The Fear is here.

And shows no signs of waning.

Thankfully the library has finally succumbed to demand and agreed to an extra hour on weeknights. Although the only weeknight before exams start is... tonight. ARGH!!!

Finally got down to the anatomy lab today. I think that induced the Fear. I know NOTHING. I picked up a 'uterus', only for someone to go "ooh, a bladder!" We may only have 2 body regions to learn for this exam, but there's a pretty huge amount of stuff crammed in there! Not to mention Mr Anatomy's obsession with lymph. Bleh.

On the good side, I got my MRI results back! I've fractured the distal tubercle of my scaphoid, and longitudinally fractured my lunate. And according to the (fourth!) set of x-rays, the scaphoid injury is an old one! So much for my claim of never having broken a bone! Ah well, still get my extra time in exams :)

Anything else happened? Erm... nah. As for the outside world, I haven't seen it recently. Ask me again on Wednesday.

Like a phoenix...

Procrastinating like a true med student. So I'm finally here, cooped up in my little room in halls. And I'm not exaggerating about the little. If I tip my chair back, I hit the bed. If I sit on the end of the bed, I kick the wardrobe. I can almost touch both sides of the room at once. I do love it though :) Covered in Zac Efron posters, shelves packed with my books and DVDs (House boxsets are hugely detrimental to anatomy study), fairy lights dangling above my desk... It's my space and no one else's.

And the reason I'm back to blogging? I have to do a mini-presentation on 'Outline the main inequalities in health in Britain' tomorrow morning. I've known this for six weeks. I have 5 papers printed out and highlighted. But no actual written notes... It was all damn perfect til the one paper I thought had all the answers turned out to be based on a Dutch population. Doesn't quite match the requirement of 'in Britain'.

Nearly done with it now. Three pages of prose (never did get the whole idea of bullet points) about the Black Report, child poverty, socioeconomic groupings, and 'why eczema has a higher incidence in the highest socioeconomic classes despite no biological reasoning for this'. And I enjoyed writing it :S

Probably because I actually felt like a medical student, perusing papers from journals to find proof that supported what I wanted to say. Not just Wiki-ing the title and copy-pasting. Add to that the fact that I actually have to trek to the hospital for tomorrow's tutorial and I may as well throw the stethoscope round my neck now.

I love my boyfriend....

The day after Pre-Spain Drinkies (2), H and I were at the pub as normal. It sounds like I'm out every night painting the town red, but honestly, this was one crazy fortnight. It's not normal. I'm still recovering from sleep deprivation...

Anyway, H got a text from S saying he was coming to take us out, and had R with him. Cue H and I getting very excited, then horrified as we realised neither of us had perfume, make up, mints, hairbrush, etc.

I missed the look on J's face when R walked in. Apparently it was a mixture of jealousy and fury.

We went for a drink at 'our' bar, and then when we went to move on to a different bar, we realised that most places in town had shut. So we ignored the normal option (give up, go home) and instead did this.

Drove to Tesco to buy a DVD, wine, vodka, cherryade, cookies, Doritos, dip and Ben & Jerrys ice cream. Then drove to S's to watch the DVD while consuming everything else we'd bought. There's something surreal about eating Phish Food at 2am while watching Blades Of Glory.

But less surreal than realising its four am and that the sun's coming up. So we piled back in the car and drove. Drove for miles, out into the country, looking for somewhere to park to watch the sunrise. Aren't our men romantic?

We missed it. At least, we think we did. We were facing the wrong way, or behind trees, or just totally lost. It was a fun crazy road trip though. By this point it was five. Again, we could have called it a night then.

Nope. We headed over to H's, who lives practically surrounded by fields, grabbed a couple of blankets, and headed to the top of the nearest hill to watch the rest of the sunrise. We saw the first early morning blackbirds. We saw foxes frolicking across the meadows. A sparrowhawk circling the dewy fields. Rabbits leaping from grassy tussock to tussock. And a snail, who tried to invade our blanket. He went for a short flight.

It was so incredibly romantic, to be laying on a blanket watching the dawn chorus with R laying next to me. H and S were a short distance away, supposedly out of sight (although from what S said to me later on msn, he saw plenty of me and R). There's a fantastic video on R's phone of S and H wandering across the field in opposite directions to find bushes to pee in, and then you can hear R and I talking, and then a scream (from me) when S creeps up and puts the snail on R's head. But it captures that morning perfectly. The four of us hanging out companionably, yet having a lovely time with our other halves.

I saw R again the next afternoon (well, I guess it was that afternoon really). He'd had no sleep, having left H's at half six to be at work for seven, whereas H and I had crashed out on her sofa for a few hours. I went to decorate the house. Painting while hungover and sleep deprived is not generally a good idea. L found it entertaining anyway.

And I met R's mum for the second time. I met both his parents the first day I helped out with the house. His mum had turned up while we were wandering in from the garden, arms round each other, and although I wasn't introduced as the girlfriend, it was certainly implied. His Dad may have not immediately approved of me because at the time he appeared I was splattered with paint, as was R. Not much paint had made it onto the walls.

But his mum definitely likes me. Possibly because while R was arguing with her about something, I ignored him and started washing down the brickwork on the front of the house, which she'd been on at him to do for ages. See Mrs R, I'll be the perfect daughter in law. Did I really just say that? Argh.

Basically its all going fabulously. I was round at the caravan last Saturday (because the house is as yet not habitable) and hung out with R and L for a few hours. R and I went for a walk round the village, and then when we got back he asked me out :)

Then we broke up half an hour later.

It wasn't my fault! Much...

L and I were joking about how R was clearly second best because I'd got with S just weeks before. Then I was kidding about, saying R and I were only sharing in Spain because it was either that or two other lads.

R got majorly oversensitive about it. And broke up with me. Mardy arse.

So we both sulked for half an hour or so, while I sat under L's duvet on one sofa and R sat under his duvet on the other. Then much sweet apologising and kissing and making up followed. Which meant he had to ask me out again. Haha.

I am falling in love with R so fast it's unreal. He's the first thing I think of when I wake up, and I don't go to bed without texting him first to say good night. He does the same. The background on his phone is a picture of me on our last date, mucking around wearing a roman helmet at the museum. His profile pic on FB and msn is of the two of us out for a drink. I can't go more than a few days without seeing him. He blew off his man-date with S to hang out with me tonight so we don't spend the entire weekend apart.

We're quite coupley. He feeds me jaffa cakes. I change the settings on his phone. He lets me pack my excess baggage in his suitcase for Spain. I talk about him non-stop at work. His friends know everything about me. I refer to him as 'the boyfriend'. When we're together we're always touching, holding hands, hugging, kissing.

I love how we can go from a really romantic kiss to wrestling on the floor, from holding each other close to tickling, hand-holding to thumb-wars. We just click. He doesn't mind me going off on random tangents in the middle of conversations, whether its about umbrellas or some crazy idea for winning the apprentice. He mocks me for everything, but is quick to say sorry and kiss me if he oversteps the mark.

We have the nuttiest conversations about everything. Tinkerbelle wings on humans, stealing roadsigns, hats, just random crazy ideas about nothing. Occasionally now I'll make a comment when I'm talking to another friend and they'll look at me as if I'm cuckoo, and I have to remember that not everyone understands the conversations R and I have.

I don't care. This is my own little world, and right now it has R in it. I'm trying to be oblivious to the fact that this ends in September, that I wouldn't trust him being so far away and that I wouldn't cope with being away from him for so long. I know we're only been together officially for 6 days, but I can't stop myself.

I want to copy that scene from A Walk To Remember. When she says 'Promise me you won't fall in love with me'....

Reflections... ...snoitcelfeR

I'm starting to seriously question whether I can cope with Medicine. I don't think I'll have issues with it intellectually. In fact, I cannot wait to start with the textbooks and labs and research journals...

But I do worry about coping emotionally.

I've been a volunteer on a medical ward at my local hospital for fourteen months. I love most of the staff, and occasionally I enjoy the afternoons I spend there. I'll admit that I relish the afternoons when the F1 on call adopts me and lets me shadow for a few hours (last time, I got to listen to aortic regurgitation! Whoosh! Whoosh!). Mostly I clean stuff, and tidy up, and run the odd errand. Mostly to send sample off to the lab, or fetch stuff from other wards, or, on special occasions, to get ABG results (I got to use the machine myself! I think the bloke who demonstrated it thought I was just a dumb doctor, rather than clueless volunteer), etc.

There is the occasional shift where I come home emotionally drained.

Memories of spending hours with a chap who had advanced Parkinsons, trying to persuade him to stay in his chair. He was so strong that once he was stood, I was powerless to stop him, so it was a case of prevention by distraction. I can still see him turning slowly around the centre of the ward, dancing with his wife.

A succession of shifts doing one-on-one work with a bloke in his 50's who'd had a stroke. He was physically fine, just prone to confusion and wandering. I used to sit in his side-room with him and read Heat magazine, or play draughts, or chess. We'd sit for hours and listen to the music chart on the radio. I'd mock him gently for wearing his trackie bottoms half-way down his bottom like some young chav.

And today.

I heard the yells and screams from the staffroom, where I'd escaped to in order to text R (and S - we haven't been for that coffee yet). I could also hear moo-ing. I returned to the ward to find an exasperated bank nurse. She had a distressed old dear in pain from terminal cancer that was refusing to calm down.

I spent the following two hours sat with this woman, holding her papery thin hand, stroking the velvet skin, softly in fear of tearing open the fragile veins. Telling her everything was ok; telling her that she needed to stay in bed to gather her energy; telling her that the nurses were looking after her, doing their best to get her well again.

I could see the tumours. A massive swollen abdomen, like a full-term pregnancy. A mass the size of her head protuding from her chest. Every so often she would shift, writhing from the pain in her bones, riddled with metastases.

She refused her tablets. Refused the soluble paracetamol I proffered. And sobbed. Cried. Dry tears, with a desperate plea in old eyes. Help me. Let me go. Let me die. And begging, in a low mutter 'I give up. Let me die. I just want to go. Let me give up. Let me die. Help me. You're a volunteer. Help me with this please. Just help me die.'

She'd spent the early afternoon telling every other member of staff to go away. Only once did I get told to leave, and that was when, against my better judgement, I was trying to get her to drink the paracetamol while the nurse gave her a Clexane injection. Every offer of tablets, painkillers, insulin; all met with a polite, but firm 'No thank you.'

She drifted in and out of sleep by the end of my shift. I sat by the bed, one hand gently clasping hers, my smooth tanned skin against her wrinkled bruised. Her eyes, once bright with sparkle, were dull, half-closed. I read, analysing an article that a nursing student friend had had published recently in a prestigious journal. I was thinking of my future, of a career in medicine. She was thinking of the past. She has no future.

One thing she said will stick with me for a long time. 'You don't know what it's like to be like this'.

She's right. I never want to experience the pain of metastatic cancer. I don't want to pass away in pain. I don't want to be so alone at the end that a volunteer sits with me.

But, when I get to that point, I want to be that defiant. I want to be as polite, yet firm. I want to wind the nurses up, yet be the type of person that they still care about even after their shift ends.

I don't know if I want to die on my terms. It got me thinking about euthanasia, and I don't want to go into it here, because I will just go round and round in circles, but how is it fair that I can walk out of here because of a petty argument and kill myself if I want to, yet a lady who has lived her whole life and wants to end the pain that she's in, can't?

I left her asleep, calm. Serene, compared to how I'd met her earlier. The nurses thanked me. I wanted to thank her, for letting me in, allowing me to see beyond 'death by cancer' and learn.

It's still haunting my mind. There is no way of walking out of the hospital doors, leaving everything there. I bring that emotional baggage home.

How do I cope with this? Will this get easier to deal with? I don't want to end up as an emotionless drone just to save myself from falling too deep into the lives of my patients. Is it humanly possible to emotionally connect with another human being and then walk away unattached?

I don't want to lose myself in the emotional trauma of the job, though...

Never volunteer, always delegate

My bestest buddy H is away travelling in Asia for several weeks. So guess which numpty volunteered to organise our summer holiday while she was away?

Never again, I swear.

The logistics of dates and people was sorted before I was handed the reins, so it wasn't supposed to be complicated.

Have you ever tried booking flights for eight people? Of which you've never met three of them? Also including two who are away at uni? And one who can't pay until the end of the month? Oh, and one who only needs a flight home as he's meeting us in Spain?

Nightmare.

"Never mind the patients, this is giving me mental health issues"

^My colleague, trying to figure out if some patient really had a history of psychosis.

I spent all morning with brain-ache. I thought I'd got my head round the Mental Health stuff I'm doing at work, but it seems I haven't. Of course, I pick the week that my supervisor is on holiday to become a doofus.

It doesn't help that the full extent of my medical knowledge on this consists of personal experience and google.

But it was a great way to spend four hours today, looking like I was working really hard but actually just reading through patient's notes. I think I've perfected the art of looking busy.

So the product of four hours work? Three emails sent out, 4 pages of notes written, and one quarter-hour meeting with a colleague to try and decipher the damn thing.

Meaning the most productive thing I've done all day is watching Ashley Tisdale vidoes on YouTube.