One more day in civilization...

Tomorrow, I've got an 8:55AM flight back to the island, for my final semester!! If you were not aware, every flight into St. Maarten is a morning flight. American is the only airline that keeps a plane at the airport overnight, and I think it's only one plane, and not every night. So, the way it works is that airlines arrive in St. Maarten in the morning or early afternoon, clean up the plane, and then fly back in the afternoon or early evening. It's predictable, but not always ideal (I hate waking up early).

In any case, this is the last time I'll have to fly to the island until Graduation. By that time, I'll probably be very glad to be going back (mostly just because I want my degree). I suppose St. Maarten is technically civilization, but it's just nothing like the US, and I like what I like. While on break, I've had amazing food that is either not available on the island (Chipotle, just about any nice chain restaurant you can think of) or is extremely overpriced on the island (like sushi).

I've also spent a decent amount of time at the firehouse, keeping up my paramedic skills. Unfortunately, I didn't really get any good calls (which is good for the community, since a good call for me is a very bad call for the patient), but I did get ample time to use my patient centered interviewing skills. The people I rode with said I was nicer and more tolerant of the patients than I used to be, so I guess those ICM classes are paying off. Either that, or I've been away from the ambulance for long enough that I'm no longer burnt out, and I enjoy riding it again. I also try to keep in mind that even though I know that the patient isn't really sick and doesn't need to go to the hospital, they don't necessarily know that, and especially if they're older, they're probably pretty scared. Keeping that in the back of your head is always a good idea and makes things better for everyone.

Finally, it's always fun to find out how much I've actually learned in medical school. While on the ambulance, I found a systolic murmur in a patient and actually knew what it meant, and how it related to her other conditions and her medications. I would not have found the murmur a year and a half ago, and I definitely would not have known what it meant. I also saw my first Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome on the EKG strip, and again, actually knew how it got there! I'm not exactly sure if it's just so rare that I've never seen it before, or I just didn't know what I was looking at, but I found it this time.