Angio and Allergies

It’s been some time since I have written on the blog; Melissa is much better than I am when it comes to writing understandable paragraphs. But I have had some time in new places, I have seen new things and I have had a bit of an epiphany. Before getting into the happenings I wanted to take a second and say hello to our new friends in Alaska and Malaysia, Melissa and I greatly appreciate your support and we hope to hear from you again soon. Thanks to everyone that has written messages and given advice, it’s always great to hear other ideas and opinions. Finally, I would like to thank those of you that have donated to our blog page. Every dollar helps and we appreciate every cent.

And on to my somewhat scrambled thoughts and experiences:

Life in another country has been a massive learning experience, both from a career standpoint and a personal standpoint. Organizing this final year has been, and continues to be a learning process. Simple things like heading into the grocery store for a few things is something we took for granted in the states. I have to work so much harder on the logistics of everyday life (I appreciate the convenience of a car so much more now). In order to have enough hours in the day Melissa and I have to spend a lot more time planning and researching how and when to do things. Checking bus schedules and time tables is a must; my randomness has come back to bite us once or twice (or thrice). I remember a speech a Chief Master Sergeant once gave during my NCO training courses. The main idea was that a good military leader needs to have “Rigid Flexibility.” It sounds a bit strange but it makes sense (if you don’t think about it) and it’s a theme that reoccurs in my life over and over. Rigid Flexibility means that you make sure you have all the information you need to achieve the objective including the ability to change plans or scrap them all together. It’s giving yourself the leeway to change direction and go with the flow instead of letting the change throw you off track. The same concept can be applied to radiography, I think. Its very easy to become over whelmed (especially as a student in a foreign hospital, where you don’t have much experience) when the patients are flowing in and the request forms are backing up and have begun to look like some abstract piece of art work. Panic, at this point, leads to mistakes, poor image quality and more work in the long run. It’s far better to remember that “you can’t image them all at once.” Have Rigid Flexibility and evaluate the situation and then continue to do your job, helping one patient at a time to the best of your abilities. In the end, that’s all you can do.

I spent this past week in Angiography, were I was given an eye opening look into vascular health (I am a bit more motivated now to try and keep my vessels as healthy as possible). My time in the department was great. I really enjoy being part of a small team that is directly impacting the patient. Radiography is fantastic but you often lose sight of the bigger picture. In the angio suite, you are actually acting on the patient’s quality of life.

During our time at the Oregon Institute of technology, we had the chance to take a course on Cardiovascular Interventional technologies. I have to say the course was difficult and very overwhelming, but very interesting. It was a spark for me. Here in South Australia, the Cardiovascular Interventional Suite (or Cath Lab) is a much more specific area. They deal with the heart issues specifically and allow the angiography suite to take the rest of the vascular cases.

Being in the angio room as a physician inserts a thin catheter into a vessel that only measure a couple of millimeters wide is truly amazing. Looking at the screen and seeing a moving anatomical picture of the process, in real time, is fantastic. Couple that with the amount of knowledge you need to have about the anatomy, the equipment and the supplies needed and you have a very challenging work place. I am looking forward to spending more time in the angiography suite and learning to be a bit more useful. For the most part I just sort of stood in the room, moved a few things, and asked a lot of questions. But I really enjoyed my week.

Outside of work, I have found that I might actually have an allergy. That’s so frustrating to say! I can remember teasing my mum about how bad her allergies got when we had to buck hay for the horses. And now karma has come back around and found me. I am not entirely sure at this point but I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have some Australian hay-fever. I have been sick, again, for the past few weeks; suffering from some sinus congestion, coughing, sneezing and headaches. I just got over a cold or flu or something last month and then bam, sick again!

The weather had taken a turn for the better and Melissa and I went out for dinner and a movie after work. After walking around the downtown city center for a few minutes, my nose started running like a broken faucet. Shortly after that my eyes began to itch and then the headache set in. I couldn’t believe it. Sick again. Luckily I have been able to take a heap of different medications and I have found one that has helped a bit. I am praying that I will feel well enough to make it back into the gym again. I miss being able to jump in the car and head to the gym whenever I want. Workouts in the states had just started getting good, too. Looking at the bright side of things, this is a good time to start over and refocus on more specific compound movements.

Life moves on and speeds up every day. Thanks again for stopping by. Be sure to check back soon, Melissa is working on another one of her intriguing and inspiring posts.

Chad

Melissa's Letters to Mum

Dear Mum,

The package you sent has finally arrived after a whole month. Everything inside was safe and sound - nothing broken or leaking.

Thank you!

Last weekend ended up being quite nice.  Dale and Linda, a couple from work, invited us over for dinner.  Michael, having been bragging about his delectable spring roll recipe, decided this was the perfect opportunity for us to make them. He picked us up that afternoon, and we went to his house where we learned the secret recipe and techniques behind the tasty golden treats.  After sampling a few with the rest of the family to ensure they were ‘edible’, we went with him and his wife to Dale and Linda’s.  After devouring our appetizers, they presented us with some homemade Moroccan food – which was quite a new taste for Chad and I!  Lemon meatballs, and some spicy braised beef with sweet potatoes.  Not complete, of course, without bread, cold carrots, some salty beets, couscous and rice.  It was all quite fantastic.

After getting a tour of their insanely nice house overlooking the faraway city and ocean sunset, we had some amazing desserts (including my first Aussie-go at Lemon bars, made entirely without measuring utensils!) we watched a movie in their ridiculous, equally insanely nice “theatre-room”.  Well, I fought to stay awake for the first 10-15 minutes, but I was woke up to the credits rolling and everyone commenting about it, so I’m assuming everyone else watched it.

Sunday we made it down to the beach, while the sun was out and it was quite lovely. People were coming out of the woodwork, and we even got some tips from an old gentleman who approached us, and began talking about seashell hunting, and how we should look for the ones with rough backs because they have pearly insides. “You need to turn them all over” he said, and even chased us down the beach ten minutes later to show us an example that he had found.  I found a purple starfish, and was quite happy with just that.

We walked along the beach in the surf, enjoying the sand between our toes, and the occasional icy splash of the ocean rinsing it all away until we reached the jetty, then walked up to the store and back home.  I really can’t wait till summer!

Also – yes. I am still sick.  I woke up Wednesday unable to breathe through my nose, and with so much pressure in my head that it was unbearable to even sit up.  Needless to say I didn’t go to work.  It took hours for me to finally get out of bed, and once I did, I quickly found myself on the floor, unable to make it all the way back to my warm sheets. I was quite disappointed with myself for missing out on a day of Level 2 work, and made my best efforts to return on Thursday and today.  I still feel like snot, but at least it’s the weekend now.

I did get some medicine, but the thing is that here in Australia, in order to buy most medicines, you must go to the “chemist” and speak with someone about your symptoms, who then gives you a couple options (or none, sometimes) to choose from. This wouldn’t be such a terrible thing except for the fact that I like to read through ALL the bottles and ‘diagnose’ myself that way, if you will.  And they do NOT have my fantastic Robitussin and Liquid Tylenol cold and sinus here.  So, this way, you end up buying $60 worth of medicines before something starts to work (or maybe by this time it’s your body fending it off itself?)

I can’t taste, and I can’t smell.  My Lymph nodes in my neck and armpits are swollen, and the pressure in my head is so great that I can’t bend over to tie my shoes. I think I will just take it easy this weekend and hope that things get better. If nothing else, I only have $40 to spend in meds before I should start feeling better, right?

Love and Miss you,

Melissa

The Emergency Department

My 2 weeks in E.D. has swiftly come to an end. And, after all of that, I must say that I am a bit disappointed.  I have come to believe that I am plagued by a curse, a curse that leaves every department I rotate through as slow as a slug on a winter evening.

Each morning was begun with ICU rounds, where the lot of us packed up two trolleys with cassettes and plastic bags (and my box of nitrile gloves – I swear I am going to start a campaign to have them standard alongside latex ones on level 3!) and we picked up our portable machines, and marched our way through the 3 horseshoe shaped ICU wards looking for our little yellow cards, signaling that the patient in that particular bed needed a morning chest x-ray.  On my first day of this, I felt incredibly useless and in the way.  I was working with people who I had not previously worked with, and despite my mentioning numerous times “this is my first day up here, I’m not sure what I should be doing”, a couple people continued to assume I should know it all.  Not the mention the new breed of patients I became acquainted with: young women in comas with broken necks, middle-aged men with breathing tubes and aortic pressure pumps, folks with H1N1 and fungal pneumonia, older patients with cerebral palsy, attempted suicides – the whole gamut!

Aside from these exciting ventures, though, my first week remained quite uneventful, with lots of chest x-rays, and lots of meeting new people who weren’t all quite so fond of… well, maybe it was the American bit?  Not sure.  I was feeling quite defeated come that first weekend. I was frustrated, exhausted, and feeling quite low.

I was determined not to let the second week be so bad. Monday morning I got my box of nitriles, and took charge of one of the carts.  I was happy to see faces I recognized from my first month at the hospital, and I tried to be as helpful as I could. I started putting my name on exams, determined to try and comp them, and I actually felt like I was ‘allowed’ to try positioning.  It paid off, and I got to take some x-rays of a nail through a finger, I went to surgery and saw a gentleman’s Sphincter of Oddi give birth to two of the most enormous gallstones I’ve ever seen, and I was able to squeeze in a ORIF of a wrist. 

And of course, just as quickly as I had started to finally feel useful, and was finally starting to enjoy myself, the week was over. I felt as though I was being sent on ‘time out’ and had to go to Level 2 after the weekend.

5 Lessons in 5 Weeks

In our short time here in Australia, we have learned quite a bit. Here are some of the most important lessons we’ve learned to date:

1.Googlemaps is FAR superior to mapquest. I cannot emphasize this enough.

2. I will be the first to admit how underappreciated drinking fountains and level (even/flat) sidewalks are.

3. If you need help sticking to a diet, sell your car.

4. If you need help sticking to a diet, don’t move to a town full of delicious sweets around every corner.

5. Prepare, Prepare, Prepare! For smells, experiences, sights, odd questions, outlandish requests, a topsy-turvy money market – for everything! Preparation is underrated.

Mexican Food and A Little German Town

I can’t think of a better weekend than waking up to crisp, clear, cloud-free blue skies in Adelaide. It was our first taste of warm weather, and it was hard to not be full of smiles, and excitement to GTF out of the indoors! Saturday was an adventure as I purchased something I honestly never thought I would in my entire lifetime: a push-bike helmet. Yes, I am embarrassed to even admit that I own one, even if it is against the law to ride my shiny new bike without one! Chad, too – although he opted to go for the slightly less stupid-looking one for a heftier chunk of change. Me? Cheap-o special-k one. Oh well.

We also explored the SA museum and took a little side trip into the ritzier “North Adelaide” across the river. And now, if you didn’t know this before, allow me to explain that Chad and I are very much food-people. While most people follow their noses, we follow our tummy’s. We plan most trips (and I’m serious here) by restaurants we want to try. For example, a couple weekends ago, we planned our entire Saturday around a restaurant called “The Burger Foundry”. I say this to somewhat explain our reason for finally traversing the River Torens: A delicious “Yakitori Takumi” review in the local Advertiser! We walked blocks and blocks looking for it, finally finding it, and… it was closed. The Mexican Restaurant (yes, Americans, MEXICAN food in Australia). Not just ANY Mexican restaurant either! An authentic Mexican Restaruant. And I will leave the experience at this: I can not tell you how odd it is to be an American, eating at a Mexican restaurant in Australia surrounded entirely by non-english speaking Asians.

Sunday was even better, as our “House-mate” was kind enough to treat us to a trip into the Hills and a stroll through Handorf. Handorf is a little German town up in the lush Adelaide Hills that is mainly a tourist-town offering waaayy too many tasty sweets and German treats! We over-spent just a bit on delicious fudge, carrot cake, bananna cake, and carmel slices. Then we stopped by The Old Pump House Pub where the 3 of us relaxed with a drink and – at least for me – a delicious Kangaroo fillet atop some sweet potato mash and au-jus!

Gone in a Flash!

Week 3 and 4 have gone by in a jiffy. Thinking back on it just today made my jaw drop, realizing that already we have been working for almost a month – 4 weeks!! It hardly seems as though it has been that long.

Our weekends have remained relatively uneventful, aside from our night at Michael’s getting the “Pizza Oven Experience”. It was quite a treat this weekend, as Michael showed off his famed “Pizza Oven”: hand built over the course of years, and heated up bright and early that morning to be ready for our lunch-dinner delight! We had been hearing about this pizza oven endlessly for the previous week, and the hype was definitely building for some tasty blow-your-mind pizzas. And, well, they were quite fantastic! It also gave me the edge in the future argument with Chad about whether we should have a pizza-oven in our backyard (:

The same has been true at work, as well. Chad and I got our first taste of Radiology outside of level 2. Chad went to the Emergency Department (ED) and I went to Southern Imaging (SI) in Flinders Private Hospital. It was an interesting journey learning new equipment, working with new people, a different type of patient, and in a different environment. For me it was a bit slow, and I was able to sneek in to the Radiologist’s booth – or as they call them here “Registrars” – not to be confused with “radiographers”, which is what Chad and I are. Chad described his experience as more “Eye-opening” than anything. He encountered patients in agonizing pain, and the neonatal babies for the first time.

Next week we switch places – Chad goes to SI, and I go to my long-awaited ED!