Were they writing to tell me that due to some just-recently-discovered huge Scantron error, I had actually failed Pathology, and would have to go back to Grenada to retake the course. As these thoughts of doom were running through my head, I gingerly opened the envelope. The enclosed letter read:

RE: CPC 5 Submission - 25 November 2005.

Dear Carsten,
I write to congratulate you on your excellent analysis and write-up of the Clinico-Pathological Conference #5. Your submission demonstrates your ability to scientifically and logically analyze the difficult clinical problem provided. Incidentally, your submission is one of the ten best analyses.

Do keep up the good efforts.

Signed,
Pathology Course Director

Wow, I don't even remember what CPC #5 was. My submission couldn't have been that good however, as I spent the previous week in the decompression chamber in Barbados, and I tended to be succinct with these submissions, using bullet form and not even real sentences. Oh well, the letter is appreciated, and in my permanent record for inclusion when I apply to residencies. Don't know what kind of weight is given to something like that in the Dean's Letter, but I guess every little bit helps.

After getting picked up from the airport, my "co-coordinator" and I headed over to the Instructor's Meeting. He disappeared somewhere, and it was really too bad for him, since after the meeting the CPR course director suggested we go to the University Club for dinner. Now most students are never allowed in the University Club, since a Faculty/Staff member must accompany them and agree to pay with their personal account. I had been twice before for end-of-term RA dinners, where we were served excellent buffets, but I was excited because this was the first time I would be able to order off of the menu. I chose a nice Fillet Mignon, and it had to be one of the best cuts of meat that I have ever had in Grenada, or anywhere else in recent memory. Best of all, it was yet again "free," since we had to have a CPR dinner meeting.

After dinner, I was dropped off at the Cinnamon Hill Hotel, where the school had reserved two two-bedroom villas for all of the St. Vincent instructors. It was a nice hotel, (even if some of the decor and appliances were stuck in the 70's), and there was plenty of space.

On Friday, I did a little bit more prep work, including copying, etc. in the afternoon. I also managed to get a hold of the RA van for transportation for the weekend. The supervisor on-duty is a really cool guy and just gave it to me without even asking me why I needed it. He probably thought I was still an RA. (Last term I did manage to drive all the RA's to the end-of-term dinner in the brand new Supervisor van without "bouncing" it, so I guess he trusted me, plus I did have official permission from a faculty member to check out whatever vehicle I could get my hands on to drive the instructors back and forth to the hotel.) In the evening, I gave a lecture/demonstration on CPR to over 200 first-term students. I think I did a relatively ok job, balancing the need to get them to learn something, and their desire to get out of there. I did it last term as well, so it wasn't really too stressful.

The next two days were spent doing CPR sessions 16 hours a day, so that we could train 389 students and random other people in a single weekend. Occasionally I ended up teaching some of the more specialized stations, i.e. AED or Airway, but most of my time was spent with paperwork and dealing with primadonna CPR instructors that only wanted the easiest stations, or didn't bother to show up at all. Well, that and eating. Each CPR session is theoretically catered, but this year they seemed to get a bit more stingy than last, having significantly less food. Luckily for the SVG instructors, we were given 250EC (~$90US) in "chits" (food coupons) that we could use at the on-campus restaurants. Most of us had enough left over that we went on a shopping spree in the on-campus convenience store.

Saturday night was spent with a few friends in a local bar over some beers. Unfortunately, they had an exam on Monday, so we couldn't keep them out too late.

On Sunday evening, it was time to head back to St. Vincent. We managed to make it to the airport on time, despite some people's best efforts to delay us by having luggage so heavy they could not carry it (for a whole 3 days!). The flight back was a little rough with turbulence. I actually got a little nauseous on the plane for the first time that I can remember. Probably not helping the situation was the guy sitting in front of me — he reeked just like some of the routine "urban outdoorsmen" drunks that EMS pulls off the street and dumps into the ED. On a side note, he also had some of the most pronounced finger clubbing that I had ever seen.

After making it off the plane, we headed back home, and I promptly went to sleep, exhausted from the weekend.

I didn't do as well on the exam as I would have liked (actually it was my lowest of the 3 Path exams), but I still scored well enough to get the grade I wanted, so that's all I care about.

So 1 exam down, 2 to go (ACS/Physical Diagnosis practical Wed, and Written Fri), a weekend of working storage duty and then checking people out, and then home! 7 days! (Did I mention that yet?)

In a stunning move, Hurricane Epsilon has made an unexpected left-hand turn and is heading back for the Caribbean. Hopefully it won't cause any problems for me getting out of here on Monday. (7 days- woo hoo!)

You are the same company that built Superdorms 1, 2, and 3 just a few short years ago. I know it's tough, but please try and remember where you laid the 3″ water main supplying these buildings.

That way you won't have 350 angry students who were without water for greater than 12 hours. Luckily for me, I am on the ground floor, so I was able to take a shower with a world's record smallest amount of trickling water, thanks to whatever residual was left in the pipes and gravity. Yeah, gravity!

In other news, the A/C chillers are scheduled to be fixed tomorrow. To think, having both water and A/C in time for finals… Unthinkable!

Maybe it's time to get bent again…

You all no doubt remember my foolish dive attempt last week. Well, after the dive, I started feeling very nauseous and vomited a couple of times over the side of the boat. Soon thereafter, I started feeling pain and numbness/tingling in my extremity joints. I had initially attributed this to hyperventilation and hypocapnia. However when the symptoms persisted over the next 24 hours, I began to suspect some sort of sub-clinical variant of decompression illness.

(  )

The first (and only) dive was to the Bianca C, a 600-ft 1940's cruise liner that I have written about before. Since I've done the dive about 5 times previously. Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled about doing it again… However, this time the Divemaster offered something different — he proposed going down to the stern of the ship and swimming under the props, which I had never done before. The only problem is that the props are in 170 feet of water. I knew the proposed dive would be pushing the limits of sport diving (limit is theoretically 130 feet), it was something I have wanted to do for a while, and since the Divemaster had done it numerous times and survived, I figured how dangerous could it be?

The dive started out calmly enough… Since I couldn't get my gear fixed, I ended up using a rental 1st/2nd stage. Gear was working fine, got to the dive site and did a negative entry followed by active swimming to get to the bottom as quickly as possible. The first thing I noticed was how cold it was compared to previously. The next thing I noticed was that we would need to swim a little bit into the current to get to the stern of the wreck. That's where I started running into trouble. What trouble, you ask? Well, since I am posting this, you must have figured out I didn't die doing it… But I was psychologically close… The first contributing factor was probably that my A/C has been totally out for the past 2 days, and I was unable to sleep more than 3 hours a night, so I was exhausted. Couple that with the swimming against the current and I think I just plain over-exerted myself. Then I started loosing rational thought and my breathing rate went through the roof. Yup, I was totally narc'ed on the nitrogen. I thought I could bring it under control, but at 152 feet, I just panicked and decided I needed to end the dive. For the first 30 feet or so, I violated my ascent rate indicator, but as I got less narc'ed I ended up slowing down to the point where the last 100 feet were nice and slow, complete with 2 safety stops (at 30 and 15 feet).

I seemed to be alright, with the exception of some nausea (and vomiting over the side of the boat), and some left-sided parasthesia (numbness/tingling). These are classic signs and symptoms of hypocapnia. Ok, ok, so I was hyperventilating, I just wanted to make it sound better. In 11 years of diving with almost 200 dives logged, this has never happened to me before. Hopefully it never happens again.

Alright, time to try and go eat something without throwing up…

Last week one of the campus Physician Extenders (campus EMS) calls me up to ask for some assistance back boarding a student that fell on slippery, wet, outdoor tile stairs. Believe it or not, the campus "ambulance" runs with only 1 crew. They have to improvise if it's anything more than a sore throat and the patient actually needs care on the way to the hospital. Crazy. And did I just spell improvise with an "s"? Wow, I've been in an English-English-speaking country too long. [Edit: It's even funnier now that after running spell-check, that even my spell check seems to think it is spelled with an "s," even though the server is located in Houston, TX. Well, I guess they did give us that brillant scholar we have for a president.) Anyways, up to the hospital for some x-rays and an overnight observational stay for "pain management." Or maybe the census was low at the privately run hospital, and the opportunity for income was seized?

Anyways, today someone knocked on my door to tell me that someone hurt themselves playing basketball (a seemingly-daily occurrence). A 23-yo male had an anterior-inferior dislocation of his right shoulder (for the 7th time.) Ice, immobilization and a trip up to the General Hospital. After films, and the orthopedic surgeon reducing the shoulder, the patient possibly has a second surgery to repair the labrum to look forward too. Which would kind of suck 3 weeks from the start of finals…

Oh well, that's all the excitement I get around here…