Sunday 2 January 2011

woops (but never mind)

This blog lasted even less time than I had anticipated. In excuse: my phone really doesn't much like blogspot, and trying to move the cursor around in the post takes about half an hour (more fool me for wanting to add something to what I have already written two lines above). Additionally, the spelling on posts from my phone is appalling (due to predictive test/fat fingers). Anyone know what "shot scared" means?! Internet at home arrived only in the last week of term, and any time I spent on the internet during that week was for far less productive things than writing a blog.
The library cancelled 24 hour access for ages, and I wouldn't have gone there just to write a blog anyway...

So maybe I'll write more often here, maybe not. I guess it doesn't matter if not, it's not for anyone else's benefit really! So nothing to feel obligated about.

To be honest it's a good job I didn't blog then. It would have been miserable and self-pitying, except for the few days that a couple of old friends from home came to visit, while other half was also down, and we had a wonderful time. Pub with boardgames (Trivial Pursuit is difficult!) and old-style sweets (Love Hearts and Caramac) was a big hit.
Otherwise this would have been some pitiful dirge of wallowing so best to stay quiet and just sleep-deprive until I'm so out of it nothing matters anyway. What a coping strategy...

Things I was going to write about but then didn't: the day that my last post was about actually wasn't too bad. I started off with two other students (they did most of the talking) but then the surgeon arrived and said three was too many, so I went off by myself and didn't do too badly of actually talking to a patient all on my own, though had to cut short because the surgeon arrived. I forgot important things when presenting (effect of osteoarthritis on daily life and general functioning - who'd have thought orthopaedic surgeons would be interested?! Sorry.) and felt somewhat uncomfortable with the surgeon's old-school style of giving us a full teaching session in front of the patient whilst talking about the patient but not really involving them - if he's going to do that he should at least give them some warning at the beginning! But maybe they were just glad of the distraction before surgery, I would have been. But then I'd have been interested in the teaching.
I even got to scrub in to surgery that afternoon, and hopefully the patient hasn't died from me introducing any infections since then. I wouldn't have found out so here's hoping. Glasses slipping so far down face they were almost of my nose, and not push-up-able under the beekeeper style headgear that I think was a head-cooling fan (and covering hood) required for orthopaedic surgery not the highlight of the day.
All in all not a terrible day.

Other things: it was Trans Remembrance Day and the first time in a few years I didn't make it to a service (family trip to France took precedence). I was going to expand on the concept of Trans Remembrance and for me how it also includes an element of thankfulness.
It was also World Aids Day and I wrote a blog in my head about that but I can't really remember the content.
The frustration that even in 4th year we still have to do group work, and worse, choose our own partners to work with, and the humiliation of having to email my group of 20 to see who else didn't have a partner. Thank god the group is an even number, that could have been even more humiliating. What's worse is the knowledge that I'll have to do this another five times this year (or alternatively work with the same person as last time - since we didn't come near winning the group prize I'm not averse to a change. Not that my share of work was necessarily of prize-winning quality either). Quite why we're not trusted with independent presentations at this stage of the course I'm not sure, but it probably hasn't occurred to anyone that the student who has intercalated two years and therefore knows no one isn't going to do too well when some people have picked who to do the presentation with (best friend) before term started. And I would quite like a prize, since I'm hoping that somewhere in the country a paediatric palliative care Academic Foundation Programme still exists and has my name on - prizes etc would help put my name on it.

I would probably have blogged about some other stuff if I'd thought about it at the time.

Conclusion: I may blog more, I may not. I will try not to care either way. I have more important things to stress about and nobody yet knows this exists anyway.

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