There's a bit of a gap between now and my past post. Pretty much as soon as exams were over I hopped on a plane to Kathmandu. From there, 56 other students/junior docs and I hopped on other tiny propeller planes to Lukla. The airstrip there starts at the edge of a sheer drop and finishes up against the solid rock of a cliff-face. It was not my favourite flight ever, especially when I noticed that the windows were mostly held in by duct-tape.
From Lukla we walked for about 10 days up to Everest Base Camp, including stops to acclimatise and stare at the views. Then walked back again over 3 days. They were long days.
Our junior docs were in high demand. We had 2 of the team get AMS, and 2 of our guides get sick, one with a suspected perforated gastric ulcer, he was carried a day's walk to hospital. The docs were tracked down in tea-lodges by other trekkers, the locals, and by one woman who walked for hours to find us, as she had a wound infection and their village had not seen a doctor for years. It felt very very strange to get back to Kathmandu and the flushing sit-down toilets, let alone to get back to London on Saturday. It made the stresses of a London teaching hospital seem pretty tame.
Still, I'm glad to be back. Ophthalmology is suiting me very well. The instant-gratification aspect has a lot of appeal, especially since the results of cataract surgery are so good. I've not seen so many happy people in a clinic for a while.
So, back to the grind-stone and more updates on final-year medicine in London will no doubt follow.
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