What a Week!

This week we had a lot of people fly into Repulse.
Last Sunday, our upper year classmate Ian came in to dogsit Bill's dogs for 2 weeks, Timmy's donuts in hand. Unfortunately, his flight came in a bit after 1:40, so we missed the beginning of the Brazil vs Ivory Coast game. I also made hummus for the first time that day, which was pretty exciting for me.

On Monday it was National Aboriginal Day and the RCMP had a hot dog lunch to celebrate. Some of the hot dogs got REALLY burnt, so much so that even Maria's dog, Henry, refused to eat them until Shane, the RCMP officer, tore off the burnt part.

Then on Tuesday, Myrna left and I missed the chance to say goodbye, which I was quite disappointed about since I'm leaving the day she comes back. On the bright side, I met the GP, Murray Lee and Sarah Brown, the Occupational Therapist, who came in late the day before. At the end of the day, I also met Annaliese (sp?), the Aussie nurse who is replacing Myrna.
Since Tuesdays are well baby days, I gave an injection to a baby, but I upset the mom because I took too long and I can't remember now, but I must not have been holding the muscle with my other hand because the needle came up when I was trying to withdraw to make sure I didn't hit a vessel instead of muscle, so she got really upset. I won't be making that mistake again...
In the evening, I got a call from Ian, who had gotten bitten by some of the dogs while he was trying to break up a fight to protect Hudson since he's still recovering from his injury. So Corey and I went down to help out so that Ian could go down to the health centre to get his tetanus shot. Oh and I forgot to mention, we had ANOTHER visitor come in that day. Craig, the health inspector had conveniently come that day, so we called him to figure out what's supposed to be done in this situation. Since Ian wasn't sure exactly which dogs had bit him, all of the had to be hooked onto short chains by law in case of rabies even though Ian had given all the dogs rabies shots himself last year when they were newborn pups.
So back to the dog. When we looked at Hudson's thigh, all the sutures had come loose. Luckily, we had the expertise of Annaliese, who has her own sled dogs and told us that her vet recommended for dogs with injuries like Hudson's to just let it heal on its own without cleaning it and continue them on antibiotics. Corey also had to put a "Victorian collar" (those cones they put around their necks) on him again to stop Hudson from licking his wound. To not much surprise, Hudson managed to get it off by morning.

Wednesday was my one day to shadow Murray and it was pretty sweet. He's a really good teacher. He talked about how the biggest mistakes doctors make are overestimating the effectiveness of drugs, underestimating the negative effects of drugs, overprescribing in healthy people and underprescribing in unhealthy people.
I also got a refresher on musculoskeletal exams on a patient with knee pain, which made me a bit nostalgic of my time in Sydney learning the McMurray test. We also saw a patient with mitral valve replacement. Her case was a very good example of how important it is to do a proper physical exam. She had a loud murmur, but it kept getting missed because no one would ever get her to remove her bra, which blocked out the murmur. Murray used to get students to listen to her heart before the valve replacement and they would make the same mistake of not getting her to remove her bra. He had to ask them to listen to the mitral valve again, properly and they'd be shocked the loud murmur they suddenly heard. Murray asked me if I could here the new valve. I said no, but I actually did without realizing it. I thought it was the sound of someone's watch ticking. When I realized the ticking was the mechanical valve, it totally blew my mind.

On Thursday, I hung out with Sarah, the OT. I saw a girl with Down Syndrome, who was super cute and really smart. Sarah tested her fine motor skills, getting her to copy her in making vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, which she aced. Then she tried to get her to copy her in jumping over a piece of paper and standing on one foot. I think by then she got a bit shy with all of us watching her, so she just stood there and watched Sarah.
In the evening, we went to Shane's and watched Gabriel Iglesias' special I'm not Fat, I'm Fluffy, which was HILARIOUS. I definitely need to find more of his stuff. Then I teamed up with Murray and Sarah to play Cranium. At first we were way behind everyone else and Murray thought we had no chance of winning since everyone else was on the fast track. But of course, being the superior team, we ended up winning! Woot woot!

And that's pretty much all the excitement of the week.