Paediatrics block

The kneidelach mixture is setting in the fridge for the next hour, giving me some time to sit down and write about what’s been going on in my life over the past while…

At the moment I am about to enter my last actually week of my paediatrics block. The block has been quite a good one. It has been stimulating, interesting, new, challenging and fast moving. It has also been quite a sad and harrowing experience.

During the first month of this 2 month block I was placed in ward B2 at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. The ward had a really awesome team of people working in it and I quickly integrated myself into the functional team. The registrar (person studying to specialise in paediatrics) was very friendly and helpful, the medical officer and 2 of the interns were also very cool. One of them was this gay (I’m assuming) piercing freak who had a very dark sense of humour that I thoroughly enjoyed. My days in the hospital were made up of tutorial, ward rounds and holding down screaming children while doctors poked them with needles.

On Mondays we had lectures, during which I mostly read my books. I spent time in the emergency room on Wednesdays instead of going to out patient’s because the doctor in out patients was extremely old and spoke very slowly and it irritated me.

Lots of kids died. I actually watched this 3 year old girl die, which was really sad and harrowing, especially when the doctors broke the news to her parents. Lots of kids have gastro. They also get this awesome thing called shock gastro, which is when they go into circulatory collapse because of the gastro; other kids of TB and HIV; some kids have down syndrome.

I am now at New Summerset hospital, in the old section. I’m not sure if that means I’m just at summerset hospital. The hospital is quite nice. Not nice like Red Cross, which has money coming out of its ass, but nice in a “this is the oldest hospital in South Africa” way. It has high ceilings and old-school paintings on the walls.

There are a lot of sad patients at Summerset hospital. The one has this syndrome called holoproencephaly, which is, as far as I know, a gross brain abnormality not compatible with prolonged extra-uterine existence, coupled with a cleft lip, no nose and a single nostril in front of the mouth. I am not sure whether I would consider it to be human because it is not capable of living outside of the womb and has no brain. I feel that it should have been euthanized. There was another child with cerebral palsy. It was blind, deaf and its arms and lefts were hypertonic and fixed. It craved physical contact with another human being because that was the only way it could experience the world, but unfortunately it barely got any. I would euthinase this child as well. It made me unbearably sad.

Next week is my last proper week of paediatrics and then I have this amazing week. It consists of public holidays on Monday, Thursday and Friday and exams on Tuesday and Wednesday! Then I have the (long) weekend off and then I start my new blocks.

My next block is divided into two one month parts. The first month covers trauma, anaesthetics and orthopaedics. I am quite looking forward to it. The second part is my elective block where I can do anything anywhere for a month. I’m hoping to go to Israel for that month and then the 3 week holiday that follows it.

My life in Cape Town has been quite uneventful. The one thing that did happen was that a former channie and friend of mine died of leukaemia. I was not specifically sad about it, but the knock-on effect it had on my close friends was heart wrenching. The funeral had about 600 people at it. All of the pall bearers were x-chanichim and friends of mine. After the body was placed into the cold cold earth I pushed through to comfort them. They cried on my shoulder and cried and cried. It was terrible. My pain is better now, but theres continues.

I smoke a lot of nag. I do this with different groups of friends. It happens probably a few times a week. I enjoy it, except for sometimes when it makes me completely exhausted.

Last night I hung out with a trio of medical student friends of mine that I like. We are a group of misfits. There’s a zulu guy, a coloured girl, a white girl and me. We all don’t fit into our stereotypes and it’s funny. We tease each other. I smoked way too much nag with them and now my throat is sore.

Nothing specifically exciting’s been going on otherwise

Tonight’s pesach, which I enjoy.