Sick...again

Spartacus: Blood and Sand...my main diversion from studying

So to prove the old belief that stress-->lowers immunity-->leads to illness...I am sick once again. Except my battle is not with a virus or bacterial infection it is once again with my self..ie. Allergies. I am now on a heavy dose of prednisone for the next 10 days, starting with 6 pills a day for the next 4 days and then tapering down the dosages. As a result I not only feel fatigued, have a headache I also have arthritic pain in my knee joints. I am officially an 80 year old woman. God, I hate medical school sometimes. It is nice to be able to go to bed at 10 pm every night though, I haven't had this sleep schedule since I was like 9 years old.
In other news, if I do make it through the next 2 weeks of hell I will have survived my first semester of medical school in the 3rd world! Yippee!
If not, well that thought haunts the back of my mind every day. In fact I have heart palpitations just thinking about the consequences. Scary!
My goal is and will be for the next 12 months to pass and earn my freedom back to the U.S.! It's a crazy goal to have, but it's the price you pay for going to school in the middle of the Caribbean Ocean.
My goal for this weekend is to catch up on the massive amounts of lecture materials that I couldn't get during my bout of illness/allergic attack. So far I have a lot of physio to do...bleh. And even more anatomy..double bleh.
These are two of my favorite subjects but the profs who taught them for the past few weeks were awful. Especially the anatomy prof. I'm convinced they hire the worst profs for this subject..which is lame considering this is the first time most of us have studied gross anatomy.
We had our last dissection on Monday of the semester! Hooray! But I have a mocktical (mock anatomy practical) tomorrow, yes, on a Saturday at 11am to prepare me for the real thing on Tuesday.
The anat practical is supposed to be cumulative (everything from shoulders to toes, literally) but luckily that's not feasible as it would take 2 days to get through with our class size.
So instead we "only" have to know everything from the waist down + heart +pleura + lungs (so all thorax). Fun times. I did get to perform the internal heart dissection which was wicked cool! Hearts are amazing and squishy too! Love it. Lungs a pretty gross though, especially because our cadaver was a smoker in life and his lungs are very large and very black. Blech.

Wish me luck on the end of this part of my journey! Hopefully I will be healthy before my exams come around! Ta ta for now!

More later...

P.

Saturday in Roseau

Woke up at 7 am today to meet up with Swati, Vishaka and Sara to head down to Roseau, the country's capital city. The ride was free, provided by Ross U and was fairly smooth. We passed through the mountainous jungle terrain and by the edge of the coast over looking the Caribbean Sea.

When we got there our friends wanted to just shop so Swati and I split up. We went into a cathedral that was built in 1864. It was nice; stain glass murals, painted depictions and some gold-leaf trim around the ceiling (nothing compared to the cathedrals I saw through out Peru).

The rest of the day was spent...

1. Eating lunch with Dr. Beevers (Chris) at a Chinese restaurant. It was the best chinese food I have had here so far; pricey but worth it! I had Miso soup + curry chicken...and plenty of leftovers for dinner!

2. Bought some really shiny, awesome flats at "Bijoux" the only upper-class store I've seen so far on this island for a mere 25 US bucks.

3. Hanging out with the Spiceman ("l'homme") and Cameron a young local guy who sells the spices. I tried their home-distilled rum: passion fruit and coconut flavored. After building a repoire with both the men and buying a small bottle of the coconut rum I asked Cameron if I could see the pet boa constrictors he has in the cellar. He had 4 of them and also a coy pond. The Spiceman, whose name terms out to be Serge, can be described as a modern-day pirate. He's charming and has long dreads that go down to his back, a gold earring on each ear, a gold-bar eyebrow piercing, and small gold rings imbedded in his dreads. He was very charming and knowledgable about Indian culture. We had fun talking to both of the men. The Spiceman really liked Swati (a little too much, haha) and he soon took to me when I asked if I could try the boa that they had the on menu. He showed me how he cooked and all the spices that went into the curry/sauce: coconut milk, his secret spice mix, chili pepper, thyme, garlic, ginger, and sprinkled some nutmeg on top for flavor. The sauce was gourmet. The snake, was chewy and reminded me of under-cooked or raw octopus. Not my favorite and I couldn't taste the meat at all because of the strong curry. He said he prob should have just fried the snake and put the sauce on the side. Next time I guess!
  

We took pictures with the Spiceman and continued on our way. What an awesome experience, hanging out with the locals. Swati and I are definately coming back!

4. Bought frozen food (Lean Cuisine, Hot pockets) from the Safeway; sad but I'm really excited about it! It's so hard to find basic things where I live.

At the end of the day we took a local bus back to Picard for 9 ECs.

All in all it was a great day. We definately felt refreshed and satisfied with taking a small vacation away from this tiny strip of land we live on. Hope we have another chance to go back soon! It's such a relief for me to know that we Can leave this tiny town and go somewhere different and fun. It gave me a real sense of balance and the whole experienced was very chill and relaxing for me.

More later!

Salybia Mission Clinic

Today, Saturday, I woke up at 6:30 am to get ready to leave for my first experience working at the Salybia Mission Clinic, located in "Carib territory" in a town called Salybia that is up in the jungle-filled mountains.
The transportation was an old 1970s bus with no suspension and sitting on the seat on top of the wheel turned out to be a bad idea. I got motion sickness halfway through and my friend had to have the driver pull over to the side of the road to vomit. Everyone turns out was taking dramamine.
The drive is 1 1/2 hours and the route starts by passing through Portsmouth and passing the airport, climbing the steep (one lane) mountain road to the jungle.
The infrastructre was very impressive, a good size yellow building, made of concrete not aluminum. It was nicer than my PP clinic back in Austin in that sense. It was also new.
Dr. Andrews was the only physician working today and she specializes in Emergency medicine. This became apparent during two of the cases. She was great at allowing us students to do the entire patient history, present it to her in front of the rest of the group and allow us to treat the patient if possible.
My partner and I had a patient who came in with a large ulcer on the medial side of his ankle. He had had the ulcer for 23 years and it started small but now was significantly large and covered in necrotic tissue. My partner and I got to use a scalpel to scrape away the necrotic tissue, thoroughly clean the ulcer, and dress it.
Another patient came in with a large, infected abcess on this hand. The students working with him had to make a small incision and drain the pus. This was very painful for the patient and I felt incredibley bad for him and tried to comfort him.
Other students saw patients with more minor or general health concerns. We ate our home-packed lunches and by the time we were ready to leave it was already 3pm. We returned to campus around 5pm and I had slept on the way back after borrowing some dramamine from a friend.
I then walked to the Diwali puja and dinner with Swati and Nitisha and after returned to my apartment tired but content.



More later!