Happy New Year!

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!