Random updates

So I'm 6 weeks into Semester 6/10. You might have realized that already from the date of my last post. Between then and now, quite a few things have happened:

1. I flew back to aussieland on the morning of 12th of July. Arrived at night to find rat poo greeting me on my bed. And the carpets. And toilet. And closet. And clothes. And kitchen. And living room. And on the sofa. To say it was everywhere would be an understatement. Because it was EVERYWHERE! Yucks. And there was no hot water because while we were on holiday, our boiler decided to do the same. Thank God for Kerf who braved the howling wind and cutting chill to coax and cajole the boiler back into service. Armed with hot water and disgust, we mopped, scrubbed, vacuumed and washed the house till 5am. And we didn't see a single rat all night.

2. Gran passed away 4 days after I got back here. She deteriorated really quickly and when I got the call that she was critical on the 14th, I flew down to the Gold Coast the following night where I got to see Gran for the last time (and she got to sniff me for the last time because she never opened her eyes while I was there). At 5am on the 16th of July, I lost the only grandparent I've ever had a decent conversation with. I was pretty upset that when she left, none of her family was with her. My aunts and uncle had gone to bed from sheer exhaustion from looking after her in hospital for the prior 2 weeks), I contemplated staying up the night but when I checked on her at 1am she seemed stable (and I was exhausted from the past few days) so i went to bed. I've known Gran for ages but I never knew she was so big on the whole 'dying-before-breakfast-to-leave-your-family-3-meals' thing. I didn't even know it existed! =( We had the funeral 7 days later, which wasn't really a good idea as we realized on the 7th day.

3. 1 rotation down, 3 to go. I completed my respiratory rotation 2 weeks ago. It was pretty good - the registrar was big on teaching, the patients had lungs which played music, and ward rounds started at half past 8 =) Started Aged Care/Gen med which is good too with ward round actually worth going to.

4. Watched 2 movies recently: Million Dollar Baby and Juno.

I love Hiliary Swank, but I would never have watched Million Dollar Baby had I known how acutely depressed it'd make me. Seriously, I felt like I needed morphine after the movie!

Juno on the other hand was a darling. It made me realize the importance of sex-education (as in teaching kids about sex, not having sex while being educated.). During this scene where Juno goes for an abortion, she meets a schoolmate camping outside with a sign saying 'Every Baby Wants to be Born'. They chat, and the girl randomly tells Juno that fetuses have fingernails. On hearing that, Juno flashed a pensive look at the camera, but went in nonetheless. Only to come racing out minutes later, telling her best friend that she couldn't do it, citing, amongst other reasons, the fear that the fetus would scratch her vagina with its' fingernails if she aborted it. I wouldn't have bought that if say Jessica alba had said that, but coming from Ellen Page's mouth, it sounded 101% believable. I'm officially a fan.

While chatting to a close friend the other day, I randomly asked her how happy she was. Being med nerdballs, I turned our Pain scale of 1-10 into a Happiness scale. She rated 5/10. Then it was my turn. I chose 8+/10.

Sometimes it takes a simple question from someone to make me realize how much I have to thank God for.