CME in St. Lucia

Yesterday at the hospital I was told one of the local doctors would be presenting on Dengue for Continuing Medical Education (CME). Of course, being currently at risk of catching dengue and knowing almost nothing about it I was quite excited to attend.

This evening, along with a room packed beyond standing room only (the organisers brought in double the amount of chairs initially in the room and still people were standing in crevices), I heard two really awesome talks.

The first presenter is from Oxford and also teaches at the London School of Tropical Diseases. Apparently he's written THE textbook on tropical medicine and visits occasionally to partner with some doctors here. His talk was amazing and brought home - in graphic medical detail - that almost everything I love to do in life is actually a remarkably quick route to a horrible death, unless I am ridiculously lucky. I really hope I'm lucky.

The second presenter went into the pathology, physiology and epidemiology of dengue which was amazing. One lucky discovery is that the mosquitoes which carry dengue are only active during the day, so at least all my mosquito bites/netting precautions at night are only protecting me from an itch whereas my time in the hospital during the day hopefully protects me from dengue. The only difficulty with the second presentation was her assumption that every doctor in the room was exceedingly familiar with dengue - and she consequently raced through the slides which were most interesting to me - pathology, physiology and treatment. I still learned a lot and it was nice to feel cool surrounded by St. Lucia's doctors at a CME event.

In other news, I continue to swim in the Caribbean ocean almost daily. The coconut vendors are beginning to know me quite well and I got my first discount on a coconut today which was very exciting - cheaper even than local rates! Then, of course, I jogged down to the beach and had a little swim before heading off for an evening of educational delight.