Nelson's guide to general surgery

I wasn't aware that this disappeared off my blog... I have a friend just starting gen surg, so I dug it back out and have posted it for your educational enrichment.

I present to you: my approach to general surgery call.

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Have I introduced you to the post-call surgery ward zombie walk?

1. Smear liberal amounts of uneaten pudding, jello or mashed vegetables on the corner of you mouth. I find the best time to snag these items is 1 PM. You can then save the food to do this with later (or you know... eat it... if you missed Timmy Ho's closing time). A lot of people tend to be stuck down in radiology while the rads eat their lunch, and thus tons of meal trays don't get touched.

2. Pick the ward that's got the most unstable patients (or the jumpiest charge...) and hold your two arms out in front of you. (Preferably draped over an IV pole...)

3. Walk up and down the hallways with a distant, vacant, yet subtly yearning and pained look on your face. If you've been on call for more than 12 hours prior to this, you should not require any additional effort or change in facial to your current facial expression.

4. Every time you pass the unit clerk's desk moan, "Draaaaaaaaaains...."

Outcome: 95% of the time they'll stop paging you after that. The other 5% of the time, they'll mistake you for a patient. Your mileage may vary, especially if you're at an inner city hospital.

For those times I didn't luck out, I take that opportunity to start answering the phone, "GO for team Alpha/Bravo" (depending on what team you got saddled with that day). If your hospital uses colors instead, try alternating, "Staaaaay on target" and "This is red leader. Cut the chatter!"

Hope this helps. If it doesn't, just remember, you're earning 7.3 cents a minute (if you're in Alberta), which is enough money to hold TWO simultaneous long distance phone calls to your med school buddies for support.

Both of them.

The entire 26 hours.

Nous sommes pauvres.

Would you like me serve your food with an AED now, or shall I wait until you pass out from having your arteries completely clogged?

Ugh.

So much food today. Really, I didn't see any sights today, it was just stuffing my face, and spending LOTS of money.

Our day started out with the Japanese take on Ukrainian food... We ordered two dishes each, since each one was 600 yen, and we assumed that they would therefore be small.

Wrong.

After stuffing myself to the point that I couldn't possibly eat another bite, we wandered to Mr. Donut, and I proceeded to purchase their burger donut set, and threw that down as well (10 minutes after finishing brunch). And I wonder why my tummy was so mad at me earlier this trip...

We returned to Shinjuku station (which is close to the red light district) to carry on. Before we left, we did hear a lady get propositioned in broad daylight. She wasn't actually a STW though, so she totally wasn't impressed. (Although to the guy's defense, she sorta was dressed like one. But c'mon people, 9 AM!!)

Onto electric town, where I proceded to purchase any camera equipment in site that was more than 50% cheaper than you could find in Canada. (*sigh*). Yodabashi is a site to be seen though... it's an entire city block and 9 stories high and ALL filled with electronic goods (or, female goods to distract them long enough for the men to go buy their stuff. I'm not actually kidding about that one). Bonus 5% discount for being a foreigner too (yay tax breaks!) -- apparently you get a full 10% off if you're from China and have a credit card from there. Yang - better get on that one for us.

Dinner tonight was at the top of Cross Tower. It was at La Rochelle, a french restaurant run by the French Iron Chef, Chef Sakai. I've never been in that fancy of a restaurant before, so I felt very out of place. Luckily, so did everybody else sitting at my table :P, and actually most of the other patrons too seemed like they felt out of their element. Thankfully, they didn't comment on my lack of formal attire (I was wearing a button up shirt, cargo pants, and amphibian shoes. :P). I felt as mismatchedly fashionable as a poker star. The food was tasty, and the view was fantastico. Apparently, it's usually alot smoggier, so the waiter said we got one of the better views for spring/summertime.

Ultimately, dinner set us back ~17000 yen (that's about 200 CAD). So... it now ranks as the most expensive meal I've ever had (and had to pay for... BTW: thanks Roche Pharaceuticals... :P). They seemed to be somewhat quizzically confused about our foreign credit cards, but thank gawd, none of them bounced.

After dinner, they escorted/led us to the door. Jack disappeared to go to the bathroom, so when they noticed he was gone, they marched us back to the waiting room and then back to the elevator when he returned. I'm sure they meant well, but I almost felt like that's what it'd be like if we ever got thrown out of the restaurant too :P.

I closed out the night with some Karaoke with Jack - just to say I've done it. I was sober, but you can't really tell that from the videos.

So, in summary - I need to take more money out :(, I think I blew 40000 yen today. Ouch.

Photo Albums:

Food
Everything Else

Nana... (Momo redux)

I visited Akihabara today.

Oh. My. God.

Electronic and gaming stores everywhere. You'd never have to leave. There's arcades, food for when you get hungry... and uhh... 'men's stores' if you ever get lonely. =)

Anyhoo, that's where I spent a good portion of my evening. Prior to that, we checked out the new waterline area. Sadly, most things are closed on Mondays instead of Sundays here. (So our TV station with observation tower, and the panasonic electronics display were closed). However, it had the Toyota showcase, so we decided to test drive the new model Prius. (Man, Jack's international driver's license has really come in handy). The thing runs on batteries when you first start it up, so we couldn't even tell it was on when we started. We dubbed our brand new car Nana.

We played a simulator which shows rally car racing with and without VSC. After playing Forza motorsport, I thought I'd be better at it. Jack got ratings of B without VSC and A with it on. I got an E (which is their friendly way of saying F) with my driving with VSC, and a solid C with it on. Basically, it was saying my driving blows. All the time.

We also played an electronic version of touch the hedgehog (I guess they meant whack a mole...) - which made me feel like I redeemed myself. A bit.

I found my new favorite video game. It's like gun games in Canada, where you try and do little tasks. Except the catch in this game is you use ikea balls which you whip at a screen instead. It's INTENSE! (My arm was sore the next day).

Speaking of intense, I should probably touch on the fish market. (Hurray for blogging in reverse chronological order). The photos probably describe it better than I could, but wow... what an experence. There was more seafood there than I've probably seen altogether in my entire life. Add on top of that all these mechanical carts whizzing around at 40 clicks up and down the walkways (I almost got smoked 6 or 7 times, and I was actually trying to pay attention).

We had sushi, done the traditional way. It took forever to get in there - there was only 1 bench, and the sushi chef's make your sushi one piece at a time, as you're ready for them. It was delicious, and well worth the 2 hour wait. (That's not a fib, we got there at 7 AM, and got in at 9). The only thing that marred the food was this really rude, agressive couple that were taking flash photos of everything. (They pointedly ignored the brochure they were holding, which requested no flash photos at the market). I think they had just bought the camera prior to coming on the trip. It was an SLR, so they took rapid fire flash photos, blinding the chef.

I almost cried when they said they were from Canada. Way to make our country proud :(

Well, on that note -- I'll stop to talk about what really makes me happy. Retail therapy. Go go spending spree. (See tomorrow's note :P)

Like an overhyped movie...

Sadly, we've just had a really big run of bad luck. I think one of us didn't pay enough at one of the shrines or something cause we seem to have accumulated some bad juju / karma.

I had hoped we had put the whole Aso fiasco behind us. We traveled about 1200 kilometers by lunchtime (we left at 7 am). Fast bullet trains are fast!

Upon arrival, my first order of business was to go see the Harajuku girls everybody had been raving (heh) about. Sadly, it was kind of a shady day, so there weren't many out. Supposedly, they're supposed to love the camera. Not this group... the ones on both sides of the street were able to mime no photos. *sigh*. Interesting sub-culture though.

We watched Angels and Demons. The theatres here are a bit different, it's expensive to get in (1800 yen), but they give you an assigned seat, and you don't get gouged for food / pop. Too bad it started out with rapid fire Japanese. "Hadon Particle Collider" was written in engrish though. Wewt.

We called it a night and went for Sumo tickets today. It was a bit insane, as it's the very last day of the tournament. Lonely planet recommends arriving at 6 AM to ensure tickets. We accidentally slept in till then, and... well... you can see the photos of the lineup. A full city block (along the outside of it), for just the day's cancelled tickets.

The licks just keep on coming.

So... since now it's really, really pouring (and hence no 2nd attempt at seeing Harajuku girls) - we're just taking a shopping day instead. Imma gonna have ze nap (we still did get up at 6), and then see if I can break the streak with some retail therapy.

Go go duty free electronics stores. Wewt. I'll probably have more to say about electronic town later. (They alternate electronics, camera and sex stores. What an amazingly, fantastic neighbourhood!)

Updated Albums:

Food (Yummies!)
Tokyo

Mount Ass. O.

Our last two days in the Japan countryside have been based out of Hakata. Basically, we're using it as a base of operations and doing full day out trips.

Yesterday, we traveled to Beppu to experience their 8 hells. Tash was all pumped about them... they're basically 8 different variations on hotsprings. In total, we spent 4 hours traveling, and probably only about 90 minutes looking at the various springs. Each one of them was pretty simple, but each also had its own gimmick (like a crocodile farm...).

Generally, the Japanese people seem to have pretty reasonable common sense. I think we found our first exception. There was this Japanese woman, who, despite seeing the warning that the water was 95ºC, decided to try testing the temperature of the water and steam by putting her hands over one of the geothermal vents. Hilarity ensued of course. I guess the tourist bug trumps all.

Our second day was even crazier... we traveled 6 hours round trip (3 hrs each way) to Mt. Aso, which is apparently the world's largest active volcano + caldera. The weather report read sunny... so we decided to header. Upon arrival, we were greeted with a mean visibility of 3-4 meters (that's not an exaggeration, see the photos). "Although the cable car is running, there is poor weather today so you will not enjoy the view." Yeap.

So in summary... 6 hours of travel and 30 bucks in travel/admission charges, for 10 minutes of Mt. Aso (fog) viewing pleasure. But hey... the sulfur was still going strong. At least we got to smell the mountain. Oh. And funny english signs, we saw those too.

We ended up returning early to Hakata, and drowning our sorrows with food. Lots and LOTS of food.

Photo Albums:

Hakata
Food

It's da bomb

Okay... that was in poor taste, but I couldn't resist.

Our night and day at the temple were pricey (11000 yen each for the night. For you Canadian folk, if you divide by 100, you get the price in USD... roughly). The food was fantastic though -- I was a little skeptical about the whole vegetarian thing, but it worked out okay.

The grounds themselves were beautiful. We ended up going to bed pretty early on account of the whole wanting to catch the service at 6:05 AM thing. Unfortunately, the next two rooms didn't feel like going to bed at a reasonable hour, and didn't really understand the concept of indoor voices. (I remember that lecture still from Gr. 2, but hey... who's counting). Add on top of that the paper thin (lol... literally - the doors are made of paper) walls and... well... good thing call rooms have taught me to sleep through earthquakes.

I got awoken at 5 AM by the monks. Apparently, even though we can control our lights using the pull switches, so can they. They turned on our room lights at 5 AM. My roomies kept on sleeping. I started to fall back asleep but the monks must be telepathic or something. They must have realized that and started flicking the lights on and off right as I put my head back down on the pillow. Actually, speaking of telepathic, they have this eerie ability to knock on your door to take the finish trays of food out, usually only a minute or so after you're done eating. Creepy.

The service itself was unique, and our only opportunity to view to main hall (which was beautifully decorated. I didn't feel quite right taking photos though, so there are none). I really wish I could understand what they were saying. I tried kneeling like everybody else... but I must have been very fidgety. After 10 minutes, a friendly japanese guy behind me tried to explain using finger signs that I could sit down cross-legged.

I ended up cheaping out and doing that (and here I was trying to be all hardcore and all that). Despite that, both my legs fell asleep (I asked Jack about the anatomy of that. He was actually able to explain it quite well. We're such geeks...). The same friendly Japanese guy tried to tell me that I could get up and walk around after the ceremony to view the shrine. I didn't know how to sign back to him that I would fall on my face if I tried, hence me crawling around...

Anyhoos.

After that, we had our breakfast (also vegetarian) and returned to Osaka. Jack had some frustrations cashing his traveller's cheques. (They get really uppity if you try and cash them on the same day you're travelling somewhere. We must look sketchy). Then we bullet (super-express all the way!) trained it to Hiroshima. Thus, we continue to flee the influenza outbreak.

So far, all we've seen is the original gate. There are ALOT of foreign tourists here... more than we've seen the entire trip. (Like... 50-60% caucasians on the shore we were visiting). This unfortunately included a blonde bimbo who kept on screaming at the top of her lungs every time she got approached by a deer. The maps clearly warn you in big letters that the deer are wild and they love to eat souveineers, so I'm not sure why she was surprised when they ate her paintbrushes...

<3 amarichans.

We watched the sunset, and then watched as somebody drove their boat through the remains of the Hiroshima gate. I idly wondered how much trouble they'd be in if they acidentally bumped the gate.

Updated Gallery: Koya-San

New Galleries:
Hiroshima
Food (Round 3 :P)

Hey?! Where's the cream filling?!

So it's been awhile since I posted.

It's probably going to have to wait a bit longer sadly. I've had gastro for the past few days (I've narrowed it down to either bento box from Lawson's, the potatoe salad from Hakone, or the warm potatoe salad from the bento box in Tokyo.

Moral of the story: No more creamy salads or sketchy trays from convience stores.

To make a long story short - I feel like ass, and we're getting up for the Buddhist ceremony at 6:05 AM tomorrow -- therefore, I'm passing out now :).

Likely, I won't have time to chart errr... I mean blog on the last few days. So, I've instead tried to caption my photos as best I can. Invite you to check them out and if a picture really does say 1000 words, then hey... here's 96000 for you.

Food Photos
Osaka & Kyoto Photos (Part 1)
Kyoto & Mount Koya Photos (Part 2)

Oh... and despite all their paranoia, Japan now has swine flu. In Osaka of all places. (They showed alot of the tourist attractions we were JUST at on the news).

Joy.