03.20.07
gp placement, stethoscopes, and other such exciting things…
I realised that I only have one shirt that fits me last week, and three consecutive days where I need to dress professionally. So I went shopping, and bought many exciting hospital like clothes (in a wide range of colours and styles)… while this doesn’t seem that exciting, it was for me because I rarely go clothes shopping 
Another exciting acquisition was the arrival of my (expensive) stethoscope - a Littman Master Cardiology (I know, I know, unreasonably good for a medical student, but I wanted it to be different from other people’s, and it wasn’t much more than the Cardiology III which everybody else seemed to be buying. And I earnt that money, I damn well wanted to spend it on something really good. Plus, I got the all black edition (if you know me, you’d understand how black and scarred my soul is 
no, I just thought it would be kind of cool to have an all black steth).
Also happily (wow, it’s been an amazingly good week for me), I didn’t feel faint at all at my clinical skills session last week. Perhaps being slightly more involved (and less tired or hot) made it a fair bit easier, although it was quite depressing to talk to the incredibly young patient who, if they manage to get a transplant, might be able to live a maximum of another thirty years. They’ll never be able to grow old, and see their grandchildren grow up, or anything - and it wasn’t even an illness that they could have prevented themselves (genetic disorders are awful news).
I also went down to Sydney (last Tuesday and Wednesday), to visit a gorgeous med student at UNSW (and visited their bookshop, and was quite saddened to discover that their books are cheaper than ours) - we went to chocolate cafes and talked about med at length (really great to talk about medicine with someone studying at a different university - the experiences are so different but still so valuable in their individuality).
Second year has been a lot more work than I expected or hoped. It’s a bit of a struggle, but hopefully it’ll be worth it at the end. Our PBL tutor was incredibly frustrated with us yesterday because he doesn’t think we’re progressing fast enough and he’s right - we really need to get our acts together if we’re going to make it through this year…
And, yet another positive (god, I’m spewing kittens and rainbows tonight - so unlike me) - I had an awesome time at my GP placement - he does absolutely everything and is somewhat nutty (he kept wanting to excise bits of possible cancers and he cut off this massive carcinoma on a patient’s forehead, and kept burning cancers and warts on patients) - he’s very hands on and likes to do things for his patients. I was only there for a few hours, and he did so many different things (suturing wounds, excising moles, burning warts/moles) and also all his general GP work - it’s definitely whetted my interest in GP (and now I really do sound Novocastrian) because there is such a wide range of possible things I could do if I became a GP.
I didn’t really do much, just observed, and took a few BPs, and almost immunised a patient (I was a bit worried though and thought I’d leave it til another time (I will do it)), a few histories, and got to touch a few patients for examinations and things… very reassuring that the few kids we saw seemed to like me (this baby didn’t want to leave and kept clinging to me and his mum just wanted to go home - awesome, yet disturbing). But I learnt a lot, and I think that these GP placements are really rewarding (thus far - but I do have another 7 to go!)
I have another GP placement tomorrow (with a different doctor, so I can compare practices and styles), which hopefully will go equally well.
I’m also travelling to Sydney twice in the next week (no, I’m not attempting to move there, nor am I from there - just visiting friends and being sociable), so I probably won’t update for a while (not that anyone else really seems to (hint hint AC)).
Anyway, if you managed to get through all of that, I give you an imaginary gold star and a sugar snake for reading about my fascinating life