Has your beard grown today?

Today was a good day - and I can actually say that I have enjoyed the course for the first time, this week. I think this second semester has been very different to the last one and we seemed to have moved on to more clinically related stuff.

Our exam results are out next Wednesday and I think things could come crashing down. I worked hard before the exams but don't seem to have done enough during last semester. As explained in an earlier post, you can only fail one exam in the first year. If you fail more than one, you have to sit "THE QUALIFIER" which is the exam from hell, which is sat (I think) at the end of July. If you fail this, you have to sit a viva and if you fail this, things are grim. I think that if you have extenuating circumstances you may be allowed to resit the year, otherwise it is curtains.

Anyway, today we had reproduction which is taught by this amazing professor. He doesn't even look at the PowerPoint slides as he teaches and really is brilliant. He was telling us that in men, beard growth is directly in relation to testosterone levels and he mentioned an experiment that an anonymous chap did some time ago. This chap had a job where he spent a few weeks collecting specimens on an island and then came home to his missus and then went back to the island again. He must have been really bored because he decided to start measuring his beard clippings for growth every day, to see what his testosterone levels were doing.

He found that when he was on the island, his beard clippings got shorter over the first week and then (As he was preparing to come home to his wife) they got longer. Thinking about his missus raised his Testosterone levels and made his beard grow! I thought this was great! I don't live with my husband at the moment (Only at the weekends), but after eight years of marriage, I should think his beard shrivels back into his face towards the end of the week.




What's he been thinking about then!





I have been reading a brilliant blog by the Angry Medic. His posts are spot on and much easier going than mine! I sometimes hear a funeral march playing in my head when I am writing these posts so seeing a happy, young man who is also a first year medical student puts things into perspective for me. I keep going back to this point, but I would so love to have done this course at 18. I think I would have had a ball.

More good things - I dreamt about Patrick Dempsey last night. We were on holiday in Tenerife (As you do) and he was walking around in little shorts (I'm surprised I didn't wake up a bearded lady). The funniest thing was that, being the married old bugger I am, I even felt guilty in my dream. It was a very clean dream though! He just seemed to be keeping me company and bringing me cups of tea by the pool. I watched four hours of Greys anatomy last night, which must have been the culprit.











Last bit of news for today - Snoop and P Diddy are in Manchester on March 29th and I have managed to get great seats. Nice one!

Struggling to be selfish (Not me, some of my course mates)

For the first time this week, I have spoken to four people who are thinking of thowing the towel in and leaving the medical course - I am really gutted for them. They seemed to me to be flying through and looked like they would be brilliant doctors.

In my previous post, I said that I thought that you had to be extremely selfish to do my course and i think that this might be the problem for some of them - they are struggling to be selfish. I think they are finding being an older student (With responsibilities) impossible and just don't feel like they can become as selfish as they need to. It's so difficult when you are an older person with a partner, house, children etc. You need to ignore your responsibilites a lot of the time, just to keep up with the work and I understand their problem 100%. In my past life, I spent 100's of hours educating staff on achieving work life balance and can now see that it is easier said than done when the only way of keeping up with what you have done that day is to sit down for hours and hours.

The tough reality is that my family could do with me back in Wales so that I could help sort out my dads' situation and help my mum with the dogs. Being two hours away means that my mum is having to sort out a lot more of my dad's problems than she should have to (She has been divorced from him for 18 years!) and without her doing this, I wouldn't be able to stay on the course. What makes life so much easier for me is that my husband has given me the freedom to do the course. He would have been well within his rights to kick up a massive stink, but instead, he got a job down the road and went with the flow. We are still not living together but meet up in Tescos every Wednesday night (Hilarious I know)and then see each other all weekend.

Speaking to the people who are thinking of leaving has hit a nerve with me, because I am managing to be very selfish. I feel a bit guilty tonight because although I winge like a bugger most of the time, I have not thought of leaving the course - I just live with being selfish, which perhaps doesn't make me a terribly nice person.

Hmmmmm.

All about the Benjamins?

This week has been enough to blow my head off and splatter my frazzled brain over the ceiling.

It's our new semester and the seven new modules (Listed in last post), have already lost me. The membranes module on Monday was about "Flip Flop" (WTF?) and I learnt that lipids in a bilayer can flip flop, but proteins cannot (Please correct me if I am wrong). On Tuesday, I learnt that the chest has four pectoral muscles:

Pectoralis Major
Pectoralis Minor
Serratus Anterior
Subclavius

We have to learn the origins, insertions, blood supply, nerve supply and function for each one.

Today we have started on histology of the heart muscle and tomorrow we start reproduction (In the PowerPoint sense) On Friday we are doing something about disease mechanisms and today we went on to a ward for the first time and took a history off a patient.

That's the bugger you see - you learn so much in a week that remembering it all two weeks later is a massive problem. I am going to look for a memory textbook at the weekend to see if I can work out a strategy for learning all this stuff. I think there is a proven way of building long-term memory and I need some help. If any of you have some suggestions on how I can try to expand my brain power (Please don't suggest getting a bigger head) I would be very grateful.

I was thinking again today of why I really came into Medicine. Is it all about the Benjamin's? I have found that no one really speaks about coming into medicine for the money - it seems to be distasteful. I have to admit that, come graduation day, this is going to be me:



SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

Yeah right - a junior doctor here is not on big bucks ( See here for our UK salary scale) but they do qualify on more money than many of my experienced nursing mates are now earning. What does cheer me up is that GPs are earning brilliant salaries, but if the Daily Mail has their way, they will have taken massive pay cuts by the time I get there.

The one thing I totally agree with is that there are easier professions to enter if money is your only goal. Even three months into the course, I can see how horrendous it can get and just doing it for the money wouldn't get you through. I have to be completely honest though - future earning potential is a large part of why I am putting myself through this purgatory.

OK, OK I might annoy people saying that and get emails saying that I should want to be a doctor so I can care for sick people and make them well. My reply to this is that if this were my only goal, I would carry on being a nurse. I would also argue that my old nursing job allowed to me to care for my patients to a far, far higher standard than I will be able to do as a doctor in the NHS. I worked as an Occupational health manager for a multi national American company, looking after 800 employees and I was fortunate enough to have the budget and time to be able to ensure that whatever they needed, they received. My patients were ruined!

I do daydream about being rich someday - on the way to Uni, I walk past some amazing houses (Oadby has some of the best I have ever seen) and they often have "MollyMaid" (Cleaning company) cars outside. I want a house and a cleaner - so shoot me! I have been in the health game for ten years and know many consultants who live in AMAZING houses, but work such long hours that they never get to see them in the light. At least their wives feel the benefit though. My husband will be more than happy to live in the executive house (With my mother, father and ten dogs in the attic) Perhaps I will become the family cash cow. I can live with that!

As a nurse, salary wise the ceiling was low and I hit it at the age of 27. At least as a doctor, there is scope for higher earnings.... I am rambling now. My last word is that there are now many nurses and physios going into medicine, but have you ever heard of a doctor coming into nursing or physio? I haven't and I am 100% sure that money plays a part in this.