A bit more optimism

Apologies for the outpouring of self pity the other day. I've perked myself up and accepted that whatever will happen, will happen and there's no point moping about it. I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that I could be resetting the year, so if I do pass it'll be a pleasant surprise, but if I don't hopefully I won't be too disappointed, although it would suck a lot.

I'm currently working another 15 hour locum shift today. It's been pretty busy up until now so it's nice to have a bit of quiet time. If I do pass the exams, then I've found out that my first proper clinical rotation will be in Orthopaedics and Anaesthetics. We have a 3 week community learning placement and then we go straight into proper rotations. Orthopaedics is probably my most dreaded speciality, probably because I don't have a massive interest in it, and MSK is my worst topic. If I knew that I'd passed exams I could be revising in preparation for it now, but I can't help but think that I'll be jinxing myself if I did now, so I'm refraining. I really wish that I have passed the exam as I'm so looking forwards to the time where I can go into the hospitals instead of lectures. Going back to lectures and group work full time again will be so hard.

As an aside, why do people leave it until 10pm on a Saturday to take action after running out of their prescription? Last Saturday at 10.30pm we had a flurry of people coming from the GP on call centre awaiting faxes of their regular prescription to be sent over. Except that the fax machine was broken, but as the patients all kicked up a fuss about needing their medication tonight, I had to try to contact all the different on call GP's to organise emergency supplies. If their medication is so important, why didn't they order it a week ago when they saw they were nearing the end of their supply, or even ask the Pharmacy to sort it for them on the Friday, or even come in on Saturday day time. Most of the medications were things that the patients took in the morning, so why didn't they take action on the Saturday morning, when we may have been able to get a script from their GP? Why Saturday night at 10.30pm????? It reminds me of when my sister (who's a nurse in A&E) had a patient call up an ambulance on a Friday evening and came into A&E by said ambulance because they'd run out of their regular medication..... Patients drive me crazy sometimes.

Giving up

I feel like a bit of a train wreck at the moment. As you might of guessed from my recent silence, I didn’t pass the exam. I did well in the OSCE, but failed the written, not by much but still a fail. Despite spending my whole Christmas holiday revising (new low – revision on Christmas day), I’m not confident that I’ve passed the re-sit exam either.

Today was our first day back at uni. We had an induction day in preparation for the clinical phase we’re about to enter. Except, I might not be allowed to enter the clinical phase but as we don’t get results until next week, I still have to attend the induction. The day also involved everyone asking how the exams went and our group supervisor greeting us with “congratulations everyone on passing the exams, except for anyone who didn’t’”. Pretty much just constant reminders of my failure, so today was pretty rubbish.

If I have to re-sit the year, I really don’t know if I’ve got it in me to do so. I really just feel like quitting everything right now, not just medicine but the world, and refusing to leave my bed and self-destructing. I would resit the year obviously as Medicine is the only thing I want to do but the thought of going back a year is completely soul destroying. I genuinely worked so hard last term, and yet other people passed no problem, so what’s wrong with me? Why are my brains so shit?

I’m also exhausted from a hard 15 hour locum shift I did at the weekend, and idiotically I’ve agreed to do a 15 hour shift every weekend bar two until the end of March. But, I’m poor so I don’t really have much choice.

Sorry for this torrent of self-pity. I’m just really tired and demoralised and needed to have a rant. I'll get over it, but I just need to mope for a while.