Things that have happened since I last posted.

Umm yeah sorry that it's been over a week since I posted here. I have lots of posts I want to write but I'm about to get dressed up and head out for halloween so they'll have to wait, here are a few interesting things that have happened:

• I handed over all responsibility for the novices to GP
• I was selected to race 4's head in London on the 14th of November and will be stroking my boat
• Mum has arranged to come see me on the 19th of November :)
• I have flights booked home for my very short christmas holiday
• I have started a christmas list
• I have started to arrange going to Kenya this summer!

Enjoy Halloween!

Bloods, Bikes and BIRC

Don't worry the three things in the title are not related, they just alliterated nicely.

Two pretty exciting things happened yesterday, first of all I (semi) successfully took blood from a real patient for the first time, and secondly I was told I am selected to go to the BIRC.

I know that many of the clinical students have taken lots of blood from patients already, having had their sessions with the Phlebotomists (awesome word) but my Phlebs session is not untill next Monday and so I am still pretty cautious about volunteering to take bloods. But yesterday a woman I had seen a couple of times needed blood taking as she was off the ward when the Phlebs came round to do all the bloods that morning. So an F1 and I went off to get 2 bottles of blood from her, and despite my nerves I successfully filled the bigger bottle! But I sadly must have wiggled my needle as I switched bottles so I couldn't fill the second one and despite another new attempt at venepucture, so I let the F1 do it!

When I got home yesterday, in my normal mountain of emails was one from Lizzie to announce who Martyn has chosen to go to the British Indoor Rowing Championships from the CUWBC squad. And I am one of four lightweights going! So I have to be 61.5kg on the 21st of November but seeing as I am pretty close to that now I don't think it will be a problem! I'm really excited about this, as I am any time I am picked to do something, I think it comes from my experience of being the one picked last at school sports!

Finally, I went out on my lovely shiny bike this morning, sadly not with CUWBCCC (that's Cambridge University Women's Boat Club Cycling Club) as I had to get to the hospital quite early. Despite realising how cold and dark it was and how unprepared I was for that I had a lot of fun being out on my neglected bike especially as I found the one hill in South Cambridgeshire and did a couple of loops around it, being rewarded at the top with lovely views of dawn over the City :).

The Importance of To-do lists

To give you an idea of my typical days:

• Wake up,
• Go Rowing/Training (4 days a week)
• Drive to Huntingdon (5 days)
• Spend all day running round hospital (5 days)
• Have one hypoglycaemic almost fainting moment (1 a week atm)
• More running around hospital
• Drive Home
• Go Training (4 days)
• Eat
• Bed

At some point in all of this I need to learn some medicine, drum up some novices, earn CBC some money, end up with clean ironed clothes, eat, record every thing I do eat, update this, see David and my friends.

So I have 6 to-do lists on the go at the moment, and any time I tick anything off on one I add another two things somewhere else.

There is a list of things to do for

1. Medical Learning
2. Medicine Admin
3. Relics Officer
4. LBC
5. Rowing
6. General Life

As a result I am currently, at least on the surface much more organised than I was when I posted last and feel that I can now introduce this blogging to other people for the first time. When I was first posting here and using my blogger account to follow other blogs, I did of course realise that other people could read this in theory, not that I thought anyone else actually was. So now I am ready to send an email to my family and put this on my facebook and generally let other people know that I am doing this. Is it weird that I have written 4 posts before telling anyone I'm blogging?

Disorganisation

So despite the weekend and taking Monday afternoon off, ostensibly to organise myself, I am still in a horrific state of disorganisation.

My room has a layer of clothes built up around the edges, threatening to overspill onto my thin pathway between here and the door, via my bed. Yet somehow there are still lots of clothes in the wardrobe and the washing basket, how do I own so many clothes?? My desk is in a similar state with papers mixed with magazines, components of my computer, books and there is a small space for me to eat my breakfast while reading my emails. Mercifully I am pretty on top of the laundry, food buying and washing up!

It's not just physical things that are in such a mess although that makes my stress at the disorganisation worse. I am getting about 25-30 useless emails a day- why am I on so many mailing lists?! I know that there aren't many girl novices, though we are up to 6! And somehow the hospital are not very clear about when I should and shouldn't be there for teaching etc so on no more than a few hours notice I ended up still there at 6pm yesterday being taught and so missing a training session. I understand that it is a hospital and things can't run like clockwork but I have other things to do damnit! And of course the teaching was on the clinical case studies which we need to do two of every week and they give us model answers and teaching sessions for, why do we need both?! So what I have done is 4 case studies in the last two weeks and I have managed to spend far too many hours on them when I have spent less than two hours on writing up some of the really interesting patient's I have seen and will start to forget if I'm not careful.

I'm just not quite sure when I'm going to get on top of all of this, particularly because it is the last thing I want to do in the hour I have between getting in from Hinch and going to training! David thinks I am going mad, as every time I see him I am talking a mile a minute about how I am getting nothing done.

Anyway, bed time now- first Cam outing for ages tomorrow morning!

Girls don't like sport

So we at CBC had a big BBQ on Saturday, which GP and I rushed to get back to from Ely ready to see lots of enthusiastic novice girls for us to teach. What we actually saw was 30 odd boys, nothing odd so far the boys are always keener to come try out a new sport, and the grand total of 3 girls. One of whom has rowed before.

Apparently just 3 of all the fresh faced girls we signed up to the mailing list at fresher's fair were keen enough to come to the BBQ at all. That means only 3 of them have been on an erg or out in a tub and so we're going to have to spend loads of extra effort emailing around college for more girls, getting them to the BH, getting them in a tub etc. In essence it means we are about a week behind where we should be. *SIGH*

Seems girls just aren't that interested in sport. Not even sport where they get to meet lots of big tall muscly men.

Aims for this Year

Hello!

Hopefully this will be a good way for everyone to keep abreast of my crazy year, in which I aim to:

• Pass Stage 1 Clinical Medicine with flying colours.
• Wear some gorgeous *ahem* Minty-Green lycra and beat some Dark Blues.
• Teach some Novices How to Row.
• Maintain some semblance of a Social Life

So far I have:

• Completed the Intro Course and 1 whole week of Placement- I can talk to patients, yay! (and I have to commute lots, boo)
• Been part of CUWBC for two and a half weeks- long enough to have been to Ely twice and done a lot of erging!

And so far so good I have only had:

• One episode where I was so tired I curled up and got randomly emotional
• One moment where I went green and nearly fainted on a ward.
• Three slightly hair-raising moments with lorries and the A14 (I AM FINE MUM)
• Blisters which are a bit sore and then go dry rather than blisters which end up as gaping wounds.