Monday
Psychiatry week! Well, sorta. Warwick scheduled us with a doctor who was on annual leave so we ended up being passed around. We headed for the caludon centre which is the mental health hospital at UHCW for 9am to meet a consultant who had agreed to take us on for the day. We ended up walking back to UHCW to see some patients who were waiting for beds or needed a psychiatric consultation. It was extraordinary to listen to their histories and stories and I could feel my heart breaking for them as they explained why they were at UH. We saw three patients and were extremely grateful to be allowed into the consultation with them as talking about mental health still has a bit of a stigma attached to it and it can be hard to talk. I can’t say much more about the consultations but I came away with a new found appreciation as to how layered mental health can be and it’s not all easily explained away like physical health can often be.
The consultant told us to have the afternoon off and I went back to the medical school to chat with my deputy tutor about how my medication was making me ridiculously tired. I am coming home and struggling to work and practically falling asleep standing up in hospital so I just wanted to chat to her about it. However, there was a bit of agg beforehand so I ended up being a blubbering mess in her office for an hour and a half trying to work through it. Well Done Abbie, Well Done.
In the evening I met with my fellow blogger and med student abi for some hot chocolate and a chance to work through everything that was going on. It was great to have a chat with a good friend and I think the hot chocolate both let us work through everything that was going on that evening. She had just come out of a CBL meeting and I was still working off the back of what was going on earlier that day. I’ve also decided to set up a “hot chocolate therapy” group with another of the medics on campus. I’m looking forward to all the hot chocolate to come !
Tuesday
Day off today. I used it to try to get a doctor’s appointment to sort out my ears. Turns out Im good and healthy, they just seem to like causing me agg. It was nice to have a day off, I used it to catch up on sleep as I was exhausted and get to work on the presentation list for that week. It wasn’t the most productive day, but sometimes that’s ok. I ended up just binge watching TV programmes that evening in an effort to try and switch off from everything going on.
Wednesday
Wednesday we were at GP and IT WAS THE BEST DAY EVER. In the morning I shadowed a GP just sitting in on their consultations and we had so many paeds cases! I was in my element. We had a 6 year old who had an ear infection in which the ear drum looked like it was about to burst. I could relate to them except they were running around and happy as larry. Apparently, kids cope really well with these types of things ! I also got a milestone that consultation, my first GP doodle:
I also got lots of cuddles from them and when they left I felt the happiest I have felt all week. Yup, I think paeds is for me! I also got to see a little 9-month old who had big brown eyes and a head full of hair so that morning was a highlight.
In the afternoon we had our own student lead clinic and I saw my foot patient again and I think just about managed to do a successful consultation. However, it was my second patient whom made the day for me. A mum came in with her three year old and her new baby. I was in paeds heaven. The mum was worried about a rash on her three year old so I got to take their temperature. Turns out mum was a doc herself so this three year old was an expert in this field! Kaludio entertained himself with the baby whilst I examined the toddler with the GP as my rash knowledge is well… non-existent. There wasn’t anything to worry about but I made the toddler a glove balloon anyway, I could not resist.
I came out of that day beaming. After everything that had happened, this day had been amazing and I knew that dropping surgery and going for paeds probably is the best thing for me, even though it was hard to admit it to myself that I was better suited away from the theatre. In the evening I had a pizza catch up with one of my friends who I hadn’t seen in a while. It was nice just to catch up and by the end of the day, I felt the most me I had been in ages.
Thursday
We were summoned to the Caludon centre for 10am and we had some teaching on AKI from an F2. It was really useful especially as although I love the physiology of the kidney, I don’t get on with the diseases associated with them. We also had a skip and hop through addiction, particularly that of alcohol which I could relate to a patient I had seen earlier on in the block so it solidified a lot of the information for me.
In the afternoon we got to sit in on a clinic which had a good turn out rate (something that does not normally happen in psych clinics) and I was able to sit in on patients consultations about their symptoms and medication management. Even though the majority of psych week had been quiet I really enjoyed getting to grips with treatment for certain disorders and was privileged enough to see the “word salad” symptom. It’s incredibly rare to see it and I was incredibly grateful to the patient for letting us sit in on their clinic.
Friday/ Satuday / Sunday
That pretty much summed up the week. We had nothing on friday so I spent the day prepping for teaching the next day. I was teaching the basal ganglia at anatomy day which is one of my favourite aspects of block three. I had nicely set up in a room with my swanky 3 slide powerpoint (as I draw most of my lesson on the whiteboard) and Ollie came and shifted me to a room where the computer nor the powerpoint decided to work. Cheers Mate.
As it was anatomy day, I focused on getting the first years to be able to draw it from memory with the help of some slightly odd mnemonics. I really enjoyed being able to go back to block three and realize that I still had the same passion for Neuroscience as I did before I gave up perusing Neurosurgery. I still find the brain amazing and oddly, I still find Neurosurgery incredible and I will never turn down an opportunity to go and observe. At the end of the morning in my final session I got a hug for my teaching which meant so much to me. I’d gone from thinking about taking a year out of Medicine on Monday, to feeling like I could conquer anything I wanted to after that hug on Saturday. I still am so grateful to be here, yes, some mornings I curse under my breath that my alarm has gone off at 5am because I need to be in for 7am (spoilers for next week) but, then when I get to hospital, I get to see babies being brought into the world, or comfort a patient who’s had to be isolated but has dementia. I keep thinking more and more about when I graduate and become an F1, then an F2 and hopefully one day, a consultant at GOSH (yes I’ve skipped a few steps).
On Sunday I went with my friend Will to IKEA in an effort to have one last plate of meatballs and exercise extreme self-control. The one in Coventry is closing down so we decided to have one last bit of fun. A qoute from Jacob in my year pretty much sums up IKEA after talking about the Corona Virus:
“Coventry can’t have Corona, We’ve already lost IKEA, do they want to hurt us even more?”
Jacob.2020
