Re: Re: Re: Blog

Today is my second day of faux-shadowing in Ox. Basically, our shadowing attachment, as much as I can understand, is based on these principles:

1) We have to spend a certain number of days actually doing Uni stuff in order to count as having finished our course
2) We've all done our finals!
3) Oh noes. What else is there to do after finals?
4) Hmm, how about some arbitrary hoop jumping and form filling in to make our students glad of heart?
5) After all, it's the kind of shitty paperwork they will be doing as junior doctors
6) Splendid idea! But don't you think it would be more useful if they actually either used the time to take a break before their joyless working lives of extreme hardship and no holidays, or went and did something useful, for example shadowing the doctors whose jobs they will be taking over in August, and seeing how their actual workplace functions?
7) Well that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Quite.

So I'm on cardio, which is my first attachment in N/C. There are no FY1s in Ox cardio. We have to complete a little shadowing logbook, which is filled with things like, "familiarise yourself with your trust's antibiotic policies". Thanks, Oxford. Toxford.

The SHOs are all very nice though and I spent most of today's lunchbreak helping one fill in a crossword. We got stuck on "agricultural implement", 7 letters, H_R__T_. I think. Then I wrote a million prescriptions and TTOs and learned about nephrogenic systemic fibrosis. I also read through an unbelievably complicated set of notes for which I had to write a discharge summary, in which the only shining beacon of light was a medical student's lovely clerking. I had never truly appreciated how wonderful a medical student clerking is until this day. I'd always thought it was lies when doctors said things like "medical students are really useful! We love it when a medical student takes a history." I have now realised this is true. This is because:

1) medical students write in handwriting that you can read

2) they have 100000 hours to do a clerking, unlike most doctors, who have precisely 21.3 seconds, including writing-up time.

3) nuggets of useless information, such as, "Mrs X lives in South Kensington with Hungarian lady-friend. Hungarian lady-friend is friend" which appears to parched eyes as an oasis in a delightful desert of dry prose, esp in cardiology, which 75% of the words on a page are acronyms. After 20 pages of, " patient on CRT, Hx AF, 2001 STEMI with 3x CABG, 12-5-11 NSTEMI with PCI showing IMA to LAD patent, SVG to RCA in-situ, bystander critical stenosis Cx, proximal stenosis OM" a medical student's attempt at terseness - "abdominal tenderness" followed quickly by, "patient said their tummy hurt, exact words were, "my tummy is quite sore, not really sore you know but sort of achey sometimes". Attempted to find out where tummy sore but quite difficult. Out of 10, sore = 5" is BEAUTIFUL.

In other news, I have made a 25 before 25 list, and also started a 30 before 30 list. My 25 before 25 list is worryingly full of food items. It is quite difficult I think to do a good 25 before 25 list, because lots of things I want to do are things with no given end-point, like, "eat more healthily". In the end, though, I think I have nailed it. In no order:

1) Cook one new recipe each week
2) Buy a proper camera, and take an interesting photo each week 
3) Pass my driving test
4) Keep a memory jar faithfully

This is a bit of a woolly one, but I've wanted to do this properly ever since I was 15, and never have. Basically a memory jar is when youw rite down one nice or interesting thing that happeend every day, on a little bit of paper, and you screw it up and put it in a jar. Then at the end of the year, you take them all out and read them. I've kept one fo ra few months before, and always ended up forgetting. It's a really lovely thing to do, because it really reminds you of all the nice things that's happened to you over the last year that you've forgotten about. It's best to use memories that are sort of trivial - not things like, "I got married!" because you're never going to forget that, but things like a nice thing a friend said, or something you got right and were proud of yourself for - it's stuff like that that gets lost in the grand scheme of things, which it shouldn't.

5) Do an audit

I hate myself for writing this. But I should.

6) Go cycling/camping in the Lake District
7) Visit Edinburgh.
8) And eat a deep-fried Mars bar.

Seriously. Ever since Ruth said it was great, I can't wait.

9) *secret* haha! you will never guess what it is.

PS it is not rude. In case you thought it was. But it is secret!

10) *secret* I love this game! You will die of suspicions.

PS this one might be rude!!!!

PPS actually it's not, I thought I would pretend it was, but then I got embarrassed. So I think it is best to make it clear. THIS IS NOT RUDE. But it is also secret. The end.

11) Be totally vegetarian for a week

I want to eat less meat generally, but it's so easy to slip into bad habits. Being properly veggie for a week shouldn't be that hard, you'd think, esp as I did it for years at a go.

12) Be totally vegan for a week

Next step!


13) Set aside 1 hr at the weekend for myself, just for contemplation

I frequently find myself losing my way and not knowing what's important in life. This is important to realign. Otherwise, I know that days and weeks and months can go by without any reassessment. That would be a bad thing.

14) Do yoga once a week

Ha! This is laughable. Still, it's written down now. On the internet! Which means I have to do it.

15) Buy a new bike.
16) Cook a proper English roast
17) Make puff pastry by hand

I have just the right recipe to use home-made puff pastry in as well. Predictably, it's from the Guardian.

18) Actually do NaNoWriMo
19) Finish Michel's French course
20) Ice and decorate a cake....properly

"Properly" involves wet towelling, crumbing, and all sorts of strange icing techniques. I'm going to make a bundt cake too. WATCH ME.

21) Visit the Edinburgh Fringe
22) Read a new book every month (and stop re-reading books)
23) *secret*!!!!

I particularly enjoy putting the exclamation marks at the end. These are so dull, though. You won't guess because they are so boring. However, I enjoy adding excitement to my life by pretending I have exciting secrets. 

24) Use Ruth's sewing machine to make something I will wear (and wear it with pride!)
25) Learn to dance swing

What are your 25s, chaps?

xxx Connie