Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes via MedWorm.com

The fight for the clinics

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:47:00 +0100

So, it's the end of my first official week back on rotations, and so far, I'm not impressed at the organisation (or lack of, thereof) by my medical school on this rotation.After ommitting my name off the student list, and misplacing my attachment forms, it does appear that I am supposed to be at this hospital, but there are other problems. The course coordinator is of very little help - most students still do not know which ward we have been assigned to, what time and where the various clinics run, and who our official teams are.The course coordinator gave us a list of all the available clinics and told us to all assign ourselves to a clinic of our choosing and to 'sort it out amongst yourselves.' Well, we have tried to sort it out amongst ourselves, and so far, it's been a nightmare. There are numerous clashes in dermatology and rheumatology clinics, meaning sometimes ten students turn up for one clinic, whilst another proceeds without any students. There are non-existant clinics, too; clinics which have been neatly timetabled in which you realise exist only on paper when you turn up to the relevant outpatient department which is empty and has been shut for the past three months.Added to this, clinics are in short supply and only two dermatology clinics run at our own hospital. Students are expected to attend two dermatology clinics per week, and there are only two half-day clinic sessions.We have been told that we have to commute to other teaching hospitals for a place in their clinics (it's important that we attend these clinics as we have to get signed off for them, and it forms part of our end-of-rotation assessment.) I was assigned a dermatology clinic at a different teaching hospital to my own on Monday. I commuted there with my firms partner, only to be told upon arrival that the consultant running the clinic who we were supposed to sit in with was leaving for a completely different hospital. Furthermore, although there were two clinics still running, six students from yet a different teaching hospital had come to attend those.So basically, it's now the end of the week, and instead of having attended two clinics, I, along with most of the students on the attachment, have attended none.And now that I've started complaining, let me complain some more. The attachment organiser today gave us a list of the names of the specialist registrars (SpRs) who are going to be responsible for our teaching for the orthopaedics part of the attachment. He gave us this list with the instructions of, "Pair yourselves up, choose an SpR for yourselves, and go and find him and introduce yourselves." That was it. No pager numbers, no contact details of said SpRs, just a list of names and nothing else.I'm sorry, how difficult would it have been for the attachment organiser to just assign us an SpR himself in the first place, along with a pager number, given that this is his job? It would save us all a lot of stress, and also, how unprofessional does it seem, to stalk out an SpR randomly and then go up to him in pairs, all, "Hi! Would you please be our SpR??"But that's what we did anyway. After first pairing up with another student, we chose an SpR with a rather exotic sounding name, (that's all we had to go on, a list of names!) and we eventually managed to seek him out and introduce ourselves to him. I have to say, luck was on our side, and we chose well. Our registrar seems like a really nice guy, really keen to teach us and prepare us well for our exams, and told us what we should try and come in for and attend. I already quite like him, despite being afraid of surgeons in general.Ok, having complained endlessly so far and having painted everythign the very blackest sort of black, I do think that things will go somewhat better next week - I already feel really reassured by the presence of our new SpR who seems very clued up. What a pity he's only our orthopaedics registrar, and we don't have an equivalent for musc/derm.Enjoy the weekend, everyone! I'm planning on getting most of my hair chopped off tomorrow, so I'm a little nervous! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Off to a somewhat shaky start

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:17:00 +0100

So it was my first day of rotations today. I woke up early, took a shower, got dressed into the clothes that I had chosen the night before, and then decided to quickly check the Intranet before breakfast just to go over the finer details of where I had to report to today for my first day on placements.To my utter surprise, I wasn't at the hospital that I initially thought I was at with the cohort of student that I thought I was with, but a completely different hospital, one that I'm not quite so familiar with, having never done any placements there before.I started to panic slightly (as this place takes longer to get to which meant that I was already slightly late), skipped breakfast and headed off, the new details of where I had to report today scrawled on the back of an envelope, stuffed hurriedly into my bag.It was absolutely horrendous commuting at rush hour today - it's the first time in quite a while that I've had to use public transport at peak time because over the past few weeks I made a conscious decision to avoid rush hour commuting, even if it meant skipping lecture in the process. Overall, that decision worked well for me, as commuting really makes me tense and angry first thing in the morning, and sometimes it can ruin the morning for me, so taking the slightly later train into London definitely had its benefits.Anyway, today I couldn't afford that luxury. The reporting procedure demanded that we be there at 9am sharp, and I commuted through London as fast as I could, although my commuting skills have obviously declined. I am now no longer able to muscle my way on to a packed train, or make a beeline towards an empty seat, and I have forgotten all of the strategic waiting points on the various platforms that ensure that I get the carriage doors to open right in front of me and leave me at minimal walking distance away from station exits.Nevertheless, I made it to the hospital on time, although slightly dishevelled.The first thing we did, oddly enough, was to have a tutorial by a professor of rheumatology, who I remember from second year immunology lectures. I really enjoyed the tutorial, and I was glad to see that I could contribute a bit, though probably not half as much as some of the other students there. The tutorial itself was fairly uneventful, apart from a friendly-seeming surgeon poking his head around the door, mid tutorial, to introduce himself as a surgery SpR who would undertake our orthopaedics teaching. (Yes, this rotation is not only musc/derm, but a bit of orthopaedics thrown in as well, just for kicks. Bizarre.) The SpR seemed really friendly, which is a positive thing, as I automatically tend to be quite apprehensive about surgeons.Anyway, after the tutorial, our course coordinator then came in and introduced himself to us and did a head count."Fifteen of you... that's odd... I thought there were only fourteen names on the list..." He muttered. I thought nothing of it and carried on scanning through the thick wad of papers that we had just been given - copies of a timetable with clinics and MDT meetings to attend and ward rounds and grand rounds and presentations and teaching and clinical skills sessions, along with information on how to get your bleep, locker and parking permits sorted.Meanwhile, the teaching coordinator was repeating the headcount. "Yeah, there are fifteen of you here... someone is missing from the student list," he said. He looked at the group. "Unless one of you present isn't actually supposed to be here," he said, jokingly. "Any of you turned up to the wrong site?" The entire group laughed. The entire group laughed except for me. In the pit of my stomach, I suddenly had a really bad feeling."Wait, could you all turn to the first page of your handouts and check that your names are actually on the list? One of you is missing from that list," he said. We all turned to the first page.My name wasn't on the list."Who's missing from the list?" he asked.Blushing furiously, I slowly raised my hand."Oh," he said, peering at me uncertainly. "Are you supposed to be here?""Yes, I am," I said, and then suddenly, my mind clouded over and filled with doubt. Did I check the Intranet details properly? Did I actually check the site details properly? Did I remember seeing the names of the other students around me on the Excel spreadsheet? I thought so, but under the stare of the course coordinator and the curious looks of fifteen students around me, suddenly I wasn't so sure. "Er, I'm quite sure," I muttered.The course coordinator shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant manner. "Ok. Well, maybe your name just got omitted by accident. You're going to have work your name into the timetable somehow," he said, and that was all that was said on the matter.Dear oh dear.I hope that this doesn't set the tone for the rest of the placement.:( (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Preparing for fifth year rotations

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:15:00 +0100

I start my first fifth year rotation tomorrow in Musc/Derm. This will be a nine-week affair at a central teaching hospital, and although part of me is raring to go back to clinical medicine, delighted at the thought of seeing and examining patients again, part of me is also quite scared as I realise that I can no longer remember even the most basic parts of medicine.On another note, the preparations for it all. I have found all my smart placement clothing from last year, but none of it fits right. Everything seems too loose or too tight, or just not sophisticated enough. Having said that, though, I have dug out a small selection of smartly tailored shirts, well cut work trousers (none of which have pockets - why not?- it always pisses me off,) and a few pairs of smart shoes, which should keep me going for the week until I get a chance to go shoppping next weekend. Nail varnish has been removed, the corn rows were removed from my hair quite a while ago, I've dug out my copy of the Cheese and Onion from my shelf and dusted it down, although I've been told I'll need the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialities more, which figures, duh, so I'm going to put in an order for that soon.Just a few small problems.I can't find my stethoscope anywhere.I can't find my official medical school name badge anywhere (different to our college ID cards which are not ideal for hospital ID purposes.)I can't find my vaccination card anywhere, which informs the medical school that I am up-to-date with all my vaccines.I can't find my course guide.Basically, apart from having silly superficial things like clothes and hairstyle sorted, I am so unprepared for this year that it's unbelievable.And to give you some more bad news.Despite having tried to mentally prepare my parents for the past two years (yes, the past two years, I kid you not,) that I would most likely want to do my elective in a faraway place and do charity work, my parents were still completely unprepared for my proposed plans and have said a firm and resounding NO.I'm not going to give up so easily, however. (Thanks so much, everyone, for your comments, especially you, Layla!) I'm going to try to prove how ideal this destination is for me and what an amazing elective experience I would have, practicing medicine out there.*deep sigh*I have a feeling I should go and try to hunt for my lost stethoscope now... (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Elective problems

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:20:00 +0100

Oh dear.It looks like there are going to be some major divisions of opinion with regards to my elective destination.I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that Malaysia was my first choice, but I've pretty much done a double take on that - completely backtracked - and I've put ahead my newly proposed plans to my parents.They are Not Happy.I'm in a bit of a dilemma, as my new elective destination is somewhere that I really, really want to go, somewhere where I could use my language skills, somewhere where I'd get to do charity work, too. I've read up on it extensively, researched it, looked at flight prices, and even made some preliminary enquiries, and so far, everything that I've read and heard only increased my desire to go out there. For the time being, let's call the destination Country X.The problems:Country X is very very far away, in a part of the world that neither of my parents are familiar with, so they're reluctant to let me go, although my father has visited countries in that part of the world on business trips before.We don't have any family contacts or friends in Country X itself, nor in that part of the world, as a matter of fact, at all, so should I run into trouble, I'd have to deal with it on my own, which naturally worries my parents.Flights to Country X are very, very expensive, over a thousand pounds for the time that I'm looking to go out there. This shouldn't be an issue with my parents, as I'm not asking them for a penny - I should have saved enough money to pay for my own flights, accommodation and other travel expenses, but they're still reluctant for me to spend so much money travelling to somewhere so far out, when flights to Malaysia are relatively a lot cheaper.If I do go to Country X, I will be travelling out there with two people from my year who I barely know. I've already begun to get to know them a little better, and they both seem really nice (and, well, I do have an entire year to get to know them better), but my parents are happier with me sticking to my original plans and going to Malaysia with another group of friends who they know more of.Country X is not an English speaking country at all; in fact, my new Bible of electives, The Medic's Guide to Work and Electives Around the World, says that it is an unpopular elective destination for students because visitors must have a firm grip of the language spoken there to get around. However, I do speak their language, and although I'm fairly confident in my linguistic abilities, my parents are not, mainly because they've not seen me speak in this language before.Country X has, to be frank, a fairly shitty image. It's recovering following a military dictatorship and a bitter civil war, there was a lot of violence and crime, although it has definitely become a lot better since. I've researched it enough to know that it's safe for two females and a male, all who speak the language, to work in one of the charity centers or the local hospitals out there for a few months.My parents are getting back to me with a final decision today. I'm nervous. I've put my case forward to them, pros and cons of both destinations clearly stated, all the other factors included as well.If, and only if they give me a yes, I can start making my elective plans in earnest! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Gigantic huge shiny ants, with wings, wtf?

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:03:00 +0100

Where the hell have all these massive gigantic ants come from? And how come some of them have wings AND CAN FLY INTO MY FACE? Where have these abhorrent creatures suddenly come from, and is there going to be a mass giant-winged-ants extermination any time soon?Has anyone else noticed these disgusting insects? Please say yes, and it's not just me whom they launch flying assaults at on my way home from uni.Gross.Anyway, on a more serious note, I have a lot to write about my plans for electives. Oi! Did I hear you yawn? ...How dare you....But anyway. Overall, I'm suddenly having a bit of a change of heart about what I want to get out of this elective, what I actually want to spend my time doing and learning. So, I'm trying to draft up initial plans and also trying to figure out how I'm going to find someone in my electives group who wouldn't mind doing the same thing with me, as I'm not allowed to go on my own.*deep sigh.*Tis complicated. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

The fuss of the track braids

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:44:00 +0100

During the summer holidays, I went to Egypt, where, because of the sweltering heat (and also because I've never had it done before,) I decided to get my hair done in cornrows (or track braids).They've been there for about two weeks now, and I have to say, I've grown to really like the style. It suits me well, it's easy to maintain and it gives my hair a break from the straightening irons. I've received nothing but compliments about it so far, along with the usual questions: "Who did them?" (a guy at the resort that I was staying at) or "Wow, how long did it take to do?" (35 minutes, for the record, the man was really fast at braiding) Or "How much did it cost?" (Fifteen pounds, which after having asked around seems to be fairly standard for that sort of thing.)Those are the sorts of questions that I've received from my university friends, people of my age, people who are, generally speaking, quite cool and well travelled.The response from traditional family members has been at the other end, and quite surprising, to be honest. My father, for instance, took an instant disliking to the cornrows, and keeps asking me anxiously when I intend on taking them out. I find this surprising. After all, I haven't dyed my hair bright green or had blue extensions put into it, it's just been put into cornrows, simple, flat braids with my own hair that I can unbraid whenever I want to, nothing really drastic.He wasn't the only one. The weekend after returning to the country, (and having been at university for one week already,) my family and I all went to my aunt's place in the countryside for a massive garden party, where there were lots of family members and family friends present.Now, one of those relatives is quite a traditional woman, the sort of woman who takes great pride in maintaining a spotless house with carefully color-coordinated rooms, polished, gleaming cutlery and perfectly manicured nails. When she saw me, she frowned."Cal," she said. "Your hair... it's...."I was sort of expecting this, in all honesty, so I grinned and said, "It's been braided, I got it done on holiday.""Right... I see," she said, in rather clipped tones, still frowning. "It's rather... African," she finished.*"Yeah, I guess it is," I said, smiling. There was a long pause as she continued to study my hair."So, when did you get them done?" she asked."Two weeks ago," I said. "When I first got to Egypt.""Really?" she said, in surprise. She wrinkled her nose and stared in disgust. "So, you haven't washed your hair in two weeks?"Oh please, woman, do get a grip of yourself. Having cornrows in your hair does not mean that you don't wash your hair. Do you honestly believe that black people with dreadlocks or cornrowed hair for months, go without washing their scalp? For goodness' sake.I patiently explained that it was still possible to wash your hair with cornrows in, but she just looked at me sceptically, as though I were lying to her. In the end, she asked how long I was planning to keep them in for, to which I replied for as long as they would stay in and look good for, and then I decided to go and converse with someone else.Later on, by the barbeque, I was talking to a different person. Funnily enough, an in-law of the relative I was talking to earlier. Naturally, the conversation turned to my hair and the cornrows. She was actually better - she admired the cornrows a little, although she still seemed uncertain."Isn't this the style that black people wear their hair in?" she asked, examining the tightly braided tracks. "Goodness, how did he manage to braid such short hair? It must have taken ages, right?""Actually, it took him about half an hour," I said, "And yes, a lot of black people do get their hair cornrowed.""But how do you brush your hair?""I don't need to brush it, you can't brush your hair when it's all tightly braided," I said, wondering if this was a trick question. Why would you even try brushing your hair over cornrows? What hair is there available to brush?"But Cal... how long have you had these in for?""Two weeks," I replied."So... you've not washed your hair in two weeks?" she said, wrinkling her nose exactly like the other woman."No," I said, flippantly, "I haven't washed my hair in two weeks. But then again, I haven't showered in five months, so what's the big deal?"Honestly.I never knew cornrows would cause such a big fuss. Next time I should get my hair done in dreadlocks with purple extensions, just so see what sort of questions they'd throw at me then.UPDATE:I forgot to ask.I had a conversation with a friend today about the cornrows, and she said, "They are coming out before placements start, aren't they?"And this made me think. Because actually, I really like my hair done like this, and when I have to take them out, I was thinking of getting them rebraided in the exact same style (I've even taken photos of my hair so that I can show the stylist how it has been done so that she can do the same thing for me.) So that means that, in all likelihood, no, the cornrows will not be out before placements.So now I'm wondering just how appropriate it would be to turn up for placements with my hair in cornrows. I took a look around the lecture theatre today, and nobody else has their hair cornrowed apart from two other people, and they're both black, which makes the style look more natural on them. I, however, am not black, and cornrows are not a usual hairstyle for me.I have no idea whether these make me look unprofessional. I don't think they do. From an objective point of view, they have been done very neatly. It doesn't look messy, and only half of my head has been done (to the crown, I think is what you would call that area.) My own hair has been used, no extensions have been woven in, it's been secured at the base with inconspicuous hairbands which can hardly be seen. There are no beads or shells or any other additions, and the cornrows in themselves are just neat, parallel lines, no elaborate patterns or shapes.So, all you doctors out there (now including you, Little Medic!) and anyone with an opinion in general - what say you? Cornrows to placements? Yay or nay?* = quick disclaimer, just to clarify - no, the woman is not racist, she's not implying anything about black people at all, I guess she's just not used to seeing a hairstyle that is predominantly fashioned on African people on me, that's all. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Apathy over lectures, and electives fever

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:09:00 +0100

Well, folks. I'm now a fifth year medical student. I am now 2/3rds of my way through medical school, and I know nothing.BSc year has finished, and I got a 2:1 overall. When I first got my results, I was quite surprised it wasn't a 2:2. Then I studied the results carefully, looking at the breakdown, and I realise that I was about 4% away from a 1st class honours.It feels like someone has kicked me in the teeth. My exams let me down, overall, and I did the best in my project. The shitty thing is, I can almost see where I could have got that extra 4% from. I can envisage my exam papers, and I remember that I answered one question incompletely, because I ran out of time. I remember my project, and think that maybe, maybe if I had included that other suggestion for improving the methods, maybe I could have snagged a first.Still, though, after my whinings and complaints, I've made my peace with my 2:1, and yes, I'm overall quite happy with it.Now, moving on, it's fifth year. We have begun with a month of lectures on pathology. I attend the majority of these lectures, but find myself getting increasingly bored through each one. I have the post-holiday blues; I am utterly apathetic, not just about lectures but about medicine in general. It's been a long time since I last visited a hospital ward, and in all honesty, I think I'm secretly more than terrified of starting my specialities. I've forgotten all of my general medicine and general surgery that I learnt in my third year, I've forgotten how to present patients properly, how to check for signs of particular diseases, important things to ask in the history...But there's no time to panic about that now - lectures are coming on thick and fast; some days we have seven lectures on topics that I keep forgetting and/or find boring, like myeloproliferative disorders, or various enzyme deficiencies.Add to this the fact that it's warm outside, the sun is shining, Londoners are soaking up the sun in their lunch breaks dressed in summery linens and flip-flops, lying lazily on grassy spaces, reading books or chatting away happily in groups. The summer holiday atmosphere pervades our oppressive and darkened lecture theatre, with tanned students trying to muster some motivation to learn about calcium handling.I refuse to sink back into work mode. I refuse to catch the train into London on time. Instead, I've been giving myself the luxury of getting an extra hour's sleep and commuting into London later, which means I miss the stress of the rush-hour commute into the capital. Of course, another thing I miss is the first lecture or so, but I'm really not feeling guilty about that. Yet.On another note.Today, I used the university's library catalogue system and my library card for the first time, and I borrowed a book. The book I borrowed?Great. The first book I borrow in my five years of medical school, and it's a book on holiday planning. :)Can I just say I am so excited at the prospect of going on electives next year? My slot is from July to September, I've got 9 and a half weeks in total, and I plan to visit two countries, although my medical school forbids this and says that we should spend our time in one.So far, number one and hot on the list is Malaysia, more precisely the territory of Sarawak. It's got beaches, watersports, and an opportunity to practice medicine in both an equivalent to a DGH as well as rural villages with an outreach team. A group of close friends and I are already drafting letters to hospitals there.However, I am keeping other options open. Second on my list and something I am aiming to definitely try my very best to fit in are Argentina or Peru. I would particularly like to visit and practice medicine in either of these places, even if only for a short while, plus I'd love to do the Inca Trail as well. Those two are countries that I have always wanted to visit.The islands of the Caribbean are hugely tempting - although I do want to spend some time practicing medicine, and I don't know how motivated I'd be to do that in, oh, Barbados. :)Egypt seems like another awesome place to do an elective, more specifically a diving centre's hospital! I know this one is a frivolous one, but why the hell not?Nepal has always seemed like an awesome place to go to - I'd love to go somewhere mountainous and I've never experienced that sort of holiday before. However, in all honesty, hotter climes appeal to me more than colder ones.And lastly - I've always wanted to do some sort of aid work in Africa, always. Unfortunately, I don't have any contacts out there and I haven't made enquiries as to whether anyone else in my year and in my electives group would be interested in something similar, as I wouldn't be allowed to go out there on my own.So, those are my options. Bear in mind I want to work for at least 6 weeks in one place and practice some actual, serious medicine, leaving 3 and a half weeks for travelling, and the fact that I'm not made of money. If anyone has any useful advice to offer, or anything to add, leave a comment! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Let's just see how i'm doing so far

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:21:00 +0100

Hello everyone!I'm back, after a rather long blogging hiatus, which was primarily to enjoy my last official holiday of medical school. I've already started my fifth year; in fact, I've been back for a week, and before I launch into tales of how cool and exciting it is to be back in a clinical year (yeah, right) I just thought I'd thank every wonderful reader who left birthday greetings at my last post. So thank you, all of you. :)I also thought that seeing as we're now more than half way through this year, I would check my original list of New Year's Resolutions and see how I'm doing so far. This might seem like a pointless exercise, but I'd like to just regroup my thoughts and think about what I set out to acheive this year and try and get back on track with things, now that it's the start of a new academic year. So:1. Re-vamp my work ethic. This includes things like reducing the time Ispend procrastinating and to stop leaving things until one hour before thedeadline. This will save me unnecessary panic and drama. Hah! Well, that one certainly didn't work! Did I mention my thesis drama? Did I mention that in the last 72 hours before the deadline, I got about a total of 6 hours of sleep because I was working round the clock? Did I mention that I was adding new material to my write-up two hours before the deadline, when it takes me about that long to commute in to campus? Did I mention that I handed my final thesis in TEN MINUTES before the deadline?Honestly. Well. Anyway, there's still time to mend my ways. The drama I went through with my thesis almost killed me entirely, and I certainly don't want to experience that again, so I'm already trying to be vaguely organised about this year, printing out lecture slides and filing things away properly. I know that this doesn't translate to working, but it helps me feel better, so oh well. :)2. Dedicate more time to God and to prayer. Speaks for itself, a fairlypersonal one, one that I debated about before writing online, but I guess Idon't really care what anyone else thinks. Hmm. This one is a difficult one to write about candidly, as I don't really like discussing religion and my relationship with God quite so publicly. Let's just say it's been a very difficult year in many ways, things have happened that have tested my faith, and although at the time I very nearly felt like I was losing the plot, I think I'm a lot stronger now, having rediscovered the benefit that I gain from prayer. There is room for improvement, I do believe that God is merciful, and I can only get better.3. Dedicate more time to family. I've been busy with exams andrevision and university stuff and my part-time job lately, but my familyshouldn't have to pay the price for that. I really need to spend more time witheveryone.I have spent more time with them. I think I can still try to be a bit more patient with family members, but I definitely have increased the amount of time I spend with family, being it just sitting back and talking, to helping with stuff around the house.4. Dedicate more time to friends. I really feel that I've failed peoplethis year in terms of support, which I guess makes me a selfish person. I've improved in this regard, I really, really have. In fact, one could even say that I've gone to the other extreme - helped others out so much that I've managed to burn myself out in the process. Damn this whole 'balance' thing!5. Pay more attention to my hair. A fairly frivolous one, after all thoseserious ones above. Er, yeah, this one lasted for I think about two months and then I got the majority chopped off anyway, making it hell of a lot easier! I can't even say that I care!6. Eat more fruit and drink more water. I was really good at thesetwo for months at a time, and then I would sort of forget about them. Iespecially need to drink more water, given the amount of coffee that I drink.I succeeded with this one! I've definitely been drinking more water, and I eat at least three pieces of fruit a day, which I know is still short of the '5-a-day' adage, but it's something, at least.7. Attempt to curb my caffeine intake somewhat. This is one of myserious ones, and it really is a pressing issue, as I have gradually developed aresting tremor and I cannot go for very long without another cup of coffee. I sort of succeeded this one at different parts of the year. In the run up to handing in my thesis, however, this one totally went out of the window. Now I'm slightly better. I'd say that I've reduced my average daily caffeine intake by about 20%.8. Take up a new sport.Naah, it didn't happen. I did start one, but I couldn't train as frequently as I wanted due to time and money constraints! Arrgh!9. Take up a new instrumentAlso sort of petered off. I'll have to see if I can revive this one somehow.10. Run 365km in 2008.I am proud to say that I'm almost finishing this one. I calculate that so far I've run over 260km, which leaves only another 105km to run in almost 6 months... easy!11. Write more. Er... yeah... can't you see my millions of award winning blog entries... Ahem.12. Continue to be good with my finances.Er... well, this hasn't gone so well. I'm waiting for a cash injection in the form of a student loan, now. I sort of blew more than I meant to on my last holiday. Ooops.13. Continue to exercise regularly and start weight liftingagain.Still doing these! Weight lifting I'm not adhering to quite so much; it involves a lot of discipline which I'm lacking at the moment, and I'm enjoying my cardio workouts more, so I'm tipping the balance in the favour of cardio.14. Try and better myself in small ways. This one seems like a bit of a twee comment. I can't remember what was going through my head when I first wrote it, but there must have been some deeper meaning behind it. Either that, or I was just being a pratt.So, there you have it. Overall, not as well as I would have hoped. Never mind, though, I've still got almost half a year left. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

:)

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:47:00 +0100

I just thought I'd let people know that it's my birthday today and now I'm 22 and BOY DO I FEEL OLD. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

By the by

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:00:00 +0100

I'm going to be receiving the results of my BSc soon. I didn't get called for a viva, unlike some other friends of mine, so this means that whatever grade I have acheived, it is a solid grade and not on any grade boundaries. I don't know how to feel about this. A viva to lift up the grade would have been like a second chance to get the higher grade. However, I may very well be solidly in a 2:1 territory meaning that I don't need a viva. Still, that in itself is disappointing, as I couldn't have been near a 1st and not having the viva does not give me a chance to prove myself.As it is, though, I have no idea where I stand.And later, in less than two weeks' time, to be precise, I will be entering my fifth year of medical school. My fifth year of medical school; my penultimate year. I'll be rotating through the specialities - big blocks of paeds, obs & gynae, psychiatry, musculoskeletal, dermatology, rheumatology, gum, neurology... the list is endless.I feel apathetic, bordering on scared. I have forgotten most of my clinical medicine; I don't even think I could read a bog standard ECG accurately. I have yet to sort out accommodation for this year, although I'm not too fussed about that just yet as my first rotation is fairly central, and commuting in shouldn't be too much of a fuss.Before I can even think of 5th year, though, I need to know if I have passed the BSc.Eeek. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

I hate ikea

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:16:00 +0100

I have always had a love-hate relationship with IKEA.I am sure that at one point in my life I used to love shopping at IKEA.I must have been about nine years old, but I loved that store more than any other store in the world. I loved seeing their mock-up 'rooms' with all the furniture displayed out and atmospheric lighting and attention to all the tiny little details that made the rooms seem so realistic and 'lived-in' - kid's toys on the floor, a drawer partially opened with an item of clothing sticking out, a small, precariously piled tower of books on the dinner table. I used to wander from mock-up room to mock-up room, pretending that these were rooms in my castle - my bedroom, my kitchen, or my study. I even remember getting a book down from one of the bookcases once, settling down in a huge cosy armchair in a fake study, and then realising that the book was all in Swedish.When I moved out for university, once again, IKEA was nothing short of a Godsend. Yes, it was busy, crowded and annoying, but it proved to be such good value for money for all those things that I needed for my home away from home - study lamps, cutlery, towels, rugs and measuring jugs amongst other things, all at affordable prices.Nowadays, I only go to IKEA with family, as we're renovating part of our house, and my trips to IKEA have become somewhat less fun, which is the biggest understatement of the century. Every time I hear the phrase, "I think we need a trip to IKEA..." my heart plummets through my body and crashes through the floor, because this automatically means that I am expected to accompany the family on these trips, now that uni's out for the summer. I am now expected to take part in conversations with riveting themes such as, "It's Too Wide - It Will Block Access To The Shelf?" or "Will This Fit In The Bathroom?" or the most engaging: "This Will Get Through The Door/In The Car/Up The Stairs, Right?" I am expected to have opinions on things such as the quality of the fabric, the style of the sofa, the color of the rug, the possible places where we could put this shelf, how suitable the lighting is for a room.I find these trips nothing short of hellish. My father is extremely tense when it comes to these sorts of things, as he hates visiting IKEA with every bone in his body and therefore tries to accomplish everything with the minimal amount of trips there.On this trip, he's terse all the way there in the car as we join the winding lane of traffic to the familiar blue and yellow building, and nobody says anything. He asks me twice if I have a list of all the measurements of the rooms and windows and alcoves and walls; distances from the fireplace to the cieling, from the wall to the door, from the window across to the hallway, from the skirting to the opposite wall; every conceivable thing you could measure out with a tape measure is carefully noted and plotted on a scrap of paper that rests in the pocket of my jeans. The car park is utterly packed; we circle the route three times in silence looking for spaces and finally spot a young couple loading their car up with boxes, ready to leave. I envy them.Once inside the store, kids scream and cry around me, couples argue about furniture, ghastly yellow and blue IKEA bags bob up and down among the sea of bodies, I see people slumped on the display sofas, looking defeated, and I feel like joining them. I'm forced to trawl through the entire showroom in order to find the shelving section; we lose our way at least twice and end up wandering around the 'Living Space' section yet again. Finally we reach the sofa-bed section, the one item that we need to get as soon as possible for guests who are arriving at our place soon.We stare at all the sofas and beds arranged in no particular order with ridiculous names and my heart sinks even further. I get the measuring tape out.More than an hour later, we have finally decided on the sofa-bed that we're going to buy. I make a careful note of the aisle and location number, and wearily, we all trail down to the self-service area with a trolley to collect the separate parts of the sofa bed.We get to the correct aisle and find the frame, the coverings, but no actual mattress. After standing in another queue for another twenty minutes, we are told there are no more mattresses coming in for at least another week. I refuse to accept this after we've spent SO DAMN LONG in the store and head back to the aisle to take one last look-see and check if any mattresses have been put in the wrong place. After another ten minutes of moving bedding and covers aside, I finally spot the mattress for our sofa-bed - the last one in stock. We load it onto the trolley and head off to the queues.Don't get me started on the queues. I've never stood in the same place so utterly bored for so long. Actually, I have, plenty of times on surgical rotations, so scratch that. But anyway, just as we're about to pay, a fire alarm goes off, we're asked to vacate the store as soon as possible. We waste time standing in the car park with all of the other shoppers, some amused, some pissed off, most just looking tired and totally worn out. Finally, the doors re-open, we head back to the checkout and pay for our things.And how long did that trip take? FOUR HOURS. Four hours for a sofa bed and a few other items. What an utter waste of my life. I hate that store with a vengeance. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Other people's houses and other peoples' lives

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:23:00 +0100

So, recently, now that term's over and I've got nothing better to do, I've been doing a lot of running.I had one tried and tested route around the area that I live in, that takes me a good 50 minutes to complete and used to be fairly challenging, but now I'm really really bored of it. The same drab houses, the same hill that I struggle with each time, the same polluted main road with cars stuck in a permanent traffic jam - totally, utterly boring.I used Google Earth last night, to check out an aerial view of my local area and choose my new running route.Now, I live in a really crap town. It's really run down, and I live down the road from a massive council housing estate, and I'm pretty much surrounded by council houses on other sides as well. There are a lot of derelict houses with unkempt front gardens and loitering children with bulldogs on a leash, outside the local off-license trying to buy alcohol. It's filthy, dirty and crime-ridden, but it's home to me, so I like it.I also thought that I knew the area pretty well. I know of a fair few short-cuts, I know which areas and pedestrian paths to avoid after, er, 2:30pm, and I thought I knew about all the local housing estates and the types of houses in my area.But Google Earth has revealed some surprises.For those not in the know, Google Earth basically lets you check out satellite images of almost anywhere in the world. You can type in your post code and zoom into your house, you can see a grainy image of your car parked in the driveway and you can possibly make out what looks like a cat on the roof of your garden shed. Before I went on holiday last year, I checked out the hotel location on Google Earth and calculated how far it was from the beach. I was able to view satellite images of the gardens, pools, tennis courts and hotel grounds from it. You can zoom into the Eiffel tower and see the tourist coaches parked around there and a little food stand. You can take a look at Mount Everest, or the Grand Canyon, or the Great Wall of China, or cruise along the streets and avenues of New York, or check out the Sydney Opera House.It really is quite marvellous. So anyway. I typed my postcode into Google Earth to plan a new running route. I scanned past my house, clicking and dragging the cursor in different directions so that I could see my options. I lazily looked past the council housing estates, looked further north, hmmm, dodgy alleyways that way, gang hang-out near that other roundabout, dodgy lighting on that street.... Then I clicked more towards the East, and to my surprise, I saw satellite images of a tiny hidden alleyway leading to what looks like a brand new road with absolutely huge houses on them. The houses are all almost identical, and they're not terraced or semi-detatched properties like all the others in our area. They all have land on all four sides, rather like houses in a typical American suburb, with massive front lawns and absolutely huge back gardens.Out of sheer nosyness and curiosity, I zoomed into this little hidden road and to all the houses there, and lo and behold, I kid you not, these guys have back gardens WITH SWIMMING POOLS. Swimming pools in their back gardens! Pardon my surprise, but this is really not typical for my run-down area with its reputation for high crime rate and violence. These houses really do not belong in my area at all. They look like someone has copied and pasted the image from a different country into the surrounding image of my town. It's bizarre.One guy has what looks like a huge conservatory and a small pagoda in his back garden with a small winding path leading up there. Someone else has what looks like a pond and a pretty rock water feature with a mini waterfall. Another dude has what looks like a little wooden bridge over a small stream. All this in their back gardens. And it doesn't end there. The lawns are all immaculate, there are tennis courts nearby, there is open green space and what looks like a beautiful little church nestled there. Unbelievable. This little slice of suburban America looks like it is, at the most, a seven minute jog away from my own house which is bang in the middle of a crowded, noisy, filthy, over-populated, drab, run-down area.It really is bizarre. I'm trying to figure out how I didn't realise this before, and my curiosity is growing. I plan to run along that little alleyway tomorrow and enter into this amazing street with its amazing houses with amazing back lawns. I'd like to take a good look around, see the amazing types of cars the amazing people must own and have parked in their amazing driveways, see the amazing French windows and doors of their equally amazing properties, and run around the amazing little church with its no doubt amazing stained glass windows.This is my plan for tomorrow, people, and I just thought I'd share this with you.I also wanted to ask if anyone had any good ideas for running music, because along with my running route, my current music collection is seeming to be rather uninspired, as of late. Just to give you an idea, The Automatic was high on my running playlist, but I'm bored of that now, so any suggestions of groups along the same vein with the same type of music would be much appreciated.:)Toodles. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Catching up

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:33:00 +0100

Many thanks to everyone for all of their suggestions on my last post. Some of the stuff that was suggested was simply so brilliant! Especially PhD comic - I stayed on that site for absolutely ages, admiring all of the things.I finally made up my mind and got my supervisor something totally different. I think it was well received and a good present to give, though admittedly I'm biased. Some of the suggestions, though, I'm using for other people, like the paperweight and holiday souvenirs.Speaking of which, I've been on holiday to Norway (back now, safe and sound), which horrendously bankrupted me. Why on earth are Scandinavian countries so damn expensive?! Paying for drinks, coffee and food all but left my wallet empty, let alone things like excursions, cinema tickets and taxis. Honestly. Having said that, though, I absolutely loved the country. The weather was a bit tempramental (although people did tell me that it was good for this time of the year!) the scenery was breathtaking, and the seafood was amazing. I ate really well (too well, which is why I then went running in the mountains to try and compensate) and had a relaxing break.Then I got back to the UK and started filling out forms and slowly unpacking and getting my things back in order. A few days ago, I was told to take our cat, Tyson, to the vet because he had a cut in his paw.What an utterly traumatising experience, probably for me as much as the cat. I hated every minute of it. The waiting room stank of stale urine and dog poo combined with damp hay and fungus, even though it looked fairly clean. It was freezing cold, and the woman next to me had something in a cardboard box in her lap that smelled really foul and kept growling occasionally.I ended up waiting for TWO HOURS to be seen. Tyson, my poor kitten, was quivering in his cat carrier all the way there and throughout his two hour wait. There were some really foul-looking dogs, including one sat right opposite us with angry eyes and a mixture of what looked like blood and pus oozing from one ear, and another nasty little chihuahua that drove me insane with his high-pitched yelps.At the end of the wait, we were seen for less than five minutes - the wound was cleaned and the vet said it was healing well and didn't require any stitches, but administered some antibiotics instead.I left the vets smelling just like one of those mutts in there. Gross.And never, ever again. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Taking suggestions now, please.

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:20:00 +0100

Well, the write-up was given in today, without much fuss, thank goodness, although a last minute change did involve me running around the building like a headless chicken, looking for a color printer. Not one reliable color printer in the whole darn building. Out of all those write-up rooms, offices, staff rooms, computer labs, libraries, and there's not a single color printer.Sometimes the world doesn't make any sense at all.But it's done, dusted, handed in. Am I happy with it? No. Did I think it was the best work I could have produced? No. In fact, was it even vaguely good? No. Could it have been distinguished from a pile of shite? No. Do I think I'll get a good mark for it? No. Do I actually care now? No.So now, project time is officially over, and I'm flying out on a quick holiday tomorrow, to recuperate. I had a bit of hell with regards to the flights as I had to change the flights at the very last minute due to an airport strike at the other end, and the plane that I'm now catching is an indirect flight lasting a total of 7 hours. Instead of 2. Joy of joys.Anyway. My supervisor, a course administrator and a two other BSc students and I all went for drinks in the coffee shop, which also happens to serve alcohol. It was really enjoyable, it was nice to wind back and just chat informally, though I'm still a little tense, but I guess that has to do with the recent lack of sleep and the long-ass plane journey tomorrow which I'm a little anxious about cos the changes were really last-minute and it sort of didn't seem very official.BUT ANYWAY. I wrote this entry with a specific question in mind. I'd be grateful if my glorious readers in the blogosphere (yes, all three of you) could please help me out.I want to get my overall supervisor a present, but I'm not sure what. The other BSc student got him a bottle of wine, but I haven't got the foggiest about alcohol, and I tend not to give alcohol or chocolates or eatables/drinkables as gifts.I know that I don't want to get him a tie, cologne/aftershave or food/drink.Things that I have been suggested so far which I'm not going to get are: ties, colognes/aftershaves, or food/drink.Other things I have been suggested: a classy keyring / cufflinks / CD / book .What do others suggest? Please let me know as soon as you can - I'm flying out tomorrow and if I can get the same thing from Duty Free, it'd be great!T (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

I've got a job to do, there's no room for mistakes

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:55:00 +0100

Brownie points to anyone who can tell me which song the lyrics in my post title belong to.Brownie points, too, to anyone who can commute here and do my goddamn write-up for me. Please. I'll give you blueberry muffins.So. My project is due to be handed in on Friday.This Friday.As it stands, I have my discussion left to finish (about 3/4s of the way through so far,) my introduction to add bits to, and my references to sort out. Add to that, printing and binding. It doesn't help that my computer here doesn't run Write & Cite, EndNote OR RefWorks properly. Bastard machine. My supervisor has been an absolute life-saver. I sent him a draft of my introduction yesterday evening, and it was sitting in my inbox first thing this morning, corrections outlined and suggestions for improvement in the margin. I feel bad, because it's all very last minute and it's really not fair on him, especially as he's been asking to see drafts for the past few weeks, but he's really cool about everything.It's totally my fault, of course. I had made drafts of everything, but I thought I'd try and get it all looking really good so that my supervisor would have to make a minimal amount of corrections, but yesterday I just thought, "Screw it," and went ahead and sent him the first copy of my introduction. And it still came back with plenty of corrections, so I don't know why I try so hard to not look stupid when it just comes so naturally anyway.************************On another note, our assessed presentations took place yesterday. I was scared shitless at the beginning (my hands wouldn't stop shaking) but overall it went well, though by the time I left the room, my back was absolutely covered in sweat (sorry to be so graphic.) At least it's out of the way - the question and answer session at the end seemed to go on for something that was just slightly short of an eternity.******************I'm stressing out at how I suddenly can't write. I'm also looking back and thinking on my mistakes. I just realised I spent five weeks using an antibody that was directed against an internal epitope on my cells, so it wouldn't have been detected in a million years anyway by flow cytometry. Still, I feel like a right pratt including that in my write-up in the discussion section. It maketh me cringe.Because of general dumbassed-ness, I spent five weeks staining my cells for a particular receptor with an incorrect antibody, and then probably the same amount of time wondering why it wasn't staining positive. Not only this, but get a load of this, too: Once, I made slides of cells really carefully, but I actually managed to deposit the cells on the WRONG SIDE OF THE SLIDE, which, really, you have to just have a Masters in Ultimate Fuckwittery to do. I have learnt many bitter life lessons from this, including the fact that if at first you don't succeed, then take a swig of the 70% ethanol and get the hell out of the lab before you set something on fire, accidentally-so-totally-on-purpose. *************************Anyway. I've booked a holiday outta here as soon as this thing is over. I'll have less than a few hours to recuperate from my recent hectic schedule (I've been working almost around the clock these past few days) but hell, I'll be on a plane heading off to sunnier (well, actually, rainer, given the predicted weather forecast,) climes.Man do I need a holiday.Right, enough procrastination, I need to get back to this stupid write-up.Come Friday, and it will all be over. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Photographic evidence

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:20:00 +0100

I wasn't joking about those crosswords, you know... (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

I want sky sports now

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sun, 04 May 2008 19:41:00 +0100

It sucks not having a subscription to Sky Sports. I had to go the gym today to watch Oscar de la Hoya and Steve Forbes fight it out in 12 rounds.What an amazing fight it was - really heated up in the last few rounds and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.I want to see a major fight one of these days. I don't even know how much they cost, but I'd be willing to put some money aside to be there in the audience. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Probably the bitchiest and most cynical blog-post ever

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:27:00 +0100

This is just an advance warning to you all - this entry is really, really bitchy and nasty and mean-spirited. So much so, that I'm probably going to disable comments after this so you don't all start throwing shit at me.I'm not going to apologise, though.What am I going to rant about?The football last night, of course.So Liverpool go crashing out at the hands of Chavski - oh, sorry - Chelsea, undeservedly so. I was really gunning for them - I thought that they were the better team by far, and played with so much passion.And for goodness's sake, I am sick to death of hearing about Lampard.Who exactly told him to take the penalty?I'll be the first to admit it - a bereavement is never easy as I have recently discovered myself, unfortunately - and it must have taken strength to face the world again and make his comeback. When he stepped forward to take the penalty, however, something inside me just cringed.I mean, of course he was going to score. As soon as it became clear that Lampard was going to take the penalty, Liverpool might as well have just said, "Alright, fair dos, have your goal." Even if it had been a totally lame kick, a really rubbish attempt that could have easily been saved - no one would or could begrudge Lampard that goal after his personal circumstances. I'm not saying that it was a rubbish penalty that could have easily been saved. I'm just saying that I feel that the entire thing has been so overrated, and it was almost a sympathy penalty.And now all the newspapers, banging on about how courageous he was, how amazingly brave he is and how this match meant so much to him. Well, yes, he is brave in some ways, but why, because his mother died? Well then that makes all of us here who have experienced a bereavement heroes as well. Let's look at it objectively - being a footballer is Lampard's job, for crying out loud - he relies upon it to pay the bills, just like the rest of us have jobs and need to get back to them after time out. He's simply returning to his frickin' day job, that is all, ladies and gents, he's not doing anything spectacular or heroic. In fact, there are people here in the blogosphere who have dealt with a family bereavement and then returned to medical school and faced course problems, financial worries and hell of a lot more. Not that I'm suggesting that Lampard hasn't got a lot to deal with - I'm not for one moment being unsympathetic over the passing away of his mother. The issue that I find annoying is how the newspapers suddenly seem to think that he's Jesus and he can do no wrong any more. And of course, I think the real issue behind this rather ranty post is the fact that I just can't accept that Liverpool lost. :( (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Isn't it great when things just work?

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:40:00 +0100

I ran some more experiments earlier this week, and to my joy, every single last one worked. Worked beautifully, in fact, and the data obtained will be used in my write-up.I was so pleased with the outcome, I was upbeat and cheerful for most of the day, and as soon as I had finished analysing my data, I raced up to my supervisor's office to show the data to him. He was impressed - I've obtained some particularly nice results, and it will be great to put them in my write-up.One of my sub-supervisors told me that in science, the highs were high, but the lows were really goddamn low, and I couldn't agree with him more.Along this vein, I've found that I really do enjoy lab work. Weird, I never thought I would enjoy any aspect of this year whatsoever, but I really, really have, and I really do believe that doing this BSc has opened my eyes to a part of medicine which I never actually thought about before.***************My presentation and write-up deadline is looming, and I still have to finish my introduction. For goodness' sake, why can't this writer's block leave already?***************I was speaking to another BSc student, who is under another clinical academic - an honorary consultant working at the hospital. The student told me that he has sat in on his consultant's clinic once a week for the past few months, and that I should ask mine if I could sit in on his clinics.I knew that my consultant ran these clinics, and I am interested in his branch of medicine, but it never ocurred to me to ask him if I could sit in on them. I feel like I've wasted an opportunity, here.***************I've decided I'm most definitely moving out for the next year of medical school. I received a letter for an NHS bursary application which I am going to fill out soon (though I have no idea how much it is for.)Commuting, I have decided, is far too time-consuming and it has not been worth the money saved. I feel that my life recently has become one long train journey punctuated by brief stints at the lab or at home. I have no time to do things that I enjoy - things like going for runs, or going out with friends, or playing Mario Kart on the Wii. I have to get to sleep really early so that I can wake up and get ready in time for my train. Now to just find a place that I don't mind paying a small fortune for, and more importantly, deciding who to live with...****************Lastly, I can't wait to vote tomorrow! Come on, fellow Londoners, make sure that you're going to use your vote! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

I think it's time to start panicking now

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:27:00 +0100

I've got slightly more than two weeks until the deadline for the handing in of my write-up and my assessed presentation.I realised last week I had been analysing some of my data incorrectly; data gathered from the entire first half of the experiment.I have experiments left to do, and the final two weeks should ideally be kept free for writing up.I have not got nearly enough data as I would have liked.My time in the lab is limited (in fact this should have been the last day.)Ergo, I'm screwed. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Pouff - it disappeared!

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:09:00 +0100

I just wrote a long-ass entry about why my day went so badly today, but why there was a silver lining at the end of it all, only to have Blogger crash on me and save the first few lines.The first few lines, after torrents of paragraphs, explaining what had made my day so eventful.So I'm just going to leave you with the first few lines instead, as a testament to how I REFUSE to ARGUE with stupid darn BLOGGER (and also a testament to how lazy I am because there aint no way in hell that I'm typing all that up again.)"I was in a weird, fragile sort of mood today; the type in which you generally feel that you're either about to burst into laughter or burst into tears at the slightest drop of a hat. Seeing as I don't really cry, for me it was the former, and I pretty much laughed all day at the most inane things."There. That's it. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Go, go calzaghe!

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:20:00 +0100

So Calzaghe won the big fight; I knew he would. Watching the weigh-in psyched me up so much, I couldn't wait for the fight.Speaking of which, I haven't actually seen the entire fight yet, from start to finish. I've tried YouTube, but nothing.Any ideas, anyone?(image from Reuters, I think) (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

The pain of writing up

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:34:00 +0100

It seems the more time that I spend trying to do write my thesis, and the more papers that I read to help me out, the more confused and I become, and the more wishy-washy the document gets.I think AMiB has written about this as well, and it just seems that my thoughts are entirely the same as his.Every time I write down a single sentence, I suddenly have ten questions about it in my head, which I then go off to research on. And then once I'm done researching, I have another thirty questions that need answering. It's a vicious cycle that then makes me believe that actually, I really have absolutely no idea of what I am talking about.It pisses, me off, really, as I know that I do understand the main concepts behind the project, the importance of my work and the significance of the findings, but it's just getting that information across that I'm finding really difficult.The write-up is purportedly the most important part of the project and I'm really trying to produce a good first draft to show my supervisor, but at this rate - well, I might as well chew my hands off out of frustration. I think the most productive writing I have done so far today has been this blog entry.On another note, the list of next year's rotations has been emailed out to all of the students. The first rotation that I'm going to be doing is dermatology, which should be interesting. Most of my placements are at the central teaching sites, apart from two major placements, Obs and Gynae, and Paediatrics, which are both at hospitals on the other end of the earth, as far as I'm concerned. To put it simply - if the hospital isn't in Zone 1-3, then it's faaaaaaaaar!I might try and arrange a swap with students in my cohort to see if anyone for some reason wants to do these rotations in the peripheral hospitals.Right, I'm off for now. I have a thesis to write! Arrrgh! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

I hate mondays

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:41:00 +0100

No really, I really, really do.My brain is incredibly slow to work and I just can't seem to focus. Instead, I've been listening to The Automatic on repeat, reading and re-reading the same two lines from the same paper that I was reading two hours ago. I have made little progress.Someone just phoned our department. It was an external call, and since my desk is near the phone, I picked it up. The person on the other end was a really grumpy guy who demanded to speak to the reception of the overall hospital. Now I have no idea what the extensions of the different parts of this hospital/lab block are, so I politely told him that he would have to find the number and dial them directly, as this was a completely different department based in the Academic Medicine block.Then he asked me whether I could transfer him through (er, no, this is not a switchboard, this is a completely different department, hello?) and then when I said I couldn't, he got arsey and asked to be transferred to Human Resources, so I had to once again explain that I could not transfer calls.To my surprise, he got really rude, angry and then hung up, after basically stopping short of saying that I was incompetent.Bastard. I don't need shit like this on a Monday. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Falling, fast

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:05:00 +0100

Oh dear.I think it's quite crap that I've fallen for someone head over heels in the last two weeks of my project.I need to get him OUT of my head, godDAMNit! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Slowly seduced by academic medicine

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:26:00 +0100

My BSc project will be coming to an end soon. I'll be having to spend my last few weeks of my fourth year doing my thesis, or 'write-up' as it were, and that will be the end of all these experiments, all these graphs, all these new techniques that I've seemingly only just learnt and finally mastered.I was thinking about it last night, and although I initially felt that I would be glad to see the end of the lab work, I think I'm going to miss it a lot - indeed a lot more than I thought I would.I've actually come to enjoy working in the lab. I finally know the ropes a little better, I'm more relaxed when I'm running procedures on my cells, I know more of what's going on, and more importantly, I've come to love my project with a fierce sort of pride.Now that I've analysed the first major set of results, I've realised that there is simply so much more we can do with my cells, so many more experimental conditions we could try, so many more experiments we could plan for them, but it all seems to be a little too late.I've also really come to love the environment I'm working in. My overall supervisor is amazing. I can't believe that at one stage I actually found him unapproachable. Yeah, I guess I still find him a tad intimidating when he asks me a tricky question in one of our meetings (except they're not really tricky, I just get the feeling he's trying to trick me out), but he's a good teacher and explains stuff really well.The people in my lab are really cool, too. I've gotten to know them well over the past few weeks and everyone has been nothing but nice, helpful and supportive; willing to explain the most basic procedures and protocols to me and show me how things are done properly. I was told to speak to a totally random person today, Pablo, to find out if I could borrow some reagents from him and get some advice regarding the concentrations of reagents to use. He was really lovely. After giving me aliquots of his reagents to use, he then made sure that I understood the how to do the dilutions to reconstitute the different reagents, making notes for me and explaining everything really well. At the end of it all, he told me to come and find him if I had any problems and that he would go through it again with me, and the entire time, I just thought, "I'm not even your student, and yet you're so cool, and so patient!"What a wonderful guy.Everyone else has been really amazing too. Although I have no one directly supervising me in the lab, everyone helps where they can. In the words of one of the PhD students: "We're in this war together, but we're all fighting on the same side."I agree with that one.On another note, I didn't really rate medical academics. In fact, I thought they were a little sad. I thought that once, they used to be fresh-faced medical students, ready to learn clinical medicine and start seeing patients, and then somewhere along the line they fell in love with a petri dish or something that they saw under a microscope, and then they decided to stay in science instead.Why and how could that actually happen? Why would they choose a career centrifuging cells or pipetting out antibodies when they could be out on the wards, seeing patients, diagnosing them and treating them? Isn't that what they went into medicine for?I've realised how wrong I am, and just how much I actually admire these people and even aspire to be like them, especially the clinical academics. If you were to Google or PubMed any one of my BSc lecturers, or even my supervisor, you'd find tens (or indeed hundreds in the case of the latter) of papers written by them. These people have pioneered clinical therapies, provided the scietific breakthroughs upon which novel therapies are being based and are really taking the field forward.And something that I really find admirable is how down-to-earth and how willing to teach they all are. Most of the people I've worked with so far are passionate about science (certainly true for my supervisor, whose zeal has rubbed off on me, somewhat,) and despite all the grants that they've managed to secure, or the number of papers that they've written, or the conferences that they've spoken at, they're really easy-going, friendly and completely not arsey, for lack of better words.I just contrast this with the attitude of some of the other medical professionals I've come across on rotations - and my respect for clinical academics just grows.My supervisor and I were talking a few weeks ago, and he said that I could come and work for him in his lab during the summer. At the time I just laughed it off, but it's slowly becoming a really appealing option. Me, considering spending my summer in a lab... My, how things change... (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Homeland medicine

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:21:00 +0100

A family friend has recently returned from a holiday to her homeland - a place of sunnier climes, good food, breathtaking scenery - and, unfortunately, plenty of medical BS. This weekend, I was asked for my advice on a drug that said family friend had been prescribed out there and had brought back with her. When I say advice, I mean an elaboration, or an explanation as to why it's important that she takes the drug at the required time. The family friend is elderly, and has little understanding of what her different drugs do, but she's happy to follow instructions if she understands why she has to do them. I asked what the drug had been prescribed for. "My high blood pressure," she replied. "Oh, I didn't know you had high blood pressure," I said. "Did the doctor out there measure it for you?""Yes, he did, he said it was very high." "How many times did he measure it?" I asked."Just the once, but it was high."Hmmm.Well. "Can you please show me the drug?" I asked?I expected to see a packet with the familiar name of some ACE inhibitor, or an Angiotensin Receptor Blocker. Instead, she produced a small bottle from her bag, and I was met with this:A homeopathic remedy. Prescribed by a doctor. Right.Well, let's take a look at the pharmacological composition. Is there a table, informing us of ingredients to the nearest nanogram, or a recommended dose regime?Ah, yes, careful examination of the little bottle prove that both are provided. How considerate.Here is the pharmacological composition of the medicine:Rauwolfia, anyone? Viscum album?And here is the dosage:Dear oh dear.I had no idea what to say. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Dare i ask?

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:07:00 +0100

I'm debating whether to ask my supervisor whether I can order my cells in for the Thursday instead of the Wednesday.Wednesday is the big match - Arsenal v. Liverpool - UEFA cup quarter finals - and I have plans to head down to a bar to watch this match with a bunch of friends.Pre-match banter starts at 7:00pm, with kick-off at 7:45pm.PROBLEM: I'm supposed to be staining my cells with flourochromes and running them through a flow cytometer at around this time.SOLUTION 1: Delay not the cell order, and listen to the match on the radio whilst I work away in a lab. (Lame, lame, lame, and I'll probably get distracted and knock over my samples at some stage or the other.)SOLUTION 2: Be honest, tell my supervisor that I want to watch a major football match, so could I please delay the experiment to the Thursday instead.HOWEVER, I don't want my supervisor to think I'm frivolous, lazy or not taking the project seriously enough (if he hasn't already established that opinion himself. I pray not.)BUT: I personally think my supervisor is quite cool and actually might not mind.So yeah.Cos, this is a fairly major match. I don't want to miss it, and the Lord only knows I have spent enough hours in the lab at the expense of good football. This cannot continue. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

The happenings around the blogosphere

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:10:00 +0100

So someone else is engaged! Congratulations to her!Another thing: Does anyone know the whereabouts of PhD scientist?How about Renal MilknTwo? (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Thief!

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:14:00 +0100

Screw you, UK Daylight Saving Time, for shamelessly stealing an hour of precious sleep before I had to drag myself into work. I hate you! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

The demise of the spider plant

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:30:00 +0100

Remember this entry? Wherein I complained about my intrinsic lack of ability to take care of plants?Well, I appear to have really outdone myself.This was the state of the spider plant last time you saw it:And this is what it looks like now:...Yeah. Now, as far as I can tell, I did everything right, I watered the stupid damn thing, I moved it into the sunlight on the weekends (when I remembered,) even bought some stupid plant food for it, and it just dies on me anyway.So, what should I do? I can't let my mum see the plant in this pitiful state - is there any chance I can nurse it back to health or is this just a lost cause entirely? Even when I try to water it, it's as though the soil is just too hard to absorb the water - it doesn't sink into the soil. Does it need to be repotted?Arrgh, stupid bloody plants. I'd be most grateful for any advice, preferably before my mother sees it! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Procrastination techniques, chapter i

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:08:00 +0100

I'm trying to start on my write-up for my project, also known as my thesis, but that word scares me, so 'write-up' it shall remain.I was supposed to have dedicated half of Monday and all of today to this task to at least make some headway.Yesterday, I created a neat little folder and some nice new Microsoft Word documents. Then I separated those into sub folders of sub folders of folders. Then I decided to title each Word document instead of just Document 1, Document 2 etc, so I opened them all, chose the font (which took twenty minutes) and then decided on the titles for each of them (Materials & Methods, Antibody Concentrations, Additional Information, Useful Information - which is different from 'Additional Information,' - Introduction, and Background Notes.) Then I transferred some of the bullet points from my jumbled-up notes in a previous old Word document to these new shiny Word documents.After that mentally and physically exhausting task, I decided to call it a day and promised myself that today would be dedicated to actually filling those Word documents with useful stuff.So far there is nothing in those documents apart from their titles, which I did last night. I'm only starting to decide which document to open up first now. Do I wish to work out antibody concentrations and open up 'Antibody Concentrations,' or should I explain to the reader how I isolated my cells in 'Materials & Methods?' The choices are endless...Suddenly I'm feeling really annoyed at myself. I've wasted a whole lot of time - I had all these days off - and I have done nothing, I haven't progressed with my write-up at all, I haven't completed the background reading that I said I would, either.Instead I've been playing the Prince of Persia: Rival Swords on the Wii (so addicting, I tell ya), hoovering up the remnants of any chocolate eggs that remain in the house with my mouth, and reading Wormwood, by G.P Taylor. Oh, and phoning random people in my phone book to say hello.Now I'm getting slightly worried, because I have a meeting with my supervisor tomorrow at 3pm who will probably realise that I haven't really used my time wisely at all. I have nothing presentable to show him (and I think that he wants to see my introduction and methods) and I haven't even planned out my antibody table, and I haven't finished working out all those darn stupid concentrations, and I haven't even planned my new controls for the second part of the experiment.It's just occurred to me that it's been almost two entire weeks since I last ran my procedures in the lab, and actually, I'm not even entirely sure as to whether I remember how to do these procedures again.Whoops.I'm off now, I'm going to try and prepare my methods write-up at least.Arrrgh! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Just a minute while i reinvent myself

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:41:00 +0100

I went for the sports massage yesterday, and on the whole, my back is feeling a whole lot better. Thank you to everyone for their advice. The massage was actually painful at times but at the end of it all, the muscles in my back felt a lot looser and actually lighter. I slept so much better than I usually do, and I woke up without the usual tense pockets near my shoulder blades. I might go back for another one to get rid of the few remaining knots which remain.Overall, I'd reccommend it to anyone who has a tense back and some of the symptoms that I described in my earlier post.On another note - last week I didn't do my experiment at all. I've mentioned before that my cells arrive in on a Wednesday morning and I basically spend the entire Wednesday and Thursday separating them, staining them and running procedures on them, but because of the Easter weekend, the transfusion centre had a bit of a backlog and prioritised the blood for clinical use as opposed to research use, which suited me just fine, as I didn't even have some of the antibodies that I needed.Although not receiving my cells has meant that my progress has been set back by a week, I'm appreciative of the break because this means that I have time to do more of my write-up which at the moment is just an amalgamation of bullet points and various headings and sub-headings thrown together in a Word document so far.*******************I approached my supervisor about something really basic that I didn't understand on Wednesday. I caught him in a foyer and told him that I didn't understand a step in my methods and the calculations that I was supposed to do for it. Truth be told, I expected him to fob me off with an excuse, but he was so nice - we went for a coffee and he explained what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to complete the steps and work out concentrations - and overall I guess I'm just quite chuffed that he would take the time to explain it all to me despite being such a busy person and my knowledge on the matter being so paltry. I'm going to try and do my best in the next stages of the project (and next week too, when my cells will arrive again, hopefully,) and do well in my write-up. In all honesty, the project is getting really interesting, if not quite complex. There are so many different angles we can take on the information that we have already gathered, so many different things to investigate, and I'm apprehesive (but also excited) about the next stages...Ohmygoodness, I did NOT just publicly admit that I'm enjoying the BSc....:S (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Knotty, knotty knots

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:01:00 +0100

Ouch.Just recently I've been having a lot of upper back pain. More precisely, the area between my shoulder blades. Probably also the areas over my shoulder blades, and my lower neck.A few months back, one of the friends in my BSc group gave me a back massage in between lectures and said that I had lots of knots in my back. When she massaged me, I could actually feel lumps of god knows what - muscle? - in my back which hurt loads when pressed. That massage was horrendously painful at the time, but a day afterwards, my back felt a lot better, my muscles looser somehow.Since then, though, I really have abused my back. I've been sleeping in odd positions, hunching at my desk for hours on end, craning over a 96-well plate with a bloody pipette, and going for runs without warming up or cooling down effectively, and now my back is screaming at me.I've tried feeling the areas of pain myself, and once again, I can feel palpable lumps if I press hard enough. They're mobile, really painful to press, but they're aching me all the time.A few conversations at the gym later, and I've been booked in for a deep tissue sports massage. To be honest, I've been booked in twice already, but I've always had to cancel last minute because of something coming up, usually my experiments over-running and having to spend longer than anticipated in the laboratory.It's come to the point now where I would say that the knots in my back are actually becoming a priority to deal with. I went out running yesterday and something twanged there near my left shoulder blade, and my back still hurts today. So this time, I'm not missing this sports massage. I'm going to leave the lab early and head to the gym for it and see if it helps.Does anyone know whether these 'knots' actually do exist? They must do, I can feel them in my back, but what the hell are they? Muscle? Why are they so painful? And has anyone else had a deep tissue back massage, and is it painful?Arrgh. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

The longest day in the world and the muddle in my head

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:52:00 +0100

Yesterday, I started my day off in the lab at 9:00am. Got in promptly, completed the first few stages (up until midday) absolutely fine. I was actually looking forward to nailing the procedure this time, purifying my cells properly, and then getting some more good results to add to my write-up.Instead, because I ommitted ONE cell-washing step, just ONE FREAKING STEP, the entire procedure went pear-shaped. Omitting this one fooooking step added FOUR HOURS of extra work to my procedure, and I ended up staying in the lab well past midnight with two (unofficial) supervisors helping me out. In fact, I ended up having to stay the night at one of my supervisor's houses because it was so late and the hospital was too isolated to really commute safely from.And after messing up that one step, things just got worse from there, although they were really silly and stupid problems, things like forgetting to resuspend the cells in a certain medium, or running out of antibody in the middle of the experiment; things that were fooking annoying but also a bit bloody stupid. I had never thought that my antibody might just run out in the middle of the experiment. I never thought that a roller might not be present in the cold room and I'd have to traverse 17 floors in ten minutes to find one, wasting precious incubation time for my cells.It was the first time that I ran this procedure from start to finish on my own, without any supervision whatsoever. This procedure, if running smoothly without any flaws, starts at 9:00am and finishes at roughly 9:00pm. And that part is just the data acquisition - analysing the data takes at least another day. So yesterday when this messed up, I ended up having to stay until beyond midnight to sort it all out.I got into the hospital this morning from my supervisor's place to analyse my data from yesterday, and I've also got an email sitting in my inbox from my overall supervisor who wants to meet to discuss why I was in the lab until 1am yesterday, and whether there was anything he could do to make my experiment go better.Oh, I dunno, give me a new brain? Or how about an actual proper supervisor, one who can watch me work in the lab, one who knows about the procedure that I'm supposed to be carrying out and one who has actually done the damn thing before?The final thing is: overall I'm not too sure what to make of that bizarre experience of over 15 hours in a lab.Part of me thinks I'm just a dumbass for messing up the steps a little. I've watched this procedure being done once, and I've done all five-million steps under supervision twice. And now, when it comes to doing it all on my own, I mess up. And my mistake was a little dumb as well. I just omitted one step, that was enough to create four hours of extra work, four hours which would have been better spent doing some data analysis, or preparing for the next steps, or starting the write-up.But then part of me has realised just how useful it was to do it all on my own. I made mistakes which now I know that I won't make again. Things like running out of a stupid antibody half way through the damn procedure - at least this time I'll go in the day before to make sure that I have enough of everything. And although it was a long day in the lab - I've learnt a lot, which, yes, I know, won't exactly win me the Nobel prize or anything but at least I've learnt things that will make the next run hopefully go a little smoother.On another note, I really like my lab (well not just mine but the people who work under a different professor and who we all share the workspace with) and later I'll write an entry on them all, because the atmosphere is brilliant.Right now, though, I'm functioning on precious little sleep and I cannot be arsed to type any longer.Toodles. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Crosswords

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:29:00 +0100

Medstudentitis wrote a post about the inability to let go in a more serious fashion, but I believe I have this inability to let go as well, though over silly little frivolous things.One of these is crosswords.The London Shite - sorry, Lite - is a free newspaper distributed to commuters in London and it has an easy crossword inside it.I've just realised how obsessive I am about these crosswords.I'll attempt it on the train journey home, and then I feel this pressing need to complete it - I can never leave it undone or with gaps in it, and I'll go to quite some length to get the answers to it, including using my mobile phone to access the Internet to go to an online thesaurus or dictionary or even just Google.com to find out the answer, and texting friends to ask them things like, "Plant fibre for rope making, 5 letters, last one l?"Yeah, sisal, I know that now.Anyway. If I haven't completed the crossword by the time my train pulls into my local station, I actually end up feeling a tad frustrated and mildly annoyed.And the thing is, I won't even let go after that.Instead, I'll take the paper home with me, dump it on my desk and then go and have dinner and such. Later, I'll come back to it and continue the task of doing the crossword again, even though I'm no longer in a position to idle away minutes of my precious time, even though I'm swamped with work. Completion of the crossword becomes an arduous task; something that simply has to be done now that I've started it. Even if I Google every single clue and get the answer, it's just the fact that it needs to be complete.If I really don't have the time, that newspaper will stay there amongst other newspapers with unfinished crosswords which I have promised myself to complete at some time or the other, because that word, the six letter one beginning with 'o' with the second to last letter being 's' meaning stupid? OBTUSE? Yeah, that's me.I've only just realised this mini-obsession of mine after clearing no less than thirteen old newspapers out of my room and dumping them with a satisfying thud in the recycling box. After completing the crosswords in them, of course. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Rusty

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:10:00 +0100

My sub-supervisor asked me to take some blood off him for an experiment that he's doing.I was up for it until he presented me with a butterfly (I don't even recall how to use those, I'm a needle and syringe person myself, or at least a vacutainer person) and then I just lost my bottle.Instead, he stabbed himself with the butterfly, and I just drew back on the syringe, praying to myself to not mess it up somehow.I used to be so good at taking blood, and now I just don't have enough confidence! Arrgh!********************************On another note entirely, I'm trying to plan my elective out (yes, I know it's two years away just yet, but still,) and thinking about the proportion of serious medicine v extreme sports and relaxation I want to do.Hmm.I've already thought of a few locations, but I'm still unsure.What, bored of my BSc?Me? No way.;) (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Weight loss, shallow women, etc etc

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:29:00 +0100

Quite a ranty entry, this one. Just to warn you in advance.A few days ago, a very old family friend came to visit. I personally hadn't seen her in ages - she's my mother's friend and lives oop Naarth, and only visits London every once in a blue moon, and it just so happens that every time she has visited, I've never been in, or I've been living out for uni. This means that I haven't seen her for a good five or six years, since when I was doing my GCSE exams when I was 16 years old.So anyway. She came around, and when she saw me, she gasped."Cal!" she gushed. "My goodness!" I expected her to say something along the lines of, "It's been ages since I last saw you!" or "My goodness, how you've grown!"Instead, she said, "It's absolutely fabulous that you've lost so much weight!"What a bizarre first comment to throw at someone whom you haven't seen in years. I didn't quite know how to react, because I personally thought that her reaction was a bit over-the-top. I mean, the last time she saw me, I was trying to learn Pythagoras' theorem, for God's sake. Er, people do tend to grow up a bit and even out, six years down the line, body shapes do change throughout school and college...But anyway. She had also brought her daughter along, who I'm guessing is now about 13 years old? 14? She turned to her daughter and said, "My goodness, honey, you don't know - Cal has lost so much weight!" And she said it so gleefully, with so much happiness, when all truth be told, on the scales I haven't even lost that much since she last saw me, although I have grown taller, slightly.Later on, she asked about my life. She was happy to find out that I had got into medical school and was doing well, but not half as happy as she had been when she first saw me and commented on the weight loss.She also caught sight of an award I won at my secondary school in a frame on a shelf (er, not that I display accolades to myself that much, but it was just a random one that was framed) and she inquired as to what the competition had been about. I happily explained the competition to her, explaining what it had entailed and the prize that I had won, whilst her daughter listened on. At the end of my explanation, she said distractedly, "Mmm, that's nice, well done," whilst replacing my award on the shelf. And then she turned to her daughter and said, "See? Anything is possible when you put your mind to it - just look at how much weight Cal has lost!" Her daughter (of a slightly stocky build) just rolled her eyes, as though she was used to hearing comments like this.To be honest, her expression mirrored what I felt inside - a mixture of boredom and being patronised, but there was also some underlying anger.When you last saw me, I was a chubby teenager sitting GCSE exams with dreams of one day getting into medical school. And now, here I stand, six years on, already two-thirds of my way through medical school, winning competitions giving talks and organising events, and what do you choose to compliment me on? What quality of mine do you hail as a shining example of perseverance to your young, impressionable daughter?Weight loss.How absolutely pathetic.Instead of inspiring your daughter to work hard at school and acheive her best, you choose to drill into her the importance of being thin, of losing weight. I mean, what on earth? If this is what educated young women are teaching their thirteen-year-old daughters, then no wonder society is so screwed. No wonder pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia groups are flourishing on the Internet, no wonder girls grow up with such distorted body images and such low self-esteem. Pardon me for being obtuse, but I bloody well belive that getting a place at medical school, thriving academically and passing exams with good marks deserves far more merit than incidentally losing a few kilograms here and there.Messed up, that's what this is. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Infinitely more positive

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:11:00 +0100

Last week ended in a bit of a disaster. I had no results to show for hours spent in the lab, and was given a bit of a grilling by my overall supervisor at a lab meeting (though admittedly it was done in good faith, and I learnt a lot from it as I realised that I was still unclear about certain concepts and then went away and went over them.) Still though, at one point during the meeting, I felt so pressurised with the constant barrage of questions that my supervisor was half-jokingly throwing my way, that I actually turned to him, flushed, and said, "Would you stop it?!"This week is my last week with my current sub-supervisor, the one who actually teaches me all the techniques and procedures in the lab and watches over me.I've already mentioned him before - Paul - and basically, I really do think he's the coolest supervisor around and that I've been blessed to have him around for the first two weeks. He's really patient, answers my questions really well, gets me to think about stuff for myself, and helps out with the thought process when he needs to. He is such a great teacher and just so cool at the same time - still has a life, manages to balance clinical work with research and teaching and playing hockey and taking PBL and the million other things he does. It's even cooler as although we have a student-teacher relationship, I can swear in front of him or say exactly what I'm thinking and ask whatever I want to without any fear of him making me feel like shit.I can't believe he's leaving at the end of this week. I cannot believe it. I really really cannot. :( After this, I don't know WHO will take care of me in the lab and make sure I don't screw up and teach me all the new things that I need to learn for the next part of the project. I need to use him as much as I can before he leaves.On an entirely different note, can I just express my devastation at Eduardo de Silva's injury in Arsenal v Birmingham at the weekend? Horrendous, I felt like crying when I saw the pain he was in, my stomach was knotting repeatedly and my heart flipped. My thoughts and prayers are with him for a speedy recovery.And omg, Spurs winning the Carling Cup, like, what the hell was that about, anyways? (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Bollocks to this, really.

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:43:00 +0100

I spent all of yesterday and all of today in the laboratory. This means that I got in at 9:00am, set to work, and stayed in the lab until 8:30pm. I missed four massive football matches, one of my own beloved team, in the past two days, just for this project. (Though I was wearing my Arsenal shirt with pride today, just to get into the mood.)Anyway, today I got in early and set to work. Today I was supposed to get Results. Actual, REAL Results. Results with a capital R. I was supposed to then present these with a flourish at the next lab meeting (er, day after tomorrow) to my supervisors and other lab members.Yeah. That isn't gonna happen.I spent ALL of today extracting a certain subpopulation of cells from human blood. It took forever. Every step had to be done with extreme care. I did each and every stage meticulously, reading and re-reading my notes and instructions several times to make sure I wasn't going wrong.Then came the purification part. Using a ridiculously expensive magnetic bead kit to sort my cells, I followed the protocol provided to the last letter and then FINALLY, after EIGHT HOURS of work and completing many other steps after the purification process, I took the cells to the flow cytometer machine.Only to find that the population I had tried to extract DIDN'T ACTUALLY EXIST IN MY SAMPLE.So basically, the entire day's work, for nothing. For absolute, BUGGERY-SQUAT, for JACK-ALL, for SFA.Arrgh.< / rant > (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Secretly actually quite gutted

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:19:00 +0100

A football rant first:What a shite weekend, I can't believe Man U(re) wiped the pitch with our faces so badly. Absolutely gutted. As the match progressed, I just buried my head more and more underneath the collar of my trusty Fly Emirates Arsenal shirt and tried to block it all out of my head.I can't even think of a valid line of defense. It was a shite match, we were awful. End of. Still, before all you Man U glory-hunting fake supporters start gloating, let me just say we are STILL on top of the league. So shame on your face. That'sallIhavetosay,subjectofficiallyclosed.***************Lab work can be really satisfyingly methodical, despite the meticulousness with which you have to work. A few days ago, I spent the better part of an hour labelling my wells of cells with flourochromes. I had no problem with this exercise, although it did get a little tedious. The tiny bottles and vials of fluorochromes first had to be found from their tray in the fridge amongst the tens of tiny bottles, then pipetted out in microscopic amounts and carefully desposited into one of 96 tiny wells on a plastic plate. The pipette end disposed of, the new fluorochrome chosen, new sterile pipette tip attached, new flourochrome drawn up and then carefully pipetted into the next well. Repeat ad nauseum with 8 different flourochromes in 21 different wells.Overall, it was a task well done, though because of the novelty of it all and the fact that I just didn't want to mess up, it took me a century and a half. My slowness meant that the flourochromes didn't get to sit on the cells for half an hour as the manufacturer recommended, and we pretty much had to go the cell sorting machine as soon as it was done as we had already booked our slot in, but hey, I did a good job.Then centrifuging the damn things, adding on the buffer, re-centrifuging and throwing off the excess. Finally, pipetting the mixtures into different test tubes for the Flow Cytometer analysis, adding some buffer, agitating the mixture, then slotting the tubes into the FACs machine for analysis.My cells were analysed, neat little histograms were plotted on the accompanying software; my supervisor and I spent a long time making sure the compensations and gates were correct, fiddling with the parameters of the various graphs....and then?"Looks like we're done here," said my supervisor. He took the grey rack, containing those test tubes that I spent the better part of a morning preparing, that I lovingly labelled with carefully chosen flourochromes, centrifuged and re-centrifuged, incubated and: WHACK. In one neat move, he upturned the entire contents of the rack into the bin. My test-tubes sat atop a pile of used hand-towels, empty plastic containers and cable ties.I was devastated.I think he realised, too, as he started laughing.In all honesty, what did I want to do with them? Their work was done, their purpose served, the necessary results obtained. Did I want to frame them on my shelf or something?Still, though. An ENTIRE MORNING'S work - upturned - in the bin - in an instant.Takes the piss, really.*************************I had a Penguin bar today (for those of you not in the know, Penguin bars are chocolate bars that feature a silly little joke at the back of the wrapper, and you lift the wrapper's flap to see the answer.)The joke I got was:What do you get if you cross a penguin with an alligator?And the answer was:I don't know, but you had better not try fixing its bowtie.Maybe I'm being really dense, but I DON'T GET IT. SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS JOKE TO ME, BECAUSE SHIT JOKES FRUSTRATE ME.In fact, so confused was I, I decided another bar was in order to get over it. This one had the marginally better joke:Who is a Penguin's favourite relative?His Aunt-ArticaYeah, no, it didn't really make me laugh either, but compared to the first, at least it makes vague sense. (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)

Pleasantly surprised but entirely overwhelmed

Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:04:00 +0100

After my project-choosing dilemma, I took everyone's advice into account, wrote up a list of pros and cons about each potential project, extensively discussed the issue with some more people in a more experienced position than myself, went on a long run to clear my head, and then arrived back home having made a decision.Despite all the advice I got to take up the second project with the supercool supervisor, I ended up going for the first one - subject matter that I was highly interested in but with an intimidating and seemingly unsupportive supervisor. I put that one as my first choice. My second choice was something different altogether, a completely different one that I didn't even mention in my project-choosing entry. And my third choice was actually the one that I was considering as my second choice in that last entry.I got my first choice and so far, I'm really glad I got it.Earlier this week, I met with my supervisor officially, and what can I say - I ended up being pleasantly surprised. He was really cool, took the time to re-explain everything again to me, broke everything down into stages that he expected me to complete, was really reassuring about things and told me that we would regularly meet to discuss my progress and address any problems.On an aside, I really need to judge things for myself sometimes instead of taking things that older years say for gospel. All I had heard was that this supervisor was wholly unsupportive, didn't give a crap about you, and basically left you to your own devices, which, so far, has been utter bullshit.Anyway, things have been moving really fast. I don't know - maybe I was expecting things to give a little after exams, you know, a bit more of a relaxed pace after the exam rush, but holy hell, no. Once again, I'm at the bottom of the barrell, I have that familiar feeling of inadequacy that I did when I first started medical and surgical rotations - a feeling of not knowing what the hell is going on, no idea of what to expect or what is being expected from me; a feeling of being supremely dumb and a huge fear of just fucking up in general. This is an entirely different ball-game, one I'm not entirely sure how to play. The laboratory scares me, people already in there, donned in long white coats, seem so driven and focussed and utterly absorbed in what they're doing, whilst I'm not entirely sure as to why there are quite so many fridges and freezers.The lab I'm in is nothing short of a mess, as we're supposed to be moving soon anyway to another new lab and it seems that to that end, no one has bothered tidying the place in the last, oh, century-and-a-half? I have to control my neat-freak urges to automatically start neatly stacking boxes, throwing away plastic wrappers and wiping down surfaces. Can't I do that instead of doing my project, please please pretty-please?Since our initial meeting, I've hardly seen my supervisor, but I'm working with someone else in the lab. Let's call him Paul for the time being. Paul gave our class a lecture a while back when we were still doing the taught module for the BSc, and even back then I remember thinking that he was a really good lecturer, so I was really chuffed when I found out that he was my mentor in the lab. He's absolutely awesome - really funny, really cool and more importantly, a good teacher. He strikes me as being a very student-orientated person - he has not made me feel stupid even once so far despite my endless (and stupid) questions - and you can tell he genuinely enjoys teaching. I'm blessed in having him as my supervisor! So that's the good side. The bad side is that I only have him for another two weeks, and then he's off. YES, HE IS GOING TO LEEEAAAVEE MEEEEE. The very thought of him leaving me ON MY OWN IN THE LAB instills a feeling of deep dread and despair inside me, so I'm just not thinking about it at the moment.I can't quite believe how busy lab life is. I don't know what I expected. I thought, you know, I'd leave some cells to thaw, grab a coffee in the meantime, go to the gym, come back, I dunno, add some buffer, put them to centrifuge, go and grab another coffee, kick back for lunch... You get what I mean.Yeah right.There are so many things to be getting on with - so many things to multitask. Even the simplest instructions like, "Add 25mls buffer to cells" turn into something sooo looooong when you realise you have to bloody well MAKE this buffer in the first place. What was I expecting? I don't know, a conical flask neatly labelled with "25mls of Buffer for Cal to use in her experiment"?And there are lab meetings that I think I'm expected to attend, and apparently I'm supposed to have results ready to present. As well as a journal club. A JOURNAL CLUB! My goodness. There are machines to be booked. Yes, we have to book use of machines. I went to book the flow cytometer machine for a certain hour NEXT TUESDAY only to find people have already booked well in advance. Unbelievable.I am so glad it's the weekend - this week has felt like one of the longest in my life, with so much new information to absorb and so much reading to do for the background of my project.SO MUCH TO DO! ARRRGH!Right, I'm off to read these 5 million pages of stuff for my project.Toodles! (Source: Of Short White Coats and Stethoscopes)