This morning I started out with Barbara and saw two patients with her. The first was a woman with veteran's insurance (so either she or her husband had served in a war) and apparently with this insurance even more services/drugs are covered than under the usual universal insurance provided by the government. The second was a man probably from an eastern european country. He had had a cyst in his left thigh (5 by 7 cm) that had been surgically removed. There had been pain before and there continued to be pain after. The pain was considerable on the anterior aspect of his left thigh from his hip down below his knee cap. Every muscle in this region (classically the quad muscles plus tensor fasciae lata, right? L2-L4?) was sour. Strangely there was some note that mentioned his S1 having been suspect on a nerve conduction test? I don't know, I didn't have a chance to follow up on this.

The next patient that Barbara was to see was an OCD patient with hoarding and agoraphobia. A social worker had arranged for Barbara to go out a see this patient in her home since she wouldn't leave it on her own. It was unclear whether this patient would even allow Barbara into her home (very untrusting of the outside world), but at this point I switched to shadowing Paul again since I was told she would certainly not let me in.

Had several good chats with Paul today in between patients and over lunch (pizza place just up the street from fitzroy: pumpkin pizza is not half bad!) One interesting thing I learned is that here in Australia they have preferential voting, meaning that you rank, say, presidential candidates from 1 to 5 (for ex). that way, you could make a ralph nader your #1 choice and al gore your #2 choice and the way the votes are tallied you wouldn't be 'throwing your vote away' by voting for ralph nader. clever solution to a common enough conundrum in the states.

in music, paul said that jeff buckley is quite popular here. also rec'd the movie 'requiem for a dream' and some movie bob dylan played a significant role in.