It'll take alot to drag me awaaaay from youuuu,
There's more than a hundred men or more could ever dooo,
I'll bless the rains down in Zaaanzibar (I'lllllll bless the rain)
I'll bless the rains down in Zaanzibar (AAAAAH bless the rain)
etc....
Hey hey hey, various people who may or may not read this. Thought I'd write a blog entry from Zanzibar to fill everyone in on the exciting exploits of Drs Burnhill & Nugent. And by Dr Burnhill I mean, of course, my dad. Not really.
So where do we begin? Well I suppose we begin with the exams. I have only one thing to say about the exams and it is this
"STOP ASKING ME ABOUT THE SPLEEN, you f*cking gaylords"
Other than that I passed, woooo, so did various other people, double woooo. Other people didn't boooo.
We left Nottingham at 8am, a suitcase in hand and a dream in our hearts and arrived 5 hours later in Gatwick (after Dave managed to catch a connecting train just as the doors closed in my face, leaving me stranded in St Pancreas for some time) at which point I decided it'd be nice to have some celebratory Champagne. This was all going fine until Dave decided that we'd be better off buying wine of an equal value in order to get a better wine for our money. End result: several hours of perusing wine followed by zero hours of drinking anything. Thanks, Dave.
Fortunately for us there was unlimited free booze on the flight so we soon made up for it and we were pleased to discover that the in flight entertainment system was somehow hooked into Hywels media server and so had every film/tv series/porn movie ever made available for our consumption. Nuge watched 'Deathkill 5: Even manlier to watch than the last one' while I indulged in Disney's Tangled. Largly to get Helen Atkinson off my back but also cos I'm secretly a Disney Fanboy (yea I know, Tash, they're evil). Long story short the flight was pretty enjoyable. What wasn't was the TEN HOUR stop over in Dubai Airport. Now Dubai Terminal 3 was recently built and is, quite literally, the largest building in the world (check it on Wikipedia if you don't believe me). You'd therefore think there is quite a lot to do there and you'd be correct if, that is, you are a rich oil baron who can blow $4,500 on giant bottles of whiskey and/or are some terrible american tourist who wants to buy hideous snow globes of the Al Durka Durka hotel (SNOW GLOBES??!?!? It snows in Dubai WHEN?!). That being said Emirates used their evil earth-raping oil money to pay for free midnight snacks and free breakfast for all passengers in their terminal so we feasted on sandwiches and chicken sausages which were the reconstituted meat equivalent of an aero before trying to sleep on the recliner chairs that were cleverly designed to provide the most uncomfortable possible reclining position imaginab-
AHHHHHHHHHHGHGHGHFD DURKA DURKA JIHAAAAAD MOHAMMED DURKA DUUURRRKKAKAKAKAKAKA
Wondering what that random arabic interruption was? So were we when the call to prayer came blasting - at a volume equivalent to that experienced when sandwiched between a screaming child and a jet engine, in oceania, during an atomic detonation whilst suffering from Ramsey Hunt syndrome - at 4am. Of course it was actually considerably quieter than that, but when you're desperately trying to claw 5 minutes of sleep from the discomfort of sitting in some kind of contorted ball in the middle of an airport departure lounge the effect was around the same.
Fast forward 16 hours later and we find ourselves in Dar Es-Salaam, known locally as 'the brain' because, and I quote the travel book, 'that is what you need in order to survive there'. Dave and I agree that never before in our lives have we felt so likely to be imminently killed (and we live in NOTTINGHAM, gun capital of the world). Praying to Allah that the fierce sun would tan us to the point of being indistinguishable from the locals we ventured into town only to be immediately relieved of all our money by a ferry captain and some other random guy that demanded arbitrary amounts of money from us because we looked at him for too long or something. We subsequently returned to our hostel and cried ourselves to sleep whilst clutching all our belongings to us in the hope that that might prevent them from all being stolen/would at least provide some protection from the inevitable stabbing.
The next day we arrived in Zanzibar and walked all the way from the ferry terminus to the hospital, whilst being followed by some random guy that we, of course, had to pay for the privilege of being near for any period of time and got in touch with the guy who owns our accommodation. Everything about the accommodation is great; clean rooms, air con, internet, TV (until it broke), lion king DVD and is only $14 a night which is insanely cheap. Cheaper than West Bridgford anyway (but no Jacuzzi bath so fair game).
The hospital is, perhaps predictably, hell on earth. Remember BBC Newsround? Remember the hideous wards with bare metal beds and people lying on the floor oozing blood, pus and excrement all over the place? Well it's not really like that. But still, it's pretty rough. The facilities aren't all that bad (except there are no curtains so everything is done in front of the whole ward) but the doctors are TERRIBLE. I had expected really caring doctors who are trying their best but the god damned 3rd world debt imposed by us capitalist pigs just... won't.... let..... them.
Incorrect.
The doctors are more or less swimming in medications and equipment (Warning: MASSIVE OVEREXAGGERATION) but they have no idea how to use any of it (everyone gets diclofenac, especially renally impaired people, people with gastric ulcers and people with acute allergic reaction to diclofenac) and they don't really seem in any rush to do anything even when they do know what they're doing. We saw a women with a breast the size of my torso (usually a good thing but no so when compared to the other, considerably less gargantuan one) who CLEARLY had some kind of hideous disease but they didn't want to ultrasound her cos she was pregnant.
Newsflash: YOU USE ULTRASOUND ON THE VERY FOETUS ITSELF!! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG???
Other horrors include the father of a child dying of meningitis being told that the squash he'd bought for the child to drink was really bad for him because it contained lots of chemicals and that he needed pure fruit juice only. The child later died and I'm pretty sure the father will think it's because of his administration of killer squash. At least the father was trying to give him some fluids UNLIKE THE HOSPITAL!
Sadly they don't take any of our advice on-board I mean it's not like we actually HAVE medical degrees unlike them who do some kind of basketweaving course for 3 years and they get to work as doctors because there aren't enough actual doctors. Dave did succeed in getting someone put on beta-blockers for his heart failure. Unfortunately for Dave the guy wasn't actually in heart failure and actually had a massive pneumothorax (that they weren't really fussed to do anything about....)
Anyway horrifying hospital stuff aside Zanzibar is, predictably, beautiful and full of amazing food and interesting sights. We've had several fantastic weekends with NJ O'Leary, Hobo, Liam and an assortment of girls from Oxford Uni (that's right they even spoke to us, despite our obvious and profound inferiority). Generally involving going out on beautiful wooden boats snorkeling in crystal clear turquoise water before returning to a white sand beach and being fed BBQ lobster and freshly picked local fruits. Terrible, really.
This weekend we went to the full moon party in Kendwa (hey Kendwa, I've been thinking, I wanna spend a little extra time with you) where we expected drugs, sex, drugs, sex, more drugs, sex, a few drugs, a bit of sex and some drugs (as is the case in Thailand). Fortunately, given my lack of desire for drugs and sex, it was generally just more of a massive piss up on the beach. We did end up swimming drunkenly in the sea and getting all our stuff stolen though, which was a bit of a downer. Especially as it resulted in me and Dave being locked out of the room we spent $50 on and having to sleep on the floor of Niall, Kat & Dr Nicks room (that's right there is a guy called Dr Nick here and he never EVER says 'Hi Everybody': crushing). It all came right in the end though because we were able to spend the following day feeling horribly hungover on the idyllic beach.
Gosh that was long and boring. Sorry.
Anyway there are only three weeks left to go and it includes such highlights as:
Maybe seeing Niall again this weekend even though he has to go to Mass most of the time and has been invited to some exclusive lunch that we can't go to.
My birthday next week: If you like Geoff & Dave sitting alone in a bar, blowing on party whistles with definite lacklustre then you'll LOVE my birthday this year. But hey at least noone can sleep ill advisedly with anyone else this year (no it wasn't me last time).
Trip to the south of the island to experience local culture and then to play drinking Blood Diamond (TIA, bru) with Niall & Dr Nick.
Best of all: Return flight massive piss up/disney film watching extravaganza.
See you on the flipside, dudemeisters.
x
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Life is such an embarrassment.
It seems that I spend much of my life being mortified at myself for doing something horribly embarrassing and the ever pressured world of med school doesn't exactly help matters. In the last 3 weeks, since our final year (woop woop, soon we'll be doctors and then we're only £8k a year worse off than tube drivers! Go us!) began I think i've probably done something humiliating on average once every 8.69 seconds.
Today, for example, when I went to leave the ward after waiting around for teaching from Dr McCance which was McCancelled (that everyone but me knew was cancelled) I said goodbye to the only person who's name I know, James, and was about to leave the door when a nurse, of unknown name, said something which could have been 'yea, and goodbye to you too!', but in hindsight could have been frankly anything most likely 'can you write me up for some insulin, Doctor'. Desperate to not look horrible and to be liked by the nursing staff I rushed up to the woman, apologising in what was probably a mumbled and incomprehensible way and asked her for her name so that I could say goodbye to her too.
Who would do that?
I then wished her goodbye too, turned to leave, tripped over a chair leg and stumbled to the door, which I attempted to prop open (as is it's normal position) and, whilst failing to do this, noticed another person in the room who I had completely ignored in this whole, trying to say goodbye fiasco, and decided to cut my losses and just get out of there. Upon walking down the corridor i bumped into Bev, the now named nurse, and said goodbye AGAIN, like a TOTAL PRAT.
Why do I do these things, I swear my social awkwardness grows with each passing day!
And that's just when I'm sober,
I went to a party at the weekend at a house in which live about 7 girls, all of whom I'm very intimidated by (except Mhairi, who intimidates me only with her unspellable name). Usually when I bump into said girls in the hospital I say something horrendously inappropriate like 'Hey, nice breasts today' or, even more likely, just fail to say anything at all and stand wide eyed, drooling slightly, as they edge, mace in hand, towards the nearest escape route. In order to get over my fears and act like all the other medical students, filled to the brim with confidence and knowledge of whatever, the fuck, the offside rule is I decided to get horrifically drunk (mistake?) and, as ever, go on and on and on and on about how amazing Dave is, while Dave is there, in an attempt to well, who even knows. All we do know is the effect: pissing off Dave and making me look like a douche. *Sigh*
Other drunken times were had at Tash's Parents 25th Wedding Anniversary/Renewal of Vows Extraveganza and Disco. Where I a) had an awkward moment with Kay Ralph when I went to hug her but then didn't want to incase I destroyed her likely very expensive dress, and then got accused of not being a huggy person so then hugged her for an inappropriately long time, groping an inappropriate amount of her ass (ok maybe there was no ass groping). Following that, I proceeded to try doing cartwheels every time I went to the toilet, spent 20 minutes telling Tash's dad how amazing he and all that he touches is, spent 40 minutes telling Sir Robert McAlpine (or similar) how amazing Hywel is while Hywel tried desperately, and soberly, to shut me the fuck up and then spent at least an hour telling someone who will remain nameless but knows who she is that, despite being flat chested, she's great in so many other ways that noone cares.
I learned later on that I ALREADY HAD THAT CONVERSATION WITH HER SEVERAL WEEKS PREVIOUSLY WHILST DRUNK THE FIRST TIME.
Couple to that my intense awkwardness around the hospital Doctors, mainly because they have initial faith in me but then lose it as soon as the pool of blood from my cannulation attempts starts ebbing up their trouser leg, and you get the reason for my return to blogdom from relative silence and it is this: To all that read this blog, I'm not really a complete tool, I just appear to be one. Now love me.
Today, for example, when I went to leave the ward after waiting around for teaching from Dr McCance which was McCancelled (that everyone but me knew was cancelled) I said goodbye to the only person who's name I know, James, and was about to leave the door when a nurse, of unknown name, said something which could have been 'yea, and goodbye to you too!', but in hindsight could have been frankly anything most likely 'can you write me up for some insulin, Doctor'. Desperate to not look horrible and to be liked by the nursing staff I rushed up to the woman, apologising in what was probably a mumbled and incomprehensible way and asked her for her name so that I could say goodbye to her too.
Who would do that?
I then wished her goodbye too, turned to leave, tripped over a chair leg and stumbled to the door, which I attempted to prop open (as is it's normal position) and, whilst failing to do this, noticed another person in the room who I had completely ignored in this whole, trying to say goodbye fiasco, and decided to cut my losses and just get out of there. Upon walking down the corridor i bumped into Bev, the now named nurse, and said goodbye AGAIN, like a TOTAL PRAT.
Why do I do these things, I swear my social awkwardness grows with each passing day!
And that's just when I'm sober,
I went to a party at the weekend at a house in which live about 7 girls, all of whom I'm very intimidated by (except Mhairi, who intimidates me only with her unspellable name). Usually when I bump into said girls in the hospital I say something horrendously inappropriate like 'Hey, nice breasts today' or, even more likely, just fail to say anything at all and stand wide eyed, drooling slightly, as they edge, mace in hand, towards the nearest escape route. In order to get over my fears and act like all the other medical students, filled to the brim with confidence and knowledge of whatever, the fuck, the offside rule is I decided to get horrifically drunk (mistake?) and, as ever, go on and on and on and on about how amazing Dave is, while Dave is there, in an attempt to well, who even knows. All we do know is the effect: pissing off Dave and making me look like a douche. *Sigh*
Other drunken times were had at Tash's Parents 25th Wedding Anniversary/Renewal of Vows Extraveganza and Disco. Where I a) had an awkward moment with Kay Ralph when I went to hug her but then didn't want to incase I destroyed her likely very expensive dress, and then got accused of not being a huggy person so then hugged her for an inappropriately long time, groping an inappropriate amount of her ass (ok maybe there was no ass groping). Following that, I proceeded to try doing cartwheels every time I went to the toilet, spent 20 minutes telling Tash's dad how amazing he and all that he touches is, spent 40 minutes telling Sir Robert McAlpine (or similar) how amazing Hywel is while Hywel tried desperately, and soberly, to shut me the fuck up and then spent at least an hour telling someone who will remain nameless but knows who she is that, despite being flat chested, she's great in so many other ways that noone cares.
I learned later on that I ALREADY HAD THAT CONVERSATION WITH HER SEVERAL WEEKS PREVIOUSLY WHILST DRUNK THE FIRST TIME.
Couple to that my intense awkwardness around the hospital Doctors, mainly because they have initial faith in me but then lose it as soon as the pool of blood from my cannulation attempts starts ebbing up their trouser leg, and you get the reason for my return to blogdom from relative silence and it is this: To all that read this blog, I'm not really a complete tool, I just appear to be one. Now love me.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
I know it's today
If you like pinacoladas *bom bom bom* and getting caught in the rain *bom bom bom* theeen I'm afraid there's no future for us as i HATE BEING CAUGHT IN THE FRIKKING RAIN.
Bonjour mon petit dejourner, as always it's been a while. This stems from the fact that I'm a super busy and important person and not that I'm too lazy to pick up my laptop and write on this blog ever. Oh no no no.
The rest of my specials attachment was pretty unexciting, really, with the only highlight being that I got bought chocolate by the Registrar looking after us for doing a kick ass presentation. When I say kick ass what I mean is that everyone had to vote for the best presentation but forgot so the only person left in the room was me and, well, I like chocolate. The only lowlight, conversely, was being kicked the hell out of theatre by Mr Sama, Bin Ladans non-irish cousin.
The background goes as follows, theatre is pretty frikking boring, now some people when they go into theatre have an awesome surgeon who fetches them from the usual med student location of cowering in the corner with fear, drags them up to the operating table and makes them do cool stuff like slice out the guys pancreas or whatever. In some cases these people even get paid £200 because they assisted on a private list. However, nothing exciting has ever happened to ME in theatre and I usually stand around in silence on my own being totally ignored by the surgeon who is surrounded by so many underling staff that it is impossible to see what the hell is going on. Fortuitously (or so I thought at first), there was a fellow medical student with me when I went into my last ENT theatre list, so I thought that for once I wouldn't be sitting around with noone to talk to feeling like a douche. As the first operation was a tonstillectomy there was very little we could see, the surgeon was hunched over the patient and furthermore, we weren't scrubbed in so out mere presence within 2 feet of the patient would mean their imminent infection with MRSA and subsequent death. So, as two humans do when they are in the company of one another, with very little to do, we had rampant sex. And by rampant sex I mean we chatted about what SSM we are going to do next and about electives etc. After the operation, the surgeon wheeled around on us.
Things in brackets are underlying thoughts.
Surgeon: Can I see you two outside, please?
Us: Sure thing (Maybe he's going to get us to scrub in or do some teaching that the hospital gets paid £1,200 per student per week to do)
Surgeon: Why did you come to my theatre today?
Us: To see you do some surgery (To get our books signed off)
Surgeon: Well, you didn't bother to introduce yourselves (Yes we did, I waved and said hello to you when you came in and you've met me THREE TIMES ALREADY so I thought telling you my name again would make it seem as though I thought you were a COMPLETE MORON), You didn't bother to find out about the patient (They were having a tonsillectomy sooo we guessed some kind of tonsil problem, furthermore surgeons often come up to us and tell us about the patient rather than ignoring us), and you just spent the whole time chatting (Well, fair enough maybe we shouldn't have been chatting but we weren't disturbing anyone and we had F*CK ALL ELSE TO DO!)
Us: Oh I'm sorry
Surgeon: So you can get out of my theatre, and I don't want you to ever come to my theatre again.
Surely a bit rash, it's not like we got his daughter pregnant or anything. Jeez.
So that was unpleasant.
Talking of electives, I've actually got mine sorted! Medical elective is where medical students bugger off out of the country for 6 weeks to learn about how medicine works in other countries, or some shit. Undergraduates, being massive goodie two shoes, who in a Disney cartoon-esque way have a deep seated goal to do good in the world and to help poor starving third world urchins achieve degrees and social prosperity, invariable head off to africa so that they can feel important and helpful. Postgraduates, on the other hand, are bitter and resent the world for all the horrible things it has done to them, and as a result like to either stay at home and dwell on their misery or else bugger off somewhere, pretending that they care about third world hunger but really they just want to go on a jolly.
So we're doing the latter. In zanzibar. And no, I can't afford it and yes, I'm going to get the AIDS and melanoma but it's fine because apparently Zanzibar is the most beautiful place in the whole world and it only rains one month in a year. And that month is Novemeber. So wooooo...
[1 month break later]
After the last paragraph, Dave walked in needing attention, so I was forced to wait until several weeks later before I had free time to write anything else.
Since then!
Hywel's Wedding:
This was good stuff, despite having contracted THE DIABETES on his Coke & Haribo fuelled stag-do (featuring such excitement as the Triad Leader Chinese Restaurant Owner who served only what HE WANTED US to have ordered and refused to allow us to have free tap water even though it illegal for him to do so, and Charles preaching the virtues of Windows over Mac OS before spending a good 30 minutes trying to get the god forsaken operating system to output to his projector) I was raring to go for the actual wedding and Hywel had kindly put me up in one of the Hyper-expensive cottages they had organised in PARADISE on the Friday night so I was well rested (ish). First of all Megan, Hywel's Renault inspired fiancee, looked absolutely gorgeous and second of all any time spent around Hywel is liable to be extremely good.
Yes there were downsides, like the fact I had no official title and spent alot of time feeling unloved and freezing cold in the church, and the fact that part of the wedding actually OCCURED in a church despite everyone Hywel knows being an athiest, but aside from those mere foibles the rest was great fun. The Best Man, Tom Dvorak, had orchestrated some beautiful arrangements of Journey and Queen for the string orchestra to play and the location in Paradise Castle was as picturesque as you can ask for. Following the service, Tom Wolverine and I took on the difficult task of getting TOTALLY OFF OUR FACES drunk which we succeeded in easily with the help of Dvorak's girlfriend and Hywel's brother Tom. We had some amazing food, I gave an amazingly poor speech and then sang amazingly loudly and out of tune to the band (that Hywel normally gigs with). My usual sense of inferiority was somewhat increased at the point that Hywel started playing RIDICULOUS SHREDDING GUITAR at HIS OWN WEDDING causing him to LOOK LIKE A GOD but he deserved all the subsequent praise he achieved.
After 4 hours sleep interrupted by Tom Wolverine's STUPIDLY LOUD snoring and Megan's cough, at least I hope it was a cough because anyone who makes sex noises like that needs to see a Doctor something awful, I had to set off to start band call for Carlton Operatic's Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately due to my hungover state and the fact I was half asleep I managed to take the wrong motorway and almost ended up in London, but I did manage to make it to rehearsal on time, even if I was a little flustered. The Wizard Of Oz band turned out to be great, combining the talent of Nottingham Operatics band with the ability to have a bit of a laugh (presumably due to a lack of the Iron Fist of the talented but stern Steve Williams) and the conductor, Chris Rees, had an easy to follow and familiar conducting style. I later learned this could well stem from the fact he used to conduct at Warwick, just like me, and the conducting style has obviously been passed down over the generations. I say generations, he's like 5 years older than me.
Unfortunately, although the show was excellently performed it is INSANELY LONG! Longer than the SUN. (that's the right analogy, i'm sure) and I was thoroughly pleased when it was over (especially as I was massively hung over from Kat Woodwards birthday bash, where I got kissed by A RANDOM BLOKE IN THE QUEUE, and nearly lost my glasses several times, though at least it wasn't my anal virginity)
Since then I've had a cold, and that's about it.
Oh and Psychiatry is a load of terrible. Being in the hospital feels like you're in one of those dreams where nothing quite happens like you expect it to; when someone opens up their breifcase, a rabbit might leap out, for example. Every conversation is packed full of long and uncomfortable pauses and you start to get the feeling that the doctors are simply mental patients who are pretending to be qualified. An example:
Doctor: I think we want to put her on an antidepressant...
*long pause*
... but a good one.
Pharmacist, with a sense of sarcasm: Well they're all equally efficatious
*long pause*
Doctor: But are they?
*long pause*
Pharmacist: I, well, I
*long pause*
Pharmacist: So maybe paracetamoxyfrusabendroneomycin?
*long pause*
Doctor: Perhaps....
*long pause*
Doctor: I think we want to put her on an antidepressnat...
At one point during this conversation, the sane SHO (who clearly hadn't been there long enough for the bonkers-ness to take effect) actually interrupted with "soooooo..." because there had been random silence for around 5 minutes and everyone looked at her astonished as if she'd just interrupted a very important conversation. One wonders what would happen if these doctors worked in A&E
Nurse: Doctor, doctor, I feel like i'm a pair of curtains
Doctor: Well pull yourself together, woman.
*cough*
Nurse: Doctor, this man was involved in some horrendous traffic accident and has lost all his limbs and 95% of his circulating blood volume
*long pause*
Doctor: and how does that make him feel?
Nurse: What are you talking about, he's barely got a pulse, he's peri-arrest for god's sake
*long pause*
Doctor: I feel we need to give him some kind of
*long pause*
... fluids.
Nurse: OK What kind?
*long pause*
Doctor: Some fluids that are good
Nurse: OK well screw you i'm just going to give him saline before he dies
*he dies*
Doctor: So... can anyone think of a reason why the clouds are so pretty on a spring afternoon...
AGHHH
Still, I've not been raped or stabbed (yet) so it hasn't gone as badly as possible.
[1 month break later]
After the last paragraph, Dave walked in needing attention, so I was forced to wait until several weeks later before I had free time to write anything else.
Since then!
Hywel's Wedding:
This was good stuff, despite having contracted THE DIABETES on his Coke & Haribo fuelled stag-do (featuring such excitement as the Triad Leader Chinese Restaurant Owner who served only what HE WANTED US to have ordered and refused to allow us to have free tap water even though it illegal for him to do so, and Charles preaching the virtues of Windows over Mac OS before spending a good 30 minutes trying to get the god forsaken operating system to output to his projector) I was raring to go for the actual wedding and Hywel had kindly put me up in one of the Hyper-expensive cottages they had organised in PARADISE on the Friday night so I was well rested (ish). First of all Megan, Hywel's Renault inspired fiancee, looked absolutely gorgeous and second of all any time spent around Hywel is liable to be extremely good.
Yes there were downsides, like the fact I had no official title and spent alot of time feeling unloved and freezing cold in the church, and the fact that part of the wedding actually OCCURED in a church despite everyone Hywel knows being an athiest, but aside from those mere foibles the rest was great fun. The Best Man, Tom Dvorak, had orchestrated some beautiful arrangements of Journey and Queen for the string orchestra to play and the location in Paradise Castle was as picturesque as you can ask for. Following the service, Tom Wolverine and I took on the difficult task of getting TOTALLY OFF OUR FACES drunk which we succeeded in easily with the help of Dvorak's girlfriend and Hywel's brother Tom. We had some amazing food, I gave an amazingly poor speech and then sang amazingly loudly and out of tune to the band (that Hywel normally gigs with). My usual sense of inferiority was somewhat increased at the point that Hywel started playing RIDICULOUS SHREDDING GUITAR at HIS OWN WEDDING causing him to LOOK LIKE A GOD but he deserved all the subsequent praise he achieved.
After 4 hours sleep interrupted by Tom Wolverine's STUPIDLY LOUD snoring and Megan's cough, at least I hope it was a cough because anyone who makes sex noises like that needs to see a Doctor something awful, I had to set off to start band call for Carlton Operatic's Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately due to my hungover state and the fact I was half asleep I managed to take the wrong motorway and almost ended up in London, but I did manage to make it to rehearsal on time, even if I was a little flustered. The Wizard Of Oz band turned out to be great, combining the talent of Nottingham Operatics band with the ability to have a bit of a laugh (presumably due to a lack of the Iron Fist of the talented but stern Steve Williams) and the conductor, Chris Rees, had an easy to follow and familiar conducting style. I later learned this could well stem from the fact he used to conduct at Warwick, just like me, and the conducting style has obviously been passed down over the generations. I say generations, he's like 5 years older than me.
Unfortunately, although the show was excellently performed it is INSANELY LONG! Longer than the SUN. (that's the right analogy, i'm sure) and I was thoroughly pleased when it was over (especially as I was massively hung over from Kat Woodwards birthday bash, where I got kissed by A RANDOM BLOKE IN THE QUEUE, and nearly lost my glasses several times, though at least it wasn't my anal virginity)
Since then I've had a cold, and that's about it.
Oh and Psychiatry is a load of terrible. Being in the hospital feels like you're in one of those dreams where nothing quite happens like you expect it to; when someone opens up their breifcase, a rabbit might leap out, for example. Every conversation is packed full of long and uncomfortable pauses and you start to get the feeling that the doctors are simply mental patients who are pretending to be qualified. An example:
Doctor: I think we want to put her on an antidepressant...
*long pause*
... but a good one.
Pharmacist, with a sense of sarcasm: Well they're all equally efficatious
*long pause*
Doctor: But are they?
*long pause*
Pharmacist: I, well, I
*long pause*
Pharmacist: So maybe paracetamoxyfrusabendroneomycin?
*long pause*
Doctor: Perhaps....
*long pause*
Doctor: I think we want to put her on an antidepressnat...
At one point during this conversation, the sane SHO (who clearly hadn't been there long enough for the bonkers-ness to take effect) actually interrupted with "soooooo..." because there had been random silence for around 5 minutes and everyone looked at her astonished as if she'd just interrupted a very important conversation. One wonders what would happen if these doctors worked in A&E
Nurse: Doctor, doctor, I feel like i'm a pair of curtains
Doctor: Well pull yourself together, woman.
*cough*
Nurse: Doctor, this man was involved in some horrendous traffic accident and has lost all his limbs and 95% of his circulating blood volume
*long pause*
Doctor: and how does that make him feel?
Nurse: What are you talking about, he's barely got a pulse, he's peri-arrest for god's sake
*long pause*
Doctor: I feel we need to give him some kind of
*long pause*
... fluids.
Nurse: OK What kind?
*long pause*
Doctor: Some fluids that are good
Nurse: OK well screw you i'm just going to give him saline before he dies
*he dies*
Doctor: So... can anyone think of a reason why the clouds are so pretty on a spring afternoon...
AGHHH
Still, I've not been raped or stabbed (yet) so it hasn't gone as badly as possible.
Exciting events coming up include:
First Sing through of the Last 5 Years this weekend: Should be good fun although I need to make Ollie Metcalfe sing less like a girl, finish the ends of words and man up a bit. Also I fear the worst when the Arts Theatre suggest that something might make a profit. Have they budgeted for a piano, probably not, have they budgeted for the music or the rights, who knows?
Visiting of Iain & Hywel (Including Nick Sutcliffe & Tom Wolverine) next weekend and into the easter holidays: Should involve alot of fizzy cola bottles so I'm quite excited.
My birthday: Is a celebration of how massively old I have become, which is bad, but will feature many excellent people, which is good, however there is nowhere to actually have the party, which is bad, but it will be followed by a trip to Hodgson Manor, which is good, the manor is laced with potassium benzoate.
That's bad.
*Ramblins End Here*
First Sing through of the Last 5 Years this weekend: Should be good fun although I need to make Ollie Metcalfe sing less like a girl, finish the ends of words and man up a bit. Also I fear the worst when the Arts Theatre suggest that something might make a profit. Have they budgeted for a piano, probably not, have they budgeted for the music or the rights, who knows?
Visiting of Iain & Hywel (Including Nick Sutcliffe & Tom Wolverine) next weekend and into the easter holidays: Should involve alot of fizzy cola bottles so I'm quite excited.
My birthday: Is a celebration of how massively old I have become, which is bad, but will feature many excellent people, which is good, however there is nowhere to actually have the party, which is bad, but it will be followed by a trip to Hodgson Manor, which is good, the manor is laced with potassium benzoate.
That's bad.
*Ramblins End Here*
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Hey, Anaesthetist, cannulate THIS *gunfire*
Gonna write a blog, for once in my life.
It's gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it right.
We follow each other on the web you know, cos we got no-where to go.
That's why I want you to know:
I'm writing about the man in the mirror,
I'm writing it to make a change (to my daily routine)
And though my writing perhaps could be clearer,
If you wanna make the world a better place you gotta look at my blog and make a -
- *key change* comment.
Sha na na sha na naaaa na naaaa.
Greetings, fellow procrastinators, I hope this morrow finds you well.
Actually on the subject of the statement 'I hope this letter finds you well', does it mean 'I hope this letter doesn't get lost in the process of trying to find you, perhaps due to a cheap satnav purchase' or does it mean 'I hope WHEN (after much swearing) the letter eventually finds you, does it find you in good health'. I mean really, these olden day sayings need to be clearer. Like 'You can't have your cake and eat it', I'm sorry, Keates, or Yates or whoever you were but I can most definitely have my cake and eat it, unless I of course eat the entire cake at once, which would be a) diabetes inducing and b) delicious. Mmmmm, caaaaake.
So it's been a long time, and I've been haranged most regularly by passers by in the street about writing another entry so here it is, your precious entry, I hope your proud of yourselves.
At the end of the last blog I was just about to head off to Leeds to see Iain and that's exactly what I did. We had a lovely meal and a catchup, and then of course Rock Band came out and so all the girls disappeared off somewhere to kill themselves while Iain and I continued, oblivious, to persue our dreams of becoming cheap plastic rock gods. I then returned home to Nottingham, got immediately too cold and too bored to stick around and spent the rest of the week in Cheltenham (pronounced Chelt-en-am if you are literate and, Chelt-num, if you are a little bit special) Spa with Bennét *air guitar shred, a la Bill & Ted* and, later on, MacDuff!.
After that began my anaesthetics SSM placement. Now, SSM placements are the medical school equivalent of 'Reading Week', you're supposed to be hard at work but, in reality, you're off masturbating outside the house of the girl who rejected you at school, or, if you're a girl, having naked pillow fights with your friends and making sure the curtains are drawn. This is certainly true for some friends of mine who have been allocated Clinical Hypnosis as their SSM which has, I believe, 3 half days of teaching followed by 3.5 weeks of 'practising your hypnosis skills'. Which is especially fortuitous because, presumably the only place you CAN practise your hypnosis skills is in bars, chatting up fit birds .
For those of you lucky enough to be unaccustomed to HTML markup script, the above thing essentially states that I want birds to be said in a cockney accent. It's very amusing, trust me. HAHAHAHAHA. Birds must always be said in a cockney accent otherwise people might think I actually use the word 'birds' to describe 'fine ladies' which I don't because I F*CKING HATE F*CKING COCKS*CKERS WHO USE THAT WORD, that's right that means you, CHRIS CALLAGHAN.
Don't know who Chris Callaghan is, clue: he went to uni in PRESTON *crushes a cup in his hand, and I'm not talking styrofoam I'm talking.... what am I talking?*
Soooooooo SSM, yes, mine was very much not the total doss-out that I needed after my two strenuous weeks of Christmas holidays. It was in fact a punishing 8am-6pm regime requiring each morning and each afternoon to be signed off by someone senior and not, upsettingly, the easily bribed janitor. Prior to my SSM, 3 things were true.
1. The only anaesthetist I had ever met had more or less stabbed me in the very heart for not prescribing IV Magnesium (which noone had ever heard of) to my simulated patient.
DIGRESSION: Dear Emma James, I would kindly like it if you would stop spreading LIES to the entirety of the medical school RE: my simulation. Given that I was the only person whos simulated patient even HAD ANYTHING WRONG WITH THEM and that I prescribed them all sorts of drugs that noone even THOUGHT of prescribing I find it rather annoying that everyone in the med school has been told by you that I stood there flapping my arms and gibbering 'uh-oh spaghetti o's' until the, in your version, perfectly healthy patient, died suddenly from my incompetence. Perhaps, it could be put down to a mere difference of opinion but unfortunately YOU WEREN'T EVEN THERE SO YOU DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT.
Signed,
Your friend always,
Geoffrey Elizabeth Catherine Burnhill
(For the record, I do actually think that Emma is an excellent person despite her LIES)
2. (Yes that's right, I was doing some kind of numbered list) The only other anaesthetist I'd heard about (aside from on O&G, which I have of course blocked from my mind) had thrashed Dave Nugent to within an inch of his life for daring to ask 'Hi, i was just wondering, while we're waiting for the surgeons to turn up, if you could tell me a little about what this machine does'.
3. I suck at cannulation.
The goal of doing my anaesthetics SSM was, essentially twofold. A) to learn to intubate because George Clooney does it on ER all the time and people seem to fancy him and B) to learn to suck less at cannulation because it makes me feel bad when I can't do it, and birds love men who are good at cannulating. Presumably because it involves skill at sticking a hard tube into a moist, throbbing recepticle. Who knows?
By the third day I was no closer to having achieved either of these two objectives. Yes, I'd seen OESOPHAGEAL DOPPLER, whatever the f*ck that is, but I had done little else. My confidence was dropped further when, in the morning, the consultant grabbed the cannula from my hand as he could tell from the very way in which I was holding it that I was about to inflict severe bodily harm upon the patient. I then had a couple of goes and did OK, however I decided I needed more practise. To this end I stole some cannulas (hey man, they're technically mine anyway, I pay national insurance) and resolved to cannulate MY OWN HAND. Those of you who follow my every move on Facebook will, of course, know the result. Essentially not only did I fail to successfully cannulate my hand, but I also realised that it F*CKING HURTS LIKE YOU COULDN'T BELIEVE.
Anyway I hadn't had much of a succesful time until my morning with Dr Vater (who, as you could expect, was dressed in black vinyl and breathed through a mask) in Paediatrics who not only showered me with compliments about being the best medical student ever to grace the earth and for having beautiful eyes but also supervised me intubating 4 children. This meant I could go home and say 'Yup, there was this kid, paralysed, couldn't breathe, he'd had suffocated if it weren't for my heroic intubation skills'. Intubation, for those of you who are totally confused by what is going on, involves sticking a tube into someones wind pipe to bypass all the crap going on in their throat and allowing you to ventilate them with a machine. I also got to cannulate a child and that went swimmingly too. So yey for me.
Sadly i managed to get blood EVERYWHERE several times when cannulating other people, so all my successes are kind of nulled out.
And that's about all that happened on anaesthetics, really, if you want to know more (of course you do) then just ask Dave as I bored him to tears every night explaining everything that happened in excruciating detail. Oh yea, and I put a needle into someone's SPINE, that was fun.
What else is going on... well I have £33 a week to spend for the next 4 months, which is going to be very interesting to say the least. We couldn't find anyone to take up the 3rd room in the house because EVERYONE ON EARTH SUCKS, but Dave is taking up the slack so we won't be out on the streets. Yet.
So ummm yea.
Talk soon.
P.S.
Donations to the 'Geoff has only £33 a week for four months' appeal can be sent to:
Geoff
Definately Won't Buy an iPad with This Money
Oh Definately
Nottingham
NGtube Age+4/4
It's gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it right.
We follow each other on the web you know, cos we got no-where to go.
That's why I want you to know:
I'm writing about the man in the mirror,
I'm writing it to make a change (to my daily routine)
And though my writing perhaps could be clearer,
If you wanna make the world a better place you gotta look at my blog and make a -
- *key change* comment.
Sha na na sha na naaaa na naaaa.
Greetings, fellow procrastinators, I hope this morrow finds you well.
Actually on the subject of the statement 'I hope this letter finds you well', does it mean 'I hope this letter doesn't get lost in the process of trying to find you, perhaps due to a cheap satnav purchase' or does it mean 'I hope WHEN (after much swearing) the letter eventually finds you, does it find you in good health'. I mean really, these olden day sayings need to be clearer. Like 'You can't have your cake and eat it', I'm sorry, Keates, or Yates or whoever you were but I can most definitely have my cake and eat it, unless I of course eat the entire cake at once, which would be a) diabetes inducing and b) delicious. Mmmmm, caaaaake.
So it's been a long time, and I've been haranged most regularly by passers by in the street about writing another entry so here it is, your precious entry, I hope your proud of yourselves.
At the end of the last blog I was just about to head off to Leeds to see Iain and that's exactly what I did. We had a lovely meal and a catchup, and then of course Rock Band came out and so all the girls disappeared off somewhere to kill themselves while Iain and I continued, oblivious, to persue our dreams of becoming cheap plastic rock gods. I then returned home to Nottingham, got immediately too cold and too bored to stick around and spent the rest of the week in Cheltenham (pronounced Chelt-en-am if you are literate and, Chelt-num, if you are a little bit special) Spa with Bennét *air guitar shred, a la Bill & Ted* and, later on, MacDuff!.
After that began my anaesthetics SSM placement. Now, SSM placements are the medical school equivalent of 'Reading Week', you're supposed to be hard at work but, in reality, you're off masturbating outside the house of the girl who rejected you at school, or, if you're a girl, having naked pillow fights with your friends and making sure the curtains are drawn. This is certainly true for some friends of mine who have been allocated Clinical Hypnosis as their SSM which has, I believe, 3 half days of teaching followed by 3.5 weeks of 'practising your hypnosis skills'. Which is especially fortuitous because, presumably the only place you CAN practise your hypnosis skills is in bars, chatting up fit
For those of you lucky enough to be unaccustomed to HTML markup script, the above thing essentially states that I want birds to be said in a cockney accent. It's very amusing, trust me. HAHAHAHAHA. Birds must always be said in a cockney accent otherwise people might think I actually use the word 'birds' to describe 'fine ladies' which I don't because I F*CKING HATE F*CKING COCKS*CKERS WHO USE THAT WORD, that's right that means you, CHRIS CALLAGHAN.
Don't know who Chris Callaghan is, clue: he went to uni in PRESTON *crushes a cup in his hand, and I'm not talking styrofoam I'm talking.... what am I talking?*
Soooooooo SSM, yes, mine was very much not the total doss-out that I needed after my two strenuous weeks of Christmas holidays. It was in fact a punishing 8am-6pm regime requiring each morning and each afternoon to be signed off by someone senior and not, upsettingly, the easily bribed janitor. Prior to my SSM, 3 things were true.
1. The only anaesthetist I had ever met had more or less stabbed me in the very heart for not prescribing IV Magnesium (which noone had ever heard of) to my simulated patient.
DIGRESSION: Dear Emma James, I would kindly like it if you would stop spreading LIES to the entirety of the medical school RE: my simulation. Given that I was the only person whos simulated patient even HAD ANYTHING WRONG WITH THEM and that I prescribed them all sorts of drugs that noone even THOUGHT of prescribing I find it rather annoying that everyone in the med school has been told by you that I stood there flapping my arms and gibbering 'uh-oh spaghetti o's' until the, in your version, perfectly healthy patient, died suddenly from my incompetence. Perhaps, it could be put down to a mere difference of opinion but unfortunately YOU WEREN'T EVEN THERE SO YOU DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT.
Signed,
Your friend always,
Geoffrey Elizabeth Catherine Burnhill
(For the record, I do actually think that Emma is an excellent person despite her LIES)
2. (Yes that's right, I was doing some kind of numbered list) The only other anaesthetist I'd heard about (aside from on O&G, which I have of course blocked from my mind) had thrashed Dave Nugent to within an inch of his life for daring to ask 'Hi, i was just wondering, while we're waiting for the surgeons to turn up, if you could tell me a little about what this machine does'.
3. I suck at cannulation.
The goal of doing my anaesthetics SSM was, essentially twofold. A) to learn to intubate because George Clooney does it on ER all the time and people seem to fancy him and B) to learn to suck less at cannulation because it makes me feel bad when I can't do it, and
By the third day I was no closer to having achieved either of these two objectives. Yes, I'd seen OESOPHAGEAL DOPPLER, whatever the f*ck that is, but I had done little else. My confidence was dropped further when, in the morning, the consultant grabbed the cannula from my hand as he could tell from the very way in which I was holding it that I was about to inflict severe bodily harm upon the patient. I then had a couple of goes and did OK, however I decided I needed more practise. To this end I stole some cannulas (hey man, they're technically mine anyway, I pay national insurance) and resolved to cannulate MY OWN HAND. Those of you who follow my every move on Facebook will, of course, know the result. Essentially not only did I fail to successfully cannulate my hand, but I also realised that it F*CKING HURTS LIKE YOU COULDN'T BELIEVE.
Anyway I hadn't had much of a succesful time until my morning with Dr Vater (who, as you could expect, was dressed in black vinyl and breathed through a mask) in Paediatrics who not only showered me with compliments about being the best medical student ever to grace the earth and for having beautiful eyes but also supervised me intubating 4 children. This meant I could go home and say 'Yup, there was this kid, paralysed, couldn't breathe, he'd had suffocated if it weren't for my heroic intubation skills'. Intubation, for those of you who are totally confused by what is going on, involves sticking a tube into someones wind pipe to bypass all the crap going on in their throat and allowing you to ventilate them with a machine. I also got to cannulate a child and that went swimmingly too. So yey for me.
Sadly i managed to get blood EVERYWHERE several times when cannulating other people, so all my successes are kind of nulled out.
And that's about all that happened on anaesthetics, really, if you want to know more (of course you do) then just ask Dave as I bored him to tears every night explaining everything that happened in excruciating detail. Oh yea, and I put a needle into someone's SPINE, that was fun.
What else is going on... well I have £33 a week to spend for the next 4 months, which is going to be very interesting to say the least. We couldn't find anyone to take up the 3rd room in the house because EVERYONE ON EARTH SUCKS, but Dave is taking up the slack so we won't be out on the streets. Yet.
So ummm yea.
Talk soon.
P.S.
Donations to the 'Geoff has only £33 a week for four months' appeal can be sent to:
Geoff
Definately Won't Buy an iPad with This Money
Oh Definately
Nottingham
NGtube Age+4/4
Saturday, 26 December 2009
At Chreeestmas Time All Chreeestians Sing To Chreest the Chreestmas Chreesty Chreest
Merry Boxing Day, one and all.
I sit here on the sofa, breathing in the germs of my sickened mother and enjoying the warmth of the log burning stove as my brother photoshops pictures of us snowboarding (more on that to follow) and I think 'Oh No! What of all my blog reading compadres?! How will they have survived this long holiday period without the lush oasis of humour and wit that is my blog?'. Well here is your answer people. On the 2nd day of Chreestmas your true love wrote for you. A blog entry that doesn't rhyme.
News since the last blog?
Well the MINI arrived in all it's lesser sized glory. It is most beautiful and most fun to drive. It keeps me happy daily with thoughtful innovations that the Germans must have added during it's reincarnation from the original mini, such as brakes and steering but, mainly, it has a key-fob thing that you slid into the dashboard and a 'Stop/Start' button. A BUTTON! How awesome is that?! None of that obsolete key turning action for me, oh no, I just pushy pushy and it starty starty. Worth 14 THOUSAND POUNDS any day.
I still have no 3rd housemate, so life on the streets is looking ever more likely. Still at least I'm not like Ben Gray who is making an ill-advised move to the death-rink that is St Anne's in Nottingham in order to actually experience the suffering of the poor and drug dependant. I cannot decide whether to find this very noble or very stupid and I am inclined to go for the latter as he is likely to try cheering up the locals by an impromptu acoustic guitar set featuring songs such as 'God Loves you, so your shit lives aren't so bad' and 'We are all god's children, what I have is also yours'.
I'm taking bets as to how long it will take him to be killed and by which method. Though I do hope he isn't as his heart is in the right place, he's just deluded into believing in a higher power. And that happens to the best of people.
Though never me, never.
My last week in Nottingham was frantic and full of concerts. I had the Nottingham Arts Theatre Singers (Good Vibrations) concert first. Now the problems with the Nottingham Arts Theatre Singers (Good Vibrations) concert were multifactorial but included
1. Originally around 60 people (58 more than turned up to Songs For A New World) turned up to rehearsal, by the end there were about 6 and one of those was inside a uterus.
2. Due to the open nature of the group all levels of talent are allowed to join. Good for the community, bad for your ears.
3. Neither Nathan or I or the band had any time to rehearse before the concert and so we had no idea what we were doing.
4. Nathan, due probably to being a huge gay, hadn't procured any music for said band during the concert so they all had to read over my shoulder
5. There were grumpy old ladies in the audience who kept asking us questions like 'When are we starting, it's too crowded', 'Why is that guitarist so welsh' and 'What is pi to 45 digits'. I ended up getting grouchy with them and telling to 'go die already like your body wants you to'.
6. At no point did they sing 'Good Vibrations' or even make an attempt to.
Then there was the Note-ability concert.
Good points:
They are a very talented group and are very nice people too.
I got a swig of brandy in the interval.
They paid me money and gave me wine.
They sang an excellent variety of music to an amazing standard.
The conductor was a MILF.
Bad Points:
I suck at playing the piano.
They knew this.
It was embarrassing.
and finally the AGF Christmas. Thing.
We had basically no rehearsal for this but the organisers had shipped in some professional singers (a daughter of one and her friends) and so the quality of singing was brilliant! Furthermore I got to play 'You Got The Love' the 90s dance classic and it was awesome. However the last day was stressful due to losing my sustain pedal and having no keys to my house and no way to get to my house until around 15 minute before the concert. Sadly during the concert the stage light was shining directly INTO MY FACE so all i could see was the music on the BACK of the piece of paper I was looking at and I consequently sucked. Again.
So alot of sucking happened.
Fun times have been had since I returned to Debden for Christmassy fun. MacDuff! and Sam also came down for a few days and we went sledging and snowboarding out on one of the hills. I received several painful bruises and my nose has started bleeding every night, perhaps as a subtle hint that active sport is not for me. Nevertheless I decree that I should spend all my remaining savings (£2.50) on a skiing holiday this year so that I can learn to steer and then impress all the locals next year.
We also had a round of Betterwizzer, the worlds most complicated board game, that isn't really complicated at all but the instructions are written in 4pt font and took up a sheet of paper the size of Britain's national debt. In the 2,345 words of instructions only around 3 rules are outlined but it takes so long to read them that most people have given up on the whole idea of a board game and are attacking the brandy in the cabinet before you understand how to play. The best thing about this game is that Sam lost, and as Sam has never failed at anything in his entire life this made me feel better about myself. All I need now is for Dave to fail to attract a girl and it'll be like I'm not the biggest noob in the house.
Sadly that will never happen.
As for christmas day I got little sleep the night before because my brother had got pissed up down the local pub on 5% beer and ended up being sick in all corners of the house. Fortunately my gifts of socks, socks, socks, socks, 2 jumpers and £20,000 worth of Blu-Ray disks from MacDuff! soon woke me up and I was raring to go and start peeling potatoes at mum's boyfriends house. 4kg of peeled potatoes later we headed up to the lucks for Janebrøt and salmon. This is where the day started to go wrong; ordinarilly I'd gave about 4 glasses of champagne at the Lucks and then head to the pub and drink about 5 girly cocktails and then be sloshed for the christmas dinner where the inane banter of our respective families turnes into golden nougats of hilarity. For some reason, however, I remained sober this time and was pretty much ready to head off to bed at 2 in the afternoon out of a combination of no sleep and boredom.
Still, there was lots of food and food is good, as you can tell by the number of o's in there.
And that's more or less it.
Tomorrow: Off to Iains with the lovely Richard and lovelier (if that were possible) Aimee Hall then back to Nottingham for sitting alone in the cold with no food for 3 days before returning to Iains.
Speak soooooon.
Merry Christmaaaaas
xxxxxxxxxx
I sit here on the sofa, breathing in the germs of my sickened mother and enjoying the warmth of the log burning stove as my brother photoshops pictures of us snowboarding (more on that to follow) and I think 'Oh No! What of all my blog reading compadres?! How will they have survived this long holiday period without the lush oasis of humour and wit that is my blog?'. Well here is your answer people. On the 2nd day of Chreestmas your true love wrote for you. A blog entry that doesn't rhyme.
News since the last blog?
Well the MINI arrived in all it's lesser sized glory. It is most beautiful and most fun to drive. It keeps me happy daily with thoughtful innovations that the Germans must have added during it's reincarnation from the original mini, such as brakes and steering but, mainly, it has a key-fob thing that you slid into the dashboard and a 'Stop/Start' button. A BUTTON! How awesome is that?! None of that obsolete key turning action for me, oh no, I just pushy pushy and it starty starty. Worth 14 THOUSAND POUNDS any day.
I still have no 3rd housemate, so life on the streets is looking ever more likely. Still at least I'm not like Ben Gray who is making an ill-advised move to the death-rink that is St Anne's in Nottingham in order to actually experience the suffering of the poor and drug dependant. I cannot decide whether to find this very noble or very stupid and I am inclined to go for the latter as he is likely to try cheering up the locals by an impromptu acoustic guitar set featuring songs such as 'God Loves you, so your shit lives aren't so bad' and 'We are all god's children, what I have is also yours'.
I'm taking bets as to how long it will take him to be killed and by which method. Though I do hope he isn't as his heart is in the right place, he's just deluded into believing in a higher power. And that happens to the best of people.
Though never me, never.
My last week in Nottingham was frantic and full of concerts. I had the Nottingham Arts Theatre Singers (Good Vibrations) concert first. Now the problems with the Nottingham Arts Theatre Singers (Good Vibrations) concert were multifactorial but included
1. Originally around 60 people (58 more than turned up to Songs For A New World) turned up to rehearsal, by the end there were about 6 and one of those was inside a uterus.
2. Due to the open nature of the group all levels of talent are allowed to join. Good for the community, bad for your ears.
3. Neither Nathan or I or the band had any time to rehearse before the concert and so we had no idea what we were doing.
4. Nathan, due probably to being a huge gay, hadn't procured any music for said band during the concert so they all had to read over my shoulder
5. There were grumpy old ladies in the audience who kept asking us questions like 'When are we starting, it's too crowded', 'Why is that guitarist so welsh' and 'What is pi to 45 digits'. I ended up getting grouchy with them and telling to 'go die already like your body wants you to'.
6. At no point did they sing 'Good Vibrations' or even make an attempt to.
Then there was the Note-ability concert.
Good points:
They are a very talented group and are very nice people too.
I got a swig of brandy in the interval.
They paid me money and gave me wine.
They sang an excellent variety of music to an amazing standard.
The conductor was a MILF.
Bad Points:
I suck at playing the piano.
They knew this.
It was embarrassing.
and finally the AGF Christmas. Thing.
We had basically no rehearsal for this but the organisers had shipped in some professional singers (a daughter of one and her friends) and so the quality of singing was brilliant! Furthermore I got to play 'You Got The Love' the 90s dance classic and it was awesome. However the last day was stressful due to losing my sustain pedal and having no keys to my house and no way to get to my house until around 15 minute before the concert. Sadly during the concert the stage light was shining directly INTO MY FACE so all i could see was the music on the BACK of the piece of paper I was looking at and I consequently sucked. Again.
So alot of sucking happened.
Fun times have been had since I returned to Debden for Christmassy fun. MacDuff! and Sam also came down for a few days and we went sledging and snowboarding out on one of the hills. I received several painful bruises and my nose has started bleeding every night, perhaps as a subtle hint that active sport is not for me. Nevertheless I decree that I should spend all my remaining savings (£2.50) on a skiing holiday this year so that I can learn to steer and then impress all the locals next year.
We also had a round of Betterwizzer, the worlds most complicated board game, that isn't really complicated at all but the instructions are written in 4pt font and took up a sheet of paper the size of Britain's national debt. In the 2,345 words of instructions only around 3 rules are outlined but it takes so long to read them that most people have given up on the whole idea of a board game and are attacking the brandy in the cabinet before you understand how to play. The best thing about this game is that Sam lost, and as Sam has never failed at anything in his entire life this made me feel better about myself. All I need now is for Dave to fail to attract a girl and it'll be like I'm not the biggest noob in the house.
Sadly that will never happen.
As for christmas day I got little sleep the night before because my brother had got pissed up down the local pub on 5% beer and ended up being sick in all corners of the house. Fortunately my gifts of socks, socks, socks, socks, 2 jumpers and £20,000 worth of Blu-Ray disks from MacDuff! soon woke me up and I was raring to go and start peeling potatoes at mum's boyfriends house. 4kg of peeled potatoes later we headed up to the lucks for Janebrøt and salmon. This is where the day started to go wrong; ordinarilly I'd gave about 4 glasses of champagne at the Lucks and then head to the pub and drink about 5 girly cocktails and then be sloshed for the christmas dinner where the inane banter of our respective families turnes into golden nougats of hilarity. For some reason, however, I remained sober this time and was pretty much ready to head off to bed at 2 in the afternoon out of a combination of no sleep and boredom.
Still, there was lots of food and food is good, as you can tell by the number of o's in there.
And that's more or less it.
Tomorrow: Off to Iains with the lovely Richard and lovelier (if that were possible) Aimee Hall then back to Nottingham for sitting alone in the cold with no food for 3 days before returning to Iains.
Speak soooooon.
Merry Christmaaaaas
xxxxxxxxxx
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Exams
For once I'm not going to use Backstreet's Back to say hello. Instead I shall use the opening from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Geoff.
The Final Frontier.
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
It's continuing mission to find, brave, new, worlds.
To seek out new life and new civilisations.
To boldly go where no-one has gone before.
Now, I defy anyone to admit they are geeky enough to know the real origin of that intro. Post here and forever remain single.
Soooo exams.
Paediatrics MCQ:
Question 1:
Jean Defect is a 2 year old child who is admitted with persistent productive cough, she is growing on the 25th centile (having dropped over the last several months from the 75th centile) and has a chlorine smell about her. Her birth was uneventful but she failed to pass meconium within 24 hours.
On what chromosome (1-22) is her likely defect:
Chromosome F
Chromosome U
Chromosome C
Chromosome K
Chromosome YOUMEDICALSTUDENTSCUM
(Select no more than 3 chromosomes)
Assuming that she has Acute Intermittant Porphyria on a background of Type II diabetes compounded by Sickle Cell, Spherocytotic beta-Thallasaemia, outline the 4 tests you would have performed 3 years ago on her mother during her 1st antenatal visit (not including prenatal scans or midwife visits) from the following list.
FBC
FBC (including Full Blood Count)
FBC (including a Count of Full Blood)
LFT
TFT
Plasma Screen
anti-streptolysin O antibodies
antiendomesial antibodies
endoantimesial antibodies
eostradiol
eastrodial
Remember that you must select at least 2 options from list A and 3 from list a, those options in list B are for reference only and must only be chosen when you are being assessed on module A1OG2FGH (Medicine with Honours but without Honour) and not module A10G2FGh (Medicine with an Honus on Honours)
Question 2:
Remember that thing Will Carroll told you about?
Yea, that thing.
What is it associated with?
Tachycardia
Tachapnoea
Bradycardia
Atrioventricular Septal Defect
Ventriculoatrioalr Septal Defect
Coronory Artery Aneurisms
Spain
AIDS
Benzene
Multifocalpolyleukoencepalopathy
Your Mum
Now those of you who listen to my whinging will know that I didn't do as well as I wanted to in my Paeds OSLER. So we won't mention that, except that I'm particularly wounded because i painted sticks pretty colours for the, presumably young and cute child to play with while I listened to his/her chest.
The kid was 13. The only thing he wants to play with is tucked away in his pants.
Further upset was caused by the attempts by the examiners to cheer me up
"I did even WORSE in my OSLER"
"You know, it's just a mark, if I was interviewing you for a job I might consider, maybe, you know, if there were no other candidates, and I had developed dementia as a result of quaternary syphilis, then there is a chance, though small, that I'd give you the job. Maybe"
"I'd be very disappointed in you if you gave up medicine forever after this. Because this is just the first one of a whole series of harsh blows you're going to get throughout your career"
And others...
But hey, I passed, and that's all that matters I suppose.
As for Obs & Gynae, well, the exam I definitely didn't excel on:
Question 1:
This woman has pre-eclampsia.
OR DOES SHE?
You tell me
True
False
Question 2:
What is the incidence of peanut butter phobia in pregnant women who largely eat celery but have the odd glass of wine on the weekend?
1.2 in 100,000
1.21 in 100,000
1.3 in 100,000
1.2 in 1*10^5
Pi
Still, these values were in the textbooks and, if it hadn't been for the Nugent & Burnhill patented revision through playing computer games/decorating trees/drinking tea campain, I may have known my stuff better.
Finally we had the OSCE today.
The OSCE consists of 4 stations, 2 where you take a history from a patient and 2 where you discuss stuff with a patient.
We had to be at the QMC for 8:30 in the morning so that we could be herded into a tiny room in order to sufficiently undermine each other's confidence before the exam began at 9:00 (for some of us, others were left waiting around practically forever). You get 6 minutes to prepare what you're going to say, having read the scenario and then 6 minutes to say it.
This was fine (ish) for the majority of the stations, except that we had to counsel people about a pre-cancerous disease - 'So I have cancer?', 'no, you don't but you might end up with...', 'Oh my god I'm going to die', 'Well, everyone dies, Madam, but your time is yet to co', 'Well what am I gonna do? WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO'. However the real problem came around with Mrs Pre Eclampsia
'Hi Is that Ms Eclampsia?'
'Yes'
'Hi, My name is Geoff Burnhill, I'm a 4th Year Medical Student here and I was wondering if I could counsel you about this illness. I ask only because I will otherwise fail my exam for not obtaining full consent to FRIKKING TALK TO YOU, despite the fact it makes ABSOLUTELY NO FU*KING SENSE IN THIS SITUATION...
..FURTHERMORE WHY THE HELL WOULD A MEDICAL STUDENT COUNSEL YOU ABOUT PRE-ECLAMPSIA, SURELY THAT'S THE JOB OF A REAL F*CKING DOCTOR'
*cough*
'Yes that's fine, if it wasn't fine you'd be somewhat screwed wouldn't you?'
'OK so do you know why you're here'
'Yes the midwife sent me here with no detail or anything'
'I see, well, she sent you in because you have (imagine, if you will, the camera zooming further into her face on each symptom)
High Blood Pressure (DUN DUN DUN)
Proteinuria (DUN DUN DUN)
and Mild Epigastric tenderness (DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN)
and these are indicative of what we like to call 'Pre-eclampsia''
'What's that then?'
'It's a systemic disorder characterised by your symptoms that occurs due to incomplete 2nd migration of the embryonic trophoblast causing placental insufficiency and the formation of an inflammatory response' is what I wanted to say because as soon as I said 'It's when your placenta gets in trouble and causes a reactive response in your body', the examiner started scribbling 'FAIL' in large letters on my marksheet. He then drew gallows next to it, with an uncanny cartoon of myself hanging.
'I see, so what are you going to do about it'
'Well, we have to admit you to hospital'
'Sorry what?'
'Admit you. To Hospital'
'WHAT?!?!?!, BUT BUT BUT BUT When?'
'Well, like now.'
'BUT BUT I CAN'T; MY SALON'
'Your salon?'
'YES I NEED TO RUN MY SALON'
'Your salon?'
'My salon!'
'I see, well anyway when you get into hospital, we'll need to give you oral steroids to help your babies developing lu-'
'Well can I not just go home and come back if I feel ill?'
'No, because you'll die'
'But my Salon'
'Sorry I said you'll die'
'my Salo-'
'SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR F*CKING SALON YOU STUPID COW, YOU ARE GOING. TO. DIE. WHO'S GONNA RUN THE SALON WHEN YOU'RE DEAD. YOU'RE DEAD CHILD? No, because HE'LL BE DEAD TOO! NOW GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF *slap slap*'
'OK OK so I need to come in, what will happen when i'm in hospital'
'Well as I was saying, we need to help your developing baby by-'
'Oh my god it sounds like I'm going to be in prison'
'No, no, not at all, it's just tha-'
--TIME IS UP, WE HOPE YOU DISCUSSED TREATMENT OPTIONS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF A CAESARIAN SECTION WITH THEM--
Anyway the exams are now over. I was looking forward to celebrating with voluminous alcohol but was instead granted GASTRIC FLU for my troubles.
Thanks, Jesus, you've always got my back.
In other news:
The search for the 3rd housemate continues.
I sent what I like to think of as a HILARIOUS mass e-mail to everyone in the entire medical school detailing the amazingness of our house and the relative cheapness of the rent. I immediately received 10 responses!
This excited me.
Every one of them read. 'Hahaha, you are so funny. But no, I'd rather die in the fires of hell than live with you. You punk.' more or less.
I have now resorted to advertising it to people in the real world. But they are apparently not content with sharing a bathroom and so I shall be doomed to live on the street, with great furniture and a piano. Let's hope it's never cold or raining in britain.
B'oh!
The wait for my new MINI continues.
I had an exciting call today from the MINI Man (did I mention I ordered a MINI, well I did) and I have got the registration of it already! It ends in WCK (for WarwiCK, I like to think) I also had the choice of WCC and, WDC. WDC being Dr Carrolls initials, I was almost tempted to get it as an act of sycophantic wondery. Sadly it would remind me that I SUCK AT THE ONLY THING I LOVE (no innuendo implied) so I went with Warwick, when I was good at stuff.
The hunt for the red october.
Is a film.
I now have 700 gigs in the next 2 weeks.
Woo, you might say? Well no as I'm getting paid for NONE OF THEM. Which is fine because I'm a wonderful, giving, kind person. Except that Nottingham Lace Market Theatre are a bunch of FECKING UNGRATEFUL TWATS and, despite me giving up two nights a week for their rehearsals and lending them my keyboard, they still get pissy with me for not recording their individual vocal lines onto CD for them (in my no spare time, with my no copy of the score) and then proceed to get even pissier when I can't do early Sunday morning rehearsals
1. I need sleep
2. I'm getting back from London late on Saturday
3. I hate you
4. I hate you
5. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
*Sigh*
Still, it'll all be over soon as the wonderful wonderful Christmas Holidays are coming up. Sadly I have to learn ALL OF OPTHALMOLOGY by then and buy lots of presents for everyone. I am of the opinion that everyone should get 'The knowledge that Geoff has a shiny new car' as their christmas present. But apparently this isn't on.
Hmph.
What else?
Oh yea, Dave moved into our tiny tiny 3rd room, barely big enough for his enormous talent and it is excellent. For me, at least. He is probably going nuts and wishing he was back in his old house with all the mould and the housemate who leaves bits of flaky skin on the toilet seat when she goes for a pee. The only downside is that I have eaten a million kilos more of fat than I normally would and as I do NO EXCERCISE and he does ALL THE EXERCISE this can only end badly for me.
Hmmm, what a negative blog. Meeeee, negative??? Never :)
Thus we well end on something positive:
The relative charge on a carbonyl carbon.
HOHOHOHOHO AREN'T I FUNNY!!!
OK um...
we have a christmas tree now and it's pretty.
That'll do.
Byeeeeeeeeeeeee
Geoff.
The Final Frontier.
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
It's continuing mission to find, brave, new, worlds.
To seek out new life and new civilisations.
To boldly go where no-one has gone before.
Now, I defy anyone to admit they are geeky enough to know the real origin of that intro. Post here and forever remain single.
Soooo exams.
Paediatrics MCQ:
Question 1:
Jean Defect is a 2 year old child who is admitted with persistent productive cough, she is growing on the 25th centile (having dropped over the last several months from the 75th centile) and has a chlorine smell about her. Her birth was uneventful but she failed to pass meconium within 24 hours.
On what chromosome (1-22) is her likely defect:
Chromosome F
Chromosome U
Chromosome C
Chromosome K
Chromosome YOUMEDICALSTUDENTSCUM
(Select no more than 3 chromosomes)
Assuming that she has Acute Intermittant Porphyria on a background of Type II diabetes compounded by Sickle Cell, Spherocytotic beta-Thallasaemia, outline the 4 tests you would have performed 3 years ago on her mother during her 1st antenatal visit (not including prenatal scans or midwife visits) from the following list.
FBC
FBC (including Full Blood Count)
FBC (including a Count of Full Blood)
LFT
TFT
Plasma Screen
anti-streptolysin O antibodies
antiendomesial antibodies
endoantimesial antibodies
eostradiol
eastrodial
Remember that you must select at least 2 options from list A and 3 from list a, those options in list B are for reference only and must only be chosen when you are being assessed on module A1OG2FGH (Medicine with Honours but without Honour) and not module A10G2FGh (Medicine with an Honus on Honours)
Question 2:
Remember that thing Will Carroll told you about?
Yea, that thing.
What is it associated with?
Tachycardia
Tachapnoea
Bradycardia
Atrioventricular Septal Defect
Ventriculoatrioalr Septal Defect
Coronory Artery Aneurisms
Spain
AIDS
Benzene
Multifocalpolyleukoencepalopathy
Your Mum
Now those of you who listen to my whinging will know that I didn't do as well as I wanted to in my Paeds OSLER. So we won't mention that, except that I'm particularly wounded because i painted sticks pretty colours for the, presumably young and cute child to play with while I listened to his/her chest.
The kid was 13. The only thing he wants to play with is tucked away in his pants.
Further upset was caused by the attempts by the examiners to cheer me up
"I did even WORSE in my OSLER"
"You know, it's just a mark, if I was interviewing you for a job I might consider, maybe, you know, if there were no other candidates, and I had developed dementia as a result of quaternary syphilis, then there is a chance, though small, that I'd give you the job. Maybe"
"I'd be very disappointed in you if you gave up medicine forever after this. Because this is just the first one of a whole series of harsh blows you're going to get throughout your career"
And others...
But hey, I passed, and that's all that matters I suppose.
As for Obs & Gynae, well, the exam I definitely didn't excel on:
Question 1:
This woman has pre-eclampsia.
OR DOES SHE?
You tell me
True
False
Question 2:
What is the incidence of peanut butter phobia in pregnant women who largely eat celery but have the odd glass of wine on the weekend?
1.2 in 100,000
1.21 in 100,000
1.3 in 100,000
1.2 in 1*10^5
Pi
Still, these values were in the textbooks and, if it hadn't been for the Nugent & Burnhill patented revision through playing computer games/decorating trees/drinking tea campain, I may have known my stuff better.
Finally we had the OSCE today.
The OSCE consists of 4 stations, 2 where you take a history from a patient and 2 where you discuss stuff with a patient.
We had to be at the QMC for 8:30 in the morning so that we could be herded into a tiny room in order to sufficiently undermine each other's confidence before the exam began at 9:00 (for some of us, others were left waiting around practically forever). You get 6 minutes to prepare what you're going to say, having read the scenario and then 6 minutes to say it.
This was fine (ish) for the majority of the stations, except that we had to counsel people about a pre-cancerous disease - 'So I have cancer?', 'no, you don't but you might end up with...', 'Oh my god I'm going to die', 'Well, everyone dies, Madam, but your time is yet to co', 'Well what am I gonna do? WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO'. However the real problem came around with Mrs Pre Eclampsia
'Hi Is that Ms Eclampsia?'
'Yes'
'Hi, My name is Geoff Burnhill, I'm a 4th Year Medical Student here and I was wondering if I could counsel you about this illness. I ask only because I will otherwise fail my exam for not obtaining full consent to FRIKKING TALK TO YOU, despite the fact it makes ABSOLUTELY NO FU*KING SENSE IN THIS SITUATION...
..FURTHERMORE WHY THE HELL WOULD A MEDICAL STUDENT COUNSEL YOU ABOUT PRE-ECLAMPSIA, SURELY THAT'S THE JOB OF A REAL F*CKING DOCTOR'
*cough*
'Yes that's fine, if it wasn't fine you'd be somewhat screwed wouldn't you?'
'OK so do you know why you're here'
'Yes the midwife sent me here with no detail or anything'
'I see, well, she sent you in because you have (imagine, if you will, the camera zooming further into her face on each symptom)
High Blood Pressure (DUN DUN DUN)
Proteinuria (DUN DUN DUN)
and Mild Epigastric tenderness (DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN)
and these are indicative of what we like to call 'Pre-eclampsia''
'What's that then?'
'It's a systemic disorder characterised by your symptoms that occurs due to incomplete 2nd migration of the embryonic trophoblast causing placental insufficiency and the formation of an inflammatory response' is what I wanted to say because as soon as I said 'It's when your placenta gets in trouble and causes a reactive response in your body', the examiner started scribbling 'FAIL' in large letters on my marksheet. He then drew gallows next to it, with an uncanny cartoon of myself hanging.
'I see, so what are you going to do about it'
'Well, we have to admit you to hospital'
'Sorry what?'
'Admit you. To Hospital'
'WHAT?!?!?!, BUT BUT BUT BUT When?'
'Well, like now.'
'BUT BUT I CAN'T; MY SALON'
'Your salon?'
'YES I NEED TO RUN MY SALON'
'Your salon?'
'My salon!'
'I see, well anyway when you get into hospital, we'll need to give you oral steroids to help your babies developing lu-'
'Well can I not just go home and come back if I feel ill?'
'No, because you'll die'
'But my Salon'
'Sorry I said you'll die'
'my Salo-'
'SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR F*CKING SALON YOU STUPID COW, YOU ARE GOING. TO. DIE. WHO'S GONNA RUN THE SALON WHEN YOU'RE DEAD. YOU'RE DEAD CHILD? No, because HE'LL BE DEAD TOO! NOW GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF *slap slap*'
'OK OK so I need to come in, what will happen when i'm in hospital'
'Well as I was saying, we need to help your developing baby by-'
'Oh my god it sounds like I'm going to be in prison'
'No, no, not at all, it's just tha-'
--TIME IS UP, WE HOPE YOU DISCUSSED TREATMENT OPTIONS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF A CAESARIAN SECTION WITH THEM--
Anyway the exams are now over. I was looking forward to celebrating with voluminous alcohol but was instead granted GASTRIC FLU for my troubles.
Thanks, Jesus, you've always got my back.
In other news:
The search for the 3rd housemate continues.
I sent what I like to think of as a HILARIOUS mass e-mail to everyone in the entire medical school detailing the amazingness of our house and the relative cheapness of the rent. I immediately received 10 responses!
This excited me.
Every one of them read. 'Hahaha, you are so funny. But no, I'd rather die in the fires of hell than live with you. You punk.' more or less.
I have now resorted to advertising it to people in the real world. But they are apparently not content with sharing a bathroom and so I shall be doomed to live on the street, with great furniture and a piano. Let's hope it's never cold or raining in britain.
B'oh!
The wait for my new MINI continues.
I had an exciting call today from the MINI Man (did I mention I ordered a MINI, well I did) and I have got the registration of it already! It ends in WCK (for WarwiCK, I like to think) I also had the choice of WCC and, WDC. WDC being Dr Carrolls initials, I was almost tempted to get it as an act of sycophantic wondery. Sadly it would remind me that I SUCK AT THE ONLY THING I LOVE (no innuendo implied) so I went with Warwick, when I was good at stuff.
The hunt for the red october.
Is a film.
I now have 700 gigs in the next 2 weeks.
Woo, you might say? Well no as I'm getting paid for NONE OF THEM. Which is fine because I'm a wonderful, giving, kind person. Except that Nottingham Lace Market Theatre are a bunch of FECKING UNGRATEFUL TWATS and, despite me giving up two nights a week for their rehearsals and lending them my keyboard, they still get pissy with me for not recording their individual vocal lines onto CD for them (in my no spare time, with my no copy of the score) and then proceed to get even pissier when I can't do early Sunday morning rehearsals
1. I need sleep
2. I'm getting back from London late on Saturday
3. I hate you
4. I hate you
5. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
*Sigh*
Still, it'll all be over soon as the wonderful wonderful Christmas Holidays are coming up. Sadly I have to learn ALL OF OPTHALMOLOGY by then and buy lots of presents for everyone. I am of the opinion that everyone should get 'The knowledge that Geoff has a shiny new car' as their christmas present. But apparently this isn't on.
Hmph.
What else?
Oh yea, Dave moved into our tiny tiny 3rd room, barely big enough for his enormous talent and it is excellent. For me, at least. He is probably going nuts and wishing he was back in his old house with all the mould and the housemate who leaves bits of flaky skin on the toilet seat when she goes for a pee. The only downside is that I have eaten a million kilos more of fat than I normally would and as I do NO EXCERCISE and he does ALL THE EXERCISE this can only end badly for me.
Hmmm, what a negative blog. Meeeee, negative??? Never :)
Thus we well end on something positive:
The relative charge on a carbonyl carbon.
HOHOHOHOHO AREN'T I FUNNY!!!
OK um...
we have a christmas tree now and it's pretty.
That'll do.
Byeeeeeeeeeeeee
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Geoff is back, alright *MOW MOW MOW MOW MOW MOW MOW, MOW MOW MOW MOW*
Everyboooooody now,
Yea-eaaaaa,
Read my blogy now,
Yea-eaaaaa,
Everybooooody now,
Read my blogy right *mow mow mow mow mow mow*.
Etc...
Soooooooooo, it's been a while hasn't it. Sadly my life has been most full, most full of generally shitty things that have made me sad and frankly this blog is not the place to be sad. It's the place for FUNK.
And in the absence of funk, an attempt at witty satire about my medical studenty life will have to suffice.
So going back a muchos longos timos to Tommy, well what can I say? It's a terrible show, essentially, is what I have to say. However we did succeed in being conspicuously loud, with guitar amps the size of Sam's bank balance and a snare drum made entirely from a unique NASA-designed loudness creating polymer consisting of 3 parts CRACK and 6 parts SMACK. Unbeknownst to me, poor Samuel spent the first 6 nights being deafened by a speaker that, inexplicably, not only amplified exclusively the sounds from my keyboard but also amplified them to the high heavens. Unfortunately due to its position, WITHIN SAM'S VERY BRAIN, Sam could ONLY hear me and I could not hear me at all. This resulted in some dangerously loud piano playing and some dangerously loud drumming. Sadly for all, my piano playing is a load of gash and so I apologise now to all those that endured it.
On the plus side, I did get a huge STEINHOPFENSCHLOFFEN (which is my pseudo-German word for large glass recepticle for beer) as a present from the cast. On a further negative side, however, I also got THE PLAGUE as an additional present from the cast. The plague hit me on the Friday evening before the last performance as I sat around in the med school luncheon area and noticed that I was shaking dramatically and could no longer feel my hands. This swiftly progressed into a deeeep chesty cough with associated pericarditis, mucosal haemorrhage and, predictably, The AIDS. To make matters worse, the next day had a matinee performance, so I had to the prospect of sitting in a bleak orchestra pit all day, exuding mucous onto my keyboard, likely shorting it out and setting the whole theatre on fire.
Except that the theatre is helpfully made entirely of carcinagous asbestos.
Fortunately there exists such a thing, as Dr Carroll will tell you forever, as the placebo effect. I therefore went to boots at 1:59 (Matinee starting at 2:00) to purchase Placebo (a.k.a Beechams Cold & Flu, and Covonia cough mixture) and to pick up my life saving inhalers.
Knowing, of course, that I was in a rush, the pharmacist continued to chat to her previous customer about, I dunno, casual sex or some such, for around 20 minutes after I handed in my prescription and so the likelyhood was that I'd be late for the start of the show. I therefor ran through town, being hindered the whole way by a) my eosinophilic lungs and b) a matrix-esque promenade of people walking in the opposite direction, to the theatre in order to avoid anal rapage by Nathan.
When I arrived, however, I discovered that something important, such as the stage curtain, or maybe the doors of the theatre, had broken and so we sat around for another 40 minutes making idle chit chat about politically incorrect things such as the worthlessness of old grannies (which was, without our knowledge, being picked up by the microphones and broadcast to the old grannies in the audience) until the show started.
And that's all there is to say about Tommy really, boring hey? I won't mention 'the dark day' that happened during the week when every member of the band fell out with each other, largely due to the fact that I smacked a tennis ball in Hywel's face and that the guys left MacDuff! (Pam's name is always written as MacDuff!) standing around in the freezing cold for 40 minutes because they forgot to tell her about the court. Amusingly this did cause Hywel to smash his tennis raquet on the floor in a rage and leave it in a nearby bin. Guess you had to be there.
So paediatrics then? What's the deal there.
Well it's been really good actually. Yes i am now ill AGAIN thanks to the snot nosed brats, and I damn near lost the will to live after the 80th time that Dr Carroll told me I was wrong when I was definitely right but I still feel like this is the speciality for me.
Highlights have included:
Having a community paediatrician attachment in what I can only assume was an old abandoned mental asylum, with bars on the windows and white tiled walls. The consultation room was made entirely of pointy metal objects and unnecessarily child-accessible scolding hot water taps, perhaps installed to test the vigilance of parents. I was, as ever, exceedingly ill on this day so spent much of it seeking the warmth of radiators, microwave ovens and workmen's armpits so I learned more or less nothing except: Do not become a community paediatrician.
Finding out that one of my classmates decided to stick an epipen in his leg (for those of you who have not seen an epipen, the needle is FU*KING HUUUUUUGE and, in this case was dripping with adrenaline after Dr Carroll savagely injected a chair with it to demonstrate it's viciousness) without flinching and without ever giving an explanation.
Correcting the ever-correct Dr Carroll on his knowledge of the mode of action of penicillin and then again on his knowledge of the action of macrolide antibiotics. Geoff 1 - Carroll 50.
I have mentioned before that there are 3 golden rules of paediatrics. 1. Always plot the height and weight on an appropriate centile chart, 2. Always check the urine, 3. Something complicated about the thing that involves the most work being the thing that needs doing. Now throughout paediatrics I have also come up with new rules, which I attempted to use humorously in a presentation I gave this morning but evidently failed.
The 4th Rule Of Paediatrics:
In one of our first lectures, Dr C asked 'Deerface' to multiply their weight (88kg) by some random number, like pi to 6 digits or something. Now, because up to this point Dr C had been extremely jokey, fun and relaxed, the boy in question replied 'ppffffftttt, can't be bothered'. At this point the room turned eerily cold, a haze of fog began to cover the floor and the lights began to flicker.
Dr C: Well then you can get out.
Deerface: Hehehe
Dr C: Get out of my lecture
Deerface: Hehe, to work it out?
Dr C: No, if you can't be BOTHERED to answer my questions then you can get out. I'm a nice guy, but I won't tolerate that.
Deerface: Oh I'm sorry it was a joke.
Dr C: I put alot of work into this teaching I don't expect such INSOLENCE
Deerface: but but but...
Bolts of lightning then erupted from Dr Cs hands, turning Deerface into a pile of smoking dust.
Dr C: OK, now can anybody else be bothered to work this out?
Thus the 4th rule of paediatrics is: No matter how complicated the calculation, you must always work it out in the lecture.
The 5th Rule Of Paediatrics:
As I've mentioned before, I have consistantly been shut down by lecturers for having the wrong answer when I know I've been correct and this is generally due to the fact that adult physicians (i.e. those that work with adults, not those rare few who are above the age of 12) LIE and the only people who know what they are talking about are Paediatricians.
This came to a head in the following situation
Dr Knowseverything: So, what causes cardiac murmers?
Me: Turbulent blood flow.
Dr K: NO! That doesn't make any sense. Who remembers their A-level physics?
Me: Me
Dr K: Well Sound is a type of ENERGY
Me: ...no it isn't...
Dr K: Can energy be created or destroyed
Me: ...well no but sound isn't a...
Dr k: Therefore how can turbulent blood flow create sound energy
Me: ...by setting up vibrations in the heart wall that are transmitted to air and perceived by us as sound...
Dr K: It Can't!
Me: ...but but but...
Dr K: Now, we all know that electricity flowing through resistance forms heat.
Me: ...yeees..
Dr K: So blood flow through a resistance creates sound.
Me: ...only because it's turbulent...
Dr K: So don't let any of those 35 or so distinguished lecturers you've had who know about this LIE to you any longer. They are wrong and I am right.
So the 5th rule of paeds is: You are always wrong, especially when you are right.
And the 6th rule is, as ever. NEVER talk about Fight Club.
Anyway paediatrics is awesome and my only regret is I have another 10,000 years of adult medicine left before I get to specialise in it.
As for the rest of my life, well, Sam is leaving so I have nowhere to live as I need to find somewhere that I can fit my piano. and no, I will not sell my piano it is too beautiful. However I'm sure he may find it hard to move WHEN HE HAS NO LEGS... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *cough*
Also my car blew up, bless it. I was driving along and heard some banging noises, so I looked in the rear-view to see who i'd crushed this time and saw nothing. On looking back ahead I couldn't help but notice the plumes of smoke from the bonnet and the newly formed dents from exploding engine in the metal work.
Unhelpfully, the garage then LIED (as if they were an adult physician) and tried to make out that i couldn't get my £2,000 scrappage bonus unless the car was in working order. As such I agreed to let them fix the immediate problem (shattered radiator) so i could drive it to a dealer and buy a new car. They then rang and said that sadly the car is totally screwed and so I can't do anything with it. They then 'kindly' offered me £200 for the car if i handed it over to them.
Being a niave upper middle class village boy, I graciously accepted this offer and went about looking for cars made of tin-foil that I might be able to afford without the precious £2,000 discount. However Sam, ever the country-leaving betrayer/awesome friend, was suspicious and so rang up some dealers to check it out. Apparently even if the car has been crushed into a cube you can still take it for the scrappage discount provided you have an MOT (which I do) and you've owned it for >12 months (which I have).
LYING PIKIE MOTHERCR*SHING MECHANIC C*NT BAS*ARDS.
Anyway Big Sam shouted at them for me and it's all ironed out. Except I can't work out which car to buy as the Fiat 500 is made entirely of the type of plastic you expect to find inside a Christmas selection box and the dealer knew absolutely sod all about the car during the test drive. Sadly, all other cars are about £2,000 more than I wanted to spend :(
Oh and finally, Joe & Nikki's wedding.
Firstly it was absolutely lovely and I had a great time.
Secondly they did that standard religious person trick of pulling out the 'cool' religious music that has drums and guitar and then using a public speaker guy who made 100 valid points about love and marriage and then swifty at the end half mumbled 'because of Jesus' in an attempt to convince us. 'Hmm' I though, 'that does make sense, maybe Jesus IS within us all'. 'Oh wait, there is absolutely no evidence at all that he exists and every argument for his existence is a total load of gash'
Except I never really thought this, because the futility of pro-religious argument is so deeply ingrained within me that I wouldn't even consider it for a second.
Anyway, clearly it made them both very happy yada yada. Furthermore the wedding was totally saturated with BEAUTIFUL, TALENTED FRIENDS who i've not seen in A THOUSAND YEARS and MISS TERRIBLY ALREADY. This reminded me that maybe I should give up with medicine and Nottingham in a Sam-esque fashion and move to London, live in a box and see these guys more often because it would make me happy.
Maybe.
So there we are, perhaps my next blog will be a) sooner b) interesting.
Donations to the Geoff has no Car and no House fund can be sent to:
Poor Geoff :(
PO Box 12345
Boston
Lincolnshire
PL3 45E god never send me there
Yea-eaaaaa,
Read my blogy now,
Yea-eaaaaa,
Everybooooody now,
Read my blogy right *mow mow mow mow mow mow*.
Etc...
Soooooooooo, it's been a while hasn't it. Sadly my life has been most full, most full of generally shitty things that have made me sad and frankly this blog is not the place to be sad. It's the place for FUNK.
And in the absence of funk, an attempt at witty satire about my medical studenty life will have to suffice.
So going back a muchos longos timos to Tommy, well what can I say? It's a terrible show, essentially, is what I have to say. However we did succeed in being conspicuously loud, with guitar amps the size of Sam's bank balance and a snare drum made entirely from a unique NASA-designed loudness creating polymer consisting of 3 parts CRACK and 6 parts SMACK. Unbeknownst to me, poor Samuel spent the first 6 nights being deafened by a speaker that, inexplicably, not only amplified exclusively the sounds from my keyboard but also amplified them to the high heavens. Unfortunately due to its position, WITHIN SAM'S VERY BRAIN, Sam could ONLY hear me and I could not hear me at all. This resulted in some dangerously loud piano playing and some dangerously loud drumming. Sadly for all, my piano playing is a load of gash and so I apologise now to all those that endured it.
On the plus side, I did get a huge STEINHOPFENSCHLOFFEN (which is my pseudo-German word for large glass recepticle for beer) as a present from the cast. On a further negative side, however, I also got THE PLAGUE as an additional present from the cast. The plague hit me on the Friday evening before the last performance as I sat around in the med school luncheon area and noticed that I was shaking dramatically and could no longer feel my hands. This swiftly progressed into a deeeep chesty cough with associated pericarditis, mucosal haemorrhage and, predictably, The AIDS. To make matters worse, the next day had a matinee performance, so I had to the prospect of sitting in a bleak orchestra pit all day, exuding mucous onto my keyboard, likely shorting it out and setting the whole theatre on fire.
Except that the theatre is helpfully made entirely of carcinagous asbestos.
Fortunately there exists such a thing, as Dr Carroll will tell you forever, as the placebo effect. I therefore went to boots at 1:59 (Matinee starting at 2:00) to purchase Placebo (a.k.a Beechams Cold & Flu, and Covonia cough mixture) and to pick up my life saving inhalers.
Knowing, of course, that I was in a rush, the pharmacist continued to chat to her previous customer about, I dunno, casual sex or some such, for around 20 minutes after I handed in my prescription and so the likelyhood was that I'd be late for the start of the show. I therefor ran through town, being hindered the whole way by a) my eosinophilic lungs and b) a matrix-esque promenade of people walking in the opposite direction, to the theatre in order to avoid anal rapage by Nathan.
When I arrived, however, I discovered that something important, such as the stage curtain, or maybe the doors of the theatre, had broken and so we sat around for another 40 minutes making idle chit chat about politically incorrect things such as the worthlessness of old grannies (which was, without our knowledge, being picked up by the microphones and broadcast to the old grannies in the audience) until the show started.
And that's all there is to say about Tommy really, boring hey? I won't mention 'the dark day' that happened during the week when every member of the band fell out with each other, largely due to the fact that I smacked a tennis ball in Hywel's face and that the guys left MacDuff! (Pam's name is always written as MacDuff!) standing around in the freezing cold for 40 minutes because they forgot to tell her about the court. Amusingly this did cause Hywel to smash his tennis raquet on the floor in a rage and leave it in a nearby bin. Guess you had to be there.
So paediatrics then? What's the deal there.
Well it's been really good actually. Yes i am now ill AGAIN thanks to the snot nosed brats, and I damn near lost the will to live after the 80th time that Dr Carroll told me I was wrong when I was definitely right but I still feel like this is the speciality for me.
Highlights have included:
Having a community paediatrician attachment in what I can only assume was an old abandoned mental asylum, with bars on the windows and white tiled walls. The consultation room was made entirely of pointy metal objects and unnecessarily child-accessible scolding hot water taps, perhaps installed to test the vigilance of parents. I was, as ever, exceedingly ill on this day so spent much of it seeking the warmth of radiators, microwave ovens and workmen's armpits so I learned more or less nothing except: Do not become a community paediatrician.
Finding out that one of my classmates decided to stick an epipen in his leg (for those of you who have not seen an epipen, the needle is FU*KING HUUUUUUGE and, in this case was dripping with adrenaline after Dr Carroll savagely injected a chair with it to demonstrate it's viciousness) without flinching and without ever giving an explanation.
Correcting the ever-correct Dr Carroll on his knowledge of the mode of action of penicillin and then again on his knowledge of the action of macrolide antibiotics. Geoff 1 - Carroll 50.
I have mentioned before that there are 3 golden rules of paediatrics. 1. Always plot the height and weight on an appropriate centile chart, 2. Always check the urine, 3. Something complicated about the thing that involves the most work being the thing that needs doing. Now throughout paediatrics I have also come up with new rules, which I attempted to use humorously in a presentation I gave this morning but evidently failed.
The 4th Rule Of Paediatrics:
In one of our first lectures, Dr C asked 'Deerface' to multiply their weight (88kg) by some random number, like pi to 6 digits or something. Now, because up to this point Dr C had been extremely jokey, fun and relaxed, the boy in question replied 'ppffffftttt, can't be bothered'. At this point the room turned eerily cold, a haze of fog began to cover the floor and the lights began to flicker.
Dr C: Well then you can get out.
Deerface: Hehehe
Dr C: Get out of my lecture
Deerface: Hehe, to work it out?
Dr C: No, if you can't be BOTHERED to answer my questions then you can get out. I'm a nice guy, but I won't tolerate that.
Deerface: Oh I'm sorry it was a joke.
Dr C: I put alot of work into this teaching I don't expect such INSOLENCE
Deerface: but but but...
Bolts of lightning then erupted from Dr Cs hands, turning Deerface into a pile of smoking dust.
Dr C: OK, now can anybody else be bothered to work this out?
Thus the 4th rule of paediatrics is: No matter how complicated the calculation, you must always work it out in the lecture.
The 5th Rule Of Paediatrics:
As I've mentioned before, I have consistantly been shut down by lecturers for having the wrong answer when I know I've been correct and this is generally due to the fact that adult physicians (i.e. those that work with adults, not those rare few who are above the age of 12) LIE and the only people who know what they are talking about are Paediatricians.
This came to a head in the following situation
Dr Knowseverything: So, what causes cardiac murmers?
Me: Turbulent blood flow.
Dr K: NO! That doesn't make any sense. Who remembers their A-level physics?
Me: Me
Dr K: Well Sound is a type of ENERGY
Me: ...no it isn't...
Dr K: Can energy be created or destroyed
Me: ...well no but sound isn't a...
Dr k: Therefore how can turbulent blood flow create sound energy
Me: ...by setting up vibrations in the heart wall that are transmitted to air and perceived by us as sound...
Dr K: It Can't!
Me: ...but but but...
Dr K: Now, we all know that electricity flowing through resistance forms heat.
Me: ...yeees..
Dr K: So blood flow through a resistance creates sound.
Me: ...only because it's turbulent...
Dr K: So don't let any of those 35 or so distinguished lecturers you've had who know about this LIE to you any longer. They are wrong and I am right.
So the 5th rule of paeds is: You are always wrong, especially when you are right.
And the 6th rule is, as ever. NEVER talk about Fight Club.
Anyway paediatrics is awesome and my only regret is I have another 10,000 years of adult medicine left before I get to specialise in it.
As for the rest of my life, well, Sam is leaving so I have nowhere to live as I need to find somewhere that I can fit my piano. and no, I will not sell my piano it is too beautiful. However I'm sure he may find it hard to move WHEN HE HAS NO LEGS... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *cough*
Also my car blew up, bless it. I was driving along and heard some banging noises, so I looked in the rear-view to see who i'd crushed this time and saw nothing. On looking back ahead I couldn't help but notice the plumes of smoke from the bonnet and the newly formed dents from exploding engine in the metal work.
Unhelpfully, the garage then LIED (as if they were an adult physician) and tried to make out that i couldn't get my £2,000 scrappage bonus unless the car was in working order. As such I agreed to let them fix the immediate problem (shattered radiator) so i could drive it to a dealer and buy a new car. They then rang and said that sadly the car is totally screwed and so I can't do anything with it. They then 'kindly' offered me £200 for the car if i handed it over to them.
Being a niave upper middle class village boy, I graciously accepted this offer and went about looking for cars made of tin-foil that I might be able to afford without the precious £2,000 discount. However Sam, ever the country-leaving betrayer/awesome friend, was suspicious and so rang up some dealers to check it out. Apparently even if the car has been crushed into a cube you can still take it for the scrappage discount provided you have an MOT (which I do) and you've owned it for >12 months (which I have).
LYING PIKIE MOTHERCR*SHING MECHANIC C*NT BAS*ARDS.
Anyway Big Sam shouted at them for me and it's all ironed out. Except I can't work out which car to buy as the Fiat 500 is made entirely of the type of plastic you expect to find inside a Christmas selection box and the dealer knew absolutely sod all about the car during the test drive. Sadly, all other cars are about £2,000 more than I wanted to spend :(
Oh and finally, Joe & Nikki's wedding.
Firstly it was absolutely lovely and I had a great time.
Secondly they did that standard religious person trick of pulling out the 'cool' religious music that has drums and guitar and then using a public speaker guy who made 100 valid points about love and marriage and then swifty at the end half mumbled 'because of Jesus' in an attempt to convince us. 'Hmm' I though, 'that does make sense, maybe Jesus IS within us all'. 'Oh wait, there is absolutely no evidence at all that he exists and every argument for his existence is a total load of gash'
Except I never really thought this, because the futility of pro-religious argument is so deeply ingrained within me that I wouldn't even consider it for a second.
Anyway, clearly it made them both very happy yada yada. Furthermore the wedding was totally saturated with BEAUTIFUL, TALENTED FRIENDS who i've not seen in A THOUSAND YEARS and MISS TERRIBLY ALREADY. This reminded me that maybe I should give up with medicine and Nottingham in a Sam-esque fashion and move to London, live in a box and see these guys more often because it would make me happy.
Maybe.
So there we are, perhaps my next blog will be a) sooner b) interesting.
Donations to the Geoff has no Car and no House fund can be sent to:
Poor Geoff :(
PO Box 12345
Boston
Lincolnshire
PL3 45E god never send me there
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