Medicine "oop North"

[M Clayton]

I've just gotten back from a chinese meal with my parents. It was really nice. A last supper if you will.

Mmmmmm, vegetable chow mein eaten with chopsticks. Yummy.



Back up to uni tomorrow. I shall have much fun driving the van along windy country roads because my dad doesn't trust me on the A1.

[M Clayton]

Well, I'm back up at uni now and it's been an "interesting" few days!

I arrived on Sunday and collected my set of keys. As a subwarden for the halls of residence I have a set of master keys which open all the doors etc.

Every door but mine that is!

Yes, my master keys couldn't open the door to my flat. Not a good start.

:evil:

However, many angry calls later, I now have a brand spanking new locking suite in my door. Yay!

Darn, time to go to my Fire Protection training.

I'll finish this later - don't go anywhere!

[M Clayton]

It's been a busy week of training so far.

I've learned how to evacuate a building, mend broken boilers and silence fire alarms and a whole host of other things!

Freshers arrive this weekend and I've drawn the short straw of being on duty on Saturday night :S

But I'm really looking forward to the challenge.

Anyways, just a short entry today since I need to go and collect my gown for Matriculation next week.

Laters

[M Clayton]

Mark needs sleep.

:shock:

I've managed to survive Freshers week on just a couple hours of sleep each night because they've kept us busy - very bloody busy!

My first night on duty on my own (last Saturday) started off fairly badly when the mobile phone that we are issued with when we're on call rang no less than 4 times during the welcome meeting given by the College Principal. Whoops! :roll:

Each time it rang it was the same set of students in the same flat (who should have been at the welcome meeting I might add) with the same problem. I don't understand why they couldn't get it into their heads that I'd be coming to sort the boiler in the next half hour! Grr.

When I arrived to sort the boiler I got a verbal bashing from the mother of one of the students about everything and anything. Seems that I'm the root of all evil in the world simply because the university doesn't grant me authority to authorise payments to contractors out of office hours.

Oh well. I was up pretty much the rest of the night dealing with requests for help with lost keys, drunken students and unreasonable levels of noise.

I helped the college with the registration sessions on Monday and actually enjoyed imparting my knowledge to the newbies.

Tuesday was Freshers Fair and I had a stall for our society (http://www.dur.ac.uk/udqc.links) plus a noisy surprise at the main entrance. You really can't imagine how much fun it is to play with all the toys on board an ambulance! I particularly enjoyed the siren and the fact that I actually managed to look professional despite having had no sleep the night before.

I rounded the day off by having a nice cup of coffee with 7 people, only one of whom actually had a pulse... Why am I not at all worried that that felt "right" to me?? :?

Had a jolly to Durham on Wednesday for the fun that is the Matriculation Ceremony. I was actually really proud of the members of the college and had a disproportinate amount of fun pretending to be (variously) batman and a headteacher in my gown. I had an absolutely superb pasta lunch at Casa De Masonis on the Elvet Bridge to round off the day.

This brings me to the nightmare that was Wednesday night. I awoke at 2 in the morning to a loud banging at my window. Despite being only half awake I managed to ascertain that one of the girls in my block had been taken ill at a club and had been rushed off to hospital with a suspected DVT! The Sub warden on duty asked if I would take over the duty while she went to the hospital to sort things out. I agreed (of course - I am a nice guy you know...) and had a fairly quiet night.

We (we being the residents of my block) visited the girl in hospital during Thursday afternoon and were pleased to hear that she'd been busy causing trouble with the medical and nursing staff! Although it doesn't appear to be too serious, she won't be back with us until Saturday at the earliest.

Yesterday nights duty was pretty uneventful until 4 o'clock when some students decided to attempt to wake the dead with a combination of loud music and shouting. When I asked them to tone it down a little I was verbally abused and told that I had no authority to do so. Ah well - they'll regret their actions when the disciplinary session summons land on their doormat...

And finally, we started lectures again today (yay!) and I'm very sad to say that I'm looking forward to the coming term immensely. I really can't wait to get my teeth into the anatomy of the pelvis (not literally of course, that would be wrong!) and the Clinical Sciences and Investigative Medicine strand looks like it's going to be good.

York Races tomorrow.

[M Clayton]

Confused by the title? Have no fear, all will be revealed in a few brief moments of madness to come.

I love Hull Fair.

It's great. I highly recommend that if you ever get the chance to go, you do.

With that in mind, you may understand why it was so hard when I realised that I probably wouldn't have the time to go on duty there this year.

The first Friday and Saturday sessions passed and I was stuck up here in Stockton. Boo hoo. I was bored stiff. Instead of running around whilst adrenaline surged around my system I was reduced to watching trashy films with my flatmates.

I resigned myself to the fact that 2003 would be the first time in 6 years that I wouldn't go out on duty at the fair.

Which is why my parents were shocked to see me arrive home on Friday night with the avowed intention of turfing all their crap out of my room for the duration of the coming weekend.

Somehow I'd managed to stumble into my brothers birthday celebrations. Imagine, if you will, the amount of noise that 10 pre prubescent teen boys can make, the damage they can cause and the level of food that they can eat in the space of 12 hours. It put me in mind of a biblical plague of locusts ... :shock:

Somehow I managed to find some food with which to put my hunger to rest (train station food is expensive, and Virgin train food even more so!) and then I tried to get some sleep.

Up bright and early and Saturday so that I could iron my trousers and shirt before going off to the fair. I discovered that some thoughtless individal (can't think who!) had damaged the bottom of the right leg so that I had to do some emergency sewing - the horror!!!

When I arrived at the fair I went through all the usual gubbins of signing on, collecting radios etc and then had to explain where I'd been and what I'd been up to for the past few weeks.

To every person that I met.

Trust me, you can very quickly get bored of talking about pelvises and cadavers. :roll:

I was initially posted as a member of the relief team since my arrival had messed up the carefully crafted member rota - whoops!

During my six hour stint on said team I encountered pretty much one of every type of injury that you could expect at such an event. Fractures, bleeds, respiratory distress (ok, so asthma, but that doesn't sound as cool) and a grand mal seizure; all that was left for my time on a team was a cardiac event. Oooh, the excitement!

I'll finish this later, lectures are calling!

[M Clayton]

Hmmm.

I didn't get round to finishing the last entry - lectures were just that exciting!

However, in the interests of explaining the gyspsy reference, I'll finish it now.

After 6 hours on the relief team I was transferred to one of the main fairground teams - Alpha (Hi Mel!!)

The fantastic rota system meant that we were posted at various locations throughout the fairground at different times. One of our sessions involved foot patrol work (which is always the best part of the duty since you can get quite bored in a First Aid Post). It had almost passed without incident but nothing in my life is that simple.

We were called by a member of the public to attend to a collapsed female casualty in the middle of the main street.

The adrenaline started pumping and the team prepared to do what we do best (First Aid - duh). We arrived on scene and, sure enough, there was a female casualty seemingly unconscious in the middle of a crowd of gawkers. As Karen (student nurse) began to treat the casualty, and as I began to relay details of our location to control, a veritable caravan of travellers (I wonder what the collective noun would be....) barged through the crowd and proceeded to tell us to:

"Move clear and give the lady some air."

Karen "explained" (note the use of inverted commas) that we were a First Aid team and we knew what we were doing.

This seemed to matter not one tiny bit to the gyspsy ladies who proceeded to drag our by now semi conscious casualty to her feet and away to one side of the street. They were most insistant that we leave the casualty alone for them to deal with. We did the only thing we could - we passed the problem on to someone else. Well, if these people will walk around with rank...

So there you go, our patient was stolen by gypsies - we were, if you like, "mugged by gypsies".

[M Clayton]

Man is my life hectic at the moment!

It's so difficult to make time for all the things I want to get done.

There's all the interesting anatomy of the rude bits to learn, the mind blowing work on cancer formation, some scarily revealing stuff on the menopause and a host of other medical things to try and fit into my student life.

It's just mad.

And I love it.

[M Clayton]

Erk

Once again Real Life (TM) has taken over from the world of t'internet and I've had great difficulty trying to keep this updated.

For the umpteenth time (and I know you probably don't listen to me when I say this any more) since this weblog thingy-ma-bob began, I'm sorry about that.

Seems it's been a week since the last update so I'll have to dredge the events from the dank recesses of my mind.

Bear with me.

[M Clayton]

Weekends are mint.

I spent the weekend on a "Youth Team Planning and Strategy Retreat" in York. Now, I know what you're thinking; "sounds like some new age hippy crap" but it really isn't anything like that.

Essentially, the Youth Team go away for a weekend, work hard during the day at planning for next year's activities for the Youth of St. John and then get totally sloshed in the evening - magic!

If I can get hold of them, I'll post some piccies of the weekend and, when I'm less busy (Who am I kidding, I'll never have a free moment ever again), I might just give the event the justice it deserves.

Toodle Pip. :shock:

[M Clayton]

I am still alive for those of you that may have been harbouring doubts...