Block One Week Three (#4)

Monday

Dragged myself out of bed today with the rain hammering down outside. Just about managed to stay awake during the first couple of lectures as I am pretty sure the meds are not helping my concentration despite having interesting content being taught. We also did some clinical skills on the Sunday evening as I had missed my session due to being in the hospital. Shout out to my flatmate Laura for helping with that one.

img_20181014_215150 — It took us half an hour to figure this out….

CBL was interesting but I didn’t feel quite as in the loop as normal due to missing session one. The patient had Ulcerative Colitis and we were treated to some endoscopy images right after lunch. I enjoy Monday afternoons as we have anatomy teaching in which there are three different stations in which you circulate between. I really enjoy this as its nice to have a change of scenery and the activities change very half hour. We have a “hands-on” station where we carry out labelling and puzzle anatomy pieces and then move to do a game of anatomy Jeopardy and then finally a seminar with the Prof of Anatomy. I find anatomy hard and sometimes the blobs just all look the same but it is my favourite topic at med school by far. Today we covered some nervous system anatomy so I was particularly happy.

A bit of a bonus with the vending machine which appears to love taking med students money here as it decided not to release my flapjack but, with some “gentle” persuasion, I not only gained my flapjack but also a digestive biscuit thing…. bonus!

Another session of peer support tonight which I am looking forward to. I have also come to the realisation that my TO DO list does not have to be completed in one day. I tried to get through 10 things yesterday and only did about three but as long as I get things checked off each day, I will be happy.

Tuesday

Bit of a rough day today. It had started out by being nearly attacked by geese in the morning on the walk in, should have taken it as a sign and gone home. I had got to the end of the day and hit a bit of a low point. It didn’t help the fact that the antibiotics are currently zapping all my energy so I just ended up staring at a computer for an hour to kill time before the revue auditions.

The revue is an annual variety performance put on by WMS students where we raise money for charity, this year being street doctors. I got to do a bit of acting and singing again which had been something I was missing so I left the med school on a slightly happier note than I had entered it on.

Called my mum to wish her a happy birthday and ended up forcing myself into the library to do some work and ended up staying till 11:30pm. Great for the work, bad for my sleep.
Wednesday

I had been looking forward to my lie in today as I was exhausted from the week before but Warwick decided that a 7:30am fire drill was what we needed in life, so I found myself outside in my baggy PJ’s wishing I was back in bed.

I had decided to head back to bed after which was a bit of a mistake as I ended up wasting my morning and did no work before hospital training. This proved to be a fun afternoon of learning basic clinical skills such as hand washing and CPR with a few videos thrown in. One to mention is the UHCW hand washing hop which I don’t think I will ever forget for as long as I live …. which I suppose is a good thing really.

Thursday

I had been looking forward to this day all week. In the evening we had the infamous “Doctors and Nurses” social in which the whole medical school and some F1’s dress up and regret the next morning 😀

The men dress up as nurses and the girls as doctors, I decided to give myself the evening off and a group of us headed to Tescos to get some last minute costumes for the boys. Safe to say it was the strangest clothes shopping trip I had ever been on. –

I may have drunk a tad too much …. a lot too much but it was one of the best evenings I have had in ages.

Friday

Somehow I had managed to find myself on the 6:20am bus to the hospital to make it for my 8am lecture and I have to hand it to my year, there were more people there than I was expecting. We looked at the human tissue act and how it impacts organ donation and education donation which was a really interesting topic and I am glad I had got myself there…. even if I have had only 1 hour and 45 minutes sleep.

Clinical skills were slightly different today as we practised taking histories from a “patient”. I had already met the actor in a different context at WMS which I can’t go too much into due to application procedures but I was having some severe PTSD 🙂

I was nervous but apparently, I had done a good job and my eye contact was good, so I am quite proud of myself and I am looking forward to practising more with the actors in the future.

Went for my occupational health after and I’ve had to delay my jabs by a week to make sure my ear has fully healed and the infection cleared.

Anatomy was interesting as always and I found that I had the confidence to palpate our model today so progress has been made. We got chatting to the consultant at the end and he was talking us about murder techniques in china where they poke a small rod into someone’s spleen making it look like they had just bumped into them. The victim would die 4 hours later and the murderer could disappear without a trace. So cheerful way to end the day!