Needles, threads and wounds!

Gosh! Finally the course is over. On the way now to Edinburgh Airport, coming back to Dublin. I thought Dublin was cold enough for me but Edinburgh is even colder. Despite the fact that Edinburgh is a beautiful city I just can’t wait to be back in Dublin. Emm....strange to say that.

I swear to God, for the past 2 days, I have done sutures so much that I feel sick looking at needles and threads. For nearly 8 hrs a day I was sitting on a chair, looking at wounds or pseudo-wounds. I did sutures on sponges, wires, pig legs and feet, turkey thighs and probably rabbits bowels. Pulled up, pulled down, tied and tied, cut and cut for 8 hrs. I started to have a neck pain. A Nigerian female doctor sitting beside me chuckled when I said I felt like to vomit, sick with the same thing over and over again. She smiled when I said that this reminded me of my late mum when she spent her free time weaving a mat from rumbia leaves. Thanks God I am off for a week next week so I don’t have to see anymore needles, threads and wounds. Another female doctor from Glasgow laughed when I said this. She thought I was kidding but I was being serious. She laughed more.

I have to say though that it was an excellent course. The demonstrators were very helpful, and they made sure everyone got a chance to do the practical parts. The director of the course was not only a brilliant teacher but he also had a wicked sense of humour. The only problem though he really liked to talk a lot. Many times while I was busy concentrating on my suture practice he would come to my table talking about something that had nothing to do with the course, like he was talking about Scottish traditional food, one of those is a boiled pig bowel, stuffed with sausage and pig stomach....emm, delicious!, I think not!


He also told me a story, when he was in China with his wife few yrs ago (why everyone assumes I am from china? M.A.L.A.Y.S.I.A!), he was asked to eat fish eye balls as an honour, of course he didn’t eat them. Instead, he offered the big fried eyeballs to the host wife as a return of the honour, and she gladly ate them. I thought that was brilliant, a smart move but I forgot to mention to him that I also like fish eyeballs especially the ones that deep-fried. Another story from him was, he was so horrified when a chinese vendor cut off the legs of a chicken when it was still alive after he agreed to try a chicken leg meal...well, only happens in china. He also mentioned that it was true that there was a legal brothel running in the building beside the campus, and he made a point that he had never been there.....emmm..I still can’t see the funny side of this story but few participants did laugh. Perhaps I just didn’t get the joke. Whatever!