porch stitches

I've never been a fan of giving answers. You want to know why.....? Too bad.

-Stephen Colbert

I’m on the ferry now. Watching Mt Baker fade into the haze as we head to Nanaimo, then to Duncan and our next elective of fourth year.

I just flew in from Ontario yesterday afternoon, where I was doing a 2-week family practice elective with my cousin Jeffy. I had initially requested to spend the whole month of September in Halifax, but Dalhousie was only able to find me 2 weeks of elective time, so I had to come up with a back-up plan pretty quick. Luckily, Jeffy bailed me out and agreed to have me come stay and work with him in Kingston. In the end, it was the most relaxed and fun time I’ve ever had working as a medical student. I also got to work on my medical skillz a fair bit, especially in the most important area in primary care medicine. Jeffy is very skilled at communicating what is going on to the patient, and also manages to listen to them at the same time. Sounds pretty simple, but it almost never happens in real life. It was nice to work with someone where you felt satisfied when you left the examining room.

The other benefit was that I got the spend time with Sheesh and the kids. They just get cuter and more fun as they get older (that includes you Sheesh). I also got to visit with my Aunt Marg and Katelyn as well as some old friends in Toronto. All this while getting in some episodes of Daily Show & Colbert and upgrading to a level 6 mage in PuzzleQuest.

regional amnesia

Nazis. I hate these guys.

- Indiana Jones, The Last Crusade

Unfortunately, there is usually an inverse correlation with how much interesting stuff I'm doing and the frequency of my blogging. By which, you have inferred, I've been doing some cool stuff.

Brief recap.

I finished my anaesthesia elective in Halifax. I endured a fair bit of frustration to organize this, but once I showed up, everything was awesome. Things were well laid out and the people in Halifax (including the OR staff) lived up to the stereotype of being extremely friendly. I ended up mostly working with relatively new Haligonians (Myron, Konstatin, Axel, Armin) who were maybe even nicer than the natives. I got a chance to improve my technical skills, which was the main objective of my rotation and my main preceptor agreed to write a reference letter for CaRMS. Halifax is a pretty cool little city and reminded me a fair bit of Kingston. But on the ocean. Haligonians tend to be a little more relaxed, good at wearing helmets and more prone to sexual innuendo. At the end of my time in Halifax, Coco and I pretended we were 55 years old and overweight on a weekend getaway in Cape Breton. The gravy covered sandwiches and scenic walks were lovely. All kidding aside, it was a great success.

I caught a flight to Toronto on monday night and took a bus straight from the airport to Queen's campus. I was reminded about how many trucks can be on the 401 and how pretty the moon can be in Ontario. Katelyn and I went to the QP with her housemates and I relived a few memories. We made plans to see Apostle of Hustle tonight, despite her housemate's wishes to throw me a bachelor party (with all the trimmings).

I'm staying with my cousins now on a lake. I get to hang out with them when I'm not at work and the preceptor for my elective is one of my cousins- Jeffy. Needless to say this has been a pretty sweet elective so far.

The photo on the last post was the ocean on the left side of us. This a picture of the one on the right. Maybe after this winter I may have another of the one up above.

we have ways of making you think

Nice tackle
-Elliott Stabler, Law & Order SVU

Having recently had my stethoscope stolen has caused me to be on the lookout for the perp. This is a little ridiculous, as I'm on call at VGH now, and there are more than a few people packing 'scopes. Also, I lost mine at St Paul's.

I'm actually fairly certain mine was taken on purpose, as it had my name, cell phone and pager number displayed clearly on an ident-a-band wrapped around the neck. And it disappeared in the early morning hours. Likely around 5am. Prime stethoscope thieving time.

Anyhow, this has made me think of what I would do if I found someone wearing my stethoscope. And it reminds me of a story from undergrad.

When I lived at 3 Aberdeen St during my time at Queen's, we would often have people come up to our door asking for bottles, or donations to vague charities, or sometimes they would just ask if "Johnny" was home. These young males would be carrying an empty duffle bag and have an old mountain bike ditched on the lawn. You are probably getting the idea, as we eventually did, that these fine gentlemen weren't actually wondering if John was home, but were in fact hoping that he wasn't, if you know what I mean. A few times we actually did get robbed. One time someone came in when we were all sleeping and pinched our X-Box and a few winter jackets. I was pretty into Halo at the time, and mostly sad about the X-Box, but Jason was more upset that his new winter jacket was gone. He had this idea, however, that we could just stay on the lookout and he would probably find it. I wasn't as hopeful.

Anyhow, as the story goes, we did. I was downtown coming home from having dinner and had run into some friends. While we were chatting, I noticed this guy wearing a jacket identical to Jason's walking down the sidewalk. I wasn't sure what to do, but I decided I should do something, so I hurried after him and struck up a conversation. I started asking him about the jacket and he was less than happy to talk about it. As time passed, I realized he was generally pretty dishevelled, except for the new jacket of course. I wasn't certain, however, how to deal with it.

Luckily I didn't really have to. Turns out Milk and Jason were across the street waiting in line at The Brass and had also spotted the jacket. It also turns out that the dishevelled snowboarder, later revealed to be Kingston resident Paul Kaye, wasn't particularly savvy, and suggested that we call the police to resolve the dispute. That hadn't occurred to us. Upon arrival of the Police, Paul talked his way into trouble, repeatedly changing his story and eventually admitting that "a friend" had given him the jacket two days prior (the same day we had filed a police report).

It was a story to tell, and Jay was happy to get his jacket back. I was happy I didn't have to break my record of never being involved in a fist-a-cuffs. It was hard not to feel guilty though. The cops made him just give back the jacket on the spot. It was cold and he was just wearing an old t-shirt underneath. You had to feel sorry for the poor guy. That's pretty unlucky.

If I find someone with my stethoscope around their neck, I doubt I will be as sympathetic.