What's the big i-día?

Greetings Chumps and Chumpettes,
Let me tell you about my last day:
8:00AM, Saturday: I woke up a bit early because I was slated to help my friend Claire move some shit. She needed some burl and I brought it to the party. I ate a quick breakfast and headed over to her house where I spent the next two and a bit hours moving stuff from her place to her sis' place and another trailer-load to boot. Hard work but the beer is reward enough. And the good deed, I guess.
11:00AM I went to another friend's, Fiona, house for a treat. What I got was some tasty green coconut jelly cakes and a pork-sticky rice bun. The exchange was finalised by my dropping off of delicious, moist compost. Then we moved on the ever-popular markets to pick up on greens (and oranges, reds, yellows, and more greens).
12:30PM I ate my usual and amazing Saturday-arvo-poached-eggs-plus-nice-bread-plus-veggies and then headed over to Chris' place for a ride down south to the beach. Yes! I sucked myself into a beach ride and this is always relevant. I haven't been to the beach in a month and as the weather has been particularly lovely the last couple days, I thought a trip was necessary.
3:00PM We only just arrive but the sun is shining and the waves are waving and it's very nice, even for just an hour of jumping crashing cruising. We head back home
6:00PM I arrive back at home, giddy and nervous having just been convinced by Chris to do a night-shift at the Emergency Department at the hospital. I fixed up an amazing meal (fresh homemade pasta tossed w/ olive oil, chopped chili and tomato, roasted garlic, onion, and pumpkin with heaps of nice parmesan and a tiny bit of wine (for sleep)) and watch a bit of a movie and am in bed before 8PM
8:00PM I read a bit and try to relax and fall asleep. I was pretty nervous, to tell the truth, because this would be an interesting thing ahead of me indeed. I was guaranteed to do some invasive stuff that I heretofore haven't done and who knows what kind of Saturday-night trauma I would see? I finally passed off into sleep around 9.
10:43PM I wake up with a jolt, down a glass of soy milk, pack up my bag, get dressed and bounce out the door. I ride along feeling vaguely jetlagged and out of it, very confused at the amount of people out there even though I understand it's a Saturday night. I get to Chris' where I have some strong green tea, he teaches me how to iron my shirt and then we go to the hospital
11:30PM We get to the Emergency Department, dressed in clinical white coats with stethoscopes around our necks, plus dress clothes underneath. We looked awesome. We schmooze with the interns/residents/consultants there, who are all impressed that we are there for a night shift and proceed to give us work to do. It was so cool and going through it timelineally would be outrageous. I got to:

• Do a neurological exam on a guy with suspected encephalitis and then present him to the intern
• Stick in 3 canulas (these are the access ports sticking out of veins where fluids/meds go in, etc). I'd never done this before and only screwed up once. It was hella cool though.
• Watch a resuscitation team take care of a woman who flew through the windshield of a 4WD (she was fine)
• Do and present a cardiovascular exam on a guy in a lot of pain, but who was notoriously a difficult patient and whom was given an ABG (painful blood test that was kind of needed) because he was a wank
• Get coffees for all the doctors
• Watch an interncostal catheter get put in
• Watched a demented 84 yr old woman get her bowels manually disimpacted (triple gloves, apron, mask, mucho air freshener)
  
• Did a bunch of more exams
• Helped with a patient who was rushed by the ambulance. He presented with a fatal heart-rhythm but was worked back up and was semi-okay. The best part was that he looked kinda fooked up, like an alcoholic, and so I, in passing, suggested maybe giving him thiamine (a B vitamin that alcoholics are notoriously deficient in and thus have problems with memory and walking, etc). The HEAD of the department overhead me saying it and mentioned to the team, no fewer than 3 times, "Michael suggested thiamine, which I think is a good idea". Fuck! Awesome.
  

And a lot more. It was soooo great, I must say. I was just pumped the whole time and it didn't matter that I'd had a full day and only a 2hr nap and was on my feet all the time and getting ordered around. I felt more medical than I've ever felt before and I loved it. I felt like an actual person for the first time in my life, I think, and that I'm actually involved in something that I'm happy to do. For now. Since I avoid caffeine at all costs, all I needed was a double hot chocolate (from the fancy drs' lounge) to keep me going. Although I'm there there was much adrenaline involved as well.
8:30AM (Sunday) We finally left the hospital and I rode home high and giddy and cheering because it was such an awesome experience. I got home and took half a sleeping pill (a man's gotta watch his cycle, yo) and had some cereal and then went to bed
12:2oPM My housemate was listening loudly to some random techno that totally sounds like hospital noises to my sleeping-ass and so I wake up thinking that someone was going into VT. Oh well, I'll sleep well tonight.

In terms of up-to-datetry. Last night was quite the culmination to a very full week. We'd had a bunch of procedural workshops (oxygenation, nasogastric feeding, chest draining, catheters, life support) and other random classes. We also had, one of the educational highlights of the year, an autopsy. About 4000 autopsies are done every year in Queensland. They are requested by the coroner's office in cases of homicide/suicide/sudden death/all unexpected causes of death/anything else unknown. We went in and watched one done on Wednesday. There was a pathologist who was speaking and telling us what was going on as well as an assistant who would have made Dexter cringe a bit. It was very confronting because there, on the table, was a 53 yr old guy who looked totally alive and like he'd get up any second. But he wouldn't. And the worst part is the beginning, because while the doctor is explaining autopsies and everything, the assistant starts readying the both, top first, starting by peel the top of the face down. Plus, since the body was so rigid (this guy had been alive <24hrs ago), his arms would move and stuff with the force. Creepy, wonderful stuff.

So yeah, the acaedemic stuff is going pretty full-on at the moment. There's been an unfortunate ebb in my English tutoring. As most Koreans come towards the end of their summer, they also leave towards the end (visas etc) and so all my students are leaving and no luck at the moment finding other ones. It's okay, I will probably have to wait a month (max) but shall get some soon.
Um, in our yard we have a crazy scrub turkey doing all the raking for us. The awesome little guys look like velociraptors and spend all day raking shit up into a pile form. The bigger the pile of leaves, the better chance some chick turkey will come along and offer herself up. The eggs then get buried down at the bottom of the pile where decomposition of the leaves keeps everything warm. The other day I watched the guy courting the girl while I was having my morning breakfast and was struck by how similar these guys are to humans: the male rooster builds a big nice house to get a female over; while she's over there, he's biting at her shoulders while she's digging a bit and flinging leaves in his face. Ah, young love. Here he is working on his pile (which he's been doing for a month now):

Jesus, I didn't know that!1
I'm too tired to think about this one right now - will post later.