Modesty... I Think Not.

Oh yeah... I forgot to mention....

I passed my exams!!!

I also did very well. I got 90% in one of the stations. 90%!!!

Modesty has never been my strong point though. Need to work on it.

Lily xXx

Eureka... it works!

I learnt something fabulous today. Taking my inhaler before exercise actually really really helps. Ever since I got asthma I cut right down on exercise and totally stopped running. Once I found out it was asthma and was given an inhaler I knew that it was supposed to help and in theory should make my running easier, but the memory of how scary and painful it is to have an asthma attack put me off trying it out.

I'm really convinced that I want to do the 2010 London marathon so I need to start running again. After Tuesdays asthmatic disaster I was a little wary today when I went to go for a short run (only 1-2kms for the first week to get me started again). I decided to give the inhaler thing a bash and took two puffs before I set off. It was amazing. Just like before I had asthma. I could actually breathe. It felt so nice to stop running once my legs were getting achy not because I suddenly felt I couldn't breathe anymore.

Even though it was only a 15 minute jog, at a fairly slow pace, it's really made me feel that perhaps I can actually do the marathon.

Lily xXx

Good First Impression

I met my neurology consultant today. He seems like a really nice guy. I've spent most of this year petrified about getting some horrible, scary neuro consultant who'll expect me to know everything from day 1, but this guy seems nice, good at teaching, approachable and reasonable.

It was nice to be home a little early today too as the first week tends to be a little less demanding than the rest of the rotation.

I've decided to apply for the 2010 marathon, so I decided to go for a run today. I learnt a valuable lesson. Don't go out without an inhaler. Apart from the odd wheeze my asthma really hasn't played up for over a year until I went running today. After about 600m I tried to take a breath and just couldn't, then I couldn't get a big breath out either. I ended up sitting on the pavement in the rain trying to calm down and not panic so I could catch my breath. Not surprisingly where I live noone decided to help me.

Once I'd recovered a bit I took a stroll about half a km back to my flat. I somehow ended up carrying my neighbours baby up loads and loads of stairs because the lift wasn't working. That was more than enough of a work out for me. Somehow I need to get the motivation to try and have a run again on Thursday. We shall see.

Lily xXx

First Day of the New Term

What a long day.

Up at 6.30am.

On the bus not long after 7am.

Back on the train home at 8pm.

Lots of stuff in between.

Today was possibly the most pointless day ever. I literally had a whole long day of various people from uni explaining admin stuff that they had already emailed us. Us medics may not be the brightest of people but we can read!

Tomorrow I have to have a whole day of neurology. I know nothing. Starting to panic now.

Lily xXx

Real Time Off

Since Wednesday, when I finished my exam, until Monday when I start my placement I have actual real holiday time off with no revision. It's been really really nice and relaxing for once although I haven't got anything I planned to do done.

I spent Friday playing squash and got home quite late, so today I was going to clean the flat, especially the kitchen which needs a really good deep clean. Anyway, it just hasn't happened so that's now going to be tomorrows job after I've done the things I have planned tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the London Marathon. Woo. Two of my friends are running in it, so the plan is to meet at a pub with a group of people and later on meet them when they've finished running.

I wish I had the determination to train for and eventally run a marathon, that takes a lot of hard work!

Lily xXx

Exam Run Down

I did my exam yesterday.

I always find exams, especially practical ones hard to interpret afterwards. For this reason I have no idea whether or not I've done well.

The stations I had were all pretty straight forward. As there is still one day of exams left I won't go into too much detail, lest I give it all away, but I can tell you some stuff without giving it away.

I had one examination station. I missed part of the examination, but it's the same part a friend missed when doing the identical station last time around and she still passed comfortably.

My other two stations were histories. One had a man who talked really slowly and at length, so it was so hard to take his history in 5 minutes. Another was really grumpy. He asked me if I thought he was going to die and if I could tell him what was wrong with him. In response to this I gave him the answer I've always been told to give in the hospital... "I'm only a medical student so I can't tell you much about what illness you may have, that's down to the doctor who is much more qualified than I am and won't accidentally mislead you." In reply to this he had a huff and said I clearly knew nothing more than the cleaner. That was a little mean.

Talking to other people after the exam really upsets me. Every time someone talks about the stations I think of all the things I've missed. To make it worse those going into the exam in the afternoon usually know what stations they will get by finding other people who had the same stations as them earlier than them last time. I'm first thing in the morning so I'll never get that luxury.

Lily xXx

Exam Tomorrow

Tomorrow at 9.46 I have my exam. 3 little OSCE stations which could be on anything I've done this year.

Fortunately for me I bothered to turn up to uni over the past 6 months, so I'm starting to feel that revising an examination is getting a little pointless as I've done it so much. Because of this I don't feel like I've done much revision.

I've practiced history taking.
I've read up on, and practiced the stuff for explaining.
I practiced examinations and keep running through what to do in my mind.
I've read over the skills I might have to do.

Skills or unmanned stations will be my downfall. Skills because no matter how much I read it in the book it doesn't make up for practice and for the last 3 months I've been placed about 70 miles away from the clinical skills centre so haven't had a chance to practice on models. Unmanned stations because I cannot face relearning all the ECG stuff. I realise that is lazy of me, but I really can't, I've tried but after 5 minutes of reading the stuff in the book I realise it's not actually going in my mind.

On a happier note I got my mark for my last rotation today (even though I still don't have mine from the first!!). I'm pleased as it's 71% so it keeps me in the good category. Fingers crossed I'll be able to keep all my clinics marks at 70 or above so they bolster my practical exam and written exam marks rather than drag them down.

Lily xXx

Even More Procrastination

My procrastination techniques have reached a new level of procrastinationess.

I need a shoe rack. Because of this fact I went to Argos and bought a shoe rack. This provided me with a dilemma. What about all my lovely matching Ikea furniture? I had a plan...

Paint it all white.

I was going to go the easy way. Assemble the bloody thing and then paint it standing up. Apparently that is wrong. WRONG in fact. It is so wrong the capital letters are a must. In fact apparently I have to paint the whole thing piece by piece. This means I have to wait hours for the bits to dry to turn them over and paint the other side.

This is taking ages.

Lily xXx

Histology Dreams

I am officially a weirdo.

Now that I've stopped snoring in my sleep, I've started talking in my sleep. Apparently it's not mumbling, it's full on loudly spoken clear coherent sentences. The boyfriend is not a scientist. Therefore he was a little confused by my late night science lesson on the histology of epithelial cells.

The most shocking part of all of this is that I don't actually think I remember any histology, so either I'm a sleep blagger, and just tried to blag it by making things up, or I'm a sleep genious and should therefore sleep through my exams.

Lily xXx

Instead of Revision...

Next Wednesday I have an exam. Just a small OSCE. Only 3 stations in fact, although that is from a choice of lots and lots of stations. However I haven't been revising yet :-s

I've been getting lots of other things done. I now have curtains up in my living room (only 9 months after I moved in). I got some pasta bowls from ikea (which unfortunately don't fit in my cupboard). I also saw Monsters Vs Aliens 3D.

3D cinema is amazing! I'm so excited by the fact all the cartoons that are coming out soon all have 3D showings too. I've been converted to watching children's films now.

Today I have one last day of doing stuff before I knuckle down to my revision. I've got a doctors appointment, which means I have to be in central London, as that's where my GP is. Because I'm getting the train into central London, I might as well make the most of the train ticket and have a nice day out in London too. Yay. Then tomorrow for the next 5 days I'll be getting some revision done hopefully. Fingers crossed.

Lily xXx

Bank Holiday Weekend

The best thing about Bank Holiday's is other people having the same time off as I do. Over this bank holiday not only have I managed to spend lots of time with the boyf but I've seen friends I haven't seen for months, spent time with my dad and spent time with the boyf's family. This afternoon I get to go to my Aunt's for lunch. I haven't seen her for ages and ages, so it's going to be great.

Unfortunately I still haven't started on my work, which I'm going to have to do in the week, but I've made the mistake of making lots of plans. I aim to get everything I don't have time for in term done this week. Namely Ikea. I love Ikea. Tomorrow is Ikea day. Woo!! Hopefully everyone else will have satisfied themselves on flatpack furniture over the weekend so I'll have the place to myself.

Lily xXx

Easter Weekend

It always seems that Easter is here to trip me up. It's probably the least efficient holiday for me work-wise. I do even less work than at Christmas. There are two reasons for this. Firstly is the sunshine. It's so hard to get any work done when the sun is shining and I need some vitamin D. The second reason is snakebite and black. Drink of the hockey festival season and my downfall! ...Surprisingly this year I've been pretty reasonable with it though.

What's odd about this Easter is that it isn't the holiday before a huge set of exams for me. Well technically it is as I don't have another holiday before exams, but I do have a small exam and a whole 12 week rotation to go.

Because of this it's hard to motivate myself. I'm hoping revising for the mini-OSCE won't be too taxing. Practice my examination techniques and remind myself of some skills. I do however have a 6000 word essay to write. As Easter marks the anniversary of my Mum's death, I'm not really in the mood for an essay on bereavement. Unfortunately I'll have to get stuck into it at some point.

Lily xXx

Fancy New Phone

After a slight altercation with Orange because they wouldn't give me the phone I wanted, I've finally got a new phone. Unfortunately this meant changing to O2, with my lack of knowledge about PAC codes meaning that I had to get a new number, which is always a bother. Otherwise it's great!

I've got an XDA Ignito. It has a funky touch screen and I can get my emails on it as well as being able to surf the 'net. I spent almost 3 hours of yesterday setting up my emails on it. Finally, after many mistakes on my part, I managed to get it working. Hurrah! I've now turned into one of those annoying people who checks their phone every 10 minutes. I can even put the oxford handbook of clinical medicine on the phone! I'm geekily excited.

For those of you who read about my snoring drama, I managed to solve it last night. I took a sudafed tablet before bed and didn't snore at all. The snoring must be because my nose is still blocked up a bit from the sinusitis I had a couple of weeks ago. I actually had a little celebratory dance around the flat this morning when I was told I didn't snore.

Lily xXx

Cardiac Arrest

I've just started watching Cardiac Arrest, a program apparently shown on the BBC in the early 90's. It got taken off TV eventually due to the Royal College of Nurses complaining that it shows nurses in a bad light, but to be perfectly honest it doesn't show doctors in an amazing light either. What it does do however is managed to be thoughtful, dark, strangely funny and makes me a little worried about what life will be like once I graduate.

On a separate note, it's day 4 of the Easter holidays and I haven't really done much. Yesterday the boyf had a hospital appointment, so that took up most of the day, but I don't know how we managed to do pretty much bugger-all over the weekend.

From now on I'm being strict with myself about doing some work and tidying the flat which is a TIP. I've decided I'm going to to uni work and tidy the flat all day while the boyfriend is at work and then our home might seem at least slightly livable.

On an embarassing note, since I had a bad cold a fortnight ago I've started snoring really loudly. So loudly the boyf has been sleeping on the sofa. :-s I feel awful because he has to get up and go to work but I don't know what to do to stop it.

Lily xXx

Back in London

Finally I'm back in London. It doesn't quite feel as good as i thought it would because I now know I have no excuse for not tidying up the flat.

Thursday night was our big placement celebration curry after our presentations and it was great! We all met in the pub. Our consultant turned up first and had a couple of drinks with us. Strangely it was the younger ones of us in our group who felt comfortable taking ot him and having a drink while the older graduate students were giggling and taking pictures from across the room, leading him to think they were a little weird. The strangest part of the evening was when the subdean, who marked the presentations walked up to me and said, "You must be a drama student!". At first I wasn't sure whether it was a compliment or not, but apparently it was because I was very confident, which is funny because I was bricking it on the inside.

When we got to the restaurant it ended up with 3 of us sitting on a table with the consultant who was actually a really good laugh. It's strange to think that he might actually be human. It was actually a really enjoyable way to spend an evening.

After dinner, although the consultant gave us the next day off so we could go out partying, we decided to just have a few drinks at home. I really am going to miss this placement a lot more that I thought I would.

Lily xXx

Protests and Clashes

So, today is the first day of the G20 protests in London. Some people will take this the wrong way, but I'm going to give my opinion on it. As this is my blog I guess I should really give my views.

Peaceful protests are OK. Everyone has the right to get their point across. Protests that shut down most of the City of London when we're in an economic crisis are a little daft. What is the point in losing 2 days of work when we have such an economic slump?

Smashing the windows of RBS. Pointless hooliganism. For a start it's owned by taxpayers so they're just trashing stuff that belongs to the state. Secondly criminal damage will not solve all the problems in this world. It leads me to think that some of the people who go on these protests are just weed smoking, cider drinking wasters who have nothing better to do.

Intimidating people so they feel they can't go to work in a suit. Seriously not on. What about all the non-banking professionals who have to go around in suits today? Why should they be put at risk?!

A lot of the people protesting need to realise that the way to change things is not to cause violence, disorder and intimidation. Change can be initiated in different ways. The first thing to do is to understand the reasons why we're here, to think of ways to solve it and then to use reasonable platforms to get your opinions across. Not just smash up "capitalist" buildings.

I seriously hope that every person arrested today for breaking something or someone gets properly punsihed by the police, not just given a warning and allowed to get away with it. These people need to start understanding that acting like hooligans is not the way forward.

I'm also hating the way that all the blame for this is being passed to bankers. Yes the banks have a lot to answer for but so do many people's attitudes. The "I want it now" culture, of people needing to have the best of everything straight away even when they don't need it is whats helped to get us into this mess. If people saved up and then bought things rather than taking out a loan, getting their new car or fancy kitchen and then realising they can't keep up with repayments, this situation wouldn't be nearly as bad.

Ranty rant rant... This may continue tomorrow at this rate if everything I read about the G20 keeps annoying me. Also if I hear the phrase "Climate Camp" one more time I'm going to have to have a rant about them.

Lily xXx