1st year medical student coming through..!

Woo proper day of medical-student-ness today!

9am lecture was an impromptu coffee hour cos the lecturer was snowed out of the campus.
An hour or so sat in the library alternately dozing and reading about kidneys. The body part, not the constituent of steak pie.
Trek out to the wilds of the suburbs to meet a patient! Yay! Proper reason to dress up all smart!

*Reminder to self: any earrings that are not studs are lethal around grabby toddlers*

Back to the library for some embryology - lotsa gruesome pics of mangled defective babies.

3 episodes of Scrubs over dinner.

Life is gooood!

Although I could have bloody killed some lads in my lecture today who blatantly didn't want to listen or learn. If you have no interest in what the lecturer is saying, why bother showing up?! Seriously?!

Hormonal imbalances and other Jelly traits...

I LOVE my course right now!!!

After weeks of complete apathy, I'm well and truly head over heels for Medicine again. We've just completed the Endocrine system (well, we have the plenary problem session tomorrow) and are getting stuck into Reproductive.

Literally.

I had my (gloved) hand in a pouch of Douglas today! It's so deep! Ok, so sticking my hand inside a cadaver is nothing new, and it's standard anatomy class stuff, but it was so awesome. Studying reproductive anatomy this week has really made me look at the human body and go "WOW".

The uterus is so cute! Womb Service! Hehe...

Seriously though, I am so up for surgery! I want the anatomy I'm learning to be be daily relevant. I want to spend the rest of my working life slicing into a body cavity and exhaling in wonder at the neatness of everything, the perfect tangle of nerves and vessels, the smoothness of peritoneal layers.

I'm so super loved up with anatomy. The difference between this term and last is that I spent three hours last night watching Aclands, so I actually knew what I was looking at in the DR today. Which meant no blank looks when the green coats started asking questions :) I love being grilled when I know the answers.

And hormones! Ooh! There's so many little abbreviated names and it's crazy thinking in molecular terms again (I thought we left that behind in the Basic Sci module) but it's so fascinating!

Especially with one lecturer who is ace! He's not even a clinician and yet I'm all gooey over him. He knows his hormones though! And he makes it sound so simple; at least to me. Make one, which makes this bit make that one, which makes this tissue do that. So cool!

I can't wait to get to grips with clinical! Learning anatomy and systems in normality is all very well, but I wanna get into patients and pathologies!!! Normal systems are for physiologists.

I'm just totally gushing in this post.
Summary: Jelly goes 'Aaahh' over the body beautiful.

I am NOT the Michelin man...

Not amused by the weather!!! iGoogle tells me that yesterday was -8C and today was -5C! Getting dressed of a morn now involves: tshirt, light jumper, shirt, jumper, hoodie, coat. And walking boots to deal with the snow/slush/death ice.

HomeTown had even more snow, but at least that melts! Gah!

Mooooo-re procrastinating

Wow - a whole month since I last managed to log on and type anything...

January was good, on the whole. A week away with R to celebrate 6 months, filled with adventure tree climbing, swimming rapids, and playing Robin Hood. A week in bed with horrific gastroenteritis. A week of exams. A week of doing absolutely zilch while waiting for the new semester to start.

And why I am back on the ol' blog? Another assignment *rolls eyes*

Discuss the issues surrounding the hazards and risks to health of Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis.

Thrilling. I'm out of spongy cow jokes already. I'm yet to find any decent research that will actually contribute to my paper. I've watered the cactus twice though! And rearranged my alcohol shelf.

Think the time is nigh to wander next door to see flatmate E and bitch about people again... or eat cake.

Fuses and future fear

I am in a state of indecision. Possibly due to yet another of my old school friends getting engaged. It's bridal bouquets and babies everywhere you look among my former classmates.
So it's prompted a bizarre look at the future. Pretty far into the future, actually, considering that the next six to eight years are pretty set in stone - stuck in my university area finishing degree and doing foundation years. No, I'm looking at old wrinklies future time...

I love R. But he has the temper of a petulant toddler. It is evident in his father. And mine. Isn't it said that you choose a man who reminds you of your father?

I hate the strops. The grumps. The tantrums. The sulks. The mardys. The 'I'm going to sit in my bedroom for the remainder of this evening, refuse to emerge, and refuse to communicate even through the bedroom door'.

Keep telling myselt it's all good practice for when the patter of tiny feet is finally heard in my life.

I can't help thinking that I only consider that R and I have a long term future because he is my first proper boyfriend. My first love. My longest relationship. Maybe if I had more experience in this, I wouldn't cling on to R like a liferaft to a Titanic survivor. I would be able to let him go, knowing that there are many more fish in the sea.

But R and I both know that we are not the people to give second chances. We are both on our second chances for minor indiscrepancies, many months past. But for big things? If I walked away, the path back does not exist. And if he left me, for whatever reason, I stand on too many principles to take him back.

The question remains, am I wasting time with R? Is Mr Right hiding just around the river bend, but I have to actually put my oar in the water, and push? Not just blindly float.

Meh, I'm on a down day. It's a week short of our 6 month anniversary. I'll keep floating. Life has waves. I just need it to lift and let me see the horizon again.

Home SweetnSour Home

After many, many hours cooped up in a sardine tin, I am HOME!!!

The sofa has never been so comfy.

Lets see how long it takes for the novelty to wear off and my mum to badger me into doing chores again...

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.