F1 Choices

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:

1. Extra assessments like situational judgement tests, clinical skills test and communication tests to help allocate F1 jobs.  
2. Grant full GMC registration on graduation
3. 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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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

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…

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

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

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.