Probably the hardest thing to do is return to work after a nice vacation. Somehow, I've managed to function adequately for the past couple of days since leaving the warm Costa Rican beach.
The last day at Paradisus was in many ways the worst and the best. We went to a little place called "Monkey Park" in the morning, hoping to feed some more Capuchins. Sadly, the descriptions were a little off, and "Monkey Park" turned out to be a sort of dilapidated zoo, with a few animals in cages. Still, they did do some rescue work, saving some of the baby critters abandoned in the wild, so we did support a good cause with our visit.
Back at the hotel, we had the joyous experience of trying to find a lounge-chair by the pool. It seems there is a Yankee trick of going to the pool at 7AM, placing your beach-towel on a chair, and then it becomes YOURS for the rest of the day, even if your gluteus maximus graces the chair and the towel for all of 5 minutes. Heaven forbid one should even move a chair slightly (we did and the Yankees came running, bellowing about THEIR chairs!) People, this is disgusting, piggish behaviour, and it is no wonder Americans aren't well-liked. Don't blame Bush for our bad reputation!
Fortunately, this chair-fight moved us to a quieter section by the pool, where we met a wonderful family from Iraq, now living in Canada. The mom was a physician, the dad a computer specialist. They told us some nasty tales of Saddam's Iraq, stuff I hadn't ever heard. Did you know that last names were banned? Saddam's new world order required that one take the first name of his father and grandfather as his "last name", dumping family names. Did you know that Uday and Qusay Hussein made a regular practice of going to clubs and picking the women they wanted to rape that day? Lucky women escaped out of the back doors. And there was more that we never hear from the mainstream media. As for Canadian health-care, well. . . Our new friends were absolutely incredulous that we in the States wanted to copy their system. "It doesn't work!" The wait for an MRI is over 6 months, unless you have a spare $900C and can get to a big city such as Montreal, where there are a (very) few private operations.
Flying home turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than I had anticipated. About 45 minutes into the flight, there came the call we physicians, especially radiologists, all dread: "Is there a doctor, nurse, or P.A. on board? We have a medical emergency." Hoping for the best, I pressed the call button to identify myself, and I was taken to the back of the aircraft. Fortunately, another physician, a family practitioner, was right behind me, so I wasn't totally lost. We found one of the flight-attendants writing in pain in the aft-most row.
The in-flight medical kits are well-stocked for heart-attack victims, with drugs and devices up to and including an automatic defibrilator. There was nothing in there for nausea or pain. I guess keeping morphine in the kits would attract the wrong kind of patient. Anyway, the FP and I could do little but take vitals, listen for bowel sounds, provide moral support, and just stand around looking stupid, and wishing we had a CT scanner available. (Even a pocket ultrasound would have been nice.) We were given the option to divert the plane to Miami if we thought getting the patient to the hospital an hour sooner would make much difference. But with a soft abdomen and no fever (although no bowel sounds that we could hear over the engines) we figured she was probably not in a life-threatening situation. Now, here's the punch-line. After we had been ministering to the poor girl for an hour, a well-dressed fellow sauntered back from First-Class, identified himself as a surgeon, and had a quick look. He got the history that she had had some sort of viral enteritis a year ago, and he was convinced that she had it again. He then told the other flight-attendants that the FP and I had it under control, and went back up to First. The FP and I looked at each other and said pretty much simultaneously, "Surgeons!"
We made it to Atlanta with no other mishaps, and the victim was able to walk off the plane to the ambulance. I don't yet know how she is doing, but hopefully she will be back on duty very soon.
In 46 years of flying (I took my first plane-ride at age 4), this is only the second time I have heard (and heeded) the call. Maybe riding up there closer to Heaven helps out some. An on-board CT would have been nice, though. Maybe if lighter-than-air travel ever comes back in vogue. . .
The last day at Paradisus was in many ways the worst and the best. We went to a little place called "Monkey Park" in the morning, hoping to feed some more Capuchins. Sadly, the descriptions were a little off, and "Monkey Park" turned out to be a sort of dilapidated zoo, with a few animals in cages. Still, they did do some rescue work, saving some of the baby critters abandoned in the wild, so we did support a good cause with our visit.
Back at the hotel, we had the joyous experience of trying to find a lounge-chair by the pool. It seems there is a Yankee trick of going to the pool at 7AM, placing your beach-towel on a chair, and then it becomes YOURS for the rest of the day, even if your gluteus maximus graces the chair and the towel for all of 5 minutes. Heaven forbid one should even move a chair slightly (we did and the Yankees came running, bellowing about THEIR chairs!) People, this is disgusting, piggish behaviour, and it is no wonder Americans aren't well-liked. Don't blame Bush for our bad reputation!
Fortunately, this chair-fight moved us to a quieter section by the pool, where we met a wonderful family from Iraq, now living in Canada. The mom was a physician, the dad a computer specialist. They told us some nasty tales of Saddam's Iraq, stuff I hadn't ever heard. Did you know that last names were banned? Saddam's new world order required that one take the first name of his father and grandfather as his "last name", dumping family names. Did you know that Uday and Qusay Hussein made a regular practice of going to clubs and picking the women they wanted to rape that day? Lucky women escaped out of the back doors. And there was more that we never hear from the mainstream media. As for Canadian health-care, well. . . Our new friends were absolutely incredulous that we in the States wanted to copy their system. "It doesn't work!" The wait for an MRI is over 6 months, unless you have a spare $900C and can get to a big city such as Montreal, where there are a (very) few private operations.
Flying home turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than I had anticipated. About 45 minutes into the flight, there came the call we physicians, especially radiologists, all dread: "Is there a doctor, nurse, or P.A. on board? We have a medical emergency." Hoping for the best, I pressed the call button to identify myself, and I was taken to the back of the aircraft. Fortunately, another physician, a family practitioner, was right behind me, so I wasn't totally lost. We found one of the flight-attendants writing in pain in the aft-most row.
The in-flight medical kits are well-stocked for heart-attack victims, with drugs and devices up to and including an automatic defibrilator. There was nothing in there for nausea or pain. I guess keeping morphine in the kits would attract the wrong kind of patient. Anyway, the FP and I could do little but take vitals, listen for bowel sounds, provide moral support, and just stand around looking stupid, and wishing we had a CT scanner available. (Even a pocket ultrasound would have been nice.) We were given the option to divert the plane to Miami if we thought getting the patient to the hospital an hour sooner would make much difference. But with a soft abdomen and no fever (although no bowel sounds that we could hear over the engines) we figured she was probably not in a life-threatening situation. Now, here's the punch-line. After we had been ministering to the poor girl for an hour, a well-dressed fellow sauntered back from First-Class, identified himself as a surgeon, and had a quick look. He got the history that she had had some sort of viral enteritis a year ago, and he was convinced that she had it again. He then told the other flight-attendants that the FP and I had it under control, and went back up to First. The FP and I looked at each other and said pretty much simultaneously, "Surgeons!"
We made it to Atlanta with no other mishaps, and the victim was able to walk off the plane to the ambulance. I don't yet know how she is doing, but hopefully she will be back on duty very soon.
In 46 years of flying (I took my first plane-ride at age 4), this is only the second time I have heard (and heeded) the call. Maybe riding up there closer to Heaven helps out some. An on-board CT would have been nice, though. Maybe if lighter-than-air travel ever comes back in vogue. . .