Tales of a Brown-Haired Freak

I've been a terrible LJ-updater this term. But i have good reasons, I swear! I've been doing important medical-studenty things. Like the surgery selective. That's been fun so far, despite the fact that poor-planning has intersected with weight loss and leaves me looking rumpled at best in my too-big, heat-wrinkled "professional" clothes. One day I'll learn to bring more than one set of dress clothes when I come here! Basically, I'm in the hospital twice a week for a few hours each, learning basic procedures and scrubbing in when there's surgeries going on. Since it just started a couple of weeks ago and half of that has been spent in lectures, I haven't done much - mostly patient interviews and learning suturing techniques (not on real people yet, through that'll come in time). I got to scrub in yesterday on a surgery for a Brodie's Abcess. Lots of chiseling and boring involved, and far more blood than expected, even with the limb tourniqueted. And I even remembered enough of my lower-limb anatomy to not make a complete fool of myself! (By the way, if you ever spend 20 minutes cleaning and wrestling with a leg before wrapping it to drain the blood away from the foot, only to realize that you've put the tourniquet 6 inches too low, don't worry! Just grab a spare latex glove and tie it on real tight - it's just as good as doing it the so-called "right" way.)

Midterms are a week away and neuro has wrapped up (next week is scheduled for clinical case discussions, ie review) so I'm free to turn my attention to physio, where the GI tract is heating up (as much as a topic that is 60% vomit and diarrhea can, at least) and immuno, where my sanity (and likely my GPA) has been saved by a hero in the unlikely form of a 4th term DES tutor. Bret, you're the best - 2nd term collectively thanks you!

Lastly, I'm fighting off a weird cold that's combining a sore throat and what feels like perpetual eyestrain. I'm hoping it comes and goes quickly, so that I can stop spending my loan money on lozenges and painkillers and put it to better use, like ice cream. Sadly, I suspect it'll hit it's peak on friday, because that just how the universe seems to roll these days.

...obligatory Simpson's reference."

No, really. I know I've been slow to update on being home, but jet lag is seriously kicking my butt. Hell -- thy name is 12-hour time change. And Noritate, apparently, as it costs $6.66 at my local Safeway pharmacy. Anyway, I got home safely and on time and have been mostly packing, watching Tivo'd So You Think You Can Dance episodes, and trying to convince my body that 6 to 11am is not really a practical sleep schedule (up to 6 has mostly been spent reading and watching Food Network, trying to get tired).

Last thoughts on Thailand:
The country is great, once you get used to everyone and their elephant trying to rip you off. Very pretty, and you really can't go wrong when the major traditional decorating scheme involves covering stuff in gold. Pictures are here, as usual. They're not labeled yet, but maybe later. The selective was interesting,but poorly-organized with really bad time-management. It would have been 10 times better is we'd had more time in Bangkok (where everything was rushed and there was nevr enough time for anything), and less in Krabi (where they really had to stretch things to take up 4 days, and by the second I was bored enough to want to go home). Days generally started late (mostly due to my fellow select-ers, on whose existence I may be forced to blame any future PTSD, but I won't get into that right now), and we never had quite enough time to learn more than very basic things about the hospital, traditional medicine, or really anything at all. This very much irritated me - they allotted 20 minutes for people to buy "traditional" lotions, soaps and the like, but we only got a 10 minute lecture about the traditional school. We spent an entire week learning massage basics, but didn't get any theory or background or application to go with it.

And the verdict is...
If you're already planning a trip to Thailand, you may as well stay an extra couple of weeks and do the selective. It's cheap and relatively interesting, provided you get a decent group and are curious about the Thai medical system. Just don't expect it to come out of it knowing much more than you did heading in, unless you're a complete airhead. If you have no real interest in ever going to Thailand, it's probably not worth it, no matter how intereted in tradtional medicine you may be.

Another 4 hours to go at the airport before I get to head home. It's exactly as it was 3 weeks ago, except that last time there weren't roving packs of military bearing assult rifles. Weird.

I suppose it the whole canadian thing that gets me a bit weirded out by automatic weapons. I mean, rifles I get. Shotguns, okay. Pistols, even. But who are you going to shoot in a crowded airport with a machine gun? More importantly, who's going to shoot you? I suppose that's the whole point, but oddly enough, I don't feel any safer. But maybe that's just me.

and that's it! I leave in 5 minutes (actually, the taxi is waiting for me. I'm a bad person, keeping him waiting). Trip's been fun, except for the parts where I was surrounding by painfully irritating people who couldn't catch a cab with detailed instructions and a demostration (no, really - it actually happened. there were 15 of them, all milling around like idiots while me and 3 others hopped in and drove off).

Wish me luck - I'll be home in approx 15 hours!

Hotel issue has been resolved to my satisfaction, as well as the hotel's.

Yesterday we started the massage portion of our training. My group started with foot massage, which I enjoyed (both giving and getting). It involved a lotion and little blunted sticks, as well as some reflexology (but not much). Today we switched to full body massage, which (at the school we were at) is more about stretching and hitting release points than your typical feel-good type massage. There's a lot too it, and we have tomorrow to practice before we get tested on thurs (yikes!).

Yesterday afternoon I went horseback riding on the beach with M. She lied and said she was an advanced rider (she was worried they wouldn't have let her have any fun if she said beginner), so they put her on a horse that knew more about what was going on that she did. Seriously, this horse completely had its way with her for the first 15 minutes of the ride. Not that it was completely her fault - Mine was a bit of a bastard at first, but settle down quickly. We swapped a little bit into the ride and everything got a bit better. Galloping up and down the beach and through the water for an hour was exactly what I needed to make me happy (even if I'm a bit sore today), and when we get back to GND M wants me to teach her how to ride if we can find a stable.

Today we went to a cooking school to learn how to make traditional Thai dishes (Pad Thai, panang Chicken, Tom Yum Soup, etc), and ended up stuffing ourselves with fantastic eats. Tonight is for relaxing and early to bed. Night!

Landed in Krabi tonight and moved into the hotel. Pissed to find out that others from SGU are paying 500 baht less for an identical room, and that they have already charged my credit card for the full week. Will be speaking to the manager tomorrow.

Today was the last day of the Bangkok portion of our program, and overall, I think it went fairly well. Last night our group got verbally bitch-slapped (in email form) about lack of professionalism in the hospital (people wearing jeans and sleeveless tops, asking to take pictures of a pair of conjoined twins in the nursery), so spirits were a bit low (though it didn't stop people from wearing their tank tops and running shoes today as well), but people perked up a bit when we visited a rural traditional hospital and got complimentary massages. Personally, I'd have preferred learning more about the theory behind the massage and how the hospital worked, but then again, massages are easy to come by at home. Not that it wasn't appreciated, of course - it felt fantastic. LAter on, our group did a presentation on Grenada and SGU, which wasn't as painful to sit through as it could have been.

Tonight a few of us went to see the famous Thai Ping-Pong Ball Show at a strip club somewhere down town (N has been talking about it since she got here). It was...interesting. At times it was a typical, if boring, strip show. Other times, a stunt show (girls pulling ribbons and things out of their vaginas, one of them shot darts out and burst balloons, one smoked a cig with her cooch...things like that. And yes, there were ping pong balls involved at times). At one point, the light dimmed and some guy wandered out on stage and started idly jerking off. After awhile, he was joined by a nude, bored-loking girl, and they proceeded to have the least interesting, bored-looking sex imaginable. Completely silent, it was more like an instructional video in sexual positions than anything real, though they get props for athletisism and flexibility. I had more fun watching new patrons show up during their act - they'd walk in, check out the crowd and pick a seat, then head towards it. At some point, they'd glance up at the stage (it was dim, so at first glance it was hard to see if anything was going on), double take, and freeze. After an uncomfortable look at the audience (most of whom were chatting, ignoring the act, occasionally applauding at particularly athletic displays) theyed gather up their courage and take a seat, trying their hardest to act casual.

Tomorrow I'm finally getting to check out little India and buy some fabric, then we head to Krabi to start the next part of the selective.

Happy birthday to me! (I got cake!)

Today we got to do rotations at the hospital. My group got internal medicine and OB-Gyn (we do surgery and peds on thursday). IM was interesting but unexciting - we saw hepititis, a couple of HIV's, thalessemia, a vit B12 deficiency (extremely rare in North America, but relatively common here. There were some really interesting neurological signs - unusual gait, difficulty with propioception (knowing where body parts are in space), some sort of infectitious bacteriam and cushing's disease (adrenal gland issues caused by taking "natural" medicines with steroids in them). A scary thought - they have so many infectious diseases here, and a shared patient floor (no private rooms), that they just assume everyone has TB and go from there. Ick.

OB-Gyn started out dull - a floor full of pregnant women and nothing happening. So we moved into the OR and got to watch a laproscopic hysterectemy for about an hour, when out attending showed up and told us a c-section was going on, so we popped in and got to see the whole thing, from the epidual to sewing back up again, all while surrounded by happy, laughing women (c-section baby was tiny and fluorescent purple - weird). Then we were supposed to head back to the hotel, but a birth was just getting interesting so we got to watch it as well (less exciting - the mother was anaesthetised and everything went well, so it was mostly "push, wait awhile, push wait awhile, push, episiotomy (Eek! I'm going to have nightmares), push, baby, the end." Then we had to leave.

Overall, a good day. Interesting, though neither field has any real interest for me.

Lame. Details to come.

Today I rode an elephant and petted a tiger (actually, five tigers and one baby tiger).

It's been a good couple of days. Yesterday, me and a guy I met did tourist things - saw a bunch of Buddhas, the museum and the like. Today, he left (people really do come and go quickly here) so I did a bunch of wandering around, saw the Grand Palace and the Royal regalia (wow! pictures when I get home) gift-hunting (didn't buy anything, mostly just price-comparing) and drinks while watching some Drunk-Tourist Theater: Bangkok Edition (wasted american girl getting tag-teamed by a pair of locals in the cafe - one was a "bad" boy, the other was pretty in a non-threatoning, boy-band sort of way. I assume the was some version of witty banter going on but I couldn't hear most of what they were saying. It ended in a cliff-hanger - Bad-boy seemed to be winning her affections; boy-band boy looked sad when I got bored and wandered off). Tommorrow, I'm going elephant-trekking and seeing the tiger temple, so it's ewarly to bed for me.

R - what's a Dha-Shay? Google doesn't know, but I suspect I'll want one (or 2).

Bangkok is exactly like every movie that ever had a scene here (without the police chases). Long streets lined with vendors, lots of people with little carts trying to sell you junk, dinner for $3 and snacks for 25 cents. There's a vendor that advertises student cards, driver liscenses, diplomas, passports and visas for the low low price of $3 a pop. It's alkmost worth it just to see how good they are, but after awhile $2 (100 baht) just seems like a lot of money - I was worried about how much I was spending until I did the math and realized that I'd spent all of $25 yesterday - dealing with 100/500/1000 notes warps your mind after awhile. Streets so crowded with cars ands motorcycles and tuk tuks that it's risking your life to try and cross them (I tend to find a native and cross when they do). Crazy hot and humid - 35 degrees in the shade, but drinks are cheap too. The area I'm in is all backpackers and students, which is pretty cool. I've been wandering around with a guy from manitoba - today we're seeing temples and museums and the Grand Palace. We failed at seeing the 40 meter tall gold buddha (it doesn't stand out as much as you would expect), but maybe we'll find it today. Lots of fabric stores, but I'll have to wait until I'm alone to explore them. That's it for now - it's exploring time!

Shopping karaoke cake pub conversation presents shots bowling pizza dennys talk race the sun home 4 hours of sleep = the perfect last night at home.