One week down...seven to go (Plus my week in Phnom Penh)

Hi everyone!!

I thought it was about time I updated everyone on what I've been doing this week!! I'm so glad to have made it through my first week!! It has definitely been a bit of a roller-coaster. Monday started off on a bit of a difficult note. Firstly, due to the heat, I decided to walk to the hospital in my thongs and t-shirt, with my good pants on, and change my top and shoes when I arrived. However, on arrival at the clinical school, I realized that I had left my shoes, which didn't fit into my bag, in the apartment. I therefore had to go through the entire day in my clinical clothes with thongs!! Luckily I didn't have my proper ID for hospital here yet, so I couldn't go to the wards anyway, but it wasn't the greatest first impression. The doctor here who is acting as my mentor was like, "We have a very strict dress code here!" I had to assure her that it is the same in Australia, and that I had accidentally left my shoes at home. So embarrassing!! I also got quite overwhelmed by all of the work that I have to do here, as the university expects me to do the same work as the IMU (Malaysian) students, in addition to what I have to do for UQ. Having looked at it more closely, a lot of things are doubled up, so it's not as much work as I first thought, but I was very overwhelmed by it all on Monday morning. The day did improve though, as it turned out that my mentor, who is the head of O&G for the university, is a christian lady, and she has been very supportive this week. She also invited me to the med school christian fellowship, which I went to on Tuesday night after classes. It's hard to explain how much of a blessing it is to hang out with brothers and sisters in Christ over here...it was a huge blessing. We had dinner at one of the Christian doctor's houses and I met and Aussie couple who have been here for three months. He's a doctor, but he's also done a bible college degree and his masters, and is teaching at the seminary here. It was a pretty cool night. It made up for a strange tuesday morning. Dr Sheila (my mentor), took me to the doctor's handover meeting so that I could meet all of the doctors working in obstetrics. When I started introducing myself, the head of O&G for the hospital started ranting about how the university could be better spending its money...etc. etc. It was quite strange.

Wednesday I went out for my first lot of malaysian food for lunch, which was great. The rest of the day was ok...a bit of a mess with centrelink that I had to sort out from here, which was a bit of a pain, but it's all sorted now. Most of the time I've either been on the wards, clerking patients (I'm grabbing any patient that speaks english and taking their history and examining them, hehe), or in tutorial sessions. I went to the antenatal clinic on wednesday, which was good too. One of my patients had a cesarean section yesterday morning, and she's doing well now.

Today is a public holiday, and most of the students went home to KL last night. It seems that most of them stay here during the week, but go home on the weekends. Only those who live further away from Seremban stay over the weekend. One of the other students who did stay back and I went in to the hospital today anyway. We have to be on call once a week, and as I was unable to do an evening this week, I decided to go in today. It should count as a weekend on call. We went to the labour ward and watched 2 deliveries, which was great. I went to check on my other patients and unfortunately, one who I thought would deliver today went into labour over night and then had to have an emergency cesarean. I was disappointed to have missed it, but thankfully both the mother and the baby are fine.

I went out for lunch with my friend to a Malaysian Indian restaurant, which was a lot of fun, and am now doing some boring study (and obviously writing this blog) before heading to her house to hang out tonight!! On Monday I will be joining the gynaecology students. Over here, they do a 5wk obstetrics term in their 4th year (equivalent to my 3rd year), and then do 4 weeks of gynaecology in their 5th yr (my 4th yr). Their terms therefore don't match up with ours. The students in 5th year have been on holidays this week, and I will be joining some of them for their gynaecology term on Monday. That way, i will at least get to cover that term from start to finish. Unfortunately that means that my obstetrics will be quite disjointed. I joined the obstetrics students this week for their week 2 of obstetrics, and have spent most of the week trying to catch up on the knowledge they learned last week. When I finish gynaecology, I'll be joining the next group of obstetrics students and just doing their first 3 weeks, before doing my exams and heading to Cambodia!! I'm hoping that I'll still manage to cover everything I need to know though.

So, that's me up to date!! I don't know if it sounds all that interesting to most of you...but I am here for study, hehe!!

God bless!!