Medicine "oop North"

[M Clayton]

Hey Baby, I'd love to offload my gametes with you

A random chat-up line to start today's entry, and not at all related to anything (unless you happen to be a)me or b)Helen and happened to have been present during the Life Cycle session on ageing this morning. :P

I haven't managed to update this thingy since Sunday night owing to a variety of factors including, but not limited to, the forum being down, chronic laziness and the phases of the moon.

Have no fear though, for I shall rapidly and comprehensively bring you up to date on happenings in the world of mac, the only Northern medical student worth reading about

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Tell me why I don't like Mondays. (Boomtown Rats, good song )

Probably the 9am start and fact that we work right through to at least 5 (often later!!!) with only an hour (or less) for lunch.

This monday was particularly strange in that I spent pretty much all of the morning session being electrocuted by Adam and Claire. :shock:

Some of the electrocution was accidental but some of it, worringly, was deliberate.

The general idea of the whole session was that we should perform a physiology prac. to demonstrate the concept of electrical stimuli to muscles. I rather foolishly volunteered for the role of victim/subject and trusted my continued good health to Claire (Adam likes to watch rather than do actual real work - his role is very much akin to that of supervisor) since she was operating the computer and EMG.

All was going well with some nice, small and totally painless finger twitches being generated. Then we decided to move onto the next exercise and investigate temporal summation. This involved opening another section of the computer program, which then proceeded to shock me of its own accord! It bloody hurt!

The rest of the day involved discussion of Dementia in Life Cycle.

[M Clayton]

Just realised that I've made over 100 blog entries.

w00t! etc.

Tuesday was nothing special. PPD followed by too many hours of lectures on muscle and lower limb vasculature.

Then I went out on duty at the FA Youth Cup match at the Riverside stadium. Quiet night - zero casualties.

[M Clayton]

Not quite sure how I managed it, but I totally forgot to tell you about the most fun part of the week thus far when I posted yesterday.

Wednesday began with a non too inspiring start - a rescheduled Life Cycle session that I really didn't want to attend. There's only so much I can do to stay awake in a lecture on the biology of ageing when my all my body wants to do is collapse in a sleeping heap on the floor of the lecture theatre. I settled on the tactic of chewing my lip to prevent potentially embarrassing snores - it obviously wouldn't do to be seen sleeping when you're sitting on the front row.

Luckily for me, the lecturer was too wrapped up in talking about offloading gametes and evoluntionary genetics to pay much attention to the fact that I'd begun to doodle all over my file rather than listen to him...

However, ask me about the biology of ageing and I'm sure I could give you a bullsh*t answer that'd get you through a viva!

When that tedious lecture had finally finished I escaped to the DR and found out that there was some dissection to be done, if I was willing to accept the challenge and face Dr Nunn should anything go wrong...

As if to illustrate that point, the Dr managed to flick cold, liquid human fat at our faces as she reflected a portion of the skin. It hit me on the cheek and chin - all I can say is thank god for glasses. :S

Being the connsumate professionals that we are, Steven and I made no reaction to the man fat throwing until Dr Nunn had left the room at which point stiff upper lippedness gave way to disgust and a batch of foul words.

Throwing caution and all sensibilities to the wind I agreed to work with Steven on dissecting the superficial musculature of the back in preparation for Dr Nunn's video session. It was obviously very important that we didn't mess up so were advised to reflect the skin and await further instructions.

Being eager chaps however, we got a little carried away and ended up reflecting the skin and cleaning the specimen to reveal the muscles. Unfortunately, one of us (*cough* Steven *cough*) had dissected a little deeper than we'd been asked to and had removed a not insignificant portion of trapezius.

Whoops.

Words cannot describe the abject fear with which Steven informed Dr Patten of his mistake. He needn't have worried! Debs saw that, in the scheme of things, it was a minor mistake and began to reflect the skin on the other side in order to expose the undamaged muscle.

She then promptly did exactly what Steven had done! So much for professionals!

Long story short, we spent over 6 hours in the lab and left feeling much more relaxed and creative than when we entered.

Currently I am (Theoriginal and best!!):
Listening to: Queen, Fat Bottomed Girls
Feeling: A little bit squiffy

[M Clayton]

You really don't realise quite how much you miss home until you manage to get back there for a weekend. At least, this is the way I see things.

Obviously, I've just returned to uni following a weekend spent in the lap of luxury at home. I needed a break from this place; the sleepless nights, the small cage-like room, the madness of 180 fellow students, the constant background noise. Most of all I needed to repay the massive sleep debt that I'd managed to build up over the preceding fortnight.

I left at around 4 o'clock on Friday and just managed to catch the train that goes directly to Hull. I was feeling greedy and wanted to grab a table (which means stealing 4 seats) so I could use my computer. Unfortunately, the train was packed (and hot and sweaty... eurgh) and all I could get was a single seat next to a horrible little screaming child. :x

After an hour or so the train pulled into York and most of the passengers disembarked leaving me with free run of the seats - yay!

I wonder why it is then, that on a nearly empty train, the fella who chooses to drink Stella (alone on a train ffs!) decided to sit next to me :S

Needless to say, my computer stayed in the bag for the duration of the journey.

Friday night was a dead loss - I got home, had some tea and basically crashed on the sofa in the living room (at least I think it was the living room, someone had redecorated while I'd been at uni).

Mmmmmm, double bed in quiet, student free surroundings. Bliss.

Saturday day was another dead loss (I love weekends like this). I spent much of it pottering around my house finding stuff to take back to uni with me, downloading music (legally of course) and helping m brother with his biology homework (apparently, as a medical student, I am a viable learning resource!).

Saturday was the whole reason I went home - my mum's birthday meal.

But since I've been too busy chatting to people and it's suddenly become midnight, I'll leave this til tomorrow to finish (sorry Mel!)...

TBC

[M Clayton]

I would have finished my blog entry for the weekend last night but I got bogged down with chatting to various people (note that I’m not suggesting that it was a bad thing to spend a number of hours chatting to Adam, Matt, Jen, Mel and a host of others!) and ended up not really having the heart to finish it.

Anyways, I’m not signed into MSN Messenger right now so I should be able to get away with writing this without too much in the way of distraction (there is “real work” to be done but nobody cares about that right??!!). Of course, there is the small matter of my being on call in halls right now but it’s far too early to be dealing with drunks/fire alarms/other miscellaneous nightmares…

*fingers crossed*

Saturday day was, as I’ve already suggested, pretty much a dead loss. The only good thing to come out of it was my haircut.
I absolutely love getting my hair cut. There’s nothing quite like walking into the hairdressers with half a stone or so of thick, dark brown, fibrous material covering your head only to leave 20 minutes later (yes, it takes that long to cut my hair – no doubt if I were female it’d take a little bit longer. Probably long enough to plan a whole day around in fact….) with a neatly trimmed and far lighter head of hair. It’s even worth the momentary discomfort as you leave the hairdresser where you realise quite how cold it is outside today!

Obviously, a visit to the hairdressers has to be followed by a second shower of the day in order to remove all the nasty little bits of hair that will follow you round for the next few weeks otherwise.

It’s quite sad when all that there is to talk about when thinking about a whole day is a shower and trim… Oh well. Welcome to my busy home life.
On Saturday evening I went out with my family to celebrate my mum’s 40th birthday. It’s actually not until Wednesday but the present we’ve gotten for her precludes celebrating on the day. Everyone got tarted up (Everyone being my bro, sisters, mum and dad and sisters boyfriends) and we trooped out to a restaurant for a meal – mmmmm, real food!

Valentines Day is stupid.

That bloody commercial excuse for public expressions of love meant that we had to wait ages to get seated once we made it into the restaurant (getting parked was also a task of epic proportions). Apparently a large party of couples was expected at any moment so the 8 of us would have to wait (despite the fact that our attendance had been booked weeks ago!! Grr) to be seated.

When we finally got down to it, the meal was very nice. The restaurant staff were kind enough to dim the lights and bring out the cake and gift when we asked them to. The gift, incidentally, is a week in the Caribbean and has totally bankrupted myself, my dad and my sisters (who are all students by the way. Well, my dad isn’t but he gets to go with my mum so he can’t complain) but it was worth it to see the total surprise on my mum’s face.

Ah, the small pleasures.

[M Clayton]

You're really only a second-rate cynic. Actually, you aren't cynical as much as world weary, and sometimes you have a point. One thing though - laughing at children isn't nice

Me? Not cynical?

I don't believe it.

Sham! I call for a recount.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3492709.stm

Are you a cynic?

Yesterday (Sunday) was a write off as days go. Sleep followed by travel back to uni followed by more sleep.

Today was a little more interesting.

9 am lecture on motoneurones (the absolute mind blowing joy of it all!) was followed by a fairly fun living anatomy and clinical skills session on assessment of the lower limbs.

This involved taking Claire and Steven's legs and pushing them past the point at which it began to hurt! mwah ha ha ha :twisted:

There was also some less painful but equally uncomfortable palpation of peripheral pulses (ooh, alliteration) and reflex testing.

I also discovered that Steven's shoes are ill fitting and he needs to get some new ones.

Life Cycle was Life Cycle and therefore unworthy of further comment.

I'm on call now and I'm actually quite bored. :roll:

Currently I am:
Listening to: The dawn chorus (at bloody midnight!!?!?!?) The birds are mad I tell you!
Reading: The Joint Societies First Aid Manual (8th Edition)
Writing: (Apart from this blog) The Team and Individual tests for the County First Aid competitions in March

[M Clayton]

I'm back after a fairly eventful week (and an adrenaline pumping night - more on this later).

I last wrote on Tuesday (well it was more like Monday since it was 12:08 in the morning) so I'll try and remember what happened after that.

If my brain is working correctly, I think we had a physiology practical on Tuesday afternoon. I'd spent the morning pottering around the flat catching up on work since I'd forgotten that it was patient study morning (my patient passed away before Christmas so there was no point visiting - not sure if I'd have gotten any new info...) and had gotten up at the usual time to make a non existant 9 am lecture - doh!

This practical was far more significant than any other I've participated in since it marked the first time I've ever seen Adam do any work! I admit that this wasn't real work since all he had to do was have electrodes stuck to his leg and let Claire hit him with a tendon hammer but it's all about first steps. GO ADAM! We'll get you to the stage of coming to all the lectures soon.

Aside from that, Tuesday was bog standard med school life. Lecture, prac, home to work, dinner and sleep.

[M Clayton]

I was conned into attending a St. John duty on Wednesday. Being the mug that I am, I couldn't say no when I was called on Tuesday evening and asked if I'd cover the 1 - 4 shift at the Riverside Stadium the following day. Apparently, Middlesbrough football club pays St. John to provide First Aid cover whilst the crowds queue to obtain their Carling Cup final tickets and someone had dropped out of their shift.

I arrived just in time to treat a post ictal epileptic (can't fault my timing there!) who'd smacked his head fairly head when he'd entered the tonic phase of the seizure. I walked into the First Aid post just as he was wheeled in on the trolley and didn't even get chance to take off my jacket before I was asked to assess his baseline obs. He wasn't injured as far as I could tell and his obs were nice and stable. All he wanted to do was sleep, so I left my colleague in charge whilst I got myself settled down (ie remove jacket, drink tea, go to loo etc). When I returned, I reassessed the patient and we agreed that the best thing for him to do was go home and contact his GP since his new medication wasn't as good as his old.

A steady trickle of casualties passed through over the next 3 hours, meaning that the anatomy workbook I'd taken with me to do remained unopened. However, I did put some of the info that I would have learned from the workbook into good use when the lady with the fractured clavicle arrived (it was an upper limb workbook btw).

Following the fun at the Stadium I attended a meeting of our LINKS unit which I'm not going to talk about since it was pretty much a non event.

[M Clayton]

Hmm, Thursday is probably the nastiest day of the week for me. No matter what fun stuff there is in the morning, there's always the dark cloud of MIC hanging over the afternoon to spoil it.

We started, as usual with the TSM strand, with an hour long lecture on some aspect of Neurophysiology - I seem to recall being bored to death by action potential propogation in non myelinated nerve fibres... However, I've grown rather fond of these sessions since they give me time to contemplate my navel and laugh at the lecturer (inwardly of course, it wouldn't do to be openly rude). As the term has progressed it looks as though this fellow has taken to sleeping in his car - he started off looking really sharp and gradually has taken on a more and more unkempt appearence...

Say what you will about the general appearance of the lecturer or the interest factor of the material he delivers, he does have the uncanny knack of making an hour lecture last exactly 55 minutes, no matter how many slides it contains! 3 slides, 12 slides, 40 slides - it is of no consequence, the lecture will fill the time allotted to it. You will not leave early. Boo

The lecture was followed by a 3 hour anatomy session which pleased me greatly. Not least because the introductory video contained footage of the dissection that Steven and I had slaved over last Wednesday. I really enjoy the anatomy sessions, despite the fact that we're rushing through everything at near light speed.

MIC afternoon. No comments on that.

On Thursday I was:
Listening to: Dido, White Flag
Reading An article on venepuncture in preparation for the Living anatomy session on Friday
Eating: Bachelors Supernoodles - mmmm
Drinking: Far too much Coke, it's probably turned my insides brown :?
Feeling: Pretty confrontational all told
:twisted:

[M Clayton]

Friday was a fairly eventful little day all told.

I must admit that it started pretty badly when I found out that the project I'd planned to do for my SSC was "no longer appropriate given the change to the specification for this component of the course".

B****ds! :x

Apparently the project idea that I'd previously submitted (and had approved) was "too general" and didn't answer a specific question.

"The University of Durham Medical School; at least one major change to course structure per week or your money back! Guaranteed"

Now I must think of something else pretty quickly since the deadline for title submission is Friday. Any ideas??

The afternoon was a much more interesting affair involving clinical skills and the bearing of flesh :twisted: We had about an hour to practice venepuncture - alas not on one another, but on the training arms. Still, it was good fun getting to stick needles in things...

Of course, there was an hour (55 minutes) long lecture on some aspect of myelination to get through first.... yawn. WE'VE DONE THIS ALREADY BOB!!!!! :roll:

The clinical skills was a whistle stop tour of assessment of the spine and upper limb involving whacking various people in various places with tendon hammers (always fun!) and generally having a good old feel...

I enjoy clinical skills almost as much as anatomy - it's hard not to like the practial stuff. Although, it has to be said, I don't take comments about my underwear choices very well... Helen mentioned that I was wearing Ben Sherman boxers and then Vicky poked me in the stomach (I don't quite know why...). This set off my awful shyness and I turned beetroot red over the course of half a minute or so. The redness started off at my neck (yup, I'm a redneck) and spread up to my face, then down my chest and arms. Fun fun. ops:

The final part of the session involved sharp things. :twisted: We spent about an hour practising venepuncture; alas not on one another but on the plastic training arms with the evil staining blood that won't come out of my shirt....

I must say that it's absolutely nothing like real life but still good fun none-the-less.

But wait, the excitement didn't stop there. There was still much more to come!