McMurdo Medical

2/1

Today from the library we saw minke whales out in the bay as well as in the polynya by ob hill, so at lunch we went for a hike and enjoyed watching them breathe and dive out in the open water.

2/2

Today was quite the unusual day! For the past week or more, I've been having some pain my left testicle. I had a dentist appointment in the morning, so I figured I'd see a dr while I was at the clinic. The teeth cleaning went great, and Dr. Bob said I had great teeth. When I saw the doctor he did the usual tests for hernias and testicular torsion, but found none. He then brought in the ultrasound tech and they spent a long time ultrasounding, but didn’t find anything unusual. The pain seemed to be in the epididymis, so they were wondering about infection. My urine test showed up negative for infection, but they said sometimes they have false negatives, so they wanted to treat me, which meant a program of doxycycline plus some big shot (Ceftriaxone IM 250mg). He said the shot needed to be in the butt and would hurt a lot. I wasn’t too worried b/c I don’t mind shots. He had me pull my pants down and he took a bit to figure out where to jab me. When he did it, he asked if there was burning, and I said a bit, but it didn’t hurt that bad. He was all done, and then all of a sudden I felt maybe the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Then the next thing I remember I was having a dream and then I was awake looking up at the doctor’s face and he was asking if I was okay. I was lying on the floor of the exam room after having passed out, and I still felt searing pain in my butt. The flight nurse ran in to assist the doctor, and of course there I was splayed out on the floor with my pants around my ankles! They helped me get situated and I tried to sit up, but felt woozy again. Elisha had stopped by b/c she was worried since I had been gone so long, and it was lunch, and she had heard the big crash as I fell over. They gave me some water and an apple, and then I slowly felt better. Then while I was there the PA decided to check out my finger again and do an ultrasound. Seems like I just have a lot of scar tissue on the injury and that’s what’s causing the reduction in my range of motion. Since we know all the docs and nurses and such they were joking about how it all started out good with the trip to see Dr. Bob and ended up so crazily, and I should have just stuck with Dr. Bob.  My butt was pretty sore the rest of the day, which had the benefit of taking my mind of the testicular pain. 

When I had entered the clinic it was a relatively nice day, and when I opened the door to leave, I opened the door to a world of white and 2 inches of snow. How long had I been out!? It snowed beautiful huge flakes all day and we got quite a lot of accumulation. The fuel tanker made it into town today and Elisha and I took a nice snowy walk out to hut point in the evening and then I did some research on our NZ trip in one of the lounges as I watched the snow fall.

2/8/18
After several cold and windy days, it was beautiful out. I walked out to hut point and it was a popuri of wildlife. There was a minke whale in really close and then 20 or so adelie penguins not too far off on the ice. There were 4 of 5 adelies swimming below us and 2 resting on the ice on the hut. There was also 3 emperor penguins swimming below us.

2/9/18
We went out to the point again for more great viewing of adelies and whales. There was one whale that came up to breathe very close to us as well as a cute adelie that walked right up the trail to us and we got within feet of it. We had our last crary party at the dive locker

Minke whale in the Polynya off of ob hill loop