Easter Weekend Joburg Style

I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter, for those who celebrated it this weekend. This year greek Easter happens to fall on May 5th, so another month to go and anxiously waiting for the lamb on the spit. But I was lucky enough to celebrate Easter in South Africa! To all my greek family and friends - make sure to put all your 50% off chocolate in the freezer in order to avoid giving stale chocolate to all the kids next month! Facebook is already filled with status updates from all the greeks so happy to be getting all the chocolate 50% off, it's like we are stealing or something!

So, this has really been a fun filled 4 day holiday weekend in Joburg. Most people were off working, leaving Joburg to visit Durban and other nearby countries, spend time with family, etc... I on the other hand spent 3 nights on call for what was another busy weekend in Trauma at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg General Hospital. Thursday, Friday and Saturday call were exactly what we thought they would be. BUSY and business as usual. Not only was it easter, people were off, drinking, also end of the month when they get paid, which means more drinking and more fighting and filled up trauma bay for us. Again, it's very difficult to talk about all the cases at the hospital that we see. What I can say, is that I can almost 99% say that I have seen it all, or I wish to think I have after spending a month here. The experience you get out here is priceless. The amount of penetrating and blunt trauma you see out here is enormous. Once again the weekend was filled with stabs, stabs, stabs, bottle stabs, bricks to heads, assaults, gun shots and more. I have become close friends with blood. It always seems to be everywhere and anywhere. Of course we take great precautions when dealing with blood here. The scary part is when your drawing blood from a patient or putting in an IV with a large bore needle. Most of the times, the patients are drunk and uncooperative. Arms flailing everywhere and legs kicking. By now, you can draw blood or put IVs in anything because you develop your tricks on how to restrain them and get the job done. Eventually, all these wounds need to be sutured closed. Most of the times I feel like I am putting humpty dumpty back together again. You can sometimes spend hours suturing someone who has 10 wounds on his head, 2 on the chest and one of the back after having put a chest tube in him to decompress his lung that is swimming in blood. You get really good, fast. You learn to suture anything that comes along, anywhere on the body. The only problem is that we often run out of stich packs and sutures. You need to get creative and use whatever you can because there's nothing else available. 

When I said I have seen it all, I really mean that. Stepping away from the traumatic violence we get on a daily basis. This weekend we got 2 pediatric cases - 11 month old and 8 year old. This is not something I have been exposed to much and was happy to see that the team of doctors here were ready and capable to manage these kids properly. They both ended up with good outcomes but it was much more stressful than any of the trauma cases I had seen to date. The first one on Friday night was an 11 month old, ejected from a vehicle after the mom got t boned by another car. Unfortunately the child was in the back seat with his 5 year old brother and both unrestrained. The 11 month old was brought in by helicopter, intubated and full of bruises and unconscious. After several hours of resuscitation and blood transfusions she was transferred to the ped ICU and heard that she's doing well now. It was so frustrating to know that the child was unrestrained in the back seat of the car. It seems like this is very common in SA. There are even programs in place for people to give in their car seats, which they get cleaned and then given to families for free, in order to try and prevent these accidents from happening. The other case was an 8 year old child who had a large gate fall on his head. He was in and out of consciousness and once brought to another hospital first, they had a difficult time intubating the child and securing an airway that they rushed him over to us by ambulance. We got everything ready and had pediatric surgery aware as well. Once the child was brought in to us, everyone was calm, we did our work and successfully intubated the child. Only problem was, after 2 hours, the child woke up and tried to pull the tube out. We all rushed over and had to reintubate him - this ended up being a difficult intubation but we managed to intubate him. Lots of high energy stress, which I love, but I don't like seeing this on kids. Everyone is usually more stressed when dealing with pediatric trauma but the one good thing about kids is that the are so resilient and bounce back very quickly.

My calls are usually from 6pm to around 8pm. I prefer this rather than the 24 hr calls that the other students do at Bara only because I can go in to the hospital 3 nights in a row and get lots of exposure that way. So far, I have been on call almost every weekend and yet still managed to do lots of touring. When I get home from call, I try to sleep until noonish and then do some activities, hang out at the house or just maybe sleep if I am really too tired. Then I go back to work for 6pm. Friday afternoon I had a nice lunch with Alan (my host dad), Clementine and the famous Elvis. Alan made us a nice lunch and we ate outside in the sun. Even got the chance to skype with my family. Elvis was the star attraction. He met my mom, dad, lawrence, Evie and grandparents. Check out the pics below of him.
On the Saturday afternoon post call day, I went to the Orlando Towers in Soweto. Soweto is where Bara hospital is. Soweto is known as South Western Townships, this was a place where most black people back during the apartheid were sent to live in. Now Soweto has a 99.3% black population out of its 860,000 people living there. You don't go walking in Soweto at night alone, it's not safe for that. During the day you are fine. So we visited the famous Orlando Towers, which used to be part of a power plant. They have now been revamped and painted and you can bungee jump in between them, which I didn't because I was too scared. You can also have lunch there. It was amazing!! You pick your meat and they brai (bbq) it for you. It's a nice ambience, lots of people, music, watch people bungee jump. It was a nice afternoon. We then ventured off to a mall there because we need to get some groceries and we knew it was close by. The mall was huge and packed with soooo many people. Li and I though were the only 2 white people walking around there. Very interesting experience! 

My next post call day, Sunday, was easter!! Father Alan Dr. Peter (host dad) had a brai in his backyard and we invited our friends, his family and friends as well. We were around 15 people for lunch and it was so much fun! It was such a beautiful afternoon. We all chipped in and made food. He even made some tirokafteri and greek salad. His tirokafteri was sooo good! I told him that he needs a spit for lamb next time!! We enjoyed great company with his family - his brother, wife and their 3 kids. We drank lots of wine and had great discussions. Alan also happens to be a priest and we got into the conversation about marriage counseling. He gave us a little talk and we were all very attentive, especially me!! He breaks it down into a mnemonic of 6 aspects that the man and woman need to be on the same page at three different stages of relationship. Before marriage, when you have children and when the children leave the nest. His mnemonic is VIPESS. Values, Intellectual, Physical, Emotional, Sexual and Spiritual. He says that for marriage to work, you need to be on the same page for all these aspects at the three different stages of life. They will constantly be tested at these three stages and you need to be able to see eye to eye on all 6 aspects before being able to move on to the next phase. All I can say is that I am even more excited to get married to Evie!! Our first stage is checked off and we are 6/6, ahhhh I love you Evie!!! Anyways, after lunch, we took a nap and had the night off, so we went for drinks on Melville (cute street like st-denis). 

Today was monday, had first full day off in a while. Slept in. Went to the Joburg Zoo. Came back home, took a nap and then went for sushi with friends. Great relaxing day. Tomorrow back at the hospital for 7am. 

This is going to be my last week at the hospital. Time really flies! I actually have 3 more days because on Thursday, I will be doing a shift with the helicopter service. I can't wait! Then on Saturday, we are leaving for a 4 day trip to Cape Town until Tuesday. We got really cheap flights and have heard lots of great things about Cape Town!! Then back on tuesday and wednesday I fly back home and will be back in Montreal after 27 hours of traveling!! 

Don't know if I am ready to leave SA. I wish I had more time to do more touring. Really wish I could have gone camping in a national park with the great big 5 - Lion, Elephant, Leopard, Rhino, Cape Buffalo. Oh well, all another reason for me to come back...maybe this time with Evie :)

Ok, it's bed time...here are some pics that go along with my stories! Enjoy :) 

Phil 

FaceTime with Elvis! 

I want to eat him!! 

Chilling with the nurses! 

One of the Wits med students :)

This is Freddy, one of the medical officers. Love working with him! He put a sticker on his leg asking for hugs. He didn't appreciate me going in for the hug. 

Driving in Soweto - entrance to Bara Hospital. One of the biggest hospitals in the world. It has 3000 beds!! 

Orlando Towers in Soweto

Restaurant in between the towers! 

Every mans dream...meat! 

Looking up...bungeeeeeeeeee

T bone steak, pap, coleslaw and beer!

So happy right now

Li - best housemate from Denmark!

Dinner while on call, going to Nandos for chicken!! 

Uhmm...No guns in the hospital. Guess it's not so straight forward!

Emergency response car. Feel so sorry for Quebec, wow. 

So cool!

Sun rising outside the trauma ambulance bay

Patient log book - look at mechanism. 

Trauma crew

Easter 

Clementine, Elvis, Li and Slie

Father Alan Dr. Peter on the grill

Wine, beer and Coke Zero LOL

Cheers!!

Zoo time - really not the same when you have experience a national park reserve! Don't like the cages

Lions chilling in the grass

Flamingos - can stand for hours on one leg. 

Foot long hot dog - yummy :)

Lepur - scary thing from Madagascar 

Rhinos!

Hungry hungry hippos! 

Wondering where his coca cola is?!

Sharp sharp

I am taking him home with me!!

Sushi dinner

yummy!

Sign on the street!?

Alan showing me his tablecloth when he went camping on a game reserve. Lions approached their camp and they hid inside their trailers as they watched the lions play with their stuff. Tablecloth post lion playing.