Another Pair Of Eyes

Pauses

You may have noticed I’m not here so frequently as I might have been before. The workload is stacking up rapidly – I’ve taken today off from placement to finish my essay and a bunch of cardio notes, and been up since half six doing the same. Day off, pffft.

Not, you understand, that I’m complaining. The more I learn the more elegant everything is, and the more I can link things together, understand the consequences of things and the cascade of consequences consequent of those consequences. Why can alcoholic liver disease cause catastrophic haemorrhage in the throat, or swelling in the ankles, or rupture of the spleen, or kidney failure?* I know I’m endlessly banging on about medicine but it’s increasingly an integral part of my identity, for better or for worse. Probably for worse, but hey – in some ways it changes me for the better. Currently I’m on a one-week-on one-week-off routine in sync with Helpful Teaching Consultant’s morning ward rounds. Next week it’s back to Dr. See-no-students-hear-no-students so I’ll revert back to going to a bunch of random stuff, neuro and GI and endocrine and phleb clinic, if I can swing it.

We’ve got some new neighbours, postgrad nurses-to-be; in number, three. We were worried first that there was a family moving in, but they were just the landlords. As of last Sunday we are officially surrounded by students on both sides, which is good news. And we invited them over for cocktails, and they are pretty chilled out, which is nice. That, the discreetly unmentioned valentine’s day and a couple of sunny days and nights with sleep in have cheered me no end, life is better again.

Now, I need to crack on with my essay. It’s a bit of a strange reflection that I want to finish this essay so that I am finally free for the remainder of the year to get down to working on medicine proper. Who’d've thought that the homework-hating me of yesteryear would become so driven…

Essaytime.

*don’t get alcoholic liver disease, kids.

Español

I do not speak spanish, and my exam is tomorrow. Yes, on a Saturday, the world is rubbish. Anyway, this is basically a post of regret – the Spanish course I have done is easy and under other circumstances I’d've enjoyed it, learnt it well, probably continued it and actually ended up speaking spanish well enough to get by in a spanish speaking country. I have not done any of these things, because in the end when I weigh up my workload spanish always loses out to medicine, because medicine is quite simply more important. From that stance the quality of my spanish goes rapidly downhill and thus the enjoyment wanes in proportion.

Yes, it is entirely my fault, but I just think it’s a shame that it is. I’m aiming for a solid 40%, which I am currently over with coursework etc, so I don’t need to do well to pass. Flipside, I hate doing things badly when I know full well that I could have aced the whole course if I’d put in a bit of effort.

Shame on me.

To make myself feel better, here is something cheery I found on the internet.

Impatience

We have a week of introductory lectures. All very well, but I think a week was too long – I for one am itching to get going and I am certainly not alone. Still, I suppose it does give the opportunity to meet everyone and go out meeting gorgeous barmaids etc so it’s all good. Certainly think that we should have progressed beyond basic life support courses though – CPR isn’t that easy to forget, so hmph for BLS classes.

I bought a psychiatry textbook today, and have been browsing through it* looking at some of the stuff I’ll be coming up against in the history taking – turns out, it’s going to be pretty hardcore. It’s vaguely similar to a normal medical history, except for a section entitled ‘Personal history’ which is described as aiming to:

“…trace the patient’s development and achievement from conception to the present.”

That is a phenomenal amount of information. From conception? You could be covering anything up to about 80 years of history in that one sweeping statement, and you have to really get your teeth into it as well. “Include gestation and delivery,” it says, “childhood milestones, family relationships, upbringing, peers, schooling, occupation, marital and sexual history….” and it goes on. No wonder they tend towards calling them interviews rather than histories!

In other news, I have applied to do Spanish evening classes this year as one of my SSUs (student selected units, dontchaknow) which should be good – it’s the only major European language I don’t speak AT ALL, and it is also one of the most useful what with being the most widely used language in the world.** It should be a bit refreshing although I’m sure the second I get my teeth into tenses I’ll regret ever have chosen it and rue the day speech developed at all.

Also, today was 09/09/09. At 09:09:09 this morning on 09/09/09 I was in a lecture on venesection and cannulation.** Where were you?

*and I quote: “For example the patient, on being handed a glass of wine, may then believe he is Jesus Christ.” I think this will be pretty eye-opening…

**Pedants; Chinese is the most spoken by population, but not the most widely used.

***Yup, we have to spend a portion of time this year stabbing random patients, rubber arms, and each other. This is terrifying, but it is also real medicine so it is exciting. Same goes for suturing.

Rotation & Failures Thereof

This year I am on rotation, and the first rotation for my group is Mental Health.

Oddball. It’s the strange one, the one that doesn’t fit with the usual rhythm of medical practise. I’m not sure if I’m pleased with it or not – surely a stint in Ordinary Medicine, if there is such a thing, would have been a more elegant introduction? Still, done is done and it’s set – daunting, but exciting. It will be interesting to see how it goes, I think. Going to be a nervous first few days…

That is not, however, the reason for the title of this blog post. Yesterday I was very down and out, and while at least a decent healthy portion of that can be attributed to the Time Traveler’s Wife, there is more to it than that. That post on aging didn’t come entirely out of the blue, either.

Basically, I was meant to be going on a big, albeit significantly shorter and faster, cycle ride this Thursday. Now, I’m not. The reason? My knee won’t co-operate with me – on a hard training day a short while back I began to feel it, and it whined about it for 36 hours. Well, knee, you win. I drop out, I give up, I cease and desist. Enjoy it while you can because over the next year I am going to hammer you.

Lectures

It’s been weird at the end of this [academic] year, in that all my friends who didn’t take gap years and did 3-year courses are now Finished. They are out in the big wide world for the rest of their lives, and I am still 3 years away from even qualifying, let alone finishing my foundation training.* It’s a weird thing to think about, that comparison, but I’m not entirely decided on why. I’m walking the long road though, no question about that, and it’s going to wind for a while.

However, in terms of endings it’s not all other people’s parties. My lecture-based section of my course is done – next year we get one a week, after that I think even less than that. Next year is all about attachments and surgical blocks and being scattered all over the south, and it will be exciting, and I shall learn much. It’s all change, and we’ll have to see where it goes and what happens.

Assuming, of course, I pass my exams. 51% club anyone?

Flames to dust.

*Once you finish medicine, you then have two foundation years (F1 and F2, imaginatively) after which you begin specialty training etc etc -

24

“…twen-ty-four hours they’ll be/lay-ing flow-ers/on my life”

Not quite that dramatic, perhaps. Still, 24 hours and I will be in an examination room, and from then on we can only wait and see what happens. I’m better set up than I was for neuro, but that isn’t saying much at all.

I’m off to the library now, so this is my last broadcast before things get fun. I plan to stay there for a Long Time, and then go over everything tonight. Then tomorrow are two rounds of fun exams, followed by some ultimate anatomy fun the day after (that’s where the main concern lies).

I’d never been in the Hartley library before, not really – its massive. You could get lost in there, and its a little bit magic. It’s the sort of place I feel like I could wander around absent mindedly for hours just running my hand along the shelf edges and watching the dust. I don’t think I’d like it so much busy, but at half 11 last night it was wonderful. It did remind me a little bit of the Doctor Who ‘Silence in the Library’ though. Hmm.

The others are almost ready. It’s time to go!

Wish me luck.

This post was set to the music ‘Doomsday’ by Murray Gold.

Watch

I sit at my desk in my room, everything neatly arranged – pencils, drink, apples to my right, textbooks to my left – on a chair with a cushion on, and a pen in my hand. I bought the pen specially, although it’s nothing special. Just a pen. Behind me there is space to stretch, and in front of me the pen has started on the blank page, devouring the empty lines.

Sound familiar? It shouldn’t – I am revising, which as you all well know involves copious amounts of chocolate, ready meals, scrubs, spooks, and trips to one stop to acquire all of the above. In my spare time, ho ho ho LOL, I take pictures of things that are close up* and listen to loud music.

The last few days have been different: I’ve been going to the library, regularly.** Every night I’ve been to the gym with a couple of my housemates. I’ve been eating fruit, and pitta breads, and healthy-ish sandwiches instead of the Tide of Shit Food which normally defines the revision period with its pizza boxes and foil containers. In contrast to the raging, railing helplessness of neuro revision or the bitter burnout that was cardio respiratory renal 2, this endocrine and life cycle is relaxed. It’s quiet, I sit in silence most days. It’s chilled, but there is a current of work that keeps flowing. I take breaks when it gets tough, and then I start again. It’s peaceful; writing a treaty instead of starting a war.

It’s not even that I know it all – I know, quite literally, none of the anatomy, and most of life cycle is scattered and inaccurate in my head. Things which are supposed to be linked aren’t, and all the interleaving systems don’t continue to do so in my thoughts. It’s a mess, but it’s recoverable.

Ever since neuro, nothing seems bad anymore. Focus, but do it in a chilled out kind of way. Tonight I’ve got someone coming over for dinner; she’s making me a curry (those who know me might appreciate the inversion). In the past none of that would have been possible, but even this week the time is available. I’ll work before, and I’ll work after, and I’ll enjoy the free time.

I can hear my watch ticking; time to get back to work.

Mmmm, curry.

*there may be another macro quiz in the pipeline, if you’re interested…

**for reference, I never go to the library.