Today is our last day and the feelz are hitting everyone hard.
Getting up this morning was interesting. After leaving skybar I went back with Amy to her room so she could look for her phone or some other silly reason that prevented me (gave me an excuse) from going to my own room, and in true Carla fashion I sat down on the bed to wait while she looked and promptly passed out. Neither her nor her roommate could wake me up so they just let me sleep (typical). I jolted up at 4:30AM freaking out that I wasn't in our room to make sure Christine was up to prepare for her competition, had a panic attack, couldn't find my room key, didn't want to wake her up at 4:30, so Amy was like calm the heck down I'll wake you up at 6 when I get up.
So at 6ish I headed to our room and luckily Christine was awake because I still couldn't find my room key. She practiced her counsel on my roughly 76 times while we got ready. I forgot the finals were public because preliminaries were private, so at 8:30 we went down for breakfast, and 8:50 headed upstairs for the finals. Beginners went first, then advanced. The beginners counseled on Epipen, and advanced on Vagifem. While points of the counsel were the same, the advanced obviously had the "awkward" factor to play into, on top of a million contraindications and side effects to educate on. She just absolutely blew it out of the water and did so great! All contestants did but hers was actually the best in my opinion.
Directly after the competition in the same room was Clinical Skills Jeopardy, and since we didn't get to participate in the Clinical Skills competition, we decided to stay for that. A full team is 4 people and there was already a full USA team, so we recruited a boy from Denmark who sat down next to us as an observer. We didn't do particularly well, I answered one question with a generic from the USA instead of name brand that everyone knew and got it wrong even though it was technically right (weight loss drug - glad we learned that first year when most schools don't!). Christine also answered a question but we got them wrong so we were in the negative - whoops! It's all for fun. The Australian team was just dominating, answering questions before j even had a chance to finish reading them, so they blew everyone away by thousands of points. Almost everyone went all or nothing in the final round so I say we actually tied for 3rd -- all but 3 teams had 0 at the end. Here's my blurb:
Clinical Skills Jeopardy - student broke up into teams of 3-4 students (some country-based teams, some hybrid) to compete in a game show of clinical knowledge. While neither our USA or USA-Denmark team won, we had fun thinking on our feet and really testing our knowledge of medication indication, dosing, side effects, and other important caveats.
I spent the afternoon in GA until a meeting at 3:30 for the Post Congress Tour. Christine is going on the short PCT and there's one 16 of them so they spoke quick and went back to workshops/GA, but I'm on the long PCT with 80 people so our meeting took a bit longer. More people, more stops, more travel questions, etc. I decided to head back to the room and work on packing. I did laundry at lunch and nothing was dry yet so I was blowdrying my clothes (basically to no avail) and organizing the things I could. They told us we could store one bag at the train station, so I put all the clothes (nothing valuable) that I knew I wasn't going to use in my backpack. But I needed something to bring on PCT since I brought no bag other than my backpack. Well, luggage is one thing I read you have to buy in India because it is so expensive. So when Christine got back we went on a shopping adventure. A stop for wine and a stop for a suitcase. I found a cool purple rolling duffel and successfully haggled a bit (with the help of my tuktuk driver) to 500 rupees. $7.50 for a suitcase? Why doesn't everyone buy these things here?
We hurried back to the hotel so we could pack some more and get ready for the night. Tonight was Gala Night. We found out at our PCT meeting that I leave at 0330 in the morning and Christine leaves at 0730, so basically we need to be ready before we start gala night. Well, naturally that didn't happen. We had a getting ready party in our room one last time because boys needed help ironing and girls wanted their hair curled and we just had a great time. We headed down to the gala where they gave mementos and announced the winners of the competitions. And what do you know, Christine won the advanced PCC!!! I knew it!!! It was APhA-ASP's one award we took home, which is awesome because there was only like 15 to be had. I got a horrible headache and drowsiness that hit me out of nowhere it was so strange, so I went upstairs to pull myself together and wake myself up before the rest of the night happened. We took group pictures, began to say our goodbyes. Everyone headed up to skybar about 1:00 but I knew I still needed to shower and pack up my still drying clothes. I was starting to get stressed out but Christine came back to help me and say goodbye, as did Amy and Danielle. I'm so thankful to have made such good friends! Amy invited us to stay with her for APhA annual so I think I'm going to have to make the trip this year. I made it downstairs by 0315 and waited with the crowds for our bus. This next day of travel is going to be an interesting one!
As sad as I am to say goodbye to all the friends I've made and World Congress 2015, I realize that the adventure here in India is just beginning. PCT 2015, in ready for ya!!!