The end of week 1 of rural

Well, I have made it through the first week of rotation, and had a great time!

It is so nice being in a country city, as it only takes 5 minutes to get from one location to another, parking is easy to find (even around the busy public hospital), the steak is excellent, the streets are ridiculously wide, and everything is a lot more laid-back.

Seriously, the streets here are so wide that it is a little offputting to walk across them. I'm used to the busy streets of the capital city that I live in, where in suburbia if you have cars parked, then you cannot have two-way traffic. It is even worse in some of the new estates, where land is at a premium, and there is no room to park on the side of the road because it would block traffic.

Anyway, we had our orientation week, which was mostly interesting, but also full of things that we already know, because it is the fourth rotation of the year. I know how to give an IM injection. Really. :P

I also managed to have a vasovagal reaction when I was a guineapig for another student's cannulation practice - he was really good and it hardly hurt at all, but I still went all giddy and had to lie down. I was fine with the cannula going in (I even watched) but when he drew back and then flushed with saline, I just went all woozy. I felt like a huge drama queen, and it was all quite amusing, but everybody was really helpful without being "med students taking charge in a first aid situation". Thank God.

Everybody seems to be having a lot of fun this week, and I have had a good time, too. It is nice that Mr TGWTBS has been around and I have been staying with him, as our accomodation would be VERY crowded if I was to have stayed in the university-organised cabins. They have four people staying in a two bedroom cabin which is quite small. I'll get to experience this in our Debriefing week, so I'm not out of the woods yet.

A lot of the students have been going out to eat and see the town together. I'm thinking about going to the rodeo tonight, and we'll be going to the movies tomorrow. It has been nice and social.

I have also organised a mobile broadband modem, which will hopefully be activated as I'm typing (on the library computer at the hospital). I decided that two months was just too long to be without decent access to the outside world if I had the option of it being otherwise. I don't use a lot of data (mainly forums and blogs and the occasional photo upload) so it shouldn't cost me too much.

I'm traveling to my assigned town/small city (if it fits on four pages of the Yellow Pages map, it is a town to me) on Sunday. The people I'm staying with also seem really nice. It is interesting that there are more of us at this rural hospital than there were students on medicine rotation at my last city hospital. I'm curious about how they are going to organise us.

Anyway, this is turning out to be a lot of fun, and I'm glad.