Glum

I don't know why but for the last week I've been a little glum and this afternoon it seems to have completely get on top of me. I just can't stop crying. The boyfriend must think I'm totally nuts because I keep having little episodes of sobbing but I genuinely have no reason why I feel this bad, so instead I feel like I'm totally bonkers.

This happened last year a couple of times as well. It's not nice. I want to cheer up but I just can't.

Lily xXx

1/4 of the Way

Yay. I'm 1/4 of the way through this placement woo hoo.

This week has been much better than last. Turns out my hardened medical school immune system is norovirus proof. I also met a really funny and nice surgeon, who apart from making me rectally examine far too many people was really good at teaching and made standing in on surgery really interesting.

I've noticed something very weird about being on this placement. I don't cook. I love cooking, but here I just don't have the energy. I live off tortellini and pesto, plain pasta and pesto or cheese on toast. This week I might actually try to cook something. It's clearly laziness. At the moment all I want to do is knit and chat, cooking or any uni work doesn't really fit into my mental timetable.

I'm also still trying to sort stuff out about this car. It's amazing how much hassle it is to cancel my car insurance with my insurers. Especially considering I'm on placement so I can't actually get hold of my certificate until I go back to london. I can't wait until all these little stressy things are over. It's really getting me down.

I want all the car stuff delt with, my essay done, my presentation done and then I'll be able to sleep easily. Although I'm enjoying being on clinics I'm already looking forward to having a 2 week summer holiday, I really need the break. Bring on the end of August!!

Lily xXx

Norovirus

All I have to say is ew. I've managed to avoid the winter vomitting bug so far. Unfortunately my other half hasn't.

Poor boyfriend isn't very well and spent all night being sick. In fact so much so that in he middle of the night he actually took a pillow into the bathroom and fell asleep on the floor.

I'm hoping my hardened medical student immune system is proctecting me from catching it too!

Lily xXx

Life's Not Fair

I've had a rubbish week.

It's just been one rubbish thing after the other.

I'm still struggling to sleep because of the monster fridge that roars all night. Otherwise I guess my placement is OK. It's hard work but I can't deny that it means that we're all learning a lot. It's also such a bonus that all the students on placement there are all really friendly so it's nice to chill out with everyone.

My main bug bear this week started on Wednesday. Because the boyfriend's car is being repaired I lent him mine. As he's fully comp on his car and his insurance has always in the past covered him to drive other cars neither of us thought twice about it. Turns out his new policy doesn't cover him to drive other cars. Ergo the police fined him and gave him points and then they impounded my car.

The poor guy was really upset and apologetic, so at the end of the day it was a genuine oversight. Because of this I'm not annoyed in the slightest at him. What annoys me most is what happened next.

My car is in the pound. On Thursday the boyf went to the pound to try and get it released. He took all the paper work the police on the roadside told him to take and I paid to have him put on the car's insurance. They wouldn't release the car. He didn't have the right paperwork and they said they needed me.

Friday I accepted a telling off from my consultant and trundled to the pound to rescue my car. As I've literally just reinsured my car over the telephone it'll take up to 2 weeks for my insurers to send me out the certificate. I also never received my change of address on my car logbook so the DVLA have to send me a new one of these. Although the police can check this all on the computer to verify it they won't. Thats £20 more a day and if I dont have all the stuff within two weeks they're crushing my car.

To make it worse they stopped someone unrelated to me with his drivers licence registered to a different address. Impounded the car. Let him say it was his girlfriends. Released him. Noone from the police has yet called me to tell me they have impounded my car.

Anyway I'm really annoyed so I've told them to crush the car if they want but I'm suing them. The horrible rude ladies on the phone when I was trying to sort all of this out have just pushed me over the edge. I never raised my voice. I constantly repeated that I was more than happy with the fact they confiscated the car as the driver in it wasn't insured because that's actually the safest thing to do. I even thanked them for their time but they still snapped and shouted at me and were generally really rude. Stupidheads.

Lily xXx

End of the Weekend

Two days have never gone so fast. The weekend is now practically over unfortunately and I've done NO work. Oops. I really should get started on the 5000 word essay that's due in in 5 weeks. I've had such a nice weekend so now I've kind of got a mental count down until I'm back in London permanently. Only 11 weeks to go.

Its rare that I appriciate a long hot shower as much as I have this weekend. It's so nice to be able to spend as long as I want in the shower, with it properly hot, without having to worry about using up all the hot water. I've also been able to sleep without the noise of my noisy fridge that's in my room in the hospital placement. I also didn't realise quite how comfy my bed is. It's amazingly comfy. Ikea matresses really do rock.

I really haven't got up to much at all this weekend. Yesterday I had a big cooking day. I cooked an amazing slow roast lamb (stole the recipe off Saturday Kitchen) and then a stew for the boyf to have in the week. I also made an apple crumble. Mmmmm. Makes up for the fact I live off tortellini when I'm on placement. Amazingly however we get free lunch twice a week on placement. One of these is sandwiches, cake and fruit while the other has a hot option like a pasta bake and salads. We've never been spoiled so much

Anyway I have to pack up my clean washing and trundle off back to placement-town now. Grumble grumble grumble.

Lily xXx

Cravings and Addiction

Deary me. The lack of a good/private internet connection at this placement is driving me insane. Thank goodness I'm back home for the weekend. The fact we don't have internet in our rooms, nor Wi-Fi anywhere in the hospital means that it's pretty hard to blog and remain anonymous. Hence the lack of posts.

The lack of internet has shown me how addicted I am to blogging and reading blogs. I've actually been getting internet cravings. Last night I even had a nightmare that through some strange event I could never access the internet again... nooooooo!

Anyway, more interesting is my first week. By day one we were clerking patients. Everyone is so friendly at the new non-London hospital and goes out of their way to help us. On Tuesday a consultant spent over an hour with us showing us examination techniques on patients. Virtually unheard of by people on placement in London.

On Thursday I was in theatre and did my first rectal exam. Embarassingly I took the glove off too quickly and flicked pooey KY onto the wall much to the consultants amusement. We also saw a HUGE hernia. Like the whole of someones guts in their scrotum. It was insane.

I also got my exam results back. I passed! Woo!!! The station I was pretty confident about I got 77 on, and the one I was worried I may have failed I got 65 on, both pretty respectable marks.

Today I also did an assessed Grand Round, which went surprisingly well considering I knew very little about the subject. Thankfully the consultant didn't ask me anything about liver function tests because I just haven't had a chance to learn the reasons why things can be derranged.

I have so much work to do for next week. It seems that on this rotation there is a lot more to learn as it covers a much wider and more complex assortment of topics. We're also going on a firm outing next week. I think because there are only 20 of us, miles away from home, everyone's being really social. It helps that everyone is genuinely nice too.

For now I'm going to enjoy my evening with the boyfriend. Order a takeaway, curl up on the sofa and have a whole weeks worth of missed attention and cuddles.

Lily xXx

New Year, New Town

Sorry I haven't blogged for a couple of days but I've been pretty busy... again.

This time I've been getting ready to go to my placement in the countryside. Well actually a city, but still kind of the countryside compared to London. I moved into my new flat yesterday. In typical student fashion it's a little scruffy, but miles bigger than halls in 1st year. Everyone else also seems really nice. I'm in a girls flat so that takes away my huge worry of hairy boys shedding all over the shower. Sorry boys... but its so true! The main downside is NO internet in our flats. Boo hoo :(

Anyway today was the first day and lets just say I'm feeling a little intimidated. We started off with just filling out forms and getting locker keys etc. Then we got our timetables. Eek. It looks like we have some serious work to do this term. Talking to our firm head confirmed this. Deep down I know this is a good, not a bad thing. The more work I'm forced to do, the better I'll learn stuff, but it doesn't make losing my lie-ins and lazy days any easier. I want the holidays to be longer!! Amazingly this rotation seems super organised so that should be good.

Today we saw 1 patient. Took a history and examined them. It was a lot of blagging as we've never done this type of examination on a real patient before, but it went okay. Tomorrow the real work starts...

Lily xXx