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)

Exam worries

Oops, it’s been a while since I’ve last posted. This term is just going really fast and I don’t really know where the time goes! It’s just over 6 weeks until my big scary exams. 6 weeks really doesn’t seem like much revision time at all, especially when these exams aren’t just on this term’s work, but on everything we’ve covered since the start of med school and we don’t finish this term’s teaching until 2 weeks before the exam! It doesn’t help that every weekend seems to be taken up by working locum shifts or with visiting parents or friends. I’m trying to do as much work as I can in all my free time, but it never feels like enough. I had a bit of a freak out a couple of weeks ago that I’d never be able to learn everything in the time, and that everyone else in my year is far smarter than I am, and I just felt really disheartened. I’m feeling a bit better now, but I still have occasional moments of self doubt and panic. I really, really don’t want to have to re-sit these exams (and I don’t even want to think about the possibility of repeating a year). Having to re-sit the summer exams was enormously stressful and took up a big chunk of my summer holiday, and I don’t want a repeat of that. If I pass these exams then I’ll get to enter the clinical phase of the course, which by all accounts sounds a bit more relaxed than the pre-clinical phase, and I wouldn’t have to sit another exam for a whole year! Additionally, we also had to chose a clinical partner a few weeks ago, which we’ll be placed with in clinical rotations, and I’d hate to mess mine about by failing these exams. So all in all, my stress levels are pretty high at the moment.

A little while ago I wrote about being offered a 15 hour locum shift that I turned down. I worked a 10 hour shift at that pharmacy a few weeks ago, and as it turned out to be a really quiet, nice pharmacy (I spent a lot of the shift just doing uni work it was that quiet), I’ve agreed to do a few 15 hour shifts, starting with one this Saturday. I was worried that it was going to be really busy for the whole of the 15 hours which is why I originally turned it down, but now that I know that the majority of the time will likely be really quiet, I don’t feel unsafe working it. I was correct in my previous post in saying that a pharmacy open such long hours in it’s location isn’t really necessary, but I found out it’s because there’s another pharmacy situated a few doors away from it. Regulations mean that new pharmacies opening close to existing pharmacies are only allowed to open if they’re 100 hour opening pharmacies. Pharmacy’s tend to be pretty profitable so I’m sure they’re still making money, even though they are paying a pharmacist and a dispenser to just sit there a lot of the time during the extended hours.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

My sincere apologies. I did mean to post my daily dairy at the end of each day this week, but the last few days have been so full that I’ve only got round to writing them up now. I may have forgotten a few details but I’ll still document the main points. This does serve as a useful demonstration of just how busy this term is though; at any given moment there are at least 5 things vying for my time and I never feel up to date with my uni work.

WEDNESDAY

7am – I wake up and get ready (smart clothes again as I’m in hospital for the morning)

8.30 – I get the bus to hospital and arrive at around 9.15

9.30 – My SSM in Diagnostic Imaging starts. I’m not sure about what to expect from this module, but the 2 people running it are really lovely, and a bit eccentric which makes it enjoyable. We start by having an overview of the basics of imaging techniques and then an introduction to the chest x-ray. I was worried that this module would be heavily physics focussed, but they only teach us the basics (which I can just about cope with) to give us an understanding of how the different imaging techniques work, and most of the information is clinically focussed. I learn a lot even in just these 2 intro sessions, and now feel as though I have a VERY basic grasp of what’s going on in a chest x-ray. The session also serves as anatomy revision, which is good for me as anatomy is definitely my weakest area.

11.00 – We split up into pairs. My surname is luckily next to my friend’s, so we’re paired together. Each pair gets allocated a different imaging speciality and is placed with a specialist clinician to be shown the equipment, and get an overview of what the speciality involves. My partner and I get put with a specialist in nuclear medicine who talks us through what nuclear medicine involves (mostly the diagnostics side) and then takes us around the department and shows us some of the fancy machines. I learn that some of the scanning techniques and images that you can get are far more advanced and impressive than I ever realised! It was a shame that we had our practical experience in nuclear medicine before we had the lecture on it, as I think I would have got even more out of it, but I still really enjoyed myself. I know that I don’t want to become a radiologist, but I still think it’s pretty fascinating, and the things that I’m learning will definitely benefit me in my future working life.

12.30 – We’re finished and I get the bus home. I’m meant to be in uni this afternoon, but towards the end of the morning I felt myself starting with a migraine, and I knew that I just needed to go home and sleep. When I get in I go straight to bed and sleep for a few hours and then feel much better. The afternoon lecture was for the module “Human Lifespan”, which isn’t really hardcore science, so it won’t be difficult for me to catch up. When I wake up I do some uni work for a bit (going over my respiratory anatomy notes) before my boyfriend comes home.

7.00 – We eat dinner of beef burritos and salad. I then want to go do some more work but my boyfriend pesters me until I agree to make a cake with him for a baking competition in his workplace. We make the cake (a butterscotch cake) and then watch some TV.

10.15 – I apply some strong cleaning product to our oven which still has burnt on grease all over it (from before we moved in) which I haven’t been able to remove from scrubbing. The cleaner needs to be left on overnight

10.30 – bedtime!

THURSDAY

8am – wake up. I’m not in uni this morning so I could have had a lie in (it was very tempting) but I needed to get up and do things.

9am – after breakfast and getting ready, I start by washing all the cleaning solution off the oven. The kit only supplied you with one pair of gloves to apply the solution (which I then threw away afterwards), so I now realise that I don’t have any gloves to wear to clean off the solution so I have to use my bare hands. This later results in all the skin peeling off my hands. The oven is very sparkly though and almost looks like new!

9.30 – I sit down and do a few hours of work – mostly going over lecture material and making notes and prepping for this afternoon’s session.

12.00 – I have an early “lunch” of cake as I realise that I don’t actually have any real lunch food in the house.

1.00 – Get the bus to uni

1.45 – Afternoon respiratory lectures. The lectures have a lot of physics and equations and histology, so they’re not the most fun. We then have groupwork going over some respiratory questions and case studies.

5.00 – Get the bus home. When I get in I sit down for half an hour and then put together some pasta with vegetables in a cream cheese sauce. I make enough so that there’s left-overs for myself and the boyfriend’s lunches tomorrow.

7.00 – After dinner I do some more work going over the respiratory we covered this afternoon whilst it’s still fresh in my head.

10.00 – I finish working for the evening and sit with the boyfriend and watch some tv for a bit before bed.

11.00 - bedtime

FRIDAY

6.45 – Wake up, eat breakfast and get ready

8.00 – I get the bus to uni

8.30 – I arrive at uni and do some reading in advance of our first lecture

9.00 – Our morning’s lectures/groupwork are on the urinary system. I don’t mind this module, but the material we cover this morning is pretty complicated and I’m feeling sleepy so in a break I grad a hazelnut latte to keep me going

12.30 – I eat lunch (leftover pasta) with some friends. I really should do some work in this time, but Friday’s are quite full on so instead I enjoy just relaxing and spending some time with friends.

1.45 – Our afternoon lectures/groupwork are on neurobiology. The brain is hard! There’s lots of anatomy in the first lecture which is complicated, but the second lecture is given by a clinician who pretty much just sums up some things and talks us through some case studies (with lots of pictures!) which is pretty interesting. The group work is very long and pretty hard, but it’s made better by the fact that 2 people from my group have brought in cake to keep us motivated!

5.00 – I finish uni for the day and walk quickly to the bus stop. I’m travelling (over an hour on public transport) to my boyfriend’s workplace to meet him there when he finishes work at 7pm. This involves getting a bus and 2 trains, and with Friday evening delays the journey takes a while and I only arrive just before 7. It’s also been raining heavily all evening and I’m wearing canvas shoes, so I’m soon soaked.

7.00 – I meet my boyfriend after work and walk to his car. We’re going home for the weekend as I’ve got a locum pharmacy shift back home and my boyfriend’s going to catch up with his family. I drive us home (a 2 and a half hour journey) as it’s good practice for me to drive long journeys as I only passed my driving test about 2 months ago. The journey involved lots of motorways, in the dark, in heavy rain, with lots of spray and busy traffic, so it was good practice of driving in adverse conditions!

9.50 – we arrive home at my house and catch up with my family over eating a late dinner (steak sandwiches).

10.45 – my boyfriend stays downstairs hanging out with my dad (I like that they get along well together) while I get my things ready for my shift tomorrow and then go to bed.

TUESDAY

6.15 – Another early start. I didn’t get the best night’s sleep due to my boyfriend waking me up at 4am and telling me that it was time to get up (I think he was still asleep at the time and dreaming), so I wake up in a bit of a grumpy mood.

6.20 – I shower, dress, eat breakfast and pack my bag for the day.

7.10 – I leave the house (late) and have to run for my bus. The bus driver kindly waits for me, which I appreciate as a lot of the time they don’t.

7.50 – I arrive at uni and make a quick cup of Earl Grey tea before the start of my lecture

8.00 – Lecture. Yup, I have a lecture at 8am. Thankfully this only occurs once a week, but we’ve had 8am lectures once a week every term since starting uni. Normally I really enjoy clinical skills lectures, but this week I wish I’d stayed in bed. The lecture’s supposed to be on MSK clinical skills, but the lecturer spent the whole lecture going through case studies of different MSK patients and didn’t actually teach us any MSK clinical skills. This happened last term also, so I still don’t have much idea how to do MSK examinations (eg. how to examine the hip, shoulder, back etc.). I hope our clinical skills tutors cover this in our hospital session next week, otherwise I’ll be clueless if these come up in our OSCEs.

9.00 – I eat the (home-made) brownie I packed for my lunch early to cheer myself up

9.15 – Our next 2 lectures start. This lecture’s on Pharmacology so I find this material pretty straightforward. It’s good revision though as a lot of this information I’ve not had to use since my Pharmacy degree. I use the lecture time to make really good Pharmacology revision notes on the material being covered (cardiology pharmacology).

11.15 – We then have small group work doing questions based on the pharmacology material we’ve just covered.

12.30 – Home time! I get this afternoon off as half the year has their hospital placements on Tuesday afternoons, but as I have mine on Monday morning, I get this time off. I walk to the bus stop and get the bus home.

1.30 – My boyfriend’s off work this afternoon too so we just do a few errands and I get a bit of work done – just writing up notes from last week’s lectures.

4.30 – I get an email from the medical school telling me that the special study module I chose to do (which ran on Thursday mornings) had been cancelled at the last minute (“due to unavoidable circumstances”) and that I’d been reallocated my third choice option of Diagnostic Imaging. I’m disappointed, but learning how to read x-rays and things will be pretty useful. The only thing is that Diagnostic Imaging is run on a Wednesday (tomorrow) morning at the local hospital, so I’m glad I checked my email when I did otherwise I would have missed the first session! I now have to figure out how I’m going to get to the hospital (a 1 and a half hour, 2 bus journey from my house) in time and then back to the med school for afternoon lectures.

6.30 – Have dinner of left over lasagne with salad.

7.00 – Do the washing up and sort things out for tomorrow.

8.00 – I watch the Great British Bake Off and then TheMidwives, both on BBC2.

10.00 – I get ready for bed and then go to sleep!

A week in the life of a second year med student - MONDAY

This week is my second week back as a second year! The first week back went really fast. It was good, but it looks as though there's going to be a LOT of work this term. I thought that I'd document a week in my life as a pre-clinical med student for anyone who's interested in what med school might be like and how much work is involved.

6.30 – I wake up, get breakfast, shower and get dressed. I’m in smart clothes today as I’m in the hospital seeing patients this morning. I also put together a quick lunch of leftovers as I'm not sure if I'm going to get an opportunity to buy lunch.

7.30 – I leave the house and walk to meet 2 friends. We then walk 20 minutes to the nearest bus stop that will take us to the hospital.

8.00 – We get on the bus and travel for 1 hour 20 mins in rush hour traffic to the hospital. Normally I’d get a lift to the hospital, which would decrease the travel time, but my friend’s car is in the garage getting fixed this week, so the bus it is.

9.30 – At the hospital. Our small groups spilt up and we sit with our clinical tutor and talk about what’s expected of us over this next term. We then go up to the ward to see a patient, take a history and do whatever examination is appropriate, as for this week there isn't one specific clinical examination we're focussing on.

10.30 – Our group went and talked to a young lady with Crohn’s disease who had come into hospital with bad colicky pain and other symptoms, and who was probably going to end up having an operation. I took the history, and it was really nice to be able to introduce myself as a second year medical student. Second year sounds so much better than first year! My partner then performed a general and abdominal examination. The patient was really co-operative and didn’t mind us practicing on her, even though the examination probably didn’t help her pain and she wasn’t benefitting from us seeing her at all. I’m really grateful when we get nice obliging patients like her! It’s so much better practice to take histories and do examinations on real patients, rather than on other med students.

12pm – We all go back to meet our clinical tutor and fed back about the cases that we’d seen before finishing.

12.30 – We luckily don’t have to wait long for a bus, and at midday it only takes us 1 hour to get back to the university. This gives me just enough time to quickly eat my lunch before my afternoon lecture!

1.45 – We have a lecture on medical law from a really engaging lecturer who used to be a barrister.

3.00 – We then have small groupwork which involves discussing some case studies involving ethical dilemmas with a clinical tutor.

4.00 – Another lecture, this time looking at ethics and consent

4.45 – Home time! I walk to the bus stop and get the bus home

5.30 – I arrive home and do a bit of housework, prepare dinner and quickly look over the lecture notes for tomorrow.

8.00 – My boyfriend gets home from work. He doesn’t work a 9-5 day, so sometimes he’s home early, but other times he doesn’t arrive home until later. He helps me finish making dinner (sausage, beans and mashed potato) and then we eat whilst watching a bit of TV.

9.30 – After cleaning up after dinner we just watch a bit more TV and faff around a bit. I get my notes and things ready for tomorrow and then get ready for bed.

10.30 – I go to bed. I normally go to bed at around 11pm, but after a busy weekend and an early start I’m tired and want to get a good night’s sleep before another early start tomorrow.