The surgeons were literally edging away from the table

Things you don't want to hear the anesthetist say in the operating theatre:
"Is he still alive?"
"Does he have a pulse?"
"Can you feel the carotid for me?"
"Feel the damn carotid!"

The patient was ultimately fine, but that was the first time I'd ever seen an anesthetic "go wrong." We all had a destressing laugh after about how close to doing CPR we all were. Good times.

Ahhh.

Singing our way across Kakadu and Litchfield

Well two weeks without an update, but there have been a lot of public holidays. So I feel I owe you nothing.

Uni/work is much the same. Sadly I'm ready for this rotation to be over so that I can move on. Luckily I have an amusing partner in crime on this rotation who enjoys a good giggle about the quality of the rotation. I have used the time to do an audit on kids with things in their ears. It turns out - there are a few.

So what have I been doing? Yeah I've very much been holidaying. Pictures? Okay!

The traveling party

Apparently if you run one of these down with a hire care, you don't have to pay the excess if you give them the horns.

A tribute to waterfalls: Part I

 

Another week in the territory!

Well another week in the unfrozen north. I think I could best describe the week as variable.

ENT surgery is an odd rotation. It's not like other surgical rotations, where people tend to have an operation and take a few days to get better. ENT patients, at least here in Darwin, tend to have their operation and then leave on the day or the next morning. It makes for easy management but boring for a student. Luckily this isn't my only surgical rotation for the year.

The other slightly annoying thing is that when you're operating in someones nose or throat, only one person really gets a great view of it - the surgeon. So watching the operation also tends to be... boring. So unfortunately there have been some long periods of idleness and boredom this week. Not a great thing when you're trying to make a good impression. I'll be honest I snuck out of one afternoon theater session this week and vanished.

The consulting sessions have at least been pretty good. Though the big big boss is a bit of a hard axe. We sat in on a session where he went around the room grilling his minions (but ignoring the students thankfully.) The new registrar was drilled mercilessly. I felt bad, but I guess he's paid to be drilled. Unfortunately (again) the big big boss is the one who fills out my evaluation - event though he has the least to do with me of all the doctors. It's cruel and unusual. The Flinders way.

Okay, I'm done complaining. I'll suck that up for another month.

So we went out on another outreach trip. Unfortunately I'm waiting for my pictures and movies to upload, so I'll put some more photos up with the story. In short we flew in to a little town called Oenpelli, pretty much in Kakadu national park. And it was beautiful.

More to come...

A week in the territory

Well, for those of you following along at home. I've survived my first week in the NT. I'm up here doing an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) surgical rotation. Not my first choice, but it's how it all panned out. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Started the week off by finding out that everyone was on a conference in Queensland, except for the one registrar left to man the fort. That registrar looked eerily familiar, and would later figure out that she was one of the interns in that 'young doctors' tv show.

SO for the first three days there were no operations, no consults and a single inpatient. Can't win them all I guess. I used the time to adjust to the climate instead.

Yesterday we got to go on an outreach trip. I didn't realise these happened, or that I would get to tag along. But it was a nice little adventure. Basically some of the team fly out to a remote community and set up camp for the day. They see whoever turns up. Sometimes none, sometimes many. Appointments I'm learning are meaningless. Everything happens in its own time.

It was an interesting little town from what I saw from the drive to the clinic, an 1100km flight from Darwin. It was the kind of town you see on the news; where kids and dogs wander the red dirt streets, litter periodically blowing across the road. Having said that the people were nice and friendly and we had a good day.

We then flew back to Darwin, catching some nice view of Kakadu as the sun began to set. It's really very beautiful. I'm sorry that my phone does it no justice.

And that's it for now. I'll let you know when I actually see some surgery!