A Tale of 5 Cities!

Well, I have definitely put the travel into travel scholar this week!
Since my last blog I travelled back to Cebu City with Gareth, we hit a crazy storm when we were getting near to the bus station, with a crack of lightening hitting right outside my bus window so close I felt the zing of it up my arm! There were honestly waves rolling down the street in front of us in some parts of the city! They know how to do storms in the Philippines, that's for sure!
We flew to Manila that evening as we were both flying out early the next morning, Gareth back to the UK and me to Hawaii.
I had a 10 hour layover in Osaka, Japan so did a bit of wandering there for the day. Long enough to get a fridge magnet anyways! The minute I left Osaka they were hit with the worst typhoon in 25 years! I swear to God I'm cursed! Well, I'm definitely bad luck for the people I leave behind everywhere that's for sure. At home they're pretty much following my trip by tracking storms around the world🙈
Luckily, I did just miss that hurricane in Hawaii and the one that was coming in held off until I left. Phew!
I was in Honolulu for Labour Day and the long weekend so not the most ideal time for a visit but I hadn't been able to resist stopping off as I wanted to visit Hawaii's very own QMC! I stumbled onto the fact that they have a Queens Medical Centre (different queen, sorry guys) when I was planning my trip and seeing as I work in one myself I couldn't pass it up! I hadn't actually realised that Hawaii used to have a royal family until it was deposed of in the 1890's, became a US territory in 1898 and eventually it's 50th state in 1959. Although I wasn't able to attend clinics or ward rounds etc. due to the bank holiday I was lucky enough to get a tour of the hospital and it's amazing grounds.

I also got to tick another major thing off my bucket list by vising Pearl Harbour last Saturday. I was in early as I hadn't reserved a ticket but that was no problem as I basically didn't sleep a wink the whole weekend due to the worst jet-lag I've ever had! The best bit was definitely going on the USS Bowfin, also known as The Pearl Harbour Avenger, a submarine which went into service a year to the day of the attack. It was like it had never been touched and was honestly one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I also got to go on the USS Missouri which is where WW2 officially ended when the Japanese signed their surrender on it's decks in Tokyo Bay on September 2nd 1945.

The USS Arizona Memorial which is above the ship where 1,177 died & 1,102 are still entombed

Ok, sorry, went a bit off topic there! This isn't meant to be a history lesson😂 I stupidly decided to hike Diamond Head on my last morning in Hawaii, again after no sleep which was a bonus as getting up for your 5am alarm is no problem if you're already wide awake (thank God my middle of the night was the middle of the day in Notts though. Don't think Gareth would've been as cool with my steady stream of 'Hiya!' & 'I'm STILL awake!' texts if they'd been pinging away all night!)! It was well worth it though to get these amazing views of the island before I left.

So, yesterday I arrived in Vancouver - my last city for the week thank God! I headed out to do a food shop for my Airbnb to save some money and ended up in 3 bookshops on my street and $40 worse off (dammit Kate!) so that didn't go to plan🙈

I spent today in the nursing school at the University of British Colombia (UBC) and it was great. They only do an 18th month Masters course here done in 6 terms so I spent this morning with the term 1 class who are just starting out and this afternoon in the skills lab with the term 4 class who were learning about IM injections.

Students here are really keen and were very interested in my project and in chatting to me which was great! We got talking about why everyone went into nursing and one thing that kept coming up was the drug abuse problem in a certain area of Vancouver. There is about a 10x10 block radius with huge problems with drug addiction and mental health problems. Many of the nursing students worked as social workers there or volunteer and felt they could make more of an impact if they could go back there as nurses. As we talked about it I was just so struck by their attitude to the people they are helping. There is literally zero judgement or blame. Obviously I don't know about the rest of Canada but they have been working really hard here for years to get rid of the stigma and shame surrounding drug addiction and trying to normalise it just like alcohol and cigarette addictions. There are Safe Site Clinics all over the city so that addicts can at least inject safely and get given a once over and also access help if they are ready for that step. 

They also came up with a Naloxone kit. Naloxone is a drug that quickly reverses the effects of other drugs and is often used in cases of overdose. Here, they have a kit with a vial of Naloxone, syringe, needle, gloves, instructions, alcohol wipe and a mouth piece in case the person needs to be resuscitated. This is given either to the addict themselves and they are thought how to administer it correctly or to a family member or friend they live with or close to. There is also a Youtube video called 'Towards the Heart' that they encourage the person and their family/friends to watch for further education. I honestly thought it was one of the best things I've ever seen. It just sums up the attitude here which is that these people are not the drain on society that they are often treated as. They have an addiction and don't need our judgement or derision but our help and compassion.

Here, it doesn't matter how or why they ended up in this situation, what's done is done - now what can we do to help? It was an absolute breath of fresh air.

Tomorrow I head back in - I've got pharmacology in the morning. As I recently qualified as a prescriber I'm really interested to see what the differences might be here. It's also really sad how bizarrely excited I am about a pharmacology lecture - 10 years ago Kate would actually not recognise me.

Sorry about the long spiel but it's been an equally long week! Oh and no visible wild fires in my immediate vicinity - maybe the curse is broken? Or is it too soon to say...!?😂

Right, time for bed - I'm definitely not planning on repeating the Hawaii experience here in Canada!

Oíche mhaith

Kate