Monday was a shitty day for most of the world; watching footage of a
fatal SMURD helicopter accident on the East coast of Romania put a
dampener on dinner discussion, during which we were receiving updates on
the Sydney siege. Hearing about the Pakistan school shooting as well
just made us acutely conscious of the fragility of human life and
appreciative of the integral part we get to play in restoring human
health. We did, after all learn a lot today and are extending our
training a lot by being here in another system on the other side of the
world. In the hospital I saw my first arrest and was ready to jump on the chest doing CPR but her heart rhythm became incompatible with life and unfortunately the Dr had to call it. Jason and I did some x-ray analysis and though we at first didn't notice anything unusual we found that there was significant cardiomegaly. I need to master the memory tool for x-ray analysis I think! Since we can't always be involved practically when in Resus, we read patient histories. We saw the unfamiliar term "Bronchopneumonia" and found out that it means disease that is confined by interlobular septa but "interstitial pneumonia" is not as confluent or dense. Another thing we saw was that their glucose measurements here are very different. We pretty much have to divide by 18 to get a number that means anything to us. Our day was full of stroke and pneumonia patients really. This means we saw a lot of the Neuro Assessment team who were checking things like orientations, babinski reflex and unilateral weakness. It was pretty confronting to see the way someone's body changes when they are kept alive by a ventilator just because brain death is not yet verified.
Aushi arrived at the Majestic to meet us for dinner and we tried to think of cheerful things to chat about; one of which was "who was the lunch lady at the cafe today?" We were very grateful that we'd had the nice lady who looks out for us walking into the hospital cafe and then immediately takes over position at the counter calling "don't worry, I help you!". She is really amazing and whenever she works our lunch-ordering is a much smoother experience. Even learning to say the right Romanian prices and pronounce the food (which is labelled) is a big challenge! I'm sure there were other positive things we remembered, but that was a big one!
Aushi announced we were going ice skating for the evening which transformed the sombre atmosphere and not long after we arrived at a winter wonderland where lights and music gave us almost a magic feel. None of us Aussies were particularly adept at the sport so there was an extra thing to point us out as different from everyone else on the rink but we had a great time! Tori and James had a spectacular collision not to mention the million stacks the rest of us had but they were accompanied by a lot of laughs. Yamesh (James) tried to coach us into skating backwards which Tori and Hannah did a remarkable job of but I think our friend Raszvan, a Romanian med student and ambulance volunteer, was amused by my attempts! Yanosh (Jason) persevered through a high degree of pessimism and got out on his own in the end so I think I can say the night was a success!
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| loved it so much some of us stayed for a second session! |
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