Rotations week three

Today was a holiday Monday for Australia day so this is a short work week. Tomorrow I start at the mental hospital and I'm sure that will be exciting.

I really enjoyed the last hospital and I think I will be applying there for my internship.

I'll post tomorrow because I'm sure I'll see something blogworthy.

Rotations week two

Last week was really busy in the hospital. I had lots of interesting cases including:
Renal failure
COPD (lung problems associated with years of smoking)
Post natal depression
Bradycardia


Today I had a case involving a 52 year old with a heroin overdose. Crazy stuff! She also had heart failure, rhabdomyolysis, and alcoholic liver disease. What a mess indeed. The meds sure are interesting in a case like this because there are so many problems to deal with.

Rotations - Case 1: Bacterial Meningitis

Today was day one of rotations at the hospital. I'm spending the first two weeks at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital which is just up the road from our place. It's a general hospital and they do pretty much everything including emergency. Its a public hospital which means it's in a dilapidated state - it's seriously shocking. Anyway, I had a great day there and learned a lot. The case I wrote up involved a 17 year old male with bacteria meningitis. Untreated meningitis is lethal and can kill the patient within an hours of seeing symptoms which means presumptive treatment is key and definietly saved this guys life. In fact, he left work early because he wasn't feeling well and an hour later he called the ambulance from home. By the time he arrived at the hospital he had gotten a lot worse - his GCS reading changed from 13 to 3 in 30 minutes. Rapid decline. Anyway the ceftriaxone (2g by IV) they gave based on the symptoms saved his life. I had to pick a case and write it up then do a 20 minute presentation in the afternoon. It went really well.
Tomorrow will be a new case.
We also have a clinical meeting at 8:00 AM so i'll invovle getting up nice and early.

Rotations

Today was basically an introduction to the 8 weeks of hospital rotations this term. So far it sounds really interesting. We're on the wards and not in the dispensary. This means we do rounds with the multidisciplinary teams and learn from real cases. Should be great.

One of the hospitals where I happen to have a two week rotation is a mental hospital. I'm sure there will be some crazy things going on there. We have been advised that neck ties are not to be worn during the rotation at the mental hospital *gulp*.

On an completelty differnet topic... I'm feeling much better. However, Danielle is now throwing up. Hopefully she feels better tomorrow. 

Last Day of Summer

Today is my last day of "summer" as a student, or at least for this degree.

I'm spending the day getting ready for school and relaxing. It's supposed to be 33*C today which means its really too hot to do much.

After arriving home from Singapore I fell ill and I'm still recovering. I've never thrown up so many times in a day. It was terrible. Currently, I'm feeling a lot better but still not 100%.

Singapore

First and last update for this trip back to Perth. We didn't have internet access in San Fransisco so I wasn't able to update. Our plane ended up going to Hong Kong even though our tickets said direct to Singapore.

We've spent the past few hours wandering around this massive airport.

We're both really exhausted.

I'll update this once I wake up tomorrow morning.

I just got conformation from my friend Stephen that he will be picking us up at the airport so that's good news.