HeartbeatOk, so I haven’t actually blogged for a month. Which is actually average for me. I’m currently in Hastings on my O&G attachment (Woman’s stuff). I passed my exams, went on a camping road trip around the north island (except the Far north) with Tom and Nathan, turned 24 and then headed off on my first placement.
I’m staying in accommodation across the road from the hospital, which is mainly housing medical students on elective and one other TI (6th year med student) from Wellington too. We were having a blast until 4 of them left on Monday. Since then it’s only been me, Nisha (the other TI) and Emily, a final year British medical student. Still it’s good fun though and we had some good times with Marko and Melissa, a Serbian Canadian and a Trinidadian from Queensland, and Luke and Laura from Britain. It has been nice to flat with people again. My Scrubs DVDs have also had a good going over- that is so cliché!
Some of the fun things we did was going to the Farmer’s market, an organic food market run by farmers and local produce makers. Things like fresh veges (the mushrooms and snow peas are excellent), fresh specialty bread, and cheese. Nisha, Emily, and I went to Napier on Sunday afternoon and enjoyed cold drinks from Esquires and went to Ocean spa. Esquires is like a fair trade version of Starbucks- it’s really flash and modern, but they use fairtrade stuff. Yummy and morally good- nothing gives the ego a boost like it. Ocean spa is the local hot pools by the beach. Just lazing in hot water in the sun with friends is excellent. Oh yeah, we also went to see “Borat”. I’ll agree with the Sunday Star Times in that it is very good acting to get people to do what they did/say what they said whilst staying in character, but wow, some of those scenes were pretty disturbing. I actually couldn’t look at the wrestling scene, it all got too much.
I’ve also caught up with Gus, er Dr Turnbull, who’s also working here. He took me along to one of the house surgeon welcome parties, which was really cool. I think he’s now flatting out in Napier- where most of the doctors live because it’s way nicer than Hastings. To prove this point we went to watch the rugby league on Saturday night at the “best bar in Hastings” with some friends, James and Anne. We were asked to leave at 11 O’clock because the bar owner wanted to close. We then drove round Hastings, finding only 2 other bars open and only the dodgy one showing the league. Weird man.
I should probably talk a bit about work. I’m starting to find my feet around the hospital. I’ve gone from having no idea what so ever about what’s going on to having a vague idea and being able to do a whole lot of stuff, especially when someone else tells me what to do and then I do it. Still I’d like to do some more stuff with patients and actually try solve some problems- i.e. take proper histories and do proper exams. Getting better at jabbing people with needles though ;).
It feels weird that exams were only a month ago today. Just how much my life has changed amazes me. One month ago, my entire life was focused on exams and whether I’d admit it or not, I was stressed. Now I feel a lot more relaxed, and seem to be a lot slacker. I’ve studied once since I came here and that was tonight. Oh and I’ve put post-it flags on all my journal articles that I’m meant to read. I have tried to start running again, and playing in the social soccer games, so the free time isn’t entirely taken up with socializing and watching bad TV.
If anyone does feel like praying for me, I’m really struggling with Church and Christianity in general. Like it’s just not important to a lot of my life. I still believe in God, and Christ, and being obedient to ‘those promptings’. But a lot of Church just annoys me and I’m uncertain about a lot of things. I know this sounds a bit much and really vague, but I’ve only really been able to start to explore it since exams finished. Wise people around me would be most appreciated.
Thanks, and take care.
Brendan
