Block 4 , Week 5

Monday

What a start to the week.

This morning began in a bit of a hurry because I had signed myself up to go
to the deans breakfast which started at 8 and having woken up at 6, I thought I
would take a nap…. this nap meant I woke up at 7:30.

I quickly managed to throw some clothes on and luckily I’d made my lunch and
my tea tonight before hand. I’ve decided to start taking tea up to the medical
school building, so it means that I am not eating my dinner at 11:45pm at night
instead I’m eating it at 6 so I’m not going to bed on a full stomach.

The deans breakfast was actually really nice and I feel that the group of us
had a productive discussion with the senior staff about what is going well with
the course and what could be improved.

We then hung around for the first lecture of the day which started at 10 and
it was a bit of a review session where I kind of realised that I didn’t have as
much of a grasp on the lower limb as I thought I might have. I’m not too fussed
though because I haven’t actually had the chance to properly go over the notes
so, I think when that is done I will be a lot more happier with the content.

I decided to not stay for the next lecture because this lecturer had previously
had just read off the slides so, I went to a CBL room and set up the tea and
empathy society and then finalised my presentation for community placement.

The society was actually really successful today, we had a couple of staff
from the wellbeing services on campus come up and chat to us medical students.
I think it was nice for people to know that the wellbeing service finally know
how restricted we are on getting to main campus services, and it’s something
that has been brought up quite a lot recently as the main campus have had their
su elections. We actually had a couple of representatives from the su make it
up to gibbet hill through the election week. I made a joke saying ” oh the
SU actually exists?!” and they laughed but one of the guys replied
“yeah well the path up to gibbet hill was a bit of a trek” to which I
just looked at him. I wish I could use that excuse to escape my 9 a.m.
lectures.

After lunch we had the usual anatomy and CBL in the common room anatomy
session we were giving white rubber gloves to draw on the distribution of the
nerves of the hand. I love this as I’d actually started doing something like it
in the anatomy session last Friday. I took some rubber gloves as spares and now
I think I have practically 1/2 of the glove collection from anatomy in my
locker.

I carried this on through the computer room session as there was no point me
carrying out the actual task because I didn’t feel I knew enough to be doing
it. one of the new anatomy professors was hanging around watching me draw on
these gloves adding layer-by-layer all main muscles and nerves, I just hope I
got it all right.

I know I find this technique useful as one of my course mates Tom ended up
in the Toc flat this weekend, because he just wanted to find out more about
accommodation. I begged him to teach me some anatomy tricks so he drew the
muscles of the forearm straight on me, and I can still remember them today so
I’m guessing there’s some tricks of the trade there.

CBL was the usual, it was really quick today as we only had 4 pages to get
through. the team are working well again and we have always joked about trying
to get CBL team of the year. However, my facilitator had their notes out and I
saw that they had circles the word “no” when asked if they were
nominating us. Dammit.

I’ve gone to fetch a parcel from the locker and coming back I bumped into
one of my friends in second year. He did the Revue with me and I haven’t really
seen much of him since then. He is also a bit of a theatre nerd like me so it
was really nice to see him again. I was chatting about how the musical theatre
society at Warwick are performing “dogfight” the musical over summer,
and I’ve been so tempted to audition because I think these songs from it a beautiful,
but I guess exams are a bit more important right now. Oh well, there’s always
next year.

I then decided to stay late in the medical school building to try and get
some work done. Surprise surprise. My usual study partner Sam decided to leave
at 8 because he has a human to go to at home, whereas I have Rolf the cat who
is currently on the mend after being run over by a van earlier this year.

I was a bit hesitant about going home really. We have had reports that
someone had been mugged down by the bus stop outside gibbet hill campus. The
criminals had decided to lure the person away by saying that someone was in
need of help out of sight. I was worried because I obviously cycle to and from
the med school and even though I was going back down to campus and wouldn’t be
passing the bus stop, the thought had been put in my head of someone jumping
out down the path. I’m pretty sure that I would have been perfectly safe but I
just didn’t feel confident about going down the Tocil path this evening.

I was originally going to get the shuttle bus back down to main campus, but
I finished too late for that to happen. Luckily, my lovely medic uncle Will
offered me a lift back to campus in his car.

I think the tiredness of the day got to me as I fell in a bit of a mushy
mood. I am so proud of my year getting to this point, and I know that we will
get through these exams together.

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Tuesday

Final community placement day today, which means the final presentation! I’m happy that we don’t have to do it anymore as they can be frustrating to put together when you have a million and one other things to do.

It also meant that it was the last time we were going to see our clinical tutors in a while. I felt kind of sad as they had been supportive of us over this year and it was always nice to see them at the end of a long day. We got individual feedback on the reflections we produced a couple of weeks back and I was happy to hear that they thought my communication skills were good and that my reflection was strong. Considering I am not really wired that way, I am happy to see my hard work is paying off!

Tuesday evening I drifted back to the med school and managed to get some work done after a long day, although I can feel something brewing in the back of my throat, I hope that it isn’t the bug going round Tocil , it’s the last thing I need.

Wednesday

Yes, indeed it was. I woke up today with my throat on fire and a cough that was sore on my chest. Still, I dragged myself up to the MTC because I had work to do but ended up sleeping on the bean bags for most of the day. I did get some work done but not as much as I would have liked to have gotten done. I ended up just laughing with Daryl, Faith and Abi in the common room, but laughter is the best medicine right ?

In the evening we had our careers in Neurosciences evening which was really insightful with talks from a Stroke doctor and two neurologists. They were inspiring and gave some tips on how to stand out on applications. We were meant to have a neurosurgeon and a neuropsychiatrist but unfortunately their schedules resulted in them not being able to come. I got to chat to my friends in the upper years though and have a discussion about getting involved in research in the upcoming years 🙂

Thursday

Full.On.Lergy. I dragged myself to the MTC for my 9 and 10am lectures as the 10am was looking at the exams coming up including the dates which I now have written into my calendar. It’s terrifying but I know what with dam hard work, it is possible. I had to go home after though as I just felt ridiculously rough which is a shame as I was looking forward to the revision PPD session in the afternoon. It turns out everyone in Tocil has been infected at some point from one person, so currently everyone is being taken down by this one lergy. Laura and I basically spent the afternoon in bed messaging each other about feeling guilty about not doing medicine work even though Laura is basically mid flu and I feel like I need to be in the range of a bowl at all times. Hopefully, I will feel better tomorrow as we have fresh tissue!

Friday

Managed to make it in. I went to anatomy where I understood something! I had a chat with one of our lecturers Jamie about the back plexuses as these have become mushed in my head as they have been brushed over, and being the neurotic person I am , I need to know the details, Jamie is brilliant as his way of teaching can make you feel like even knowing the tiniest of details is a huge accomplishment.

The fresh tissue was incredible, and I got to pull on some tendons to move the fingers and toes. I was surprised as to how strong these things are and I loved being able to sit and understand how the muscles are related to each other in a real anatomical specimen. We had a review of the clinical skills in the afternoon and I managed to grab one of my lecturers James to ask him about managing stress from exams and revision. I wanted to ask James specifically as he knows about not being able to switch off from Medicine and how to best handle it due to the “wiring” of our brains. I still find James helpful, so I feel I have found at least three lecturers here that I can trust and go to about anything. Im hoping that the distinct lack of first years during the Easter break will mean I get the chance to sit down with people such as Jamie and Tunstall to go over things I find difficult. I really want to ace these exams …….

Speaking of exams, this will be the last blog post until we come back from Easter. I wont really be doing much apart from revising and occasionally taking a break. They won’t be interesting if I do them but I am planning on having a video to release each week and keeping the Instagram updated. Please bear with !

Abbie 🙂

Go and check out my Youtube channel for more procastination !

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSzkNY8TnBx28gtB-h7c04ghttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSzkNY8TnBx28gtB-h7c04g

Oh, because Nadir made me promise I would do this before he gave me some Strepsils for my throat this morning : Should also mention F1 starts again on Sunday… There goes my quiet Sunday mornings