The Coffee Formula

I have a complicated relationship with coffee. I love it - it's tasty, smells great and has caffeine in it so what's not to love, but it doesn't always love me. I'm pretty caffeine sensitive and I have to be careful otherwise I get palpitations, light headed and an upset stomach. It also lasts a really long time in my system so if I have it past 4pm I have trouble sleeping at night.
Currently I'm in hardcore revision mode for my exams (which are in less than 2 weeks time, argh!) so the extra caffeine really comes in useful. It's a tricky balancing act to get the benefits from the caffeine but without counter acting it by getting side effects, and I think I've finally cracked it! By having one medium strength coffee just after my lunch I prevent the mid-afternoon slump and the caffeine effects mostly last into the evening, but without having too much caffeine and getting ill. I then just top up my caffeine occasionally with the odd cup of tea. This seems to be working so far :)

I'm feeling ok about the exams at the moment, but I am getting the odd period of overwhelming panic and stress. I'm trying not to get too stressed though as that was one of my downfalls in the summer, when I was so stressed that I couldn't concentrate properly on my revision and got loads of migraines. I currently feel a lot more prepared for these exams than I was for the summer exams, but this set of exams is also notoriously harder, so we'll have to see. My boyfriend has bought me a mini christmas tree for my desk to help motivate me to revise whenever I'm lacking concentration, as if I don't pass first time and have to do re-sits after Christmas, I won't be able to celebrate and enjoy Christmas properly!

(Photo taken by me)

Lots of neuro

As is the constant theme in the run up to exams, my life isn't really consisting of anything interesting outside of revision hell at the moment. I've currently got half an hour left until the FIFTEEN hour locum shift I've worked today is over. The morning/afternoon was pretty busy but this evening's been DEAD (as in, there's been one patient come in, in the last 4 and a half hours...) so I've taken advantage of this and got lots of uni work done. My brain's no longer concentrating though so I thought I'd update this to use up the last of the time until I can go home to bed. I'm looking forwards to bed so much!

This week was the last week of my radiology SSM. Instead of going to shadow people in the radiology department, we just had a short neuro imaging lecture and then we all we had to give a short presentation on "whatever we wanted, as long as it related to radiology" to the rest of the group as part of our final assessment. My presentation was pretty boring  and I'm not great at presentations (nerves cause me to forget how to talk coherently) so I'm not expecting a great mark for that. It doesn't count for much though, we basically just have to pass it. In the neuro lecture the radiologist got out a model skull to show us. I thought it was just a bog standard model of a skull, but NO it was actually a 3D printed skull showing the exact fractures a patient had sustained from a gunshot wound! I didn't even know that was possible!

I've also given in the last of my other bits of coursework for the term, so all I've got to concentrate on now is revision for exams (which are getting very close, very quickly). One of my downfalls last term was the fact that MSK was hard, the lectures were too long and detailed and I couldn't figure out a good way of writing up notes for it, so I just didn't... (a friend has since given me a copy of his very good notes which I am extremely grateful for). Neurology this term could very easily have gone the same way, but I've made a concerted effort to put a lot of time and energy into getting my head around it and making good notes. I'm almost up to date with it all now which I'm very pleased about as it's taken far longer than any of my other modules. Hopefully it'll pay off for the exams.

Where's Bernard's watch when you need it?

Hi.

Apologies again that I haven't updated in a while. Uni is very busy right now, with only 4 weeks-ish until exams. I know they warn you that medicine is a lot of work before you start uni, but I don't think you realise just how intense the course is until you're here doing it!
I'm home again this weekend for another locum shift. Trying to earn enough money whilst having enough time to revise sufficiently is a difficult balancing act.

Theres not that much going on at the moment that's interesting to write about. All we're basically doing at the moment is lectures, group work and lots of revision for exams. My year's all a bit stressed and tense at the moment with the thought of exams. We have lectures up until 2 weeks before  the exams, with OSCEs in the 2 weeks before the exams, so not a lot time to revise. The exams are on everything we've done from day 1 at med school (1 and a half's year's work) and we have a lot of lectures at the moment, so trying to keep up with group work/extra questions and writing up notes for all our current modules whilst also revising everything else is pretty difficult. I wrote up a work/revision timetable the other day and realised that I'm at least a few weeks short of the amount of time I ideally need, but everyone else seems to be in the same boat, and every year the majority of people pass the exam, so it must be possible!

It was my birthday recently which was really nice. My boyfriend went all out in making the weekend special. 4 of my friends surprised me by visiting and staying for the weekend. We went for a meal on the Friday night and on the Saturday we all went to Alton Towers which was really good (despite raining all day). Also, check out the birthday cake that my friend's sister made for me!

(photo taken by me)