sorry for the delay in posting...the ship's satellite internet service has been on the blink the past three days so i've been unable to get online. however, i've put the extra time to good use by gathering a bunch of random bits of info to share:
-- first off, a big shout out to tricia, layla and grandma for the cards/packages i got from them this week. you girls are the best!! (seriously, everyone else here is jealous because it's a big deal to get a piece of mail, let alone THREE in a single week!)
-- i am happy to report that my nose has finally retired from it's snot-making duties, though not without a kick in the pants from amoxicillin. after 14+ days of feeling horribly tired and stuffed up (and noticing that the breeze of a fan blowing on my face was enough to make my sinuses hurt) i decided maybe this wasn't a common cold after all (yes i know, i'm sharp). i went to the crew clinic and turns out i had sinusitis, a first for me. 24 hours after starting antibiotics i felt like a new woman...thank goodness because my kleenex bill was about to prevent me from having any cash left over to buy souvenirs for friends and family. three cheers for amoxicillin!
-- several different people on the ship (on separate occasions) have been shocked to hear an american accent come out of my mouth as i apparently look very dutch (news to me!). are you sure your grandparents came from czechoslovakia, mom?
-- i've gotten my first mosquito bite, on my right forearm. urban legend here says that if the mosquito's tail-end is up in the air when it bites, then it carries malaria. well unfortunately i had no premonition that a mosquito was going to bite me, so i didn't get a chance to see the bug, let alone make extensive observations about the position of it's tail-end. thank goodness my mefloquine is protecting me.
-- speaking of mefloquine, i have had several strange (though not particularly vivid) dreams lately...however my unmedicated dreams are also weird so these may have just been regular plain-old dreams. one of them involved me and my roomie alaina chillin with julia roberts at her place.
-- yesterday in clinic we saw a "julius caesar" and a "mohammed ali." love it.
-- besides the seven or eight african languages that i encounter each day at clinic there are also a lot of packaged foods, signs, etc on the ship written in various european languages. i have found that when faced with an unknown word in a foreign language, i reflexively apply the spanish pronunciation rules to it (as it is the only foreign language that i
do know how to pronounce)...i figure hey, what's good enough for all of latin america is good enough for everyone else, too. =)
-- we have a new dental hygenist in our clinic...donna, from sacramento. her daughter susan was a bronze medal triathlon winner at the 2004 olympic games in athens. cool, huh?
-- i saw an african guy in town this week wearing a Son of Beast t-shirt (presumably some cincinnati kid donated it to a clothing drive after figuring out that rollercoaster t-shirts aren't
that cool). the reminder of Kings Island made my day though as i'm sure jessica can appreciate. (girl, we have GOT to go back to cedar point and hit millennium force again!)
-- i have now gone 39 consecutive days without a dr. pepper.
-- had my first doctor moment in clinic yesterday. it's mid-afternoon and i'm sitting in dental clinic, minding my own business, getting the next day's schedule in order when all of the sudden i hear a child scream right outside the door and someone yell, "get a doctor!" i just about had a heart attack when it finally occurred to me that i was the only one there with any medical training. i went outside to find a lady lying on her back on the ground, unconscious. i quickly surveyed the scene and, finding that i was in ghana, opted to skip the "someone call 911!" step as a) i don't know if that's the emergency number here, and b) there is no EMS service anyways. i forgot to take my pulse but did remember to check for hers and was greatly relieved to discover that her heart was beating and (bonus!) she seemed to be breathing, too. i don't know what possessed me next (i think a neurosurgery spirit or something) because i then decided to open her eyelids to see what her pupils were up to...well she didn't seem to like that very much because she started looking back and forth and then pushing my hand away. next thing i know, she's sitting up talking to me about how she hadn't had anything to eat since the night before. of course, being the card-carrying ACLS certified superstar that i am, i did what any good doctor/candy addict would do...whipped out the ziploc baggie of skittles i had stored in the back pocket of my scrub pants and--voila!-- good as new. i was about to do a little victory dance but instead was stampeded by a wild herd of children attacking me for my skittles.
# posted by Jenn @ 4:25 PM