Another Pair Of Eyes

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.

Construction

Nobody procrastinates like we procrastinate. Note the automatic patio sweeping appendage, the wind chimes/motion detectors, and plant-watering features.

Clappity Clap

Why do medics clap after lectures?

I don’t know. I’ve not run into anyone else who claps after each and every lecture (there have been about two which didn’t get appaluse, and for good reason!) but the lecturers appreciate it. It’s nice enough and its harmless.

Today, however, I felt the urge give a standing ovation. It was a lady who had come in to talk about the last days of her husband for a symposium on death and dying, and confronted with 200 medical students in a lecture theatre it was clear she was more than nervous. Still, she went on through, detailing some of the feelings and practicalities of attending to someone who is dying. Needless to say, when this was combined with all the other talk of death and dealing with the dying in palliative care, I had quite a harrowing morning. I’d not have noticed really except that when I came home I ended up asleep for half the afternoon, and I never sleep in the day.

The question came up: are we a death-denying society? I’d answer yes – we have euphenisms and stiff upper lips and a fear of being a burden. How do you open up a conversation with someone who is terminally ill about their wishes after their death? Depends on the person, yes, but it’s always going to be awkward. I’m not looking forward to those conversations.

Cure sometimes.

Relieve often.

Comfort always.

Examination Examination

Today I had a entertaining exam. It was an examintion exam, and basically involved taking a history off one patient *coughactorcough* and then examining something completely different on another. I got a ‘patient’ with arthritis, and a lady who needed a respiratory examination doing. This was something that was particularly inconvenient – the lady in question was somewhat overweight and, to augment the issue, had very large breasts. This makes examining the chest…awkward at best, ineffective at worst. On slender people it doesn’t make much difference – you can work around it but the combination makes any chest exam rather tricky. Especially the percussion bit, and anything involving a stethoscope. I wonder how many normally-palpable abdominal tumours/aneurysms are missed or what proportion of heart murmurs go unheard because of the layer of fat in our increasingly BMI-high population?

Ho hum. Anyway, despite all that the exam was a great success and was actually really good fun – I felt on top of my game and even though I had a couple of minor slip-ups I managed to keep things on track sufficiently to end up without a single error in the history and only one omission in the examination. Life is good!

So I went home and had a pint of cider in the sun, played poker, and then went for a quiet session at the gym with one of my housemates.

Pah. That failed epically, and it turned into an epic gym sesh ending in a sum total of 700 calories burnt, and 100 situps on top of that. I WILL lose the abflab I seem to have accumulated at some point over the year (bloody neuro revision..grrr).

I’ve been up for 17 hours. I’ve spent 5 hours of that in the hospital practising exams, and not enough of them in bed, so that’s where I am off to.

Good night.

Wrist

I have, as they say in technical circles, buggered me wrist. I’m not sure which is the guilty party:* tennis (highly suspicious), notewriting (damn you, endocrine!), badminton (I will miss you), piano (those cursed high-speed arpeggios in Metamorphosis II) or squash (unlikely as not played in a while), but something has done some damage and me ignoring said damage for a week or so hasn’t helped.

Thus, I have purchased a wrist support, and I shall hope for the best. It’s irritating because it kind of cripples my cunning (but not actually all the cunning) plans to write huge quantities of notes and it has also caused me to miss the last badminton sessions before the halls flood with desks and the susurrations of hundreds of pens frantically recording the poorly-remembered knowledge of their masters. Grr to that, says I. Still, I’m one better than last year in that I’m not going to go anyway and cripple myself. Bonus.

This term has flown by at an unbelievable rate – it seems like only a fortnight ago that I was enjoying my easter holidays and, surely, it was only a couple of weeks before then that I had neuro burn a hole in my brain? It is insanity itself, this rush of days. Tomorrow I’m off for a camping trip. Might let me relax for a little bit, would be good! The invitation seems a little odd though. Nothing scary-strange, just kind of unexpected.

Do you ever get a feeling that someone is acting out of character towards you?

Sometimes you don’t know where something will go until you get up and do it.

*I’m guessing that gardening isn’t the reason, as there is nothing strenuous about moving seedlings from A to B.