey...gettit?) a girl who just finished a placement at red cross invited us to stay for the weekend, and it was so nice to get a bit further away from mowbray and the hospital. we stayed in edgemead which is a northern (?) suburb of cape town. here we ate homemade pizza, watched bad movies, visited the largest shopping mall in the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE (o yes!), saw pirates 3 in cinema, ate some more and strolled along the beach looking very windswept indeed. we also went to church (st marks methodist) which was lovely and was all good stuff.

the guys sermon (it wasn't the minister, it was someone younger as it wasa youth service) was very easy to follow so here's the gist of it:

1. don't always be asking "where is God", cos we know he's everywhere, isn't he? you gotta appreciate the stuff that God is clearly visible in instead of just focussing on complaining about when we can't "see" God.
2. when you do come across these places of darkness (which inevitably we will) you must pray for them. how can we expect anything to change if we don't pray about it?
3. Jesus says "YOU are the light of the world" so pretty much, you gotta get out into the darkness. how can you light up something thats already fully lit? !

obviously he used more eloquent phrases but thats pretty much what he was saying.

today was hard, i had a patient who was "anxious" and cried lots. he didnt' want to do what he needed to do so when i tried to make him participate he did not like it. and as i don't speak afrikaans, i couldn't really communicate so well with him. it was good in some ways though that i dont speaka da language as they later told me he was swearing somethin shockin at me.

i enjoy physio in the operating room where patients are sedated and compliant.

just jesting. sort of.

end of week 2...

well, it was 31 degrees yesterday...in theatre, that was. outside there was rain. torrential rain. inside though, it was well hot. yesterday i spent the day in theatre. had the scrubs, the attractive little hair net thing and mask on. to top that look off, i was as red as a tomato (someone actually commented on that) and sweating like... something that sweats a heck of a lot. but it was all good fun- saw 4 ops, mostly skin grafts and changes of dressings on burns patients (cos its soo sore to change the dressings that they need anaesthetic for it).

for the first one i was just standing around looking like a lemon and gettin in the way- as you'd expect with a student. but for the others, a man they all call "prof" was doing the ops and his first words were "i hate it when students stand around doing nothing. this irish girl is here for an experience, give her one.let her do something". so lots of things like removing clips from people, taking off dressings with a blade( i actually ripped my gloves with it, oops) and making some splints. all in a day's work, eh?



today was a half day and we felt like we didnt really do a lot- but its because there is a sever shortage of patients to be had. the physios are fighting over patients, so we're not even gettin a look in! o also, there are conjoined twins on one of the wards. i haent seen them and probably wont be allowed to cos as you can imagine there has been a lot of ppl poking around them and its all very distressing apparently. they are joined at the trunk, have 3 legs and 4 feet. (no, not a typo, one of the legs has 2 feet on it)



so this weekend we are taking a trip. i dont know where yet, but we are going to stay with a girl called lara and her family. she goes to uni of western cape and has been on placement while we have been here. so we're going to do southa frican family things. and she also mentioned a braai is the weathers good. for goodnes sake , if you ever meet a south african, don't ever call a braai a bbq- its terribly offensive...



enjoy yer weekend!



ma- don't worry, i dont want to be a surgeon, too much learning involved. maybe a theatre nurse, though?? only joking... nee naw

excitement!

well, its all very exciting over here, i'm just back from theatre. thats right- theatre! wearing scrubs! a face mask! cutting off bandages AND stretching the patients leg!

today is not the first day we have been "keen" as even though we're supposed to finish at 3, we stayed on to go to theatre. people think we are keen, i try to convince them that really we're foreign and have nothing else to do with our time.

things are going better at the hospital, it took us a week to settle in really as they do thigns so differently over here. but we're getting on fine now (we think!)

we got an absolute soaking through to the underwear on the way home yesterday, that was the first time it has rained since iv been here and boy, did it rain! there was so much cloud you couldn't even see table mountain which is so big you usually can't miss it. this soaking was not made better by the fact that the house has no heaters, radiators or tumble dryer. as soon as i got home i stuffed my shoes with newspaper and thankfully when i got up this morning they were only slightly damp.

we like tuesday nights because americas next top model is on. its a very old series, but its oh so good!

a fun-filled weekend was had by all...

friday started officially with the end of our first week in red cross and a fabulous half day. its funny- half days at home end at 12. they also end at 12 here. we start at 7.30 though, so its more like a 3/4 day we get... anyway...
one of the girls wasn't feeling so well so me and the other girl (lorna) went into cape town. i hadnt actually been right in the centre before, and its quite intimidating you know- there are lots of big tall buildings that seem to crowd in on you... we got the train in which cost us R4 for a single. and in " realmoney" that is 28p. shocking, eh?!
we went to the markets, then walked down to the V&A waterfront where we walked about, had some dinner ( i had chicken potjie which was interesting- and again, surprisingly cheap- i paid about 10pounds (theres no "pounds" sign on the keyboard- i just noticed that!) which was my main course and a bottle of pinotage which we shared. despite being on a wine tour, lorna assured me that pinotage was white... it wasn't...
then off to the cinema to see spiderman3 (R40 for the cinema, again, nice and cheap!although they don't appear to do student discount anywhere).
some things we were shocked to find in the cinema:

• they dont sell sweet popcorn
• if you buy popcorn, you have to put the flavour on it yerself. they had tables with shaker things on with ridiculous popcorn flavours like bbq, sour cream, "aromat" and salt and vinegar
• they dont clean the cinema between showings. i had to move someone elses empties off my seat before i could sit down. not impressed (as usually im a tidy person...)

saturday was culture day, as we went to robben island.its as well we picked that weekend to go ,as from today the maximum security compund is closed to the public for restoration for the nex year or so. so we went down to the waterfront again )to the nelson mandela gateway, to be precise) and hopped on the ferry. when first stepping onto the island, i thought "this is too much like the island from lost" it reminded me lots of the "others" bit, with the little houses and speakers about the place... so first we had a bus tour round the whole island, seeing various different parts. then we had a tour round the max security prison, given by an ex prisoner.it was a very moving tour, and it really made me wonder why he was still there. he was sentanced to 25 years, due for release in 2009. yet he's still on the island? (all the people who work for the museum live on the island) later on he told us that when he was released he had no employment prospects and a family to feed- being a prison tour guide is literally the only thing he's equipped to do.

the last prisoners were released from the prison in 1991 and it was opened as a museum in 1997. a sobering boat ride back to the waterfront and then to Long Street for dinner.

sunday brought a whole feast of exciting things, as we met up with mums friend neil. who,despite being "not southafrican" sounded like he was doing a pretty good job at pretending. its a strange accent he has, a mix of staffordshire, norn iron and south africa. so neil picked us up and we went to cape point and the cape of good hope (not so much a cape as a big rock) it has the privilege of being the most southwesterly point of africa. a little walk around there, lunch in the restaurant, linefish for me please, and then a drive round the peninsula and onto boulders bay.

boulders bay has been one of my top 6 favourite moments so far. boulders bay is where the penguins are- and i wish i coudl get my pics up here, as you just have to see the penguins to belive it- penguins, but no snow! penguins, waddling about in sand!

saw some ambulance staff today. love those green and yellow coats!