Right or Left? (Wednesday)

I went to pick Cory up last night; it was dark, but I was feeling pretty good about my driving. Well, that should’ve been my first warning – you jinx yourself when you are overconfident.

I missed my second turn and drove into essentially a dead-end. There was no traffic, so I pulled in and got headed the right direction, pleased that I hadn’t had to go too far out of the way. I was cruising along, listening to the wacky accents on my NZ radio station, when I realized I was on the wrong side of the road. The headlights in front of me, in the same lane, but coming from the opposite direction, were a good reminder. For crying out loud! Now, it was only a block, but still…my worst fear, realized.

Luckily, I managed not to cause an accident and quickly shifted into the correct lane. Now, as this car and I continued to approach each other, I imagine the other driver was a little nervous. But, I nailed the next challenge.

There is a rule here about yielding to the right. Really, that makes a lot of sense as you are going through traffic rounds; I’m good with that. The problem comes in this situation: two cars, facing each other from their correct perspective lanes (imagine one coming from north and one from south), both turning, say east, onto the same perpendicular road. Our rule in the US is that the driver crossing fewer lanes of traffic has the right of way and would turn first. If that rule applied here, the driver turning left would make the turn. However, and this is crazy, I know, in NZ, the driver making a right-hand turn gets the right-of-way!

Anyway, if you followed all that, I made the correct turn in front of the driver I’d just managed to scare out of his wits. It would not be outrageous to suggest that he was just so worried about the crazy girl on the wrong side of the road that he let me go, but regardless, I nailed that turn.

Ironically enough, after telling all this to Cory on the way home and listening to him chuckle at me, this morning, on the way to work, he cut some big lorrie (okay, a truck) off in a reverse situation on the same intersection. My turn to chuckle!

And, Cory didn’t have to work his “long” day yesterday. Instead, he’ll do it Thursday, which at least gives him another day to acclimate. He got lost going to the department yesterday, and was trying to punch in his code at the wrong set of doors. That image makes me laugh every time I call it up… :)

Cory has been pleased with how friendly every one is. This is a good thing, considering he has some new medical terms to catch on to. He operated yesterday, and kept asking for tools or dressings and the nurses would look at him like he was crazy and say “we don’t have anything by that name.” They also thought he sounded hilarious, apparently.

He was intrigued to hear about the residency programs here in NZ. Like the US, four years of medical school are required. After that, you enter your residency program. Othropaedic programs in the US range from 5-6 years; in NZ, you do two years of general surgery, then 2 years of basic ortho. Then, if you are accepted into the ortho program, you do another 4 years of ortho training. Plus, most do 2 years of fellowship in one or more specialty areas. (You know how in Wikipedia, they’ll put in a note that a certain piece of information requires a citation. We’ll consider this my note that I believe this paragraph, and the following, are accurate, but, hey, I’m no expert.)

A positive (in terms of lifestyle) to such an extended program when compared to the US seems to be the hours. Cory was told to show up at 7:30; he was sort of hounding the junior residents to see when they would be showing up, because he thought he’d show up earlier, too. But they really don’t go in until 7:30. Also, as he went to do a case yesterday afternoon, it was after 4:00, and another junior was surprised to see him still at the hospital, as most others had left. They have a 60 hour work week that is actually followed, so that has been a pleasant surprise for Cory.

I personally can’t work an 80-hour or a 60-hour work week, which is why I’m thinking I will try volunteering over here. I heard back from Maunganui College but promptly, and idiotically, deleted the email without reading it. Don’t ask. I can’t explain it either. So, I resent my earlier email with a note saying that I am not always so dense. Hopefully they’ll reply. A staff that helped Cory get set up over here is in orthopaedic pediatrics and referred me to a special ed school, so I shot them an email today, too. From the website, it seemed that their students might sort of be like my students at CR Jeff. It would be pretty interesting to see, so hopefully that will work out, too.