My Godson is walkin

well Opal contacted me this week to tell me that my godson, Wesley is walking now, at the age of 9 months. he is too brilliant and cute. such a smart boy and he is in such a rush to be independent.








One step.....







Two step......













Three steps and he is off.... yea walking......




so this is just a shout out to Wes to say congrats hun. well done. Auntie Ruthie is proud of you. in no time you will be able to come and visit me all the way in Aussie land. i haven't seen him since march but he does look at my pic every morning, Opal tells me. so at least he will remember me to some extent......:)

The value of Good Parenting

during my third week in paediatrics, i have been doing adolescent medicine. i have been dealing with a lot of patients with eating disorders, chronic illnesses and somatic pain. one of the main things that jumped out at me this week was how important the parent's role is in not only the recovery of their kids but in the worsening of the diseases and problems. in many situations that lack of parenting enables the kids in their problems. many of them were around 12 years old. some were school refuser's who have refused to go to school for months, even up to a year. can you imagine that? and the parents allowed it. same with the kids with anorexia. at 12 my parents would have never allowed me to refuse to go to school, or to not eat. seriously i had no choice in either matter. i was the child, they the parents, i had absolutely no option, no say in the matter. maaaaaaaan.....there is a big cultural difference with how my parents parented and what i have seen in the western world. now don't get me wrong, i understand anorexia is a disease and i treat it as such, i'm mainly talking about the role of parents in the recovery process where it is important for them to be parents and lay down the law so to speak. pretty much forcing the kids to eat. because they have not been parenting well, a lot of the work, in the recovery period is family therapy and working with the parents to get them to take on that responsibility. so many more things made an impact on me, but its too much to even really think about , much less talk about. though i do appreciate my parents a lot more this week, as i realize that they set me to win in life because of they way they parented me.

TVC shoot today

So i got a job in a TV commercial and we shot it today. it was a nice and welcomed break from medicine. i did have a bit of medicine this morning though, as i dropped off my paperwork for medical registration to the office. it was a bit of a rush as i had to get photos and photocopy identification to go along with it. but it needed to be done so, thank the lord it is done now. then i went to Vaucluse in Sydney, which is one of the hoity toity areas in Sydney. we were filming at Vaucluse House, built in 1803, and today stands as one of Sydney's museums. they transformed one of the rooms into a South African kitchen. i had to cook, or should i say pretend to cook, on a Breville electric cooker while singing waltzing matilda in Xhosa. well i lip synced it, cause you all know, i don't speak Xhsoa. the shoot went well i thought, everyone was happy, Matt the director, the clients and everyone else.

my call time was 11 am, but no one got there till after 12 , because they were coming from the other location. so i sat and waited in the Vaucluse House gardens, which are beautiful. i would have taken pics, but i thought i had enough pics of flowers. i got to see a kookaburra take a bath in the fountain though. that was cool. i was an idiot and didn't eat any breakfast before i left so i was filled with water, but not even that could stave off the hunger headache. it was a good thing that we had lunch before we started shooting. the food was great, as is always the case on these things. Neways, it was a pretty good shoot, i like the people and was told that i was beautiful and did well. so i'm not complaining about that at all.

now i still have the headache, but it will eventually go, but sadly its back to medicine tomorrow. the message from church this week was Never Give Up, so i'm gonna do my best not to give up. even thouh, i'm a bit tired and frustrated about the whole medicine thing at the moment. i'm just gonna persevere through this season, and i'll get through the other end eventually and do it well. ok, enough typing now. i'm done.....

Tired and Frustrated

first week of Paediatrics, seems like it will be ok, im just a tad tired and frustrated at the moment. i'm tired from the long days, frustrated that i still have to do it and hate being a broke student. i'm doing the best i can, and i'm still alive, but i'm just sick of just making it. and i also hate, really disliking my work at the moment....mmmmm, oh well, just a little rant there, sigh, i'll be ok.....a ray of hope though, i got a nice part in a TV commercial, so at least i'll have a little variation in my life and will get paid, eventually......

Conference week

man it is immensely surreal for conference week to be over. it went by so quickly in a haze of free stuff, lots of talks, food, alcohol and camera flashes. what was cool was being able to see people who, after yesterday i will probably never see again, who aren't really friends, barely acquaintances, but who are 'ok' people none the less. this my adopted year, is filled with interesting people, and some i will truly miss. since we have been separated for the past 2 years into our clinical schools, most of the people i am close to are from my clinical school, but it was good to catch up with others from the other clinical schools.

the activities each day were mostly useful. lots of talks from insurance people, the health union, financial planning institutions and doctors who want to influence us into choosing their field. the most helpful of these were the financial planning people cause the gist of everyone else was that, we know that you have no money now, but as of next year, you will have loads, so let me show you how to spend it or allow us to take it from you. neways, they came bearing gifts, free stuff and free lunches and alcohol, so that was ok, i could listen to them as payment....lol

our final year dinner was great fun. the food was great if you were omnivorous. if you were vegetarian, i have heard that it wasn't as great. but the food was sooooooo good for me. i love seafood, so it was right up my ally. i ate so much and was smart enough to wear a dress that allowed me to do that. it hid my big belly effectively. i was stuffed afterwards, so much so that if i pushed my belly out i could make for a convincing pregnant woman, as you can see in the pic. ... lol. loads of pictures were taken, way to much to put on here. they are on facebook though so those who are on there can have a look.

it is getting realer by the minute, that as of next year i am officially a doctor and medical school is over. freaky....