braaaainnnn draaaiiinnn....

''The brain makes up 2% of a person's weight. Despite this, even at rest, the brain consumes 20% of the body's energy. The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. The average power consumption of a typical adult is 100 Watts and the brain consumes 20% of this making the power of the brain 20 W''

My brain has become an ABSOLUTE MACHINE. Its actually kind of annoying. When i was revising it would decide when it would work...
9am-
Me-come on brain, we've had coffee, now lets start thinking..
Brain-no
Me- right, well we will have a shower and maybe the caffeine will have kicked in by then.
Brain- Try me.

and it goes on. It tells me its stopped listening by making my eyes ache at the back and going a bit fuzzy around the temporal region, then i try and remember what I've just read and it cackles at me.
This is when i know i need a break.
But still, I've trained it to know it needs to intake information at every moment of the day. During revision i would work solidly post shower, stop for half an hour lunch, an hour for dinner and then work until when Brain then did the Windows Shutdown procedure at which point i had approximately ten minutes on 'power save' mode to get into bed before i collapsed into a deep sleep.
Undoubtedly in the morning i would wake up having dreamt about whatever i had been cramming into every nook and cranny in my mind and have ONE WORD just there. going round and round.
'vasopressin', 'vasopressin', 'vasopressin' etc etc etc etc until i found a medical dictionary and looked up the word and placed in on the right brain shelf. and then the cycle of the day continued.

The thing is, i have honestly never been so stressed about an exam in my life. towards the end of the revision period I'm talking absolute exhaustion but a complete inability to sleep. the shakes. headaches. weight loss. the works.

The night before the exam I did the mock paper online, one question was:
The psychosocial model of stress indicates that stress
A. can be interpreted as the objective response to excessive stimuli
B. is a specific response of the body to a specific demand
C. is caused by over-exposure to life events
D. is unaffected by daily life
E. occurs when perceived demands outweigh personal resources

The answer is E.
My brain had given up listening to me and gone into hibernation.
And then i sat the exam and my brain went 'nah nah nah nah nah nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...i was listening even when you thought i wasn't'. i dumped all my knowledge onto the paper and it seemed to fit the questions.

My problem is now post-exam my super efficient brain is............SOOOOOOOO BORED!!!!!

I cant win.

'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.

'These are my confessions.......'

In the words of the oh so wise RnB artist Usher, these are mine...


here we go....




I. Hate. Medical Students.
i think i obviously have to quantify this, because they surely cant all be bad can they? They aren't. I have some very good friends in the medical school but to be honest, i tend to gravitate towards the non-typical variety of people.
It is so bad that i cringe when i tell people i am a medic..not because I'm not proud to be training to be a doctor, don't get me wrong, i am, immensely, its just that peoples reactions would, i can guarantee you, be better if i said i was a binlady.
Its not an overt reaction; but it generally can be recognised as one of three:
1) 'ohhh, you must be reallllly clever. So much more than me' HOW DO YOU REACT to that??? do you say, 'well, yes actually, and more dedicated to the greater good, and I'm probably more responsible too'? No, you don't. because you have probably just met this person and don't know that. plus also you shouldn't be so bloody arrogant.
2) 'HAHAHAH BAD TIMES 5 YEARS AT UNI!!! do you cut up dead people? whats it like? tell me tell me tell me!!!' thanks for the reminder about all the time and money I'm spending on my course. and actually its 6 YEARS get it right. and yes i do cut up dead people and its actually become quite normal. yes i am a bit weird for saying that.
or
3) they just raise an eyebrow because they have a preformed idea about what you will be like and they want to make a quick exit.
This isn't my problem. I know that. But the thing is with this is, its what I DO when i meet medics.
The reputation medics hold is self perpetuating.
I know medics who have announced that they think medics should be served in bars before other people??!?!? what sort of mentality is that? where even is the LOGIC in that? you re a medical student, you shouldn't be in a bar, get back to your books.
And i know that for a fact, at stage 1) some people would answer that 'yes' they were clever. probably more so than whoever was asking. It is this kind of arrogance that makes the action of 3) almost justified.
Also, medical students think they are more fun than other people. they think they can drink more, they like exclusive socials with only other medics, they form cliques within the medical school that are impenetrable.
I know i need friends who are medics because at the end of next year everyone who i know and love who isnt in my school will leave. i know i need support from people who are doing what im doing and who understand what it is like but i look at my year as a whole and there are decidedly few people who i would let near me with anything more than a pair of tweezers.
I think I'm probably quite snobbish about this- it is unfair to make such sweeping judgements but i cant help myself. I really struggle to think of my class as doctors without muttering a few words to Hippocrates to ensure he spares the patients they encounter from too much insult.
Many of the students in my year were privately schooled, many live at home in or around Manchester, or go home at weekends for washing and nutrition. this is me stating a fact and it is this that helps me understand the mentality of some of them.
I have known it that people come in to our PBL sessions on a morning drunk from the night before, i have overheard it said that people who do life sciences shouldn't use the library in the medical school, despite the fact that there are lectures for many other subjects in the same building.
This is why i am embarrassed. it is the unfounded elitism of a group of people who raise themselves above others based on THEIR interpretation of their own self-importance.
Apart from this being selfish and self-righteous, it is the exact opposite of the characteristics needed within the medical profession...
we are trying to introduce a new breed of medical professionals who have been trained in communication skills, who have had patient contact from the start and understand the dynamic of a ward. Gone (hopefully) are the days of the misogynist consultants, the old boys and their set ways...but all i see is a group of 18-19 year olds who lack the basic humility to realise that their job may be well paid (eventually....) but entails years of dedication, hard work and compassion.

At the start of this year we had the 'you are different from everyone else' lecture. It was one bigging us up. Bigging up our intellect and our potential. It also mentioned professionalism and how we have different responsibilities to everyone else. I think that bit got ignored.


The good medics I know are amazing. They are kind, funny, intelligent and hard-working and i would have (almost) no qualms about any one of them operating on me in a time of need (hippocrates forbid!) I guess these are the people i need to concentrate on.....I also need to concentrate on finding a way of avoiding the 'what course do you do..?' question......


Maybe I'll start hanging out at medic only bars. Its the only solution.

Stuffed.

I am.so.full. Im back in Mtown and i went to dinner with those housemates that are in the country. (screw you boys in canada/ prague..'boohoo im missing my exam'- shutit) Im back in student-mode. eat EVERYTHING you can because you never know when your next meal may be. (entirely an exaggeration. mine will be at 7.30am tomorrow). The cupboards are full too though (thanks mum) and the car was full on the way home as ive tried to half move out to save giving myself a hernia in a few weeks when i actually have to decamp from Number 35....
I have been at home for 3 WHOLE BLISSFUL weeks. I have done practically no work except for a few afternoons in the park with my 'integrated pharmacology' textbook for company. This is a guilty pleasure of mine and it is my internal snob that admits this....i kinda love people looking at me with my textbook sunning myself while all the crusties are dossing around with their circus skills...
Anyway...i think my mother at least would contest that i have not learnt anything- i challenge you with this-
NEVER INJECT VASOCONSTRICTOR DRUGS (epinephrine) into YOUR PENIS FOR FEAR OF GANGRENE. boo yah. i know that fact offf.by.heart. mainly because i sent it as a text to all my friends that would understand it because i thought it was funny.
The easter holidays are actually a horrible invention- They create a false hope of summer even though theres this nagging in the back of your mind reminding you that you have 4 weeks left of lectures and 3 weeks of EXAMS before you can truly bask in the glory of the english summertime.
SO, what have i done in these 3 weeks then? well, been out 3 whole times. Ive (re)discovered that a cider hangover is probably the worst sort of hangover that there is. and (re)drinking on it the next day in order to (re)go out is an awful idea.(except for if going out involves 8 banterous boys. then its a great idea and a lot of fun) Ive been to the dentist- (LUDICRISLY OVERPAID). I re-read a book called 'Trust Me I'm a Junior Doctor' that has re-scared me about my FY1 year.
I got to catch up with my homegirllllssssssssss.
I watched UP. Its my favourite film ever. After The Crimson Pirate. And The Holiday.

So basically, im sat at my desk attempting to digest, checking to see if my timetable has reduced in the 20 minutes since I last checked. It hasnt. 9-5 tomorrow. booooooooo. (yesyes, i know, in the REALLLLLL WORLD everyone does that every day blah blah. well by signing up for uni you expect to bypass the real world for up to 5 years so shhhh!)
At my left hand is my physiology manual. Tomorrow were learning CPR so DONT WORRY if your heart unexpectedly stops in my prescence (after tomo) i will be able to break all your ribs, slobber on your face and hopefully keep it pumping until someone comes along to tell me that you merely fainted.
At my right hand side a bag of ground coffee with extra caffeine (how is that even possible??) that i was given as a gift...i think i may have let slip to the people who gave it to me that my trips to the park werent THAT effective....apart from the gangrene thing.


Im just going to make myself some kind of digestion promoting drink as i feel like a beached whale.

And check my timetable one last time.

So until next time kids, watch where you stick those needles.