Tidying up

Ah..... after 25 weeks of Uni, and various busy weekends, I am left with a very large pile of stuff to file away... all sitting in neat piles... or at least they were neat piles when I laid them out.

Anyway today is the perfect chance to do them, as after a week when I have hardly been home, today is the annual Orange Order parades through the centre of Glasgow. This morning there was a heavy Police presence, include Butcher Bo, and a large crowd of Orange order fans and protesters. This evening there seem to bbe large crowds of drunk protesters and supporters going round town shouting at each other, traffic, and the world in general.

What we need is a very heavy rainstorm to send everyone home!

First Day off

So today was my first proper day off of the summer. And I haven't done much/anything of use.

As in real;ly, I woke up 18 hours ago, and i canl;t account for much of the intervening period. I slept a bit in the sun, cat like.

Bang!

I was sitting here about 20 minutes ago just on MSN and doing some emailling, when I head a bang. I got up and looked outside.A van has crased into the side of a taxi at teh traffic lights outside my flat. The van has kinda stopped dead, and the taxi has been shunted ovver into some roadworks - outside the building opposite.

It all went very quiet for five ninuites. I could see the van driver was on the phone, so didn;t feel any need to call the emergency services. Sure enough, within 10 minutes there was an ambulance rapid response car followed by a normal ambulance on the scene, anoither 5 minutes and the fire brigade arrived, and still no sign of the Police.

Meanwhile the 3 roads which empty into this junction are starting to back up and traffic is having to do U turns oin one way streets to get away - sounds like a recipe for disaster the way some people drive round Glasgow at night.

H O L I D A Y

I have booked my summer holiday.

First week in August, to London for 6 nights staying in a (hopefully nice - well it looks ok on trip advisor) hotel in Kensington.

Plan to see some school friends who live down there and also be very touristy - Science Museum, Kew Gardens, some shopping maybe, John Soanes house, Wellcome Collection etc.

Then I have the third week in August working at the fringe, and seeing a few shows as well, so that gives me two weeks in August to relax, see family and such like.

Boiler saga

Well, 5 visits, several hours of workman trime, 4 weeks and a few hundred pounds later, my boiler has a new pump,m new valves, a new PCB, and will soon have new temperature sensors. Hopefully it will then work properly.

Currently I obtain hot water by opening the front of the boiler and wiggling one of the temperature sensor wires, which then causes the circuit board to realise that the water in the 'out' pipe is cool and thus starts heating teh water. This works for a variable period of 2 days to 20 minutes. Thankfully when not working correectly, the LED flkashes constantly, so it is fairly easy to tell.After 10 plumber call outs in 5 years, my admiration for the boiler manufactuirers is immense. I habve no idea what the pourchase cost was, but I feel I have paid them at least the same value in out of warranty parts, thus maintaining their income!

If only there was mains Gas into the building.

Score!

Well that is term officially over. 25 weeks, or 175 days or....well you get the idea. 5 blocks, from ICU to psychiatry via Obs/Gyn and Medicine. It;s been a long term with lots of good bits,, and some boredom.

I managed to get to the end of term by getting a score of 2 for every module this year. With some complex maths which gives every piece of assessment from years 1-4 a score, I now know that I have achieved a score of 38 out of 70; the main reason for the low score being exam resits in years 2 and 3. So now faculty will rank the whole year group by these scores; and sort us into quartiles. The 4 quartiles then get a score of 34,36,38 or 40 points which counts towards the MTAS ranking. So for all mys core is not that great, it only penalises my a maximum of 6 MTAS points.

The MTAS score however will give me 5 points for having a BSc First Class; and I can get 1 point for a presentation at a National level, and 1 for a publication. Sadly I fear that my SSC Audit may not be written up and submitted in time. However I do have a paper from my BSc Hoinour project, so I can win back 6 or maybe 7 points there.

The rest of the Foundation Programme MTAS form is so awful and boring I am goiing to forget about it over the summer.

Choices, choices

Today I was thru in Edinburgh and once I had finished my ususal stuff, and been to an 18th Birthday lunch BBQ, I went to see a friend from my BSc days. She was a genetics geek and then went on to do a PhD and is working as a post doc researcher in cancer-y genetics in Edinburgh. She gets to go to all sorts of exciting confeerences in Prague, and Crieff......

It was very interesting to compare stories as to what could have happened if instead of choosing Medicine in 2004, I had chosen to do a PhD and go into biomedical research.

I had applied for medicine and a PhD and got back acceptances for both on the same day, thus meaning I had 24hrs before I had to reply about the PhD offer. Except by the time I got the email it was midnight and I had until 5pm to reply. I also had a really busy day and ended up only snatching moments to think about it, and came to the decision "You can do a PhD as part of research as a medic, but you may not get another chance to study medicine". Wheher accurate or not, that is how I made the decision!

The boiler saga episode 2, part 2

Now that the boiler engineer has been, I am left with the knowledge that a valve has leaked, dripping water into the pump, which is shorting. He has dried the pump, but even so, it seems I need a new pump and new valves. Even then there could be microprocessor problems, though apparently these are unlikely.

Either way the parts will arrive Friday so it will be Monday before they can come and fit them, which means another half day off placement. Monday teaching is officially at 1.30, so I would hope to make it in for that.

Now just deciding whether to go in this afternoon and find my FY1, or whether to stay home and finish off my case write up, boil water for a shave and shower and just head in for 9 tomorrow morning.

Head says the latter, heart just doesn't know.

Welcome back to my crazy life

The first part of this post has come back to haunt me.

The boiler died again last Thursday with a strange burning smell.... So I phoned the company, who said they would find out whether they could still obtain spare parts since it seems that Pulsacoil may have gone bust / reformed / stopped making the boilers. It turns out they wrote the phone number down wrongly. So they didn;t call me back, so then I called them yesterday and was told they did have the parts available, and there would be an engineer available this week. I requested that they come out. I am sure they said that they would come today........

But after a no show until 4pm, I phoned them and apparently they are sure it is for tomorrow....morning at 9.30. Which coulkd be interesting since I have hospital teaching at 11am, a 50min drive away! I am hoping they can fix it the first time, as a second visit will mean missing more of this placement and also I wnt a warm shower!

• I also have a broken dishwasher, but cannot book their engiuneers only a day in advance, and also they can only commit to a day not a time, so i may have to survuive without that until end of term in July.
• I need a dentist appouintment, so might try to ring one of them as I have cracked a filling....
• I need to arrange an MOT for the car before the 17th.
• The wooden fascia of the dishwasher needs refitting to the dishwwahser unit

Sometime I think I need a PA!!!!!

Sorry!

With many apologies for my absence. I should learn in future to remember my passwords and not let my PC remember them... cos when I change my PC user area then I lose my passwords...

So anyway life has been fun and busy and I shall recap these areas soon, probably the M onday holiday on.....Monday..

Technicalities of life

Having got my car back, and then been away to see Mum & Dad last weekend, I spent the past week gradually coming to terms with life and several busy evenings, including uni, comedy, friends visiting, winning a music pub quiz (as part of a team obviously). I also found time to get a new phone as the old one died. I was also out for inner tonight, which was especially nice.

I am thus now part of the iPhone 3G group... first impressions are very good but it did require iTunes, which for some reason my laptop wouldn't install due to a 'corrupted user area. Thus I backed up all my stuff and created anew user area on the laptop, only taking about 5hours. I also tidied my contcat lists, and sorted out my files on the PC whilst all this was happening, so it wasn't wasted.

Having found out how to copy my mail settings across, I can now sync my diary on the pc with the one on my phone...which is kinda cool. I still need to work out how to use teh full functionality of the iPod part of the phone, but that requires an understanding of iTunes.which may have to wait for another day.

This week looks to be another one with several late finishes, with an 'academic meeting. tomorrow, the music quiz on wednesday, an ICU night out on Thursday and then an invitation to Cheesy Pop on Friday night. The quiz doesn't start til about 9, so is a useful post uni, midweek chance to catch up with friends, and demonstrate our lack of knowledge, and eat/drink our winnings from last week.

Happiness and regrets

Well today my 04 intake got their exam results, and everyone I have heard from passed. If I had passed 3rd year the first time around I'd be with them, and looking forward to becoming a Doctor in August, a career, money, success and a long summer holiday. So I;m really pleased for all them, twinged with a slight regret that I won;t be with them, and that I have another 12 months work and graft until (hopefully) I can also add MBChB after my name.

I hope they are nice next year when we students are on their wards.

Graduating a year early?

You might think that of all the people to keep track of what year of a Uni course a student is in, that the University registry might be pretty clued up.

And yet, myself and other students who have either missed a year, repeated a year or taken time out due to illness, and thus despite an 04 (or 03) matric number, will be graduating in 2010 not 2009, all received the following this week.
As yet they have not responded to my email. I wonder if i can graduate this year and thus avoid having to sit exams in 2010. Thought not.

Housekeeping or the house and uni

Well in this weekend between blocks, I tried to be productive... after taking the car to the garage early on Saturday (such a short night) I decided to start cleaning the kitchen, including scrubbing the hob, scrubbing, hoovering and mopping the laminate floor throughout the living area, cleaning my desk, scrubbing the bathroom, and then hoovering the bedroom and tidying everything away from the bedroom surfaces I felt that things were going better, so on Sunday I printed all the Uni notes I did not recollect printing and found the matching lecture notes from this year and started filing them. Despite lectures only once every 5 weeks, the pile already almost fills a ring binder.

The notes on clinical skills are less organised because due to the nature of this year, they become more integrated into normal notes... I need to work out how to formalise and organise the notes from placements as well into a form from which I can revise when the time comes.

SSm starts tomorrow

In a follow up to this, tomorrow I start my SSM at DepCat hospital in ICU.

It is an audit, and now I have a title, a topic, and a pile of reading at tall as a house! I also have a questionnaire I composed to gather the data and now need to design a spreadsheet to put it all into. In some ways a database might be more useful, but I;m not sure how to extract data from that and this needs to be more about the data than the process. It is essentially a 'paper' audit with no actual changes to practice in the unit until we reach some conclusions, but could involve going back through 720 patient records (or 300 patient notes) hopefully though this might be nice and easy and come in a spreadsheet itself from the labs.

Although I did my ssm in ICU before christmas, thatw a s abig city ICU with tertiary centres, and high level professorial input. This next one is a much smaller unit, with more paper based recrds, so it may be something of a change. For a start not all the staff wear scrubs....and I might not get to either.

The exodus continues

well in the past 2 years, since I left my lace of work the first time, the rats have been leaving the sinking..... sorry other colleagues have been leaving. First Stefan, then Gstar, Chris, Sarah, and now Butcher Boy. This leaves the tattooed drinker and little Miss P holding the fort, although they have now been joined by some new people...

So Friday night became Butcher Boy's second leaving night...he is maintaining a watching brief by getting his flatmate to work there though.

Time to recharge the batteries

My car is ill.... on Friday a red light came on indicating that I had ignition problems... I managed to keep it going until Saturday morning, as the lights got dimmer and dimmer, and then managed to coast it to the local Ford dealer on Saturday who said they would look at it and get back to me, but most likely the link from alternator to engine had gone - apparently this is common in Ka's. However the Ka has also done almost 12000 miles since I got it in August (see here) and needs a serrvice.. so this little episode may not be cheap........

Ethics in psychiatry

Wow well Psych turned out to get a bit busier towards the end than I had anticipated. I ended up completing all 4 case sin the final week, and had to adapt one of them to fit the demands of the Uni ethics case.

However, like many others I worry that I have done the ethics case wrong. The guidance notes seemed to refer to patient safety stuff and us seeing staff doing things wrong and how this could affect the patients prognosis and outcome.

Mine focuses more on the issues to do with a 17yr old with prodromal posychoses and self-harm but who contninues to abuse large quantities of illicit drugs, and for whom pharmacotherpay is bcoming elss effective as he takes more drugs to achieve the high he wanted.

I linked this to teh situation of heart disease, and the fact that medics and GPS continue to give statins and anti-hypertensives een though people continue to eat badly, exercise poorly, and drink and smoke mroe. Thus I reasoned the illicit drugs were only different ebcause they were illegal, but that such isuses shuould not affect patient care.

However from the otehr side, if the pharmaco-therapy is meaning that the patient is taking more illicit drugs (with no quality control sapling etc) then it puts him at greater risk of adverse side effects and making his psychiatric condition worse, so maybe in the interest of non-malifience we should cut back his treatment.

In the end I came to no clear view........but in my experience psychiatry was all about discussing the options and not coming to a decision......

Sorry for being away

Where did February go?

Mostly in a haze of youth group stuff, psychiatry at Uni - of which more later and sleeping - for some reason I am absolutely shattered this block!

generalness

This is lining up to be a nice quiet weekend. Yesterday was a bonus day off, when my supervisors signed me off from the ObGyn block on Thursday, and since they had no clinical activity on the Friday, i decided to have a study day, and i did a bit of the pre-work for a tutorial on Monday, and did the laundry and tidied the flat.

Today is a freezing morning, and we are promised some -5 ish frosts over the weekend which will be fun, so some time today i need to top up on screen wash and de-icer to make sure I can get through the weekend in the car. Today should have a leisurely feel - some shopping, gym, about it until late afternoon, when there is rugby to be won - we can't afford to lose the first match, because with Scotland playing Wales tomorrow, an english victory today would only spur the Welsh on, knowing that they was one team less in the contest for the Grand Slam.

Postal shenanigans

I live in an area covered by the XX1-4 delivery office. I'm expecting a parcel - too big for a letter box.
I was expecting a 'card' and then I;d have to go to the local delivery office - about 10 min walk away, which is open 7.30am-5pm 3 days a week, and 7.30am-12.30pm on the other 3.

But today I got my 'sorry we missed you card' asking me to go to the XX45 Delivery office in Ned-estate. And even then it is only open 8-12 each day! Seems ridiculous.

It is on my way to hospital (kind of, but I risk being late, and I need it asap. It seems stupid that they did not try to deliver it from my local Post Office. So I need to leave 30 minutes earlier, and may get there late!

Clank clank bang bang

What a way to be woken up at 6.31 on a Monday morning. A smattering of snow on the ground, and people building a crane outside your bedroom window (and yes, I am 4 floors up. It seems that the site opposite has now reached a stage when the 'new' building inside the 'old' facade is strong enough to allow the mecanno which has been holding the facade up since August 06, is being taken down - in a very different way, and with a much smaller crane than when it went up. Also, Uni prevents me sitting watching them all day....which was a fun way to revise for the year 2 resits.

This also means that the building is almost finished, meaning my road with return to 2 lanes each direction, allowing for 'off peak' (i.e. 6pm-8am) parking outside my front door once again. This will also later this year see the office block being available for a tenant, the 'upper floors' with their glass walls towards me potentially being occupied, and the ground floor shops, and restaurants opening. Except this is a recession, and a conversion of a similar building in Edinburgh about 2003 left them waiting 5 years for a tenant - and even then they only took one floor of the building.


OOOh this is post 401.

Cases...

One of my supervisors this block has an unusual way of approaching my case reports. Hew anted them in by week 3 and then sat me down went through them and pointed out some errors, but instead of them giving me the mark, he wants them re-written and handed in by mid next week. This gives me both an opportunity to correct those problems, a second chance to worry about introducing more, and a worrying situation of having to tidy up all my cases in one weekend!

Looks like this weekend will be more book based than last weekend.

In an interesting twist, the Med School, and med School Library are shut for most of the weekend (usually we have 24hr access) as the door swipe card machine is broken. A biut annoying for e, but the 5h years are only 2 weeks from finals and are les sthan pleased to have to use main library and their own textboks.

London

Well a fun weekend in London was had, with Pete, Anna, Jack, Ronnie, Rachel and Jack all being there for part or all the times of fun.












We all started off meeting up... well this was where the fun started. The agreed time was 2pm in 'Lord Moon of the Mall' on Whitehall, or "the wetherspoons near Trafalgar Square" as it was described to me. Despite getting up earliest, traveling furthest and being 20 minutes late, I was stll the first to arrive. Well we all traipsed in one at a time over about an hour, and sat chatting and drinking a bizarre cycle of coffee, juice and drinks. About 4 we decided to take a wander down to the embankment, and along to the South Bank to see the huge book fairs under the bridges. As we walked past Trafalgar Square, we saw a protest of some sort (I suspect gaza related).
The south bank was quite good fun, and we ended up in a small pub near Blackfriars Bridge which was warm, cosy and not too noisy, despite the football on the tv. It took us a while to realise it was cup (itv) and that Car meant Cardiff, nor Carlisle.

Then we headed off, and a few of us went back to Pete's and cooked up some tasty tea. This involved passing through London Bridge, obtaining my very own Oyster Card, and then a wander through the inner east end.

On sunday a more touristy day was planned, with 30 minutes stiuck on a hot tube due to signalling problems. We alighted at Kings Cross, had some tasty lunch, and then ehaded for a wander around Bloomsbury, the british Museum, Soho, the West End, finishing in Leicester Sqaure before I jumped the tube back to Euston for the train. On the way up Oxford St, after passing through Uniqlo, I saw this fantastic shop selling walking sticks and umbrella's. It still had half closing Wednesday and didn't open on Sundays!
For higher quality pics, just click through.

SSM(C) 2

I have another SSM / SSC coming up in March-April. After the fun of my last one at big city hospital in November, I am hoping to do the next one out at DepCat hospital. This one is looking to be an ICU Audit of some sort, and there will be two students doing it. The ICU there is much smaller so hopefully elss records to rake through!

Anyway the two of us students met last night, over coffee to plan our moves from here and brainstorm some ideas on what we could audit - any sugegstions? We have to meet the Consultant, plan the audit, sort out the practicalities, submit it to faculty, get a response to faculty from the consultant and have faculty approve it. All by next Friday.

A strange week

More on London later in the week when i catch up with myself.

Monday was a day of ante natal clinic and then Gynae theatre (of which more later). After this I got a text from Butcher Boy asking if I fancied a trip to Ayr that night as he needed to go there........given my main plans at that point were an evening off, I said I was free and my car was at his convenience if he bought me a Maccy D's....so I picked him up outsode his work at 7.

The roads down to Ayr was empty. just as we rolled round the Ayr bypass, he sugegsted Pizza instead.... so after getting down and him doing what he needed to, we went to get a Pizza Hut atke away.....after not really getting lunch (or breakfast), and late night sudnay, that pizza was good.... and the irony of eating a chicken pizza whilst watching Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall going on about animal welfare was not lost on me.

Tuesday was less fun though. After getting back from my placement to the West End, I had a pre-meeting about my next SSM (more later) and then found that the rear tail-lights were not working in my car..... after a 2hr wait for the AA man (or actually his subcontractor), they don't carry bulbsm, which is what the problem turned out to be. So he put the bulb from reversing light into tail lights so I could drive it yesterday, then I made it home for 10pm for the second day in a row!

Lundun

Slight break in proceedings this week due to Uni work, and tomorrow I'm away for the weekend.... to see friends in London.

Simple pleasure

Friday night: after Uni and stuff, a quiet pint or two in the pub with a few workmates from the past (G star, Butcher Boy and Little Miss P amongst others), chatting, joking and generally relaxing. The pub so quiet that we have to move from upstairs to downstairs as they are sending staff home early and shutting upstairs at 10pm.

Saturday morning : fresh cooked bacon in an oven cooked roll with brown sauce. Behind me the washing machine rumbles away on the third load of the day.

Perfect.

Shame that left the car in the West End, I need it tomorrow and its currently throwing it down and blowing a large gale.

Traveling, traveling, traveling far.....

The hospital where I am doing my Obs/Gyn is about 25 miles away from home. And has 3 main roads into the town. All 3 currently have roadworks, meaning that it can take 30 minutes, or 45 minutes to get to the hospital in the morning. The antenatal clinics are about another 10-15 miles beyond the hospital, which makes getting there lots of fun as well. There is a bus, but it takes 1hour plus a 25 minute walk. May as well just resign myself to a 320 mile weekly commute!

Straightforward cases and ethics!

I'm finding Obs/Gyn a strange block - Obstetrics seems to be a mix of sonography, surgery, medicine, and being a referral service for Midwives. A lot of the consultant work involves initial assessment by sonographer / midwife and then just a quick consultation by SpR / Consultant. This makes trying to talk to people for long enough to get a case study quite difficult.

One day I spent time on the Maternity suite / labour wards, initially shadowing my consultant, but later the Spr & Fy2 who seemed to be doing most of the work. There was less of the competition and agro between Midwives and Medical staff than i had been lead to believe existed, and also less resentment to my presence as a Medical student.

Two cases filled a large part of our day - a young woman who had a C Section and also had HELLP which meant her blood wasn't clotting correctly. She developed a haematoma under the would and was taken back to theatre to have it removed. As they undid the staples, there was a strange sound, and a plume of blood sprayed towards me as I jumped backwards to escape the pool of red arterial blood on the floor. The clot was removed, and the bleeding vessels were sealed. It was an interesting case, because she was at that moment receiving lost of blood products and transfusions, and the situation had fairly rapidly escalated from a post op patient who was a bit sick, to a surgical emergency. Interesting to see, but not very mentally taxing.

The second case left me thinking for a long time about ethics and my opinions. Itw as a patient who had gotten pregnant despite a contraceptive implant, and then decided to have a medical termination. The implant secrete progesterone (which IIRC both 'prevents' implantation to stop a pregnancy, but once one has started, maintains the placenta). The Medical termination pills cause blocking of progesterone receptors, causing the placenta to die and the uterine contents to be delivered following further medicine administration a couple of days later.

In this case the patient had passed the foetus into the vagina, and the placenta was coming out. My consultant used a speculum to open the vagina and said, "Look in there. see the hand and face...." I was quite unprepared for that to be what I saw. Medical termination sounds very sanitised and clean. The actuality is less nice, and quite traumatic on the mother.

This has contributed to a growing ethical dilemma for me over the issues of terminations and abortions, which I may explore in a future post once I get time to read more on the subject.

What is it?

Sadly this rather nice looking spacecraft/firework / whatever is actually some kind of rocket or missile or bomb over Gaza. I don't know which way it is going, or who will be the victims of it, but it occasionally amazes me how something so pretty can be so lethal.

edit: The BBC website now captions it as "Israeli artillery shells explode over the Gaza Strip"

The day the earth stood still

My annual cinema visit was tonight...well I think it was last January when I last went to the cinema. I think we (that is me, little miss P and another of my former work colleagues) meant to go to a mind emptying joke fest (e.g. Bride Wars) or action film, but ended up at a thought provoking version of the Al Gore film....It's a good film, about an alien race who come to earth in 'globular balls' which look something like the planet earth...they have come to save the other species then destroy the humans to allow the planet to recover 'Earth is one of 5 planets in the cosmos suitable for supporting life, we cannot allow you to destroy it'.

The film however ends on a cliffhanger, with none of the 'modern' mechanical or electronic items on earth (from a watch upwards) working. The product placement for Microsoft vista also gets quite annoying, though the touchscreen desk looks quite fun. Mind Keanu Reeves is starting to look quite old........Speed was quite a few years ago....

Thought provoking.

I was listening to Radio 4's PM programme in the car on the way home today and they were talking about Leona Lewis writing her autobiography at the age of 23. they interviewed the author and commentator Matthew Parris, who made the interesting point that maybe we should all write down our views (not feelings) on the world, because we forgetso quickly what we once thought or accepted as normal.

He gave the example of how few of us can remember what we thought when 18, and whilst sat at traffic lights, I pondered on this. I know a lot of teenagers around 16-20, but I can't say that i can think like them anymore, or even visualise their hopes and dreams.

And when I think back to when I was 18, way back in 1999-2000, it is tinged with the actuality of what happened. The dreams of studying medicine and the reality of doing a Biology degreee, the dreams of what I could/would do, and with whom, and the reality which was so different.

It was not just the hopes, dreams, and opportunities that I had, but also the changes to me, to life, and to the world which I could not have forseen which have changed my thinking, changed the world and changed my life since that point - the friendships, relationships, deaths, opportunities, disappointments and such like.

Maybe this is a good frame of mind to start my bnext block, OBstetrics and Gynaecology, one half at least of which is about the hopes, dreams and opportunities , and a child who can be anything it wants to be..........oir it could be like the 'child' today jailed for culpible homicide at the high court, of whom the Judge said:

I accept that the very early years of your life, prior to your adoption, were emotionally traumatic; having been born in Corntonvale Prison to mother then addicted to heroin and a father who had himself died in police custody. He had apparently been physically abusive to you even although you must have been little more than a baby. It is hard to image a more deprived and tragic start to life.

However, it is equally clear that your adoptive parents tried very hard to compensate
for that early start by providing you with a comfortable lifestyle and the potential for a good education and future life.

Whatever the psychological reasons for it, you spurned their attempts to help you
and engaged in a life of substance, drug and alcohol abuse and, ultimately, crime.
This lifestyle culminated in the death of another young man at the start of his adult
life.

What must the views and opinions fo this young teenager be, and how alien to most of society must their thoughts be to do this, and yet, their hopes and dreams may be very similar to many other people - a partner, family, money, job, house.......I guess we can only hope that prison rehabilitates.

Do cashpoints get hungry?

Today a Clydesdale cash point ate my debit card because, according to my bank (HBOS) 'card services' department "The bank which operates that cashpoint was worried about the security of that cashpoint and to avoid a potential fraud it closed down and retained your card"

Ok.....except
1. Why not close the cashpoint before I started my transaction?
2. If there is a skimming device (and I didn't see anything which looked like one) why allow me to put the card in and enter my PIN before shutting down?

These are points I may be raising with HBOS and Clydesdale by letter. For once I even had sufficient funds in my account!

The cashpoint was in a Clydesdale bank wall..... thankfully my bank is now open Saturday's a mile away so I went there to get it sorted over the phone. still takes 7 days for a new card to come (odd given that Play.com can manage next day delivery), but they were able to give me cash based on photo ID and my having a credit card with the same bank.

Happy New Year!

As introductions to 2009 goes, I felt almost Gazanian... the fireworks from City Chambers appeared to be shelling my flat, and indeed on the TV pictures it looks like they were. I managed to be outside from half eleveen and was still frozen when I got back home, and yet sweating and needing Beechams... I think my Chjristmas Cold has returned.

As tonights headlining artistes finish on the main stage outside, I am watching QI under a duvet and waiting for the noise to finish so I can sleep. If this is what 2009 is like, I'm not entirely sure I liek it.

I am however looking forward to tomorrow, and if I had any similarly mad friends (and did not have a cold) I'd be up for doing the Loony Dook at South Queensferry! Havings aid that, I have no plans for tomorrow, and may end up just heading out to wander round the quiet of the city.

2008/9

Well 2009 is now a little over 6 hours away and in common with my general state this year I made no plans for tonight and now end up with no actual evening as such. Most of my friends are quite apathetic for new year this year, with a large focus on 'staying in'; 'doing nothing'; 'got no money'; and 'meh'; when I surveyed them.

I have the car so could go to one of the gatherings I know are happening, but that involves going all the way down in Newcastle, or Reading, both of which are a long way. and would cost lots of patrol. I have my House series 3 from Christmas, a warm flat, lots of tea and wine, and a huge pile of ironing, so it could be that I have an interesting evening, unless I get a better offer by text soon. I also have a large street party and concert outside, which if I open the window I can hear perfectly, and should I want to, I could go to with the 2 free 'inconvenience' tickets I get from the organisers.

Looking ahead, 2009 should be a good year:- my last holiday as a student, elective, and SSM, my Child Health block and for the first time in (at least) 12 years......a summer with no exams!

Looking back 2008 was a year of some highs (passing 3rd year, my ICU SSM, my block at seaside hospital - including chicken sewing and fireworks, passing driving test, getting a Car, my Sister's wedding) and lows (death of close friends, death of grandfather).

I liked 2008, it was a good year, but I am looking forward to 2009 so much more.

Random photos

I was in the West End of Glasgow yesterday and took some unusual pictures......

Icicles!

It was quite cold yesterday!

Any ideas?

Does anyone know what this thing on top of a post box is for?

Ann On A Mouse

Faculty have sent out an email this week reminding us of the need to remove all identifying patient information from case reports when we hand them in. They have then requested that we do not use initials either.

This causes minor issues in referring to the cases with educational supervisors, and also with supervisors checking the patient details to ensure that we have got the interpretation of investigations correct.

It would also seem to me that 3 blocks into the year is maybe a little late to tell us!

Busy weeks

The past fortnight have been quite manic so far and seem to have one ongoing pattern...in fact most of this ICU block has focussed around dying. It is a common thing, given that 33% of all ICU admissions die in ICU and 50% before leaving hospital. Also this month has been the one where I had to write a Palliative Care case, and work on a Palliative Care plan for the patient.

As you will have seen from past blog posts, the perceived unfairness of who dies has been something I have been thinking about a fair bit.

Also mixed in with all this has been a variety of random non-Uni stuff, tech for a CMF conference weekend away (where end of life issues, euthenasia, and assisted suicide was one of the main discussion topics - some interesting views and opinions); Origin events in Princes St Gardens - where I kept warm by handing out flyers and shaking an orange bucket; and in St Cuthberts in Edinburgh last weekeend. Then this Monday I was at the launch of a CD recorded at a concert we did in the sumemr, and on Friday is another gig, in Grangemouth. So I''m so looking forward to Saturday for a long lie!

A change of scene

With one thing and another, I haven't really been home in daylight since well....October, and noticed this morning that the new 'roof extension' to the building opposite seems to be well underway with structural floors and supports in place and the outer skin being put in place. This is to be covered in glass apparently.