Hi, well the SSU got completed three days early, and the presentation on it went very well considering was trying to teach a bunch of first years with no background knowledge how plasmids work in the space of 3 minutes. The essay itself counts for nothing, but we will get professionalism judgements from our tutors. I then spent the next couple of days relaxing, it was amazing. It wasn't entirely what I'd had planned as I wanted to go up into town to do Christmas shopping, or do some more shifts at the surgery, but karma had its way. My foot has been a little sore for the last few weeks. I thought it was possibly a stress fracture on the ball of my foot from dancing in (tiny) heels at the numerous Christmas balls recently. However, when I woke up the day after giving my presentation I couldn't move my big toe and it was lying in a plane a little lower than the rest. I couldn't bear for anything to touch it: I couldn't even get my foot into a shoe without crying in pain, so I got my housemate to drive me to the walk-in centre. Turns out I have gout or mono-arthritis (both pretty similar). Not entirely sure how that happened as I'm certainly not overweight, hardly drink and border on anaemia I eat so little red meat. It's doing much better now, but I've been told to keep off it and keep it elevated for the next two weeks. So I've been spending my time hurriedly making jewellery for family for Christmas since I couldn't get into town to buy them anything. Hopefully it'll be better by Christmas. And it had certainly be better by New Years because mr and I are going to watch the fireworks in London again and there are a load more museums we want to look round (medical ones of course, geeks that we are).
I'm back with the pension company for Christmas so I may be quiet for the next couple of weeks. Long term readers may remember me talking about Christmas being a really busy time because of reports and checks that have to be run on all schemes. I started them in Summer, but surprise, surprise no one has touched them since and my boss wants me to clear as much of it as I can, so I don't know if I'll have time to post. Because of that, I hope you all have safe journeys wherever you need to get to this Christmas, that you get everything you want and that you get to spend it with the people that matter most. Happy Christmas everyone, your hobbling bean.
Friday, 17 December 2010
Friday, 10 December 2010
Buried under a mountainous to-do list
Eeep, hello, I almost didn't see you there. Sorry it's been so long since I updated this. I have discovered the more things you try to do in a day, the faster the day seems to go. Since last time I have done another placement - another GP's where I saw a 6 week baby check (so cute!) and had the pleasure to sit in on a consultation of a very quiet man recently diagnosed with HIV. He was so calm and collected, he had all his scores written in a note book so he could keep track, he was utterly charming. I went to an amazing Paediatrics career evening, so as is tradition (you want to be whatever the last thing you saw was, as long as the people you met were nice) I now want to be a Paediatrician :). They told us that as Doctors we will have the privilege to be part of defining moments in people's lives - whether it's telling them good news or bad news, or even just lending an ear when it's needed and I definitely felt that with the HIV patient. Cue the warm fuzzies (I'm a Peninsula student don't you know, we ooze the warm fuzzies, we're people persons).
I wrote 100% pure grade waffle reflective essay on how I've been learning so far and handed it in with my super organised portfolio (the second person in the year to do so, 4 days before the deadline, geek). I choose my SSU title for the formative SSU1 which I am currently battling with now. I chose a very interesting topic, unfortunately there isn't any information on it that isn't heresay or classified. Smart move bean. I got allocated my SSU 2 and 3 topics and I'm really happy with them - Biofilms and Eczema in Children. I get to be a science geek because I LOVE biofilms (disclaimer: I will not be saying this when it comes to SSU2, I know this and ask you please kindly refrain from pointing it out to me when the time comes) and think they are really cool!!! Aaaannnd, I get to spend time on actual wards talking to kiddies! Granted about eczema, which won't be quite so exciting, but it was a 'red spot' topic so it was really popular with limited places so I'm amazed I got it, especially as I know quite a few people who didn't get any of their choices.
I went to an extra lecture about the acute abdomen and got my first taste of what third year will be like being grilled by a consultant: [Him]"What muscle causes renal colic?" [Me] "Err, I don't know", "Never say you don't know, that's what my 15 year old son says and I give him a clip round the ear. Where is the muscle?", "Um, we haven't done the kidneys yet!" If you wondered, he squeezed out of me in the end and it was the ureter. Apparently, you can open someone up and watch the ureter wriggling when they have renal colic as the muscles spasm. (See, mean man = don't want to be a vascular surgeon). When he wasn't asking you a question he was pretty cool. We all left muttering/singing 'nerves C, 3, 4, 5, keeps the diaphragm alive'.
Mr came down last weekend and we had a lovely weekend gallivanting around town. I wish. On Friday night my hard disc drive failed in my laptop so the most amazing (electronic engineer) mr that he is took me to PC World, bought me a new HDD and then spent the rest of the weekend fitting it, trying to recover my old data and updating the now blank laptop with Windows and Microsoft Office. And all I've done since then is snap at him cos I'm super stressed and busy. Bad, bad bean. I really hope he knows how much I love him and appreciate him deep down underneath the seething waves of stressage. And no, not just because he knows what to do when I look at him with a quivering lower lip babbling "b...b...brokken" and pointing to my computer.
He also downloaded me this new fancy freeware that backs up my documents to a cloud server in the sky. It's very clever. You download the program, tell it what folders or files you want backed up, and then everytime you make changes and save a new version or add something to the folder it uploads the changes to your secure webspace. You get a website and a password so you can login to your files from wherever you are, even mobile devices, and work on them, then when you go back to your main computer it downloads and integrates the new changes. You can email files straight to your cloud server and they will be ready downloaded to your main computer when you come back, and you can share files or folders with other people and they can either see or see and edit them. Oh, and pictures you upload can be sent straight to facebook so you don't have to upload them to things twice, but I haven't played with that bit yet. Can you tell I'm very impressed? You get 5GB free storage, but if you sign up using my referral link by the 31 December you get an extra 500 MB free (and so do I :) ), after that I think it might be an extra 250MB. If you complete all their getting started steps you get and extra 250MB as well. Soooo, click and download it, that way you'll never lose something important. https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=cgkwwb5xe55d0
I wrote 100% pure grade waffle reflective essay on how I've been learning so far and handed it in with my super organised portfolio (the second person in the year to do so, 4 days before the deadline, geek). I choose my SSU title for the formative SSU1 which I am currently battling with now. I chose a very interesting topic, unfortunately there isn't any information on it that isn't heresay or classified. Smart move bean. I got allocated my SSU 2 and 3 topics and I'm really happy with them - Biofilms and Eczema in Children. I get to be a science geek because I LOVE biofilms (disclaimer: I will not be saying this when it comes to SSU2, I know this and ask you please kindly refrain from pointing it out to me when the time comes) and think they are really cool!!! Aaaannnd, I get to spend time on actual wards talking to kiddies! Granted about eczema, which won't be quite so exciting, but it was a 'red spot' topic so it was really popular with limited places so I'm amazed I got it, especially as I know quite a few people who didn't get any of their choices.
I went to an extra lecture about the acute abdomen and got my first taste of what third year will be like being grilled by a consultant: [Him]"What muscle causes renal colic?" [Me] "Err, I don't know", "Never say you don't know, that's what my 15 year old son says and I give him a clip round the ear. Where is the muscle?", "Um, we haven't done the kidneys yet!" If you wondered, he squeezed out of me in the end and it was the ureter. Apparently, you can open someone up and watch the ureter wriggling when they have renal colic as the muscles spasm. (See, mean man = don't want to be a vascular surgeon). When he wasn't asking you a question he was pretty cool. We all left muttering/singing 'nerves C, 3, 4, 5, keeps the diaphragm alive'.
Mr came down last weekend and we had a lovely weekend gallivanting around town. I wish. On Friday night my hard disc drive failed in my laptop so the most amazing (electronic engineer) mr that he is took me to PC World, bought me a new HDD and then spent the rest of the weekend fitting it, trying to recover my old data and updating the now blank laptop with Windows and Microsoft Office. And all I've done since then is snap at him cos I'm super stressed and busy. Bad, bad bean. I really hope he knows how much I love him and appreciate him deep down underneath the seething waves of stressage. And no, not just because he knows what to do when I look at him with a quivering lower lip babbling "b...b...brokken" and pointing to my computer.
He also downloaded me this new fancy freeware that backs up my documents to a cloud server in the sky. It's very clever. You download the program, tell it what folders or files you want backed up, and then everytime you make changes and save a new version or add something to the folder it uploads the changes to your secure webspace. You get a website and a password so you can login to your files from wherever you are, even mobile devices, and work on them, then when you go back to your main computer it downloads and integrates the new changes. You can email files straight to your cloud server and they will be ready downloaded to your main computer when you come back, and you can share files or folders with other people and they can either see or see and edit them. Oh, and pictures you upload can be sent straight to facebook so you don't have to upload them to things twice, but I haven't played with that bit yet. Can you tell I'm very impressed? You get 5GB free storage, but if you sign up using my referral link by the 31 December you get an extra 500 MB free (and so do I :) ), after that I think it might be an extra 250MB. If you complete all their getting started steps you get and extra 250MB as well. Soooo, click and download it, that way you'll never lose something important. https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=cgkwwb5xe55d0
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