Sometimes it really amazes me how nice patients can be. I was doing a cannula (i.e. inserting a plastic tube into a vein) on this old man and he was so co-operative and friendly even after I failed. In fact, after I apologized profusely, he said "if you don't stop saying sorry I'll throw you out the window!". It's possible that maybe he just doesn't care what the hospital staff do to him anymore, but he was still lovely. It was the same with the previous patient I tried to cannulate. I actually failed twice on her, which is embarrassing, but after my first go she said "I don't mind if you try again" and hence I got my second go. One day I'd like to repay their kindness by actually successfully getting a cannula into a patient. Then their suffering won't be for nothing, lol.

Mum and I moved house 2.5 weeks ago, into our own apartment close to my hospital. Now, public transport takes on average only 10 minutes rather than the 40 minutes that it used to take before. Hooray! Granted, we're paying more than double the rent of our room previously, but considering that 1) it's in a better neighborhood, 2) it's our own apartment, not just a room, and 3) it shaves off at least an hour off my travel time to hospital and back everyday, which is 5 hours that I gain every week. The only problem is that I still do Japanese at the university campus, which my old house was very close to, so now twice a week I have to make a long trip to uni to attend Japanese class. But of course, that's only twice a week, and I have to go into hospital everyday, so it's still better this way.

In my previous post I mentioned that I wanted a toaster oven and a bike. Well I haven't got either of those things yet... I'd still like the toaster oven (I'm resorting to using my actual oven to toast things, which is a waste of electricity) but I've changed my mind about the bike. It's almost winter so it's going to be too cold and probably rainy for me to bike much. I might get it during the mid-year break and use it next semester once spring approaches. Instead, getting a new phone has moved up on my wishlist. I'm hoping to get the HTC One X sometime this month so that I can have a phone that can actually go online without suiciding, and my mum can have my current phone and ditch her old one (which was actually my first phone ever) that is almost 10 years old. Yay for hand-me-downs.

Seeing as my recent posts have become almost entirely about med (can't blame me, that's like my life these days!), I thought I'd do a more well-rounded post today.

Uni

Just finished my head and neck rotation, and next week I'm moving onto musculoskeletal, starting with dermatology. Japanese is coming along fine as well - did pretty well on my midsem test despite minimal study. Thank you anime.

Life

So currently there are 2 things in life that I want: a bike (an Avanti Aria 1.0 2012, to be exact) and a toaster oven. Yes, I'm an easy person to satisfy. I'm also moving house next weekend to a location closer to my hospital, which means I'll be able to get up half an hour later every morning. Yay! It'll be good to be able to bike to and from hospital. Saves money from public transport and provides an opportunity for regular exercise.


Hobbies

I actually set myself more deadlines for drawing and writing fanfics, but they've only helped minimally and I haven't completed a single picture this year yet. =.=;; Currently working on a Hetalia fanart, though, so hopefully I can finish that soon. It's good to see that despite my lack of practice, I'm still improving or at least keeping up my drawing skills. I used to have this fear that when I got older and started uni/work my art would deteriorate in quality and skill and I'd end up being no better than the average person, but seems that isn't the case just yet. Phew.

Music

It seems my K-pop phase is fizzing out, after the peak of attending the concert in Sydney last November. I don't know any of the new groups from late last year or this year and have no intention to listen to them either... these days it's a lot of video game music and bossa nova type stuff in my playlist. And speaking of video game music, last thursday I went to a concert by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra called Video Games Unplugged: Symphony of Legends, where they played live video game music. Totally amazing - there was One Winged Angel from FF7 of course, and also music from Assassin's Creed 2, Secret of Mana, Skyrim etc etc. They even had a live Soul Calibur V match between 2 guys sitting awkwardly on the corner of the stage, lol.

Anime

Progress through my want-to-watch list has been pretty slow, though I did blaze through an entire series during Easter weekend. Currently watching Gosick which, as ftechz often mentions, is a pretty pedo show. The main girl looks about 10 which makes romantic scenes slightly awkward to watch.


Gaming

Been putting Skyrim and Trine 2 on hold in favor of STALKER: Call of Pripyat. It's a horror game at its core, with lots of silence and mutants and zombies and so forth, but it's also open-map so it definitely lacks the usual claustrophobia of classic horror games like Silent Hill. Plus there are other people around so you're not entirely alone.


OK, now time to go back to working on my fanart...

Just about to finish my 3rd week on the head and neck rotation - I started with Stroke, then Endocrinology, followed by Neurology this week. Next week is Neurosurgery (lead by the neurosurgeon who claims he has "God's hands") and finally Ophthalmology/ENT. It's a big change from having 5 weeks of the same thing to changing specialties every week. It's not much time to get to know the wards, but we get a lot more tutorials and every week we generally cover all 5 specialties within the tutes, which I find very useful and was something that gen med lacked.

We've been getting a good number of ophthalmology (eye specialty) tutorials, too. They're actually surprisingly interesting. Apparently I don't look like the surgery type, so maybe I'm destined to be a ophthalmologist? But I'm pretty sure my interests will swing around dramatically in the next few years until I actually specialize, lol. Still, the eye is a fascinating thing. Did you realize that you can only see fine detail in the very centre of your vision? You're only able to read these words because they're in the centre of your field of vision. If you turn your head even slightly, you can't read this anymore - you can still tell that there are words there, but the detail needed for your brain to process is lost.

Anyway I'm looking forward to neurosurgery next week. Finally get to see some surgery! Though of course, as a student there's a lot of standing in the corner and holding things out of the way for several hours, rather than anything actually interesting.

I'm finally in the last week of my first rotation, which is general medicine. Can't say I particularly like it much, but it really depends on the team you're on and the consultant you get and whether they like teaching or not. Most of the other students in my group latched onto the rapid team (who handle simpler patients) whereas my team handles the complex stuff which tend to go over my head.

However, this last week things have been getting better. We got a new consultant who actually asks us questions, our registrar finished their physician training exam, and the new 5th year on my team seems pretty keen to teach me stuff. Too bad it's the last week, sigh. I'd have liked gen med more if it were like this all the time. Nevertheless I'm going to miss the consistency of my weekly gen med timetables - from next week on I'm doing head and neck, and will be changing specialties every week. Eek.

Today I got to spend some time in the emergency department with a registrar. We don't have an ED rotation so when I saw the chance to go, I snatched it. I tried to take a history from a couple who spoke very little English so a lot of gesturing was required lol. Still didn't manage to get too much information, sadly. Nevertheless I got a taste of being a doctor - I had a gown on and my steth was over the top so the nurses thought I was a doctor and asked several times if they could do anything for me. Gahahah, a taste of power!

And so ends my first proper week at the Alfred. To say it's been a long week would be an understatement - almost every day felt like a week in itself, with me having to get up at 6:30am to make the 8am ward rounds or 7:30am lectures. =o=;; Definitely a stark contrast to last year, where I'd regularly sleep in til almost midday and skip the morning lectures. Now I have to actually suppress my night owl instincts and force myself to be a morning person.

So, what have I learned, or experienced?

Firstly, rectal exams are surprisingly quick and easy. It's just my luck that I got to do one on my first day...

Secondly, I know hospitals don't really look like the hospitals in medical dramas, but I have to admit that there are a surprisingly large number of attractive staff around (probably because it's a teaching hospital so there are a billion students and young doctors). Could totally imagine all the dramatic things that must be happening while I'm not looking.

Thirdly, unlike medical school, patients can be terribly complicated. The cases we got at uni and the actors during our exams all have pretty much just the presenting complaint, with maybe a bit of other largely irrelevant stuff on the side. In the real world, however... most patients never have just one thing.

And lastly, seeing a patient as a person can actually be pretty disheartening. There are lots of old people who have advanced diseases and you know that either they're going to die in the hospital, or they'll be sent home but not have much longer to live afterwards. No wonder some doctors come off as cold - it's a valid coping mechanism.

I'm liking 3rd year a lot, though. We've only got compulsory tutorials on one day, so every other day is free for us to choose to do whatever we want. Of course, we've got a few rotation-based tutorials and stuff, but those are few and far in between and most of the time it's up to us how long we want to hang around. Since it's the first week, I've been doing 8-hour days most days, and will aim to keep it up. Getting up early is torture but you definitely get more done.

Finally, here are some pictures of the new cat family in my backyard!

( Cats cats cats. )

I'm back from my holiday in Japan, and I bring an epic post with me!

( This took me all night to write, so you better read it. )

Been back in NZ for exactly 4 weeks now, and it's been sunny no more than a dozen times. Pathetic Auckland weather, urgh. Anyway I've just been catching up with friends and going out as often as my wallet allows. It helped that I forgot to bring my bank card so I have to rely on my parents' charity which definitely makes it harder to spend too much. And compared to last summer where I regularly went out on 'food expeditions' to pricey cafes and restaurants and went on a road trip, this summer's been much more frugal.

I got my exam results back a few days ago - they were passably good, I guess. My final year 2 GPA and my combined year 1 and 2 GPA are only 1% apart, so I suppose it can be said that I'm maintaining a consistently mediocre standard. orz The only thing that irritated me especially was that my theory exam marks had gone down again, which means either I worked too much during study leave (which is plausible, but I'm not sure how much good the extra time would have done me) or my new study strategy is failing me. Or that I'm now simply stupid... though I'd like to remain in denial about that for some more time. Well, in any case, the important thing is that I can safely progress to 3rd year and I can still do the Japanese diploma next year if I want. Which I probably will. Yay!

Speaking of Japanese, I'll be going to Japan next sunday, which is not-so-coincidentally Xmas Day. Yes, I took advantage of the fact that the tickets are cheaper because nobody wants to fly on Xmas Day. It's totally pragmatic and unsentimental of me, but my family don't really care about Xmas anyway so it doesn't matter much. I'm totally excited to be back in the land of automatic toilets again, and this time I'll actually be allowed to explore the cool parts of Tokyo! Last time I went to Japan, it was on a school trip and our Japanese teacher was adamant that we were going to meet weird people in Harajuku or Shibuya and get kidnapped or something, so she forbade us from going. I understand that she didn't want us to get lost and be responsible for it, but way to ruin the trip.

Anyway, 1 week left to finish playing AC: Revelations, and make some major progress on Skyrim since I'm not gonna be bring my laptop to Japan most likely. MGS4 will have to wait til next summer... as will Valkyria Profile, which I bought on a whim. Bah, just you wait, PS3, I'll ship you over to Australia soon! Then we will be together forever! <3

Today was my last exam after 4 days of consecutive exams. The faculty really trolled us this year... tues and weds were clinical exams which went fairly horribly, while yesterday was the end-of-semester theory exam which was pretty horrible as well, and today was the year-1-plus-year-2 theory exam which went OK (I hope, I skipped the after-exam analysis to save myself the depression). It was amazing how happy everyone was the minute the exam was finished haha. Sadly this will be the last time I'll see many of my classmates for a long while, but pretty sure we'll cross paths again in the future.

For some reason, there was a lot of train disruptions in the past few days. Yesterday there was an accident a few stations down so I got to the station only to hear that the train was delayed indefinitely. I bumped into a friend there who was also going to an exam, and since there was like 25 mins left we both panicked and considered going by car, but then the boomgates were still down and we wouldn't be able to get across the tracks anyway, and and and- but then a few minutes later a train arrived and we were thankfully able to get to the exam on time. Then today, somebody apparently got hit at my train station so trains weren't running from my station anymore. My friend texted me while I was still in bed to inform me of this and I had to get up earlier than expected so that I could take the bus to the exam instead. On the bus there were a few meddies I knew so we did some last minute cramming and panicking about how we were gonna be late, though fortunately they postponed the exam by half an hour so our last-minute sprinting was for nothing. Thank god for small mercies...

After the exam my group of friends and I went to the city to get lunch. It took me aaaages to decide what I wanted to eat, and I ended up getting a delicious lamb kebab from this dodgy-looking alleyway shop (hey, they always say that the hidden-away places are the best). So far no diarrhoea, so I think it was pretty safe. We had our lunch in a park and then spent a few hours relaxing on the banks of the Yarra river. There were loads of people practising rowing; I certainly wouldn't want to be them, seeing as the river was the color of chocolate milk and was filled with much less pleasant brown substances.

I decided that I would try to spend all summer not talking in medical terms, just so I can stop being nerdy and relax. Chances are I'll fail though. Med really is a whole new language; once you know how to express something with one medical term, you really don't want to spent 10 words describing it in normal English. Still, I should get my mind out of study mode so I can enjoy the summer before clinical years next year (provided I don't have to repeat 2nd year or something).

Went to work again today - my boss is really abusing my supposed 'free time' and has booked me in for 4 days this fortnight, 2 full days and 2 half days. I was hoping to get up early enough to have breakfast and get a few hours of study done before I went to work in the afternoon (I tend to concentrate better when I know my time is limited - hence why I'm still working, to put a bit of pressure on myself), but alas, I slept in and was late for work. >_>;;

I was familiar with both the sonographer and the cardiologist today, but they had never worked together before. It was quite amusing how the sonographer was quite wary at first, asking me "have you worked with this guy before? Is he slow or fast? How old is he?" as if I was some bottomless reservoir of information. Even my boss asked me "are those two getting along? They've never worked together before". I got the impression that they were just like young children who had only just met; initially they hide behind their mums and eye each other suspiciously, but soon enough they open up and get along just fine. I guess the mentality of an adult really hasn't evolved much from a child's, even if we think it has.

Oh and this staff member was walking up and down the clinic with a bowl of watermelon and was practically waving it under my nose. What a bitch, right. So uh, I'm not proud to admit that I couldn't resist cutting a bit off the watermelon when she wasn't around and stuffing it in my mouth. PLEASE DON'T ARREST ME.