After the facts

One thing you don't normally hear about in the study-exam-holiday cycle is the waiting. Waiting for the results of the exam whilst holidays trundle onward. Mmm it's bad. That's really all I have to say on the issue, which I guess is why you don't hear much about it, hey?

The other bad thing about having a lot of medical friends is that they all go back to where they came from over the break. Now I'm forced to write my thesis with very little in the way of distraction (except the internet.)

Knowing your anatomy is the key to success...

A song about exams

Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
You'll love me tomorrow?
It's only 13 hours away.

And then, it's time to get real life done.

Half-time show

Well, I'm but four days away from being a half-doc.

I have forgotten everything I wanted to tell you.

But I did get to watch a tumour being removed from somebodies caratoid artery the other day. It was exciting, seeing as you are only ever millimeters away from shooting blood across the room. There was a communal "Yay!" when the surgeon got the mass free.

So strange.

^date

So I spent a couple weeks on the cardiology medical unit. It was really interesting and I did learn a lot. I also ended up successfuly taking a few bloods and doing cannulas (my future bread and butter.) Amazingly, I feel heaps more confident in my ability to diagnose things from an ECG. Well, seriously obvious things. But having had some good teaching and cast my eyes over tens of ECGs. It has become aparrant that ECG interpretation is less crystal ball gazing and more a science than I thought. I could totally be a cardiologist.

Now I'm on ENT surgery. It's great! Watching the surgeries is really good. It really helps with the anatomy. And the surgeons have been really generous with their teaching time.  I got to watch (amongst other things) a doctors first solo tonsillectomy, which took many times longer than a veterans efforts. But it allowed me to see heaps of the basic anatomy and to get softly pimped. Fortunately as a second year im not expected to know anything, so I'm taking it all with great humour.

Really enjoying medicine at the minute, just wish the final set of exams would get out of the way.

2 weeks.

Surgery is surpringsly violent. Apparently jaw dislocation during the operation is not uncommon. Now say "ahhh!"