Summary of the year so far

Well, after nearly a year I've decided to rekindle my blogging efforts. I've joined the bebo and myspace craze (great inventions!), and as awesome as they are, ya don't want to read a lot on them...makes them crammed. I like my internet aesthetically pleasing. So I've recently gotten in touch with a few mates who I haven't talked to in literally years, and since I'm cutting myself off from AIM cuz I get a bloop everytime I try to study, I figured this blog would be a great way of staying in touch!

I'm still in Dublin at Trinity College (I love this place!), one year away from becoming a full-fleged doctor. Right now I'm doing a rotation in Obstetrics and Gynecology, which to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of. Today in my group was me and 3 guys - we went to see a C-section of a woman with placenta accreta (a complication of pregnancy). Because it's relatively rare, there were like 20 people crammed at the foot of the bed trying to get a view. So the placenta dislodges spontaneously, and there was huge gushing of blood...like seriously, waterfall coming out of this tiny woman. And the surgeons are in there tugging away trying to get the baby out but one of them was rather rattled from all the blood spewing forth and her hands were shaking badly. When they got the baby out, it was blue and not breathing and was the most awful shade of pale grey imaginable. If anyone had looked at us 4 med students they would have seen 4 people who couldn't have gotten out of there faster! None of us were particularly keen on seeing a baby die. So they whisk the baby away and are slapping it to get it to respond and eventually have to intubate the baby (the instruments are kind of cute actually cuz they're like mini versions of the adult tools) , which they had trouble doing so there was a bit of panic. But after what seemed like ages, they got the baby tubed and she turned a nice normal color, and they controlled the mother's bleeding too (after a Lynch suture which makes the uterus look kind of like a pork round...) . So all was good. I'll give it more time, but not really falling in love with obs/gyne right now.

My last rotation was Ophthalmology, which was really cool. I enjoyed it, found more doctors to add to my list of people I want to be when I grow up, and learned loads. I thought it was going to be incredibly boring when I first came into it, and I don't like things poking eyes and whatnot, but it was cool watching the cataract surgeries and finally learning how to use the fundoscope. The only thing I didn't like was watching the unblocking of a lacrimal duct in a kid - that is viscious! They take this wire and literally jam it down the inner side of the eye...EW. I'd consider Ophtho if it wasn't so bloody hard to get into.

Before that was ENT. Which I pretty much skipped because of all the work that had to be done for the Trinity Student Medical Journal (which I directed this year). This year ended up being a hell of a lot more work than it should have been for various reasons - laziness on the part of some people and type A personalities of medics. Seems sort of ironic that the two happened simultaneously. Fortunatelly for me, the ENT rotation is a bit of a joke and as with some other things, it's "teach yourself medicine" time. I went in for two hours the whole rotation, and learned how to use an otoscope. Not well.

Before that, I was doing Anesthesiology which was an AWESOME rotation simply because the anesthetists were so keen on teaching. I really wish I could have spent more time there, but because of the feckin TSMJ, I had to skip a bit. I don't think I'd do anesthesiology, but it was way better than I thought it would be and not too boring because in theatre when anesthetists are just basically monitoring, you'd get a tutorial so you're not just sitting there staring into space. This rotation was split with radiology, which was also quite interesting. I liked viewing the MRI interpretations. For some reason, I just like MRIs in general. Not any specific body part, but MRIs of anything.

In January, I did Paediatrics. That was hell on wheels. A whole load of bitchiness came out of everyone. All I'll say for now is that MEDICAL STUDENTS AND GROUP PROJECTS DO NOT GET ALONG. DO NOT ASSIGN MEDICAL STUDENTS GROUP PROJECTS! I mean, it's pretty self-explanatory isn't it? What happens when you put 10 type-A personalities in together? And add to that a couple people who rank 10/10 on the laziness and stupidness scale? (trust me...there are some really stupid people doing medicine. I know that's not reassuring to the general public). That just really ruined the rotation for me. Plus I've never seen such flagrant examples of subjective grading in my life, with examiners hiding behind the excuse that "life isn't fair." Why the hell does that give them license to ignore the universal best practice of standardized examinations? The kids were the actual fun part. And I'm so glad I didn't drop any of them.

In December, I did Hepatology. That sucked because the team sucked. I learned nothing and felt it was a waste of time so essentially skipped it.

For October/November, I was doing Psychiatry. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. But that's probably because I started off interviewing a bipolar patient, who are mad fun people (I don't mean "mad" to be a pun). When they come into hospital, they're in their manic phase and delusional, but really fun to hang out with and interview. My patient even sang for me! So I got a good introduction to psych :). The rotation was enlightening and not too difficult. Some people in my class are now enamoured with it...but not for me. I find it still a bit waffly and psychiatrists are a different breed - sorry to the psychiatrists out there, but man...they say in 45 minutes what they could have said in 10, and what makes it worse is that you can anticipate what they're going to say about 3 minutes before they get around to saying it :).

Anyway, that's just a long brief recap of my rotations so far. All this + studying for USMLEs and Captaining my rowing team + TSMJ + SDN! I'll be glad when I can look back at this year and laugh.