wednesday

we have had a busy day , the ward round started at 8 and we saw some very  difficult cases which we then took to the meeting this afternoon. The IT man at the hospital has mended our lap tops and lent me a mouse!(I shared one of the choc orange bars Sue sent me with and he was very excited ,!)
This afternoons meeting was well attended by 4 doctors . a social worker , lab worker and psychologist about half the clinical staff, we also had an audience with the med dorector this am. We lead the meeting by discussing the case of a 77 yr old lady who has a large brain tumour and is in the last days of life but her family cannot take her home as she is being tube fed (pureed food), it was  a very difficult session discussing palliative needs and withdrawing feeding and respecting famly wishes etc . they have read the books but not use to applying pall care and the team is lead by a doctor just 3 years qualified. we introduced role play to them , their first experience and after initial hesitation they really entered into it and it stimulated lots of french/ english discussion, they were rather keen for Ruth and I to act out roles (Too keen we felt!!)
we have spent the evening preparing tomorrows presentation to the whole hospital (50 people) at 7am and i am very grateful to the Matthew to remotely making it look professional and Imogens distance IT advice , we have been e mailing french pall care power point back and forth!!
Our supper downtime was interrupted by the only other european face we have seen who turns out to be a german doctor living in Holland ( on her way to safari) and is a specialist doctor in euthanasia who was an evangelist for it , we were already not pro euthanasia and are now convinced we are right!!
We both thought we should wash our hair before tomorrow  and as we share a tank had to be quick , I also didint want to be caught out when the power went off. we have had several power cuts today as there have been electrical storms today , and tonight was a liitle chilly sat out side for supper ( hear it v cold at home!!)