general practice

i just finished my 2-week placement at the GP for this block. good riddance to waking up extra early and paying £5.30 for transport A DAY, which i don't get reimbursed for. i can go on about this but i've complained so much in the last 2 weeks that i am sick and tired of it and have made peace with the fact that i am never going to get my money back. just treating it as a "nice relaxing ride to and from the clinic" (honestly i do enjoy my bus/train rides) and going out of Preston for a change.

my favourite day was with a french doctor who ran a women's health clinic at the medical centre - she's really nice and has that (positive) french air. she was willing to teach but she didn't allow me to take cervical smears and fit in intrauterine devices (boo). but she did let me "assist" her, so whatever. obviously i saw many vaginas and cervices. they were NOT pretty.

also met a lot of underage mothers - underage in my opinion but not necessarily underage by law. i mean, i can't fathom how anyone in this day of age can have babies at 22. i can't imagine myself having babies at 22! OR in the next 5 years for that matter. but of course there were many other mothers WAY younger than 22, which is worse. sigh. a few even turned to me and said, "Don't ever get pregnant!"

and it's words like these that make you realise how much they regret their actions and you wonder what will happen to the child when it is brought into the world (will most likely end up like them - but who am i to judge).

sad.

not so good days at the clinic: having to sit in with 2 practice nurses only to listen to them bitch about the lead doctor WHO, FYI, IS THE NICEST, MOST SOFT-SPOKEN DOCTOR ON THE PLANET, completely ignorant of my presence. bloody bitches.

anyway. 'twas still a good break from my normal hospital routine. but i do look forward to going back to it and being on the wards and theatres again. 2 more weeks of GI surgery and then i'll be switching to a medical firm. i cannot believe that it is almost november.

going to nottingham tomorrow for the weekend. :) finally, my first place OUT of manchester and preston since coming here. haha. oh i was in bolton last saturday but that's not counted.

weekend

i'm slowly gaining my social life back. thank goodness.

i love manchester at night. :)

was at pitcher and piano at deansgate locks for melody's 21st birthday. melody is my one and only friend over at hope hospital (one of the other hospitals under uni manchester. like mine is preston). met her on induction day in uni. she's schweeet.

and peihua was nice enough to accommodate me last night. hahaha. love her place. love herrrrrrr! and also her flatmate louisa who's a year older than me and is already an F1 doctor at the manchester royal infirmary. :/ how is that even possible.

pfft. but both of them are lovely. peihua i will come stay with you again and i promise i will not leave at 7am the next day.

yes i left at 7am this morning to catch the earliest train back to preston so i could make it for church. yes i am churchy. well actually i wanted to go to church this morning because i skipped church last sunday to have dimsum (and shopping thereafter) with edwina and huiling. and the sunday before i was in church for a free lunch. so i didn't want people to think that i was only there for the free lunch and that i wasn't planning to regularly attend church. ok i know that they wouldn't judge (cos they're church people) but i am overly conscious and really, i am quite insecure.

well and also, actually, i really love church here. i'm so glad to have found this church (although i have to walk an insane 30mins TO and FROM church - i'm sorry if you think 30mins is not a big deal but i only need to walk 30secs to the hospital each day, and that's the only walking i ever do over here). it's probably the only church in the whole of preston that gives me a sense of familiarity, since it's similar to the churches i'm used to back in msia. it has a big congregation, a good worship team, wonderful pastors, friendly people, free coffee and tea and biscuits... i'm at home!

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pictures! it's been awhile. :)


last weekend: huiling's visit to manchester from dundee! and edwina came from notts again. because she loves me. and also cos she's very rich.



eh seriously.. wongwong @ chinatown's original pearl milk tea is THE BEST. always £2 well spent, for me!



last night: melody's 21st at pitcher and piano.



louisa, peihua, me. spot my cosmo.

peihua! the next time i stay at your place we will talk talk talk till 3am again ;)



this is my ghost, on oxford road.



ed and huiling said they prefer my outfits here, as in, in the cold. obviously they haven't seen me in preston, especially in the hospital - black, white or grey blouse with black formal pants and black Clarks shoes. and the same grey knitted sweater. OR if i'm lazy to think of what to wear, or feel like i dont wanna do much laundry that week, i'll just wear my ugly scrubs (which are grey as well), because i can send them off to the hospital laundry after. that's as fashionable as i can get in preston.


grumpy on the train back to preston this morning, sans makeup and still in pajamas underneath my coat. it was so damn early and so damn cold! had mcd bfast (McD, woohoo! i love you and always will!) alone while waiting for the bus after i got off the train. dropped my bag back home, and off to church i went. yes i went to church in pajamas.

and now... i need to sleep.

have a good week all of you. i'll be on gp posting for 2 weeks and i'm not looking forward.

i want to be a gastroenterologist

i've been on my gastrointestinal surgical firm for 2 weeks now and i'm really loving it. not so much the surgery part (which is cool, i admit), but because i have had a fairly good foundation on GI back in IMU (as compared to other systems :P) so i know exactly what is going on. surgeries haven't been particularly interesting so far, having only seen a couple of staging laparoscopies, a parathyroidectomy, laparoscopic cholecystectomies and felt gall bladders with multiple gall stones (multiple is an understatement, really. let's just say there were SO many they made the hair on my back stand on end). there were a few major surgeries going on like ileostomies and gastrectomies when i was unfortunately posted elsewhere for clinics and ward rounds, and it's seriously frustrating when some of your group members get to see (and do) stuff which you've missed out on. but i've got 3 more weeks on this firm so fingers crossed i'll get to see something cool before i move on to a medical firm.

another reason why i like this firm is because i have a really good firm leader who used to be an apparently-very-famous liver surgeon in Manchester but is now teaching full-time. we have long hours of bedside teaching with him and he takes time to really drill us (like how we can spend up to 3 hours standing around ONE patient, omg bless my back). he is the stereotype surgeon, only 5 times more extreme. haha. but he's a fantastic teacher and although we have to bear with his self-worshipping sessions, i actually enjoy listening to why he thinks he's so great. it's amusing that someone can think SO highly of himself, but the thing is, you can't really deny that he IS great; he knows everything, it's not funny. we were in ICU yesterday (ICU is a sad, sad, sad place :( ) learning how to operate those scary machines and going through what i thought was 2.5 years of physiology crammed into 3 hours; and you know what, i actually understand physiology of ALL systems more than i ever did before. i love medicine i really do. especially when i REALLY get it.

we also had a basic surgical skills class with him one afternoon where we were introduced to surgical equipment, learned how to tie knots and practiced suturing on pigs' legs! it wasn't pleasant at all, the smell of raw meat, but it was one of the best afternoons of my medical school life! though i still don't think i'd want to be a surgeon. :P

oh and i'm quite happy with my PBL sessions here because i have a good group with an even better tutor who's an endocrinologist. and since i'm actually doing a GI, Renal and Endocrine module (just that i'm currently on a GI surgical firm), we discuss cases from all 3 systems so he has been really helpful with his expert input (although he's technically not supposed to really TEACH us but he does anyway, and we like it). AND he makes us bring cookies to share! someone did suggest to bring alcohol but obviously that wasn't going to happen - how sad -because our tutor can't drink while he's at work, we can't too. it would be funny though, drinking while discussing liver cirrhosis. hah.

well that's basically it, really. i'm enjoying it although it's a little more hectic than i expected it to be (hey they told me 3rd year was "REALLY FREE AND EASY"). my schedule seems to be very tight especially this week, having to go to Chorley (another hospital) by bus in the mornings and coming back to Preston for afternoon sessions. one more week of this and then i'm off for 2 weeks of community posting in Leyland (another godforsaken place), and then i'll finish off my remaining 2 weeks with this firm before switching to a medical firm.

:)

i'm so glad the weekend's here. i need to clean my room.