Day four - I'm being good!

It's just gone 12.20, and I am sitting here, having just had a cuppa and some lunch, feeling rather smug with myself.  I have already clerked two patients today... admittedly still have to write up my examination findings, but all in all, they both went ok.  Finished with good amounts to spare on both and I think I covered most things.  I actually surprised myself with how slick it felt during my examinations... maybe (as much as I hate to admit it!) maybe this was one of the issues from last year, but either way, at least it is improving!

Still have to make a decision with regards the weekend.  But at least I have done my minimum of two clerkings, so if I get offered a lift back this afternoon I can take it, and then maybe think of coming back tomorrow or Sunday.

Must go and write up the clerkings, especially as haven't done yesterdays either... they're starting to pile up!  Ooops!

Day three - oh weekend, where are you?

Day three - two clerkings done.  Ran over time on both.  Really need to work on this.  Presented one of the cases to a housemate, and he gave me lots of food for thought, which didn't make me feel overly positive about my performance or my presentation.  Really need to work on this too.  So all in all, not feeling wildly positive about the day's achievements.  Or maybe I'm just reflecting the grey, drizzily cold weather?

It's not that I'm really hating doing the clerkings.  I actually feel really ambivalent about them.  Neither positive nor negative, they just are.  It's just the hassle of doing them.  The trying to find patients, working around meals, scans, visiting hours etc.  This has always been a major beef of mine with regards to this whole clerking malarkey.  We're just doing it to fill a portfolio, and to pass an exam.  It actually seems so pointless and irrelevant.  I actually quite enjoy it when I have something positive to contribute to patient care, and they're all shiny new to the hospital.  And you have some input to their tests and management.  It's more like the job than this bugging patients on the wards, especially when they're already all fed up of us bugging them.

And it's scaring the life out of me.  Only a week and a half until we are no longer allowed on the wards.  In a way this makes me want to stay over the weekend.  So I can be super-eager (read: driven by utter fear) and go in everyday.  But I really want to go back to Bristol.  To my flat, my spindle, my Sky plus and my friends (not necessarily in that order).  I'm going a bit stir crazy here in Weston, especially on days where the weather gets you down too.  I've also fallen into the trap of having no cash on me, so I can't even jump on a bus and go to the cinema or something like that, just to get a change of scenery.  The nearest cash machine is about a 25min walk away, and not something I want to do in the drizzly ran without a coat (I wasn't expecting this rubbish weather!!).  I just don't know what to do.  And I need to make up my mind so I can catch the people who are likely to be able to give me a lift back to Bristol.

Yup, it's just one of those days were I just want to moan!

Day two - still sticking to it... but begrudgingly

Just a quick update tonight as hardly anything to say.  Just mainly confirming that I did manage to clerk two patients today.  They were both ortho, so if nothing else it will be good practise for my ortho job as an F2.  Not much of an ortho fan, it has to be said, so I'm sure they weren't my best ever clerkings.

Found it even harder to get going today, and am currently feeling rather wiped out, despite having a coffee this evening for the first time in simply ages.  And truth be told (and sorry if it's TMI) I'm feeling a little hormonal.  Not in the crazy angry woman PMT kind of way, but in the week before my period where all I want to do is eat and eat (mmm, carbs!) and my breast's hurt and I loose my concentration very easily... ahhh the delights of being female.  But rather now than in a couple of weeks when my exam is actually in front of me and I have to cope with that and being of the XX genotype.

But female rant over.  Off to bed, and hopefully more sleep so tomorrow isn't quite such an effort.

Day one - and sticking to it!

The events of yesterday have really haunted me over the last 24 hours.  I had a really restless night sleep, waking up on several occasions and struggling to get back to sleep without spending ages obssessing over it all.  And as a result, this morning I didn't really feel the whole "bright eyed, bushy tailed" thing going on... far from it.  I felt really unrefreshed and not very proactive.  So it took me quite a while to get going and get to the wards.  But I did, by about 10am.  And I clerked a patient.  I was fairly happy with how it went.  Not sure I would have got his diagnosis if I had been the doctor that first saw him, but flicking through the notes afterwards, I don't think that his first doctor did completely, so that was reassuring.  What I was most happy with was that I really nailed the timing, had 10mins to spare, which I'm really proud of.  And yes there were a couple of things that I forgot (kicked myself when I remembered afterwards), but they were pretty minor, and would have most likely only accounted for a couple more minutes at most.  Timing was definitely something I struggled with last year, so it's an improvement.

I had teaching over lunch and then my coursemates and I sat around having a really mellow half hour before heading on with our days.  I did a little bit of work, and finished writing up my examination from the morning.  Then I hit the wards again.  Annoyingly took ages to find a patient who didn't have visitors, wasn't asleep, wasn't confused, wasn't acutely poorly and wasn't immediately post surgery.  It was so frustrating and quite a waste of time.  But I did find a lovely patient to clerk who had an interesting story and was very sweet to talk to, although she did ask me to stop before I had finished my examination as she was getting a lot of pain and couldn't cope any more.  So that was a little disappointing, but totally within her rights.  And I reckon I was doing ok timewise, so happy with that too.

And that's it, I did my two clerkings that I had aimed to do, and I feel really good about it.  I'm sure I'll get a much better sleep tonight and feel more pro-active tomorrow.  And dare I say, shall I aim to clerk three patients?  Might be pushing it, so maybe will set a MINIMUM of two instead.

Bluebell update

The wait is nearly over.  I hope that by Friday, it will be in full bloom and absolutely amazing!  Already seeing so much change since I last went and visited there, just last Wednesday.  Getting so excited, but also slightly worried that I have built it up and built it up and it won't be all that great.  But hey, it's something that brightens my days and gives me something to look forward to.

I was relieved to see that for a change, i wasn't the only one there with my camera out, although I did feel a little inadequate with my little happy-snappy compared to this photographer:

I know it isn't the best photo, didn't want to get too stalker-ish close!  His camera had the most enormous lens.  I bet he was getting great pics!

I also took a longer walk around the back of The Hill.  I always am enchanted about how remote and wild it seems, yet it really is just minutes away from the hospital and the house that I live in.  Truely fantastic.

And to add to the country-ness of it all, I went and said hello to the cows that are now grazing on The Hill, as part of maintaining the natural ecosystem.

And talking of the natural cycle of things, the field of buttercups from just a couple of weeks ago is decidedly less yellow.  Maybe the cows have really been enjoying the flowers!

And on to the slightly less bright and cheery outdoorsiness of these rambles of mine.  I have exchanged several emails with the Prof regarding my practise long case with him since Friday's little incident.  He's been asking me to think about what went wrong, and now he seems worried about my uncertainty.  He said I should look back and be self-critical.  He doesn't seem satisfied with my saying that I really don't know what it was.  I tried to explain that with the second long case, I was very nervous in light of having not done well enough in the first attempt, and that I thought that this had affected my performance.  He really didn't seem to like this, saying something along the lines of nerves having no place at my stage, and that practicing medicine is all about high pressure situations.  But I know that I'm not normally nervous.  I normally handle the pressure really well and that these nerves were in a very specific situation, and one that I won't really be coming across in my day-to-day work. 

Cutting a long story short, I really am starting to feel sick in the pit of my stomach when I think of it all.  I'm hating this pressure of expectation and to be honest, pure dread.  I'm really going to have to do something, no excuses now, this is it.  I have to do this, and in the next three weeks before my exam, I'm going to have to do everything I can to put myself in good stead and get over all this negativity and worry.  No more excuses, I have to hit the wards tomorrow, and clerk like mad, despite me hating the process of annoying patients!  And to this end, I'm going to be honest and accountable and keep a daily tally of how many patients I see.  I'm aiming for two a day.  I'll post everyday how I'm doing with this. 

And so to bed, for an early night and a productive day tomorrow.

It's all about the spinning therapy

I have finished my silk hankie yarn.  I had a few issues with it, mainly a huge knot that I must have spent more than an hour trying to undo, before I took the heart breaking action of cutting it.  I'm so happy with how this turned out.  It's so far from perfect, and my spinning skills still have a lot of developing to do.  But it's so beautiful.  35 yards of yarn bliss.  I have no idea what to do with it, as it's such a small amount of yarn.

I really enjoyed spinning with the silk hankie, and it's quite an easy and forgiving fibre to work with.  Can't wait to spin up the ones that I dyed over Easter. 

And to overcome the running out of wool from the Spinning Weal, I found somewhere online that does very cheap wool  and I treated myself to 200g BFL top, 100g merino top, both undyed and 100g of blended dyed merino in a blues colourway.

I've spun with the BFL a little and it was quite hard to work with compared to the Portland that Sarah at Spinning Weal recommended for a starter spinner.  I can see why she said it was too soft for beginners.  I was beginning to get the knack for it, and start to finally get some more even single out of it when my spindle broke!  So it's spent most of the day being glued back together with superglue.  I'm looking forward to using the BFL some more.  It's so soft and fluffy.  Absolutely gorgeous.  I have also decided that I shouldn't pre-draft anymore, it's cheating really, and I should try master drafting.  It's the final end goal of spinning techniques, so the sooner I start, the better. 

The knitting is still going slowly.  I'm loving the shawl and how it's looking.  I have recieved my second skein of the wool, after an appeal on Ravelry, although I'm still miles off needing to use it.  Unfortunately revising really does have to come first.

Taking it one step at a time

Following my rather dispondent post yesterday, I thought I'd give a more positive update.  I had a fairly relaxing afternoon, just revising and wondering round town a little.  I then went and hung out with my friend Mary for her last couple of hours at work.  She was having a crazy busy day, so I did what I could to help her out.  I had wanted to try and do a practise long case with her, but it was nearly 7pm before she finished, so we decided that it was all a bit too much.  So we went out for drinks and dinner with Harry, Claire and DOm.  It was an amazingly great way to relax and just take things a little easy.  It was definitely the chance to unwind that I needed.   And then I got a really good night sleep. So I'm feeling a lot better now and a lot more positive about things.  I have arranged my practice long case with the Prof for just before my exam, so hopefully I'll have everything fresh in my mind and very slick.  I've got to stay positive and keep the end goal in mind.  I CAN do this... by just taking it one step at a time.