Friday at last!

It's Friday here in Sydney, and I'm free for the weekend! Today is my "study day" and I choose to interpret that as a day to study Sydney, not neonatology.

First of all, thanks to everyone for the emails. I'm still borrowing a computer, but yesterday I was given permission to use the doctors' computers in my department.

Dragon Lady update. Only one incident to report. One of the babies needed hourly documentation of resp/circ observations, which I did at 0800. An hour later, needing to do it again, I searched through his journal, but I couldn't find the chart. I looked again, still couldn't find it. I was a little concerned because I knew I had seen it at 8, but started to worry I had misplaced it, maybe in another journal, maybe lost it on the floor, maybe a parent stole it? It had all the baby's info on it, social security number etc. So after carefully checking all the other journals I find my adviser and ask her to help me. We ask the other nurses, and when we get to DL, she says, yes, she has it right here, and produces the chart. I'm standing there, curious why she has the paper and my adviser asks her what she's doing with it. She explains that she was waiting to see if I'd notice it was missing - that sometimes students forget hourly obs and she was "testing me" (her own words!). Nice. Real nice. At least she was off on Thursday so I had a different nurse who was fabulous.


My schedule is all worked out, and I have lots of time off at the end to travel. I'm done at the hospital on the 23rd of April, and don't leave for Denmark until the 5th of May. That means I have almost 2 weeks off...! Anyways, at the individual orientation meeting with my adviser and my "educator" I was asked if there was anything special I'd like to try while at RPA. I said that well, since they asked, I was interested in participating in a pickup or transfer. Either by ambulance, plane or helicopter. Either local transfer (the biggest trauma center is at another hospital called Liverpool, but ours is still big), or out in the bush. Child or adult. I would take whatever, even if it was just standing on the roof and receiving the patient on the helipad. So they said they would see what they would do. So yesterday my adviser told me that I was on a list to go on an emergency transfer, and that it would most likely be by helicopter. Obviously, this will only happen if a) there is an emergency transfer and b) I'm around at that moment. I'm totally giddy about this. It reminds me of the scene in Dumb and Dumber where the main character is asking his crush what his chances are of hooking up with her. She says 1 in a billion and he gets all excited, "So you're saying there's still a chance?" That's me, the odds are low, but I'm thrilled. Other than that, things at the hospital are getting better, I'm learning people's names, learning where to find things, learning the rhythm. Today we're going to "afternoon tea" with the Dane that heads the program in Silkeborg. She arrived in Sydney yesterday I think, and requested to meet us at the hospital today. What a job, having to travel to Norway, Thailand and Australia to see all her students...


Last night I went to an outdoor film festival at the Belvedere Amphitheatre at Centennial Park. It's been running for three months, with a different movie every night (everything from The Sound of Music to Pan's Labyrinth). Sunday is the last night, so last night I saw The Jane Austen Book Club. The girls weren't interested in going with me (maybe they don't get anything out if it without the subtitles?), so I went alone. It was fabulous and they missed out. Here's a pic from where I was sitting. A very bad one, but you get the basic idea.

Here you are seeing Sydney in the background, and the white dot by the top, left-hand corner of the screen is a plane. The airport was over to the left, so we saw planes taking off and landing during the whole film. We didn't get any sound, just planes every minute flying by. Then, even better, to the left of the screen, out on the horison was a thunder and lightning storm. Every five minutes or so there would be a huge flash of purple or orange lightning. It was far enough away that it felt like watching a storm in a globe, we could see the edges of the storm. The weather was fabulous, too, around 24 degrees at 10 pm! This whole week has been between 24 and 29, but today there are some clouds floating around. Anyways, the movie was good, and the people were even better. Australians are some of the most polite, considerate people ever. We are in a massive city here, and still people are friendly. Last night I sat behind some folks in low chairs, which meant I had to sit a little further up the hill. This left a big patch of green grass right in front of me, and people would see it, roll out their blankets, realize the chairs were blocking them, move back up towards me and block my view. Two seconds later they would turn around to check for people, see me and jump, literally jump off the blanket, apologies flowing from their mouth in a continuous stream and move along. They'd say things like, "Bugger mate, why didn't cha say sommin?" And as they were leaving they'd say, "Cheers love!" And of course, I'd be sitting there, steam coming out of my ears, used to Danes, where they would have just stayed put, and tough shit if you can't see anything. Danes are the kind of people who stand up the second a movie's credits roll, see you craning your neck to see the credits, and stand there buttoning up their coats, stretching, doing basically whatever pleases them regardless of the others around them. So Australians are at the complete opposite end of that. I've had people stand for 10 seconds holding a door for me - count that out - it's a long time. After the movie ended, there were tons of people waiting for the bus to town, and I just got all strategic about getting on the bus. Where should I stand, front or back, left or right? Then I got into standing-in-the-chosen-location mode (now it has to be protected at all costs!): elbows out, feet firmly planted shoulder width apart. Everybody else was milling around, and when the bus finally came, there was no mass dart for the door. People said, "You in a hurry, love? Go on ahead then, we'll catch the next one." The next bus was 22 minutes later. Afterwards I got some dinner in town, caught up on some New Yorkers, watched some Australian Football (very odd) and got a late bus home.

It's always a nice feeling to discover that we can swim out a little further and a little deeper, even alone, and that everything turns out all right anyways.