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.

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.

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*

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