ilovehotchoc - A Bean's Life

My first time

2012-01-25T23:32:00.000Z

My friend and I are sat with all our equipment prepped in a sterile dish, gloves on, surveilling the patients in front of us apprehensively. Introductions done, procedure explained, consent obtained and the area swabbed with an alcohol wipe - one wipe top to bottom, and we could put it off no longer. I reached for the cannula, removed the cap, wiggled it to check it wasn't stuck, put the bung to one side and willed a vein to jump out and dance at me. Vein selected, palpated and pinned I advanced the needle through the skin which was tougher than I thought it would be. Nothing. I wiggled a little, still nothing. I looked at my friend who peered and said "you have to pump the thingie to make the pressure for the flashback". I dutifully reached around the back of the severed rubber arm and pumped the balloon but still no flashback. My friend reached over and gave a few more pumps for luck while I advanced the needle a little further. Just then, "aaaarrrrghhhhh!" I shout, as bright red fake blood squirts out of the end of the cannula all over me. "Oooohhh, tourniquet off, needle out a touch, advance the cannula, pinch the vein, needle out, thumb over the end, needle in the bin, bung on!" yells my friend, helpfully. I try and comply and wish for a few more fingers and pairs of hands to do all of that at once, as blood continues to spurt everywhere - a little too much pressure added maybe? I got in a bit of a mess with the sticky thing, as it doesn't stick well to rubber but I got the gist and before long I was looking proudly at my first ever cannula, happily splattered in fake blood. I looked at my friend who was trying to flush his with saline. He was having a little difficulty and the saline wouldn't go in, so he put more force behind the syringe. The saline squirted out around the port, spraying us both. Despite our mishaps, job well done and we've been told it's much easier on real people. I did get some odd looks at work later though, with my hands stained in cherry red blood. Totally worth it though. And now, if I'm asked if I'd like to try putting a cannula in I can honestly say it's not my first time. I just won't tell them about the bit where I screamed in the middle.

Exam post mortem and my new friend

2012-01-16T22:58:00.002Z

The exam went ok, I think. I'm not really sure. I haven't found any yet that I got wrong through overhearing other people discussing questions. I fall in the group of people that doesn't like doing post mortems on exams. I am very competent all on my own at beating myself up and second guessing my answers, I don't need any help thank you very much. I can't change what I did so it's best for my sanity and sleep cycle if I just forget about it. I answered less questions than last time, which could mean I have done better as I will have gotten fewer minus points for getting questions wrong, or worse as I didn't answer as many so didn't have a chance to get points. Aargh, see? Neurotic about Track, neurotic about exams, maybe it's a medical student thing? Or me, just me :) My last minute cramming sort of worked. There was a question about B symptoms in leukaemia. I read a little about B symptoms, but only that they existed, I didn't read what they were. If I'd just have read the rest of the paragraph!

I have moved back home for two weeks whilst my parents are away on holiday to cat sit. This weekend was the loneliest time in my life. The two people I talk to every day, Mum and Mr have left the country, and I had to move back to my parents house. Normally I like to be on my own but it's different because in my house I can always hear the noises from other people. Here it's just me and a cat that hates people. She had very little human contact and she's only two, so she doesn't really know how to be a domestic cat. Every time I stand she runs away. I enter a room and she leaves it. She sleeps all day then yells at me to go to bed so she can play all night with me gone.

Today, we had a breakthrough. My computer is set up on the dining table and today she has come to sit next to me on the corner of the table, staring at the computer screen. I've been watching the streams of our lectures, and the take the form of a split screen with a view of the lecturer and a view of the powerpoint. Freya keeps watching the lecturer and every now and then bopping them in an "Ah, shut uppa ya face" sort of way. It's hilarious. Now she's weedled her way into the space between my bum and the back of the seat. She's curled up in a little ball, very happy and purring. There's a big bully cat who keeps coming in and eating all her food and she just yowls at it, terrified. Every time she yowls I come running with a water pistol, whether it's 3am or 9 am (and believe me we've done all times in between). She runs away, I see off the cat and she creeps back to make sure it's gone. I think that may have won me some brownie points. That and I haven't actively tried to eat her yet. I've gotten back into my normal routine and done my big cook for the weeks' evening meals and lunches (pork and mushroom stew and a vegetable pasta, if you wondered) and so with that and Freya's offering of friendship, today hasn't been quite so glum. Also, it turns out the boiler in my student house has broken and they haven't any hot water or heating, so it turns out this was all timed quite well after all.

The Fear

2012-01-10T20:27:00.000Z

So, as is usual with me, it's the night before the AMK and I have the fear. I have the fear so bad, I'm pretty numb with it to be honest. I am about 99% certain I won't be able to beat last time's score, so I'm just psyching myself up to telling my family and friends I've gone down. It doesn't even really feel like there'll be an exam tomorrow. I've got PBL in the morning with a new facilitator who's pretty strict and pro-science/anti-fluffy stuff so hopefully he'll impart some pearls of wisdom as there's literally 15 minutes between finishing the session with him and the coach leaving to take us to the exam venue. Before an AMK you'd usually find me pretty spaced out doing last minute cramming in my room, on the walk to the coach, going up the stairs to the exam hall, to the very last minute. People tell me it's not good and if I don't know it by now I never will, but I know for a fact that I got at least one mark last time because of last second cramming - an odd sentence I read in a dermatology section about livestock handlers and skin diseases, and a question about orf came up. It works for me.

Mr is now ridiculously far away for a stupidly long time. It's not even really worth counting sleeps it's so far away - 108 sleeps. I can't even comprehend how many fingers and toes and noses I'd need to count all of them :( New Years was lovely though. It filled up really early, so we were there in the rain from 7pm and my evening included a fun hour long queue for the loo. The fireworks were worth it though - absolutely amazing.

I'm off to go cook tea - squash gnudi om, nom, such a student diet. See you on the other side, and happy new year.

End of Year

2011-12-30T19:41:00.000Z

Tomorrow I am training up to London to spend New Year's watching the fire works with mr. If you're watching on the telly I'll be the one in the bobble hat at the front :) I am currently languishing in essay hell. One fluffy essay on work life balance is written and submitted but the one off the back of my SSU I'm having much more difficulty with. See, before we went into a tutorial session with the facilitator, one of my two placement partners asked what essay titles we'd picked. When we went in to talk to the facilitator, the facilitator asked each of us in turn and the person that was asked before me, the person that had asked what we were doing outside, gave my idea as their own! Bearing in mind that outside they had told us they were doing something completely different and they are also absolutely disgustingly, sickeningly, sweet and lovely, so you'd never believe they were capable of doing such an under-handed thing. I was not amused. It left me struggling to come up with an idea on the spot so as not to look under prepared in front of the consultant. Now it turns out that there isn't anything to write about in that field and I am a little stuck. The thing that my essay has turned into is way to big to write a 2000 word essay on and cover properly, but if I go wildly off topic and pick something else, the facilitator will wonder why as it was so different to what I was originally going to do. I can't complain about the other student because that just looks like I'm moaning and I certainly can't do the same as them.

This year has gone pretty well, looking back through some of my blog posts. Exams have all gone well, I had a lovely holiday with mr, I've been on some amazing placements, proved to myself that I actually can do this medicine lark, met some inspiring people, and started to try and come out of myself a little more and be a bit braver. Next year I will be trying to do some sort of fitness each day, make a real effort to stop ignoring emails and messages form friends and actually find time to meet up with them like I said I would and try to moan at you lovely readers a little less.

I hope the new year will bring you everything you want, be it luck, a medicine place, health, friendship, love or wealth. Happy New Year!

Christmas

2011-12-21T15:49:00.000Z

Well, the cancer clinic was as dire as I thought it would be. It was the closest I have come to crying in clinic, which I know is totally inappropriate, but I had to look away and steal myself to stop a tear rolling down my cheek. A patient came in with their sons and was told that the headache and cough they'd had for the last couple of weeks wasn't a head cold like their GP had told them but a met from lung cancer they also didn't know they had. They have weeks left. They joked if they'd have known they would go like this, they wouldn't have stopped drinking all those years ago. The GP had told them once the headaches had gone they'd do something about helping them quite smoking. It took a good while for the patient to decide if they even wanted a diagnosis. That seems alien to me. Is it better to not know? To not have a name to call the evil you have to try to fight? Not knowing would be worse for me. Funny how different people are.

I've moved home for the two weeks of christmas holidays. I am working full tim at the surgery, and spending the rest of my time on my knees trying to find the balls that my cat has lost. I'm trying to show her I'm the magic ball finding lady, not the terrifying lady she thinks I am at the moment. She's forgotten the hours we spent under the sofa together and runs away from me now. Which is doublly sad because I am normally one of those crazy cat ladies/cat whisperer that has cats follow them home and roll over for tummy tickles the first time they see me. Not my own cat though.

New Year's is all booked for me and mr to see the fireworks on the embankment in London again. It will be our third year. Not sure what we're doing in the daytime yet but train tickets, hotel, restaurant vouchers from tescos points all booked and sorted. I can't wait. It's a little sad, but in some ways I'm looking forward to that more than Christmas. I was trying to find a Christmas card for him, but all the couples card's kept saying about how special it was to spend Christmas with your loved one and how magic they make the day. One day. I hope you've all bought the Military Wives Choir song, it should def be Christmas Number 1.

Hope you're all having a nice break for Christmas and those interviews and offers are rolling in. Good luck and Happy Christmas!

Colourless, green, yellow or black?

2011-12-11T23:15:00.000Z

Can you guess what I'm doing at the moment? I am about to start my final week on a respiratory outpatients SSU. I had been thinking that maybe respiratory could be the speciality for me and whilst I have enjoyed these two weeks, but now I've done a little - nope. Another speciality choice crossed off the list. It has been the most depressing couple of weeks. It is probably not the most depressing - oncology, palliative, I can see those as being sad; I would go into them prepared. This was an ambush of sad.

First patient of the day comes into the room, consultant looks at the scans. We are sat behind the consultant staring in awe at the proceedings, not quite believing we are in an actual hospital seeing actual patients and trying really hard to look like we've done this loads of times before and sort of know what we're doing. The consultant has quite a thick accent so I find I have to concentrate a lot on what he's saying to understand it. What gives the game away though is the look of utter shock on the patient's and their relatives face. The look someone gets when their whole world falls apart. That the shortness of breath their loved one has been feeling and the slight cough is actually ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis and there's nothing that can be done. That they have about 2-3 years left of increasing shortness of breath and decreasing quality of life as the fibrosis rips through their lungs, spreading like cancer. Repeat this for two clinics a day for two weeks with one and a half days of to work at the GP's and that's my last two weeks.

The consultant was explaining to a patient that they could be put on this experimental anti-fibrotic drug. It isn't licensed yet and the drug company will give it to the hospital for free to so that if it does end up being licensed the hospital will be more willing to pay for it because they have patients on it already. The drug may not work, but you might think it's better than doing nothing. The patient looked at me and asked what I thought they should do. I had no words. As they left, the patient thanked me for my time, patted me on the shoulder and told me to enjoy my life. I know that death is a big part of being a Doctor. I'm not naive enough to think that everyone can be saved. I just wasn't expecting to meet it so soon.

A patient was seen with a whole list of problems, but they are happy, up beat, they have a strong family network, they still do things, but they'll be dead in 6 months. It's incomprehensible It just makes me want that parallel life with me curled up with mr on a big comfy sofa in front of a roaring wood fire with a couple of dogs and cats lying about the place. I want my life now, I don't want to keep waiting for it. It doesn't help I'm currently trying to write an essay on work life balance (as in my lack of one and the changes I plan to make to get one), and that January is creeping ever closer. In January mr starts the longest period of time we've ever been apart. He goes from being far away, but not too far that I can't go visiting some weekends, to ridiculously far away. He's not going anywhere scary, but he is going far away for roughly 98 sleeps. We don't have the exact dates yet. Thank goodness for whoever invented Skype.

It might be a little hard to believe from the way I'm moping, but between writing this post and the last I did cheer up considerably. I had one of those special moments girls get when they go clothes shopping and realise they've dropped a dress size. Fantastic feeling. I also finished all my Christmas shopping, I just have to put a few more coats of varnish on things I have been making for family presents, finish writing the cards and I am done. Tomorrow is home visits and the cancer clinic. Psyching myself up for it with hot chocolate and biscuits.

Down in the Dumps

2011-11-23T01:13:00.000Z

I'm afraid I'm not the happiest, smiliest bean ever, so please bear with me while I have a little woe is me rant. Or not. Skip it if you like, but don't say I didn't warn you. Results night I was walking down the stairs at home to answer the door when my ankle gave in and I slid down the rest of the stairs on it, landing in a small heap at the bottom. Sadly nothing stronger than water passed my lips and I was having a quiet night in, not celebrating like a rock star falling off the table I was dancing on. One of the good things about being from my University town, is that when my housemates were running around trying to decide who could drive my car (as none of them have one) or whether they should call an ambulance, whilst trying to fight me and RICE my ankle while I just wanted to cry and lop my foot off because it hurt too much and could they please stop touching it with the cold solid thing, I could call Mummy and Daddy bean to drive me to the Walk in Centre because I broke a bit of myself. 3 hours later I emerge with a PIL on foot and ankle injuries, a copy of my X-Ray (batted my eyelids sweetly at the Dr), a sprained ankle and a shiny pair of crutches.

It's been over a week now and I'm still on crutches. People tend to fall into two categories, those that think I'm being lazy and for goodness sakes it's just a sprain, and those that have also badly sprained their ankle in the past and cheerfully tell me a sprain is worse than a break and is there anything they can do for me. All I know is if I take 6 steps without crutches my ankle will ache for the rest of the day, or if I try flex my foot, like to do stairs, it aches, or if I rest it on something, it aches, and that it is still swollen. Still. Stupid ankle. My lovely Mr came down and put it in a tubigrip for me this weekend, which is helping, although I nearly kicked him when he put it on it hurt that much. It's helping so much I would be down to just one crutch except that last night I managed to put my hand on an electric hob on max and am sporting a rather painful burnt palm now. Crutches are blooming hard work, especially because all the exercise I do normally is lower body not upper. Everything aches. It's laughable really; before I wasn't sleeping because I was a stressy-head over exam results. I was really looking forward to a full nights sleep when the results came out and it turned out I didn't need to worry. Now I can't sleep because my ankle has perfected this dull, nagging, persistent ache that pain killers aren't touching. Argh! I went back to the WIC at the weekend and they said to stay off it for another 2 weeks. That means my Winter Ball on crutches, and my first week on SSU on the Respiratory Ward on crutches. Brilliant, just perfect. Should I mention this is all on top of the inner ear infection I already have that the GP said was viral and I just had to ride out?

Placement was pants, utter pants. I had such a good placement last time and this was just awful. It started badly when I asked my partner to give me a lift in because I can't drive at the moment, and they asked me to walk what would normally be 30 minutes to meet them so they could drive a really convoluted way, instead of the direct route which goes straight past my house. I had explained why I needed the lift and when I told them the direct route they got really defensive and said since I was asking the favour I should be nicer to them. They then were so paranoid that we would be late they arrived 10 minutes early to pick me up and we arrived 40 minutes early. I was with 2 GPs. One completely ignored me and didn't involve me at all. The other was the nice one that I had last time only this time the questions he asked me I hadn't a clue about (diagnosing Paget's from the clues of bilateral hearing aids and hip pain, and spotting CREST) and he just made me feel like an idiot for not knowing them. My attempt at taking blood didn't work as the patient's vein disappeared when he straightened his arm out, and only once I'd tried did the patient say "Ah yes, the hospital always has trouble taking my blood". My ankle was killing me after that day as the GP was full of come over here and have a look at this boy's spots/man's cyst/lack of an inguinal hernia/letter that I'm holding in my hand/etc.

Finally, the forces have been in the spot light a lot recently, with Remembrance Sunday, Military Wives Choir and Frontline Medicine recently. Being completely and utterly selfish and probably just a big bag of silly girly hormones again, but I'm finding it really hard to be supportive for Mr. My heart bursts with pride and love for him, but I don't know as I'm ever going to be strong enough to be left behind, waiting for him to come home safe. The first of his intake from Sandhurst was killed on tour recently and it's made it all hit home. I keep beating myself up about it because as sad as I get and for all my doubt in my own strength, it's not about me, it's about him, and I shouldn't be so.... pathetic. Hundreds of women do it, there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to. I just don't want to have to try. I was watching the choir programme and they were saying that they had chosen this life and so that's how they get through it, but I didn't chose this, I fell in love with a guy I met in a club. I need to man up, stop dwelling on it and deal with things as and when they arise. I need to take my own advice, that it's not about me, it's about Mr. And maybe one day I will.

In happier news, I passed my clinical competencies in IM injections and musculoskeletal exams with excellents, and the GP passed me on cardiovascular exam competency.
Hopefully I'll be happier next time,
Hop-a-long

Results

2011-11-11T14:55:00.000Z

Results came out at 11.30 today. I PASSED!!! Not only did I pass, I did rather well, a bit of a closet clever clogs really :p I got 41, which is up from my last score of 28. I am in the top 5% of the year so I got my excellent and a bit of snooping through the exam reports tells me that I'm actually 6th in the whole year. To say I am excited right now is an understatement. I even passed the passmark for the 5th years. I am shaking I'm so happy. To have been so worried about it and to have it all turn out all right, and even better than all right is just fantastic. I'm off to go bounce off some walls now :) Thank you for your lovely comments yesterday, they really cheered me up. Have a great weekend. I'm up early tomorrow to go to a day of Podmedics lectures. Now my only worry is maintaining that score!

Fret, fret, fret

2011-11-10T15:58:00.000Z

I should be excitedly telling you how I aced the AMK, or crying because I failed the AMK and am feeling pretty dismal. I have dutifully waited the normal two weeks. I am getting my insomnia and then sleep walking when I finally do drop off, as is usual when I'm fretting about something. Results day should have been yesterday. Tuesday we got an email saying that due to unforseen circumstances there was going to be an unavoidable delay in the release of the results, for another two weeks! This bean is not amused. I'm not sure I'll last that long on this little sleep. It's all very well saying it's no use fretting, and why don't I try going to bed early but it's not that simple when you're this side of the fretting, and when it's not your results, or not your family you have to tell if you fail. We then got an email from the Dean telling us of for a facebook group that had been discussing AMK questions and the rumour is that we've done better this time than we were supposed to, hence the delay as they try and work out how to moderate it. This was the first time I'd heard about any such group and really just adds to the fretting, as it presumeably means that a whole load of people have done very much better than me and when the grade boundaries are set according to how everyone else did that really doesn't bode well for me. I don't know how you picture the little bean in your head but she's pacing up and down right now and could probably do with a swift slap across the cheek and being told to calm down.

Apart from that this case unit has been pretty massive - covering endocrine, diabetes, the eye and the leg in the space of two weeks. I have done my usual shifts at the GP surgery and so having an inability to shut down and go to sleep means my productivity is up pretty high, as long as you don't mind your bean rocking a zombie look the rest of the time. After this case unit there is a study week, so as long as the GP's don't claim me I should get a bit of a break then which will be nice.

The new cat is now out from under the sofa. She now lives under the table, but at least she's more accesible there. She adores getting tickles but isn't comfortable enough yet to come and ask for them. If you want to contort yourself to get to her and give her them that's fine, but if you don't that's ok too. Hopefully we'll start giving her the run of the house soon as she's confined to the living room for now until she's less fraidy. It is very therapeutic going over every day to tickle a cat though. Should be prescribed.

Exams and Cats

2011-11-02T10:47:00.000Z

The AMK went. I'm not sure if I can say any more than that, just that I have done it. The results are out next week, so I shall have to wait and see until then. This was the first time we sat it on paper and not on a computer, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. On the computer the questions come up in blocks of 25 and once you complete a block you cannot return to it. It's difficult to think of timings so I had a tendency to be very cautious. On paper you have three hours to look through all the questions as many times as you like, so you can convince yourself you know more than you actually do. Because of this I answered a lot more than I normally do, so I think it's either gone really well and it was a good paper, or it's gone really badly. I'm tying myself in knots, I don't like it.

Yesterday I sat me first clinical competencies of the year in intramuscular injections and musculoskeletal exams. I had spent the last month practising for the IM injections every Friday for an hour, so I was pretty confident. It threw me a little because the vignette wasn't the one I was expecting, but I muddled through and did pretty well. I got all high excellents and one satisfactory because I didn't wash my hands after I gave the injection. I was just too pleased to be finished without stabbing myself and that I remembered all the bits and did it in the time limit. Hopefully that will come out as an excellent. The MSK also went well. She picked me up for not looking behind the patient to see how high up they could get their hands, but I didn't do that because it wasn't on their demonstration video so I didn't know I had to. I got all low excellents for that, with high excellents for communication skills and introduction. I'm not sure what else I could have improved upon. That one will probably moderate out as a satisfactory.

Another big thing that happened to me in my break between writing was that my cat died. We'd had Amber since she was 8 weeks old and she died at the age of 13 at 7.45am on 1st October. Her liver had started to kick out all the stored fat into the blood stream for some reason, making her blood really thick. She was so poorly in the end we rushed her to the emergency vets who tried but couldn't save her. She was the best, funniest, cleverest, stupidest, fluffiest, warmest, most loving cat in the world, with the biggest personality. Whenever I was upset or ill she'd come and find me. She wasn't terribly good at being a cat - couldn't really jump that well and was never very good at catching things but she knew how to play each member of the family to get exactly what she wanted. Whether that was being carried to her food because she didn't want to walk, being taken and let out the front door because she didn't want to go out the back, sitting on what ever you were working on because you weren't paying attention to her, getting hugs and tickles when ever she wanted, or sitting on you because you were wearing something soft that she thought must be for her. She was more than our cat, she was my sister and she is sorely missed.

Our family was devastated getting that call from the vet. We cried for weeks. Without her the house just seemed so empty. This weekend we went to the cat shelter and we got a new cat. Nothing will ever replace Amber, but we've had cats in our house for as long as I can remember. I was practically raised by them. There's pictures of one of them, Shilling, sitting on my moses basket watching me sleep. Apparently, if I woke up she would walk back and forth down the basket to rock it and send me back to sleep. She didn't know what I was, but she knew I was to be cherished and protected.

Freya is our new cat and she is 2. She is currently under the sofa. She is very happy, not scared, will have tickles and food and wash and lick you and fall asleep flopped on your hand. She just won't come out from under the sofa. Except at night time, when she comes out and goes nuts. Once she's sure everyone has gone to sleep she has quite a night of playing. The first night the tail came off her catnip mouse. The second night the mouse was annihilated into fluff and bits of fabric and scattered around the room. The third night a ball of wool was unravelled and re-wrapped around every chair and table leg in the the room. So, every day I go over, clean up whatever she's done and spend the next three hours lying down beside the sofa with my arm jammed in up to the shoulder tickling the cat to try and get her comfortable enough to come out. She came from a multi-cat household with very little human interaction. She's just finding out that ear tickles and tummy tickles are the best thing in the world. If she would just come out from under the sofa....

Vampire Bean

2011-10-21T00:17:00.001+01:00

Hi, I know, I know, it has been ages since I last wrote. I probably don't need to tell you I've been busy a) because of the length of time since I wrote and b) because I'm me and, let face it, when am I not busy? I had to stay up late to type this now though, because today has been all sorts of awesome. Firstly, a little catch up. Second year has well and truly landed. We've done two case units so far. I am frantically trying to revise for the first AMK coming up next week and my first competancy in IM injections and musculoskeletal exams the week after. We've also been given prep work to do for a whole myriad of other exams that we have to pass this year, way more than we had to sit last year. Alongside that, all the hours I have betwen 8.30am and 6pm that I am not in lectures I am working at the surgery because there is a massive backlog there. I also went up for and got a promotion to Data Quality Analyst Assistant, which means I do more computery, techy stuff for them 8 hours a week and got a nice pay rise for the other hours I work for them too. I found out my Special Study Units I've been allocated for the year, and am really happy to say that, once again, I got the ones I wanted. I have three weeks on respiratory, looking at inflammatory respiratory disease and three weeks looking at use of language and how your choice of words can reveal things about you. In non work and uni news I have been to visit mr a couple of times and we celebrated our 4 year anniversary. We had another beautiful walk with the swirling birds and the sunset... but you don't want to hear about the gushy romantic stuff do you? You want me to get to the awesome :)

If you are a medic, or a big reader of medic's blogs, you will probably recognise the allusion in the title. I shall spell it out anyway because i'm just too excited. Today I took blood for the first time from a real person :) Today was also the first time I gave a real person an IM injection :) :) Then I took more blood from a different person, just to prove the first time wasn't a fluke, and swapped the vials over to get three tube fulls. The degree of loon grinning going on right now is pretty extreme. I have had a full day in a GP practice today on placement and the GP I was shadowing in the morning had to take bloods from a patient and asked if I wanted to give it a go. I was torn between really REALLY wanting to say yes and knowing that I have only done it once on a plastic arm about a year ago and haven't practiced it since. I didn't want to let on I was nervous and hadn't done it on a real person before in case the patient revoked their consent or tensed up anticipating I would do it wrong. But I seized the opportunity, pulled it off without a hitch, got compliments from the patient and the GP and was altogether pretty chuffed. Later I was shadowing the Practice Nurse who let me take more blood and give an injection. I'd been really nervous because everyone has come back from placement saying how hard it was and how they got grilled and didn't know any of the answers. I hardly slept last night I was so nervous. However when it came to it, every time the GP asked me a question or asked for my diagnosis, I got it right. I am floating on cloud 9 right now, I really have had the best of days. A second year and taking blood, blood pressure and doing injections on real people?! I love my course.

In Limbo

2011-10-06T16:00:00.001+01:00

Sorry I've been a bit quiet of late, have you missed me? Here's one I wrote but never got the chance to post. More recent update to follow.

So I'm in kind of a strange position. I've moved into the shared uni house but I'm still going to work at the pension company as usual. Not quite a student, not quite a real working person. I moved in on Sunday - packed my little car to the roof with my stuff (how do I have so much stuff? I've already done two trips to move stuff in?!) and moved in Sunday night. I did it this weekend because I thought everyone was also moving in this weekend, and I didn't really want to be left out. When I turned up there was only one other person and he was off out to the pub. He did invite me out, but I had bits to unpack to get ready for work the next day. Surrounding the house were 8 police cars, a riot van, an ambulance and a police bike and the road was cordoned off due to what I've heard was a hostage situation up the road (no casualties thankfully). I sat on my bed looking at my life in boxes, in this massive, empty, cold house, listening to the police sirens and felt so lonely and isolated.

It was such a contrast from the day before where I'd been showing pre-freshers around my old halls site as an open day helper. Seeing all their excited faces and answering their questions made me really excited to be starting again. Best question of the day: while in one of the common rooms in one of the flats a guy pipes up "so, when I get here, will there be an X-Box and TV?" Erm, only if you bring one! Closely followed by a comment I heard one of the mum's make about her friends' son. Apparently instead of washing his underwear he just bought new ones, so came home at the end of term with 42 pairs of boxers for his mum to wash. Magic :)

Things are looking up now though. One other person has moved in, only two more to go. We have internet up and running in the house. Well, apart from the top floor because the booster router still has the previous tenants' mystery password on it but we're working on that. A couple of people have come to look at the spare room and my housemate is really excited about one of them, so fingers crossed. I've received my hours for going back to the GP job next week. I just need to stop feeling so old and try and gee myself up to going out to some of the freshers events. It gets to 11pm and I think bed time not party time. Leaving you with a bit of bean silliness - after work yesterday I went to Tescos to do grocery shopping for the week and had just put all the food on the conveyor belt to be scanned to pay for when I discovered I left my wallet in my other bag. Oops. I had to get them to put it in a chiller for me whilst I ran home to pick up my wallet. Except then I got distracted by fixing the internet (housemate had plugged the router in to the wrong hole in the wall). Oh dear. I did redeem myself slightly though by making a delicious mushroom and spinach lasagne. Om nom :) (which I eventually got to eat at 10.30pm). Next week, student bean returns!

Confused Bean

2011-09-16T09:55:00.000+01:00

I've been rather confused this last week. Somehow, it's been decided I'm the most responsible of the group and it's been left to me to sort out utilities and broadband for the house share I'm moving into next week. I was kinda hoping since I found the house, someone else would take on the mantle of doing all that stuff. Unfortunately, no one stepped up and then one of the lot announced they were moving in four weeks earlier than we had to be there to start lectures. They also weren't offering to sort bits out so I started doing a bit of research. Broadband was alright. I understand we need unlimited broadband as fast as we can get it and as cheap as we can get it. That's logical. I managed to get us a deal with Orange with a £40 Sainsbury's voucher and £50 credit. If you're going with them too and want £50 credit, send me an email and I'll tell you my Orange email address you need to quote to them to say you've been referred by me.

Gas and electric however, completely floored me. There are so many different tariffs available, how do I know which one's best? Is it better for us to be on a standing charge or not? Currently the house is economy 7 which seems like a stupid idea for a bunch of students, so how do I go about changing it and do I have to, and will it cost and *pop* (small bean explosion). All the comparison sites want to know how much you'll use before they give you answers and lots isn't one of the options available to pick. I know there's 6 of us, well, there will be, there's only five at the moment, we're still looking for a sixth. I know it will be expensive. There is nothing out there that is a rough guide to sorting out utilities for students moving into shared housing for the first time. I know technically it's not my first time, but, somewhat shamefully, a different housemate sorted it all out in Southampton and I didn't bother getting involved to see how they did it. I'm paying for it now though. I've picked a plan, and I'm getting the meter changed over next week. I do feel very pleased with myself I've figured it out and sorted it. I just hope I picked correctly.

In other exciting news I have children! I have a boy fresher and a girl fresher. One of them is a mature student I think, although they aren't replying to my messages at the moment :-s Although I guess if you had a randomer sending you a message on facebook saying "hi, I'm your mum", you'd probably ignore them too. Wifey and I are planning on cooking a meal for them at our house. Details of our tutors have been released and our intranet page is looking very whizzy now as more stuff is added to it.

I'm working at the uni this weekend as an open day helper which I'm looking forward to. It's been ages since I did anything like that. To be honest, it's more the £7.33 an hour I'm looking forward to. There's been an announcement on the intranet they will be advertising for people to sit in our life science room which has books, computers and plastic models in it and be a life science technical helper. Talking to last years' second years, it's an evening job that involves sitting in the room and making sure no one trashes the place or steals things. They're quite happy for you to sit and work while you're there. I'm seriously tempted to go for it, although I wonder if I'd be able to fit it in with my GP job I'll be going back to. That's as well as trying to be better friends with my housemates than I managed to at my last degree. I think my downfall there was the hours I spent working in my room that they spent downstairs watching telly or going out together. I have to try and make more of an effort this time. Oh, and this week I need to decide if I'm rowing with the city club for this year or not. It's my last chance to row with them, and it looks like there's a perfect squad to fit me, if I can just maintain the oomph to go train and fit it in with the rest of my life. If someone could just sponsor me to do med, that would be great. That way I wouldn't have to decide between course, friends, sports, jobs, cooking and sleep.

I mentioned last time listening to music while I work and the song I linked to last time is a favourite Friday song of mine. Had you been a fly on the wall, after one particularly busy Friday you would have seen me playing that song on full blast dancing around Mr's room like a loon, with him smiling at me and wondering how he landed himself such a funny, strange girlfriend. I believe people must think that of me fairly often, as I frequently find myself bopping away to the songs I'm listening to whilst sitting in my chair at work. It's only small dancing, but there's definite swaying, tapping and bouncing. Ah well, life would be boring if we didn't have our oddities, wouldn't it? Another song I'm loving at the moment is Titus Jones - Pokestar The whole album it's on is great, but there's a couple of stand out songs for me and this is one of them.

A hodge podge of placement, work and music

2011-09-09T13:53:00.000+01:00

Happy Friday! Continuing the trend, I have two weeks to go!! Placements were released yesterday, and I've been given a rural GP's. Still making my mind up about that one. I'd wanted to go to the one I already work at as a receptionist/administrator, because that would have completed the circle nicely. I would have seen everything that surgery does. I can't work out if a rural GP's means I'll get to do more because they may be more relaxed, or I won't see anything because they are so tiny. I'm not looking forward to the 20 minute commute to get there, but it could be worse. Some people have to go much further than I do.

All that's left to find out now is what my SSU's are and who my fresher children are. I'm trying to work out what to do with my children on our parent's night. My parents took me bowling. I'm torn between that, cooking a nice meal for them at my house, or showing them a great pub in Exeter they may not discover by themselves. I'm sure they'll be a little weirded out whatever, as we are an odd couple. I'm a mature female student and the girl I took for my wife repeated first year. I cooked for my mentees at Southampton the first time I met them, and that worked well. They appreciated having proper home cooked food for once. Well, it went well until one of them had an epileptic fit on the driveway and we had to take him to hospital. Hmmm. Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm somewhat buried at work. My boss is going on holiday next week, so gave me his backlog of work to clear as much of it as I can before he gets back. That's on top of the projects I already had from him to do. Most of those are just starting to get big and actionable as people are finally responding to the questions I sent them weeks ago, now they realise I'm going soon. With that, comes the little spreadsheet queries people have, as the people that are used to me being here that I have worked with over the years fall back into the mind set of 'Oh, it's a spreadsheet thing, Bean'll do it.' I did get a little stressy last week. I had a day where I was given masses of stuff to do, which looked simple at first but none of it was in the end. I cleared none of it that day, I was so frustrated and just felt completely rubbish at my job. Just as things were getting too much, mr and I's song came on the playlist I was listening to (a radio station made of all the songs and artists I love on we7.com). It's not really a happy song, but it always seems to come on when we are together - a busker will start singing it, or it'll come on the radio or start playing in a shop. It calmed me down so much. He's on exercise at the moment, stuck on a moor somewhere and pretty much out of contact for a few weeks. It's pants because I normally speak to him everyday and I really miss chatting to him. At Southampton we used to work together and if either of us got stressed with what we were working on the other could tell and would initiate a five minute break of a chat and a back rub. At that moment, silly as it sounds, it just felt like he was watching and he knew I was stressed so he sent that song. I know, I know, I'm soppy beyond redemption. Shoot me now, disgusting loved up person that I am.

Songs are really important to me. I love songs that remind me of events, people, places and great times. So, my loved playlist is pretty eclectic, but putting the right music on can really alter my mood. For example, I have masses of work to do at the moment, so I have dance music on so the beat helps keep my motivated and concentrated - Chase and Status today and the bootie mashup by DJs from Mars - Show Me in the Deep (Listen here). Bootie mashups are great because they can put a really different spin on songs. There's a couple where I love the mashups more than the original. If I'm learning I like either dance, house, funky folk (Seth Lakeman, The Bad Shepherds) or something soft and quiet, like Joshua Radin or JJ Cale. Rock guitar and grizzly vocal pieces come out if I'm grumpy and am happy to stay grumpy for a bit, like Queen sung by Paul Rogers or Daughtry, or happy cheesy stuff like Sara Bareilles and Colbie Caillat if I don't want to grump anymore. You can tell a lot about me by listening to what music I'm playing. I listen to music all the time, I love it. I like so much there's bound to be stuff you like and others you don't, but I don't care what others think of my music taste. I listen to it because it makes me happy.

Marking Time

2011-08-30T15:45:00.001+01:00

4 weeks, just 19 working days left. I am as excited this time as I was this time last year when I was waiting to start for the first time. Although, I have less of the 'what ifs' this time; I know what's in store, I know I can do it, I just want it to be here now. Well, I do and I don't. I would like a little extra time because I have quite a to do list at work and I don't think I'm going to get it all done. Ever the perfectionist, I hate leaving work unfinished. Having the three day weekend was lovely. Can all weekends be three days long from now on please? I got so much done, it was great. That is one thing I really do miss - the joy that comes with it being a Friday or a bank holiday Monday. You just don't get the same feeling being a student.

Our new medical school intranet site has gone live, so my obsessive checking habit has now turned to checking the intranet to see which groups I'm in, what my timetable will be, what GP Placement I'll have and which SSU's I will be doing. Timetables are up, but that's not a lot of use without knowing what group number I am in. I can see I finish every Friday at 2, which I like very much, though I'm sure my part time job will soon have something to remedy that with. The Life Science group lists are up, and if I know that I can work out what I'll be for everything else, but I can't access them! I get an access denied message which is somewhat frustrating. Apparently the fourth years have their bits up so hopefully they shouldn't keep us waiting too much longer.

I've had another weekend at Mr's where we went blackberrying and found that our favourite restaurant in Salisbury, Charter 1227 had burnt down and won't be open again until March. We had a meal in the Officers Mess but because it was the holidays there was only the two of us booked in for dinner. The chef cooked us the most elaborate, delicious, fancy meal I think I've ever tasted. He'd done the table up with flowers and really gone to town for us. I normally feel guilty enough having silver service for ordinary meals as it is, but he went to so much trouble, and he was so humble when we told him how much we enjoyed it. Nothing much else going on at the moment. I'm just waiting....

5 July

2011-08-19T14:49:00.001+01:00

On the 5th July 2006 the bottom fell out of my world. The 5th July was to me what the third Thursday in August is to A Level sitters. Judgement day. I left high school with good GCSE's and when I picked up the college prospectus I couldn't pick just 4 AS/A Levels, there was just so much that looked interesting. Tucked in the back half of the prospectus was a course that would let me keep my diversity and do loads of subjects. While all of my friends went off to do A levels, I enrolled on a course none of them had heard of and prepared myself to study the equivalent of 8 A Levels. In hindsight, I may have been a little crazy and a slight sucker for punishment. What can I say, I'm never one to take the easy route. 5th July is the International Baccalaureate results day. The results come out on the IB website at a certain time of day. I was feeling fairly confident because despite a few hiccoughs, a chemistry tutor and a swap of subject levels, I had worked my socks off, why shouldn't I have the results I deserved? That's how it worked, right? I needed 655 in my highers. I got 644. A black hole opened in my stomach, white noise filled my head and through the tears I squinted at the figures on the screen, trying to make them change to be what I needed.

It actually felt like my world ended. I had worked so hard and I hadn't gotten the grades. Maybe I wasn't good enough after all. I had been in slight disbelief when the Connexions career test said I should be a Doctor, as it hadn't ever entered my head. Since then it had always been in the back of my mind there was no way I was clever enough. This just proved it. Telling my family I had failed was hard. They'd been so proud I got a place at medical school and I'd let them all down (apart from Dad, because I was the first from his side of the family to stay on at school past 16, so he was proud of me just for going to college). I went off to Uni in September to my insurance choice: same uni, different course. I sat on the bus on the way to lectures listening to the medics laughing about how they weren't going to that lecture because they were too hung over and they weren't doing that essay because they couldn't be bothered. I hated those bus journeys. What I wouldn't give to be in their shoes.

I wouldn't change my path to medicine for anything. It all worked out in the end. I met my wonderful boyfriend, got involved in new sports, considered other career options I hadn't dreamt of before, tried my hand at research and thoroughly enjoyed it, found out just how far I can push myself until I physically break and how to cope with continuing to work whilst broken, met fantastic friends, got all my partying done and learnt to settle down and work when I cannot stand the subject material I'm working on because I can see the long game. Most importantly I think, I learnt to value my place. I had to work harder for it than I ever imagined when I first applied in October 2005, and having felt both the elation of an unconditional and the despair of an unsuccessful I will never forget how gutted the 16 other people I fought off to get my place must have felt.

So, if you opened your results envelope yesterday and didn't get what you were hoping for, take some time for yourself to re-evaluate, look at the new opportunities that are open to you and really think about what you want to do with your future. Perhaps you've been a little too focussed on one thing for so long you hadn't thought of all the other things you'd be really good at and could enjoy doing. If med is all you want to do after thinking through that then don't give up. Keep working until you've exhausted every opportunity and you really are down to your last shot. Each knock back should only make you stronger. You know you can do it, you know it's for you, you just have to convince other people. It will mean plenty of dog work on volunteer work experience and all-nighters writing essays about topics you couldn't care less about, but if you want to, you can focus and get done what needs to be done to achieve your goals.

If you got your results and you are going to medical school in September then congratulations, but the hard work starts now. Don't forget the people who weren't as lucky as you, those who got unsuccessfuls or lower grades, because you now have to work to show you deserve the opportunity you were given. There are many others who would have your spot in a heartbeat and you'd be surprised how quickly you forget how difficult it was to get in and how stressed you were during the application cycle waiting for the magic words on Track. Apart from that, have fun celebrating and packing. My top tip: take a door stop and biscuits to help you make friends with housemates when you first move in.

6 weeks...

2011-08-15T15:23:00.000+01:00

Firstly, thanks for all your lovely comments on my last post, they really cheered me up. This last week I've had Mr down to stay so I've been really spoilt being able to come home from work to him every night. We went out for meals, had nights in front of the telly and went strawberry picking for the biggest, reddest, juiciest strawberries I've ever seen. It was great. That went some way to lessening the blow that came with me doing a sensible thing and extending my contract at work for another week, since we start back a week later than I thought we might. I now have 6 weeks to go. I am currently wading through 100 divorce cases to compile a tracking spreadsheet so you can easily see where we're at with every case and see if I can find some we haven't charged for yet. Each case gets us £1,500, so I'm potentially going to generate lots of money for the company. Divorce is expensive! Unfortunately for me, the files are all stored on an online/intranet storage website and there's so much paperwork and correspondence to sort through to see what's happened. It doesn't help I've never had any dealings with divorce before, so had to have a quick divorce procedure 101 before I started. To say my Monday is dragging is a serious understatement. 6 weeks, 6 weeks, 6weeks….

In other more exciting news, I've started planning my elective!! :) Slightly ahead of schedule… I wanted to see what the options where, to give myself plenty of time to raise funds if an overseas one was feasible, or time to decide it wasn't and plan a UK one. I've had my heart set on an overseas one since I first started considering medicine as a degree. Seeing all my college friends go off on their gap summers and gap years while I went to work in an office with very little natural light and an over active air conditioning system only made me more jealous. I've always known it was somewhat of a pipe dream, and not getting a fee loan further put the kibosh on any hopes of me doing an elective somewhere hot and sunny. Doing a bit of digging and it turns out it may not be as unachievable as I first thought. It will be a lot of money, but if I can put some away I should be able to afford it. If the Student Loans Company decides to be silly and not pay me in the intervening years, well then I can use the money for fees, and still have plenty of time to plan a cheaper UK alternative. For now though.. I'm dreaming of Fiji or Malta, or the Bahamas…. I have a dinghy, a Laser Radial XD (with an interchangeable 4.7 rig), that I never sail anymore. I just don't have the time. It's such a shame because I love that boat and I have a horrible feeling if I sell it I'll never get back into sailing again. It was a present, a beautiful boat and it clears my head so much sailing it. When I'm in it it's an extension of myself; I love being out on the water. But being realistic and cold-hearted and grown up I haven't been out on it in years, and because of where I have to keep it, I probably won't for years more. I can't keep paying for club membership and boat mooring fees if I'm not going to use it. I'm going to try and sell it and put most of the money towards paying for the awesome elective I've always dreamed of, and use a little to buy myself a kayak so I can still get out on the water that's a little closer to home.

Weekend

2011-08-02T15:17:00.001+01:00

This weekend was lovely. Friday night I had the choice between my work's summer event and a leaving do. The summer event is where the company I work for hires out a local children's theme park and the employees and their families and friends get the run of the place. You tend to see managers running around the soft play area, having a whale of a time in the ball pool pit and geeing themselves up to go down the death slides. It's normally a good night. The leaving do was for one of the trainee GP's moving on and a receptionist at the GP surgery I work for term time. I figured I'd been to the Summer event before but these people only get one leaving do so I went to the leaving do in a restaurant I wasn't familiar with instead. I had such a good night, it was lovely. I got chatting to some of the GP's who don't normally talk to me because I'm just an office girl, and they were quite surprised to find I was a med student. One of them is in charge of the exams at my med school and another is a personal tutor so was giving me some tips about writing the portfolio analysis essays we have to do.

It was spoilt some what by one of the nurses who I haven't really seen before and haven't talked to. Upon finding out I was a med student from one of the GP's that I do talk to, she yelled across the table at me in all seriousness that I would never be a Doctor, I wasn't suited to it and I should find something else to do as I'm too quiet to make it as a Doctor. I'm sort of used to being told I'm not good enough because it's an argument my Mum always used to use against me when I was younger and messed up at something "You'll never be better than stacking shelves at Tesco", but I've never heard it from someone outside at all. Secondly, I tend to be whatever I need to be for the situation, I don't know if anyone else does, but different situations need a different side of me. When I'm coxing I'm serious, direct, motivational and forceful. That's not what's needed at a leaving do that's not mine, after a long week at work, surrounded by people I don't normally talk to and sat opposite sub Deans of my university! I've had my fair share of rejections in the past and I know it shouldn't, but that comment cut quite deep and keeps playing over in my head. A negative to my face is somewhat harder to swallow than a faceless 'unsuccessful' on UCAS. Truthfully, I don't know I'll be able to do it until I get there, but I'm hoping I should be able to pull together different facets of my personality to be whatever is needed of me to succeed.

Sunday was much better. I went to my Aunt's and my Goddaughter happened to be there. She'd just started walking earlier that week and she's so cute. She has some genetic problems that her paediatricians are still investigating so she's hitting the normal development milestones a little slowly. It's fascinating to watch her and see what she can and can't do. She can understand everything you say but her speaking vocabulary is only about 5 words. She tends to say something once and then won't say it again, and as I said, she's just learnt to walk at the age of 2.5. To be honest, she has such an adorable smile it doesn't matter about her health problems. She just has to smile and you'll do anything for her. She has so many appointments and tests coming up but hopefully when they are done we'll have a better idea of what's wrong and how best to support her. She's happy though, and really, that's all that matters. She's surrounded by people that love her, and she's happy.

Office Bean

2011-07-28T10:42:00.001+01:00

I have fully settled back into office life now. I have my work to do spreadsheet fully up and running, colour coded for when things need to be done by and rapidly filling up with "can you do this for me by the end of the week?" jobs, and "when you have a minute, can you look at this for me?" jobs. These must be fitted in with the "oo, Bean, do you know how to make it do this?" quick fixes. Slowly the last year goes a bit fuzzy round the edges, like it didn't really happen, and I slip back into feeling like I've been here for years and I could stay here for years more. I'm making the most of being able to paint my nails shockingly bright colours (electric blue today, if you wondered), of finishing work at 4pm and playing cards every Thursday lunch time. I'm still a little sniffy, but much better than I was. Today I had a jolt that prompted me to wake up and start counting the weeks until I finish again; a reminder that this life is not my only life. I had an email inviting me to enrol for second year. :)

For the last two weekends in a row I've been lucky and have been able to see Mr. Last weekend was his Summer Ball, and my presence was requested in a pretty dress. It was a lovely evening, with much mingling, dancing, alcohol and a little coughing, hidden as demurely as I could. Before the ball we went for a walk on some moor land close to his base. We saw wild rabbits, jumped over giant muddy puddles and stood hand in hand in the middle of a flock of swirling birds. It was beautiful. Long distance relationships are hard work, but that walk really made me think about what I want for my future and what I'm working towards. Our mantra at the moment is very much 'one day'. One day we'll be a normal couple, we'll have a house and dogs and cats and we'll go for walks and we'll be a normal couple. I know that's not normal really, but it makes a pretty picture in my head.

One of the biggest problems I have with the drive to see Mr is the nutters that appear to be on the roads. The first weekend I went up there was a car coming at me head on my side of the road, trying to overtake but horribly misjudging it, and a bean sandwich between two milk lorries that nearly made for a squished bean. This time however was the worst. I really did think that was it for me and I was about to die. I was on a roundabout and I looked out my window to see a massive BMW bearing down on me, having decided to move from the inside to the outside lane without checking it was clear first. Luckily I was able to shoot off at the exit on my left and sit quietly in the crosshatched extra wide mouth of the exit for a little bit and slow my heart rate down. I'm more cross that all I could manage was a feeble "eep" instead of finding the horn to frighten the idiot as much as he scared me. I'm really not a bad driver, and this never happened on my commute to Southampton and back. I'd quiet like it to stop though, I don't need my driving skills tested. A nice quiet, uneventful drive would be good.

Finally, it's no secret to those that know me, that beans run on biscuits. Custard creams, shortbread, digestives, I'm not fussed - if I get hungry biscuits are usually what I reach for. To try and healthy me up a bit I've started having Graze boxes and I have to say they are really tasty. Normally I come home from work starving and head straight for the biscuit tin, but not since I've been snacking on these throughout the day. They are tasty and there's a real mix of things available for if you're in a healthy mood or not. If you'd like to try a box for free, use this link on the website enter this promotional code 8N13FZ3

Snotty Bean

2011-07-20T12:51:00.001+01:00

Not a lot to update you with I'm afraid. I walked 300m in the rain (not even that, it was drizzle at best!) in a dress and cardigan and I come down with a stinking, horrible cold. Lovely. Whilst I'll admit it's been nice to have time off work sat at home doing not a lot, I'd quite like to stand without wobbling, smell things, go more than 3 minutes without soaking a tissue, have muscles that don't ache and not be addicted to max strength cold and flu tablets and lucozade. I think everyone has staples they turn to when they are ill don't they? Things that make you feel better, whether they work scientifically or not. For me it's supermarket brand cold and flu tablets, lucozade and chicken noodle soup. My knitting is coming along nicely, and I'm finally watching the Godfather trilogy for the first time. I'm getting a taste for what it must be like for other students who do nothing in their holidays and don't work, something which I haven't done in 6 years. That said, my facebook is filling up with people complaining they are bored. I keep thinking how much work I have to do and everyday I call in my boss sounds more and more upset (I have a feeling this isn't because I'm ill, it's because I'm not there to do my/his work). However, when I can't walk for more than a few metres without holding on to something and when I think 3+3=5, I really don't think work is the best place for me at the moment. There is a highlight to my day though. I have just discovered Kleenex balsam fresh tissues with menthol in them. Genius idea :) I shall bid you a snotty adieu and hopefully next time I write I shall be a healthy bouncing bean again.

In time

2011-07-16T11:00:00.000+01:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted. Lots to fill you in on, as inevitably, all things work themselves out in time. Firstly, I am enormously happy to say I passed! I was sat on the plane hiding my phone from the stewardesses and praying for the pages to load faster before I absolutely had to to turn off the phone because we were taking off when I finally saw the magic green word satisfactory. I passed both the AMK with a score of 28 and the EoY1 with a score of 50. Both comfortably above the pass rate and the cohort mean. I was so happy, I was grinning madly all the way to Lanzarote, and every now and then whilst on holiday I would suddenly be struck with the thought that I was a second year, or a fifth of a Dr.

Playa del Papagayos

The holiday was amazing. 7 days of blistering heat with enough of a breeze to just about stop Mr from melting, beautiful scenery, a couple of days on the beach or by the pool and the rest was spent sight-seeing. We went to a couple of amazingly well done landscaped gardens and houses, took a trip around a volcano and down lava caves and saw a natural lagoon in one of the lava tunnels in which lives the only colony in the world of small, white, blind crabs. Very bizarre!

Cafe in Jameos del Agua ( near the blind crabs)

Evenings were spent in the bar playing cards with Mr and indulging (sensibly) in the free bar, or wandering round the local town and harbour front. We ate sausages cooked over the heat of the volcano and had the nicest squid I have ever tasted. We had ice creams in the shade over looking the beach whilst small lizards ran between our feet, and on our last night one of the cats at the hotel came and curled up to go to sleep on my lap. It was bliss. I'm not sure what it was and can only speculate it was the minerals in the water from the volcano, but my hair has been the nicest, shiniest, softest it has ever been. It's like I've stepped out of a Pantene advert. Unfortunately the Lanzarote for Beans fund couldn't raise enough money to keep me there for the sake of having beautiful hair and finally being warm.

Lazing on Playa del Papagayo, enjoying the sun

It was lovely to be able to spend so much time with Mr, and time where I'm not rushing from place to place, not worrying about things, not thinking of the enormous piles of work to be done or trying to recall nerve tracts and muscle names. I heard news from home that my office job were going to take me back, so once I got back I had one last week at the GP's and I have just finished my first week back at the office job. I have been promoted to senior and had a small pay rise which is nice. I have been tasked with setting up control environments for them, so working out how things should be done and constructing spreadsheets with control elements for people to fill in as they progress through tasks to ensure nothing is missed and it is easy to see where hold ups are and where they are with tasks. I also have 40 30-page documents to write on how administration has been going on some of the schemes and am head up a task to ask all the trustees of schemes whether they want to adopt new government rules about pensions or not. All in ten weeks. Except most of this week has been spent completing tasks my boss has emailed me that are due out urgently today this minute now! It is nice to be back though. The knowledge of how to do things is slowly trickling back to me, and, I won Thursday cards! I was very happy.

After many phone calls, threatening to get my MP involved like I had to do last year, threatening a formal complaint, having some outright lies from them, hearing each person I talked to tell me something different, I finally managed to get Student Finance to give me money, and an apology letter. I shan't entirely believe it until I see the money in my account in September, but things are looking hopeful. All in all things are going pretty well at the moment :)

[All photos taken by me]

Holiday!

2011-06-26T17:44:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow mr and I jet off to sunny Lanzarote. It's currently 33 degrees over there; I am exstatic and mr shall just cook. I was born to be in a hotter climate than this one. Mr jokes I'm a little like a lizard: I need the sun to warm me up. Apart from that, it will be lovely to have a whole week of me and mr being a normal couple. I am currently typing this from his office on base whilst he finishes up some work. It's just like we were back at uni again, most of our dates were spent sitting side by side in a computer room somewhere doing our work. A little sad possibly but needs must and it works for us.
Also tomorrow the results of the AMK and EoY1 exams are due out, so unless I can find WiFi I'm afraid I shall have to keep you in suspense over whether or not I passed. It is a four hour flight and I anticipate going slightly nuts as the results are released just 20 minutes after we take off. Rest assured the first thing I will be doing when we land is turning on my phone and praying for a text from Mum hopefull containing the magic word 'satisfactory'.

Quite a few people I know have recently got their degree results, so well done to them. I was waiting nervously for them to post their fate with everything crossed trying to summon some more cosmic good will their way. Everyone I heard about did well, so I'm thrilled for them and hope they had fun celebrating. I really hope the good will is extended my way, although to be honest, I'm not terribly stressed out. I have a gut feeling everything will be all right. Though that never worked out for me in Southampton, everything I thought went well did the opposite :-s But, nowt to be donas was the about it now.

After I made the decision to go back to my office job once I got back from holiday, I am now still waiting for them to confirm they actually have availability for me which is annoying. I may have to make a call to the GP's when I'm back next week and work there after all. As long as I'm working, I don't really mind where. I'd kind of made up my mind about the office job and was sort of looking forward to the challenges they'd be asking me to fix. In the last week at the GP's I spent two solid days coding diabetic retinopathy results and basic medical record stats like BMI and fixing telephone number data errors. I spent a whole day on the front desk and telephone line and met my first patient that really, really annoyed me.

They phoned in the morning and booked an appointment for the following week, which they were happy with. I always sign off a call by confirming the date, day, time and Dr the appointment has been booked with, just to be clear. A nurse from the hospital then called whilst sitting next to the patient to book an INR blood test for the same time, only she thought the appointment was tomorrow, not the next week. She was getting really angry at me, as was the patient. The hospital wanted to hand care over to the GP now, but we physically couldn't fit them in until the following week, we were all booked up. The nurse was trying to say that since the INR would only take a couple of minutes, did it have to have a nurses appointment, couldn't the GP do it in their consultation. Firstly, the patient DOESN'T HAVE AN APPOINTMENT, and telling me they do isn't going to make their name magically appear on my screen. Secondly, no, that's not how it works. GPs don't do INR's, nurses or HCA's do, and as we are a busy practice and the types of appointment are grouped so all the bloods and all the imms are done together, ringing me the day before an expecting an appointment is a little unreasonable. I thought they were all fine with it, grumpy, but they understood there was nothing I could do. That afternoon, the patient in quetion turned up at the desk 'to confirm their appointment time tomorrow. I spoke to someone this morning'. Nice try, it was me you spoke to, and surprise surprise we still don't have spaces since you called 2 hours ago. They got their appointment in the end. They came in the next day for the appointment they didn't have and made so much fuss the nurse and a GP fit them in in between patients, and were subsequently running over 30 minutes late. It's fine for the patient, they got to be seen and to feel like they got one over on the mean receptionist keeping them from medical attention. They didn't have to be receptionist sitting there fielding evil glares and queries about when they would be seen from the waiting patients because morning clinic over ran. They did it again the next day, again turning up for an appointment they didn't have and again the day after because, despite being given a clean bill of health from us, they'd gone to the Emergency Department anyway that evening for the same complaint and been sent home fine. They'd had blood tests, so came in to use the following day because they wanted to know what the blood tests had said. Cue the GP asking me to contact the ED and find out why the patient went in and what the bloods showed. That was fun, because obviously everyone who had been there had since gone off shift. Did it though. The Dr was very pleased. The bloods were clear.

I like to think I'm a resonable person, certainly I've had many other patients compliment me on empathy and going above and beyond for them. This is the first that has acted like I have purposefully been difficult. If there is an emergency, or you are a green flag patient so you have open access (generally for the really sick) I can make a space for you whenever, but just because the hospital have decided they don't want to treat you anymore and your GP can deal, or because you turn up and yell at the receptionist, don't be surprised we can't see you immediatley. That's what Walk in Centres and ED's are for, and even there you have to wait.

That's probably enough from me for now. I shall go and finishing combining my bag with mr's and prepare for the horrible early start required to drive to the airport and catch the flight. Have a great week.

Holiday?

2011-06-17T16:24:00.000+01:00

The end of year exam went well. I hope anyway. It felt like it went well. It was certainly a lot better than I expected. There was a lot of anatomy - along the lines of " if you were to inject someone here, what would you have to careful not to hit?". Probably about 60-75% I could answer without thinking and the rest I could make educated guesses on. There were only about 4 out of the 100 I couldn't answer at all. It takes the standard AMK format, so a wrong answer is -0.25 and a correct answer is 1 mark, with a blank being 0. Results for the End of Year and the final AMK are out on the 27th. There was a question about what movement a lady found painful when shutting drawers and when people got to that question you could see them all going through the motions. It was quite funny to watch. I'm fairly happy. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm not nervous about the results, but the butterflies in my tummy aren't pterodactyls (as the lovely madsadgirl would put it).

I am currently working at the GP's and in a bit or a battle with hours. I would like to do full time but they can't afford me full time. Bearing in mind their full time is 42.5 hours a week, I asked for 33 hours and have been told they can definitely give me 28 but can't confirm more than that however they really don't want to lose me. The problem is, my old job have asked me back.. sort of. One of my old bosses has a project he wants doing, and he thinks if he goes to the board and says I'm free I'll do it, they will allow it. Then there's other bits I can do whilst there for the rest of summer. They pay more than the GP does. I will earn £800 more at the office job than doing the 33 hours at the GP, and £1100 more than the 28 hours at the GPs. Now sneaky BIS have re-written the rules to exclude the loophole they had previously been ignoring, and all the campaiging that is being done to save GEM is ignoring us grads on five year courses, it's looking less and less like I will get the fee loan money after all, so anything I earn now is important.

I worked out I am covered for year 2, I can afford fees and rent there, and I have year 3's fees sat in an ISA, so it's rent and fees and rent for 4 and 5 I'm saving for now. So, head says go for the more money. Heart says I want to do a job I love, a job that is relevant, where everyday I'm learning new bits that help my degree. I'm not coming home shattered like I do at the office job even though it's longer hours and more repetitive 'boring' work (that acctually I really enjoy). I'm not using my brain to problem solve as much as I get to in the office job, I don't have autonomy, lunch time cards or the responsibilty my office job gives me, but still.... I can't be pleased. Those that tell me to do the one I love I tell the money side to, and those that say do the money job I tell the enjoyment side to. I am completely stuck. They say you should flip a coin and in the split second it's in the air you'll know the one you really want to do, but even that doesn't work. I didn't get the job at the hospital to boost the GP job money and do the two part time, and I don't think the office job will let me be part time. I am hoping the decision will be taken out of my hands. I've told the GP's my final offer of 33 hours a week and if they don't meet it I will have to go back to the office job. It's the sensible, grown up thing to do. You can't have what you want all the time. And it won't be for very long. People who read my blog who are further up the course than me, how do you find balancing a job with being a 3rd, 4th or 5th year? Is it possible?

If we ever get around to booking it Mr and I are going to Lanzarote in a couple of weeks for a cheap week in the sun together. Looking at the horrible rain we've had today I cannot wait. I have a to do list that is ridiculously long with work to do, rooms to tidy, stuff to sort out and cull, christmas presents to start making, baby clothes to finish knitting, I have to decide what if any rowing or coxing I'm doing this summer. And summer doesn't really seem to be that long to get it all done. I tell you what though, I can't wait for it to be over :) I want to see what the next case unit is, and where my placements will be. :)

Medically Racist

2011-06-08T23:48:00.000+01:00

Well I've had my placement at the Chiropractors. I'm probably a little more pro-chiro now than I was but I'm not sure I'd ever go myself. He said there were two types, the traditional that believe they can fix any problem because the spine is the centre and needs realigning to restore flow to the nerve roots that come from the spinal cord. Then there's the mechanical type like the one I saw that manipulate the spine to fix back pain but refer on for anything else. He did get quite hands on and jump all over the patients, contorting them in strange positions and hugging them tight, jerking them to extend the stretch until the joints cracked. There was one patient who was finding it really uncomfortable and seemed to be in a fair amount of pain but he was just ignoring it. He berated her somewhat afterwards by saying that if he could move her neck there was no reason she shouldn't be able to which I thought was a bit harsh. It's only natural that if something hurts you don't do it. He might very well be right, I just felt there were probably more sensitive ways to say it. He seems to have gone the opposite way - where Peninsula teach us to treat the whole patient including their thoughts and feelings, he treats spines, and just spines. I did like how he explained to the mechanic about his back comparing it to a car engine, but he didn't treat all his patients equally. We got into discussions about where GPs refer to. He was upset that many will refer to a physio but not to a chiro. He called it being medically racist, which is a novel idea. The GPs I've spoken to say they won't refer to chiros because they aren't NHS; they aren't in the 'toolbox'. He sort of understood this at the time, but then later referred back to GPs being medically racist, as though he was willing to accept my input, but had already made up his mind and that was what he thought. What made me laugh was how he said he wanted tighter regulation and didn't want to be associated with the traditional chiros who do all sorts of strange treatments, but then said he uses a blend of physio, osteopath and chiropractic moves. How is that better? He's still going outside his remit to treat how he feels works best.

Exam prep is still going pants. I'm more on the 'I've got so much to learn and I'll never get it all done in time' mindset now. I found out I passed my last assessment essay, so passing through to year 2 is all riding on the AMK or EoY1 test now. As a class we've taken to accosting members of staff to see if anyonehas any knowledge of our AMK scores. No joy yet. I also found out I'm going to Truro for my fifth year which I'm pleased with. I've collected the set now with years spent at Exeter, Plymouth and Truro. Mr and Mum aren't too thrilled as it means I'll be really far away. The way I see it, I'll be too busy to have the time to just pop home. Plus it's no further from home than when I was in Southampton and Mum didn't have a problem then. I'm happy because it's pretty, I've heard good things about the teaching as people have the time to teach you and they are friendly. I'm not fussed about the lack of nightlife, and I'm pleased I have the opportunity to go to Cornwall as a local and not a grockle. If the foundation school applications change to reflect the proposals I was emailed about earlier in the year, it'll mean I do F1 there as well. See you on the other side of the dreaded end of year :-|

Nearly

2011-06-04T21:51:00.000+01:00

I am about to start the last week of being a fresher. It's quite a scary thought. I'm not really ready for it to be the end of the year. Not because I'm not looking forward to the exam at the end, rather I'm having a blast! I've worked so hard to get here, and it's amazing. The placements I get to go on, the skills I'm learning, the science. I'm having such a good time, I don't want a break for 3 months. As for the exam, well I really don't have the motivation. I seem to swing wildly between thinking "I'll be fine, I can do it", to "I don't need to do it because I've passed the AMK, so I don't need to work too much for it", to "OMG I have no idea what I'm doing about anything, all the work I've done has been focussing on the wrong things and I've now run out of time to cover it all properly and I don't even know where to begin".

I'm getting rather fed up with Peninsula keep changing our timetables. I organise meetings and work and then have a double check and it's all changed! Not useful. It's been a pretty quiet week otherwise. Placement is next week because of the bank holiday. It's at a chiropractors which should be interesting. I have an open mind, but I'm not the biggest fan of alternative medicine to be fair. Although there are two chiropractors we get sent to on placement, I don't think this is the one where the guy doesn't believe in DNA.... (I wish I was kidding)

I'm getting married next week :) To my medsoc wife and we shall have fresher babies in September :p My wife-to-be and medsoc mum and a friend went out last night for pizza and sangria to celebrate my birthday. I'm 23 tomorrow. I had a really good night. There was a lot of sangria and I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen for about 8 years. It was a shame more people didn't come, but I guess that's what I get for not socialising with them that often, and spending my nights with my head in the books. Maybe I'll see what I can do to try harder next year.

Results

2011-05-25T23:26:00.001+01:00

The results came out. Amazingly I passed that shocking competency. I was so pleased, I was grinning all day. Today I found I also passed the essay I had to submit after the dermatology SSU I did just before Easter break. I got marked down for silly things that were IN THE HANDBOOK AND WE HAD TO DO(!!), again, but at least I passed. In the feedback I was told not to reference the BNF, which was a bit weird. Anyway, it all means that I am only one exam away from being a second year. Either the AMK I did last week, or the End of Year coming up a few weeks. How exciting! I'm confident for the AMK, I really think I've passed it. Which is dangerous for me. Given my track record it means I've probably failed it horribly and they have serious doubts about my passing into the second year. I'm always pants at second guessing exam performance.

Yesterday at work I had to handle my first complaint. A patient had had an operation and needed their stitches out. The 7-10 day window they were given to have them removed in falls on a Saturday, Sunday, Bank Holiday Monday, Tuesday. The only free appointments on the Tuesday are with the HCA. The patient was as pleasant as you like until I told them it was an HCA they were booked in with, at which point they demanded a nurse or a doctor - someone 'medically trained'. It didn't matter how much I explained that our HCA was lovely and fully trained to inspect their wound and remove their stitches, they were adamant they didn't want to be seen by a 'sham nurse'. They asked to speak to the Practice Manager to put in a formal complaint that they felt they were giving us plenty of notice and our services were poor that we didn't have anyone medically trained to see them.
It would seem that perhaps some members of the public don't want a multi-disciplinary team way of working? In case you're wondering, I sent the patient to the walk in centre where they can wait for hours to have their stitches taken out. I'd laugh so much if an HCA did it there after all.

Pooped Bean

2011-05-22T23:33:00.001+01:00

Did I mention the week I've just done was going to be horrid? It was horrid. By Tuesday I couldn't wait for it to be Friday. Monday I had placement at the mobility centre. It started with a tour of the factory where they hand make all the casts and shoes and prosthetics. It was sweet and sad all at the same time. The factory was pretty large and the walls were lined with pictures of what the factory used to look like with all the benches full of workers hand crafting things. Now each room had maybe one or two old men who were proudly showing us what they were working on and the design process. They were smiling at me and telling me that because us Doctors were becoming so clever at our jobs and noticing problems faster and finding new ways to surgically correct them and since plastics became so easy to mould there wasn't such a need for hand made casts and prosthetics anymore so they'd slowly all been laid off. They make shoe insoles and permanent leather casts, but that's it.

Next, I spent an hour watching a physiotherapist run a rehabilitation session with a man who'd had his second leg amputation 9 weeks ago and was learning to walk with two prosthesis. Although to be fair, the physio didn't have to do much. This man was amazing - willing to take on any challenge, keen to show all the tools the physio had, any 'game' she explained to help him master a new trick on them he wanted to do, and do, and until he'd perfected it. He had three great danes and was determined he was going to walk other on the moors this weekend, as he had done previously when he had only one leg amputated. Even if that meant walking round the facility time after time after time, trying to find someone to play football with him in the carpark, stepping from balance hedgehog to balance hedgehog to practise for the marshy ground up on the moor. This man was awe inspiring, truly. Whilst he was training another man came in in a wheel chair, not as far along in the acclimatisation stage of getting used to his leg but it was still fascinating to watch - his determination, and his strength. He joked that he thought it was a lot easier to learn to walk the first time.

Eventually there were three guys, all getting on with pushing themselves to learn how to adapt with the new changes in their lives. Incredibly to me, another guy came in looking at what was going to happen, smiled and said he was having his operation to remove his leg next month. The other patients looked at him and smiled and one said, "Congratulations! Having mine off was the best thing I ever did." Such a strange concept. Through listening to them talk, it turned out all the patients were ex-forces which was quite upsetting for me as I wasn't really expecting it. I haven't really been challenged like this before, in terms of having to put my personal circumstances on a back foot and ignore it. I managed but I have to admit there were tears in my eyes as I was walking away from the factory. I can't imagine myself ever being strong enough to watch Mr have to learn how to walk again.

Tuesday bought my combined clinical competency in respiratory, gastrointestinal and cardiac exams. It went pants. I got the most pernickety examiner and I'd gone through it so many times with my partner, all the run throughs blurred together in my head and I couldn't remember what I'd done in the test and what I'd done in practise. I was so frustrated with myself. On the marksheets I got some excellents, some satisfactories and a borderline. I really don't know if I've done enough to pass once my score gets moderated. I don't think I will have done because the evaluation reports say Exeter students do worse than Plymouth students, and I've been in a bit of a pessimistic mood lately.

Wednesday bought the last AMK of the year. I thought it went quite well. I enjoyed it actually. I answered more questions than ever, again, and I took longer at it, again. There were more questions I knew the answers to because of my degree and revision, and educated guesses I could take from seeing things at work. On the other hand, everyone else seems to have hated it. I'm not sure if that's a good thing and I'll therefore have done really well, or if I was really wrong with all my guesses. Because they are meany, we don't get the results in the normal two weeks, it'll take 5 and half. Which means I don't know if I've done enough to pass the year and if the end of year exam is necessary for me to pass or just a formality. Meanies.

Then it was Thursday, and Mr's birthday, and no, I hadn't sent him a birthday card, or present :( Bad girlfriend. Hope he understood. I also had an essay to write for the next day - on Ethnicity, Race and Health. It was to based on a chapter from a sociology book we'd been photocopied and given. I had real trouble with this one because I didn't actually agree with anything they had to say. Apparently the genetic differences between different races were too minute to be significant and therefore there's no such thing as race or ethnicity, they are just social constructs. We shouldn't treat people any differently because of what they look like, which I do believe in, but to say there's no difference between people from different parts of the world is ridiculous and PC to the extreme. Hopefully, I got a mark in the AMK for remembering the NICE guidelines suggest one line of treatment for the under 55s or non Blacks/Afro Caribbeans and another for the over 55s or Blacks/Afro Caribbeans because they have lower levels of renin and so ACE inhibitors don't work as well. Should I ignore this fact then because the difference isn't 'significant'? It's rubbish. I managed to write it in the end, ticking the I'm not a racist box and putting my own point of of view across. They did say there wasn't a wrong answer and I've got to do better than one of my peers who decided to end his essay with "well, it could be worse, at least I'm not Irish". Not entirely sure that's what they were looking for.

To get over this week I made the best cake using up some rhubarb I had - rhubarb and custard cake. It's amazing. This has been a bit of an essay, so I shall leave it there. Tomorrow I start the last case unit of the year, how sad. I wish you all good luck in your exams!

Hormone Soup

2011-05-13T22:33:00.001+01:00

This week has been one of those where I'm reminded just how pants it is to be a girl. Crippling stomach pains, crying at the most tenuously soppy things, broody at anything baby related (even the maxillocraniofacial babies), grumpy for the tiniest things and the next minute bouncing off the walls hyper with the slightest good thing (surprise strawberries in my veg box from Mr this week!!!). It's a wonder half the population function like normal human beings to be honest. I've managed to keep the worst of it behind my bedroom door, so I haven't snapped at anyone or gone mushy at them which is good.

Since exams are looming it is also time to welcome the stressy bean ball back. Panicking that I haven't done enough and I won't be able to fit it all in before the exams. Insomnia because I can't switch my brain off from worrying enough to sleep. Not eating properly because I'm picking at bits throughout the day whilst I work. It's not good. What makes it worse is I know I'm over reacting. I know it's just the stupid hormones exacerbating normal nerves over something that matters. And that when I'm like this it's not me. I'm not a soppy person. I'm not broody. (I'll admit to being a little grumpy sometimes though). Next week I have the final AMK of the year. If I pass this I pass into second year and it doesn't matter about the End of Year 1 test. On the other hand, if I fail the end of year it's a good indication I'll fail year 2, apparently. The day before the AMK I have a combined clinical competency in cardiovascular, respiratory and gastrointestinal exams. The day before that I have to give a five minute presentation on why the placement I will have been to that morning deserves £50,000 of theoretical money. I am not looking forward to next week. One bit.

The Many Hatted Bean

2011-05-06T00:52:00.000+01:00

I had a toughie today, I really had to restrain myself. I was at job number 2, the GP surgery and was working on the front desk on my own. A mother rang up clearly upset. She was asking for an appointment as soon as possible for her young son because the anti-histamines weren't working and she didn't know what to do. She said she kept giving him more but all they were doing was making him sleepy and difficult to wake in the mornings which she was feeling very guilty for. Without thinking, whilst looking for open appointments my med student hat slipped on and I asked what was wrong, although I had pretty much guessed from her description. I was correct, her son had eczema. He's fine in the morning, but his skin gets redder and itchier throughout the day, so she wanted an afternoon appointment so the Dr could see how bad it was and how the anti-histamines weren't working. She was so upset and beating herself up about giving him poor care, and I really wanted to tell her that all anti-histamines are given for is to make them drowsy enough to sleep through the itch at night. I've just done my dermatology placement see, I know about eczema. I don't like to think the Dr didn't explain the treatment regimen to her, I would hope it's just she didn't quite understand. After all, if we get an itchy rash because we're allergic to it we take anti-histamines, but it doesn't work that way in the little ones with eczema.

A little later on, a patient was being very particular with the appointment slots they wanted, and I came across a colour of appointment slot I didn't recognise. We use different colours to denote different classes of appointment, for example purple would be admin, green slots are bookable only on the day, red for bloods, orange for imms (the nurses get upset if they have to do more than two baby imms in a clinic, they don't like making the babies cry) etc. This one was a sludgey green and when I asked my colleague she peered over my shoulder and said 'oh, that means there's students in. So you see a student and the Dr just observes. Are you sure you're alright with that, you don't have to, you can see a proper Dr.' She made it sound so awful, as though it was unimaginable anyone would want to be seen by a student because we're all such horrible people, aren't we? It was a fifth years clinic as well, so they're pretty much qualified, especially given our strange exam style. Ooo, I so wanted to tell her to be quiet and stop painting us in such a bad light.

I also had a bit of a silly bean moment. I was summarising patient notes, and one set said a patient had had a termination, and the tests carried out on the fetus showed it was a mole. I'd never heard this term before and was puzzling as to how a person can be pregnant with a cute, blind, fluffy thing (a la Moley from Wind in the Willows). Especially because one of the random facts stuck in my brain is that humans are the only animal that cannot breed interspecies. When the sperm reaches the egg, if it's not human sperm the egg locks down and it can't penetrate. Cool, huh? Anyway, after some googling I found it's a molar pregnancy and it's when the egg doesn't have any DNA, or the egg is fertilised by two sperm. This results in either a 46 chromosome all coming from the sperm, or a 69 or 92 chromosome foetus that doesn't develop properly and can form a cancer.

Photo from photobucket

Oops. Ah well, can still hide under the big "I'm a Fresher, don't laugh at me, I know very little" placard for a little while longer. Job number 3 finishes tomorrow, no more censusing bean. And I should be able to fix my car, once my parents give me back the money I lent them. I've applied for another job, it's perfect. Ha, another job, I can feel Mr groaning and rolling his eyes, telling me I don't need another job, I need to study. Which is true, but I need both. Dilemma. Anyway, this one is to potentially replace job number 1 and be my full time summer job. It pays slightly better and is set in the hospital, collecting data for an endocrinology randomised control trial. Reading the blurb about who they are looking for, you couldn't write one better suited to me if you tried. The only problem is that the closing date for applications is June 10th, the last day of term. Ideally, I should be telling job number 1 I want to come back now. I can't really tell them I want to come back and then pull out at the last minute if I get this awesome job, because that's not fair and they'll never have me back again. On the other hand, if I leave it they may not factor me into their work planning and budget. Plus HR are unbelievable slow at sorting contracts and log ons and swipe cards to enter the building (since they de-activated mine and they can't re-activate it *sniff*). Sooo, I don't really know what to do. I've been hankering to get back into research since my dissertation, and if they want to pay me to do it, all the better. I may even be able to wheedle my name onto the end of the authors list of the paper, you never know. But I can earn £3000 for definite at job 1, which is a major chunk of money, and not to be sniffed at. Even if I am finding the job incredibly dull since starting my double life as a wide-eyed in wonderment med student. I don't know! Inspiration and a firm decision either way kindly accepted. Can pay in chocolate, since I found when going home for Easter that I hadn't actually eaten last years Easter eggs yet.....

PS. Mr gets awarded a shiny sword today for being very clever and coming top of his Army training course. I'm very proud of him and although I couldn't be there to watch him get awarded it, I'm sure he looks very nice in his fancy uniform with a new shiny sword. *Beams* <3

Back to it

2011-05-02T19:19:00.000+01:00

Last day of the holidays today. I am sat back in halls, I don't think too many people yet it's very quiet. Which is good because they can't hear me singing along full pelt to the Rent soundtrack (~guilty pleasure~). Well typically I didn't get half the things done I wanted to. I did the essay, all bar the pernickity formatting hoops to jump through. It's not bad. It's not amazing, but it'll do. Now I have to waffle another 2000 words on how I work in a group and how it makes me feel. And revise because in two weeks I have my last AMK and combined competency in two days.

My bags are all still packed around me. I hate unpacking. I like it when everything has a place, but not the act of putting things in their place. Can I just click my fingers please? Mr came down for five whole days. It was amazing. A shame I had to spend most of it working or writing my essay, but it's nice to just do normal things, every visit doesn't have to . We used vouchers and went for a couple of really nice meals out, and had a big family get together with Mum's side of the family for a late Easter gathering. It was lovely.

There's only six weeks left of term. That is a very strange thought, six weeks of being a first year. It's gone so quickly and I've enjoyed every moment. Even though it's this far through, and I moan about work I have to do, I honestly wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I still can't quite believe it. The Student Room is filling with next year's Freshers and in a funny way I'm a little bit jealous. It doesn't seem that long since it was my exciting news. Fingers crossed it'll continue and I can be an over-excited second year too :)

Scruffy Bean

2011-04-23T16:42:00.000+01:00

First day of the holiday and I relished pulling on comfy jeans and a slouchy hoodie. What with work and the policy we told on our induction day at PMS "you will be doctors, you should act and dress like doctors", I haven't been able to be a properly comfy scruffy bean in ages. I am also enjoying the after effects of a student diet and finally being able to fit back into my skinny jeans. Although with the abundance of biscuits floating around our house, I doubt they'll be fitting for too long. The new computer is shiny bright. I went for an all in one, touch screen PC in the end with the hope it will be hard wearing enough to be used often but still be portable enough to move from student flat to home and around various placements and things the course will be throwing at me. Unfortunately, I appeared to take on the role of Bean: Destroyer of Electricals as a couple of days after getting the new computer my phone died. Ten days after the warranty expired. Not amused. I am currently in that awkward phase of owning a new shiny thing where you have to keep fiddling to get things how you like them. What's worse is that I can't remember how I got my phone to how I liked it before so that's causing some frustration. It's getting there, but it's not right yet. On a similar times-they-are-a-changing note, anyone got any suggestions for a suitable replacement for Spotify once they change to only allow 10 hours a month and 5 plays of each song? First Pandora, now Spotify.... Huff.

Another perk to being at home that I had sorely missed was being able to sit on a sofa. It's not something you think about really until it's not there anymore, but I've so enjoyed being able to curl up on the sofa of an evening, be sat on by the cat (once she got over her grumps at me for abandoning her for months) and settle down to some knitting in front of the telly. My cousin is expecting twins soon so there's much knitting to be done.

I've only been off a week, but because the last three weeks of term were odd because of placement SSU it seems like ages since I've been stuck into studies proper. I'm torn. I want to be back studying because I love learning new things. However, I know I'm a little behind with lectures and I'd like to do some revision for the End of Year and the last AMK. I'm also quite enjoying the time off not being quite as busy as I normally am, although I'm still trying to fit in GP work and Census work. Reading all the posts about the 5th studying for finals is making me feel very guilty for not working harder at medical stuff and also pretty happy that I don't have to do exams like that. Best of luck to you all.

RIP Laptop

2011-04-14T20:25:00.000+01:00

I'm not sure what I do to laptops. This is my second in 7 years, and this one only lasted 3. I love them, I treat them well, I don't spill stuff on them. I do use them all the time.... maybe that's it. I was kind of hoping that because everything was backed up I'd banked some karma, you know? I was prepared for it so obviously it wouldn't happen? Apparently karma doesn't work like that :( So I'm switching from a laptop to a desktop and hoping that will be a little more hard-wearing. As such this is my final post on my beloved laptop. I have two essays to write but can't because Word won't work in safe mode and I can't back up my work in safe mode either. I should be packing to go home tomorrow and I should be cooking tea after a long day of comparing laptops and desktops and 6 hours of censusing. What I actually want to do is go to the Slackers Club free film showing tonight. It's not a film I desperately want to see, but it's free and it has an actress I like.

Haven't done a lot of medical stuff since I last post. Nothing interesting anyway. I sat in a nurse's paeds eczema clinic and listened to teenagers explaining they hadn't followed the treatment regime they were given and look their eczema isn't any better. What a surprise. We were told to come back to see a Phototherapy clinic but when we got there no patients were due to arrive. We got shown around instead, which was fairly interesting but there isn't really much to see. It's a bit like a walk in tanning booth. I was half contemplating telling my facilitator that my colleague hadn't been ill for a week, he'd been watching the cricket. He wasn't able to answer the questions he was asked in the tutorial, and waiting and watching while he stalled and ummed and ahh'd was painful at times. Especially since the answer he was looking for was the same as the one he'd given not 15 minutes ago. However, knobbling other students isn't really me, and certainly not the type of person I want to be. I joked at the beginning of the year I'd only have to knobble 7 students in order to pass the year since the bottom 5% have to fail.

I went to quite an interesting lecture about how Exeter is the leading centre for blood saving. No blood is crossmatched from the blood bank for any elective surgeries. Instead, the blood the patient loses is collected, centrifuged to remove the plasma, diluted with saline and given back to them. Apparently blood treated in this way recruits pro-inflammatory factors and capillaries which helps the healing and antibacterial process. 1 unit of blood costs £150, which I did not realise. Clever stuff. It was a filler lecture because Professor Ellis was too sick to lecture. He'll be coming back to lecture at Plymouth and we'll be linking in telematically, but he can't sign my Lecture Notes on General Surgery from Plymouth.....

Vaseline

2011-04-10T13:48:00.000+01:00

Firstly, hello to all the new followers. I don't think I've said that yet,which was rude of me. It means a lot that you like reading my waffle :) So I haven't been able to do any suturing yet but I was given a very important job to do in the last surgery morning I was in. You know on Grey's or Holby where the Surgeon yells "suction, I can't see!!" well that was my job last week. Except since I'm on Dermatology which is slightly less invasive it was more here is a tissue pad, dab the wound clean. But I still got to scrub in and be useful which was awesome. The first surgery of the day I saw was removal of a pigmented lesion (mole) query malignant melanoma (possibly cancerous, probably not, better to be safe). This operation was performed by a fifth year from start to finish with the Surgeon stood observing. What an amazing thing to aspire to! He made a really good job of it as well. I know it only seems like small fry, but I don't really have a lot to compare it to, so it seemed pretty awesome to me. The surgeon was really nice in explaining what he was doing and pointing things out. He asked a load of questions, some of which I could answer, some were for the fifth year, and some were for the fifth year but he couldn't answer them and I could :) There's a lot more surgery scheduled for next week so hopefully I'll get to see some more. There are fourth and fifth years on the ward as well so we're sort of competing with them to see things and they have priority.

As for the title of this post - I have seen Vaseline used in a variety of ways over the last week; it really is a wonder substance. The consultant tells the patients on isotretinoin (an acne treatment, it used to be called Roaccutane) to use Vaseline on their lips as one of the side effects of the treatment is very sore, cracked, dry lips. The surgeon was using Vaseline to cover incision wounds and fill in holes in nails where he'd removed them before dressing. This is apparently because the wounds heal better and faster in a moist environment. Finally I was at a rowing race yesterday and in order to transport a rowing eight on a trailer it was be split in half. We used Vaseline to waterproof the two halves of the eight before we put it back together. A little whimsical but I figured it deserved a mention since it seemed to crop up a few times too often in my life recently. Clever stuff apparently.

I have spent the morning lazing in bed, knitting and catching up on my TV programmes because last week was hectic. To be fair it was my fault it was hectic, I may have possibly taken on too much. Again. Bit of a mantra for me recently :-/ But it won't be for very long. SSU blocks are notoriously slack, so when I saw a job advertised for over Easter holiday and two weeks of SSU paying good money, really good money, I jumped at it. The selection process was long and fiddly. There were lots of emails saying you must do this 3 hours of online assessments in the next 48 hours, but at each stage I got through, and finally heard a month ago I got the job. After going through all that I wasn't going to say no, and besides, it's only four weeks. Then I found out my timetable for SSU and the 3 hours a week I was told it would be morphed into a good 4-5 hours everyday. I have to do token efforts at the GP surgery, but they don't mind if I'm in clinics and can't work. Job number 2 is mainly to be done outside of normal working hours 5-9 and weekends. I am a census collector. One of the smiley, friendly but menacing people who go door to door and remind/bully people into filling in their census forms. I'm a nice one, don't worry, I'm not mean at it. They get a half jokey "fill it in or you'll have to put up with me keep knocking on your door". I am pooped! I started Wednesday and did clinics or surgery 9-12, GP's 1-6 and census 6-8.30. I have 3 patches and have done a first pass on two of them. It's going well and it's lovely to have an excuse to be out in the sun but my did I need to spend some time doing nothing. Now I have some errands to run and to start the essays. Back to it!

Quandary

2011-04-07T22:56:00.002+01:00

Well, I passed the AMK. Still dead centre in the middle of the satisfactory band. I found whilst digging the other day that if I can pass everything with a satisfactory I should get a merit. All excellent I think is a distinction, but I'm happy with a merit. Not that I was planning on failing or borderlining anything that is. I also passed the last SSU and the professional judgement that went with it. This SSU is going well too. Well, no, the essay isn't going anywhere at all but the attachment is going fantastically. I'm seeing so many patients, getting the chance to see common and rare diseases, getting to examine, diagnose and offer a treatment plan. I get to chat to them and take detailed histories, and answer questions fired at me from the consultants.

I had one event that put me in a bit of a professional quandary however, and I'm still not sure if I should say something, or if it's too late now. My partner and I were sat taking a history from a patient on immunomodulators for his eczema. He was pointing to and describing a crampy pain running in a thin band inside his right iliac fossa region which is just above your hip (Imagine your abdomen divided into a 3x3 grid with the top being a line across the the bottom of your ribs and the bottom being a line across your hips. Right iliac fossa is lower right hand corner). I had the patient's notes on my lap, where the consultant had requested an ultrasound scan of the right hypochondrium which is just below your rib cage and contains the liver and pancreas (right upper corner). The consultant was worried about pancreatitis and so was running a blood test for amylase and ordering the ultrasound. The only problem is that the pancreas is not where the patient was describing the pain, and it wan't the right sort of pain. It's true pancreatitis pain radiates, but to the back, not down. My partner flicked through his note book which just happened to have the last LSRC notes in it with the abdominal checkerboard drawn out which confirmed we were right. The consultant had muddled his basic anatomy. I should imagine he'd seen the area, incorrectly remembered it as being the right hypochondrium and recalled pain in this area could be pancreatitis. Neither of us could summon the courage or work out the tactful way for two first year medical students kindly being allowed to interview his patient that he was wrong. What would you do? Whilst walking back to halls we placated ourselves with the hope the patient would say something when the jelly for the ultrasound was being put in the wrong place. Since his creatinine kinase was up we wondered if he was experiencing death of one the transverse abdominal muscle bands (creatinine kinase goes up after a myocardial infarction as it is released by the dying muscle cells), but that really was us pushing our limited knowledge.

At my GP job I was marvelling at some old patient letters I was summarising. When he was a young boy in the 1940's he'd contracted TB. Upon discharge from hospital the Dr had written him up for extra milk, the way we would do now for any other drug. It was fascinating. I was also amazed at how long it took him to get over TB. Knowing nothing about the disease in detail at all, he spent a year in hospital and was followed up every year for six years after that with the recommendation for extra milk and no PE. Apart from trying to decipher the handwriting I love going through old notes.

Continuing the wistful happy vibe, if you like Mr Scruff, or are curious, I have The Voodoo Trombone Quartet on repeat on Spotify at the moment. Hope you're enjoying the sunshine.

Loon Grinning

2011-03-28T20:59:00.000+01:00

Be aware, the loon grinning has set it, and it won't go away for a while. It may even be contagious. You have been warned. The loon grinning commenced last week on placement when the GP I was sat in with said, "Oooh, that's a nice mitral regurgitation murmur, do you mind if the student Doctor has a listen?" (Don't worry, the patient has had it for a while and knew about it, that wasn't how the news was broken.) I got to use my stethoscope on a real person for the first time ever! A real, sick, patient kind of person, not a medic friend I'm practising on. Placement continued with listening to breath sounds for asthma, squeezing a huge sebaceous cyst (as big as a £2 coin), chatting to a Dr come in for a referral, and talking to a very charming lady who confirmed she ate a very good diet, elaborating that it consisted of no breakfast or lunch, a packet of Dolly Mixtures a day and a ready meal every evening. It was really busy morning clinic and so interesting to see all the different types of cases. The Dr was open to questions and at one stage even went out into the waiting room to see if she could drum up any more patients for us to see before we left. I get the most from placement seeing the interaction between the patient and the Dr. I like to see if there's any phrases or ways of handling and approaching things I can pick up in a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of way. It really helps to put all the studying into perspective. I'm studying for something. One day this will be me. It's like all access work experience and I'm still as excited as a little kid at al the opportunities I get.

In clinical skills we learnt how to do gastrointestinal exams. Happy to say I have a liver, I have felt it. :) We have competencies coming up after the Easter holidays where we have to do a combine cardiovascular, respiratory gastrointestinal exam - running them all together in the end of the bed, fingertips up to the head and down to the toes prescribed format. This will be interesting because we have 10 minutes to do it and it took the demonstrator 15 when she showed us at full speed....

We only had one normal two week case block and now we have started another SSU. I have been allocated 'The Impact of Eczema on Children and their Families'. I've been attached to the dermatology ward and when I went for my contact session today she gave me a timetable for the rest of the week. I'm in clinics everyday. It's AMAZING!!!!! There were a couple of optional sessions in there, like tomorrow morning. She said "if you like you can come in tomorrow, get changed into some scrubs and observe some minor surgery. It'll mainly be removing skin cancers and depending on where it is you can do some suturing if you like. You don't have to come in though if you don't want, you can have a free morning." Would I like to come and observe and do stitching? HELL YEAH!!!!! Seriously, I am so excited. I have not stopped grinning, and the little bean inside me is bouncing up and down like you wouldn't believe. She had me at scrubs to be honest, I love a bit of dress up. I've got some general clinics, some phototherapy, some patch testing and possibly a trip onto the wards to see some inpatients with skin complaints. And this is just week 1! I have 2 more weeks of this.

Stress Relief

2011-03-16T22:12:00.000Z

I have been missing in action somewhat for the last week and a half. The essay needed to be done after all, surprise surprise and I wrote an awesome one if I say so myself. I was really proud of it - well researched, technically strong writing and a good conclusion. Even my superior agreed when she saw the first draft. And then I had to massacre it and cut 350 words. That doesn't sound a lot but it only had to be 2000 in total and not a single word over. It was so dry once I'd finished it I really didn't like it anymore which was really disappointing since I worked so hard on it.

As soon as that was submitted it was only a couple of days until the next AMK and I was feeling The Fear. Between the first one and the second one we did a load of case units but between the second and third we did one unit on cardiology which I always just don't understand and a highly specialised SSU project. I really wanted to keep making an improvement and stay in the top half of the class. Late teens early twenties is my goal for this one.

I sat it this afternoon and it was horrible. There were a load of gastro questions - ask me again at the end of next week when I've finished the gastro unit please, and a load of questions I recognised bits about from seeing them on patient records at work but don't know the specifics of to be able to answer. And for once there were a few where I knew bits about what they were describing, but they hadn't asked the right question for me to be able to answer it. For example they gave a perfect description of shingles without identifying it as such. Fingers crossed the question is what is it....nope, how do you treat it. I don't know, I didn't look at that bit. Grr. Can I have half a point for being clever and knowing it's shingles? There were some I got down to a 50:50 and I honestly still can't say I got it right or not. I'm afraid to look up the answer. Oh, and diverticulitis. It comes up every time and every time I think ooh, what on earth is that, must look that up and forget. Gah. Well, I know now.

I missed pancake day this year. I was studying and couldn't take the time to make them. I had suggested to my housemates before the workload became all encompassing we do a house pancake evening, because the only thing we've done together since we moved in was go to a disciplinary hearing. They all said it was a good idea and we should do it. Pancake day comes and they get some course mates over a pancakes for lunch. Gee thanks guys, nah, don't worry I didn't want any Thanks for asking... -_-

At the weekend I coxed the crew I'm supposed to be racing with at Women's Head of the River next weekend. I can't go because I can't afford to get the membership and enter the race. We had a new coach who's coached the New Zealand National team so he should be pretty good but he was pushing them so hard he almost broke them. Race piece after race piece, more pressure, row faster, row for longer. It was tough. For two hours I was in charge. I was their on board coach, talking them through the pain, motivating them, getting them to row their best, keeping them strong, tweaking their technique, steering them. I was responsible. That's my stress relief. Yelling at people to do their best at obscene times on a Sunday morning. Dressed in so many layers you could push me over and I'd bounce up again. Leaving work and study behind me focussing entirely on being what my crew need from me. That is my stress relief. That, and if you'd have been a fly on the wall of my kitchen a few hours ago I had the radio on full blast playing dance music and I was dancing round the kitchen like a loon cooking bolognese stuffed pancakes :)

Work, Work, Work, ?Study

2011-03-03T00:44:00.000Z

"Do you like living your life at a maniacal pace?" Ha! Obviously SSU was not going to be a nice chance to slow down. My Practice Manager said this to me in the week as I was rushing from lectures to work. I work as an administrator at a local GP's surgery and they must be pleased with me because I'm getting more responsibilities, more training and a pay rise, which is good. Unfortunately I'm being thrown in the deep end some what as there are quiet a few sickness absences so since I seem to be a quick study I'm shown something once and left to do it. Since my last post I've done a twelve hour shift which started with manning the appointment line (only my second time) for the Monday morning rush which was absolutely crazy busy but I managed it which I was so pleased with. It ended with the late clinic and lock up where I was the only member of admin staff and there were two Doctors in and a full clinic. The next day I was handed a pile of 41 dictations with 7 urgents to do since the girls that normally do them were off sick. These are interesting, but involve a lot of sleuthing as the Dr's tend to say "letter to so and so" and you have to work out who that may be, what they do and how to contact them, whether it needs to go via choose and book so the patient can pick their hospital and slot if it's a speciality that it can be done for, or if you should be looking for an address for them or their secretary. Google is a God-send! Again the day ended with a solo shift on the front desk with the late clinic and the Dr running 30 minutes late.

I know that I'm probably saying yes to too many shifts at the surgery, and that I should be taking more breaks whilst I'm there. But the work is so interesting, time slips by without me noticing and I'm not tired until I get home. Equally, it's a viscous circle on the hours front. I need to study so I can keep up to be able the knowledge to pass the tests to stay on the course. Although the work I do is related and I am learning bits whilst I'm there, it's not really the sort of knowledge that will help me at the moment. I know my available time will get less and less as I go through the next five years, so I really need to make the most of the time I have now to work and save up so I can afford fees in the years to come.

What's not helping is the fact our SSU facilitator is off ill. She has a different approach to everyone else, which is that she's setting us small questions to do for each session we see her, while everyone else just has an essay to write. She told us to hang fire on the essay and not to start it yet and we'd go through some topics and discuss titles when we next see her. She then cancelled that session because she was ill and sent us an email with some more questions to do for when we next see her which is next week, so now I don't know if she's expecting an essay or not. I tend to be a bit of an ostrich about things I don't like and ignore them and get on with other stuff. Since work is keeping me busy I don't want to think about essays and am happy to assume we don't need one, but I don't think life'd be that kind.

Ah well, time management - tick (sort of), multi tasking - tick, learning new skills - tick, being a responsible member of a team - tick, sleep - not really. I'll be a Doctor yet :)

Frozen Doctor Syndrome

2011-02-27T22:45:00.000Z

I've seen a few examples of this in the last week and what with it being interview time, and me being in a contemplative mood again I thought I'd share. There are people that 'do' and 'can' when the situation calls for it, and there are people who 'can't' and 'don't' and I'm not sure you can really tell which category you fall into until the situation occurs and you are tested. To put this into context, last week I watched Junior Doctors on BBC3 and it mentioned frozen doctor syndrome where the new F1's freeze and don't know what to do when faced with situations that require quick thinking and fast actions. This is probably because of any number of very valid reasons - they don't want to be in the way, they don't know where things are, they haven't dealt with such an intense real life situation before or they are scared of getting something wrong. A few weeks ago, one of my housemates tore a ligament in his ankle jumping off something. The swelling hasn't really gone down and he was making do with strapping it and sort of keeping off it, but he's quite an active person and so has been going to the gym to do upper body work. Whilst at the gym with our other housemate he met a load of medics and they were skipping (as you do, apparently). For whatever reason, he thought he'd skip too to show off, and of course went straight over on his ankle and collapsed on the floor. The medics all stood around staring at my friend screaming in pain on the floor. One of them managed to mutter RICE, but by that time our other housemate had gotten some ice and a blanket and a bench and was coming back to pick our friend off the floor and ice his ankle. Both of my housemates do sport science, so whilst he was an idiot to try and be a hard man and skip in the first place, I'm proud of their quick thinking, and wonder whether the medics were kicking themselves for not thinking to do that themselves. I guess slightly on their side is the fact that they weren't in a setting they would be expected to use their skills and knowledge, but I think I'd still be a little embarrassed. Even though we know nothing, we are perceived to be knowledgeable and capable, and RICE is kinda first aid basics, no?

I have been tested myself in the past, though thankfully not often and nothing too bad. Back at Southampton my mentee had an epileptic fit on my driveway, sustaining a nasty head wound as he dropped. Then earlier this week I had a knock on my door at 2 in the morning from my house mate, blind drunk, terrified and vomiting blood. I'm happy to say that I appear to be a person who can and does, although inside I'm terrified and I have no idea where the strength and calm I display in the outside comes from. At least so far, with the situations I have been presented with, I am.

I think it's a difficult skill to interview for, because it's not about what you say, it's about what you do. I have visions of one of the interviews going into pretend anaphylactic shock or something to see how the candidate reacts. As if interviews weren't terrifying enough. I'm sure that not all Dr's require these sorts of skills in their line of work, and that the more you are involved in situations like that the better you'll be at handling them, but it must be useful to be a person that 'can' and 'does' from the outset. It gives you a base to work from and build in the actual knowledge of what to do to be useful.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs...you'll be a Man my son!
If by Rudyard Kipling

Semi-Responsible Bean

2011-02-23T03:03:00.000Z

I love Peninsula. Just when I was starting to panic a little that everything was getting on top of me SSU comes along and I get a chance to breathe which is nice. Other people seem to be stressing about coming up with a title for their essay so they can get started but my facilitator doesn't seem too bothered about us getting to the stage where we are ready to come up with a title yet. So I have a few days to just relax and do what is for me, a bit of microbiology revision. So today I had my first lie-in in ages :) Awesome.

Also, today I had a little bit of a taste of proper medical decision making, which was a little weird to be honest. I was at work at the GP's on the front desk for the second time ever, under supervision taking the phone calls. I kept having phone calls from patients wanting appointments for the same day, of which there weren't any left. From taking a description of the problem I had to decide if they needed a call from the Doctor which could turn into a home visit or late appointment if necessary, or an appointment later on in the week. I know that this is small fry compared to what I will be faced with, but having so little experience and faced with a crying mother on the phone because her toddler still has a fever from yesterday when the Dr saw them, I found it quite strange to try and strip away her emotion from what she wanted me to do, logically assess the situation and balance that with how annoyed the Dr might be with me if I keep adding appointments to the end of their clinic. Luckily I had my boss next to me who was really patient with me as I consulted with her on every case like that, and the magic words "Sorry, I'm new to this, I'm in training, I'll just check" to brandish. I honestly have no idea how the receptionists with no medical training at all handle those sorts of things, because it felt a bit like being a triage nurse. I guess it just comes with time.

I learnt a secret the other day I'll let you in on. When I first got my stethoscope, obviously the first thing I did with it is put it round my neck. Poking around on some other blogs I've seen some of the older medics and Dr's laughing at the young ones wearing the steths round their necks. However, no one will ever tell you why it looks silly, or where you're supposed to put it. The secret apparently is that if you keep it round your neck it gets warm, and if the tubing gets warm repeatedly it gets stiff and may even snap.

Sniff, again

2011-02-20T23:56:00.000Z

Well, I'm ill again so now is as good a time as any to give you an update. Since the last post I have learnt respiratory exams and cardiac exams. I have signed up to be part of a new society called Save a Baby's Life that will aim to teach basic life support in GP's surgeries and parent/child groups. I taught a lesson on HIV to a class of year 11's at a local school. I have done more hours at the GP's surgery than I thought could fit into my time table. I found out I was successful at applying for another job that I entered in for ages ago and have completed on-line training to be... a census collector :) I have struggled through a PBL case unit on the heart - the first topic that I really don't understand. I know it's not hard, it's just that the heart has never seemed to 'click' and make sense with me. I have received peer feedback forms from my new PBL group and discovered that while the last group thought I was too loud, this one thinks I'm too quiet, half think my sources are great and half think they aren't and one appears to want me to put all my sources on the group discussion board on-line before the session thereby giving them all my answers 0_o I have come to the conclusion you can't please all the people all the time and perhaps I really shouldn't care about what my peer feedback forms say. This has been compounded by the actor in my clinical skills communications class telling me to my face that my history taking was fantastic, I covered everything and did everything really well...and then scoring me as 'poor' on his feedback form. Grrrrrr. I have also been called to a disciplinary meeting with the rest of my flat because our fridges have some damage to them. Namely the door fell off one of them and one of the plastic bits has broken in the other because they get so much use. It has escalated to this stage because when they came round to get one of us to sign a form to claim the damage and pay for it none of us would because we believe it is wear and tear which we are covered for and don't have to pay for according to our contracts. I have had training at work on how to man the front desk and how to carry out carer medicals to check that people who care for others are getting all the support they need and are fit an healthy themselves. I have been a tea lady again. I have been rubbish and haven't replied to emails I got (sorry :( ). I have been nostalgic as a round of GAMSAT interviews took place. I have accompanied Mr to a wedding of one of his best friends at Sandhurst and had a lovely day and met really wonderful group of people which I really don't think I'd have had the courage to do a year ago; to go to an event where I only know one person and not stay sat in the corner of the room and observe quietly, but to actually talk to people and be brave. I am starting to understand what it is to be part of the army family. I found out I'm mushy to the core and I cry at weddings, but it's their fault for having such beautiful readings. I watched Never Let Me Go for free at the cinema the day before it premièred as part of the Slackers Club run by E4 and the Picturehouse and found it to be very plain, simple, clever and so sad. I rowed in the first ever Peninsula Women's 8. I have laughed until I cried and I have danced until my feet ached. For two weeks I did not go to bed before 3am and then got up at 8am everyday. I found out that Mr loves me even when I'm snotty, covered in tissue fluff and snoring like train /mush.

I now have a streaming cold and feel like pants. It is entirely my own fault, sort of. The stuff that I planned to do wasn't supposed to all come at once, with a load of other stuff cropping up that had to be done immediately. So, I guess I've also found out that I'm pretty good at running on autopilot, ish. I haven't done all the stuff I should have done, or wanted to and have now made my life more difficult by catching this cold when I still have a lot to do. Fingers crossed for me please because Glandular Fever is currently going round and I really couldn't handle it if my cold turned into that. But, I also have my fingers crossed for you and I hope you interviews are all going well. Believe in yourself that you can do it, because if you don't believe you'll never convince the interview panel you're right for the place either.

Headway

2011-02-09T23:58:00.000Z

Probably not a surprise, but things got busy again, hence the long delay in posting. Sorry! I had the best intentions....

Placement was with a charity called Headway who offer support following brain injuries. I went to a morning group session where people can drop by and meet with others in similar circumstances. It was all very informal and people can take whatever they want from the sessions. One person was there talking through with a staff member difficulties he was having. He had told his case worker that he didn't need them any more because he could do his own washing and cooking, and the staff member was trying to explain that this wasn't what they were there for. He'd been having trouble filling in his benefit forms so the group were trying to convince him to let someone help him with them. Others were there to use the computer, some were setting personal goals with another staff member to help them address difficulties and work out what they wanted from their Headway sessions, one man was bombing around in his wheelchair supposedly drawing pictures of birds, but actually getting into what everyone else was doing and complaining about how long he was having to wait to get his wheelchair fixed since it was so poorly designed - he slumped badly to the left and the controls were positioned so that he couldn't do anything on his lap because they got in the way of his dominant hand. Another group of people were playing Scrabble, my buddy was playing Frustration with someone and I was sat with someone working on a project about the brain - apparently he'd remarked that the picture of the brain on the wall was good but it didn't tell you what each of the different bits did, so they told him why doesn't he research it. He'd gone to his Mother's who'd printed him out some information from the internet but he'd decided since it was his project he should handwrite the information and so was meticulously copying it out.

Before the people arrived the staff member were telling us that it might look like they are just playing Scrabble but they are also developing their vocabulary, learning about dealing with a social setting, about fair play and fine motor skills. They also told us that some people don't have a clue as to the scale of their injuries - they may just think they had a bump on the head and not realise its impact. I didn't entirely understand this at the time, but I I was chatting to this man who was telling me about his life: his father had died, he'd been in two car accidents neither of which were his fault, his wife had spent all his inheritance and left him for someone else but it would be all right because he had this project on the brain to do now. o_0 This poor man had so many terrible things happen to him, but because he had something to focus on he was fine. Inspiring and heartbreaking all at once. His injury had caused him short term memory problems and he was having trouble recognising where he'd already copied bits from and would start to write something but then forget where it was coming from, even though it was right in front of him. Sat across from me was my buddy playing frustration and the guy he was with seemed 'normal' enough - there was no physical disability and he was fairly quiet but happy playing his game with a wicked sense of humour, getting my friend to feel his hand because his hand hurt and then laughing because you can't feel pain like that. The staff had told us that he likes to steal things like keys and phones so he can give them back to you later and tell you he found them because he likes to be helpful. He had another quirk that was every now and then he'd quack like a duck. Totally bizarre!

It was an amazing placement. It was challenging to my views, a fantastic experience and a lot of fun, but equally really upsetting and quite uncomfortable. I really didn't know how to approach these people. Most of them didn't have any outward signs that they had anything wrong with them so it was hard to know what level to pitch your conversation to them, whether you were just being patronising, what they needed help with and what they were just being lazy about and whether it was my place to correct them if they got something wrong. It's great for developing communication skills as they made need things explaining in many different ways to them, and in some cases it was like talking to a child. They all stared at us when they first got there, some coming over to chat because we were new and others completely ignoring us. I sort of felt like I was in a zoo, although I guess they've had plenty of people staring at them in their time.

If you're looking for work experience or extra curricular brownie points I'd definitely recommend looking to see if you have a local Headway branch. They can always do with volunteers, it's really different in terms of normal work experience and it will certainly broaden you and your skills and challenge you whilst still being fun.

F1 Choices

2011-01-30T12:48:00.000Z

Don't worry, I'm not that organised that I'm thinking about F1 yet, I just got a very interesting email from my medical school I thought I'd share to see what your thoughts were. As you no doubt would have heard, this year for the first time overseas students were allowed to apply for F1/F2 jobs, and in December this year 180 UK graduating medical students weren't allocated foundation jobs, although apparently they will all be placed by August. This is important because you don't get full GMC registration until you have completed your F1 year. Furthermore, medical schools take on more and more students each year because apparently there's a shortage of Dr's in this country, although it seems there's a demand for trained Dr's but not the resources to train us. To try and stop this from happening again the Medical Schools Council have come up with three options:

Extra assessments like situational judgement tests, clinical skills test and communication tests to help allocate F1 jobs.
Grant full GMC registration on graduation
Link F1 year with the undergraduate degree so you stay in your locality to do your F1 job, and then compete for F2 jobs.

Admittedly, I haven't looked into how the whole foundation places thing works yet, as it's miles off for me and I figured it would probably all change again by the time I got there, so I'm not as knowledgeable about it all as I'd like. However, options 1 and 3 don't really seem to address the problem to me? 3 just moves the point at which there will be a problem - fantastic, well done you've graduated and done the horrible stressful F1 year and become registered, now if you want to practise as the Dr you've spent years trying to become, take your student debt and leave the country, or find another line of work. How is that right?

Option 1 assumes that medical schools haven't prepared you well enough for F1/F2 years. Although I'm sure it's true not all medical students are created equal, surely (but maybe naively) if you weren't good enough to be an F1 you wouldn't have passed finals - is that not how the medical school conveyor belt works? Equally, I thought GAMSAT was expensive enough, I'm shocked at how much the Royal College of [insert profession here] exams are that I've heard about, how much am I going to have to pay to do the assessments to let me do the job I've trained for? By the time I graduate, it will have cost a lot of money to train me, what a waste if I can't get a job. And what am I supposed to do with the £60,000 of student debt I'll have by that time?

As for option 2, I'm not sure why you aren't GMC registered after graduation anyway, so I can't really comment on that, but it seems that makes it easier for our home students to push off and take their skills elsewhere, and leave the Dr-ing to the overseas Dr's coming in to do. What do you think?

Awesome day

2011-01-27T18:12:00.000Z

Well yesterday was a pretty awesome day :) In parts, bits of it were a bit weird, but it started and ended well, so overall - super smiley bean. At 8am I logged in to student logbook whilst quickly bolting down some breakfast, to see the magic words "AMK - satisfactory". I passed!! I had wanted to do better than last time, stay in the top 50% of my cohort, get a satisfactory, and I was secretly hoping for double figures, but would admit that that may have been pushing it a little. I am super happy to say I did all that. last time I got 8, this time I got 14. I cycled to work to spend the day being a waitress for some people who had hired out the seminar room at the GP's and I was their tea lady ._. Meh, I got paid for it. Can't complain. In the evening, I went to a lecture, given by Professor Parveen Kumar who co-wrote the bible that is Kumar and Clarke's Clinical Medicine. It was nice. We were told there would be some GI teaching, but it turned out to be a lecture on how we could change the world with medicine. It was very inspirational, but practising medicine in a third world country is not my sort of thing. She was talking about electives and how to go about making a change that is worthwhile and beneficial to the local culture, without imposing your views on them. I also got my copy of Kumar and Clarke signed :D And I totally don't care if that makes me sad. I now have two signed books - my Kumar and a Rosie and Jim book my Mum had signed by John Cunliffe for me when I was 4 and ill in hospital. So... I'm pretty buzzing at the moment. Wandering around with a fuzzy grin on my face. Doesn't happen too often, but I'm enjoying it. For Harry Potter fans I was in the inspiration for the Leaky Cauldron earlier on this week - they do awesome pizza. And the inspiration for Diagon Alley is my favourite place in Exeter, although it was before I realised it was connected to the book. Apart from that, this week has been pretty quiet. Another case unit, this time about asthma, which is perfect timing as mine has just started to flare up again because I was a silly bean and cycled somewhere in the cold last week with no scarf on. Boring stats lectures, hours at work and lectures. All pretty standard. I hope your interviews are coming through as you want, and good luck at them :)

Influential, dress-up bean

2011-01-20T00:04:00.000Z

Placement this week was with a school nurse. My schools didn't have school nurses, so I didn't really know what to expect. I was envisaging spending two hours watching nurses give out paracetamol and sticky plasters. Instead it was a two hour lecture on the school nurse system and their roles and responsibilities, mainly focussing on the child protection aspect. This finished with the nurse telling us a couple of stories of previous cases she had worked on - one about teen pregnancy and one on sexual child abuse. The stories took place over many years and you could tell she really cared about the people she was looking after, and even got quite emotional. I certainly didn't recognise that school nurses would get continuity of care like GP's did. A midwife looks after you from birth to 10 days (up to 28 if they have specific concerns), then a community health visitor looks after you from 10 days to 4.5 years. The school nurse then takes over until you are 18. Most of their referrals come from teachers or students, but every time a policeman picks up a young person they call the school nurse the child is under to inform them. It was really interesting, but would have been better suited to a lecture than a placement.

Tuesday I got to play dress-up!! In clinical skills we learnt how to scrub in for surgery and theatre etiquette. Is it really necessary to wash your hands 9 times?! Ha, my blisters were not amused. We also learnt to suture, which I thought would have been easier because I went to that workshop on it, but it turned out the lady demonstrating does it a different way to the guy that taught me before, so it wasn't as straight forward as I was hoping it was going to be. Ah well, more time in the self directed learning lab for me.

Today I had a very nice lunch - it was free :) We had an email sent round asking for students from all years to go to an hour long meeting about community placements and give our feedback to the deans and placement staff. I went, but there was only me and one other student, a fourth year. It was pretty cool to be in a room with all theses GP's and important staff looking at us and actually being interested in what we have to say. To the extent that I think they'll be making some changes based on our opinions which was pretty awesome. I'd say if you could go to any meetings like that at your uni, definitely go. It's quite fascinating to see the inner workings of it, and I'm not normally into things like that. And as I said, I think it might have done some good.

Tomorrow will see me strapping on a set of plastic breasts as we learn how to do breast examination in clinical skills, and on that visual... good night :)

Catchup

2011-01-16T22:47:00.000Z

Well this week seemed to go by very quickly, I meant to blog much sooner. This week I have returned to normal with case units and standard lecture patterns, so that's been nice. We have new PBL groups, and the first session went well, so I'm hopeful. I was strange because everyone came to the session all used to doing things differently, ad the facilitator was no different. We are supposed to sit down and work out our own group rules *Yawn* but she was full of "this is how my groups have done it in the past and it worked so this is what we shall do, happy? Right, good continue". It seemed to work well, although I still don't understand the merits of electing one of the group to be chairperson, as it works just as well with everyone chipping ideas in and being equal.

Also this week I have done my second AMK, and this one counts for something. I think (pray/hope....) I have done better on it than last time. I answered more questions and felt a bit more confident. Some of them I know from talking to others I definitely got right, and there are some that I chickened out of answering because I wasn't 100% sure, but have since found out I was right which is frustrating. For revision I re-read topics I knew might come up that we had done and I had become hazy over, and I went through some bits of Crash Course in General Medicine which has chapters called Patient Presents With and then common symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath. It tells you what it might be and what you should do about it, and just picking at that I found gave me answers to some of the questions, and a few of the ones I had an inkling about but wasn't totally sure, so I think it's a good revision idea for next time.

I had an academic tutor meeting, which left me quite frustrated. My academic tutor grades my Portfolio Assessments: the one I said I waffled through about Independent Learning. For grading, you can either get unsatisfactory, borderline, satisfactory or excellent. She gave me a satisfactory, which ordinarily I would be fine with - I'm happy it's a pass. However, she went through my essay and marked everywhere where I had ticked off a requirement in the mark scheme. Since I wrote it to the mark scheme I had all the points ticked off which she was very pleased with, but I didn't get an excellent, because apparently she had a mark scheme in her head that I didn't correspond with. What now? I'm perfect for the medical school's required standard, but not to the one he made up? I understood the points she made and agree my essay was lacking in those areas, but it's still annoying. I may be a little bit of a perfectionist... in case you hadn't spotted.

Mr came down because he had some free time he hadn't anticipated and it was so nice to wake up with him in the mornings and come home and tell him all about my day. We didn't do anything terribly exciting as I had work and lectures but it was still lovely to have him around. Finally, I went rowing this morning on a really long outing and have so many blisters my poor hands are shredded. I'm not looking forward to clinical skills on Tuesday because I think we are learning how to scrub up for surgery and I really don't want to have to wash my hands too many times, or let alcohol hand gel go anywhere near them. Shampoo in the shower was bad enough. I shall go bathe them in moisturiser to try and get them to heal in time. Hope you had a lovely weekend.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-06T21:37:00.000Z

Another holiday brings another last day at work and I can resume normal blogging service. I hope you all had a good holiday. I liked not having new work to do, but I did miss being immersed in medicine. Pensions somehow isn't as fun as it used to be now I have this whole other side to my life. I have some new followers which is amazing, hi guys! I also had some comments on old post which I'd like to address. I try to be as ambiguous as possible, and I'm really not that accurate with those parts of my memory anyway, so I highly doubt any of the people I talk about could be identifiable. You only got my side of the story with the frustrations with my group, and I'm pretty certain they had some issues with me too, which was confirmed in my peer review forms. I use this blog as a place to empty my head - I'm not talking to anyone in particular, so although those who know me might have worked out who I am, to the rest of you it's anonymous. Plus, people who know me have no real reason for reading this blog, they know what I'm doing. Unless they are trawling for me to dish the dirt on someone, which isn't going to happen and is quite petty. Besides, venting is good for the soul. I've set up an email address for people to ask questions, and those who have I'll be answering soon! Despite the low med work load, there still seems to be heaps to do ._.

Now that's done with, time for the proper catch up. Christmas was quiet as the relatives who were supposed to be visiting got snowed in, but luckily the snow went in time for the mr and I to go to London for New Year's. Once again the fireworks were amazing, although I was a little disappointed I didn't get to go to any of the museums I wanted to because they were shut :(

NYE Fireworks, taken by me

It was nice to spend so much time with the mr again, it won't happen for a while. I managed to get a load of lecture notes typed up again after losing them all with the hard drive. Sugarsync has extended their double bonus for a few more months, so you can still get an extra 500MB for clicking the link. I was listening to some Podmedics podcasts on the train to London and this lead me to some other medical podcasts so I'll let you know if I find any that are particularly useful once I've heard a few more. The next lot of placement allocations went up and this term I'll be visiting school nurses, an alcoholics charity, a brain injury charity and the GP's where I work, so a real mix of stuff. I'm looking forward to the brain injury on because I think we'll be helping at an activity rehabilitation morning, and the opportunity to see the other side of my GP's surgery to the administrator side I get now. I'm not really looking forward to the alcoholics charity one, because from what I've heard from others who have done it, it's a presentation where they come to us and tell us about their work in the local prison. Whilst I'm sure what they do is interesting and useful, one thing I like most about placement is that we get to go out and do things and see things be done in different settings. Giving me another presentation is just like another lecture. However, I shall reserve judgement until I've done it. They may yet blow me away.

We have had a consolidation week to catch up on some bits and revisit topics we have covered in different contexts so we don't end up thinking things like all oxygen dissociation curve stuff is fetal connected because that's when we first saw it. It's a good idea I think, although I'll admit I haven't made the best use of it as I didn't realise there would be work to do in it so I told work I could do this week. I shan't make that mistake again. Looking through the topic list I'm certain there are things on it we haven't covered, and the next AMK is next week so this isn't the time to get insecure about all the mountains of stuff I don'tknow yet. Luckily the slight panic is being subdued by rediscovering the Return of the Champions album by Quenn + Paul Rodgers on Spotify. I'm a sucker for a good guitar riff and this is such a beautiful album stressage simply rolls away.... Sorry for such a bitty post, I'll see you again on the other side of the AMK. Happy Friday for tomorrow!

And now for something slightly more relaxed

2010-12-17T23:52:00.000Z

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.

Buried under a mountainous to-do list

2010-12-10T00:59:00.000Z

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

Stopping to take a breath

2010-11-28T18:58:00.001Z

Wow, what a busy week! Since student finance don't seem to be sorting themselves out I updated my CV and a cover letter and dropped them round the local GP surgeries and luckily was called in two days later by one for an interview a couple of days later and started work the next day. It's nothing terribly amazing - I'm an administrator on a zero hours contract, so I work when they need stuff doing and when I have the time. At the moment I am working through their backlog of letter dictations and I'm having the best time! I find it really fascinating to be able to combine my administration know-how with medicine, and I'm hoping that immersing myself in medicine a bit more might make it easier to learn. I would also really like a dictation/transcription foot pedal that works with Real Player so I can type my lecture notes streamed from the online uni portal faster. The one at work is amazing! I have descended into a whole new level of geekiness from which I fear I cannot be saved.

Asides from paid work I have sat my clinical competency exam in basic life support, taking blood pressure and examination of the pregnant abdomen, and am happy to say I passed all three with top marks. I have been to lectures both boring, interesting and extra. One which I found fascinating was some new theories being tested about treating septic shock patients. The macro-circulation vasodilates but the micro-circulation (the capillaries) vasoconstricts, so although you can oxygenate patients the oxygen doesn't actually get to where it is required, so although the sats appear normal (because we can't measure oxygenation of the microcirculation) the septic patients still die. They have been able to visualise the blood moving through the capillaries and in normal, healthy people it flows freely, in anaemic people you can see the lack of red blood cells and in septic patients the blood moves slowly and gets clogged up and stuck. The theory being that now researchers should look for drugs which target the capillaries and vasodilate them. I found that I really missed going to lectures where the material comes straight from the lab. I love the clinical lectures that we do, but I miss hearing about the exciting new research. It's great to be taught by someone who is so passionate about their work, and the way they explain it makes the science sound so elegant. Hmmm, maybe I'm already to geeky to be saved :)

I also donned my fancy dress and sparkly shoes for the Medsoc Winter ball which was fantastic. The committee did a great job. We all got these free insulated travel mugs printed with the Peninsula logo which will make morning PBL session so much more bearable. We have finished the last case unit of the year and now move into three weeks of SSU (student selected unit), but seeing as it's a formative SSU, I don't think we have much contact time so most people are treating it as an extension to the two weeks we get off for Christmas. There's just an SSU essay and a portfolio analysis essay to do and that's me done for the year. It seems to have gone very quickly.

Because the next three weeks will be so slack, it sort of feels like Christmas is a lot closer than it actually is. This isn't being helped by how cold it is. We don't have any snow down here, but when I was rowing this morning we were having to break the ice with our blades to get them in to take the stroke, and there was one terrifying moment when I went to put the blade in and it bounced straight off the surface. We were going round a corner at the time, so if we can't row we can't steer and we were heading straight for a bank. Luckily there were no accidents. Every time splash came up it froze on us, the blades and riggers had icicles hanging off them and I was wondering why I wasn't warmly tucked up in bed. I really should start Christmas shopping....

Pigs

2010-11-20T11:57:00.000Z

I am adding to the list of animals which have been sacrificed for my education. Starting with flies, maggots and sheep for the IB, moving through frogs, mice and hamsters for my first degree I can now add pigs to the list. Thursday afternoon/evening saw me taking a scalpel to a pigs trotter so I could learn how to stitch it up again. I'm not sure I've ever felt so guilty but had so much fun in my life. If I'm being totally fair, the sheep and pigs were just bits left over from a butcher, the frogs were saved from being frogs' legs and the mice are specially bred to be lab mice.

We have various societies here which, instead of organising socials, organise extra lectures and workshops, and this was one of them. There was only one other first year that got a place, and only ten of us at all, and otherwise us first years don't get to learn suturing until the end of the first year when it will probably be a 30 minute session before being whisked off to learn something else. This was two glorious hours. My theory was that I am pants at sewing, utterly pants. As in, I sewed patches on my jeans because I had holes where a lady probably shouldn't have holes and try and get away with calling it fashion, so I bought material, made a patch and sewed it on. Half way through a trip out to town all the patches fell off. Embarrassed bean. I figured therefore, I would be a good idea to get as much practice in as possible, and I am still on a mission to collect skills that show yes, I am actually training to be a proper Dr, not just doing another science degree. I can now do plain interrupted sutures and mattress interrupted sutures and the facilitator said my stitches were excellent :D

Mum had great fun telling my aunt I got 8% in an exam and watching her squirm before explaining how our exams work. My aunt has always been very supportive, but has also always been the first to point out to mum that medicine is very hard, and only the cleverest get on, and wouldn't I rather do something else instead.

I also went to a careers event in the week - Women in Surgery which had some amazing speakers. There was a Dr from the GB health team that went to the Beijing and Athens Olympics, an amazing Romanian Plastic surgeon who was terrifyingly brilliant - by the time she finished med school she had 55 poster, 30 papers and had spoken at loads of conferences. She figured if she tripled the entrance requirements no one could tell her she wasn't good enough. Apparently, although at medical school the gender balance is equal, only 8% of the Consultants in Britain are female. I can't remember if that's all Consultants or Surgical Consultants, but it's not good either way. All the speakers were great, with fantastic sense of humours and I got free food, it was a free event with free transport and a certificate :)

Finally, congratulations and commiserations to all the people who got their GAMSAT results yesterday. It seems all the people I was rooting for didn't pass so I really am gutted for you. It is a ridiculously hard exam, no matter what anyone says.

First AMK Result

2010-11-10T14:43:00.000Z

AMK results went up this morning......... I passed!!!! I got 8%, which counts as a satisfactory pass, and I am above the cohort mean of 7.5% so I am a happy bean. Unfortunately it doesn't count for anything, but I was happy to see I answered correctly the questions on the topics we had done so far, and I even beat some second years. It's a good score to work on I think.

Acrylic eyes

2010-11-09T22:49:00.000Z

Tar barrels was amazing, although I got much closer than I was expecting. I had anticipated being on the edges of the crowd, watching from a distance, but instead on several occasions I found myself right next to the gaping, flaming mouth of a huge barrel with a crowd surging behind me, trying to push to get closer because they wanted to touch the barrel. Both amazing and terrifying. Apart from that, it was a nice, relaxing weekend with mr.

Monday was my community placement, this time with the national artificial eye service. It was pretty cool, I have to say. This one man travels around hospitals covering all of the south west - Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, with a case full of trays of prosthetic eyes; mainly blue, since apparently one type of eye colour is more prevalent in certain areas than others - and the west country is blue. An impression is made of the eye socket and one of these temporary eyes he carries with him is selected based on best colour match to the other one, cut to shape and fitted. The impression is sent to Blackpool where a bespoke eye is handmade and hand painted with oil paints, with the veins being made of individual red silk threads laid on. Every six months to a year the patient can come back in to have the eye sanded down, buffed and polished to get rid of the build up of proteins from tear fluid and to check the fit to see if a new prosthetic is required. We met a patient in his 60's who had lost his eye in an accident when he was a little boy. It was really nice to see how well adjusted and happy this man was. The prosthetist and the patient spent a good 15 minutes chatting about the man's life in general - his family, work etc which was great, that he had that much time to really build up the rapport, and he'd obviously been seeing this man for some time and remembered details about his family life. The prosthetist was a history graduate, and it was great to see how much he enjoyed helping people and the continuity of care. We were told about how few healthcare professionals know about the service, which is a real same since it's free and it can make such a difference.

Unfortunately, and rather embarrassingly, I nearly fainted twice in my placement. It wasn't because I was grossed out, because I found it freakishly fascinating to be honest and the things we were discussing at the time were perfectly innocuous. I just started to get really hot, sweaty, dizzy and my vision blurred and I got the sense I'd fall down if I couldn't sit soon. It even happened when I was with the patient which was seriously embarrassing for me. The rest of the day I didn't feel right - really weak, too hot, too cold, fatigued and then really achy. So I am typing this from bed where I have been all day bar a quick trip to the Dr's who thinks I have some sort of major viral infection emerging and that I should stay in bed and keep away from sick people since I am immunocompromised. I missed clinical skills today, which was pants. I hate missing things, especially awesome things like that, but I'm not too sure I could get to clinical skills and back without falling down. That and the fact that tonsillitis and freshers flu round two is currently going around the medics, although I seem to be showing symptoms in the opposite for either of those - everything hurts and is stiff, swollen lymph nodes make it feel like I'm swallowing rocks every time I try to swallow and a fever but no cough or runny nose. I guess it will get worse before it gets better, but I hope it goes away soon.

Busy Busy!

2010-11-05T00:18:00.000Z

Wow, well I'm not sure what happened to that week. I survived the AMK. I answered 22 questions, so I have somewhere between -4.4% and 17.6%, which I'm happy with. There were probably some questions I could have guessed at - I got a few down to a 50:50 choice that I really couldn't pick between so I left. Equally there were some where I didn't understand any of the answers, so I sensibly left them too. There were a lot of Don't Know answers, but I find I'm not as freaked out by that as I was expecting to be. When I left one of the guys who finished at the same time as me only answered 2, and I've found someone who answered 122, so the odds of me being somewhere in the middle and therefore passing seem pretty good. The top 5% get excellents, the bottom 5% fail the next 15% up from that get borderline and everyone else gets satisfactory.

I promised some information on my placement. I was shadowing a community midwife in one of the roughest, most deprived areas of my city. This was a really big culture shock to me, and the first time I've had my views really challenged. We went on a home visit to an 18 year old girl with a 7 day old baby. The baby had been sleeping fine, but the night before was up crying all night and the mother didn't get much sleep. She was sobbing on the phone when we said we would come round and she continued to cry almost constantly throughout the visit. Her mother was there and was being really supportive, although her two younger sons (around 7 and 14 I guess [7 years old and an Uncle!]) were running around being noisy which possibly didn't help. The mother was telling us how she had fed the baby every time it cried, but still couldn't get it to settle. The baby was a little grisly when we got there, and didn't like being weighed, but when the midwife held him it was like she knew a special off-switch, the baby was instantly silent and sleeping. The midwife explained that babies need other things besides food, and at that age they don't know what it is they want exactly, just that they aren't happy. The biggest thing for me was how young she was. Inside my head was screaming go back to school, you shouldn't be having to deal with this, you poor thing. I kept thinking of my housemates who were 18 and how they couldn't look after themselves, let alone a baby. I know that at that age our bodies are most prepared for having a child, I guess it's just that it's so incongruous with my upbringing, where the focus has always been on education. The second girl we saw was 20, with a two year old running around and a history of miscarriages. She was living in a one bedroom flat paid for by the council, and her partner was living with his mum so the council continue to pay her rent. She had had a big argument with her boyfriend the night before, had no job and her previous successful pregnancy had left her with post natal depression, which she was still being medicated for two years later but had stopped the pills immediately when she found out she was pregnant, although the pregnancy was planned. Again, I just couldn't help thinking this is no environment to raise a baby in. I'm not saying she shouldn't have kids, I'm just saying she should get a bit more stability in her life first. She did come out with a gem though: when asked if she had any heart problems she said "No.....Though I do have a heart murmur, does that count?"

My my am I looking forward to Christmas when the PBL groups swap over. I really like PBL, I get a lot out of it and prefer it to lectures (especially since a lot of this is revision for me, which is nice). My problem is the closed-mindedness of my group. I get the impression that because I look the same age as them, they aren't going to take anything I say seriously - if they haven't done, it can't be true. When it was explained to me, Peninsula like grads because we can bring our prior knowledge to the group and help out a bit. My group just shoot me down and get really arsey with me. Now, normally I can stand up for myself, but when it's 8 against one ad it happens every time, I'm seriously losing patience and am thinking of just shuting up in class and let them do it the hard way. But I can't really do that, because we get judged on how much we talk in class and how much prior knowledge we bring, so I'd just end up shooting myself in the foot if I'm quiet. An example being in our case unit this week. It's on immunology and they decided one of the questions they wanted was when is it not appropriate to give antibiotics (the stimulus being a mother wants antibiotics for her child who has a respiratory infection and you as the Dr don't want to give them because they won't help). Now, I don't know the A-Level syllabus, but I said well, antibiotics wouldn't help if it isn't a bacterial infection, so only give it if it's bacterial. Would they believe me? No. Another was what was the age of consent for medical treatment. Now we covered this in the first case unit with what age can you get an abortion at. We should also have looked it up for interview prep because Peninsula is hot on ethics. Apparently they only looked up rules on contraception, and thought it might be different for everything else?! So I explained Gillick's competency and Fraser guidelines and so it's 16 normally or minimum 13 with Fraser guidelines but still they wouldn't listen. We ended up with questions about what is a respiratory infection, and what does a practice nurse do? Seriously!!! They are smart people, why the stupid questions? And I don't even think it's just making questions for the sake of it to pad out the number we have to make it look more impressive. Any paper evidence I bring to class is shot down and I'm made to feel like I'm disrupting class, being deliberately difficult or something. Arrgh, rage!!!! In any other setting I get on really well with them, because we are together for quite a lot of things, it's just PBL. I guess it shouldn't bug me really, because it just means I have a really easy question to answer, I just get frustrated that I don't feel like a group equal, that my knowledge doesn't count for anything and that they can be so childish and un-accepting. Meh, maybe this is just the storming part of group dynamics and it'll calm down, but somehow, I don't think so.

In more exciting Dr news... I learnt how to take blood. Eeeee!!!!! It's actually real now. I am bean the medical student, and no one is going to say they made a mistake and I shouldn't be here. Tomorrow I'm going here :) Us Devon folk are right nutters!
Tar Barrels!

Good luck GAMSAT people, not long to wait now.
Bean x

Another first

2010-10-26T22:58:00.000+01:00

Today was the first time I got to use my stethoscope (Purple, initials engraved for those freshers who wonder) on a real life, actual person. Ok, so it was another student, but it was the first bit of medicine I have done that wasn't pretend or on a manikin. And it wasn't exactly taxing being as it was taking a blood pressure, but I'm still excited. Well, excited but exhausted. In the two hour session we covered examining a pregnant abdomen including determining position and lie, fundal height, fetal heart rate, blood pressure manually and with a steth, heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature aurally and under the tongue, and plotting it all on obs charts. It was interesting and good fun, but man - my brain was leaking out of my ear by the end. Just complete information overload. And to top it off, we have competency tests on it in a couple of weeks. Eeek!

Even more of an eek is that tomorrow I have my first exam. An AMK - acquired medical knowledge test, that will be 125 questions in 3 hours, multiple choice with 4 options and a don't know option. 1 mark for a correct answer, -0.25 for an incorrect answer and 0 for a don't know. The test is set at Junior Doctor level, although I was told last week that even a consultant would only get 60%, so I'm a little confused at that. I also get the feeling this is the test that will be sat by all Doctors every five years after qualifying to retain their license to practice under the new guidelines. I think we are only supposed to be getting about 2% because it's our first one, and technically it's formative so it doesn't count for anything anyway, but it's still fairly terrifying.

Most people on my course will be stressing I think because they will be used to getting 90%+. Having done a degree and had proven to me on many occasions I know nothing, this does not bother me so much. What is most nerve wrecking for me is that you can't revise. I'm a great one for cramming, but you just can't for this. There's so much I don't know, I wouldn't know where to begin. I'm confident in what I do know, but that amounts to pretty much nothing in the grand scheme of what I should know in order to do well in this test. I'm also worried that I'll recognise some of the words from my biomedical days and be tempted to have a punt and end up doing worse than I should. The questions are all clinical cases including symptoms and test results requiring a diagnosis, or what would you do in this situation (with the answer conveniently being some GMC guideline on the appropriate action to take), so I think I might recognise some of the answers, but never have looked at the science in a clinical context I'm not going to know the symptoms. Fingers crossed I can show restraint tomorrow. Wish me luck!

I have more news to tell about my midwife placement and confrontations with my PBL group, but I think I will leave that to later on this week and go to bed now with some camomile tea to try and abate the insomnia I always get before an exam. See you on the other side.
Bean x

Placement!

2010-10-19T11:24:00.000+01:00

Last Monday I went on my first placement. It was at a GP's surgery, which just happened to be where I did some work experience about 5 years ago when I was first applying to medical school, so I already knew a few of the staff and how the practice works. From start to finish I just had the best time. From looking at it, I didn't get to do anything terribly exciting really, I just sat on a chair in the corner of the room and watched the consultations and spoke with the nurse or Dr about them afterwards, but from the grin that was on my face for the rest of the day you'd have thought I single-handedly diagnosed all the patients myself.

Firstly, I was introduced to all the patients as a student doctor, which actually made my day :) I got to see a wide range of patients including knee pains, IVF requests, 12 month immunisations and cervical smears. One of my two most memorable moments was sitting watching this lady ask for a referral to an IVF clinic as she had suffered 19 miscarriages and buried two children born prematurely, which was heartbreaking to hear about. There's no way I would be strong enough to put myself through that, she was such an amazing lady.

The other moment was when I was observing a cervical smear from the other side of the room to give the lady some privacy, and the nurse some room because the table was sort of squished in an alcove. The nurse asked permission if I could have a closer look, the lady consented and I bounded across the room - you have never seen a bean move so fast. I had a peer, saw the cervix, and then had a moment of realisation that I knew absolutely nothing, and here was this lady letting me peer at her privates as she is having an uncomfortable procedure and in possibly one of the most undignified positions you can be in. It was really useful for me to see because it tied in nicely with the case unit we'd just been doing, so now I've seen it in books and real life but once she was dressed I made sure to thank her properly for giving consent. It seemed the least I could do. It might only have been a simple thing for her to do - to say yes - as I guess she was already embarrassed enough anyway, so having one more person looking probably couldn't add to that feeling, but it was incredibly useful for me.

The reverence required to be around patients when dealing with sensitive matters soon left our class however, as later on in the week we were doing genital exam on rubber manikins in clinical skills. There were several incidents, including one person managing to fire the glans head of the penis across the room while trying to milk out any discharge, and the facilitator casually reminding us to be careful of where we put our thumbs. We were all so intent on getting our fingers deep enough to feel the ovaries, we all had our thumbs firmly jammed on the clitoris. Ooops. Oh well, I guess clinical skills is the place to make these kinds of mistakes :)
We were told you can laugh as much as you like now, just make sure when you do it for real you aren't partnered with the same people, otherwise you'll make eye contact, remember this day and dissolve into fits of giggles.

Week One Survived

2010-10-10T19:57:00.001+01:00

Not counting Induction week, my first week at uni is finished, and all I can say is...WOW! It's everything I hoped it would be and more. It's so cliché, I know and for that I apologise, but I am just having the best time, there is such a big smile on my face all the time, albeit only visible through the frazzled, exhausted haze my life has become. The smile shines brightly through though. This week has seen plenaries (lectures) on conception in culture, anatomy of the reproductive systems and pelvis, reproductive ethics and mitosis/meiosis; Life Science sessions on medical imaging, anatomical language embryology of the reproductive systems, the menstrual cycle, spermatogenisis and oogenisis; an essay handed in two days early (nerd that I am) and my first PBL revealing a case on the topic of conception. Wow :) Embryology was one of my favourite topics, and I'm so happy that things are coming flooding back to me, rather than struggling to learn them for the first time. I am certainly glad I did a degree first, actually. It was definitely the best way for me to do it. I'm not afraid of hard work, and I know how to take lecture notes, which everyone else seems to be struggling with.

The work load is tough, I can't lie about that - there's so much to do although I do keep forgetting a case unit lasts two weeks so I have twice as much time as I think I do, sort of. Bearing in mind I don't know what new stuff there will be next week yet... Argh, anyway, tough as it is, I'm loving it. It's so nice to be back studying again, and to be studying things that are really interesting to me - this must be what it was like for everyone else who picked degrees they liked and got in first time. I can sit down to study and look up three hours later thirsty and wonder where the time went. It's awesome! This was definitely the right course for me too. I love how everything is taught with a bit of science and then here's the clinical context, straight away. I went to a plenary on pelvic anatomy, I watched Aclands Dissection videos that we have access to online, I coloured in the anatomy colouring book, I played with models and felt the landmarks on my life science partner and I can now say that I fully understand the anatomy of the pelvis. It's amazing. I've never had that sort of clarity built by seeing things many times from different angles before. Everything is built up, bit by bit and there's lots of cross over between sessions, but with a different slant, so instead of being repetitive, it's clarifying - you see one bit and then it's built upon because this other bit you're learning about is connected to it in some way. I really hope I can stay this enthusiastic about the course. I see other medics on TSR complaining about modules of their course, but mine is taught so differently from theirs, I hope it stays this interesting.

My beautiful God-daughter, Irys

In non-medic related news, Mr came down last weekend for my God-daughter's Christening, and he was down this weekend because it was our 3 year anniversary. We went out for a meal Friday night, Saturday night I cooked for him - gnocchi and bolognese, all cooked from scratch I'm proud to say and enjoyed with wine and Seven Pounds, a Will Smith film I've been waiting to see for ages. Sunday morning I cooked him his favourite breakfast in bed and then we took a wander up into town. It was a lovely weekend and it was really nice to see the mr. My housemates were looking jealously on as I cooked for my mr, and the little bean in my head was saying, well that's what you get having a steady girlfriend instead of a string of girls you pick up in clubs. Catty bean :p

I'm feeling really lucky at the moment - I'm on a great course, making lovely new friends, with a fantastic mr, and only a few marly points. Most recently being the fantastic people at SFE who decided to do a manual re-calc of my entitlement and pull my funding for the rest of the year "because my course dates changes" Wha....? 0_0 Cue one very polite, quietly simmering, angry phone call and a hasty apology, "I have no idea why they did that, I'll put you in for another re-calc tomorrow. It'll take 4-6 weeks to come through." Stupid people...

I'm off for a shower before my first placement tomorrow and then blast through some more PBL questions. Have an awesome week people, I hope my excitement rubs off on you and things go your way. Good luck for the UCAS deadline potential medics!!! It is totally worth it.

Death By Powerpoint

2010-09-30T14:36:00.001+01:00

Hi, sorry it's been a while since my last post. It's just been crazily busy! The two weeks off I had were spent unpacking bags from last time, completely going through all of my things and chucking bits out and then repacking for uni. Saturday I went to a craft fair and got some new beading bits to make pretty things with, though having seen the programme I'm now not sure when I'll have a chance to sit down and make them.

Sunday I loaded the car up with all my stuff and my parents followed my down while I cycled down, which took me all of ten minutes. It is a very strange feeling to be going to uni in my home town. I keep forgetting everyone else doesn't know their way around like I do.

None of my house mates are medics, which was a bit disappointing to be honest, I thought that they put us all together. I have one Business Studies, four Sports Science and one sports Science with Psychology, and of those only one other is a girl. Having said that, the guys are getting nicer as I get to know them more, but it's a bit awkward because they're all doing main uni things whilst I'm doing medic things. I'm really feeling the age gap between us as well. I've got 8.30 starts every day this week so far apart from today and they really haven't, so have been staying up late and making lots of noise each night, including bringing back lots of giggling screaming girls - gah! That said, for the last two nights I've been so tired I've slept right through anyway. They'v also made up flat rules which they keep catching me out with, so the next time I drink with them I have to do 30 press ups now I think. I actually can't wait for freshers to be over so they have some work to do and stop going out so much, gosh I sound like such an old moany lady! I must be channelling Grumpy :p

The course isn't terribly interesting so far unfortunately, and what interesting bits there are have been swamped with boring admin-y, common sense lectures. They appear to like telling us everything three times in three different lectures all by different people, but using the same slides, so it would be nice if it were more streamlined and they had a bit more communication between them, that way maybe we wouldn't need such early starts!

I've found my PBL group number and we have our first session tomorrow which is PBL themed to be a formative introduction to a PBL session. Unfortunately off the back of this there will be an essay on what type of learner I am to be handed in at the end of next week. It's International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge all over again. We've had a clinical skills introduction and seen the rooms and some of the robots which look like they will be fun to play with and learn from. I've found out where my placements are and it looks like I have some pretty exciting ones. The first one is actually at the GP's I did my work experience with, which will be nice. I also have another at a different GP's, one at an artificial eye clinic and one with midwives. I'm really looking forward to them. It still hasn't quite sunk in yet that this is actually happening, and I'm feeling like a massive pretender with my ID badge clipped to my trousers like I'm a real professional who know what they're doing - crazy.

Nights out have been all right, though I'm finding it hard to get motivated to go since I know I have such early starts the next day. The first night was a Pirates night in Walkabout, Tuesday was a UV rave which was great fun, last night I had tickets to Hayseed Dixie who were amazing though it certainly wasn't a student event, even though it was held on campus. Tonight is Doctors and Nurses. I do want to go since I got an outfit specially, but I'm having second thoughts because I'm really really tired, have another long day tomorrow (8.30-5.45) and I have freshers flu. Grr, silly freshers. My fantastic logic before I came - I was thinking I wouldn't get it because I wasn't going anywhere new. Completely forgot the masses of people bringing their new bugs. Silly bean.

Anyway, I have to dash now to an Occupational Health Appointment, fingers crossed they don't have a need to give me any jabs!! Bye!!!

Unemployed bean

2010-09-10T09:58:00.000+01:00

Well today is my last day at work. I have masses to do, and the systems are all down, so I can't do any of it. That's why I've been so quiet this week - super busy bean! And I'm so excited!!!!!! I may have to be physically restrained to stop the bouncing. I spent all of last night baking cookies and cupcakes, as is the work place traditional offering for a last day or a birthday. Last weekend Mr came down in his uniform which was a lovely surprise :p We went to Bideford regatta where I was supposed to be coxing a mixed crew, but due to a lack of a fourth member I ended up rowing and mr coxed. We were put up a level to race with people more senior than us, and had to borrow a boat from Bideford club due to a clash as the people due to use the four we had bought after us were racing for the championship and we had never rowed together as a crew before, and I hadn't rowed for a month. All in all, we weren't expecting to do very well, but in the end we came a respectable third, beating the home club on the line in their own boat, which was an awesome feeling.

After today I have two weeks left until I start, and quite a to-do list outside of work as well: buy saucepans and pots, buy stationary, pack, tidy room, throw out a load of stuff, do a recce to find someone mr can park when he comes to visit, buy some iron supplements to take daily, finish Goddaughter's christening present (I know, I know I started it ages ago….), be super excited!! Argh :D Apart from that, I have been very boring this week, so I shall leave it there for now. Hopefully have another update next week, but I don't know if I'll be able to get on to the computer. Have a great weekend!

As Promised…

2010-08-31T13:41:00.001+01:00

I'm back! I'm certainly browner, calmer and happier and lots has happened since my last post. I drove to Sandhurst to watch Mr pass out to become a Second Lieutenant mr. I was so proud. The parade went really well, they were inspected by David Cameron and also present were a load of foreign dignitaries like the President of Yemen and the King of Swaziland. It did rain on my pretty dress and beautifully straightened hair, but it held off anything more than drizzling until they'd finished their parade and the horse had gone up the steps of Old College. The ball in the evening was amazing. It was held in the largest marquee tent I've ever seen. The Killer Queens played, who are a fantastic Queen tribute act. From where we were sat we couldn't see the stage, and we just thought they were just playing a CD they were that good. At midnight the officers were allowed to remove the home made covers on their shoulders to reveal their pips denoting their new ranks and mr's smile was so big, it was great to be there with him. I snuck off to his bed after that so he could carry on partying with the rest of his friends - I was absolutely shattered. The anaemia's getting better, but I'm still not 100% yet.

A couple of days later and we flew off to Mallorca to stay at a small all inclusive resort in Callas de Mallorca. It was a really touristy part of Mallorca, miles from anywhere, but there was a beautiful little sandy cove down a rocky path and crumbling steps that was gorgeous. The water was lovely and clear and warm and because it was so hard to get to it was quiet too. It was a roasting 32 degrees everyday, which is definitely my sort of temperature, dipping down to about 26 at night. After dinner we went for a walk most nights and sat and watched the bats swoop closer and closer to us - to the extent you could hear them squeaking and their wings flapping. It was lovely. We took a trip to Marineland to watch a dolphin and sealion show, Western Water Park - a water theme park and the Drach Caves. The Caves were amazingly pretty as someone has been through and dotted thousands of lights to compliment the natural structures, and at the very bottom it opens out into Europe's largest underground lake where classical concerts are held on rowing boats everyday. We were able to take a boat across the lake to get a closer view of some of the structures, and the water is so blue because of the minerals in it. It was stunning and I definitely recommend anyone to go and see it. We also took the bus to Palma for a day and had a wander round. Dotted around are various modern art sculptures - we saw an upside down house balanced on its chimney and a couple of giant granite pigeons. The old town blends seamlessly into the more modern developments and they appear to be really big on their underground developments - the bus station, major shopping area and all their rubbish bins feed into an underground system. It was rather surreal - after getting off the bus and following the crowd to a lift, when you step out of the lift you're in a public park and between the raised beds are massive frosted glass boxes, which are all lifts to the underground bus station.

Getting home was a little bit stressful as Ryanair only had one person to check in the whole plane. We weren't asked any security questions, as by the time we got to the desk we had 4 ½ minutes to get to the gate before it shut, a whole 15 minutes away. It wouldn't have been so bad but we arrived 2 hours early, as organised by the transfer company. We did make it in time, the plane was 20 minutes late leaving because of the slow check in process, yet somehow we still arrived 10 minutes early.

Waiting for me at home was a letter from my local MP saying the Student Finance Company should have written to me by now, one from Student Finance reminding me that I hadn't sent back my signature they wanted to confirm I was to be paid nothing (funny that…) and another from them telling me I had been calculated and would be getting over £5,000! Result!! Sort of. Still not getting the fee loan, and because I'm not getting that my maintenance is all loan and no grant, but at least I am actually getting something. I shall wait for confirmation from Peninsula that they are a Level 7 course and send that to SFE and hope they give me the fee loan. Next slight problem is that it says my first payment date should have been 23 August, and as yet still nothing, but I'm hoping that's because they didn't have the signature. I sent that off last week and so fingers crossed I should get money soon.

I joined the BMA at the weekend. I've never had a union before so that was exciting - in and it's all getting closer and more real now. Funny thing is, as close as it's getting, though I'm getting more and more excited, my fear level is increasing as well. With a definite case of the 'What if's'. What if I'm actually rubbish and can't do it, what if I can't learn it all, what if I don't get on with anyone in my group/flat/course, what if I get ill again, what if I fail, what if it would be better to stay at JLT, playing with my spreadsheets, coxing my guys' crew where it's safe, where I know what I'm doing and I know I'm good at it. I know I'm being silly and it's all normal anxiety - sillier still because I've done the whole fresher thing, I know I can do uni, but I still have the fear. The fear entertained mr on holiday because when I'm nervous about something I sleep talk. Apparently I make a lot of sense in my sleep.

Hope your exams results went as planned, and if they didn't, trust me - it's not the end of the world, just look at my story. It might seem devastating, but it could be a good excuse to step back, look at all your options, and you might find there's something else you're really good at to take a chance on, that had previously been forgotten because of months striving towards one goal.

Happy tinged with uncertainty

2010-08-11T09:52:00.002+01:00

I'm not really sure how I feel at the moment: sort of happy but unbelievably sad all at once because it's all going a bit wrong. Firstly, the rubbish things I think. My anaemia got really bad last week. I wanted to go home from work but I was shaking so badly I didn't think I could drive. I got home from work, ate tea and fell asleep on the sofa at 8.30pm, half woke up at 10 to go to bed properly and slept through until 8.45 (was briefly woken at 7 when the cat decided she wanted breakfast so scrabbled on my door). Luckily I haven't felt that bad again since. I got new pills from the Dr, exactly the same as the old ones, but inexplicably they seem to be working.

Secondly, student finance. Sigh. Student Finance are taking themselves to court so they don't have to pay. They are claiming they were incompetent when they wrote the rules and so the rules are wrong. They want the independent assessor's report overturned. A grad starting PMS with me in September that I met at interview sent me a link to their student finance online calculator. She said she filled it in and used what it said to get them to fund her. It says I should get full maintenance loan (£4,950), a long course loan (£249) and the fee loan. Win! Sort of. If they're dealing with this court case they aren't going to stall as much as they can, and they still haven't given me a proper first assessment yet, so it's not like I have anything to appeal against. It's such a mess. I wrote down everything and sent it all off to my local MP half heartedly, but within hours had an email from someone in his office asking for contact details and my student finance number, which might be promising. I'd be happy with just the maintenance loan for now as that would cover fees and then they can back pay me the fee loan later. I just want to know I'm getting something, anything, and I can't get the PMS bursary if SFE don't give me anything.

Finally, it had been suggested a couple of years ago that I could continue my full time job part time working from home. I asked to take them up on this offer and was told it would be fine, they just had to make sure they had the budget for it. Now they've told me they have the budget but I can't do it because I wouldn't be coming into the office. I tried to sign up with the part time jobs agency at the uni, but can't until I get a uni email address, and I won't get that until after 19th, by which time everyone else will have one too and that scuppers my plans of getting in early to be sure of a job.

Now for the happier stuff. I saw Les Miserables at Bristol and it was amazing and I cried :) I love musicals. On a slightly stranger note, in the vein of being brutally honest and spilling what goes on inside my head - I have friends! In my home town! Friends who do stuff and want me to do it with them! I've never had that before. I went to small schools where most of my classmates lived out of town, so I never saw them outside of school. I keep myself to myself, and if I'm not asked to join someone doing something I'll assume it's because I'm not wanted and would never dream of inviting myself along.
Because I'm trying to say yes to more things to try and be a more open and friendly, happy, bouncy bean for uni, I said yes to going on my first ever girly night in with some girls from work and their friends from outside work. Now I'm much more of a boys mate than a girly girl. I don't do pink, screaming, giggling, going googoo over boys - it just grates with me, but I went and we did facemasks and played uno and drank wine and gossiped and I actually had a really good time. I went to see Inception with a couple of them, which was great and there's rumblings of going to pet civets, see Hayseed Dixie play and go camping in Padstow. I don't know if that will actually happen, but it makes me happy that there are people that want to do that sort of stuff with me. I just wish I'd met them all at the start of the year and had been able to do this all year, instead of just before going back to uni.

This weekend I'm going to watch mr passout of Sandhurst. I'm very proud of him and so pleased his beasting is over. He moves on to Stage 2 training slightly closer to me than he is now. On Tuesday we jet off to sunny Mallorca for a week, so it might be a while before my next post, but I shall endeavour to return tanned, warm and happy, and hopefully with more encouraging student finance news. I only have 15 working days left. Uni is fast approaching :)

Wanted: Iron

2010-08-03T10:52:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the gap between posts, last week was pretty pants. I must have called SFE about 4 times now and have been told different things each time. One bloke told me I'd put I didn't want to be income assessed - which isn't what the pdf of my original application says, but they are adamant their systems say I only want the minimum non-means tested bit. Despite that, they still say they are waiting for my parents financial information and I will be reassessed when they get that. They've reached my Dad's information now, but they still haven't recalc'd me, and they haven't even given me a maintenance loan, which is the least I should have. One bloke told me I was entitled to full funding, but when he went to check he was told I wasn't because I'm not doing an integrated med course, which would apparently mean I should have stayed at Southampton and 'topped up' my BSc to a MBBS. Seriously? And this was his supervisor telling him that's how you get a med degree.
A student at HYMS has produced a report analysing the T+C's of the student finance system, and it turns out because a med degree is technically a Masters and so a higher level than a BSc, we should get full funding including the fee loan. This has been independently assessed and verified as correct by the Business, Innovation and Skills department. Whenever this student rings up he seems to be being told they are rolling the new rule interpretations out immediately, but whenever anyone else rings up they get told its maintenance loan only. I rang Peninsula fees and finance department to see if they'd right me a letter confirming they were a level 7 course, which the medical schools council says they are. They didn't realise they were and have to ask the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth if they can up their status. So now I don't know if they are expecting me to pay fees, or if they are taking it in faith that SFE will be paying. I have sent a letter to SFE confirming I want to be means tested, Mum is a housewife, and here's a report confirming I should get funding, and so now I'm just waiting and watching the Matures student's finance thread on NMM for updates from the HYMS student.
On top of all that I found out my anaemia is back. Now I say back, I'm not really sure I ever got over it, but I def felt much better than this. I'm borderline microcytic anaemic with practically no ferritin. To cope with the lack of iron my body has overproduced tiny red blood cells, so I'm just on the lower limit of normal, but normal has a really wide range at 60-170 mcg/dL, so it's still not good to be so low. The biggest problem is my ferritin which is what your body stores excess iron as, is 3 (normal 12-300ng/mL). Your body is very good at recycling iron, so it should be a pretty closed system - cell dies, iron is stored, new cell is made from stored iron, but with no stores I can't make effective new cells - I make tiny ineffective ones.
This means my life at the moment is quite a struggle. At uni my housemate had a version (low RBC, normal ferritin), but it didn't seem to affect her in the slightest, she was still up early every morning, bright and peppy and gyming everyday. I don't seem to sit well with anaemia. When I wake up in the morning all I want to do is curl up and sleep more, no matter how early I went to bed, it's like a piece of elastic keeping me in bed. I trudge round the house in morning and as I'm climbing the five flights of stairs to get to work I can feel my legs getting heavier and heavier to the extent I feel I won't make the last flight - not that I need to sit and rest, that I want to curl up and sleep. A flight of stairs being 11 steps. Pitiful really. I am a fit athlete, I row, I'm young, I'm strong, I should not be being defeated by a set of stairs. When I look in the mirror I'm pale so I use blusher and a pale bronzer and try and get a bit of colour in me. My arm's are nice and brown from rowing, but my palms and face are pasty pasty. I have an aunt who's always telling me how pale I'm looking and I should get some more sun, so I'm a sucker for all those radiance moisturisers to try and hide it. I was teased while coxing the other day because I kept using the wrong calls - saying bow side when I meant stroke, and having to quickly correct myself. Or when I'm trying to do a process at work that I've done many times before, I get stuck thinking what to do next. I know what I want to say or do, but my head is fuzzy, like there's cotton wool in it, and the word or action I need eludes me so I say something close and hope that prompts me into remembering what it is I want to say, or sit and stare at the options and hope it comes back to me what to do next. When I came back home I didn't tell anyone I was ill. My close family know, and mr, and my Dr, but that's it. So my crew just think I'm being ditzy, or a sleepy teenager who's up too early. I take lucozade with me to rowing and I eat biscuits before I go, so I can row just fine, but I can't survive on biscuits and lucozade.
I'm annoyed really, because I can't see where my iron goes. I swapped to an iron fortified cereal, I love my steamed green veg, I eat rare steaks, I have steamed spinach every week, I take the pill with no breaks which will apparently mess with my fertility but my Dr suggested it to help get me strong before starting uni again. I just don't know what else to do. I'm back to taking iron tablets, with orange juice because the vit C helps iron take up, once in the morning and once at night, making sure it's one hour before or two hours after food or dairy so nothing can tamper with the iron uptake mechanism. It's frustrating beyond belief. I want to be better, but I've totally run out of ideas.

Down to Earth with a Bump

2010-07-23T13:25:00.002+01:00

Chagstock was amazing. Cleverly laid out, well organised, not too wet and with amazing bands – notably The Bad Shepherds, With Nell and Eye and The Hoosiers. The main stage was set up so you could see the tors of Dartmoor in behind and it was just beautiful. Camping was successful and we didn’t get blown away in the fierce gales of Saturday night. I had to get my Dad to run my coat out because it was much, much colder than I was anticipating, but it was my first festival so I’m allowing myself that one oversight and it’s not like I was far from home. I’m looking forward to the early bird tickets released for next year.

The guys I’ve been coxing have come on really well this week and I’m confident for Greenbank Falmouth Regatta this weekend. Balance isn’t all there yet but everything else is looking good. I also had a phone call from mr who has succeeded in not gaining any extra holes or broken bits and has nearly finished his exercise.

That’s all the good stuff done, now for the rant. Student Finance England is just the most useless company I have ever come across. I cannot believe they are entrusted with such an important task when they appear to be completely incompetent. I appreciate it’s a big undertaking, organising the finance for all the people that go to uni. But I expect a team of children could do a better job than them. I’m not sure that I’ve had even one year of funding that’s gone smoothly.

I had an email telling me I had been assessed and the results were on my account online. I checked, and that just said they were awaiting financial info from my parents, which I sent to them in the middle of June. The rest of it still said I had asked for the maximum but was entitled to nothing. I rang them and they said they’d done an initial assessment on a non-means tested basis and the assessors had decided I was entitled to nothing. They received my parents’ financial information on 16th June and had scanned it on the 29th June and were so far up to processing the 24th June. They have now decided they want a letter form my Mum confirming she is a housewife and dependent financially on Dad, which they hadn’t asked for when I called in May. Also when I called in May they confirmed to me I would be entitled to a fee loan. No one will tell me what has changed since then, and usefully the guy I spoke to noted on my records I had called and he had asked for the passport and financial evidence, but not that I had funding confirmed. I’m so upset; I just don’t know what to do. If they had told me from the off that I wouldn’t get funding, I wouldn’t mind so much, but the fact that for all this time I’ve thought I’d be covered… Plus with their backlog they won’t get to the letter from my Mum in time before I start the course. It’s just a mess, they’re pants. And I was in such a good mood this morning as well. Why do I want to go to med school again? At every turn something tries to stop me.

Shiny Happy Bean

2010-07-14T12:53:00.000+01:00

Today finds me really happy :) I had some lovely comments on my last post, which always makes me smile. Thank you, they really do mean a lot to me. It’s Chagstock on Friday and aaarrrrghhh I’m super excited!!!! Even though it is tipping it down with rain so it’s going to be really muddy and apart from wellies I have no idea what you’re supposed to wear to a festival.
We’ve had bees in our shed at home for the last couple of weeks. I used to be of the sensible opinion that if you weren’t screaming and flapping your arms like a loon they’d leave you alone – until I went to Corfu and was happily reading a book on a sun lounger on the beach when a wasp landed on my eyebrow and stung me :( Can’t do buzzy things now. The freezer and tumble dryer are in the shed and you have to go in and shut the door behind you so you have enough room to open the freezer door. The bottom of the shed door has some holes in it, and I was finding bees would hover outside trying to get in. So last week I was in the shed nicely asking the bees outside to leave the door alone so I could leave when I noticed two bees crawling out from under the freezer behind me. Queue much eeping and running away covering my face so the bees don’t get me. 0_0 Impending doom from the front and behind?! Couldn’t just pretend the hovering bees weren’t just the same two curious bees all the time now. After researching what to do with bees and calling the local beekeeping man (who didn’t offer to come and pick them up and take them away like the internet said he would) dad soaked the nest with soapy water (they can’t fly if they’re covered in soapy water) and they all died and he took the nest away. The shed is now bee free. The nest was huge though, I saw it when he took it out, it was massive and made of paper. I do feel a little sad that they all had to die. I was hoping the beekeeper man would come and re-home them, but at least I’ve finally stopped itching all over thinking I have bees crawling all over me.
When I got home from work last week mum gave me a message that occupational health called and I was to ring them back the next day. There was sooo much fretting going on that night – “But, they’ve cleared me now and given me my offer. They can’t revoke it, what’s the problem?” Panic, panic. Well the next day when I called it turns out they couldn’t find my antigen test results and were trying to ask me to get the test done. Sigh, that palaver again! Admissions def said they had all my paperwork, so I’m not bothered. It’s their problem if they haven’t sent it to OH.
Exeter Regatta went well and it was lovely and sunny. I stroked the novice race and we won our heat but lost the final. We would have lost anyway, but one of the girls fell of her seat so we lost contention for second. I swapped to bow and we lost the Senior C race too. It was a pants race, not our best row at all. I then swapped to cox and coxed the mixed novice 4 to a fantastic win, easily 2-3 lengths ahead of the opposition. Winning that heat really improved my confidence as a stroke too; I was grinning all day. On Thursday I’m going sculling for the first time. I’m quite nervous as it requires a lot of balance which isn’t my strongest point, but it makes me happy that soon I will be able to do everything there is to do involving rowing – like I’m some uber-rower or something. I can sweep, scull, do bow side, do stroke side, cox and coach.
I spent all of yesterday teaching someone how to do something on Excel. Out comes the geek in me again, but I was teaching her all of my shortcuts and tricks and by then end of it she’d really picked things up and was confident in coding things herself. I really enjoy teaching. I love watching people progress from clueless, to supervised, to understanding, to confident, and seeing how happy they are with themselves that they’ve done it – they’ve learnt a new skill. I’m really happy Doctors get to teach newbies coming up through the ranks. I hope that’s one aspect of my job I’m really going to enjoy.
There is one sad point, which is that mr’s on exercise. He’s in Scotland for two weeks being beasted and eaten alive by mossies. Eeep, he’s also doing a live fire exercise – no more blank rounds. I’ve told him he can’t get injured because the holiday is non-refundable, lol, as though getting injured was perfectly acceptable normally. But the really sad part, is that although I miss him because I can’t talk to him, I don’t miss him as much as I think I should. I know that it’s because I’m busy with work and rowing and God Daughter’s present (there’s rumours of christening date finally being set – she’s 18 months but her mum was very ill when she was first born and the family own a small business that hasn’t been doing very well with the recession) and all the exciting things coming up, but I can’t help but feel I’m being a bad girlfriend not missing him more. There’s certainly something to be said for keeping busy to keep your mind off things I guess. Either that or I’m being sensible and grown up and not a lovesick teenager. Meh. *Smiley waving good bye*

15.45

2010-07-09T16:17:00.002+01:00

At 15.45 on Thursday after I last post I got the email I’d been waiting for: “The status of your application has changed”, and when I logged in to confirm, even though I knew what it would say - I had to see it for myself - I saw that magic word: unconditional. Absolutely nothing can stop me from taking my place now. Well, barring a freak accident of course, but still. :) *touch wood

Mr came down for his long weekend off from Sandhurst which was lovely. I know I’ve seen him every weekend for the last three, but now we’re both busy until he commissions in 6 weeks time. It was so nice to have him to come home to after work, and I finally beat him at a game on the Wii. Granted it was Mario Party 8, but a win’s a win!
In rowing news it’s our home town regatta tomorrow and we are certainly not going to win that. Training has been going disastrously, with people skipping training for holidays, bruises, or because they were going out the night before and didn’t want the early start. I’m supposed to be stroking for the Novice race, and the practice Tuesday went so bad I wanted to cry. Thursday was a bit better and we were starting to look promising but I don’t hold out a lot of hope for Saturday. If it’s any consolation, the girl that strokes our boat for the Senior C race we’re entering doesn’t do that much better of a job, so I’m encouraged that it’s the boat as a whole and not just me. I can’t wait to get out of this crew and back to university rowing. It’s a shame because the boats are better here and there are so many small regattas locally it should be easy to pick up points and progress through the levels but my crew just aren’t pulling together, and woe betides anyone who tries to tell them what to do. *Sigh.

It possibly didn’t help that when I went rowing Tuesday I was in a mood, and when I went Thursday I was super bouncy happy because of a couple of reasons. 1) Chagstock tickets arrived. 2) I booked a holiday!! It will be my first time on holiday abroad without my parents and with mr. We’re going in his break between Sandhurst and Stage 2 training which unfortunately is only 2 weeks long, right at the end of the school summer holidays. It was nigh on impossible to pick up any cheap deals anywhere vaguely decent but I’m confident I’ve found a good deal. It’s a nice all inclusive in Majorca. I can’t wait. 7 nights in the sun and I can get a lovely tan before I start uni.

So wish me luck for tomorrow guys and I’ll leave you with a link to this fantastic blog I found. It’s a great insight into being a patient with Cystic Fibrosis and I was amazed by her strength and lust for life. She had such a fantastic way with words and I’m truly sorry I didn’t find her blog sooner. She has changed my outlook on life and the way I hope I will be able to view patients with her post on living her life to the full the best she can and how she wants to instead of being dictated by her disease and hiding from opportunities in case they complicated her symptoms. Eva Markvoort - 65redroses. Enjoy your weekend people.

Balls, Asthma and Nearly….

2010-06-30T11:43:00.002+01:00

My cold is still present, though I’m feeling much better now. I took Friday off because I’d gotten so little sleep after a coughing fit most of the night. Silly me went rowing Thursday night since I was starting to feel better. I thought I could sit somewhere in the bows and we could do a simple light outing, focusing on technique. Silly coach put me back at stroke and then decided to practise a new racing start and high rate pieces ready for our home regatta in a couple of weeks. This properly woke my asthma up and I had my first real asthma attack in a year and maxed out my inhaler. They kept telling me how bad I looked and I need to move faster on the start, so as well as feeling pants from being ill, my confidence as a stroke was knocked too.

Saturday I zoomed up to Sandhurst for mr’s company ball. It was very posh. There was polo and croquet and duck breast and wild boar tureen – very posh for this bean. It was strange. It was really nice to meet his friends and have a fancy night out, but it’s such a different world for me. After seeing some of the other cadets wags, I felt so unglamourous. There were ladies with feathers in their hair and very fancy dresses and I just felt so out of place.

Mr’s been given his first posting and it won’t be too far away, which is nice and I think it’s a really good one. I have a feeling I’m more excited about it than he is, he just keeps saying it’s a job, a job’s a job, but I was positively bouncing when I heard what he’d be doing (not too sure he or the army would be too happy with me posting the nature of his job on a public blog though, so I’m afraid I’ll have to keep you in suspense). Apparently all the guys in his platoon will have to salute me because I’ll be the boss’ partner, which is a crazy thought. I still haven’t quite got the hang of this army etiquette yet.

We spent Sunday wandering round Sandhurst and it’s so pretty, I’m really looking forward to going back for his commissioning ball now. It was back to work Monday to find that over the weekend the systems providers have been changed from HP to HCL and so nothing works, sigh.

I rang Peninsula admin last night as it’s been ages since I sent my paperwork back and I still hadn’t heard anything with regards to my offer being made unconditional. This is required for the accommodation people to start placing me, and has to happen before August for me to be placed first. I had seen that some people who confirmed after me had already had their statuses changed so I was a little worried there was a problem. They said they were still waiting on my Occupational Health clearance to come through, and once it did they would be confirming me. This got me even more worried as my health background isn’t exactly clear, but I didn’t think bad enough to cause me a problem. I rang OH who thankfully said I’d been cleared on Wednesday so the certificate would have been sent Thursday and is probably still in the internal post. I am now obsessively checking my emails, waiting for the ‘Your status has changed’ email from UCAS which should be coming any day now. On a lighter note, I went rowing last night and swapped sides to row bowside and pulled a muscle in my bum. Ouch!

Sniff

2010-06-24T11:04:00.002+01:00

You know when you have a little niggling bit of an illness and you ignore it and push through, and then it dumps on you from a great height and completely floors you? I’ve had that this week. It hasn’t been fun. Last week I was having problems with my ears, which isn’t unusual for me as apparently I have small ear canals so they are prone to becoming blocked. I put some olive oil in them and carried on. I had a bit of a sore throat on Friday, but I put that down to coxing on Thursday night without a coxbox - I had no microphone and had to yell my commands. I sucked a cough sweet and carried on.

Saturday was Totnes Regatta and I was due to cox my mens novice 4 and then a mixed (men and women) novice 4. It was a beautiful day and the guys were all in high spirits despite being up against some tough crews including Exeter A – our A crew who were only racing at novice level on a technicality but should be seniors, and Dart Totnes A who had beaten them the last two races. We lost our first heat against Dart Totnes A, which wasn’t a surprise. It was close, it was taken from them in the last 50m. We won the second heat against Dart Totnes B by a good 2-3 lengths, but then came last in the final against Dart Totnes and Exeter A crews.

We had been told our mixed race had been moved earlier because some of the crew members of our opposition, Exmouth were supposed to be in the race leaving straight after ours. So we came along side, two guys jumped out, two girls jumped in and we were off to the start line again to wait. And wait, and wait. The earlier race time, 45 minutes before its scheduled time came and went. The race officials said they hadn’t heard of a change, so we waited some more – by this time I’m shivering as I’ve been sat in a puddle of water for 3 hours. The proper race time came and went, with no sign of Exmouth. An Exmouth single scull next to us told us one of the girls who was supposed to be in the mixed crew was in the double about to start up ahead, and it was the double event they had moved the race time for. Fantastic! So after telling us to come early, they pull out, without telling us. We told the start officials, who put a call out for the Exmouth crew to come and when they didn’t we had to do a row through – row the course as if we were racing, but without an opponent. This confused the commentators mightily, but we were cheered home across the line and they collected our names at the end as if we’d won, so I don’t know if the guys will get points from it or not. No shiny things as there were only two of us supposed to race anyway :(

After that I raced home and then to Bristol because….. mr had got tickets to Bill Bailey!!!! After his Women’s Henley crew hadn’t qualified on Friday so didn’t have to row on Saturday he had checked to see if there were still tickets available and amazingly there were, and really good ones too – we were four rows back, just at the side of the stage. I was a bit sniffy getting ready in the hotel before, so I packed my handbag with tissues and carried on. Bill Bailey was fantastic, as I knew he would be and I had such a good time. Within five minutes I couldn’t breath I was laughing so much as he had us trying to sing California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas in the style of Slayer – I guess you had to be there.

I drove home Sunday morning, wished my Dad Happy Fathers Day, gave him his presents and we went out for a nice carvery lunch. I had an amazing gingerbread panna cotta for pudding, which it’s probably just as well I was bunged up and couldn’t taste much of as it was packed full of ginger and might just have blown my head off. By Sunday evening, I was snotty, coughing, couldn’t think straight and was generally in a bit of a mess. Monday morning I added feverish and dizzy to the list and called in sick. Tuesday the cold woke my asthma up and every time I breathed I wheezed and when I lay down I couldn’t breath. Mr got quite worried about me wheezing down the phone which was sweet, I was fine – breathing’s very overrated. Wednesday was much better but after waking up to call in sick at 9, I didn’t wake again until 2.30. Now it’s Thursday and I’m back at work. I’m still sniffy, and coughing, and have a fever, but I’m feeling much better in myself.

There are a few things I do like about being ill. I spent my time watching trashy films, tennis, sleeping and knitting; the fever means I’m finally ‘normal’ (for everyone else) temperature and can sit in a t-shirt out of the sun without getting goosebumps; and it’s the easiest way I know to lose weight. I’ve lost 4lbs in 3 days, which is good because I’ve put on a stone since coming back from uni. I would say I haven’t learnt my lesson yet though, unless an illness wipes me out, and I have to stop, you’ll still find me soldiering through, armed with tissues, Lucozade and alcohol hand gel so I don’t give it to anyone else.

Geek, me? Never.

2010-06-17T11:15:00.003+01:00

This weekend saw me doing fairly practical things for a change. I managed to get my car parked close enough to the house to wash and vacuum it, which is not an easy task considering all the workman that are still around my estate. The car park at work became like an ice rink when it was snowy at the start of the year, so the landlords dumped piles of grit salt everywhere – it’s almost a gravel car park now. So my poor little car got filthy dirty inside as the girl I give a lift to and I tracked the little stones into the foot well each day.

On Sunday I cycled down to the rowing club and me and another girl from my crew did some maintenance on a boat we’ve been allocated. It used to be rigged as a junior quad but the riggers were hastily changed so we could row it sweep. The shoes of the girl at bow were too small, the slides were all too short and the rigger heights were all different, so armed with Allan keys, screwdrivers, rigger jiggers and a fine adjusticator (a hammer) we set to work configuring it for our crew. It’s not the side of rowing I’m used to as at uni we elected a boat man to do all the maintenance work and if there was something we wanted doing we just logged it in a book. Now mostly it wouldn’t happen until all the problems with the guy’s boats had been fixed first, but that’s boat politics for you. It wasn’t really difficult, and it was good fun working in the sunshine. I got so dirty though, completely covered in oil and grease and general muck. Combine that with walking into a ladder and getting a bruise and a graze on my knee I felt like I was 5 and playing in the mud in the garden again :)

At work I’m doing a quarterly project of mine where I track all the retirements on all the schemes to check we haven’t missed any and the scheme owners are on top of all the upcoming ones. It’s a fairly dull job, it just involves running a load of reports and compiling them all into one massive spreadsheet and putting some code in to compare retirement dates with work completed and in progress. It’s my baby – I came up with the idea and have generated the spreadsheet from scratch. Every time I do it I make it a bit whizzier. It’s this project that was mentioned to the head of our division of the company I work for as being an example of how good an office we are and why we should get more work. Eeep! Anyway, my systems are going sooo slowly at the moment, and the spreadsheet is fairly large and takes a while to compile; it’s taking forever, not helped by the fact it keeps deleting bits of itself. On Tuesday the whole computer shut down, lost all my work for the morning and then couldn’t reconnect to the server. I spent three hours learning anatomy and watching it try and fail to log in: attempt 237…failed, attempt 238… failed. Roll on university is all I can say!

I really can’t wait now, I feel like I’m just marking time. All the people I know at uni are all finishing and having end of exam celebrations and I sort of miss that - the celebrations, not the exams - so I’m filling the in between time with exciting things to look forward to. I’m going to my first ever festival with a girl from work – a local one called Chagstock which the Hoosiers and Adrian Edmundson are playing. We are both so excited. I’m looking at tents and praying for sunshine. Apart from that, there’s a couple of balls at Sandhurst with mr, I’ve got tickets to Les Mis at Bristol with my parents, a comedy night with some guys from work, a couple more regattas I’m coxing, our club regatta where I’m racing, and the free work summer event where they open a local kids theme park for us and families/friends to play in after hours and put on a hog roast. I have something every weekend for the next month and half, it’s ace. There was a little excitement as I nearly got tickets to see Bill Bailey in Brstol for this weekend with mr, but he’s coxing the Sandhurst girls at Women’s Henley so couldn’t get away. Never mind, I will see Bill Bailey at some point in my life :) Right, back to seeing if this spreadsheet will behave. Bye for now,
Your geeky bean.

Birthday Bean

2010-06-10T15:28:00.002+01:00

Hiya. Soo, it was my birthday on Saturday :) I’ve been so excited about Peninsula that my birthday just sort of crept up on me without me noticing. My family hit my wishlist hard, so most of my presents were textbooks but that’s awesome. I got Memorising Medicine – a book of medical mnemonics, A Crash Course in General Medicine, Kumar and Clark, Macleod’s Clinical Examination, an anatomical chart of the skeletal system, The Anatomy Colouring Book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (it was mentioned as a must read by the xkcd guy), the DVD of Will Smith’s Seven Pounds (I love Will Smith :D ) a pasta maker with lasagne and ravioli attachments (I love to cook), some smellies and a self watering plant tray, as I’m very good at killing plants over the holidays :-/

I was out for most of the day at Plymouth Regatta coxing my novice men’s crew. It was lovely and sunny and they did so well. They came third overall out of four, but it was really close and they were winning until the 500m to go mark, so since it’s only the start of the season and their first ever race I’m really proud of them. They went off a bit hard and got so carried away they didn’t bring the rating down when I asked them to. We think if they can hold it steady all the way through they have a really good shot at winning which means shiny stuff :)

I went out in the evening with some guys from work. We went to La Tasca for a meal and then on to a local nightclub. It was my first night out in Exeter, so I didn’t really know what to expect but I had a great time. Had such sore feet the next day from all the jumping up and down I did, and realised I might dance like a bloke. I’m sorry, but else can you do to Pendulum except jump?

It was really weird to go out without mr, since I’ve been going out with him it’s very rare that he doesn’t come to, or he isn’t waiting for me when I get home. I guess it’s something I’m going to have to get used to though. I’ve been a really lucky bean and have had phone calls everyday from him whilst he’s been away, although he did frighten me somewhat when he called the first night as I only expect calls if he’s injured. It was tough hearing him sound so tired and broken though, knowing there’s nothing I can do to help. I sent him a letter and a big bar of chocolate he can devour when he gets back to Sandhurst, hopefully that should score me some good girlfriend points.

Sunday was a bit of a conveyor belt of family members all managing to just miss each other and it was nice to see them all. Our cat was a little confused as every time she left, when she came back there was a different person sat on the sofa. Talking of cats, next door’s cat, Marmite, has realised what time I come home from work each day and has taken to sitting behind the hedge at the end of our path and ambushing me. He’s a very affectionate cut and loves rubbing up against your legs. He also dribbles. And moults. So not only do you get covered in cat hair, he sticks it to you with drool. He’s like a little fountain. And then he shakes his head and it all flies everywhere. Beeeaauutiful puss. He has this adorable habit of rubbing up against your foot whenever you move it. So if you’re trying to walk anywhere he gets between your legs and rubs against your foot, then you move the other so he dives to that one and you end up having to zigzag shuffle down the path. Or, you can pick him up and he’ll give you a proper cuddle, paws either side of your neck, burrow into the crook of your neck and contentedly dribble down your front and back. Having said that, there’s nothing quite like starting the day with a Marmite hug as you walk to your car to go to work. He’s so happy to see you, and my cat moults so much I don’t notice the extra cat fur. I find cat fur on clothes I haven’t bought yet. Mr’s found it on his beret. I’ve never seen his beret, the cat has certainly never seen it, and it’s been ages since he saw my cat, so that’s transfer from her to me to him to it.

Still no word from Peninsula yet…. 66 working days left!

Stethoscope!!

2010-06-02T10:44:00.000+01:00

The bank holiday weekend was awesome. I didn’t get done everything I wanted to, but what I did do made me really happy. My parents gave me a stethoscope on Friday. A stethoscope of my very own :D It’s purple, and it has my initials engraved on it. I was very excited on Friday night! I’m pleased to say I have a nice strong heart beat, couldn’t find Dad’s though, which was a little worrying. Well I could but it was really quiet. Little bit embarrassed about that. I was expecting to not know the specifics of what I was hearing, but to not be able to find it at all? Oops. I was expecting it as a birthday present (it’s my birthday Saturday), but I got it as a congratulations-for-getting-in present instead. I’d quite like to take it in to work to show some people there because I’m sure they’d be just as excited about it as me, but I have to keep reminding myself it’s not show and tell and I’m a proper, real person, working bean now. However when I told someone about it at work he said “Wow, a stethoscope of your own? That’s like getting your wand if you were going to Hogwarts isn’t it? It’s the sign that you are a proper wizard now.” Totally is!!!!!! Interesting fact of the day: JK Rowling went to Exeter Uni and Diagon Ally is based on Gandy Street in town. Gandy Street is my favourite part of town, it’s a cobbled street full of boutiques and bakers and there’s the Phoenix Arts Centre which has a metal phoenix statue on the front that moves every hour, it’s lovely.

That’s everything on the kit list sorted. I’d quite like my UCAS status to change to unconditional now. I’ve sent all the paperwork back, about two weeks ago, and I was only conditional on CRB and Hep B antigen, and they’ve got the proofs of those.

Saturday I went to a garden centre with my parents and got some herbs to replace the ones I neglected and died this year between uni :-s oops. My chives survived, and now I have parsley, thyme and apple mint to go in a trough on my window sill. I love to cook, and it’s nice to have plants in your room, so herbs are the obvious choice. All that’s left to get before I go now is some saucepans. I bought a really cheap set from Argos last time and they kept getting holes all the way through the bottom. They did have a lifetime guarantee and I did take them back and got a new set once, but for a £5 for 4 pans set it really wasn’t worth it. The guy behind the counter had a little chuckle when he asked what was wrong with them and I held one up and you could see daylight through the bottom.

Sunday I cycled to rowing because I was due to be coaching some of the Juniors. Oversaw a couple of juniors in single sculls who completely ignored me the last time I went down but were much more receptive to me this time and seemed really happy with the criticism I was giving them. Was then asked to jump in and cox a boat of three novice men, one of which was a complete beginner, it was his second outing, and bow was a girl from my squad who had also come down to coach. We were making really good progress with them on the water and they got so much better. We were challenged to a race by a coach of a Junior under 18 quad, so on paper, the quad should have won – more blades (each boy is sculling so two blades to our sweep oar rowing with one blade), they’re lighter, younger, fitter and have been rowing together for a couple of years. Amazingly, we won! I was really proud of my guys; they were down at the start but took it back steadily throughout the race and beat them by quarter of a length. I cycled home and spent the rest of Sunday and Monday making my Goddaughter’s Christening present. I’m decoupatching 9” high MDF letters spelling her name which will be hung from a curtain pole to make a wall hanging. It’s torn bits of brightly coloured patterned paper stuck on with glue and varnished with glue. The paper is thinner than normal, so when dry it looks painted on. Here’s a chair done in it I found through Google Images (http://www.sussexcraftsltd.co.uk/)

I’ve done the letters and I’m doing the curtain rings, whilst trying to decide whether or not to do the pole too. It’s looking really impressive, not home made at all. I’m thinking about doing Christmas presents for my aunts and cousins in it – things like tissue box holders and flower pots. Last year they all got hand knitted stripy socks, the year before was home baked fudge and sweets and before that was hand made soaps. I don’t have a lot of money to buy them nice Christmas presents and there’s a lot of them – 2 aunts, 2 uncles and 11 cousins/cousin in laws/second cousins, so I like to try and make them something nice instead.

Mr went on exercise Monday, and won’t be back for about two weeks, so I shan’t be getting a birthday call from him :( I’m really worried about this one because he’s being petrol bombed. I don’t like it when he’s on exercise anyway because I worry about him, but fire?! Am trying to keep busy and not think about it, but I’m keeping my phone close by in case I get a call saying he’s been injured. He’s good at his job, I’m sure he’ll be fine (if I say it enough, I’m sure I’ll believe it soon).

Ah well, 17 weeks to go!!! Then I can stop being a working bean and be a fresher bean instead. Have a good week guys.

Warning: You Should Not Vex a Bean

2010-05-28T11:36:00.003+01:00

So a real mixed bag of pantsness and awesomeness this week. It all evens out to happy smiling bean, because the good stuff is just too good. Last weekend I was due to see mr in Salisbury. His present still didn’t arrive, so I cycled to town (I’m trying to be fitter see?) and bought him a Turnbull and Asser collar stay set which he was very pleased with. The hotel was nice enough, in the middle of town this time and the meal was as delicious as ever - of course we went back to Charter 1227, how could we not? We watched Iron Man 2, which was good, but I didn’t think it was as good as the first one, though it had some good action sequences. The cinema itself was weird, it was a proper period building with the black wooden beams and white walls, and the lights were on wrought iron chandeliers. There were only about 6-7 rows in our screen, and the seats were really squeaky, so I felt like a naughty school kid every time I leant into mr to hide from the scary bits. Sunday was spent wandering around the cathedral and sitting dipping our toes in the river whilst watching the ducks. It was perfect :)

When I came back I found an email from a member of my rowing crew saying they had gotten together on Thursday after our outing and had decided there should be no talking in the boat except cox and we should elect a boat captain who can direct the outing, and to make it fair we should have a rota so everyone gets to be boat captain. Basically, they are saying bean, shut up. A bit of background info – I can row both sides, I can stroke the boat and I can cox. Our cox is a 12 year old boy who hasn’t had a lot of practice, doesn’t know the calls to make, can’t feel when we’re doing something wrong, and when he does, he’s too shy to tell us to change it. So since I’ve been at stroke, I’ve been giving him some ideas of things to say, because otherwise our outings are silent from him and we don’t get much out of it. Our coach isn’t that useful either, he doesn’t really speak much or give any critical comments – I haven’t been picked up on anything since our last coach left last year (left because he was fed up of the rest of our crew not doing what he said). Now my aim for the year was to lose my novice status, so I have to win one more race, as was the aim of other members of our boat. This isn’t going to happen unless we get better as a crew, which isn’t going to happen if no one ever picks us up on anything. They’ve already told me I’m a good cox – I coxed them to a three boat length victory at Bideford last year in a higher level than we’re at. So I’m pretty annoyed really. Alright, I know I’m not perfect and I can see how they might not like someone keep picking them up on what they aren’t doing right, but cox has asked me to do it to help him get better. One of the girls can’t take Saturdays off work, doesn’t think we’re good enough to enter races and the only sub we have is a senior C so can’t race with us at novice level. No races for beans then. I volunteered to cox a novice men’s four because I want to win something, even if I can’t get any points from it, and they’re a really good squad with great chances this year. I had my first outing with them Tuesday and it went really well, though I didn’t have a microphone so had to keep yelling and consequently swallowed a lot of flies. Protein anyone? They seemed to really like me, we have a laugh and I’m down to cox two races with them.

At work I’m super busy and have to keep dropping things to deal with silly queries from another office about a data validation exercise they’re running – checking that we hold all the data we should for schemes, as dictated by the pensions regulator. The project’s a good idea, but it’s not ready yet. It works by running a series of rules against the data we have, eg. Member has service pre 06/04/1988 and the scheme is contracted out so they should have Pre 88 GMP recorded on the system. If they don’t that’s a major fail point, so they lose 4 marks. At the end they tot up the fails and I get a final score, a rating a bit like the washing machine energy rating and list of errors. I make an error log and tell the scheme owner what to fix.

The project got put on hold because I flooded them with parameter forms for schemes to put through it and they couldn’t keep up. Then the administrators weren’t fixing the problems it found so the schemes couldn’t have their second run and be cleared off and the whole thing seized up. Admin manager is trying to get a rush job through to please the Scheme and so the Validator team have been sending me little pernickety questions which I have to ask scheme owner about. Then it turns out every thing scheme owner told me when I did the original form in March was wrong and I have to drop everything to do new forms >_< The nice guy I deal with from the validations team was on holiday and I got his boss asking me questions instead. He sent an email attaching one of my forms, asking me to remove some of the details form it. In the form, he’d struck through what he wanted removing. So it would have been less clicks for him to remove himself. He then went on to ask me to change the pension data splits so they fit in with the standard splits they can accommodate. Pension splits work on dates. Between these dates your pension will escalate by this much, then until this date it goes up by a different amount and so on. Pensions is silly. If the dates aren’t the same, there’s nothing I can do, the scheme has its own rules. I snapped. I sent him a very carefully worded, venomous, shouty email back telling him to amend the functionality of his tests as this was the way the scheme works, it’s correct and it differs from his and since the Trustees of the scheme are paying for this, and it’s not the first time this problem had come up it would be better in the long run to change his test. He’s four pay grades above me. Oops. I got a meek email back from him saying he’ll change it, and a nice phonecall talking about what changes would be best. Oh, and a high five from my boss :D Bean wins! Aww yeah, that felt good.

Yesterday I had another cracking outing coxing the guys in the sun and called the student finance people because I hadn’t heard anything and my online account said I wasn’t entitled to a fee loan (PANIC!!!!). They checked and said that as I am a med student I will definitely be getting the fee loan, they just haven’t calculated that bit yet (and breathe...). I also got a letterf romt he uni saying I'll be getting the full £1,500 bursery for being from a low income family. Financing thins degree is def becoming more doable. This weekend will see more rowing, coaching, cycling, maybe some sailing and making a Christening present for my God daughter. Should be good, if the weather’s nice. Good luck with the last of your exams people!

Friday!

2010-05-21T16:10:00.002+01:00

Hello people :) It’s Friday and it’s sunny!!! Can you tell I’m happier today? :p Firstly: it’s Friday, which is pretty much as good as a working week gets, bar the odd dress down day or bank holiday Monday. Next, an update on the Hep B antigen fiasco: Dr rang PMS, Dr rang lab, lab said they’d do the right test. Intriguingly, I got the results as a screen dump printed from my records the next morning, which hints slightly of ‘well, we’ll just fill the screen in as though she had it to keep the med school happy’, if I was being a cynical person. Especially because they said before it would take three weeks to get the results back, and I know I’m not that much of an important person to get a rush job done. Ah well, stop complaining bean. I sent the screen print off yesterday and so I am all sorted and should soon be a fully confirmed Peninsula Medical Student. How exciting!
Things aren’t entirely all going my way however as I’m under a mountain of work – to the extent that everything’s out of target and it’ll only be moved up the pile if I’m chased for it, which is not how I like to work, but needs must. Mr’s present STILL hasn’t arrived, and it was his birthday Wednesday, and I found out this week that my cousin in law’s cancer has come back, which is pants because she’s only been in remission 2 years. Fingers crossed for her. Aww, and my cat’s got an irritation of some sort with her eye so she keeps blinking it shut and looking at me mournfully, however it does make her look a little like a pirate which is hilarious. She is not amused with me keep laughing at her though. I’m getting grumpy faces from my pirate puss.
However all of that is out of my mind, a) because it’s Friday, b) I’m seeing mr tomorrow (eee! – but panic - where do I get a decent birthday present from?) and c) Hey, Soul Sister by Train. How can you not smile when you hear this song? They were on CSI the other day and I found the album and the first 4 songs on it have been on repeat for the last two days :) Enjoy the sunshine guys.

Pickled Bean

2010-05-17T15:42:00.007+01:00

Well today finds me in a bit of a pickle, but overall happy. When I had my first offer for Southampton, they asked that I start my Hep B vaccination straight away. I never finished the course because I didn’t get in. One of the conditions of my Peninsula place is having a clear Occupational Health test, which involves having a clear Hep B surface antigen test. After the fun of having my blood taken (see last post), I rang up the next day to double check the right test had been asked for, which it had. When I went to collect the results on Friday, the receptionist happily told me I was Hep B immune. Now, this shouldn’t be possible to tell from an antigen test. Here comes the science: Antigens are little bits of the pathogen cut up and displayed on the outside of cells, ready for the antibodies to come along and try and recognise, which they would be able to do if you’ve seen something before. If they do, they replicate and mount the appropriate specialised response which helps you beat it quickly and efficiently, if not, you have to tough the buggy out with your normal non-specialised, less effective approach. So in short, an antigen test would say whether or not I had the thing, an antibody test would say I had seen it before or was immune to it. So you can see I was a little perplexed. The test that had been asked for was indeed an antigen test, but the lab had decided an antibody test would be more appropriate. Grr. Now logic says if I’m immune to it, I can’t have it, so I bundled all my paperwork together and sent it all off to PCMD. I called them this morning to check that given the results, the antibody test would be fine, but they were adamant they wanted an antigen test. *Sigh* I called my Dr’s and explained, and then got a very shouty call back from my Dr about time wasting and money wasting, and he doesn’t seem to want to listen to me saying that I know this and I’m sorry and I’ve told them but they won’t budge. Eeep! And my Dr’s always been so nice to me 0_0 He wanted PCMD’s number to yell at them himself, so I’m waiting for the fallout from that. Oh dear… How can I be in PCMD’s bad books when I haven’t even started yet :(

Other than that, it was a good weekend. I finished the jumper, and apart from being a little tight across the, er, chest area (making me look massive, lol) it’s lovely. I’m hoping it’ll be better with a shirt under it, squishing me in, and not the horizontally stripy thing I was trying it on over. I had a club day at the rowing club learning about safety and welfare and proper warm ups and I super-duperly passed a hamstring flexibility test :) Flexible bean.

I also went sale shopping and am very nearly all sorted for uni now. PCMD has two balls a year – a summer and winter. I bought a load of dresses off ebay before I went to Southampton, but then I lost a load of weight whilst away, so my old size 12 wardrobe doesn’t fit me now I’m a size 8. I’ve been slowly replacing things over time as required – like jeans and jumpers and work stuff, and now I also have a summer coat, and some dresses, including a beautiful floor length dress perfect for mr’s commissioning dinner. I had to get a cardi as well, because the army has some silly rule about dresses not being allowed to show the ankles or the shoulders (because the sight of bare ankles and shoulders drive men wild don’t ya know?!), and it’s nearly impossible to find one that does both and doesn’t make me look about 50. I’m so excited, I can’t wait for an excuse to wear them now, they’re so pretty! I wouldn’t say I’m terribly girly, I normally can’t stand giggling silly-ily dressed girls (what’s wrong with jumpers and coats?), but I do like a nice swishy dress :) Don’t worry, you’ll still never catch me in pink or anything flowery. All that’s left to get now is another pair of work trousers, chocolate brown ones I think, some stationary bits and a couple more textbooks. And then I’ll be an all sorted bean, exciting stuffs!
Mr’s birthday present hasn’t arrived yet, and it’s his birthday this week, eep! I’m seeing him at the weekend, so hopefully it’ll arrive before then, and I’ll only be a couple of days late with it. Aww, and in other rubbish bean news, I lost my seat in the boat because I had to miss that one outing because of the silly nurse. Boo! I’ve been demoted from stroke to 2. Altogether now: thiiiiiiiiings, can only get betterrrrrr, can only get…… :D Have a good week guys.

What a Difference A Day Makes

2010-05-11T15:45:00.000+01:00

After my grumpy post last time I did indeed go home and curl up on the sofa with knitting and hot chocolate. I have nearly finished my jumper now, just have the neck band to put on, although I have to do a bit of repair work on it because in my eagerness to see what it would be like I managed to undo the stitch holder and a whole load of live stitches slipped off it. It has been gingerly put down until I can take a crotchet hook to it to pull the stitches back up, else the whole thing is going to unravel :-s I did buy some Sirdar Crofters self fair-isling wool to make some tank tops for when this silly jumper finished.

Oh, and the final verdict is that I love the jumper, it’s very me: nice and long in the sleeve and short on the body, so now I just hope I can rescue it! I also used a bit of retail therapy over the weekend too, and bought some super comfy new black heels for work, and a backpack with laptop compartment for uni. Also quite excited because I noticed some more things have gone off my Amazon wishlist.

When my alarm went off Monday I was super happy for some reason. I opened the curtain, saw the beautiful, blazing sunshine and was wide awake with the first alarm, whereas I’m normally still groggily trying to sneak a few more minutes of sleep by my third alarm, 20 minutes later. I would like to think that when I’m doing a job I actually want to do and enjoy, getting up won’t be such a struggle as it is now. Hopefully. I was early to work, and even though I was on my own all day because the rest of my bank of desks was on holiday, I was smiley and happy all day.

Today was completely different. I opened the curtains and it was grey and miserable. No wide awake bean raring to get up and start the day here. I wasn’t too late for work, only about 10 minutes, and as long as you do 7 hours a day and are here between the core 10-3 hours, they don’t mind. I did my morning reports and then an Internet Explorer window opened and started loading. Three seconds later and another one opened. And another, and another. As fast as I was shutting them, they were opening more. I got 65 windows in the end, which I thought was quite impressive. Ever get the feeling today isn’t going to work?

I had my blood test scheduled for thismorning, so off I poddled, straight in to the nurses room, on goes the tourniquet and the nurse asks if I have any problems having my blood taken. I explain not really, but I do have quite a low pain threshold. She says she's the same, so she’ll be gentle. She started tapping an odd vein I thought, not the normal one I get my bloods taken from, but the cephalic, further over. I looked away for the scratch and when I looked back because it seemed to be taking a long time, there’s no blood going into the tube and she’s wiggling the needle and digging it deeper and deeper into my arm. I can see the vein is going diagonally across my cubital fossa just under the skin, but she seems to be putting the needle vertically up my arm. She eventually gets a little dribble by waving the needle and sometimes it orientates in the same direction as the vein, quarter fills the tube, and grabs another tube to fill. I asked what the second tube was for because I was there for a Hep B surface antigen test. She says one is for a full blood count and one is for ferratin levels. I corrected her and I guess that threw her a bit because when she went to take the needle out she yanked it straight up out of my arm, rather than drawing the needle out of the same path it went in by. Suffice to say, it’s quite painful now, and I’ve had to drop out of rowing tonight because I can’t really bend my arm without it being painful. Rather than having a nice neat little dot, I have two large dots, a centimetre apart and a line joining them, like a cat scratch. She smiled at me as I was leaving and said she hopes I recover and isn’t it funny how it’s always the people with the low pain threshold who it’s hard to get blood from. I’ve never had a problem before…. o_0 I will be very surprised if I get the right test done after all that, though I did tell her a few times. I really hope she was having an off day and not like that all the time. Ah well, I guess bad experiences will only make me a better Dr, since I’ll know what it feels like. I went to Sainsbury’s on the way back to work and got a pain au chocolat for being a brave bean at the Dr’s :) The afternoon is so far bringing lots of computer crashes, email server’s down and it’s raining. Today def should have been a duvet day. Although, I have found this interesting website, which looks promising. I have to admit the idea of MTAS scares me a little, since it doesn’t seem to have had the best track record. The week can only get better, right?

Apathy

2010-05-07T16:40:00.000+01:00

So the rest of this week has seen a somewhat deflated bean. Not for any particular reason, rather a collection of small ones. I seem to get like this every now and then, you may have noticed it in some of my other posts. I have been completely and utterly bored at work. I am doing the same thing day after day after day. When I first got promoted, I was really excited about being on a more technical team and all the spreadsheet playing I’d get to do. While it is true that I am working with spreadsheets every day, for the last month, and probably the next one coming as well I have actually been doing the same thing every single day. Argh! I get a slight respite when someone comes to my desk and asks for some help with something, but 9 times out of 10 they want something that I’ve already written up how to do in the instructions I was asked to write for them, which they could find by scrolling to the document and reading a single paragraph detailing very clearly how to do it. I made the template for the document they are trying to use, and I included a helpful instruction sheet on basic troubleshooting with what could go wrong. Do they read it? No. Even their boss, the person that asked me to make the template and include the instruction sheet, he doesn’t even read it! I get chirpy little emails from him asking if I could help so-and-so because the contents page just isn’t working, no matter what he tries (read: nothing)! Grr. Now my work is building up because I’m getting back the items I’ve sent for checking, but can’t complete them yet because I’m waiting on data I requested from another department back in March.

At home we have two types of workmen at the moment. There are gas men replacing the pipes and builders building a new set of flats. They’ve coned off loads of areas so there’s nowhere to park and every morning they are blocking me in so I’m late for work. Combine that with the bin men trying to squeeze through and I was about an hour late for work this morning. I had to squeeze myself through a tiny gap this moring, and missed hitting my neighbours car (parked next to the cones because he couldn’t find anywhere else) by 0.5 cm. Spatial awareness win. This has been going on for 2 weeks so far, and there aren’t even half way done yet.

We also had a visit from my aunt last night, who’s been told that the cause of her severe back pain is vertebral discs disintegrating. The only treatment options she was offered were pain killers and physio or spinal surgery to insert rods to immobilise the two vertebrae and keep them apart, but then she would lose all mobility in them and the problem would move to the two above. I’m sure I’ve heard of disc replacement surgery, so I’m a bit confused as to why that wasn’t an option. Suffice to say, she’s in a lot of pain, and it’ll only get worse. I’m doesn't help that mr has gone back home and I think it’ll be ages before I can see him again. He's brilliant at cheering me up. Continuing the moan, since I'm on a roll I turned up in all my kit for an outing last night, only to find half my crew hadn’t shown up, and the other girl was busy taking out a single, and didn’t even offer to go in a double with me. Rude, and nice of the rest of them to let me know it was off. Our Sky plus box broke at the weekend, so the engineer came and took the box away and replaced it with a shiny new one. It turns out the problem was actually the dish, which they fixed the next day, but they won’t give us the box back, so I have lost the episodes of Lost and Heroes I was saving up to watch in my own time because Mum doesn’t watch them. I was only sticking with Lost because this was the last series! Grrrrr.

I shall put the ranting bean back in her box now and medicate her with knitting, biscuits, hot chocolate, maybe some shouty music and a sofa to curl up on.

My boredom has lead me to discovering a couple of new blogs which were good, but possibly doesn’t help lift the mood any, rather puts me deeper in it, because I want to be doing what they’re doing. I had an email from the accommodation people at Exeter uni and so have now applied for my accommodation. Applications aren’t dealt with on a first-come-first-serve basis, but those with an unconditional firm status before August are dealt with first, so that kick started me into trying to get my application to have that status. I was quite surprised to see that I could only apply for the Rowancroft halls, I was certain I’d seen somewhere you could live anywhere, but those were kept for medics primarily. My offer is conditional on CRB and OH checks. I’m not sure how to fulfil these any more than I already have, as I took the completed forms with me to my interview. I have arranged for a Hep B surface antigen test next week, I’ve signed the rest of the forms that came with my offer and I just need to print off 4/5 passport photos and send them off with the forms, blood test results and vaccination history which my Dr has already kindly printed off for me. Hopefully I’ll be able to send the whole lot off some time next week.

In other exciting news, I have found an amazing new app for my phone that I’m somewhat addicted to: Speed Anatomy, and what’s more, it’s free! It displays the name of a part and you have to tap it on the diagram of a dissected body before the time runs out, with bonus multiplier points for accuracy. There are different levels, so you start with easy stuff first like skin and heart but then it gets harder (well, I haven’t looked over those bits in my flashcards yet, so they’re hard to me). I can get to level 9 at the moment, which is about the different vertebra, and level 8 nearly caught me out because I couldn’t work out my left and right when identifying blood vessels. Level 6 proved tricky for a while; it’s about muscles. Why is the gastrocnemius in the leg? I keep thinking it’s abdominal. There are 28 levels in total so I’ve got a while to go. Have a good weekend, hope the weather clears up (maybe I have SAD?).

London, Anatomy and the Best Mussels in the World

2010-05-05T12:08:00.001+01:00

I had a big exciting week because mr came to visit and all the plans we had so carefully made fell into place beautifully. It was so nice to come home from work to find him there to greet me, but it’ll be a long time before it’s like that again. He came down Wednesday and we went out that night clutching an Orange Wednesdays voucher for 2-4-1 pizza at Pizza Express and cinema tickets to see Kickass. The film was really good - a little more violent that I was expecting, but awesome nonetheless, and I can now be mostly found singing under my breath ‘Don’t give a damn ‘bout my bad reputation, na na na na na na naaaa’. Thursday saw rowing, with mr coxing (he’s an amazing cox :-D) and a lovely meal in On the Waterfront. Friday we went to a comedy night which wasn’t as good as Mitch Benn last time, but was still pretty funny and a good night out.

Saturday we were up super early (for beans, I don’t really like being up before about 8.30-9) to go to London! Being from a little city (city only by default because of the cathedral) London’s quite scary for me because it’s so big and busy. I get quite excited about going, and I’m always really proud of myself at being able to navigate the tube and not have anything stolen (I might have a slightly naive view of London!). I say always, it’s only the second time I’ve properly been to London, other than school trips to plays. The first time was when mr surprised me with a trip for New Years to watch the fireworks. This time he was surprising me with tickets to watch Avenue Q – I love musicals. This one was good, not my favourite - I feel a little bit wrong having watched puppets have sex, but it was very funny and cleverly done, with some amazing singers. We walked through Kensington Palace gardens, Hyde Park, stumbled across Harley Street, which was very exciting, (mr asked if I wanted to wander down and pick out my office :p) went to Camden Lock and went to the V and A but quickly left for the Natural History museum, science geeks that we are :) We had saved up our Tesco vouchers to have a meal in Loch Fyne where I had the nicest, most creamy, melt in the mouth, biggest pot of mussels in the world! The pot was as big as my head, I was in heaven getting very messy in the middle of the posh restaurant, can’t take me anywhere! :p I had started to eat them with a fork and spoon, but they put a finger bowl on the table so I tucked in :) Another thing about me – I love my shellfish (apart from oysters. I read a book where the murderer killed by hypnotising people to swallow their tongues like oysters, can’t have them now). Mr’s smoked roasted salmon was pretty awesome too. I think we’ll be going back there. There was much sleeping and more rowing on Monday, and in the evening mr kicked my ass at Mario Kart for Wii. I will beat him at something!!!!

Back to the medic-ing. I had the best time on the train journeys up and back :) We took the flash cards and blitzed bones of the body - front and back, parts of the ribs and most of the major arteries of the body. On the way up we were sat opposite a lady whose daughter’s a second year at UEA med school. She was telling me that only UEA and PMS do PBL (wrong? V v wrong…) and she was going up to drop off a fancy cardio stethoscope she had bought for her daughter because her daughter was too poor to buy one and had been borrowing one o_0. She did tell me of a web site to try and get some funding. I’ll check it out, but given her other medical knowledge, I don’t hold out much hope. It was fundfinder.org. On the way back, we were sat opposite a PMS third year who had been based at Exeter for his first two years who was really nice. Apparently, I’m a medic-related magnet (there was a microbiology Dr on the last train journey I took before this back from Derby). He was telling me all about the course and the PMS ethic that they don’t like revision or cramming, nothing in the first term counts at all and the pass mark for the first exam is 3%. He was really nice, and gave me his email in case I had any more questions. This encounter only made more excited to go - there is renewed bouncing. Also, when mr came he was bearing a present from his parents – Grey’s Anatomy for Students (spoilt bean again!) So I shall be genning up on some surface anatomy before I go I think - the third year said that would be useful, and trying not to forget the bones and vessels I learnt on the train :) I’ll bounce off now, have a great week, and good luck in your exams IB people!

Thick Letters

2010-04-27T10:42:00.001+01:00

On Friday I got the very thick letter from Peninsula I’d been waiting for, and I was very surprised at how quickly it came, given that I had only firmed them Tuesday evening. I’ve been placed at Exeter. This means I’ll be in Exeter for the first two years and I will be a University of Exeter student for my five years of uni. I’m happy about this, I guess weighing up the pros and cons of Plymouth and Exeter, Exeter would def come out on top. Plymouth has a better nightlife, which would be good for my first year when I’ll actually have time to go out. Although, they do have a field hospital on Union Street where all the clubs are for all the drunk injured clubbers, which is a bit scary given I’m not really a loud party animal type. I do like going out for a dance, but I’m just as happy not drinking, I don’t really like the feeling of being drunk that much. I can have just as good a time sober, it’s much cheaper, and I know what I’m doing at all times, win-win, surely? One of the students on my interview day said Plymouth had better teaching for third year. Exeter has much nicer halls, living with medics, sports scientists and PGCE people, although I think I’ll miss not being on the main campus, especially since it’s one of the prettiest in the country. Apparently the St Luke’s and Streatham people don’t mix much, ah well, medics are cliquey; I just hope I can fit in. I’m going to have to be a bit more outgoing and less sit-back-and-observe-slightly-scared I guess. And here’s where I have to admit to a small snobbish side of me – another reason I’m happy I’m at Exeter is because it’s a top 10 uni at number 9 in the country, and I found out that Plymouth used to be a polytechnic. I know, I know, there are no such things as polys anymore but I just can’t get over it I’m afraid. There was a poly in Southampton - Solent Uni, and it offered such wonderful degrees as Football Studies and Stage Makeup. Now, I’m all for people going to uni, it’s a fantastic life experience and I’m happy they can find something they want to study to a higher level, but really, these things should not be a degree. A BA in History should not be held in the same esteem as a BA in Stage Makeup. Similarly, a BSc in Football Studies? I discovered something brand new and proved 10 years of study by proper academics wrong to earn my degree, what on earth can they do that’s similar in football studies? Sorry, rant over *bean hangs head in shame*. I’m a nice bean really!

My thick letter came with my student agreement that I won’t abuse patient’s trust and interestingly, I thought, I won’t cover my face when dealing with patients or in lectures unless it’s for sterile reasons. There was a very short kit list – stethoscope (got a pretty purple one picked out :) ), shorts and t-shirt for clinical skills practice on each other, a scientific calculator and no white coat. :( It’s a shame. When I was little, I didn’t really know what I would do when I grew up, but I was certain I would be wearing a white coat and doing something science-y. Now I’ve finally gotten here, they took the white coats away!

To make up for the very short kit list, there is a monster of a book list (around 4 sides A4), of which I’ve gotten 2 already from biomed - Pharmacology by Rang, Dale and Ritter and Albert's The Cell. There’s a couple I already had on my wishlist, and I’ll look at reviews of the rest and maybe add some more. I know I won’t need all of them, and that they will be in the library, but I do like having books and being able to look at them whenever I like, without having to break my back carrying them back from the library, plus they’re well under half the price of my biomed text books, which is nice.

I was also told to email the accommodation office at Exeter uni to get my student number to start applying for halls, but they said they haven’t had the details over from PCMD yet and to try again in a week. There isn’t really much choice in the accommodation tbh: ensuite in Rowancroft (built in 09), or standard or enhanced at Rowancroft Court or Rowancroft Mews. Ensuite for me I think :) I had an ensuite in halls last time and it was good. I’m a bit of a lush addict, so I have a lot of stuff to put in a bathroom and I like to keep it nice and tidy. When we shared a bathroom in the house we moved into for years 2 and 3 I swear they had radios and would time it perfectly so they would all go in the bathroom one after the other when I was waiting. Surely that will only be worse if we’ve all got the same timetable.

It’s mr’s birthday soon and I have no idea what to get him. Apparently I’ve got the reputation in his lines of being a thoughtful, awesome girlfriend because they previous gifts I got him were so good, and now I have to live up to that and I have no clue! He’s so hard to buy for. He likes things that beep (being an electronic engineer), but I can’t afford them, and I don’t really know much about army life so I don’t know what would be useful. Any ideas people? I’ve asked him three times now and he’s helpfully avoiding giving me an answer. He’s coming to visit Wednesday-Monday and we have lots of exciting things planned, so maybe I can press him a little more then. I’m very excited, it’s been about 2 months since I saw him properly, not including Street watching him swim. I’d best leave it there, this has become a bit of an essay! Have a great week people :)

A New Chapter

2010-04-21T11:11:00.004+01:00

Following a bit in the theme of last time because I seem to be in a bit of a reflective mood for some reason – bye bye Track. No more obsessive checking. No more mashing the F5 key in the frantic but slim hope I logged in a second too soon. No more getting frustrated with your extra pages keeping me from finding my fate. No more will you make my heart catch in my throat and my stomach turn as you load the page sooo slowly, only to find the decision column is blank, still, again, like I knew it would be, and then I feel silly for thinking it may have changed. I have moved on, I have no need for you anymore. Your bookmark is deleted.
Nottingham put out their results last night and I had an email telling me I was on the waiting list. Now Notts aren’t as nice as St George’s in that a waiting list place isn’t a ticket to an automatic place next year if you aren’t called for this year, it’s really just a holding status. ‘We don’t like you enough to offer you a place, but we do like you enough not to reject you’. You may be offered a place if enough of those who were offered in the first place turn down their offers, or if people don’t get their grades come results day and the uni has places to fill. This means you could be given as little as a few days notice to pack up your things and come to uni. When I saw the email, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. I’d thought the interview had gone really well, so to only be on the waiting list? I kept trying to rationalise it that maybe it was because I still had some documents to send to them, or because my GAMSAT wasn’t that high, or because they’d seen me on the different forums talking about wanting to go to PCMD, but I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter. At least it was better than an outright rejection, and it’s not like I wanted the place anyway. So I logged onto Track for the last time ever, withdrew from Nottingham and firmed Peninsula. There we have it then, my path is decided. After three applications, five years of stressing, one degree, 3 entrance exams spanning a total of 7 hours, 5 interviews, countless amounts of money spent on preparation books, entrance exams, train tickets and a degree, and so many tears and sleepless nights, I am finally in to the place I wanted to be in from the very beginning. And to think that I didn’t want to try again this year, I was ready to give up. My family had to coax me into it (according to Dad, I’m a bean, and bean’s don’t give up [for bean, insert surname]). Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry class of 2015. Hopefully I will hear from them soon with a campus allocation and all the other paperwork I need to fill in. I am now Bean the medical student :)

In Which Bean Gets a Bit Touchy-Feely

2010-04-20T14:36:00.001+01:00

This week saw more failed attempts to complete student finance. They took the whole system down on Sunday, so I was hoping they were going to fix it then, but whatever they did, it didn’t work. They have put a caveat on that you can fill in a paper form, but I really don’t want to have to do that. They already have most of my details on the system, and for the whole of my last year at uni they sent all my letters to a made up mash up address of my home address and term time address. That was a gem, they made it up, and no matter how many times they changed over the phone when I told them it was wrong, the system still sent my letters to it. So all in all, I don’t have a lot of faith in them and trying to merge paper with computer applications is just asking for trouble I’m sure.

I got a lovely congratulations card from mr’s parents filled with some really pretty beads that his mum had picked out, which was lovely of her. I am now trying to decide what to do with them. OOooo, and the first book is gone off my amazon wishlist! Super excited bean :D

In other book related news, I gave away my UKCAT book to a guy at work who’s son wants to go to med school. That was quite an odd feeling. It was nice to know that I wouldn’t need again, but it’s still quite weird thinking that next year I won’t have to apply again, because for the last 5 years or so my life has been about applying to med school and now that I don’t have to anymore, well it’s odd. Obviously I’m really happy that I don’t have to apply, and I got to where I wanted to be, for the moment anyway. The next step will be passing exams, and passing the course. I suppose it’s just been force of habit – “What are you doing? I’m applying to med school.” It’s been long enough since I found out, it really should have sunk in by now. Lol, I guess it’s just my impatience again – I want to start now, and I won’t quite believe it until I do. It’s still a long way off yet, a whole 22 weeks, even though 22 doesn’t sound like much. 101 work days left, according to my clever formula. And I expect when I get there, I’ll be craving a break again, the grass is always greener isn’t it ? :)

Well your all very boring people not playing the conundrum I set in last weeks post. The answer was bookkeeper in case you wondered silently. Round up of the rest of my life: the rowing is going better, and since it looks like I’m sticking at stroke, I guess I’m going to have to start going back to the gym to get my fitness back up. You can’t slack at stroke and I can’t let the rest of my crew down cos I’m lazy :p My blisters are nearly completely healed thanks to the newly discovered miracle lotion that is Palmers Cocoa Butter Formula. I have great tan lines from rowing on Sunday morning, a proper farmers tan, and awesome plans are slowly falling into place for when mr comes down in a couple of weeks.

I had my first washing disaster last week, and ironically, I did it at home. I felted my favourite tank top, oops. I can’t find a replacement for it either, so I think I may have to knit one. To do that though, I have to finish the jumper I have on the go, which I am procrastinating because the next bit is hard, and I’m not sure I like the colour anymore, and making pretty jewellery gives instant gratification. Lol, I am such a fickle scatty girl sometimes, which is funny, because I’m sure none of the people who know me would say that about me, it’s just how I seem to be coming across here. Ah well, that’s it for me for now. Let’s see if our ‘upgraded’ systems are working at work yet (read: put in place before testing and now failing horribly, a bit like Windows Vista). Nottingham decisions out this week, good luck people!

Blisters, Rowing and Finance

2010-04-13T15:06:00.000+01:00

I keep forgetting to say I actually met Mitch Benn when I went to see, him, which was awesome and I got totally star struck :) We were hanging around in the room so they guys I was with could finish their drinks and he wandered back in to get his stuff. One of the guys (rather drunk) turns to him and said “Oooo, it’s you! She loves you! She’s the reason we’re all here!” *Bean blushes and wishes the ground would swallow her – she isn’t drunk. Never mind, it was awesome and I shook his hand :D

In other, more Doctor-y related bean news, I’ve been putting my application for student finance at last, now I know I’ll definitely need it. I’ve been doing it online because they’ve still got all my details from last time so it’s easier that way. Just before you click ‘send’ they show you a summary screen of what you’re likely to get (with a rough estimate of the means-tested bit) and I was very surprised to see them offering me a fee loan after a comment I got after mentioning it last time about someone else not being able to have it. I shall have to wait and see if they cotton on and retract that bit, though I did say that yes I had already done a degree. Maybe it’s because it’s a five year course? I don’t know. I should get the max means tested bits (excluding the London extra) and a bursary from the uni themselves, so… shock horror, don’t panic people, this might actually be fundable by myself! (However, all this will take my student debt up to around £55,000, and I dread to think the interest on that. It’s all fake money, isn’t it, I can’t possibly owe that much and only have a bit of paper and some letters [Dr Bean MBBS BSc Hons :p] to show for it). I’ve been trying to put my Dad’s figures in to the support a student’s application bit, but the clever, clever people have decided now, in the middle of application season, would be a good time to take the system down to upgrade it, so it’s not working and won’t let me link Dad to me. Bean is not amused.

The rest of this week brought a busy week at work with system failures a-plenty (aircon down leading to a flood in the main off-site server room – useful!), a surprise birthday outing to a pub quiz for someone on my team (what English word that describes an occupation contains three sets of consecutive double letters? Answers in the comments, solution next week people), successful haggling of my phone network to give me the shiny new phone I wanted and a great package for not much monies at all (leading to a jealous mr because he wants the shiny new phone and good contract) which is being delivered today, a lovely congratulations card signed by everyone at work waiting for me on my desk Friday morning and I’ve been asked to put together and captain a team from work to enter the Bell boat race as part of the local Business Games. All in all, a pretty good week, as long as I don’t have to hold anything… I went rowing again Sunday in the beautiful sunshine. Our four combined with a novice four to go out in an 8, which is a bit like trying to manoeuvre a lorry when it’s full of a novice crew. We were using their novice blades, which have cheese-grated my hands – 11 blisters in 3 hours including two sets of blisters on blisters, or rather in them, once they burst - luuurvly :p. It’s a toss-up see, I need calluses to be a rower, but soft hands to touch patients as a Dr. On the plus side, coach is happy with me and the novices said I was the best stroke they’ve ever had (sshhh, I know they haven’t had much experience, just let me bask in the compliment for a while, ok?) and I got a nice tan (which is secretly the whole reason I row). So now my hands can mostly be found covered in as many moisturisers as I can find to try and heal them before my next outing next weekend. So I shall leave you scratching your heads over that double letters conundrum and wave you a shiny, manky-handed goodbye for now. Hope you can get the opportunity to take some time off to enjoy the lovely weather.

Bean: Queen of Cupcakes

2010-04-06T10:19:00.000+01:00

It was so good to have the Easter break. It is one thing I like about having a regular 9-5 job and not being a student –weekends and bank holidays mean so much more. I’ll miss that. I was about ready for a break too, so it was lovely to have the Friday and Monday off. Short weeks are brilliant. A pretty unremarkable week before that: nice and quiet at work, although I’m not sure why because I have a lot of work to do. It’s possibly because I know I have an end date now. On my work flow spreadsheet I put some formulae in to count number of working days left :) I’m such a geek sometimes.

I didn’t get a lie in Friday because I went rowing for the first time in months. The weather was atrocious, so we did an erg first. Blergh, I hate ergs and I haven’t done one of those in even longer. They are just hell, pain and errm, hell. But, I did it and we had an outing after that when the weather cleared up. It was so nice to be back on the water. It’s like my calm place, being on the water – whether it’s rowing, sailing or kayaking, it’s lovely to just get away from it all and think of nothing bar what you are doing on the water. I did have a little more to think about unfortunately, since I was stroking. This means (for you non-rowers) that I was at the head of the boat setting the rhythm – no-one can move before I do and everyone must move at the same time as me. This is quite hard in itself, as you have to be perfect – you have no-one to follow, but being a little rusty, and being shorter than the rest of the girls, I wasn’t setting a very good pace, and they have to move faster to keep up with me. Never mind, I’m rowing again tonight, I’ll do better this time.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much spent in the kitchen baking cakes and muffins. Mum volunteered me to make some to take to see the family for Easter, and I had wanted to make some to take to work to celebrate my good news. This mainly involves me throwing flour and icing sugar everywhere, and even getting some in the mixing bowl, but mostly over me and the kitchen. I could totally be five :) The cakes I make are very good, but I’m also extremely good at making a mess. I broke out my new Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and made 2 batches of Red Velvet, and 1 batch each of Marshmallow cakes, Black Bottom cakes and Banana and Cinnamon muffins, oh, and some soup for work, and some earrings for me. It was a properly creative weekend, and the cakes are lovely :) I normally bake when I have exams and essays to have a break (and a reward for when they’re finished).

Oo, in other exciting news, mr got into the regiment he wanted, so his interviews did go well and he is a happy, but tired boy. He is happy two-fold because Cambridge won the boat race and he briefly went there for a year before switching to Southampton so we have a slight allegiance (even though the Oxford blue is prettier than the Cambridge one, he pokes me when I say that). What an awesome race it was! He is also happy three-fold, because it is his Easter break coming up (the army do things odd) and we are plotting a trip to London to see Avenue Q, which makes me a very happy and excitable bean, because it’s one I’ve wanted to see for ages. Might also see if we can fit in a trip to the hospital museum which was shut when we went to London for New Years. All I have left to do is book the train tickets, which I very nearly did last night, but had to stop when I realised I was booking them for the wrong month – oops! Don’t panic about me being a Dr, I’m not normally this scatty, honest! :) Have an awesome short week people.

Still smiling

2010-03-30T15:46:00.003+01:00

So not much has changed since I posted last, other than my smiling muscles getting a through work out. They did get a bit of a rest last night when I got back from work and saw my book and flashcard pack had arrived. How on earth does anyone remember that much stuff? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book with that much tiny writing crammed into it. Do I really have to learn it all? The flashcards weren’t much better either to be honest. Even just the first one had bits I’d never heard of before, like an acromion, or a cubital fossa. And I thought the first card of the pack would be easy. Hmm, I was planning on learning a couple a day on my lunch breaks at work to give myself a bit of a head start and I guess it’s just been a while since I had to learn anything by rote. Never mind, it will happen and it will be worth it (and hopefully it will make more sense once I get to doing a bit more about it).

The rest of last week was spent by me wandering round in a fuzzy, grinning daze, getting congratulated by people and thinking I should probably be a bit more productive at work. I still can’t quite believe it’s true. I keep waiting for Peninsula to send me a letter apologising for getting it wrong, they didn’t mean to offer me a place at all. I want to firm it, but I can’t until all my offers come in. I could withdraw from Notts, but after such an awesome interview, I really want the confirmation from them that I did well at it too, and for them to give me an offer. Each time I’ve applied I’ve only ever gotten one offer, and I really feel this cycle went much better and I’m much better prepared mentally for it. Part of me feels bad that I might be taking an offer from someone else, but they do over-offer for those that decline and I believe they have a waiting list for those that don’t quite make it.

The weekend brought congratulatory surprise flowers from mr (spoilt bean :) I was really excited when the door bell went because I thought it might have been my textbooks, but they were just as good), a shopping trip to buy Easter eggs (how did it get to be Easter already), a new pencil skirt in the Next half price sale (bargin and I have to be a smart [Dr] bean from now on) and an awesome pair of purple tights (no reason why smart tights can’t be slightly interesting in lieu of the stripy socks I would be wearing if I wasn’t wearing tights). I had gone to have a look in Waterstones at textbooks, but all the interesting ones like Tortora, Moore and Daley and Kumar and Clarke were cellophane wrapped, which wasn’t useful. Although I did find a new one to add to the want list – a book of mnemonics, which I will find really useful. So glad I have a birthday between now and the start of term.

On Sunday I drove to Street to see mr compete in the Royal Navy Masters Swimming Competition. He used to swim a lot when he was little, but gave it up and hasn’t trained properly since. It was great to see him, and it was so lovely and warm sat in the stands by the pool. It was funny to see all the other clubs bright, peppy and raring to race, and Sandhurst lying around sleeping, taking the opportunity wherever they can. He didn’t win any medals, but he did come close with a couple of fourths, and only being a second or so out. He enjoyed himself and had a good result with the Sandhurst 8 competing at Head of the River in London the day before, beating the RAF and coming second to Army, but pulling up massively from 235 place to 163 (out of about 350-400). He’s got his regiment selection boards this week, so I have my fingers crossed for him. He hasn’t done as many interviews as me, so I have no idea what his technique is like but I’m sure he’ll do fine.

Thanks for your lovely congrats messages on NMM, TSR and this blog, it’s lovely of you, and I really am so happy. More from me later, back to work now…

Can This Week Get Any Better?

2010-03-25T10:25:00.000Z

I had my Nottingham interview Tuesday. I thought it went really well. It seemed to be much better organised than the St George’s one, the interviewers were all really nice and there was only really one question that flummoxed me but I managed to cobble together a response eventually. It was also nice to see three of the people that had been at the Peninsula interview again. Dare I say it, but that interview was actually fun? I have never had 6 minutes go by so quickly. The main question came with several follow up questions, so it really felt like a proper mini interview and let me really show my strengths, opinions, think on my feet and have a proper probing conversation with them. All in all, apart from Derby being so grey and miserable after such a sunny day for the PMS interview, I had a really good time.

So a group of us took a taxi back to the station and we bid each other farewell and good luck, I sat waiting for the train and rang mum to let her know how I got on. While I was on the phone she checked Track – nothing. Never mind, I thought, maybe tomorrow. I got on the train and after about 15 minutes I had a call from Mum. She said “Hello Dr Bean”. I was quite confused, I knew Track was blank, and I just thought she was being a bit presumptive about Notts. I was wrong. Peninsula offered me a place!!! EEEEeeeeeee!!!! Since I was on a train I knew I couldn’t really scream, but then totally out of my control my eyes started leaking and I was crying all over the place. I don’t normally cry, especially not with happiness, so I felt a bit of a ninny crying on a train and was getting some very odd looks. Apparently Mum had checked again just before she logged off the computer (can you see Track obsession runs in the family?) and had seen the golden words Peninsula – Conditional. I was loon grinning for the whole ride home, and actually have been since I found out, and expect I will be for quite some time. After ringing round friends and family and sharing the good news, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. What with all the unspent adrenaline from my interview and now this good news, what I really wanted to do was jump up and down, but that’s a bit hard to do on a train. The girl opposite me offered me a celebratory cookie, which was nice, but not quite the same somehow. Of course, the person I really wanted to tell was Mr, but I can’t because he is still in France, but he’s going to be so excited.

So yesterday at work I got to tell lots of people and re-live it all again – suffice to say I didn’t get a lot of work done, I was simply too excited. Mum sent me a link to a stethoscope I want – it’s purple!! And I bought my first textbooks after scoping the threads to see what would be useful – Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine and Grey’s Anatomy Flashcards so I can start learning bits before I go.

We had a meeting with the head of Employee Benefits, the division of JLT Group I work for, who told us about our financial position at the end of the last year and improvements we need to make moving forwards. Imagine my surprise when our Consultant Client Manager told the EB heads that one of the changes we’ve made to improve systems is by having the retirement tracker. Hi, that’s me. *Shock* You shouldn’t say things like that in front of such important people, what I do can’t possibly be that important, right? This is just a holiday job for me. 0_0

Anyway, it also bonus work at time which has traditionally been a time where everyone gets individual short meetings with their manager and told that they haven’t got a bonus this year, and from the murmurings I’d heard about people who’ve already had theirs, this year wasn’t any different. In the big boss’ eyes, he pays us to work hard so he shouldn’t have to reward us for doing our jobs. When my manager called me in, I was expecting the same, so I was very, very surprised when he told me I was getting a pay rise and £250 bonus this month for working hard. That will certainly pay for some textbooks :) I actually didn’t think this week could get any better but, when I got back to my desk there was an email saying we’re having a dress down day this Friday, and a reminder that I’m going to see Mitch Benn on Friday evening. I don’t know what I did to deserve a week like this, but I am so happy, it’s amazing. Please don’t let something happen to bring me back to earth with a bump for a while.

Fret Fret Fret

2010-03-22T11:44:00.002Z

So, another week of fretting, surprise, surprise. I am soo tired this morning. Last night was the worst night’s sleep I’ve had in ages. I seem to have gone back to thinking that I’m not good enough to be a Dr, why did I want to do it again and maybe I should just stick with what I know as a Project Officer. I was also a little dismayed to see that I had forgotten a whole week of March. I thought this week would be the last week, so the PMS decisions would be given out by Friday, but there’s still most of next week in March as well. Rubbish. It doesn’t help that mr is going to France for this week and so won’t be around to help calm the fretting bean. Also, what with his leave weekends and the train strikes, it’s looking like we won’t be able to see each other for another 5 weeks. There’s no one on my bank of desks this week, I’m sure no one will notice if I just curl up under the desk and go to sleep for a while.

I’ve been having really strange dreams this week. I normally start sleep walking when I’m nervous, so it doesn’t surprise me. One night I dreamt my boss had died suddenly at work the day before. I woke up crying and I was so upset, I really thought it had happened. He comes in later than me, so I was trying to work out how I could tell if it had actually happened or if it was only a dream, as obviously no one was going to be talking about it. The next night I was trying to work out how to send loaf cakes, cupcakes and flapjack to mr at Sandhurst. Then last night I had a letter from Peninsula saying I had scored 35 points at my interview and they were offering me a place. The extra points that had decided it had come from the rifle shooting round of the interview, but could I please not bring my rifle with me to Uni. I haven’t done any rifle shooting for a very very long time, so I’m not sure where that one came from. Silly bean.

Last week went very quickly indeed. We had a dress down day and bacon baps on Wednesday for St Patrick’s day fundraising for charity. Mufti days are actually just as exciting as they were when you were in school, it’s silly. Although for me it’s more that I get to wear jeans and a hoody and be warm and comfy at work for once. Everyone’s much happier at work when it’s dress down and there’s a proper Friday feeling in the office. Which therefore makes it very confusing it not being a Friday 0_o

When it actually came to Friday I totally did not have the Friday feeling (although we did have popcorn Friday on my team, which helped a bit as the guy that does it makes the best popcorn in the world, salty and sweet, mmmmm). I got asked to do a rush job fixing and updating a report to make it fancier. This took all day and meant I didn’t get anything done that I was expecting, although the geek in me does enjoy playing with formulae and spreadsheets on projects like this. The admin manager I did the report for was so pleased he asked me to email it to the other admin managers to show them how clever ‘he’ is in sorting out this report, so I am fully expecting emails saying that’s good, can you do it for my team too please. When I came in today though, I was pleasantly surprised to find he had copied me in on an email to my boss telling him what a good job I had done. Bean mutters a humble apology for thinking bad thoughts about said admin manager.

The weekend was spent organising bits for Notts, shopping and playing tennis and baseball on the Wii. I am determined to beat mr next time he’s down. I’m nearly a pro at tennis with 702 points. Bean on a mission.

That’s all from me for now. Tomorrow Bean’s going up North! (I am from Devon, there is no Midlands, it is merely a myth. The North starts above Bristol – Geography according to bean.) Have a good week and good luck to all the other Notts GEMers.

Calm Before the Storm?

2010-03-17T13:22:00.000Z

Last week I noticed a deep sense of calm in me. I was smiley happy all week from a combination of small things: the fact my shoes click when I walk in the office (when I was little I couldn’t wait to be grown up and wear shoes with heels that clicked like Mummy’s shoes, and now I do :) ), I bought a new cardigan from Topshop the weekend before and it has a waterfall front which swishes nicely when I walk and I had a quiet week where I got to solve a lot of people’s small IT issues as it’s like a little win for me each time. They normally aren’t very difficult problems, but I like helping and they have such a big smile when I’ve fixed them.

I found myself switching between thinking ‘Of course I’ll get in, why wouldn’t I get in, my interview went well’, to ‘Well, what will be will be, I can’t change it now, I probably haven’t gotten in because I should have said this and this, but that’s alright because I probably wouldn’t be any good at being a Dr anyway.’ I noticed on New Media Medicine that someone interviewed the day after me had an offer, but she was an undergrad, so it didn’t stress me that much.

It was also an odd week because mr (my bf) was off on exercise all week from Monday to Monday evening and incommunicado. It made me feel like I was kind of on hold all week, wondering what he was up to, hoping he wasn’t too tired and watching the phone in case I had a call to say he’d been pulled off injured. I find it quite strange going from functioning fine on your own to suddenly realising that you care this much for another person that isn’t family and it seems to have snuck up on you without warning.

The weekend went quietly, just like the week really. I got my car insurance sorted and saved £100 by adding Mum as a secondary driver. Score 1 for me :) We went for a nice pub lunch for Mother’s Day, she loved the chocolates I got her for her present and I got some nice lentil and pasta soup made for lunches. Buying lentils is actually quite difficult, believe it or not. Having never tried them before, I thought I’d be brave, but this led to me spending a good 10 minutes with a packet of green lentils in one hand and a packet of lentilles vertes in the other and trying to work out what the difference was between them and wondering if I was just being silly or if the world had conspired on a big joke without telling me. I was actually looking for brown lentils, which are not green lentils or even foreign green lentils. I found out after Sainsbury’s in their wisdom store the brown lentils in the world food section, not with the pulses and other lentils…obviously o_0 But I still don’t know the difference between green lentils and lentilles vertes. I did have a slight geeky moment when describing the only discernable difference between the two to a girl I give a lift to work was that green lentils are smooth and lentilles vertes are like Mendel’s wrinkled peas. *Hangs head in shame, spot the Biologist?*

The start of this week couldn’t be more different. I feel calm, but I think my body is just fretting at a really deep level. I keep waking up every two hours when I’m asleep, all the traffic in the world is on the roads when I’m trying to get to work, so the 15 minute trip is taking me 45 minutes, people at work keep stopping me to ask if I’ve heard anything, my Notts interview is next week, I’m very light on work which leaves me sitting doing nothing while people prepare stuff for me (I hate not being busy) and mr keeps falling asleep on the phone when I’m talking to him (makes me feel mean, like I’m keeping him up) – all in all, this makes for a stressed bean. Peninsula decisions soon perhaps? I really really hope so. I read Internal Optimists blog and I wanna do that!!! There’s a little bean in my head jumping up and down and pouting and stamping her feet because she wants to know now and wants to be reading textbooks and journals and learning interesting things and poking people, now. Arrgh! Patience is so overrated. Pretty please Peninsula?

Interview

2010-03-08T14:34:00.000Z

Last week at work went really quickly. Partly because I was looking forward to my interview (perhaps looking forward to is the wrong word, more anticipating the interview) and my boyfriend coming down for the weekend and partly because of a photo frame on my desk.. For Valentine’s Day my boyfriend gave me a digital photo frame and filled it with photos of us, him and my Facebook photos. It was lovely of him, because I really like photos - my screensaver usually cycles through all my photos on my laptop at home, but also because the photos change every 30 seconds, time seems to go by very quickly.

Before I knew it, it was Thursday and interview time. I had to get there for 8.15 for an interview that wasn’t until 10.30 so they could register me and go through my documents. The girl sat next to me whilst being registered hadn’t got the form signed by her GP and hadn’t bought all the ID forms she was asked for. It really amazes me sometimes, how this is possible. We’ve had these documents for months, plenty of time to assemble what was required. If you can’t follow simple instructions with plenty of time to complete them, it doesn’t reflect well on you, surely, and it wastes the Medical School’s time, the very people you are trying to impress. I know that it probably won’t make any difference, but when it’s this competitive, I really wish it did sometimes. Sorry, rant over.

Everyone was registered by about 8.30, so we had plenty of time to sit and chat. The other candidates all seemed really nice and friendly, though most were older than me A presentation at 9 told us that lots of people had dropped out, so the two days of grad interviews had been cut to just this one and some people had had their interview times bumped up. There were 42 of us interviewed throughout the day. I don’t know how many grad places there are – they said a proportionate amount to those who applied – and I don’t know if anyone was interviewed at Plymouth. I was first up after that, and taken to a room to choose my ethical scenario of a choice of three and answer the questionnaire. After 30 minutes I was taken to the interview room where a panel of four made up of clinical people and professional laypeople asked 9 questions based on the ethical scenario, and then standard questions on situations I’ve been in and how it makes me feel. I don’t want to put too much information about the interview because this is the internet, but get in touch if you’d like more info. I did have a bit of a eureka moment when they asked me a question I’d had when I did the PMCD interview in my first round of applications and I finally understood it this time. We went on the tour, most of which I’ve seen before as it was part of a work experience course I did run at the Postgrad research side of Peninsula, but it was nice to see the accommodation and chat to some students and other candidates. It was a beautiful sunny day and nice to be out of the office for a change. All in all, I think it went quite well, she says, tentatively. Then again, I always think it went quite well, and it doesn’t normally get me anywhere. But no, this time, I didn’t stumble on any questions, I had a big smile, I gave honest answers, demonstrating what they are looking for, I made them laugh, that has to be a good sign, right? Ah well, we’ll see. They said a panel is getting together mid March and all decisions given out by the end of March. Finger crossed!!

I had a lovely afternoon off after that, watched some Lost and did some tidying ready for my boyfriend to come in the evening. He stayed until Sunday afternoon, and apart from being a bit bored when I went to work (he did ask again if he could come in with me Friday morning!) we had a really nice time. We did some shopping for Mother’s Day presents, had the best steak in the world (according to bean!) at Harry’s Grill, I beat him at Wii canoeing and Wii fit and he beat me at Wii tennis, he rubbed my back and fixed my silly back ache (5 layers at work from now on) and we went to see Alice in Wonderland at the cinema. It was a lovely, relaxing, fun weekend, and I loved seeing him before and having him to come back to after work. He’s on exercise now so I won’t be able to speak to him for a whole week, which is rubbish. Saturday morning post bought the interview pack from Nottingham, so the next set of stressing can begin.

One thing I did find from the interview that was interesting is that we were told to apply for a student fees loan anyway, even though the Student Loan Company says it doesn’t give them for second degrees, because they actually don’t mind giving them to grads on a degree leading to a professional career, I guess because they are guaranteed to get their money back fairly soon. This means that a 5 year course will def be possible to fund, even if it means the amount of debt I come out with might actually make me cry, it’s do-able. Plus one for Peninsula. I’ll leave it there for now, since this is quite long with all the interview stuffs. Hope you have a good week, please feel free to comment, and very excited to have my first follower! :)

A quiet week with an exciting end

2010-03-03T10:09:00.000Z

So last week was a nice and quiet one at work, which was good. Oh, and I won our weekly Thursday lunchtime game of cards, which was awesome :) It got crazily busy December/January time as I was trying to get around 80 data analysis reports done to an external deadline, whilst trying to find people to confirm I should do them and then check them once I’d done them. Since then, I don’t take the quiet weeks for granted anymore! I work for a pension’s administration company. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but with the job market as it is, I shouldn’t complain.

I started here in the summer between college and uni as a temp sorting and filing paperwork. Luckily they liked me and have taken me back every Christmas, Easter and Summer since then, and every time I come back I do harder things. When I told them I would have a whole year free, they extended my contract, promoted me and moved me from the Direct client facing team to the Business Support Team. Here I do a lot more technical bits like calculations, constructing spreadsheets to perform certain tasks, training people in Excel and Word, reporting, data analysis general computer troubleshooting and formatting things. It’s a lot of problem solving, which I love and although I’m part of a team I’m left to my own devices to get on with my work flow most of the time, which I also like. I guess I do really like my job, especially now I’m not bottom rung and filing all the time! :p It’s a nice office with really nice people, the majority of which are grads who fell into the job because there was nothing else at the time. This means there’s quite a high turnover of people but everyone is really friendly. On my team especially we do have a laugh. They are quite a competitive bunch and there’s normally some sort of a quiz going on: What happened on this day in… kinda thing. It has shown me that I don’t want to work in an office forever and I do really miss biology. Another thing about this place is that it is always so cold! I know I’m a cold person normally, but I have to be wearing four layers at all times to be warm here, it’s ridiculous. In fact, it was so cold in here last week the muscles in my back tensed up and were really painful. They are still a bit tight now but they are getting better.

Like I mentioned before, my boyfriend is in the army and is going through Sandhurst at the moment. He had a hard week last week with a big test so we met in Salisbury last weekend to give him something to look forward to. Salisbury is almost half way between us, a little closer to him than me and it’s the second time we’ve done this now. I drove up on the Saturday, we went out for a lovely meal in the evening at Charter 1227 which I cannot recommend highly enough – the chef there is a genius and I have honestly never tasted food as good. Actually that place is the reason I chose Salisbury to go back to instead of somewhere closer to me. The waitress lady remembered us from last time, just over a month ago, which was amazing. We stayed the night in the Grasmere Hotel which overlooks the river Avon and is so pretty. When we came back from our meal we bought a business card to give the hotel manager as he's never heard of the place before. He was so pleased, he gave us a free glass of wine each and invited us to sit and chat with him and his friends who were out celebrating their son's birthday. It was really nice, particularly since I'm quite shy, so wouldn't normally have said yes to sitting with a bunch of strangers for an hour, but actually, we had a really good time. I am trying to come out of my shell a bit more. I can do it when I have to, like when I'm instructoring, so I know Doctoring won't be a problem, I'm just trying to make it more me all the time. The next day we went to Wilton Shopping Village Sunday and then to the Victoria and Albert Pub for Sunday lunch before driving home. Well the pub was lovely, a really nice, proper country pub, but Wilton Shopping village…. Lol, well, perhaps if we were about 50 in our tweed and wool and comfy shoes with a lovely big country house it would be alright, but it wasn’t really for us!

He’s actually coming down to see me this weekend as he has a long weekend of leave before a big exercise the week after. We spent so much time together at uni, I really miss him when he's not here and I know what with the army and me hopefully going back to uni it's going to be ages until we can be back together like that again. Hopefully if we can last that sort of time apart, we should be able to get through anything, but we'll see. He should be getting here Thursday after my interview which will be nice and staying until Sunday afternoon. I’m still trying to work out things to do with him, especially while I’m at work Friday. I think he thinks he’ll be able to come in and sit with me, he doesn’t really get office life! At least he’ll be able to give my back another rub and sort these silly muscles out! Thanks so much for your comments, they’re really useful, and it’s nice to know people are actually reading. Back to the ethics revision, bye!!

UCAS History

2010-03-01T12:14:00.002Z

I did the International Baccalaureate instead of A levels, so when I was offered a place at University of Southampton for Med with 36 points and 666 at higher, my 32 with 644 at higher (4 ½ A’s at A level equivalent) didn’t get me very far. It did however, get me into a Biomedical Science Degree at Southampton Uni, which I absolutely loved (apart from neuroscience – very interesting but I appear to be rubbish at it, plants and molecular which are just dull and complicated and filled with three letter abbreviations for everything!) Here I learnt I could cook, I learnt to row, I made some great friends and I met my boyfriend. All was going well until the start of my final year, when I developed asthma so had to stop rowing and then anaemia, so my body tried to stop me doing everything – moving, concentrating and remembering, which is not conducive to revising for finals, or indeed sitting them. I had to take time out of my dissertation research but carried on battling to lectures. The uni had told me that they would apply a sickness policy to me, unfortunately, due to their anonymity policy, this didn’t help me in the slightest. Once again, I missed my offer of a place at the University of Leicester, but this time by a measly 3%.

So now here we are at round three. I revised and took the GAMSAT, and amazingly passed which was surprising considering I don’t really do well in exams and I have no background in Physics at all (I dropped it in year 9). This got me three interviews at St George’s 4yr, Nottingham 4yr and Peninsula 5yr. I found out last week I didn’t pass the interview for St George’s which is a shame because that was my first choice, but there we go, two left. I have the other two interviews coming up this month, and I honestly cannot pick between the two. Peninsula is close to home, a nicer program, has better facilities and I’d get to watch my god daughter grow up and see my family more often. On the other hand, it’s more expensive as I wouldn’t get a fee loan and I’d have to move every two years. Nottingham is a grad entry program, so a shorter course, I get a fee loan, it’s a nice friendly place but I’d be far from home and based at Derby away from the main uni and student-y goings on. I’m hoping actually going to the two places for interview will help me decide, and then again there is the distinct possibility that I will only get the one offer (if any) and so my decision will be made for me. I guess really, I’m going to enjoy wherever I end up going as it’s the course that I want to do and if the area’s really *that* bad I can just throw myself into my studies. Oooo, I just hate the waiting though! I submitted my application in October, which was ages ago. I went through all the stressiness of waiting to find out if my GAMSAT was good enough, then waiting to see if I’d get any interviews, then waiting to hear the results of my St George’s interview and the waiting’s getting kinda old now nice admissions people, yeah? Unconditional offers please! I’m a nice person, I’d work hard for you, do I really need to be interviewed? Aww, I wish, sadly, it’s not to be. Peninsula interview this is Thursday so I’m boning up on my ethical arguments and terminology. Fingers crossed for me!

Introductions

2010-03-01T10:56:00.001Z

Hi. Over the last couple of months I’ve been reading some blogs and it’s kinda given me the blogging bug. I’ve always been one of those people who start a diary as a New Year’s resolution and then get bored and stop by about February. Hopefully this one will last a little longer!

The reason I’ve been looking for blogs is to get an insider’s view on medical school. See, I’m one of those crazy people who has decided to put themselves through the hell that is UCAS apply to med schools: the stressing, the obsessively checking track, the over analysing every sentence of my personal statement and answers to interview questions and terrorising the postman for thick letters only please, no thin ones. It turns nice, normal, ordinary people into crazy, twitching, paranoid, ones – not fun. To make matters worse, this is the third time I’m putting myself through it. You might very well think that I should have learnt my lesson by now, but no, I’m a glutton for punishment. All it has taught me is that yes, medicine is what I want to do and that hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.

I’m back living at home with my parents and my cat for the time being, working in an office for a pension’s administration company. I’m a Project Officer, so I make spreadsheets, analyse data for problems and make reports. It’s not terribly exciting, but it is nice to have a wage. The people I work with are great, and I’ve been here for three years now working in my holidays from Uni. It also satisfies the geek in me that likes playing with spreadsheets and problem solving.

I have a Laser Radial which I don’t sail nearly as often as I’d like to/should. I am also a sailing instructor for Juniors, which is great fun. At uni I was looking for a challenge and to learn a new skill so I started rowing as I am hopeless at all land sports (can’t run, can’t throw, can’t catch). That was awesome and I loved it so much I joined my local rowing club and we are currently the novice women’s 4 WEARA champions, which means I have shiny stuff with my name on it :) Considering I’ve always been rubbish at sports, this is a big deal to me. My goal is to lose my novice status by the end of the year, which means I need to win two more races.

I knit in the evenings in front of the telly curled up on the sofa. It started because I needed to do something creative for my IB, and so I got my Mum to teach me and I made a patchwork blanket with her and my aunts to take to uni with me. I made a few scarves, a load of baby jumpers for my cousins’ kids and some stripy socks for Christmas presents this year. I am a firm believer that you should never wear boring pants and socks. If I’m having a rubbish day I only need to take my shoes off and see my brightly coloured stripy socks and I smile, as does everyone else who sees me padding round the place in my socks. Try it someday; I defy you not to smile :)

I’m not the best writer, but I’d like to think I have good sense of humour, which I hope comes through in my writing. If there’s any comments you have to help me improve, or if you’d just like to drop me a message to say hi I’d love to hear from you. By the way, bean is a nickname my boyfriend gave me that seemed to stick.