Thursday 10 February 2011

Catch Up 3: Back to Cambridge

First of all, sorry I didn't post yesterday, I was busy rescuing David who had hurt his knee at "Manly Circuits" and now can't walk. Also you may have noticed that there are now adverts here, basically if I make any money from them I'll donate it to the Sponsor a seat fund.


Back to the point, I've filled you in on the end of Mich term and the holidays so on to the first few weeks of this term...


Rowing:

The rest of CUWBC went to Soustons for training camp for ten days at the start of January. I bought flights to go out and join them for the weekend, and was all prepared to go, but then I had a difficult journey back down and ended up missing the first day back at Clinical School and so I couldn't go out to Soustons and miss another 4 days. Instead I did ALOT of classes at the gym and erged with the Clare girls, and once I went out rowing in a mixed Clare boat. The mixed boat was pretty entertaining, especially as I got to stroke it, Alice and I spent most of the time making sarcastic comments, and a boat with guys in it goes REALLY fast even if it is going badly.

Medicine:

Once I had got back to Clincal School, I was on Vascular Surgery for my first placement. Turns out vascular surgery is incredibly dull. There are three things that people in for vascular surgery have- an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA), varicose veins, or necrotic feet. AAA can be very dramatic if they rupture in which case they are a surgical emergency, but mostly they are very slow to increase in size and after their incidental discovery they are left alone before being fixed a few months to a few years later. Varicose veins are very boring as there is nothing that can be done really on the NHS for most people. Necrotic tissues are kind of interesting, in that occasionally, very occasionally there are amputations. But turns out what is interesting is interventional radiology, mostly because there are lead suits to wear and a cool consultant called T.C.See and who likes to teach med students!

Social:
Seeing as how I had a weekend where I didn't need to go to Ely or in fact rowing at all because I couldn't make training camp David and I went to Chester for the weekend. Needless to say Chester was really really nice and it was wonderful to get away for a few days. We went to the Zoo! The Zoo was really good fun, I haven't been to the zoo for years and years- I loved the jaguars!

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Catch Up 2: The Holidays

Today was a good, but very very long day. I'll tell you all about it another time, for now I left you at Trial Eights dinner last night so it is time to continue and describe my lovely Christmas Holiday...

Despite the snow I got home with no delays or problems at all and settled in for a few weeks of rest and relaxation. Just being at home, able to sleep and sit around doing nothing but go to the gym (less than I should have) and eat (more than I should have) was amazing. I was so so surprised how much last term had taken out of me and it was a big relief to build back up some resilience and energy stores.

Apart from potter around snowy Kilmacolm, doing not very much and definitely no rowing or medicine, I had the chance to catch up with Emma, Kirsty, Ally and the rest of the St. Columban's at Elaine's Birthday in a lovely bar in Glasgow. The bar was great- I had a Mojito in a mug, and various other cocktails in a brown paper wrapped bottle, a jam jar and a tin can! Everyone looked stunning and for the first time in a really really long time I had a night out with the girls I went to school with.




Christmas was then suddenly upon us and we had a lovely chilled day at home eating food that we all helped to cook- I made (arranged) the anti-pasti type starter and made Cranachan for pudding. I got some awesome presents as well including some lovely clothes, a new ipod and the ridiculous if very warm and useful snow leopard hat with ears and a nose.

Heading up north on Boxing Day we dropped into see Eliot and Nicky (and Angus and Stella) before braving the snow and the dark on the A9 to make it to the cottage. Unfortunately as we turned on the water it became very clear something was not right... we had a burst pipe. Luckily it was in the bathroom and luckily we caught it about 10s after it started but still not the best of starts to a "DIY Free" holiday in the DIY hungry cottage, cue lots of plumbers over the next few days.

David arrived into Inverness on the 30th, and after much faff about my brother managing to leave with our only set of Golf keys, and the need for even more DIY plumbing; Mum, Angus and Phil left to spend Hogmanay in Kilmacolm. We had a lovely chilled couple of days in the cottage, going for walks in the surrounding areas and David taking amazing photos like the one above. On one such walk on New Year's Day we randomly bumped into Cat, Donald and Tom who were up staying at Donald's cottage not far from mine. It was by far the most coincidental meeting I have ever had, but nice to say Happy New Year to them all and it made me smile to think how small the world is!

Next Up I don't go on Training Camp...

Monday 7 February 2011

Catch Up 1

So now all my grand claims of a blog post a day seem ambitious. I am tired and we have an outing in the morning. Ah well here goes nothing:






Everything up to the end of last term..... (which I wrote about once at the time and it didn't post)

Rowing:
Well the weather was horrible, so the Cam froze and the Ouse froze and my bike got frozen into the shed more than once- so actually not that much rowing happened in the last week or so of term. What did happen though is CUWBC had Trial Eights, or rather we tried. Lizzie does a fantastic job of explaining what actually happened over on the CUWBC website but for completeness sake I must add a couple of things. First of all a huge thanks to Esther and Kate for holding our feet down when we did realise foot straps were silly, I think they did as much work as we all did, if not more! (I wish I had a photo of the faces they were pulling) And of course I need to point out that we would have won if we hadn't fallen off the seat....

Medic:
I finished off last term with my last few weeks on the Diabetes and Endocrine firm, and generally found my enthusiasm for talking to little old men with diabetic neuropathic feet was waning. But I did have my most embarrassing moment of medicine so far- when one consultant looked me up and down and claimed that my boots were entirely inappropriate. I promptly spent the rest of clinic with my feet tucked right underneath the chair!

Social:
So after Trial Eights comes dinner! After the excitement of the day we all settled down to get ready for our early dinner at 6pm Cafe Rouge, I had a conversation with Mum about 4pm and told her that I would be fine to get my flight home the next day. By the time I tottered out to my taxi in a dress and heels (not worn them for a while...) there was six inches of snow on the ground. Luckily we had left plenty of time to get to dinner, which was lovely and involved some amazing secret santa presents. We all made it to Clare MCR for speeches and after dinner drinks, as far as I can remember Lizzie was inspirational and lovely and we gave her some utterly ridiculous hats, and Martyn was actually quite rude about what he expected us to be like... he did say we were nothing like that though...

Anyway it was great fun to see everyone all dressed up and get to dance and be silly. Even if we were all pissed by 10pm.

Sunday 6 February 2011

*Sheepish Wave*

Hello Again,
So I haven't posted anything for a really really long time. Sorry about that. Turns out my big post from before Christmas with the story of Trial Eights didn't even post so it has been even longer than I thought, apart from the little hello on Christmas. To make matters worse I managed to fail in my blogging duties before Christmas as well! Anyway to catch up I promise to write one blog post a day till we catch up and then the blog will resume regular Sunday Updates.  (As an aside while I was looking for a cool enough sheep picture I found this which then distracted me for ten minutes)

To make things easier on myself I am going to split up the time I need to catch you all up on into these chunks:

  • Up to Christmas
  • The Holidays
  • Mid Jan when training really kicked back in
  • The present
And you are going to get just one entertaining story from at least 2 of the 3 things that I ever write about:
  • Medicine
  • Rowing
  • Social Life
So that was kind of an admin-y type post but I will start posting properly tomorrow and then you will all be caught up on my life.


P.S. Adventures would be nice....