Week three in ICU has been a real mixture. Some of the really sick patients are getting better, which is fabulous. However, there are a couple of really sad cases where metastatic cancer and massive cerebral bleeds have put up a better fight than the combined forces of the patients and medics. I’m learning loads… the teaching sessions of the week have been: management of severe brain injury, non-invasive ventilation, airway management, renal physiology and a journal review about the use of certain antipsychotics for delirium in ICU. I’ve also felt surgical emphysema and stuck my finger through someone’s chest cavity to feel his lung (we were putting a chest drain in, I hadn’t just stabbed them!). I’ve also sat in on a family conference, where the consultant had to break bad news. This was interesting to see as it was done with great sensitivity and care. We also did a couple of simulated senarios. My role in each was ‘medical student’, which was great as I just did as I was told and did CPR and put fake cannulae in. In both cases the ‘patient’ survived, although this may have been due more to luck than anything else in the first senario, as none of us had realized that the oxygen was not turned on!
In addition, one of the Residents is Chinese and brought in a 1000 year old egg for us to try. I will now quote Wikipedia to give you an idea of what this entails:
Century egg, also known as preserved egg, hundred-year egg, thousand-year egg, thousand-year-old egg, and millennium egg (or Pidan in Mandarin), is a Chinese cuisine ingredient made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice hulls for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing. Through the process, the yolk becomes a dark green, cream-like substance with a strong odor of sulphur and ammonia, while the white becomes a dark brown, transparent jelly with little flavor. The transforming agent in the century egg is its alkaline material, which gradually raises the pH of the egg to around 9, 12, or more.[1] This chemical process breaks down some of the complex, flavorless proteins and fats, which produces a variety of smaller flavorful compounds. Some eggs have patterns near the surface of the egg white that are likened to pine branches.
I definitely will not be trying one again- the aftertaste of mouldy egg will stay with me for a long time!
Thursday night was out with the girls for amazing tapas and Twilight. The tapas restaurant was fabulous- we has scallops and octopus and meatballs and several other things I can’t remember anymore! And sangria, which was another first for me. The cinema was lovely, a bit like Zefferelis in Ambleside. You can take a glass of wine in with you, which is very civilised.
Friday night was dinner in China town before the Dutch game. We ate in the food court, where there must have been at least a thousand different meals from various different outlets. Not good for someone as indecisive as me!! My seafood Thai curry was amazing, if hot enough to make me weep.
I shall write again soon, and will eventually get round to writing some postcards.
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