mondays

Now that I'm working closer to 9-5, I seem to get that oh god it's monday feeling on a nice lazy sunday evening. Gah. Horrible. But nonetheless I grumble my way round monday mornings and drag my self into work. I spend the morning thinking of the one hundred and one other jobs I'd rather do then by midday or so I've kinda realised I'm stuck with my lot and what the hell am I thinking, just get on with it for christ's sake woman. Then the afternoon goes by and I get so happy at the prospect of home time, anyone would think I was back at school. And here we are. Wishing my life away, one chunk at a time. I'll do that, AFTER my exams, after my results,after 1 st year after 5 th year and so we go; wishing life away slowly; but, surely there's more to enjoy than exams, study, assessments, work. Ha! Wishful thinking. But then I was actually thinking for once and you know perhaps this is just the season of work, of passing exams, of jumping through hoops. Maybe I should just try and enjoy it, rather than fighting it all the time. Just Maybe. I'm game to give the new theory a go. For one thing it has to be more fun!
----------------
Listening to: Martin Solveig & Dragonette - Hello
via FoxyTunes

surreal

I was sat in my first clinic. The phone rang. The receptionist, "A patient has arrived, he asked for Dr.... that's you, right?" Really, me? I caught my breath. It hit me. I guess I am a doctor but somehow this all felt too grown up and the responsibility, WHAT! this can't be true. But it was and it was my responsibility to tease out this guy's issues and provide something resembling a solution. Surreal. And almost kinda fun.

finding my groove

I think I used to think five years and bam, you're a doctor. You learn the knowledge and put it into practice, right? I'm sure you'll agree it's not quite like that. I'm working under a consultant just now who will retire just as I finish the job. He's worked, in various capacities as a doctor for, I'm guessing, 40 years at least. Experience is priceless. Learning how to tackle the concotion of issues patients, relatives, fellow staff, establishments throw up each day is invaluable. As time creeps on, in the space of a year or two, the art of observing, of patience and of calm in the face of chaos, become covetted skills. The art of being able to say, "We can watch, we can wait" even for a moment longer, can bring clarity to a situation looking dire moments before. From cardiac arrest calls to irritatinf relatives to the angry patient that moment, I'm learning is vital. Just as finals are complete at medical school, it's easy to think that's it, but the more I work, the more I realise that was just the very beginning of a long road, a long road of continual learning, adjusting, reviewing, reading, interacting and hopefully, enjoying. Though it times it seems impossible, I'm doing my best to learn from the older folk, they've seen a lot and that counts for a lot.

balance

I used to think if you worked hard, did right, looked after yourself things would be fine. Sometimes I long for that innocence. Medicine is tough. I thought it was tough because of the endless exams, the long hours, the emergencies, the difficult decisions. The hardest part for me is chance. Disease isn't selective, the healthiest folk can be devastated, the survivor can be pummelled again and again by disease, the healthy mind can be engulfed by terrifying thoughts. Chance is the possiblility of being born into a family; broken by abuse, drugs, alcohol. Chance is the possiblility of being born fit and well into a happy home.

I struggle with finding the balance; realising that just because we often see the worst of humanity, it does not mean that this accounts for the majority of humanity. Sometimes it's all too easy to lose it. I hope I can work on finding a happy balance.

to write or not so right?

I come home each evening with lots of little tit bits, little stories...sometimes bigger angsts and I think, I should write all these odds and ends down before a new day starts and a new lot of tit bits take over. But the trouble is I'm knackered. The whole damm time. Well, I guess at work I just keep going. But as I walk home I think of a cup of tea, the tv and bed. I know, how sad is that but I spend my whole day with people: asking me for things, chasing me about things, mad at me for things out of my control and sometimes I just need an hour of peace, of letting go, of drifting off.....

So the stories and tit bits I want to remember are forgotten as the day ends and my body collapses into bed. And before I know it, it's time to do this whole chibang again. The madness, the patients, the relatives, the friends, the nurses, the doctors. And somtimes, just sometimes, I manage to remeber to go to the toilet during the day. Sometimes, I also wonder about renal failure.

Nobody told me that when I applied to medical school...eh?

sunny sundays and yes, deja vu too

Sun's shining and I'm inside. Oo, deja vu...yes I think so. Summer just creeping in = exams! For the 5th year now and for 3 years at school, ouch. Buit nothing for it to keep the head in the books, got too much to lose now. Boy do the stakes feel high.

----------------
Listening to: Beyoncé - Deja Vu
via FoxyTunes

5 weeks

As it says above I guess. 5 weeks till the start of the FINALS. Sometimes it feels possible, just. Other times it seems totally not. Geriatrics block ended this week and I was blessed with a great tutor who gave some well thought, useful feedback (usually a rarity). This weekend I'm off to a revision course, just the surgery part-I did the medicine day back in late March. I'm hoping this will be just as useful. An added bonus is it's down in London so I guess it's a wee break. Strangely enough I'm looking forward to the train journeys the most. And I will try to do some work and not just stare out the window listening to music, one of favourite pastimes...Then onto GP on Monday for the last 4 weeks. Anyway, am off to try and crank the revision up a notch. Hmm.

----------------
Listening to: Beyoncé - Halo
via FoxyTunes

swallowed up

So as the weeks are disappearing, it's a bit of a treadmill, teaching, histories, examinations, case reports, presentations..... Now I've a long weekend off. Somehow I'm finding it tough to just slow down and schedule a break. Still 7 weeks to go but being away from a desk or a hospital somehow is tinted with guilt. Can't keep up like this for 7 weeks otherwise I'll be burned out before I'm anywhere close. Oh, to get that balance. So off to hit some neuro square on the head then maybe a bit of murmurs......man, I can't wait for this to be done.
----------------
Listening to: Katy Perry - Hot 'n' Cold
via FoxyTunes

8 weeks to go here on the finals front so things are hotting up. well, I'm sat here surrounded by piles of notes, a variety of revision books, textbooks and altogether a bit of a mess. As I was procrastinating fiddling away on the computer, I came across a blog which I hadn't read in a couple of months, Babycatcher. It is written by a midwife who worked in Malawi for several years (now in Ghana) and she recounts beautiful stories of her work. At times they are joyful, at times harrowing beyond belief but always inspiring. So as I was grouching and grumbling here I was reminded of the work that is out there to be done and the amazing opportunity I've been blessed with to study. So in other words, it reminds me to suck it up and get on with it. Still, studying doen't always come easy...No 1 Ladies Detective Agency is on at 9pm so another couple of hours then break time! woo hoo!

Spent today at the hospice as part of the introduction to geriatrics this week. We had some palliative care last year too and it pops up, not surprisingly, in general medicine, general practice and surgery too with talk about "do not resussitate"forms etc. Somewhat weirdly I guess I find it quite a fascinating topic but somewhat less weirdly, for a 23 year old, I guess I find I get work myself down thinking about disease, people and ultimatley death no matter how much peaceful, serene deaths are talked about. Medicine is a lot to deal with, your own mortality is pretty much whacked in your face most days and yet you're just starting life so to speak in your early twenties. A Reverend spoke to us at the end of the day about his role as part of the hospice team and talked animatedly about bringing people to a peace before they pass whether they are athetists, devout christians or muslims. Perhaps, we should take something from this and be this frank and open everyday but I guess it wouldn't be life...... the one thing it does, a day talking of dying and death, is put finals in perspective. But that's no excuse for the lack of studying here. I wonder what I'll be thinking on my death bed. What will I regret? What will I be thinking? These years on earth seem short so I guess I should enjoy, make the most of it and get going.....

----------------
Listening to: The Saturdays - Just Can't Get Enough (Radio Mix)
via FoxyTunes

Medicine block exam yesterday so a shock to the system. Need to learn more drugs-interactions, side effects, contraindications etc.....doesn't make for an exciting next few weeks til finals. but as someone kindly, pointed out it's only another 2 moths away so a bit of hard graft is definitely in order. Just wiaitng for a lecture on, funnily enough, pharmacology then it's the weekend and the start of a 2 week break before the next block! Now I'm off to hunt down some good old grey's anatomy dvds...thta's neuro revision...right?

and the show goes on

Saturdays are rapidly becoming the same...get up work, have lunch, watch scrubs, work.....puddle. Sometimes I think Scrubs just nails things right on the head. Not real but hey, they get those emotions bang on (at least from what I've gathered so far in this medicine lark). Anyway, back to real life medicine....doh.

----------------
Listening to: The Fray - How to Save a Life
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?
----------------
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.