it's been a packed week. dean's meeting, night duty, simulation training. haven't done as much reading as i should have. sigh.

dean's meeting threw no surprises, though i think some of us are still wondering about the electives. no decision has yet been made whether to keep our elective period the same as before or to combine them to have a super long four-month stretch. applications for electives have already opened i believe, and indeed those for a few universities have already closed! so the longer this thing remains inconclusive (like the histo results for one of the patients we know), i guess our elective plans have to be put on hold.

night duty was only vaguely interesting, perhaps because we're used to the medicine night duties which consists of clerking and blood taking. we started with yet another rounds, then clerked three patients briefly (they were all in varying amounts of pain and discomfort) before finding ourselves with nothing to do, not even bloods! we followed a patient down to the basement to do a scan, then ran back to the SICU when some patient's blood pressure crashed. she was asystole on arrival. after that there wasn't very much to do, and we realised that if we didn't go back to the lounge by ten, we wouldn't be able to retrieve our bags, so we left. hope to see more proceedures on my next duty.

we had simulation training at the nursing school today, which was intially a little dry (how many units of insulin? of kcl? of normosaline?) until we got to the mannequin station. the three cheeky boys from my cg did all sorts of funny things to make us laugh. hilarious. we all got to "intubate" the mannequin, which was pretty hard because the neck was so stiff. crazy. my hand was all red from trying to view the vocal cords.

it's been two weeks into our surgery posting, and the three Jays have noticed that we're starting to use swear words (eg. wah lau, s***) more often, very unlady-like. surgeons have no qualms about using such words in front of everybody don't they? heh. and morning rounds are such a rush that they sometimes utter funny things. one reg told an elderly man, "uncle yao ambulate hor, yao ambulate", to which the patient nodded solemnly. today my tutor, torn between trying to give advice to the patient and teaching us at the same time, told a lady," auntie if you don't move around, your veins will thrombose and you'll have a pulmonary embolism!" it was too much for her to handle, so she just stared at him. muaha. he later rephrased that of course, but it's sometimes really quite hard to "translate" all that lingo isnt' it?

got back my medicine grades yesterday. not that fantastic, but i must be grateful no? will work harder for surg. now, where did i leave my scott's?