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03/08 - Dawsons Freak:

Okay so let’s start with the pictures.

Was a fantastic day to walk around London, and showed off the charterhouse square fantastically.

...

And another:

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02/08 - Life Lessons:

I received an e-mail from Barts asking for all my old exam certificates for enrolment. This sparked a furious search for them only to end with the realisation that I never picked some of them up from my old school in the first place. Panicked, I phoned the admissions department who told me I shouldn’t have received that e-mail and all I needed to send was my degree certificate (which hasn’t actually been issued yet) at the end of the month.

Lesson learnt – Ignore non-specific admissions e-mails.

Last night I...

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08/08/07 - Paths Crossed:

Headed back from London last week took much longer than expected, but was made all the more pleasant by a conversation with a fellow passenger for most of the way. Now, usually I tend to keep myself to myself and rarely engage in conversation with strangers. In fact, I didn’t even...

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11/08/07 - Addicted to Bass:

Picture this, it's Freshers week, everyone is anxious and making an effort to get to know each other and it feels like such a false, forced environment. One eager fellow fresher comes up to me and introduces themselves as Zahra. We chat for a while...

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14-08-07 - Burnt food for thought:

A random collection of thoughts…because I can.

How odd, I seem to have got my first terms student loan instalment already, despite not having enrolled yet. Still, can’t complain as I might get a few quid interest on it over the next month.

*****

I’ve also got the timetable for the first two days of med school. Unsurprisingly it is concerned with enrolment, orientation and course overviews. Sounds like a riot.

*****

Why is it I...

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18-08-07 - Phone Call:

Last night I got a call from my mate’s girlfriend. Needless to say she isn’t the sharpest tool in the box (and this is a pretty blunt box). Ever since she found out I got into medical school she has occasionally phoned me up asking health-related questions, to which I usually reply ‘go and see your doctor’. Last night I felt that I had sufficient knowledge to provide an answer for her:

*Phone rings*

I pick up my mobile and see...

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21-08-07 - Things you probably don't know about me:

1. I have spent about a quarter of my life abroad

2. I taught myself to drum and play guitar

3. I broke my arm when I was 7 literally diving...

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23-08-07 - Feeling the heat:

Med school is now just over three weeks away, and will mark the end of this everlasting summer (seems strange to think the last time I had any teaching was back in March). Further induction material has been published online, including the...

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25-08-07 - Wake me up when September starts:

I’m not a mornings person, nowhere near. In fact, I would recommend that no one engage me until I have established my day at least one hour after waking. Let me explain:

8:00am – Drifting slowly into the edge of consciousness as the cortisol from my sleep-wake cycle kicks in.

BP = 110/70

8:02am – The recycling lorry trundles along the road, glass smashing and my open window at the front of the house make a bad combination...

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27-08-07 - The Bad Samaritan:

I was 18 when a friend and I finished our A-levels and jumped on a plane to celebrate our new found independence. The day before we left I sat my last exam at the school I’d been at for 7 years, finishing with ample time to reminisce over the times I had there and the fact that 24hrs from then I’d be on the other side of the Atlantic.

We spent 6 weeks travelling the...

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29-08-07 - Crazy:

Medicine = t- 17 days

Me thinks I should start getting the essentials, trouble is I can’t remember what I’ve got and what I need…

Should I bring my George Foreman grill? After all, it’s so good he burnt his face on it.
How many...

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30-08-07 - Wok a bargain:

Oh yes, you’re reading the blog of a proud new wok-owner:

Cost me under a tenner, so I was pretty damned pleased. Even better, it’s a carbon-steel non stick wok. It’s better because I won’t be living off a diet of Teflon flakes (unlike last year when our undomesticated arsehole housemate scratched the Teflon off with wire sponge)...

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1/10/07 - Things I Would cite as the bane of my life:

1. Plastic packaging when there really is no need for it
2. When people pronounce Iraq: ‘eye-rak’
3. People who declare themselves mad/random/crazy to compensate for a lack of personality
4. People who boast about how much they drank the night before (look, we get it, you’ve got a small penis)
5. Cricket on TV, all the time
6. Cards with glitter on (and I don’t want to look like a 13yr old girl at a school disco when it sticks to me)
7. Bloggers inability to publish a post without ****ing up the layout (especially when pictures are involved)
8. Offensively fragrant body wash (who really wants to smell like a mango first thing?)

...

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5/10/07 - Plan A:

They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do in your life. I may not be leaving a career, selling a house, changing the bills, saying too many goodbyes or transferring an entire household content’s to another property, but I am moving, and I am concerned for one thing…

In my single-parent family only one person is able to drive. Unfortunately for me, she hasn’t any balls either...

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9/10/07 - Faceblogged:

It’s a little daunting to think that I am now in my last week of holiday. This time next week, I shall be mingling with my new hall mates probably discussing the previous night’s activities, deciding what to do for the rest of the day and feeling sufficiently out of my comfort zone… probably.

To recap on this past week’s highlights:

Hair – cut
Friend – reminded
Freshers pass – posted
Tuition fees – paid
Essentials – bought
Guitar – restrung

And that explains...

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13/10/07 - Summer by numbers:

Of the 84 days of summer
…2 of which I worked
…7 of which I went to London
…75 of which I sat on my arse

I read 3 books
…of which 2 were good

Restrung my guitar twice
Drank beer on 54 of the nights
Had one...

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14-09-07 - The Night Before Medicine:

Twas the night before Medicine, when all through the house,
Harry was up late, agitated and rouse.
His crates and bags ready, packed with due care,
In hope that morning would soon be there.

He lay there all snug in his single bed,
While visions of freshers week danced through his head...

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17-09-07 - My first day at med school:

Q. What is the most unpredictable way to start medical school?
A. Have the very first person you meet ask “oh! are you the blog guy?!”

More surprising still, was when quite literally the exact same thing occurred with the second person I met.

That’ll teach me to blog without a pseudonym!

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20-09-07 - Does not commute:

We’re walking to lectures, it’s around 8am and there is an oncoming mob of Liverpool street station commuters. I wait at the traffic light slightly dazed by the morning sunshine and stare blankly at the other pedestrians waiting to cross. One hurried lady walks out, sees a silver BMW coming towards her and runs across the road in a fairly graceless manner to avoid getting hit.

All I do is watch expressionlessly...


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23-09-07 - FunMed: Step Right Up:

So tomorrow marks the start of medical school teaching, and as I understand the ‘Fundamentals of Medicine’ module is neither fun nor medical. I have had more than enough induction talks for my liking, and am just about ready to start some real work, no doubt this time in a few weeks I shall eat my words...

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25-09-07 - Interprofessional Entertainment:

Interprofessional Education – that’s what I wasted my morning with. I guess this is my first insight into the bizarre world of NHS teamwork strategies. I’ve always been a cynic with regards to these sorts of things, so it is no wonder I have taken...

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30-09-07 - Prosection Introspection:

As a child I would occasionally daydream on long car journeys or before I fell asleep at night, pondering what death is like. Back then as a naïve child with an overactive imagination I used to think that although you were dead, you could still feel what happens to your body on some spiritual level. Because of this I thought the idea of cremation was horrific, that you would feel the intense burning of your remains somehow. The same superstitious logic could therefore be applied to dissection – that you would somehow feel your body being cut open, manipulated and dissected out. I would shudder at the thought of such horrendous agony, but...

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02-10-07 - Problem Based Learning:

You know all those swanky high-gloss images in the medical school prospectus featuring eager young medics participating in intensive PBL debates? That clean, trendy and fully equipped room full of wonderful gadgets like interactive whiteboards, computers for every student, plasma screen televisions networked together in some sort of euphoric PBL dream?


Wake up, it’s all a lie...

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04-10-07 - The sweet with the bitter:

The Anatomy Room

Whilst staring at a clearly enlarged heart (not far off dinner plate size!) which had been cut in halves through coronal section, one of the anatomy professors walks over to me and quizzes me on the atria, ventricles and major vessels coming in and out of it. I pause for a second whilst noticing this black/gray grainy material in the walls of the heart chamber.

“Is it like this because of haemochromatosis?” I blurt out.

…

“Err, well it...

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07-10-07 - Karmacology:

About a week ago I attended an emergency medicine society meeting in the basement of the Royal London hospital. I actually really enjoyed it, there was a short quiz that us freshers sucked at (though not too badly, surprisingly!) and a mini-lecture with lots of gory photos and information in it. For example in an explosion did you know your ear drums burst and sinuses literally explode? I didn’t ever consider that, though it makes perfect sense in retrospect...


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12-10-07 - Reassurance:

"Seriously, if you tie a donkey to the medical college I guarantee you that in 5 years time it will graduate."

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15-10-07 - Great Expectations:

It seems that the old adage of medical student ‘glamour’ is true. The adage that is, not the reality. Recently I have found myself coming under relentless questioning from eager friends and family for the nitty gritty details that make up the first month of medical school. The reality of course, is there are very few, if any.

Take for example the recent phone call I had with...

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16-10-07 - Reasons I'm not problem based loving it:

1. Being chair with flu

“So-cgh has any-cough one f- f- f-cghgh found out any reas-cough reasons why this per- person resorted COUGH to COUGH taking COUGH dru-COUGH COUGH COUGH”

2. Ridiculous scenarios

“Mrs C was relieved the baby was born with no obvious defects; her husband had been born with an extra finger on each hand.”

3...

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21-10-07 - Selected Study Modules:

In just a few weeks time we have to submit our preferences for the first year SSMs. These consist of two week blocks of teaching in a specific area of medicine designed to broaden our knowledge and open our minds to possible career options. Basically, the list has a...

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22-10-07 - The Anatomy Room:

Next, I walked over towards a leg, with the skin, fat layers and muscles partially removed so as to reveal the entirety on the legs anatomy. I gently reached out and touched the toe testing whether it would flex. It hardly would, and obviously not because of rigor mortis, but because these specimens were...

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24/10/07 - The Daily Grind:

The following takes place between the hours of 5pm and 6pm.

5:01pm - Whitechapel

“Unfortunately due to a signal fault at Tower Hill there are no westbound services running at the moment”

…

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25/10/07 - You know it's a long way off when:

You’re not even half way through FunMed

You are yet to meet a patient or set foot in a hospital

Your uni swipe card expires in 2012

There’s an entire Olympics before London 2012

...

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26/10/07 - The Mendelian Bunch:

This week we have been covering genetics, and in particular inheritance of the Mendelian variety. Now, before I started the course I used to think families looked like this:

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27/10/07 - Lost in frustration:

Changes I would make to the past week include:

“Pre-eclampsia: a deceptively boring PBL” as the scenario title.

and

“Hammersmith and City line – well worth the walk”

...

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29-10-07 - Year 1 SSM Choices:

I’ve now submitted my year 1 SSM (selected study module) choices. You may recap I was irresolute with the plethora of options available to study, but for some reason or other I made up my mind and talked myself into submission of the form.

We do two SSM blocks (1a and 1b) this year. For each block we must put down four SSMs we would like to do. My choices were as follows:

...

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30-10-07 - Enzymology Lab:

Case study:

Female, 56yrs
Bone pain
General malaise
Hypercalcemic
Very high ALP
History of breast cancer and mastectomy 3 years ago

All other liver functions normal

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01-11-07 - Elephants:

The day started early, a quick shave and frantic last minute rummage for my smart shoes before heading off to the medical school for a communication skills briefing. Normally I wouldn’t have been so eager to get to college, but today marked a medical milestone for me – it was the “meet your first patient” day...

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04-11-07 - Rock On:

If there’s one good thing about medicine, it’s the seemingly endless list of cool band names on offer:

Epiglottis
Karyotype
Blastocyst
Mesoderm
Splanchnic ganglion
The Anticodons
...

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06-11-07 - One more time for the PB Hell of it:

Want to know what the best part of the week is?

Tuesday afternoon, right after PBL has finished. That marks the longest possible time before the next PBL session. I am fairly critical of PBL...

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