Revision

Revision.
It feels like I have been revising for my ENTIRE LIFE.
Which can't be true, because I must have spent some of my life actually learning stuff to revise, right?
Anyway, I just wanted to share with you
that I am at that stage in revision
where everything is distracting
because nothing is as dire as doing more revision

food?
yes
I will eat it
a rubbish tv programme?
I will happily
happily watch it
Minesweeper?
You don't want to watch me play minesweeper
Update my blog
with no actual content
just whittering about how much I hate revision?
Yes, thanks. Lovely. I'll take that. That's a freebie.

I just thought I'd record today in my blog for posterity
today is the day I have had ENOUGH of revision

this will, however, make no actual difference to the amount of revision I do in the future, as it seems my life is basically going to be one big revision fest over and over again. And with revision, it doesn't even END, because even if you could theoretically stop learning stuff, you NEVER have to stop REVISING STUFF. NEVER.

:-/

Listen, ophthalmology textbook, I am weary. I am weary of knowing that the medial rectus inserts 5.5mm from the limbus, whereas the lateral rectus inserts 6.9mm from the limbus and the inferior rectus inserts 6.5mm from the limbus, that the inferior lacrimal duct opening is slightly more medial than the superior, that the three principal actions of the superior oblique is depression, abduction and excyclotorsion while the three principal actions of the superior rectus is elevation, medial duction and incyclotorsion, that the lateral rectus is supplied with one of the anterior ciliary arteries while all the other rectus muscles are supplied with paired anterior ciliary arteries, while the long and short posterior ciliary arteries supply the uveal tract (the short anastomosing within the circle of Zinn to supply the optic nerve), and I DEFINITELY am not interested in the suspensory ligament of Lockwood. No. I'm not.

All of that stuff just spilled out of my head. It's like I can just open my head....and all that stuff can just fall out. It's inexhaustible! It's pushed everything else out! I have nothing else going on in my head. At all. Nothing.

Yesterday one of my friends asked me, 'so Connie, how does the combined oral contraceptive work again?' and despite having been on O&G for the last THREE MONTHS, when I could have explained this in my sleep, for a second my mind went totally blank, apart from a tiny voice said, 'hmm, well that definitely isn't on the ophthalmology syllabus. Wouldn't you be more interested in the different kinds of glands in the eye ( Meibomian, which is a sebaceous, holocrine gland; the glands of Zeiss, which are serous; the 2 types of accessory lacrimal gland, the principal lacrimal gland- a tubuloacinar structure derived from surface ectoderm and lined with cuboidal epithelium - occasionally bilayered), and of course the goblet cells of the conjunctiva which are more numerous in the inferonasal region of the eye (why? WHO KNOWS)" and then I realised I'd blanked out for about 1 minute and the conversation had moved on.

Isn't it fascinating that the iris only  has epithelium on its posterior surface (the anterior surface is really a modified basement membrane, which doesn't count), while the lens only has epithelium on its anterior surface? (I actually do find this fascinating, which...I don't know what that says about me right now.) That there is carbonic anhydrase in the non-pigmented ciliary body epithelium but not in the pigmented (which, by the way, lie together apex to apex, not base to base: there are no tight junctions in the non-pigmented epithelium but there are in the pigmented epithelium - or wait, is it the other way round? - and they form part of the blood-aqueous barrier), that....

No?

I am daily astonished by just how much anatomy (oh, what a small word for the world of pain that is the anatomy of the head and neck, eye, and brain), embryology, pharmacology, and OPTICS, FRIGGING OPTICS that there is in the world.

You know

the only thing that keeps me going

is knowing my sister is going to medical school

and she doesn't know ANY of this yet!

Nothing!!!

When I think about how much stuff I know now compared to how much I knew when I started medical school, oh boy. I fill up with hysterical laughter thinking how difficult it all was. It was so! difficult! And she doesn't know ANY OF IT.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Oh, I'm so happy. Oh, thank goodness for that. That's cheered me right up.
Nothing like a bit of schadenfreude for your nearest and dearest.

Now excuse me, I'm off to draw 50 ray diagrams on the use of the Porro prism in the indirect ophthalmoscope.

And also, maybe watch an episode of Masterchef Australia.

Weep for me.

GP

Things that have happened so far on my GP rotation

1) Me: "Hello, what brings you here today?"
Woman: "hi, I hate my job."
Me: "................ok. What would you like to do about that?"
Woman: "I dunno. I thought you would know."

2) Two small children roll about on my lap. One wipes its nose on the back of my cardigan while another grabs hold of my thigh and rubs her face on it. Then sneezes into it. Their mother is detailing exactly how many men she has slept with this month and how 'there's this weird cauliflower in my vag, but it's not warts, is it? tell me it's not warts. I've had warts before." Me: "Sounds like warts." Her: "HOW CAN YOU KNOW? How can you possibly know?"

3) My GP takes me to see a patient in lunchtime and ends up buying a fireplace.

4) Woman: "I'm bleeding from my anus."
Me: "Ok. Shall we get you on the bed and I can examine you?"
I draw back the curtain to find her standing with her cheeks spread between her hands, bent over the bed.
Woman: "Is this how you wanted me?"
Me: ":-O"

5) Woman: "I think my son is brain damaged."
Me: "Why?"
Woman: "He's got a headache. And occasionally he sticks his tongue out when he's thinking."
Me: "Right."
Lengthy neuro exam later.
Me: "Everything's normal. I think he has a squint. That is probably causing his headache."
Woman: "Are you qualified? Like, as in a real doctor?"

6) Me: "I see it says here you have chest pain."
Man: "No, that's just because I was embarrassed. I actually have worms."

7) My GP takes me to see a patient in lunchtime and buys a piano.

8) Woman: "I need antibiotics."
Me: "What for?"
Woman: "Never you mind what for."


1 week down. 12 to go.