Medicine "oop North"

**M Clayton** · 27-09-2005, 12:27 AM

Taken from the horoscope section of today's "Metro";

CAPRICORN
Is this the way to Amarillo?
Every night you've been hugging your pillow.
Get over the soppy bit and get on with finding who's waiting for you out there

Inspired use of a popular song to pad out the otherwise rubbish horoscope. Hats off to David Wells at Metro.

**M Clayton** · 02-10-2005, 10:23 PM

It's Sunday already. That means I've been back at uni now for 4 weeks - a third of this term is over and done with! How amazing is that?

Since I last wrote, some exciting things have happened.

1. I regained the power of walking (albeit whilst looking like I was making fun of people with cerebral palsy for a day or two).

2. I found possibly the largest curly fry known to man nestled amongst those on my plate during my dinner on Monday. Don't believe me? You know what I'm like with photos...

The very fry. Look at it! It's at least 20cm in long in the unstretched state and I bet there's a good 10 cms of stretch to come. Proof positive that curly fries are, in fact, not actually made from potato at all.

3. I learned that the Germans have a special word to describe those people that are too cowardly to make snowballs without the aid of wooly gloves. In the spirit of education, I shall share this word with you all now:

Handschuhschneeballwerfer

Apparently it may be used to describe anyone displaying cowardly attributes (not just poor snowballers). Use it regularly. Love it.

4. I went for a wander down the Quayside and visited the Baltic art gallery.

See?

I don't know how on earth that place actually sustains visitor numbers - the art inside is all really high brow stuff that mere mortals like me just don't get. Take this as an example; Great big darkened theatre showing repeated images of hand drawn lightning. Pretty? Yes. Pointless? Definitely.

That said, the old flour mill is a stunning building and the view from the top is really something else. I'd go just for the view and skip the art if I were you.

5. I learned all about stem cells and their future role in medicine - pretty exciting stuff all told.

6. The freshers arrived. The uni and city are now way too crowded although the lunchtime people watching sessions have gotten a lot more interesting....

And finally...

7. I went to Alton Towers for the first time in my life (yay!) on Wednesday.

Lady Victoria drove all the way down to Staffordshire, having picked Helen and I up at Durham Train station (what a dump!) and we had an awesome day! I absolutely adore roller coasters - I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie in that respect - and, due to it being midweek during term time, there were hardly any queues.

My absolute favourite roller coaster of the day (and possibly of my life so far - yes, that good) was Air. I have never experienced anything like it - truly a unique roller coaster experience.

Luckily, the rain held off until mid afternoon so none of our rides was spoiled too much. In fact, the rain did us a favour at one point, allowing us to ride Oblivion with the 16 seat car between the 3 of us! Top Banana.

Lady Victoria and I, wet but happy.

Lady V and Helen share an intimate ride in that ride that goes fast, upside down and made me feel a little bit sick. Obviously, I took this picture before it started - duh.

**M Clayton** · 04-10-2005, 01:38 AM

Today I have demonstrated equal quantities of blind ignorance and near genius. It's nice when the universe is balanced although I do wish that I could demonstrate some more genius once in a while.

**M Clayton** · 07-10-2005, 01:25 AM

Can anyone please explain to me why it is that I drink wine when in the company of others when I really don't actually like it very much.

Yours, pressured by peers,

Mark

**M Clayton** · 12-10-2005, 02:24 AM

Did you know that Drumstick lollies have the rather unusual flavour of "Raspberry and Milk"?

No, nor did I. But I know this to be true because a friend told me and I dared to call her a liar. She challenged me to view the packaging and, lo and behold, she was right. Raspberry and Milk. A winning combination in gooey lolly technology.

**M Clayton** · 13-10-2005, 02:57 AM

Today I have not changed out of my pyjamas (well, my scrubs trousers and grey t-shirt) and hoody combo. That's not to say that I've not done something with the day, because I got a lot of work done. I just didn't see the point in getting dressed once I'd been showered - it was a miserable day and I had entirely no intention of going outdoors.

<I was going to talk about food again at this point but realise that it's actually really rather dull, so won't>

What else have I done recently?

I finally got round to reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and I have to say I'm really glad that I did. I'm always very wary of hype surrounding new things and I try to make my own mind up but I'd made the rash decision not to bother with this book earlier based on the cover. It's a rare thing for a book to be both funny and sad, entertaining and educational but this seems to pull it off. In the unlikely event that you've not read it yet, I do recommend it.

I was out on duty at Hull Fair over the weekend. I must be mad to travel 120 miles in order to spend 18 hours working to treat some pretty unsavoury characters for free but it's one of those events that I really wouldn't miss. I've covered it every year since 1996 and there's always something exciting to do....

well, I say always. Friday proved the rule, with the doctor and I working non stop to deal with the drunk and drugged up. But Saturday was a huge let down. The most interesting thing I got to do was do an abdominal examination on a kid with tummy ache (yes, tummy ache).

I'm hoping for bigger and better things this coming weekend when I'm in charge of Post 2 and on the Incident Team.

More later...

**M Clayton** · 14-10-2005, 01:49 AM

I decided today that, at some point, I'm going to give a presentation on the lower gastrointestinal tract and faeces. Then I can honestly start with the phrase "For the next hour I'm going to talk crap..."

Today was dull and I was in a bit of a mood with myself. This was primarily because Newcastle, New South Wales have decided that they are withdrawing support for the medical electives programme. This leaves me with no elective placement and a wasted 3 months. It's highly unlikely that I'll get a placement in Australia now and I'm stuck trying to find something I might enjoy in Europe. It makes me so very angry.

Home to the Fair again tomorrow evening.

**M Clayton** · 19-10-2005, 02:56 AM

The final weekend of the Fair was interesting enough, although perhaps less exciting than I'd imagined it might be based on previous years.

I managed to involved with some interesting casualties including, but not limited to, ?C-Spine Fracture, ?Right sided pneumothorax (who self discharged against all advice!!!), severe asthma attack which was well en route to respiratory arrest and shed load of minors. I even managed to win an award without actually trying - ok, so it was the "Dave Williams Look Alike Award" but it still counts!

**M Clayton** · 25-10-2005, 03:08 AM

The latter half of last week was really rather good. Things seemed to be going my way for a change (hooray for rubbishy self indulgent posts!) and I actually felt quite positive about a lot of things.

Medicine saw the continuation of the unadulterated joy that is IDHD (is it wrong to have forgotten what that means now?) with the theme of the week being clinical genetics - I'm yawning just typing that. Instantly forgettable material really.

I attended my first staff student committee meeting on Wednesday. I'd decided to get myself onto a committee for the purely cynical reason of wanting to beef up my CV for the foundation post application form (I know, I know, wrong reasons blah blah blah) and was a little bit surprised to find that I'd been accepted to sit on the Big One - with my history of upsetting various high ups, I was sure I'd be told to feck off.

As it happened, the meeting kept getting bogged down on minor issues and ran for much longer than I'd imagined and meant that I had to put back my cinema visit to see Kinky Boots (yes, Kinky Boots - it's funny, ok?).

Speaking of cinema visits, I also went to see Wallace and Gromit and I can't recommend it highly enough. It was so good that I managed to refrain from getting up and killing the overly noisy kids on the back row.

Slow down Gromit! You'll buckle the trunions!

In other news, this week has started badly. I didn't sleep well last night and I'm finding the immunology case very dull.

**M Clayton** · 01-11-2005, 02:28 AM

Another week begins and another "enjoyable" case launch to endure - this time, the intracacies of skin disease fall under the mircroscope. Never mind that this is now the 4th time that we've covered these topics - all the better to remind us how little we remembered from last time. Perhaps the fact that the highlight of this week is the suturing of pigskin (This may, or may not be, what the pig looks like.) will give some indication to just how much I relish it.

I mean honestly, skin disease is just icky - does nobody else want to scrub themselves with Vim after they've been in a dermatology clinic? And don't get me started on scabies! Thank God (or, more accurately, Lady Victoria) for Hibiscrub, alcohol Gel and scouring pads.

So that's what this week has in store - I think the excitement of it all may just cause me to stop breathing. If any of you encounter longs posts such as;

"igyu ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssss"*

I've fallen dead on my keyboard. Please be kind enough to inform the relevent authorities.

I wonder just how up to date this blog is.... <scrolls up to see what last nugget I posted>

Hmm, so we were at the dawn of clinical immunology when last I left you. Permit me a moment of brutal honesty; You do not wish to know the intimate detail of that teaching. Suffice to say that I understand about as much immunology now as I always have and the only new thing I learned really was that clinical immunologists can't explain an isolated elevation in chloride any better than I can. Here endeth the lesson.

However, there's more to life than medicine (Shock, horror kids! It's true, just don't tell the admissions people I said that) and I've spent a fair amount of time in the past week doing things that I enjoy or otherwise wanted to do.

I had a great day on Wednesday which involved, amongst other things, a trip to the cinema to see Lord of War (How much do I love Orange Wednesdays? This Much), a decent meal with good friend and very entertaining drinks with the group. Significant progress was made on a number of fronts

Thursday was a bit of a rush since I had to get from uni to home, get changed and eat, and then get back across town to the Carling Academy in the space of an hour and a half. Of course, being a bit of a relaxed fellow (ok, I'm laid back when I should really be putting in a bit more of an effort), I didn't quite make it. In my defence, the last lecturer overran til 5:15 and the metro on the way back in stopped for 10 minutes outside Central Station - I would have had plenty of time otherwise. As it happened, I was only 10 minutes late for the Athlete briefing. My role that night was to be stationed in the pit with another member of the team in order to deal with any casualties that came over the barrier. Athlete being the band they are - they were referred to as "startlingly uncool" by one music magazine (a tad harsh I feel!) - I didn't expect to have too much to do and fully intended to enjoy the experience of being within spitting distance of one of my favourite bands.

^^ In the pit. The image is crap because my camera phone is ancient and not really suited to the formation of high quality images. However, you do get some idea of just how close I was to the stage - I was actually inside the mojo barrier in front of the stage (R) speaker stack. In the event that you're interested, the big person in the right of my picture is a security guy

The set performed was amazing with both old favourites and new tracks being showcased. My personal favourite track of "shake those windows" made an appearance, much to my pleasure.

^^Look! Joel Pott! I have to say I do love a good concert (especially when it's free!) but this one was a cut above. The venue is compact so 2000 people do tend to make it a little bit hot and sweaty but those same 2000 people singing back the words to the songs makes it all worthwhile. Inspired stuff! (and only 2 minor casualties too!)

I think you'll agree that that alone should have made the week for me but wait! There was more to come on Friday!

The same scenario as Thursday evening was in play for the Friday evening concert, but this time I managed to make in time for the full security/medical briefing. Much like with Athlete, we didn't expect any specific trouble from the crowd there to see KT Tunstall. Again, similar arrangements were in place with me spending most of my time in the pit.

This time, however, my view of the stage was not so good, obscured as it was by a gigantic speaker stack. Forgive the crappy photo, but I promise you that the little figure off to the left is KT herself. The guy in yellow is the security guy that saw fit to bop along to "Suddenly I See" - hats off to that bloke; he has more guts than I do!

Finally, the weekend. On Saturday I decided to go to off to Baltic again with another mate in a fruitless attempt to discover my cultural side. Once again, I didn't get any of the art although I did like the tower of washing up bubbles (difficult not to destroy it though!), a particularly satirical film on the subject of American Consumerism and a delightful little movie about a woman walking along 3 chairs whilst floating down a Turkish River (Don't ask me why because I don't know - it's art). This cultural experience was followed by something more suited to my tastes - namely, super DVDs in the form of Reservoir Dogs and Constantine.

And that brings us today (But what about Sunday?? I hear you cry - Sunday happened although nothing noteworthy occurred in the 10 or so hours of my being awake). Time to do some work methinks.

Be Happy and stay safe my loyal readers (snigger)

*Note: The absence of this specific letter pattern may not necessarily indicate a lack of death. Any combination of nonsense (well, more nonsense than usual) may indicate my demise - use your better judgement before calling the local authorities to investigate. I can only afford so many front doors before I'll get bored of the police kicking them in.