Weekend Weirdness

Another really busy weekend for me. I really need to learn how to relax over a weekend rather than burn myself out even more.

Saturday night I babysat for my boyf's sister again. What a nightmare. The baby is now 3 and a half months old and is totally adorable. Unfortunately she had a horrible cold and was so sniffly that she kept coughing and spluttering so I ended up staying awake pretty much all night worrying as I could hear her snuffling. Amuzingly she also puked all over the boyfriend's chest. Ew.

Apart from staying up all night worrying about the baby I had other things on my mind. Some very unexpected text messages. One was a picture message. A picture from one of my ex's of his penis. Not what I wanted to see. Needless to say I was sitting next to the boyf when I opened it as I have nothing to hide from him and if he wasn't so believing of me something like that could get me in trouble. Needless to say I was not happy. My most recent ex text me out of the blue too. He's the guy I broke up with in March (there's a post about it). I haven't heard from him since and he seemed to want to talk about all his problems. I told him all about the fact I have an amazing boyf at the moment and that I'd listen to him if he had problems, but that I didn't want him to get the wrong idea. Very very weird that they both text me within half an hour of each other. Especially since they live on opposite sides of the country.

Lily xXx

The Ball

Last night was the night of the ball I've been helping to organise for a charity I'm on a committee of. Many many things went wrong during the organisation (we were holding it in conjuction with a different organisation who buggered up on a lot of things).

The only annoying part of the evening was the raffle. We had some amazing prizes and to boost ticket sales all the committee who were there bought tickets. As the draw happened one by one we all won. It seemed totally fixed. Between us we took the cheapest prizes, or in my case I decided not to choose a prize. It seemed awful to be taking one of the prizes when I'd already been given a present for helping to organise the ball.

The food at the ball was amazing. If I could find the cable for my camera then I'd upload some photos. There was a goats cheese and tomato tart for starters, sirlion of beef with delicious green beans and potato gratin and then the most amazing dessert I've ever eaten. To put this dessert into perspective you have to understand that I don't have that much of a sweet tooth, so I rarely enjoy desserts. This was a chocolate torte that was perfect. Lovely sponge on the bottom and the most chocolately truffle layer on top. It was heaven. It was also served with a touch of vanilla cream and was so perfectly presented. That alone was worth the (rather extortionate) price of the tickets.

The night also gave me an opportunity to introduce the other half to some more of my uni friends, and it went very well. Overall it was a brilliant night. Best of all is that we managed to raise about £700 for the charity we held the ball in aid of. A miracle when you think that less than a fortnight ago we thought that we would have to cancel the ball.

Lily xXx

Medicine's Mysteries Part 1

Strictly this counts as a surgical mystery, but that ruined my alliteration...

All the time we're told about surgeons and varicose veins. The better a surgeon the more varicose veins he has, because he's spent longer on his/her feet in surgery.

Surely surgeons should wear support stockings? But they don't... why?!

Out Damn Spot!

I think my body is permanently against me. Over the summer I really wasn't feeling well and my skin became all spotty and horrid. Over the last 2 months I've been feeling so much better and my skin has got so much clearer. Almost totally clear in fact. This could be partially due to the fact I'm back on the pill I used to be on that always makes me feel great, and partially because I'm generally a lot healthier. Or at least that was the case.

The past 2 days I've started to get a cold and been feeling generally rubbish, so what happens when I look in the mirror?! Spots!! Not just 1, not just 2 but lots. Grrrr. As if that isn't bad enough in itself on Wednesday I'm going to a ball. So that means there'll be lots of photos and in all of them I'll be all spotty. Double Grrrr.

On the plus side I saw the coca-cola advert 3 times today. That means it's officially the festive season so I can start eating mince pies... Mmmmm. Yummy!

Lily xXx

Lazy Sunday

After last night's printing panic, where word would not do what I wanted, I'm having a calm and relaxed Sunday. I ended up staying awake past midnight feeding paper into the printer in 4 different ways so that I could get what I wanted printed how I wanted (probably more due to me not understanding word than anything else). I then had to do lots of cutting and numbering before I'd finished my errand and could go to sleep. Lucky for me the boyf helped out a lot and I got to calm down with a glass of beer after almost throwing the printer across the room in a temper tantrum.

Why is it always that I have so much uni work and house work to do on a Sunday. In all fairness I haven't done any work all weekend but I know that I should do an hour or two before bed tonight. That wouldn't be so bad if my flat didn't look like a bomb had hit it. For some reason I always get it into a right mess whenever I'm not on my own.

We also got no painting done yesterday. Instead we got up late and spent ages in town. This was my fault. I had to get my niece a present for her 8th birthday and spent ages choosing. In the end I settled for a funky dungaree dress with hippy flowers embroidered on it, a stripy and glittery hat/scarf and a kit with all the bits to make lots of girly hair accessories. I then spent over an hour trying to find shoes to go with my ball dress. As I only spent £20 on a ball dress I had a budget of upto £30 to get shoes I could wear to the ball and out partying. They had to have pretty high heels as I'm so short but also had to be comfortable. In the end I found some gorgeous black stiletto platforms that add a good 4" to my height, thus stopping my dress dragging in puddles. Hurrah! As a bonus they were only £25 and I'm sure I'll get lots of wear out of them. By Thursday morning I should have a pretty good idea whether or not they're comfortable too, but just wearing them in my flat for an hour they felt really comfortable.

Anyway I'm going to watch a film and then try and get a little productive, tidying my flat and doing some work. Or maybe I'll just watch 2 films, or even 3 films....

Lily xXx

Word Woes

Word clearly hates me. I've spent ages working out how to get something to print in a particular way and I've now given up. Instead I shall spend the next hour rotating bits of paper so that I can get stuff to print the way I want. Grrrrrr....

It seems everytime I touch something to do with technology it goes wrong. It's as if I'm jinxed. :(

Fingers crossed I won't get confused when rotating these bits of (very expensive!!!) paper, or I'll ruin everything!

Lily xXx

My Week At Medical School - Friday

The more observant among you will notice that it is in fact Saturday today, not Friday. Needless to say I was very tired last night and had my lovely boyf to snuggle up to so I completely forgot about writing the last instalment of my week at med school.

Anyway, lets pretend it's still Friday....

7.30: Get up. A little earlier than I would normally considering the train I have to get, but it means I can have a vague attempt at tidying a bit before the boy arrives. I fail miserably at the whole tidying thing because I get distracted by yesterdays metro which is still in my bag. I love sudoku.

9.10: Get on the train and actually get a seat. This is total amazingness, especially as I'm wearing heels as opposed to my hush puppies.

9.40: Have the usual gossip about the night before over a cup of tea. Not much to say today as I just kept falling asleep last night. Ironically every time I woke up there was an advert on telly about people with narclepsy.

10.03: Get onto the wards and stalk the very busy SHO during her ward round. Sensing our need to actually do something useful she sent us off to get lots of bloods. Unfortunately these were off people who seemingly had no blood. Thank goodness for the elective student who managed after multiple attempts to get some blood out of these people. Worryingly they were covered in huge bruises where she'd taken blood before.

12.15: Skived off for lunch. I had a rather yummy stew thing. It even had carrots in. Unfortunately it was probably cat and carrot stew or something as it didn't really resemble or taste like anything I'd ever had before. Oh well. Cheap and tasty so I can't complain.

13.30 On the train again to go to a more central train station to get to my GP placement.

14.30: Very almost left my bag with lots of work in it at a coffee shop in the train station. Thankfully I rescued it. However I did get a lecture from the coffee shop lady. Although I only left it for about 60 seconds she insisted on lecturing me about how she wasn't a left luggage facility and that she should charge me £3 like they do. Now, realistically... I'd left it for a minute, I came running back in all flustered and was so thankful that she found it. Was the lecture really neccessary? No.

15.45: Arrived at my GP placement. I saw frolicing dear along the way to the surgery from the train station. That's how far from London we were!!

The GP was really dull. He didn't seem to know anything about any of the stuff we've been learning at hospital. Now I can understand him not having specialist knowledge but I'd think that he should at least be able to explain something like atrial fibrillation. I was not impressed. He then gave us a lecture about taking our time with histories. He recommended half an hour. If we did that in the hospital we'd be shot or the patients would die of old age before we'd finished.

He didn't even know what murmur he was listening for when he rolled the patient on to their left. I was stunned. Surely if you're going to demonstrate something you'd at least want to look up why you did certain things so you could tell the students.

However he did seem like a really nice man, and with both patients we saw he really listened to them which obviously is very important. So not all bad.

18.30: Finished at the GP in the middle of nowhere and trekked back to the train station. Between changing trains and waiting around for connecting trains the journey took me almost exactly 2 hours. I did get the chance for a gossip on the phone while I waited. My niece has broken her nose. Apparently they can't do anything about it for 10 days?! Any tips on how to help relieve the pain and help it to set straight?

20.30: Lovely boyfriend picked me up from the train station and off home I went to cook dinner and have cuddles. Perfect end to a long and busy day!

Lily xXx

My Week At Medical School - Thursday

9.00: Hurray! A proper lie-in. Finally get up at 9 and still have lots of time to get ready. This is pretty much the case every Thursday of this rotation which is nice.

11.00: Arrive at uni for my special study module seminar. As I've picked a non-scientific topic, which interests me greatly, this seminar is no great chore. In fact I really look forward to this. Even the fact that it take a couple of hours a week preparation doesn't put me off at all.

13.00: Grab a coffee and a nibble for lunch. Catch up on all the gossip with my clinical partner who was in the hospital this morning. It's amazing how much can happen in the few hours that I'm not there.

13.30: Off to an ENT outpatients clinic. These have an awful reputation. A couple of weeks ago the ENT doctors actually made two of my friends cry. I was so nervous when I arrived and convinced I'd hate it. The second I walked into the outpatients department I felt at home. The receoptionist was lovely, the nurse was so helpful and really friendly and most importantly the doctor I was sitting with wasn't a complete monster. In fact he was one of the nicest people I've had teach me since I started at uni. We didn't see that many patients but those we did he really involved me in the consultation and let me examine everyone. He then also went through lots of sign up skills he didn't have to because we had the extra time. Now I only have 7 sign-up skills left to get, which is less than 2 a week. I think that might be manageable. I have this huge fear about getting to the last week and having to cram everything in. Hopefully tomorrow I may be able to get another sign off as I have a GP placement in the afternoon/evening.

16.15: Finished outpatients because it was quiet. Tottered home nice and early. Walked from the train station as opposed to getting the bus because I had the time to kill.

17.00: Got home and chilled out. I even managed to cook some yummy tuna pasta. Before I realised what happened I had fallen asleep on the sofa though, so I haven't tidied up at all, even though the boyfriend is coming to stay tomorrow. Thankfully he loves me even though I'm incredibly untidy. I'll just have to try and shove everything under my bed.

Lily xXx

My Week At Medical School - Wednesday.

7.55: Alarm goes off. I feel rather nice that I'm waking up when the sun has already risen. Have breakfast and get ready with a smile on my face.

8.40: Leave to catch the train. Half way to the trains station my shoes start rubbing. I haven't worn them for about a year and I was sure they were comfy. Comfortable shoes are vital for a good day at uni. Sore shoes always cause me to get grumpy. Nothing worse than spoiling the fun of seeing patients with achey feet.

9.30: Get to uni early because of erratic train times so have a cup of tea and a chat with some uni chums.

10.00: Off for teaching on one of the wards. We get to see and examine 3 really friendly and helpful patients. It's amazing how much everyone's examination teachnique has improved since we started a couple of months ago. I remember thinking I'd never feel confident doing it and now I completely don't mind examining a patient with other people watching because I'm starting to think that I know what I'm doing. All the steps of the examination also mean a lot more to me now that I've seen most of the signs on patients and thought through them more. My teaching group gets a round of applause from the nurses on the nursing station because unbeknown to us they were spying on us and noticed that every one of us washed our hands before and after each patient. Go us!

11.30: My last case presentation of the year... hurrah! We got started late because of a meeting in the room. Kindly the people having a meeting left us a box of mini flapjacks and mini chocolate cornflake cakes to make up for having to start late. Yum yum yum. Had a bit of an internal panic when my titles weren't animating right in powerpoint but it went well overall and I got a nice high mark. Presentations are another example of how my confidence has soared since starting clinics at the end of September. At first I was really nervous at presenting and now I don't get nervous in the slightest.

13.00: Grab some food and head off for a big trek between two campuses.

14.00: Had an hours practice session at taking blood from plastic arms. Although I've got a lot of practice on real people coming up it's vital to know how to take blood from plastic arms for my practical exams (OSCEs). We also need practice at just using vaccutainers with a needle as opposed to taking blood using a vaccutainer attached to a butterfly, because although as a rule butterflies are used on patients, just the ordinary vaccutainers are used in exams.

15.00: A demonstration from an FY2 on respiratory examinations. Very useful as she graduated from my uni so knows what they look for in OSCEs. Also useful as I haven't had much of a chance to practice. Almost forgot my nice stethascope in a pile of not so nice ones.

16:00: A different FY2 showed us all cardiac exams. By this time I was getting a little tired, so probably didn't pay as much attention as I should have. I'm not too worried about this because I've now done probably near 50 cardiac examinations and feel pretty confident with them. Granted I need to practice more before exams, but I think I just need more practice as opposed to more instruction.

16.40: Got to leave at a reasonable time. Hobble to catch the train and then hobble home.

17.10: Get home and have a cup of tea. Read the paper curled up on the sofa. Think a little about what I'd like for dinner.

17.40: Cook a lovely dinner of garlicy chicken and mushrooms with pasta and spinach. I feel really good today because I've had a little more time to myself. I even do the washing up without a grumble.

18.40: Chill out in front of the TV. I know I have some work to do for my special study module tomorrow but I'm not in too much of a panic. I really need to unwind so I'll probably try and get it done while watching a bit of telly over the evening. Thankfully it shoudn't need too much brain power.

Lily xXx

Hives!

It's official. I'm allergic to presentations. I've been beavering away at it bit by bit (trying not to distract myself by watching youtube videos of Il Divo...) and I'm almost finished. I'm as far as my last slide. Anyway... I was looking up information about how a certain antibiotic works and realised I was scratching my belly. When I looked down IT was covered in hives... as is one leg.

I haven't had hives for ages and ages but I can't think of anything I've eaten or been near today that could have set it off. It must be the hard work. It clearly has to stop as of now.

Lily xXx

My Week At Medical School - Tuesday

6.35: Alarm goes off. Stumble out of bed.

6.36: Stub toe on the door frame. Swear loudly enough to wake up the whole block of flats and stumble into the shower. Get dressed and have breakfast as per usual.

7.18: Set off for the train station 3 minutes later than normal because I couldn't find my headphones. This disproportionately annoys me but strangely I make it to the train station 2 minutes earlier than I usually would. Clearly the stubbed toe didn't disable me.

8.15: Take my headphones out and realise ink from a pen which exploded in my bag is all over one. I know have a nice blue ear canal. Lets hope noone gets out the auriscopes today.

8.30: Lecture begins on time today. It's a surprisingly interesting lecture with loads of cool 3D echo pictures. Even more excitingly the lecturer only talks for half an hour rather than adding loads of technical mumbo jumbo we have no hope of understanding. Unfortunately lecturer number duo doesn't turn up.

9.03: Frantically scramble to the ward with the nice registrar who likes teaching in an attempt to beat any other students.

9.04: Drat. The other students beat us.

9.06: When all else fails go for a coffee to cheer up. During the coffee we chat mindless rubbish and make a new game plan for the morning. We almost go into cardiac arrest when we realise this has taken 45 mins.

10.00: Sit in the library and try to do a little more of my presentation. Unfortunately for me the library is one of the social hubs of the hospital and I end up having a good old natter to lots of people I haven't seen in ages.

12.00: Mmmmm... hummus for lunch again. Shame the bread is a bit stale.

13.00: A really informative and interesting teaching session from one of the surgical registrars. I also managed to answer a lot of the questions correctly. It's reassuring to think that deep down I'm actually starting to learn stuff.

15:00: With only a few minutes to stretch our legs, we then have another teaching session but this time with one of our consultants. He's surprisingly nice and not scary although the further we get into the rotation the more annoyed he gets when we look blankly at him. Yet again I manage to answer a fair few questions as do the others in the group so we don't look completely stupid. I'm sure I see a small smile of satisfaction on his face that we're finally absorbing the things it's taken him weeks to teach us.

16:46: Wait for the train. It's late. I'm unimpressed.

17.20: Pop to Starbucks to kill time before a 6pm meeting. Do some of the work for my special study module while sipping a gingerbread latte. It's completely not science based which is a nice change but it's been at least 5 years since I've done anything similar.

18.00: Meeting for the charity committee I'm on. Basically it's a major freak out because an event which another group were holding on our behalf has fallen through and we may have to let a lot of people down. We spend ages brainstorming ways to make the best of the situation we're in. Fingers crossed we've kind of got it sorted but my stress levels are way way way high. I've also agreed to make 250 posh raffle tickets for the 26th. Eek.

19.45: Get home. Have some pasta and jump in the shower afterwards. I always find a hot steamy shower helps me when I'm feeling really stressed out.

20.30: Crack on with my presentation for tomorrow. Things are a lot more complicated then they first seemed so I'm trying to keep it as simple as I can. I've still got a fair bit to do later on tonight but I'd guess that I'm well over half way now and I'm pretty confident about the subject which is what matters most.

The rest of this evening will be taken up by finishing my presentation (hopefully it won't take more than an hour), calling the boyf for a chat because I miss him and reading whoever's updated their blogs.

As you can tell this has been a pretty hard working boring day overall. Thankfully all the teaching I had today was really interesting as otherwise days without much patient contact can get pretty dull.

Lily xXx

My Week At Medical School - Monday.

Since I put my email address up I've had a couple of emails asking me what it's actually like being a medical student and the kind of things I get up to. Rather than trying to sum it all up in a post, as I think I'd fail miserably at getting everything across properly, I've decided to actually write a little factual diary of what I get upto this week...

Monday

6.35 : My alarm goes on. It's still dark outside and actually freezing. I jump out of bed and run into the shower to try and warm up. I load up on a big bowl of bran flakes. As a random aside I put sugar on all my cereal... is that weird? I don't know anyone else who does.

7.15 : I trudge off to get the train to go to the hospital.

8.05 : At the hospital. 25 minutes early, but the stupid trains mean that I'm either 25 minutes early or 2 late. The latter is not an option. Pour a cup of coffee down my throat in a feeble attempt to wake up.

8.30 : 2 hours of lectures. I die a little inside. This morning we have two particularly dry lecturers who both seem to zoom through their topics too fast to make notes. Thankfully one of the topics has been covered by my firm head pretty well. I spend most of the lecture rubbing my nose in a frantic effort to stop it actually freezing off my face. All that keeps me concious is period pains... woe is me.

10.30 : Now we get to the good stuff. Actual "doing stuff" in the hospital. This morning I spend 20 minutes trying to track down a registrar to make sure someone is teaching my group this afternoon. Seems like wasted time but it's better to spend 20 minutes organising the teaching than leaving it too late and getting none at all.

10.50 : Down to one of the wards to have a look and see if any interesting patients have turned up. Use the computer system to look at patient notes for a patient I'm presenting at a Grand Round later in the week. Fortunately it's good news... my patient was refusing treatment, but changed his mind this weekend and is now on the mend. Hurrah!

11.50 : Quick dash to get an overpriced cappucino. I like mixing sweetner in the froth so I have really sweet froth and really bitter coffee. Mmmmm. I also nibble on a nutrigrain bar... it's been ages since breakfast and I always seem to be hungry.

12.00 : Possibly the highlight of my week (and this is not sarcasm), radiology teaching. The registrar is amazing and explains things so well. Is it geeky that I spent the whole session actually having to sit on my hands and bite my lip shut so I didn't scream out all the answers when it wasn't my turn? I love it. We saw some amazing things today that I hope I'll never forget. Who knew that one of the pre-antibiotic treatments for TB was putting little ball things in the lung?! Well... probably lots of you, but I didn't. Great little fact.

13.15 : Mmmmm... Hummus, bread, sugarsnap peas and cherry tomatos. A lunch fit for kings, or even medical students.

14.00 : More teaching. Another really nice reg but a little more random. Learnt lots about emergency diagnosis and treatment of a patient who presents with shortness of breath. Hopefully I'll remember it. Chances are I won't. Unfortunately this reg was insanely busy so had to cut their teaching session short.

15.30 : On the train home. Resisting the urge to have a nap.

16.15 : Get in the front door. Do the most important task of the evening. Put the kettle on. Have a cup of tea. Mmmm. Tea.

16.17 : Procrastinate a bit. Make sure the electricity and gas people use my actual meter readings as unlike the woman who lived here before I don't have all my lights on all the time and run the heating at 35 degrees. Daft lady.

16.40 : Try to start the powerpoint for my presentation on Wednesday. Do all the easy bits and give up.

17.30 : Do some work I have to do based on a clinical scenario. Totally underestimate the amount of time I need. They usually take about half an hour. This was mammoth... about the size of 4 normal ones. Needless to say it took ages but I'm pleased I've done it a week in advance. Not the most interesting of topics but it's helped me revise lots of stuff from preclinical years which is really important.

19.10 : Cook some lovely pasta with pancetta, blue cheese, mushroom and spinach sauce. Is it just me or does time actually slow down while your waiting for pasta to cook? It took ages. I almost died of starvation.

20.10 : Sit down and write my blog.

I still have a fair bit of work to do tonight. I'll probably do another half hour at least on my presentation and had originally hoped to get some reading done too, but I'm not sure that'll be possible. I guess this is karma for not really doing any work in the first few weeks. Fingers crossed I'll get to go to bed by 11 or I'll fall asleep on my laptop.

Lily xXx

Catty Consultants

I finally feel truely part of the team within the hospital. My chums and I have been witness to some proper inter-consultant bitchyness, much to our amusement. There we were thinking all the consultants are sophisticated and professional. Not so.

When one of our consultants (who, to be totally honest is very very arrogant, but in a funny cool way) asked another consultant if he could use a seminar room, none of us were taken aback by the usual sarcastic witty banter. What happened next was enough to shock me into almost choking on a cup of tea...

as the funny arrogant consultant stuck his head out of the door to see if any other rooms were free the other consultant stuck his two fingers up and mouthed "F*** off, W*****" (it's not usually my style to star things out, but I'm still in so much shock I can't get the words out).

Glad to see it's not only us with our improfessional, petty grudges.

Lily xXx

BFF

The craziest thing has happened. I've spent this Sunday in London at my flat. The Boyf spent Sunday afternoon at the seaside which is home. He bumped into my Dad so they went for a beer. They then went off for a cosy curry just the two of them.

Crazyness!!

My Dad usually HATES my boyfriends. This one clearly has my Dad's approval. I don't know whether to be really pleased or really really scared.

Lily

P.S I want a curry too.... I hope my Dad takes me and not just his new BFF next time!

Another Grumble...

As always I have another grumble to make. This time my grumble is about people who presume that because I'm a student, I must do nothing all day.

Examples:

"You students... do nothing all day and complain you're tired"

"Getting up late, drinking every night, loads of random sex... Don't pretend it's hard work!"

"Just you wait until you're part of the real world, then like me you'll know what stress and work are all about" (this is usually from someone I know who either works part time in a bar or does a fairly unstressful 9-5 admin job in an office).

I'm fed up of this misconception. The next person who says anything along these lines will face my wrath (and that's surprisingly scary for someone this short)!

I now only get up when it's dark. Usually about 6am. I also get home when it's dark. Around 6pm or for the last few days 8pm. As well as having 12 hours out of the house at uni I'm also expected to do work at home. This means I either work late or I have to give up my weekends. I also have the added emotional stress of seeing things which are upsetting. After seeing 2 or 3 patients who have terminal cancer the last thing I feel like doing is going out and having fun. It takes time to wind down.

As for the drinking and sex... Well no. Just no. Midweek drinking is out of the question as there is no way I could get up at 6am with a hangover and even on the weekends im knackered. The most I'll usually drink on the weekend is a glass of wine or bottle of beer with dinner. Also where did the random sex thing come from? As if I'd have the energy for that. My boyfriend is lucky if he gets a cuddle and a kiss on the cheek half the time.

Maybe I'm just a totally boring student, but everyone I've talked to on clinics seems pretty much the same. Excess and partying are saved for rare occasions (birthdays... and even then not everyones) and we all do seriously long days.

Just to clear this up I actually enjoy university, and because I enjoy it I don't mind the long days and the extra work, what I'm moaning about is the fact that people constantly have a go at me for being a "lazy student".

I'm not. So they can bugger off!

On a related note I was eavesdropping on some 1st year students in the hospital. Yes. I know eavesdropping is rude, but so am I. Anyway back to the point. One student said he was interested in the intercalated BSc in Medical Ethics and Law. This caught my attention as even though I didn't do this BSc I did think about it, it's interesting stuff. One of his colleagues asked him why he wanted to do this BSc. His reply was "Well.... I'm interested in law. Thinking I might do a law conversion..."

Whoa. What? You're a 1st year!! It's not even the end of the 1st term! What on earth are you doing on my ward?!

He went on to explain that he didn't think he really wanted to be a doctor but he was interested in how the human body works so he decided to do the course. Then he went even further and said that although he fancied being a lawyer that he thinks medicine pays better and is more secure as a job, so it's his back up. I was horrified. I hate to think that he's taken the place of someone who actually wants to be a doctor. Grrrr.

Lily xXx

Rain, Rain Go Away...

I hate this weather.



Last night I drove back from the seaside where I'd been visiting my lovely boyf. I'm surprised I made it back alive. I can't have driven at more than 55mph at any point and yet it was still the scariest thing ever. Not only was there so much rain that visibility was virtually 0, but the wind meant that I spent the whole time just trying frantically to keep my car from being slammed in to another car, the barrier or a lorry. I was exhausted when I got back to my flat and curled up to go to sleep pretty early as I had a stupidly early start this morning.

So this morning off I went in the rain again. Luckly I left so early that it was easier to get a bus than the train because the trains were buggered. So much so that when moving between hospitals today I very almost didn't make it back to a teaching session. I had to get a random bus I'd never got before and hope for the best. As if this hadn't annoyed me enough I got totally soaked on the way home. So much so that my waterproof coat leaked (clearly Primarni isn't quite as amazing as I first thought). Thinking my day couldn't get any damper I got in to my flat, changed in to warm dry clothes and went to have a cup of tea in the living room.

Drip, drip, drip...

The window frame was leaking. Not just a little leak but a huge armchair soaking, floor puddling leak. It's still going now, albeit a little slower. The only silver lining to practically drowning in my flat is that the chances are with this much water around I won't burn to death as the battery in my fire alarm died today.

Lily xXx

Trying to Relax

Sorry about the lack of posts so far this week. I've been making the most of having a less busy than usual week. In fact Friday I'm even planning to have a duvet day, before my much busier timetable starts on Monday. Unfortunately my duvet day will involve doing a fair bit of work, but at least it means that I can have a lie in and maybe do my work with my duvet. That counts as a duvet day right?!

Excitingly tomorrow after uni I'm going to see the ex flatmate and her lovely other half who I haven't seen for ages. Then after that I'm going to see my lovely half who I haven't seen since Sunday, and that is far too long! Maybe I'll make tomorrow even better by having some curly fries in the pub. I love curly fries.

I'm enjoying the fact I can chill out this week. Now there are doctors on the wards who'll help us learn the skills for sign ups and sign us off I'm not as stressed out. I learnt blood taking on my clinical partner earlier in the week and it went amazingly. Now that I've had a go on a healthy person my confidence is much higher when it comes to patients. If I tried to take blood from a patient and couldn't manage it I wouldn't feel like a total failure. It shocks me that our medical school doesn't really advocate practicing on each other. Health and safety or something. Madness!

Lily xXx