'You might want to turn that lancet round.....'

This, is a 'SAFETY' lancet. Millions of diabetics use them every day to check their blood glucose daily. The reason Ive whacked this in here is because today i had 6/10th of my OSCE. (Oh look, another medical school acronym)... OSCE stands for Observed Structured Clinical Examination and it means you get to don your white coat (not actually allowed in hospitals anymore...) and show the skills you have learned throughout the year/crammed the night before.
We got a brilliant set, no bloody spirometry (technically no blood should be involved...), Lung and heart auscultation(listening)...showing someone how to use a metered dose inhaler, ECG and pulses, CPR, blood pressure and blood sample taking and the handling of blood products...

Mine went OK, its one of the pluses of being a 'Williams', i was at then end of the day which means i get almost an extra day to prepare than your average Anderson or Andrews...(this makes up for the years of going last for EVERYTHING at school...).
The thing with these is that your potential for being able to competently complete the task is 100%, they are simple and we've done them a million times, but you lose marks for small things- e.g. not washing your hands at all, not introducing yourself, moaning that you cant count the ribs of the patient because he/she is too fat, not washing your hands after taking one persons dorsalis pedis pulse (foot) before you take the examiners temporal pulse. you get MINUS points for not putting gloves on before handling blood. I know someone who crashed the ECG machine. don't know how that one works.
Here's MY big mistake.....i almost lanceted myself! what a foooooooooooooooooooool!
The thing with the blood taking station is that you have to talk to a plastic hand. What i mean is that you approach and go 'Here Mr. Hand, let me shake you (joking...), My name is Lucy Williams, I am a first year medical student and Ive been asked to take a small blood sample today. This will be from your thumb, it will hardly hurt, is this Ok?' The hand says yes and then you pick up the lancet, twist that pink bit off and as you can QUITE CLEARLY see in the photo there is an ARROW which indicated where the stabby bit comes out..... I was steaming along until the examiner (who seemed to be quite jolly and up for a bit of banter...) said 'You might want to turn that around, or you might get blood everywhere...then i might pass out and that would be embarrassing wouldn't it'.
So I turned it around and stabbed the plastic hand with it, apologised to it and continued....

Lets be honest, It could have been worse.


At least I put it in the sharps bin once I'd finished....

5 stitches down and call me a doctor....

It is soooo hot in Manchester. As in its only bearable to wear running shorts and a tiny vest top and all the windows in the house that cant be accessed by some scally are wide open. Its summer in the North and I have 2 WEEKS of exams to go. I know, I just know that as soon as I'm free of academia for the summer it'll undoubtedly rain.
I ran the Great Manchester Run last Sunday... 10km for this charity called Depaul UK. Ive never heard of them before but they help out homeless teenagers. since then all I've wanted to do is run. For the first few days my Rectus Femoris' were pretty sore and i couldn't walk downstairs without considerable amounts of shuffling and groaning. Sucks to be me considering I'm in the attic room. It felt really amazing to run with 36000 people though, definitely something Id do again.
However, I haven't been running all week because I've been working. the fear has not appeared but i have got my proverbial finger out now. We have physiology practicals on Tuesday and anatomy and communications on Thursday and then a portfolio review on Friday, then the following Thursday is our SEMESTER EXAM OH GOLLY.
Now physiology involves CPR and taking blood pressure and handling blood products and heart and lung auscultation and that sort of thing. We have 6 stations of that, then on the Thursday we have 2 simulated patients and 2 prosections to work. all of this is the sort of stuff that you can justify as being useful for budding young doctors.
Portfolio is literally the bane of my life. apart from brussel sprouts. Its so EMBARRASSING, one big 'Dear Diary' session for the next 4 years... we have to write reflective pieces on 'probity' and on 'patient interactions'. one massive pile of barf. My piece on probity makes me nauseous.

What makes me feel more competent than working for any of these exams is that t-Ed actually let me take out all 5 of his stitches. He didn't even squeak. He then offered anyone in the room a fiver to eat them. boys are so gross.

The dangers of parked cars...

last night, at about 4 o'clock in the morning my friend 'fell asleep whilst running whilst drunk' and ended up in a&e having collided with a car(parked). i was due to have coffee with said person and got a text saying 'can we make it an hour later. I've got a good excuse i promise'. So an hour later i went round and this person, lets call him 't-ed' was in his tracksuit showing me his chin scar with 5 stitches. A WHOLE 5. so we eventually went for lunch, via the road with the aggressive car on to see if the lens of his glasses was there...he had wondered if he had in some way brain damaged himself when he put them on and one whole half of his world was blurred. no such luck, the lens wasn't there..it turns out it could have come out whilst CYCLING TO THE HOSPITAL. that's right folks. it could have come out when he fell off his bike having decided that cycling to the hospital was an a-ok plan.
We also went via my house which is subsequently and usefully about 3 minutes away from his, to administer- paracetamol, ibuprofen and antiseptic wipes for the war wounds on elbow and hip. Is it wrong to take a tiny bit of pleasure in the wails of a grown man as the alcohol stings? anyway, having dressed the man-scrape we went on our way. I was also very proud to be able to explain the mechanism of the lidocaine, of which 6 injections he had so bravely 'taken on the chin'...
I've shotgunned stitch removal on Friday!!! woooooooo!



In other news, watching medical drama does actually aid learning at medical school-
I had my progress test yesterday, the second of the year, and one of the questions was usefully answered for me the night before by Carter and Ross who were discussing a crazy lady wandering around who hadn't taken her LITHIUM. SCORE!!!!


Totally justifies my dedication to the series....that's right people....for the LEARNING.......




























....and the other learning.....................................

My favourite time of day....

at he moment is right now. Bedtime. I am in bed at quarter to twelve just writing this and then i get to turn the lights out and for SEVEN and a HALF hours i have a perfectly valid excuse for not working! this would have been a blessing for my parents some years ago when i begged to be able to stay up to watch animal hospital which FINISHED at half 8...and then id sit really reallly quietly and (quite stupidly) think they might forget i was there...ah what it is to be young!!

When my alarm goes off an HOUR before im due to get up i trick myself into thinking that im having a lie in, when in fact its half past six and even birds are still asleep. (well at least i cant hear the pigeons coooing away on the other side of the roof)...and then i get up and sit...hoping....wishing...praying that the Fear will come.
I dont know if this is a new thing, or whether my motivation got used up getting in to university (yes i do obviously still want to be here, i just dont want to do any work...) but i CANT be productive until ive got it. THE FEAAAAAAAAAAAAAR. it suddenly grabs your heart and stomach and twists, as your brain races through your ineptitude at your subject and lists all the things you dont know....how an ecg works, what the bony attachments for the diaphragm are, the course of the obturator nerve, the brachial plexus, the origins and insertions of all 20 muscles of the forearm, how to set up a spirometer, where the points are to auscultate the individual lobes of the lungs...hell, i cant even remember if the new guidelines for CPR say that 'nelly the elephant' or 'staying alive' are the best songs to sing to get the correct BPM.
I still havent got it. This doesnt mean that im not working, but i kind of feel like im drifting through my work, whats the rush?
Its the time of year where our library is open 24/7 and people take sleeping bags along with their laptops in order to not lose their spot. The time of year where people go a bit crazy from staying in and working. I havent been to the library once. mainly because biking there with the amount of books ive got to use would probably give me a hernia...and also because all my housemates already go which means the house is empty- basically the library comes to me!
and theres a kettle here.
So tomorrow i'll get up and do my anatomy flash cards and look at some drugs and hope that sometime during the day i have some kind of mental seizure that means i start to feel like my first exam is on monday, and not in 2 months time...

COME ON FEAR I NEED YOU.