Busy Bee

I thought I would be home early on Monday since my consultant didn't have clinic at Epsom this week. Teaching for that day was cancelled right after my radiology tutorial ended at 9.45 am. Technically, I had the entire freaking day free. Instead, I decided to go to the ECG room, and after finding that it was being taken over by a bunch of surgery med students (pffttt go to your theatres or go somewhere else!), I suggested we go over to A&E to irritate some of the poor doctors there. I ended up on the service of this reallyyy nice SpR around - who just reminds me of my dad btw, although I lent him my pen to fill in a form and he ran off with it and I could not locate him after! ARGH! - and V was taught some amazing ECG stuff by this SHO.

Finally spotted a pneumothorax and collapsed lung on the CXR, attempted ABGs but it was too difficult so the SpR took over. And ABGs totally are not easy by the way, because today during rounds, our team's SpR tried on this old lady and after two people jabbed her like ten times, everyone finally gave up. Then assessed a priority chest pain patient with another Reg, and then was asked to run through the ECG (ARGH!! Well, at least I got better after ystdy), and after that another CXR. Managed to put some of my well-acquired knowledge from my IJN Elective days to good use. Then the Reg shooed me back home saying that it was 5 pm and she thought I had been there long enough. And I was! From around before 11 am till 5 pm, and missing lunch in between too!

V was exclaiming later how she thought A&E was really cool, and this reminded me of how a couple of my friends have been professing their interests in Emergency Medicine. Compared to yesterday's fast-paced experience, ward rounds this morning was realllyy snoozy with the team's new Reg and the F1. After that I tried to clerk a patient who obviously had a very large multinodular goitre but to no avail because she was completely confused and could not even answer the first 5 questions of the MMSE. V and I just trawled through the patient notes after that and looked up a couple of the follow-up investigations on Clinical Manager.

Then I had clinic in the afternoon with my regular consultant. Rheum clinic, is as V puts it, 'mindblowingly boring', but I love Dr D heaps. He is like a kindly father and so funny at times too, although he may be a man of few words and little constructive criticism. I still have a soft spot for Rheum, however, because it is a running problem in my family.

Now I need to do my incredibly boring essay. Argh. Such a buzzkill after two such lovely, busy days.