Breakthrough!

So it's Monday and we are half way through exams. I have not left my room for three weeks and have no life or thoughts other than revision, panic, revision, panic.

The good news is that I had a breakthrough at the beginning of 2007. When I look back, I realise that I felt like I have been playing at being a medical student. I have never actually felt like I deserve to be here, and have felt unlikely to make it through the first year.

My reasons for this that my dad had a massive stroke on May 17th which left him unable to speak or look after himself. He was still in hospital when I started at medical school and it was horrendously hard to concentrate and learn, when he was faced with not having anywhere to go or anyone to look after him. He moved into a rehab flat in Mid November and then the fun really started because he decided he would get regular taxis to his bungalow. I would then get phone calls to say the rehab flat workers didn't know where he was and I would end up coming home from Leicester (Two hour drive) to find him and persuade him to go back. The stress of this has been indescribable and things got worse when, on December 23rd, social services decided he had been in the rehab flat for long enough and give him 48hrs notice that he was going into a care home. Nice Christmas present.

Christmas was awful - just a constant round of trying to keep his spirits up and travelling to and from his care home.

When I visit my dad, there doesn't seem to be any sense of him being glad to see me or that he is grateful for the effort I have made. I think he is gutted that I have not dumped medical school and looked after him full time and bitter as hell that this has happened to him in the first place. My guilt of having him in a care home is constant and my only way of coping is to block it out and not think about it.

Part of me is angry at him because he has abused himself into this stroke by drinking, smoking and eating crap for the past twenty years and has let his house get into such a state that social services have now deemed it unfit for living in. The other part of me knows that his dad also had a stoke at the age of 60 and so perhaps he would have had one without the extra risk factors.

I have been dragged down by all of this - I wouldn't be human if I hadn't.

My breakthrough occurred straight after New Year when I really started hammering the revision. I realised that I could do the work and that that more than anything, I really want to do the course. All I can do is hope for the best with these exams and then start afresh next week when we start semester two.