and so it begins...

Today is the day. Months of preparation and planning have gone into sorting this trip.

The last couple of days have been exhausting. Saturday involved an early start to hire a transit van, this was followed with a couple of hours loading our stuff into it. We then drove to my home town before unloading the van, after a very long day we returned to our now almost empty flat. Sunday involved another early start to return the van before yet more loading, this time into my car which i then drove back home. I then had to get a packed train back to our flat for one final night.

This morning we said goodbye to our flat, which barring pigeon disasters has served us well. We handed in the keys and sorted our utility bills, we kept quite busy up to a point but the day began to drag... We dont leave until 6pm. Even then its only to london! I'm sat here in the airport just waiting for time to pass...

First stop Bangkok, Thailand. Here we go.....

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Going Up In The World

4th Year is officially over and done with! I guess that makes me a 5th year! Shitters.

The year concluded this week with 2 mammoth days of everyone presenting their project option. This involved about 40 people talking, for about 5 minutes each (it was supposed to be strictly 5 minutes but there was a mistake in the timing thing which meant everyone had 6 minutes! Ha!) Anyways, my turn came and went without any problems, my presentation was ok and I think I managed to answer the questions. Even my busy supervisor managed to make it which was nice of him. All in all, it was all quite interesting although it began to drag a little towards the end. The worst thing about it was the free lunch, what a pathetic attempt it was. We're always given free lunch at the end of OSCEs but it usually consists of atrocious prawn croissants. This time I couldn't even tell what it was so I stuck with 2 baps and some ham. And the cake?! Don't even get me started, I think it was supposed to be black forrest although you couldn't tell! It was awful, the sponge had about as much chocolate in as my left big toe! (Bloody neurology meetings always get a big juicy chocolate cake WITH CREAM! I often acquire a bit on the sly pretending I'm a neuro doc) So that was a mammoth disaster.

Anyway, yesterday ended and slowly people drifted away. Some of these people I won't see, probably until finals, most of which I won't see until January and all of which I won't see until the end of October. (5th year is very scattered, we're all on electives at different times and at different places) Being the socialite that I am, I decided against going to the pub and decided playing pool would be a far better option and so that's what we did. Suddenly the realisation that we're now 5th years began to dawn on us (helped by a huge brown envelope labelled "tlm, Year 5 Medical Student" No longer can I fall back on the excuse that "I'm only a 3rd year", or "only a 4th year", I'm expected to know stuff. Next year should be fun, I've got a cool elective and some great placements.

And that was that, the end of another year at medical school. 4 down, 1 to go. For me, the next one sort of begins on Monday when I leave for pre-elective travelling. Everything has come together and seems to be sorted out. We just have to finish packing up our cosy little flat (which at the moment is crammed full of full, half-full and empty boxes), move all the stuff, and then we're ready for the off.

I even managed to sort out, at the very last minute, the donation of a fetal heart Doppler from Huntleigh Healthcare, very kind of them indeed. I'm sure it will be much appreciated, that is if UPS decide to deliver it today...

Testing Blogger Email Publishing

Hopefully this will work ok?
If it does, elective blogging is a realistic possibility.

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Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

NO SPOILERS IN THIS POST (IN-CASE PEOPLE HAVE NOT FINISHED IT YET)

And so, in a day (yesterday) that began with me composing a parody of part of the London Underground song by Amateur Transplants (I'm sure most of you will have heard it)

Where the fuck's my fucking book?

Royal Mail...
Royal Mail...
They're all lazy fucking useless cunts

It got to 10 00am and my Amazon pre-order of 2 copies of the Deathly Hallows had not arrived. Both me and missbliss we're getting fidgety, we wanted our books dammit! We decided to take a short trip to Asda to buy 2 copies at £5 each. At last we had our copies.

We got home and began to read, we read some more. We stopped for a crisp break, then we read more, it was sort of a race between the two of us but I got fed up of reading fast everytime I fell behind. A brief lunch break interrupted the flow, I decided to check the post to see if royal mail had got their act together and was surprised to find one of those notes which are left when you're not in and the package won't fit through the door. This was apparently delivered at 11:00am, hmm, they could have at least rung the god dam bell surely? We were in all the time! Now this is either another 2 copies of Harry Potter (which I'll be sending back to Amazon) or a replacement mosquito net. If its not Harry Potter then royal mail are even worse than I thought!

Anyway, I'm so glad we went to Asda and after a day reading we finished the book at about 9PM last night. I thought it was amazing, although I want to know more about what happens next (another book please JKR), missbliss thought it was 'all right'.

But that is very probably the end of a very long journey, quite sad really.

Life is gooooood.

1) missbliss is back from Devon so I'm not bored and lonely anymore
2) Research project finished and handed in
3) 5 minute presentation is prepared for Wednesday
4) Saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yesterday and it was AMAZING!
5) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out TOMORROW! And I'm SO excited about it!
6) We're leaving on our elective/holiday a week on Monday (I'm starting to think that I really should know some medicine first)
7) Everything is falling into place for said elective
8) I've addressed the problems I had with my recent OSCE results (see The Real Little Medic) (if you don't have an invite, drop me an email and I'll see if you're allowed)
9) I passed my recent exams well and have no more until finals!

So yeah, all is good at the moment. Bring on the end of term on Thursday and final preparations for our elective. Oh, and moving house in between. Busy, but exciting times.

To all those who read it, enjoy Harry Potter. I know I will

p.s. For those of you that were worried about missing me and missbliss (I know there will be at least 1 of you) for the 2 and a half months that we're away, I've worked out how to post here via email so we might be able to keep you updated, although goodness knows how regularly!

Hardcore

No this isn't a blog about porn your dirty people (Judging by some of the Google searches which bring people here some people will be disappointed that this isn't porn)

Anyway, hardcore, yes that's me for the last 2 days. And at last I can tick a very large box on my to-do list. My project option/research project is done (when I say done, I mean pending the approval of a complete draft by my supervisor) There maybe minor changes to make, hopefully nothing too important. Now I just have to make a 5 minute presentation about it.

For this deadline I've actually been quite organised. I mean I've had lots of time doing not a lot, but when I've wanted to I've worked bloody hard. Today for instance, I got to the computer cluster at 10:15am and didn't get out of my chair until 8:20pm. I even printed it all out and read through it for mistakes and readability, something I never normally do. It doesn't even have to be handed in till Friday so I can relax a bit now and enjoy the thought of not having to get stressed as the deadline approaches.

I'm actually really pleased with it. I've not actually found a great deal and some of my discussion is a bit of a mish mash but I've enjoyed it (even that statistics! - well, some of them). And I have found some interesting things, well, interesting from my point of view and maybe my supervisors but probably nobody else. It has been really useful experience and I'm sure it will come in very handy when it comes to research later in my career.

I think my brain is a bit fried now so I'm going to go and chill with my banana milkshake, read the Sunday Times and watch some scrubs.... goodnight all.

To-Do Lists

I often see junior doctors frantically running around with their pockets crammed full of paper and notes scribbled on all sorts of different things. These bits of paper can include blood results, investigation requests or patient details taken over the phone after being bleeped for the millionth time. It is often said that the most important scrap of paper carried by junior doctors, or indeed any doctor is their 'to-do list', anyone who has spent time with a junior doctor should know it well. A beautifully (if not neatly) presented list of, among other things; who needs bloods, who needs fluids, who needs other investigations and who needs a discharge summary done, each item followed meticulously by a little tick box to indicate when it has been completed. It can a disaster of apocalyptic proportions if this bit of paper goes missing and I've seen a few doctors searching frantically for this list which seems to define the working lives of junior doctors.

And so, in preparation for this, I've long been using my own 'to-do' lists, although admittedly without the wonderful tick-boxes, (I find scribbling out to be more satisfying.) At the moment my list is huge, it is longer than.....erm...well, its long! Full of necessary tasks which accompany leaving the country for the best part of 3 months, in fact, we may as well be going to Mars, it is so remote. Cancel this, cancel that, change address for the other, blah, blah, blah. Combined with; trying to organising moving out, finishing off my research project (which is starting to stress me out just a little, especially when 3 patients have to be deleted which messes up your statistics so they need to be done again, although at least I know what I'm doing stats wise now.) I don't seem to be doing much scribbling on my list, and for each thing that I do scribble out, 3 more things get added to the list! Then I start to get neurotic about having missed things off which mean I'm going to come back to a court summons for an unpaid gas bill or something just as stupid. At least I have someone to take care of my emails and stuff in-case of any unexpected foundation application deadlines which may come and go whilst I'm away.

Who thought going on holiday could be so stressful? Oh, and if anyone has any tips on where I can find a fetal heart ultrasound for free, in the next 3 weeks, to take to the hospital, let me know. (One company have offered me a huge discount but I was hoping for a little more) Oh, and if possible, they want some anti-fugal medication too for ringworm...help.

No More Exams Untill Finals!

Today is results day and i'm very pleased to announce that I passed! I actually did pretty well, a lot lot better than I expected.

Unfortunately there were no academic rankings to go with the results.

Anyways I passed and for that i'm extremely grateful but iis still a stupid exam in my opinion. One of the main things is that now I don't have any more exams until finals. Wooo! (a scary thought)

A little bit of everything...all rolled into one!

Back from short trip to Dublin which was very welcome indeed. It rained lots...and lots...and again some more but other than that it was great! Plenty of Guinness was drunk, although not by me since I don't like it.

July is rapidly becoming the most hectic month ever, elective departure is just 26 days away with preparations for that in full swing. In the midst of all that i've a presentation to prepare and do, my research project to finish, a flat to move out of...arghhh where will it stop.

Exam results are out on Friday, whoop. Could be interesting. (I wonder if they'll surprise us too by telling us our academic rankings, I do hope so!)

My research project is apparently good and nearing completion however the database has been changed as a couple of mistakes were found which renders most of my statistics out of date. grrr. At least now I know what i'm doing it'll only take me 10 minutes to sort it out.

Off to Devon this weekend for more holiday goodness.

Also, only 16 days to Harry Potter book 7. Like cal I'm also uberly excited as is missbliss, wooooooo!!!! How exciting so I'll have that to read that amongst all the July craziness.

Top o' the mornin' to ye

Its been a hard weekend, I've spent the best part of 20 hours sat at my computer doing stupid stupid statistics and writing thousands of words. My brain is well and truly fried by numbers and I've got RSI in my hands from typing so much!

After all that, I've found very little, if anything interesting. So much for my stupid research. All that data and most of what I've got isn't statistically significant. (I'm well and truly fed up of that phrase too!) I'm fed up with P Values, fed up with means, medians, chi squared, t-tests and all the other rubbish that comes with statistics. Oh well, at least I've done the best part of my project option now. 2 and a half weeks to go to tinker with it and see if I can make something useful/vaguely exciting.

The end of term is in sight, the end of my project option is finally in sight and its less than a month till elective departure!!!!!!!

Tomorrow I'm going to Dublin for 2 nights with missbliss, I need it after this weekend, I literally haven't stopped working. It hasn't been too bad, once you get in the zone you're ok. Yesterday I didn't move out of my chair for 7 hours solid! (I had missbliss running around after me getting me drinks/bacon sandwiches!

Anyways, I'm looking forward to a nice short break in Dublin tomorrow, and a trip to Devonia next weekend whilst finishing off my project in between.