January 8, 2008

I’m writing to you now from my room at the B+B. There’s no internet here, so this posting is likely to be a compilation of several days’ ideas. Or I’ll separate them by day. still, though, perhaps too long and boring to anyone but my mother. It’s the end of my first day on location in Clonmel, only my second full day back in Ireland. How strange we can change locations and lives so quickly. One minute I was enjoying my vacation in Massachusetts, the next I’m learning to be a doctor in ruralish Ireland.

I hopped on a bus Monday evening, glad to have some quiet time to myself to try to get my brain and body less lagged behind the jet. Put some Josh Ritter on my headphones and… took a nap. Sean, one of the proprietors of the B+B picked me up at the train station (yes, you read correctly. Don’t ask me why I can’t take a train from Cork to Clonmel, but the bus stops at the train station. It sounds like something they would come up with in Russia.) I quickly got settled in. The other inhabitants of the inn: 3 women from New Zealand doing some of their medical training at South Tipperary General Hospital, where I’ll be next month, a GP from Capetown filling in for a few weeks, and 2 medical students from UCC. Arguably one of the safer places to be in the area. My room has a double bed, a little t.v., a closet, a dresser, and a sink. Both mirrors in the room were either designed for small people, or tall people who like to look at their torsos. There’s a shared toilet and shower (separate rooms, also a la Russia) with a comfortable sitting room downstairs. Breakfast was also a group affair, with people coming and going as their schedules necessitated and their breakfast arrived. Sean couldn’t stand for any of us to have to go to work in the wet weather, so he made a couple of trips with the various people to where they had to be. I feel like I am in one of those English comedies that have no apparent plot, barely move, and yet are utterly charming.

The G.P. we’re with, Paddy Lynch, is a great guy. Talks a mile a minute, and is a very patient teacher and doctor. Today was mostly about observing, but found little teachable moments. Today’s patients were varied, as they seem to be in a GP’s surgery outside the big city. A woman with symptoms that appear to be intermittent claudication, an infant in for some immunizations, some adolescents with ear aches and chest colds, some adults with chest colds, some routine blood tests, cryosurgery for a sebaceous keratosis, a prolapsed uterus (or womb, as the doctor said, which does have a friendlier ring to it), a woman with a as-yet undiagnosed nerve problem, a few folks with lower back/disk pain… You get the idea. We felt some pulses, listened to some chests, got to see how ESR is measured. Then off home, to change and relax. Somehow very tiring, despite the fact that we didn’t actually DO anything.