looking up

This week was good. Assessment-tick. Portfolio-tick. But need to get stuck in with the old revision. General Medicine exam is a bit tricky to revise for....just about anything and everything you can think of. Two great people from my elective have had their babies so I got to go present hunting for gorgeous little girl dresses so send as presents! Am on my own in the flat tonight so am going to get a dvd and curl up on the sofa without falling asleep fingers crossed and without that mouse for company I hope. Tuesday is jobs d-day. I found out where I'll be for the next two years. Strange but exciting. And still doesn't feel quite real....
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Listening to: The Weepies - World Spins Madly On
via FoxyTunes

crap-ity-crap-crap

I thought I was doing well this morning-what with the run n all but alas I confuse myself: I felt like an addict (or at least what I imagine an addict would think like). I needed chocolate/crisps something bad. So I didn't just have a wee square of the bad stuff. Oh no that'd be far too normal. I had half a tub of jaffa cakes, a carmel square thing and 2 wagon wheels....what a pig. I sometimes can't believe myself. This time I'll really hope it's over. I'm fed up with me right now. After this blip (sounds better than a down hill spiral) this week better go better. I'd like to lose about 7kgs to be comfy and healthy again and I'm slowly realising there's no reason why I should use eating as a way to cope with medicine. It's not worth it for sure. but somehow I manage to forget that.

back to diabetes (I think my waist-hip ratio might be a worrying indicator of type 2 diabetes) anyhoo...
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Listening to: The Script - The Man Who Can't Be Moved
via FoxyTunes

thyroids, adrenals, pancreas' (-es?)

Managed to go for a run this morning and the sun's shining. woo hoo. now it's time for some work but am feeling better about the humungus pile of stuff I still have to get through. made a wee plan yesterday which always feels good and which I always never stick to. These next few months seem to be doomed to be emotional rollercoaster material so I need to keep the old head just above water and get through the crap. phew. reminder of the day: stick to the simple things-keep breathing.

ps. took the plunge and stood on the scales (clothes off ofcourse who knows how many extra pounds that would add) and we weigh in at 61.6kgs. so here goes to healthy eating, healhty exercise and happy brains.

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Listening to: The Saturdays - Keep Her
via FoxyTunes

Listening to an ice cream van jingle into the distance. Wishing I was 6 again.....ho hum.

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Listening to: Tinchy Stryder - Take Me Back (Radio Edit) [feat. Taio Cruz]
via FoxyTunes

death's door

In Malawi, I experienced my fair share of death. Little kids with raging fevers, severe anaemia, cerebral malaira, meningitis. It hit me hard. It was accepted all too readily by families, medical practitioners, doctors. Back home, death hits home in a different way. Usually, elderly patients, with heart failure, a pneumonia that was just too much on top of a multitude of other morbidities or a metastatic cancer. But still I find it all too consuming.

Then, there's the gastrointestinal ward. Many patients are chronic alcoholics some known for years others just starting out. One women, mid 30's, going on 60, well known, with decompensated liver failure has been admitted to HDU twice in a matter of weeks but both times has pulled through and is now sitting up on the edge of her bed wondering why her legs are wobbly and her hands have got the shakes. After each previous admission she has gone back to the bottle. Who knows if this time will be different?

Just along the corridor a young man in his late 20's has been admitted again, decompensated liver failure too but this man is not an alcoholic, he has cancer, a nasty rare liver tumour which has spread and is taking over his lungs too. As he is noticably weaker by the day, I can't help think what a pile of cards to be dealt. But he speaks of how much he's been able to do while the cancer was in remission, finish his degree, get a job, buy a house, a nice car and how he is glad to have been given that chance. But what can you say as he prepares for his oncology appointment to find out the results of the lastest scan and says, "I'd just like to know how long I've got, I mean, is it weeks or months or days, I'd just like an estimate." Somehow, he asks this, not pitifully but just as if he'd like to know whether Scotland will win the six nations. Sometimes certain patients just strike a cord and powerless to do anything, I say bye and thank him for speaking to me.

Everyone deserves the best care possible but some people will always seem more deserving than others. Who knows whats in store?
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Listening to: Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
via FoxyTunes

Lost in Translation

I'm sitting trying to get my head in the books. Exams are looming, end of block and finals. And after the disastrous week there's a good whole lot of stuff to be done. Somehow, I feel disociated from it all and as I was debating whether or not to watch Lost in Translation (I've started it about 3 or 4 times over the past few weeks and never finished it) this morning before studying, I realised I feel like I'm lost in translation. Scraping around with all these books, piles of bits of paper with supposedly never-to-be-forgotten facts from tutorials, printed notes, course booklets and I am lost, completely lost. I know I have work to do but where do I start. It seems impossible but I need to get my head round to the idea, it's not, IF I do the work. Medicine has often been compared to running a marathon (both are completely bonkers ideas, medicine and marathons) and now I think I'm beginning to understand the metaphor. I thought first year would be the hardest-all new and alien. But my goodness, it's beginning to feel like a test of my endurance these last few months and now there's even more at stake. I'm so close yet so bloody far. And now, what's worse, after years of indesicion (numerous thoughts of packing the whole thing in) I think I really do want to be able to practice medicine. Soppy as it sounds, after my elective, I realised that it was what I wanted to do and that for all the life changing nonsense banded about, my elective definitely made me think about future careers. It gave me a big wake up shove to: get on with girl, stop all the deep and meaningful crap. But now, I'm drifitng back into the negatives, the what ifs. So, yes, this morning I feel lost in translation but maybe I just need to think of the bigger picture, the end result not so far away now. I guess for marathons it's all about the mentality.

genius, yes pure genius

just discovered "genius" on itunes. pick a song and it creates a playlist based on that song. quite excited. might even get me out of bed to go running tomorrow. who knows.
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Listening to: Azure Ray - Sleep
via FoxyTunes

sometimes it just feels such a phaff

This week just dragged from start to finish. Monday morning I forgot my bankcard and couldn't pay for my train ticket at the station so had no choice but to jump on the bus back to the flat, grab my card, and jump on bus number 3 of the day back to the station and it was only 7.15am. Missed the train (unsurprisingly) and waited 40 mins for the next one, missing first part of the morning and spending an extortionate amount on a (much needed) cuppa at the station while waiting. Then came Tuesday, set off the fire alarm in the accomodation at the hospital and 2 fire engines arrived with a lecture on evacuating the building on hearing the alarm (fellow student burned chicken so thought there was no need to all get out) from a (not even hot) fireman. I know they have the public's best interest at heart and I certainly have no leg to stand but... Ipod ran out of battery and no charger in sight. Wednesday got all nervous before my assesment when it went fine and got all hacked off about the amount of paperwork we have to do, log books, assessment forms, portfolios... Thursday motivation at an all time low and am feeling like I have cabin fever and just want to escape small town. My dad kindly pointed out I could of course leave small town anytime I wanted but that's not the point I said. Friday: got no 3 of 3 assessment forms signed off. plus point. motivation in my boots to go and see any patients so curled up with a cuppa and a good book til fellow students ready to go home too. minus point. So, this weekend needs some serious work if we're to get through this ordeal unscathed. Sometimes there's light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes it's a black hole with no escape.
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Listening to: Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
via FoxyTunes

25 random facts

tagged on facebook.....excellent waste of time.
1. I love the tune that goes with lloyds tsb adverts: it has a strange way of making me smile whenever I hear it.
2. I fall asleep to coldplay.
3. I love travelling on the train staring out the window plugged into my ipod daydreaming but usually an old granny/granda/bored mother/child decides they'd like to talk to me instead.
4. Everyone says I look like a kid-I can still pay child fare on the bus, well, in Aberdeen, anyway.
5. A boots lady there asked for id me when I was buying aspirin.
6. My favourite film is amelie, I think I'd like to be her in another life.
7.But I'm a complete sucker for any film with a happy ending....
8.I dream of being swept off my feet one day
9. But it's more likely, I trip over my own feet.
10. I'd love a big family but the thought of childbirth freaks me out so I think a general anaesthetic is the way to go. Stuff going natural.
11. I hate being cold. I love sitting reading with the sun on my back. (I think I should emigrate.)
12. I spent a year in Malawi now half of Scotland has been there. What can I say? I'm just a trend setter.
13. I now have a long and complicated relationship with Malawi. So beautiful but so screwed up. Don't get me talking politics. You'll most certainly regret it.
14. I was an au pair for 2 french kids and was a wreck by the end of the summer. Who said it was an easy way to learn french?
15. I love the idea of running. In reality, it's never quite so glamorous.
16. I'm a closet cleaning freak. And love nothing more than a clear out. Certain people may think I've no sentimentality. I say it's more an issue of practicality.
17. I dream of publishing a novel and living an idyllic, wrtier's life in the south of france in an old chateau. In reality, I'd never have the patience, talent or money to do any of these things.
18. I have a soft spot for chocolate chip cookies (but they have to be soft and squidgy in the middle).
19. And for Will Smith too (with stuble) but 7 pounds was a bit too emotional for me. Rugby players don't float my baot but tennis players do.
20. Mangoes are my favourite fruit and was in heaven when I went back to Malawi for my elective in mango season.
21.I love paediatrics but dealing with sick children is the hardest thing I've done.
22. I have an irrational fear of the police even though they brought me back my bike seat after some drunk stole it. A perfectly good use of police time.
23. I am incapable of making decisions (well fast anyway) so I usually miss the boat completely or drive others nuts while I'm thinking.
24. I hate photographs of myself....I always look a bit spaced out with my eyes half shut. But am now beginning to think that must just be how I am.
25.I have spent an hour doing this list while watching scrubs, eating chocolate biscuits and thinking I should be doing work.

the first day

weight: too heavy

studying: going too slowly

chocolate: see weight and you can guess

exercise: dug out bike. making strange noises.

Off again on placement tomorrow. I'm half way through this one so 4 more weeks stuck in the back of beyond then 2 weeks off (or studying, of course, studying) those finals are creeping up a bit too quickly for my liking, consequently I'm in denial. I try to remind myself I always feel better when I run but dragging myself out there in the cold and snow (darn, it's all melted now..another excuse?) is always close to impossible. But this week I aim to get out for a short wee run every day..ok, every 2nd day. Ok, ok, if I manage once this week I'll be happy.

Lunch today with S, we're both single though she's got way more guys in her life than I do, just things aren't working out for her. But I like hearing about all her PR things and various dramas.

The rest of theday was a non starter. I'm slowly realising I'm rubbish on my own. I think too much (usually in a downward spiral).

Early start for the train tomorrow. Will walk to station as part of fresh start. No excuses.

just another...

Almost 5 years ago, someone told me she thought I was like bridget jones, yes, the bridget jones who kept that diary. Yep, Bridget would also be the over weight, rather ditzy, 30 something with a dodgy taste in men too. I still tell myself she meant well. So, 5 years on, as another Valentine's Day passed with no Mr Darcy whisking me off into the sunset, just me falling asleep on the sofa watching Notting Hill with only the trespassing mouse for company, I figure it's time to do something.

So here's my diary, hopefully, not too much a la bridget....