Things i've been pondering this week...

7

7th December 2007

18 Days to go till Christmas

tlm fact: Despite my blogging name; The Little Medic, i'm not actually that little. I'm actually almost exactly 6ft tall.

1) Do swans have arguments? Swans pair for life, and there are a couple on the pond at my hospital. I've spent many an hour this week wondering if they argue with each other in their swanny ways. (This is mainly because they've spent most of the week at opposite ends of the pond which is unusual.)

2) I've become obsessed with the time it takes for my journey to hospital. It is just over 40 miles and I usually set off at 7:00am or so (8:11am by my car's clock which i've yet to put back an hour for daylight saving time and which is always fast anyway - i'm never late for anything!) Its virtually all motorway and i've been obsessed with doing the journey in 45 minutes. I managed it this week but now I'm determined to squeeze a few extra seconds to the extent that I'm even obsessed with the traffic lights and trying to get a clean run through them. I know..... i'm strange

3) I went to the doctors this week with missbliss and unknowingly had my stethoscope in my pocket. About half way through the consultation she noticed it and asked if we were both medics. I found the whole consultation quite hilarious, felt slightly patronising but only because the GP was trying to explain things in the very simplest of terms.

4) Thank god its Friday.

Just 1 more week of gastro before Christmas and on Friday I have to make a presentation on diarrhoea, joy. I'm still really enjoying the placement although the house officer isn't quite as good. I am absolutely dreading after Christmas, 8 weeks of community, I've been hearing exceptionally bad things about my GP too which isn't reassuring. I'm not a fan of GPs at the best of times but for 8 solid weeks? I did try and change my placement to one closer to home as when I gave my preferences I picked place X because I thought we'd be living there. Of course this changed when I decided i'd rather walk barefoot over a bed of nails whilst being showered with lava than live in place X. As usual the medical school were exceedingly understanding and helpful in that they said no. It was my own stupid mistake in the first place but I should have known my medical school well enough not to even bother trying.

One Year On

6

6th December 2007

19 Days to go till Christmas

tlm fact: I am related to Gordon Brown and have had tea and biscuits in 10 Downing Street.

One year ago today I was sat in a GP surgery working on a project, by working I of course mean surfing the Internet. I came across The Angry Medic and from there, I found a plethora of blogs from medical students, doctors and other health professionals. Despite my addiction to the Internet, I'd never previously discovered this phenomenon. I spent hours reading about the experience's of others and that day I decided that perhaps I should have a blog of my own.

(I tried to use this as an excuse to get missbliss to bake me another cake, unfortunately she was having none of it - although she did make a very tasty trifle)

From there I came up with I'm a Medical Student, Get Me Out of Here and wrote my first post. I really didn't expect anyone to read my moans and groans and was very pleasantly surprised to find that I soon built up a small following. I'm not the most articulate of people, especially when it comes to explaining my ideas in writing, I often forget things and I'm sure my vocabulary, spelling and grammar often leave a lot to be desired. Never-the-less, here I am one year on, I'd started blogs before but only written 1 or 2 posts before getting bored and giving up but I was determined to stick with it and I've succeeded so far.

I've enjoyed blogging, its a very helpful release, I enjoy getting some of my moans off my chest here (although I still moan a lot in person too). There have been some great times in the last year, and some really shit times but overall I think blogging has been a positive experience for me. It isn't exactly a portfolio but blogging has also had its uses, it is a way of reflecting on some of the experiences I've had in the past year. This came in useful when I had to write my foundation application form. The writing experience has also done me the world of good as I've improved my writing style and learnt things too.

I'd like to say a huge thank-you to all those who've read my blog and those who've left comments. There would be much less enthusiasm for blogging if I knew that nobody was reading.

I hope I'll be able to continue blogging over the next year. There will be PLENTY of challenges and lots of things to moan about over the next year so stay tuned. There will also probably be a sparkly new blog to come if I pass finals and finally become a doctor.

Oh, and you should all read this post by missbliss, the pictures are hilarious!

The second first day

5
5th December 2007
20 Days to go till Christmas


tlm fact: It is my lifetime ambition to own a brand spanking new red Ferrari bought from the showroom, in cash. Hopefully before I'm 45. I daresay missbliss might have something to say about this.

A confusing title indeed, today is the day that all the F1s (junior doctors) in my hospital (and probably most other hospitals) rotated to their new 4 month posts. I suppose it must be better now they've got 4 months experience but it must still be quite stressful, especially going from surgery to medicine for example. I missed that day in August when you should never under any circumstances go near a hospital because the wards are full of junior doctors on their first day but personally i'd give hospital a miss today too if you possibly could as it was somewhat chaotic and it rather scared the shit out of me thinking that i'll be in this position in 8 months!

What scares me the most is the ridiculously little amount of support the F1s on my ward received from their seniors today. My new F1, who is a pleasant chap who has just come from 4 months A+E, I helped him out quite a lot today by doing jobs, hopefully I'll be able to help him settle in a bit as I've been on the ward for a couple of weeks and know how things work. The SHO, who was supposed to be there at 9 ended up walking in at about 9 45 and neither the consultant or registrar were anywhere to be seen. Now I know its unrealistic to think the whole team would be there to greet you on your first day, but it'd be nice if someone was there to explain what the fuck you're supposed to do.

The other F1 who started on my ward today had even less success, nobody from his team turned up so he just took off and did the ward round on his own without having the foggiest idea what the hell was going on.

This situation can't be good for patient care, I know for a fact that things were missed today because of it and patients treatment has been put back by at least a few days until everyone is back up to speed.

Note to self - must make sure when I'm an F1 that I've got a reasonable idea of what I'm supposed to be doing whenever I change jobs. I'm hoping that I'll at least have some support wherever I end up, but I suppose I shouldn't expect there to be much in the way of help.

The Adrenaline Rush

4
4th December 2007
21 Days to go till Christmas

tlm fact: All through primary school, I was obsessed with becoming a policeman. So much so that I used to wear my little uniform whenever possible and whenever I wrote my name on my school work, I always wrote: PC Little Medic so I could pretend to be a policeman. Fortunately I did grow out of this and spent many years after that wanting to be a vet. I changed my mind only a year or so before applying to medical school. I've not yet taken to writing Dr Little Medic on my work so I can pretend to be a doctor.

Yesterday, I went to see some endoscopies, expecting a nice relaxing morning. Fortunately for the patients, everyone was normal. That was until there was an addition onto the list, an elderly (70+) lady who'd recently had a GI bleed. She had already been scoped but they couldn't find where the bleeding had been coming from. Her haemoglobin was already ridiculously low (i'd never heard of a Hb so low). They scoped her again and found where the bleeding must have come from and made an attempt to stop any future bleeding. Unfortunately, right there in front of our eyes (well, on camera), an artery started spurting blood inside her stomach. From this point, my heart started pounding in what must have been an adrenaline rush. By now the endoscopist couldn't see a thing because there was blood everywhere so he couldn't do anything about it. He called down the best endoscopist in the hospital to see if he could do anything and he also called the surgeon on call to take the patient to theatre if nothing could be done. Before I knew it, the room was crammed with people. Endoscopists trying to stop the bleeding, the surgeon on call and an anaesthetist assessing him for theatre. Various other doctors were running around like crazy putting cannulas in and taking blood for cross matching. Blood and fluids were being put up by the bucket load. Meanwhile I was in the middle trying to hold the patient down as she fought to remove the endoscope despite being sedated.

They couldn't do anything endoscopically, so they took her down to theatre to open her up and try to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately thats where I had to leave, so I don't know what happened. I guess I'll find out today. I hope she is ok.

I feel bad that I was sort-of excited by the emergency response to her rapid deterioration. I suppose it must have been the rush of adrenaline as people were running around me trying to do their best for the patient. The whole team were fantastically calm despite what I thought was quite a serious situation. I think it was dealt with really well and maybe the adrenaline rush that each member of the team must get helps them to do what they need to do efficiently.

Advent Calender Update

3
3rd December 2007

22 Days to go till Christmas

tlm fact: I have a severe phobia of earwigs. The evil monsters scare the living daylights out of me! That is my only phobia.

Things that rock about Christmas

2
2nd December 2007

23 Days to go till Christmas

tlm fact: 2 weeks before starting university in 2003, I almost wrote off my brand new car. Since then I've driven 75,000 miles which is the same as driving round the world 3 times! During this time I've spent about
£9,000 on petrol and £6,500+ on car insurance. Despite that, I still enjoy driving and I've spent most of the 3000 or so hours i've been behind the wheel day dreaming (not the best idea whilst behind the wheel I admit), all sorts of things go through my head when I'm driving including lots of blog ideas, unfortunately I tend to forget them when I get out.

1) Christmas cake - quite possibly the best cake ever. Especially when there are huge amounts of icing and marzipan all over it.

2) Clementines/Satsumas - best fruit ever. They are always on offer in ASDA or Salisbury's and we buy them by the crate load. I don't even know if they're particularly christmassy but its a good enough excuse for me to binge on them.

3) Mince pies - oh my god, why don't they sell mince pies all year round. In previous years I have pretty much lived on mince pies from late November to January. Missbliss has tried to put a stop to that but I can often be seen munching on them. The thin ones from Salisbury's are my current favourite.

4) Presents - well it wouldn't be Christmas without them would it? It is always an excuse to buy presents for yourself too!

5) The Christmas cheer - it usually starts on the first of December, people can be heard humming Christmas songs to themselves, and most people just seem to be happier than usual. We went to a Christmas market last week and EVERYONE was smiling and generally being happy.

6) Christmas markets - mulled wine, dutch pancakes, mince pies, and hog roast, oh my god hog roast! *drools*

Leave a comment and tell me what you like about Christmas (if you don't like Christmas then go and watch the "Holidays are coming" advert until you've changed your mind!

"The Holidays are Coming"

1

1st December 2007

24 Days to go till Christmas

TLM Fact: On Christmas eve 1997 I was running down
the stairs and I tripped and fell, I spent the evening limping
around in pain. My mum and I spent Christmas morning in A+E
and later that morning, I came home in plaster having broken my foot.
What a way to round off the worst year of my life during which my parents broke up,
I had to move house, and my nan died.
(I promise not all the TLM facts will be as miserable as this one)

Its true, its the 1st of December and Christmas officially starts now. (I'm not even going to say how long our Christmas tree has been up!) I've already seen the Coca Cola Christmas ad on TV once or twice which made me ridiculously excited so I thought I'd share it with you all. Whether you've never seen it at all, or just not seen it yet this year, watch it. I promise it will stir up the Christmas feeling inside you. (If it doesn't you must be some kind of anti-Christmas monster)

December also marks my 1 year blogiversary and to celebrate this momentous feat, (I never expected to still be blogging regularly a year later, nor that I would ever get any readers) I'm going to try my hardest to write at least a short post every day during December. Will I manage it? Probably not, but we'll see. Also, in the spirit of Christmas, I will also be running my very own advent calender with a new Christmas picture each day, and rather than a chocolaty treat to go with it, there will be a TLM fact of the day (which will probably be exceedingly boring but we'll see how it goes)