Big Green Dinosaur

Life as a Resident: New Title, New Rotation, New Location

2012-01-29T20:38:00.000+11:00

Yep, I'm officially a Resident Medical Officer! I survived my internship and now one year older and hopefully wiser, I get different rotations and a pay rise (serious WOOT on the last one, junior doctors get paid okay but not as well as people seem to think...)

My new rotation is Addiction Medicine, and I'm based in a treatment clinic NOT in the hospital! Yep, two months out of the hospital environment. It's the first time that the clinic has ever had a resident so there's a lot of me getting used to them and them figuring out what the heck to do with me.

After a year of variable and sometimes long hours... two months of a 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday job. Yes, you read correctly. No weekday overtime until 11pm, and no weekend shifts for two whole months!!! Life is going to be hard to get used to when I go back at the end of term!

So in Addiction Medicine I have clinics both morning and afternoon, reviewing people who are getting treatment for substance addictions of all types. My first morning in the methadone clinic was a real eye-opener. Seeing someone in acute opiate withdrawal is quite disturbing.

This year I have to figure out what it is I want to do with my medical career. To be honest I have no idea and will most likely do a senior resident year just so I have a little more time to decide (also I want to try out anaesthetics and I didn't get a rotation in it this year). Mr Slippers has his heart set on becoming a surgeon... that's definitely not my cup of tea!

The other extremely nice thing about my schedule this term is that Mr Slippers and I can spend more weekends together, since only one of us (him!) is doing weekend shifts. Let me tell you, two people working weekends at two separate hospitals makes coordinating time off together quite tricky sometimes!

On Friday I'm having a get together at my house. There'll be six of us from medical school, and since we haven't been able to catch up since midway through internship, I'm sure there will be lots to discuss!

Goodbye 2011...

2011-12-31T18:19:00.000+11:00

It's happened again... the end of the year has crept up on me and I'm surprised by how fast 365 days can go by. Lots of blogs do it I know, but I'm going to do the ubiquitous summary post, and I'm amazed at how much has happened this year.

♥ JANUARY ♥

I saw in 2011 with my parents and brother in Rasa Ria, Malaysia. I made a New Year's Resolution to try something new on the first of each month after going parasailing on New Year's Day. Unfortunately I must confess I didn't end up keeping this resolution :S

♥ FEBRUARY ♥

I spent February getting used to my new job as a doctor and balancing working with socialising. Happily I still see my friends from medical school and we get together for a meal every now and again.

♥ MARCH ♥

I dyed my hair for the first time ever. I really enjoyed having the red foils, but they were just too much maintenance in the end. This wasn't the most exciting thing that happened this month though: Mr Slippers and I started dating XD...

♥ APRIL ♥

I didn't post much in April... probably because I was deep into my six months doing general surgery. I learned very quickly that it was NOT what I wanted to do for the rest of my life!

Incidentally, I'm wearing this dress for dinner tonight with Mr Slippers and his parents :)

♥ MAY ♥

Another month of writing very little, mostly due to work.

♥ JUNE and JULY ♥

Not even any photos, and almost no blogging. I have to confess now I was going through a very rough patch at work, and blogging took a back seat to life. Apologies. I'd also like to say here thank you to Mr Slippers for being there for me :)

♥ AUGUST, SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER ♥

More absence from blog as I put my life in order and became acquainted with that scourge of healthcare work: night shifts!

♥ NOVEMBER ♥

Spending my birthday doing nights was seriously un-fun, but the day brought these beautiful roses from Mr Slippers. November also meant a trip to the Blue Mountains together, my annual leave, and my first trip alone to Singapore.

♥ DECEMBER ♥

Our family's first Christmas in Sydney and my first with Mr Slippers. The most perfect day in which I got thoroughly spoiled and we all ate too much of my mum's excellent cooking. Baked ham has already been requested for Christmas 2012!

A Very Merry Christmas!

2011-12-26T18:45:00.000+11:00

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas! I definitely did!

I had the week off leading up to Christmas due to doing a week of night shifts. We had Christmas Day dinner at my mum and dad's house on the day. There were six of us: Mum, Dad, my brother, his girlfriend, myself and Mr Slippers (he wasn't working either :D).

It was a veeery long meal! The BGDino family likes to eat XD. In six (yes, six!) hours we got through:

Lobster with mayonnaise and rocket salad
Roast ham with three kinds of vegetables
Chocolate cake
Cherries
Cheese
Mince pies
Christmas pudding with custard
Chocolates

All washed down with champagne and dessert wine...

Aside from all that, we also exchanged presents and pulled Christmas crackers, and did a lot of talking and laughing and taking of photos.

The Christmas table was my responsibility this year, here's what it looked like:

What did I get for Christmas? Well, I'm a very lucky girl and my boyfriend and family have spoilt me rotten this year:
♥ Stationery for letter writing (Mum and Dad, Mr Slippers)
♥ Voucher for a manicure (my brother's girlfriend, who noticed that I like having my nails painted when I'm not working in surgery or emergency)
♥ $ (thanks Mum and Dad ;D)
♥ A metre of Japanese kimono fabric (from my brother, only he would know that I'd love something like that)
♥ Japanese book on craft projects (from my brother, he knows me well)
♥ KINDLE!!! (Mr Slippers, who managed to keep it a secret from me for a month * ♥ you*)

This morning I slept in, and then Mr Slippers made me breakfast:

Pancakes! Made from scratch! (I told you I'm being very spoilt!)

Tomorrow I plan on checking out the post Christmas sales, to see if I can buy a pair of sandals (mine are falling apart after Christmas shopping and Singapore!) and of course a cover for my precious new Kindle (incidentally Amazon 1 click purchasing is proving to be very dangerous!!!)

Back to work on Wednesday, although I only have to work 2 days before getting more time off for New Year's XD

How was your Christmas? Did you have a good day?

Being Productive During My Week Off

2011-12-21T14:04:00.000+11:00

So as I mentioned in my previous post I finished a week of nights at 8:30am on Monday. Since then I have (in no particular order):

1. (half) Reset my body clock back to normal. (Woke up at 4AM this morning. Body seemed to think it had had enough sleep.)

2. Cleaned my fridge out of old food and gotten rid of all the boxes from parcel deliveries over the past week

3. Picked up the last parcel waiting for me at the post office

4. Visited my parents to see how they're going

5. Gone to Ikea (and gotten lost on the way there...)

6. Finished wrapping all my Christmas presents

7. Had the electrician come by to install a circuit for my airconditioner

8. Had the installer come to install the airconditioner

9. Cleaned up after the air conditioning installation

10. Had coffee with a friend from high school who I hadn't seen since 2008 (!)

11. Dropped off some snacks at the hospital

12. Picked up a New Year's Eve gift for Mr Slippers' parents (we're having Christmas Day lunch with my parents and New Years Eve dinner with his)

13. Checked that all the Christmas table decorations are ready

14. Bought groceries for the next week

15. Put petrol in the car.

Most of these are very mundane everyday tasks but it just goes to show how far behind I get on household stuff when I'm on night shifts! I'm going to have to learn to do better since in the future I might be mixing night shifts with looking after a family!!! I can only just about look after myself!!! :S

Before the end of the week I'd like to:

1. Tidy up my apartment

2. Vacuum and dust my apartment

3. Launder all my bedsheets

4. Do the laundry (clothes)

5. Pick up a Christmas cake for a friend that my dad made at the hospital (long story short he's having long term treatment at the moment, I don't really want to go into details tbh)

6. Pick up chocolates for Christmas Day lunch

7. Get my nails done

8. Write a New Years letter to Mr Slippers :)

If I get all that done by Friday I will be very happy. 4 more sleeps till Christmas!!!

Life as an Intern: More Night Shifts

2011-12-19T09:35:00.000+11:00

It's 9:30am and I finished my second week of night shifts an hour ago. It wasn't as bad this time around, for one thing I didn't do 8 in a row, instead just the usual 7, and I knew what to expect second time round.

Now I have a week off (conveniently over Christmas) and then I'll go back to work with 4 weeks of Geriatrics to round off my internship. This week is all about sleeping, changing my body clock back to normal, and getting ready for Christmas. Since I had annual leave before last week, I've done a lot of Christmas crafting: an advent calendar for Mr Slippers, miniature Christmas stockings and decorations for the Christmas lunch table, buying and wrapping presents for everyone... I even got myself a tiny Christmas tree from Daiso (which just opened in Sydney... yay!) which sits on my coffee table.

I looove Daiso. It's such a dangerous shop for me... lots of crafting items and knicknacks, cute stationery etc; etc;... and everything is $2.80 which makes it even more tempting... I bought a lot of my Christmas crafting supplies from there, and a couple of advent calendar fillers.

6 days till Christmas... my first with Mr Slippers. He told me he's already bought my Christmas present. I've been unsuccessfully trying to gather hints about what it might be... I wonder what it is?

Snapshots

2011-11-16T21:10:00.000+11:00

Just a few photos to share...

This is what plastering class looks like...

Daylight at the end of night shift number 8 of 8...

And this is what Mr Slippers gave me for my birthday :D

Life as an Intern: Time Off

2011-11-12T22:28:00.000+11:00

After surviving eight night shifts in a row, I'm now on annual leave! :D Five weeks of not being at work XD

I actually ended up with laryngitis on my second last night and spent all of this past week sick, but luckily I didn't feel too unwell so I could enjoy my week away.

Mr Slippers and I went to the Blue Mountains for a couple of days last week. I'm sorry there aren't any photos, in my post-nights daze I forgot to pack a camera :S We stayed in Blackheath in a little guesthouse which was very pretty (and served an extremely good English breakfast!) We did all the usual touristy things: Scenic World (and going on the railway which I remember vaguely from when I was six years old but was VERY much steeper than I remembered!!!), Jenolan Caves (we saw the Imperial and Chifley caves), Echo Point and Govett's Leap lookouts, and looking around Leura (and buying the odd present or two from the gift shops).

I had a bit of a scare yesterday on our way back home. Something I ate at lunch disagreed with me and I got the most intense abdominal pain I've ever had. In trying to walk from the car to Mr Slippers' apartment (about 5 metres) I had 3 vasovagal syncopal episodes. It was scary - it's never happened to me before, and even though I'm a doctor I was scared. Luckily Mr Slippers was there. I'm ok though, except I lost my glasses on the pavement somewhere when I hit the ground and we couldn't find them anywhere. Now I'm wearing contact lenses until my new glasses are ready... doh >.<

What else do I have planned? Well, I'm going to Singapore next week. This week I plan to get stuck into my latest craft project: making an Advent calendar for Mr Slippers. I'll try to remember to take some photos of the process :P

Life as an Intern: Today it is my birthday...

2011-11-03T06:39:00.000+11:00

...and I'm halfway through a set of eight night shifts :S

I HATE ward night shifts. There's only two residents and one registrar for the whole hospital. That means I'm covering more than 200 patients between 11pm and 8:30am when the day teams return. My pager is my new worst enemy. This is seriously unfun. Or maybe it's just because it's 6:30am and I'm seriously cheesed off and wanting to go home...

It's not all bad though. I get 5 weeks off after this hellish week is over. Mr Slippers and I will be going away together. And I'll be off to Singapore in a couple of weeks XD.

Anyway that's all for now. I have someone who's tachycardic and febrile to go and review :(.

Two Perfect Days

2011-10-19T22:07:00.000+11:00

I worked Saturday and Sunday and believe me, was I glad to have Monday and Tuesday off!

Mr Slippers came over on Monday afternoon. We went to the Night Noodle Markets in Hyde Park. There were dozens of stalls selling food from many many Asian countries (although I'm not sure the gozleme and mini pancake stalls are really authentically Asian!!!). Luckily it didn't rain, I'd been watching the weather forecast anxiously all week. We had dim sum to start with, then roti canai and chicken baked in banana leaves, then roast duck pancakes and Vietnamese rice paper rolls. Kir Royale (sparkling wine with black raspberry liqueur) and sticky rice dumpling (mango for him, custard for me) to finish. Both of us were very very full after that!

Tuesday morning we slept in, then we went to Mr Slippers's mum's house for lunch. She made handmade wontons and they were sooooo tasty... the nicest wontons I've ever had! After lunch he and I went for a walk in the Botanical Gardens and around to Mrs Macquarie's Chair. The weather and the view were both beautiful. We cooked Mexican food for dinner later that night. I wished I didn't have to go to work the next morning... but someone made me breakfast while I was getting dressed :D

Life as an Intern: Night Shift

2011-10-13T22:54:00.000+11:00

I just finished my second set of Emergency night shifts. They run from 11pm until 9am the following morning and you do a set of 3 or 4 once or twice a term. I found my first set (of 3) really challenging, but the second time around (4 shifts) was slightly more bearable, probably because I knew what to expect.

Depending on what day of the week it is, the ED can be either very calm or a complete zoo when you get there in the evening. Monday night (my last one) was especially crazy: we had the usual Mad Monday rush and we had hardly any beds in the hospital so we had trouble moving people out of ED and upstairs. At 11pm we had six ambulances lined up outside the doors and god knows how many people in the waiting room.

Can I just say, it's called the EMERGENCY department for a reason. A sore throat of 3 days with no other symptoms, or a sore shoulder which you've had for six weeks, is NOT a reason to come to the ED, and certainly not late at night!!! Extra negative bonus points go to the guy who presented at 3AM with food poisoning after eating pasta with cream sauce which he was pretty sure was off from the first bite... but he ate the rest of the dish anyway!!! What can I say, you can't cure stupid.

Everyone has different strategies for coping with night shifts in terms of sleeping, and I needed a bit of experimenting to figure out something that worked for me. One of the hardest things for me is that I have trouble sleeping when it's light... not a good combination with night shifts. So, I wear sunglasses on the way home from work so that the sunlight doesn't wake me up too much. When I get home I hop straight in the shower then go to bed. I sleep from about 10am until 2pm then go back to sleep until about 5pm. Then I usually get up and have something substantial to eat, then go back to sleep at about 7pm and get up at 10pm before starting work. Other people I know stay up until about midday then try to sleep right through until 9 or 10pm, others go straight to bed and wake up at 7-8pm and stay awake until work. It's whatever works for you basically.

Managing food... again it's finding something that works for you. I usually eat something light just before starting work, like a piece of fruit, then have some toast or a sandwich at about 4:30am at work. I have breakfast at about 7am at work if it's not too busy because then I don't have to eat when I get home. Other people I know eat breakfast food just before starting work and dinner food when they get home in the morning. Other people do the reverse.

What's the ED like in the early hours of the morning? Well, if we're lucky it's pretty calm and there's hardly anyone to be seen, and all the patients in the ED are sleeping. All the medical and nursing staff congregate at the bridge (a raised section in the middle of the ED where all our computers and phones are) and snack. People usually get the munchies at about 1am and we take it in turns to bring food in: fruit, crackers, dip, biscuits, chips, lollies... etc;. You'll do anything to stay awake and that includes eating :P Sometimes I think the patients must get annoyed at us: they're not well, they're trying to sleep, they've only eaten hospital food sometimes, and we're all awake eating and talking...

Caffeine is your friend on night shift. I usually drink anywhere between 1 and 3 cans of Pepsi Max in a night shift, and at least 2 or 3 cups of tea. I don't drink any caffeine after about 6am so that I can get to sleep when I get home.

It's Been A Very Long Time I Know

2011-09-26T20:08:00.001+10:00

I guess you might have been wondering where on earth I got to. Since my last post quite a lot has happened.

I finished my surgical rotation at the end of August. It was definitely the most challenging term I did. The hours were longer. The patients were more complicated. The patient turnover was higher. I'll be honest and say that I didn't quite make it in one piece, it was very difficult and I definitely got burned out. But the term also had its rewarding moments, like when one of my patients gave me a big hug and a thank you present when she left hospital, or learning to suture in operating theatre. I also went to the hospital ball with all the other doctors and had a fantastic time.

After surgery was finished I started working in Emergency, and that's where I am now. The things I like about the term are the fact that you are at work for exactly 10 hours, you work more or less at your own pace, and there is lots of senior support. The things I don't like are shift work, the fact that there's always more work to do no matter how efficient you are, and not being able to predict what comes through the door. I did my first set of nights (3 shifts) two weeks ago and while it was very scary and EXTREMELY tiring (seriously, humans aren't designed to be working at 3am) I know that I can cope with it. Although, you do get some strange people coming through, like the lady who told me at 5:30am on my last shift that she was possessed by evil spirits and one of them was in her back passage...

What else... I've bought an electric piano which now sits in my living room. It has headphones so I can jam away at all hours of the day or night and it's been very therapeutic. I'm enjoying relearning my old pieces and learning new ones.

Mr Slippers has walked into my life. He's a doctor at another hospital, we went to medical school together. I've mentioned him on this blog before actually: his previous aliases are Someone Special and The Extracorporeal Manifestation Of My Conscience. We've been together for 6 months now. I have never been so happy :D

Big Catch-Up Post: June and July New Year's Resolutions, and Other Stuff

2011-07-03T19:01:00.000+10:00

Arrrgh! Time is really just getting away from me this rotation!

For June 1st I started making a dress. It was a painful process, especially since after I'd cut out all the pieces I discovered my sewing machine got broken in the move to my house.

Laying out the material and cutting out the pattern.

Hand sewing. Freaking painful

The finished product, photo taken during one of those try-on-different-things-to-make-new-outfits sessions, hence the huge pile of clothes on the bed!

July the 1st I was at work late, so it was a bit of a struggle to come up with something. I decided on another craft based project and this time it was to make something from a craft tutorial on a blog (I know it's hard to believe but I haven't done this). I decided to make Violet LeBeaux's tea wallet. Her original tutorial is here.

Green peppermint tea for a green tea wallet!

I added a ribbon tie closure :)

Also, last weekend someone brought me these beautiful roses...

Aren't I lucky? :)

Life as an Intern: Long Days

2011-06-15T19:27:00.000+10:00

Long days are a part of being a doctor, that much everybody knows. The part that I didn't realise before starting this job was just how mentally draining it is.

My normal shifts on upper GI surgery are from 7:00am to 5:00pm Monday to Friday, so 10 hours a day. I also have roughly one overtime shift per week this term, and I worked one of them last night. So yesterday I was on duty from 7:00am to 11:00pm, which is exactly 16 hours. Our contract states that we have to have a minimum of 8 hours off site between shifts, so I was just barely meeting this requirement. I calculated that in the 48 hours of yesterday and today, I was at work for 25 of them (my registrar let me go home at 4:00pm today because we were having a non-busy day and he knew I'd worked late the night before).

I always find the evening after a 15/16 hour weekday it's best if I just unwind and go to bed early to make up for the sleep I didn't get the night before. So tonight is all about housework, TV and chilling on the couch, and going to bed between 9 and 10pm.

On the very plus side because we had a long weekend (and for once I wasn't working!) I only have 2 more days until the weekend :D

One thing that happened last night really pissed me off. The overtime shift officially begins at 5:00pm, which is when the wards are to start calling the overtime staff for jobs. Before then, the overtime staff have their responsibilities on their day jobs still to do. I got paged by a nurse at the stroke unit at 4:50pm, and when I answered, this is what I got:

Me: Hi, this is BGDino, you paged?
Nurse: Hi this is stroke unit. You need to rechart some meds.
Me: *trying to stay non-angry* Is it that urgent? I'll be coming to do a round soon, can it wait till then?
Nurse: Oh, and also, the patient in bed 1 is short of breath.
Me: *gritting teeth* Are they otherwise stable? How are their observations? (blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturations, temperature)
Nurse: They're fine.
Me: I'll review them when I get a chance. Thank you.

Now this whole exchange pissed me off for several reasons.
1. I'm not on duty for overtime until 5:00pm, and the day team should still be on, therefore it is rude to page me, especially for a job the day team should have taken care of before they left.
2. Recharting medications is not something urgent that you couldn't have waited for me to do when I came on my rounds when I started duty.
3. The part about the patient being short of breath is infinitely more important than the med chart, and that's the first thing you should have told me.
4. You didn't give me any more information other than the patient is short of breath, how do you expect me to categorise how urgently I need to see this patient?

Le sigh. On the upside, payday tomorrow!

New Term and New Apologies

2011-06-06T17:21:00.000+10:00

Gahhh! The last few weeks of last term were so busy that I haven't had a chance to post anything since my last apology!!!

Last Friday I finished up with Surgical Oncology. I was supposed to go to the end of term party that night but by 5:30pm (and the end of a fairly horrible clinic) I was too tired and sick to go. I had a very quiet Friday night and then slept most of Saturday, for which I was on call (and luckily no one called me in).

During the day all the residents on our ward gave the nursing staff cake and chocolate to say thank you. And in return some of the nurses had made a little Chinese oyster pail box containing M and Ms and a chocolate cupcake, and a card for each of us! So nice :)

My new job is upper GI surgery. It's much much busier than surgical oncology, but you do have a resident to help out (which is a complete novelty for me, I've never done a job with more than one RMO per term). To be honest the 7:00am starts are starting to wear thin :S I'm working overtime tonight so I'll be here until 11pm. Which makes a 16 hour day. Ouch. To anyone reading this who wants to be a doctor, are you sure it's a good idea? :P

Someone decided to give me an easy introduction into this term though, we only have 12 patients and usually we have double or even triple that! So maybe medicine karma is looking after me a little...

The blog posts that I still have to do (and haven't done):
May Edition New Year's Resolution
June Edition New Year's Resolution

Bit of a fail, huh? If you don't hear from me in the next week or so, please accept my apologies, it's because I got slammed at work... :S

Sorry I've Been Neglecting You...

2011-05-23T21:39:00.000+10:00

... I keep meaning to blog about the May edition of my New Year's Resolution but never succeed in sitting down to the computer!

So what have I been up to?

My fellow has been away for all of last week and will be this week, so it's just my registrar and myself. Oh, my registrar passed his final surgical exams, so he'll be a fellow next year! We did pretty well through most of the week except for Friday just gone, when he was called to emergency theatre to do a laparotomy and I got left in surgical clinic by myself. (I should point out that being in clinic by yourself is not in the scope of what an intern is expected to do!) I saw all our postoperative patients and discharged them from the clinic, and there were quite a few phone calls made to the emergency theatre that went "Hi, this is BGDino the surgical oncology intern, is the surgical registrar still scrubbed in? Yes? How long is he likely to stay scrubbed?" At this point I would like to thank all my patients for bearing with me, and to my registrar who came down at 5:00pm after a long difficult case and sorted out the things I couldn't manage.

I had an excellent weekend just gone, I very much enjoy my time off work. Saturday morning I went to my German class with my friend S, and then afterwards I met a certain Someone in the city. We had coffee, then we walked over to Walsh Bay and listened to a talk at the Sydney Writers' Festival given by four authors of crime fiction about where they set their novels and why. One of the authors, Shamini Flint, was really funny and engaging and I'm quite keen on getting hold of her Inspector Singh series. I'm really glad I went: it's not something I would have though to do myself, so many thanks to my certain Someone for suggesting it! :) Then we walked over to Darling Harbour and he took me to a very nice Italian restaurant for dinner :D And then we went back to my place and watched the second episode of Sherlock: The Blind Banker. Second series is coming out in September I hear! Wooo!

Sunday morning I slept in late, then decided to randomly take the bus into the city for a wander around. I bought some food and ate it sitting on a bench in the sun in Hyde Park. Afterwards I went home and curled up on the couch with a mug of tea and Alison Weir's book The Captive Queen, which is about Eleanor of Aquitaine. It wasn't as interesting a book as I'd hoped, sadly. The next book on my list is Anne O'Brien's The Virgin Widow which is about Anne Neville, the wife of King Richard III. (Can you tell I'm going through an English royalty historical fiction phase at the moment?!)

Today was a pretty quiet day at work, for which I was immensely thankful as it was definitely a feeling of Mondayitis when I got out of bed this morning. Tomorrow is a non operating theatre day for me, and I have a protected lunch hour in the form of intern teaching. And then in the evening I'm teaching myself: I run through emergency medicine viva questions with the 6th year students.

10 things: Random Moments Where I Really Felt Alive

2011-05-16T22:28:00.000+10:00

I must apologise for the lack of blog post-age recently. I haven't really gotten into a good routine with this surgical rotation.

This week I present 10 random moments that made me really feel alive from the last few weeks.

1. When a certain Someone told me they loved me for the first time... :)

2. When I stood at the pedestrian crossing and saw a fifty-something year old man wearing a knitted Mr Blobby jumper

3. When I watched the Axis of Awesome 4 chord song video and laughed myself stupid

4. When I said farewell to the patient that I've been taking care of for over a month, because she finally got well enough to leave hospital

5. When I decided on the spur of the moment on Sunday to take the bus into the city for a wander around... just because I could

6. When I picked up my cello for the first time in months and played

7. When I put on the dress I made for the May edition of my New Year's Resolution... wearing something I'd made with my own hands...

8. When my boss did my mid-term evaluation and said I was doing a good job

9. When I spent Friday night at the pub with the other doctors and my medical student, drinking beer and just enjoying ourselves

10. When I kissed a certain Someone for the very first time... :)

Outfit Post: Just Another Day at Work

2011-05-11T20:40:00.000+10:00

A basic, not-really-thinking-about-it sort of work outfit.

♥ Top: Target
♥ Pants: Target
♥ Shoes: Diana Ferrari

Life as an Intern: Halfway Through Term 2

2011-04-29T10:24:00.000+10:00

Today I'm officially halfway through my second term. It's going alright. I feel I have a better handle on all the things I'm supposed to do. We haven't been too busy at all, but next week is going to be interesting because most of the team is away at a conference and my boss is covering the other consultants who'll be away.

I'm still firmly decided that general surgery isn't the right career for me. I looked at my current boss's job, and compared it to my previous boss's job, and I'd pick my previous boss's job any day for sure. If I never set foot in operating theatre again I won't be upset.

First Year Buddy is currently doing what I'll move to next term (Upper GI) and he's told me that if I already don't really enjoy what I'm doing now, I'm going to hate my life next term. I went to the JMO office to see if I could swap out of Upper GI (since I've completely decided against it, why would I do 6 months general surgery?) and I have to meet with the Director of Prevocational Training (i.e. director of interns) to talk about what I'm worried about and what I want to do with my career.

I'm in two minds. If I stick with the Upper GI job for next term, chances are I'm going to hate it. But it will also mean I'll be in a non-shiftwork rotation and I'll get to stay in Sydney. And I don't want the Director and the JMO office thinking I'm being a princess about doing a job that I don't really want to do.

I don't know. Maybe I just worry too much about everything in general.

Mid term assessment today. Hope the fellow is satisfied with the job I'm doing.

Outfit Post: Dresses

2011-04-17T16:20:00.000+10:00

It's been ages since I did one of these!

Outfit #1: For a very special dinner :)

♥ Dress: Jacqui E
♥ Cardigan: Esprit (last year, swapped out after the photo for a coat!)
♥ Shoes: from Singapore last year
♥ Bracelet: gift from my dad
♥ Coat (not pictured): Myer Miss Shop (last year)

♥ Earrings: gift from my mum

♥ Hair close up: went for it with the curling iron!

Outfit #2: Saturday night in at my place

♥ Dress: Kmart (found in the clearance sales for $5 would you believe it!)
♥ Cardigan: Esprit (last year, same as the previous outfit!)
♥ Leggings: Next from Singapore (last year)

♥ Charm bracelet: gift from my great grandmother when I was 8 years old
♥ Floral bracelet: Moorish gold work, gift from my parents on a family holiday to Spain 9 years ago

Life as an Intern: A Mixed Sort of a Day

2011-04-14T13:40:00.000+10:00

A quick rundown of today so far:

Operations: 1
We did an open repair of a massive inguinoscrotal hernia this morning. 2.5 hours from start to finish and believe me it was the biggest hernia I've ever seen. I was 2nd assist, which translates into "random person scrubbed in who occasionally holds stuff when asked".

Patients: 2
One lady who's day 8 post laparotomy for a bowel obstruction, and the patient who we operated on this morning.

Meals eaten: 3 (1 is pending)
Breakfast in the cafe near operating theatres after our ward round, and a lunch run to the cafe in the children's hospital. Afternoon tea (leftover banana bread from breakfast) is in my scrubs top pocket.

Jobs to do: 4
Order bloods for my patients tomorrow
Check that my patients have enough medications charted for the weekend
Read up on the history of a patient for a presentation my team is doing in 2 weeks time
Look for literature on thyroid cancer for same presentation

I'm typing this in the residents' common room. It's unnaturally slow on my team at the moment because two of the consultants are on leave.

Today has been pretty good in summary. Except for the fact that I'm allergic to something in the air at the moment and none of the wards that I work on seem to stock antihistamines :S Pharmacy run after work methinks.

Anyway I better get on with my 4 jobs. There's only 3 hours and 20 minutes of work left for the day!

New Year's Resolution 2011: April Edition

2011-04-10T20:00:00.000+10:00

Hello again! I'm finally getting around to posting up the April edition of my New Year's Resolution. I was really unorganised when April 1st rolled around, my brother graduated that day so I only had the afternoon to do something and not having any plans, this is what eventuated:

Mystical pachinko machine

I played pachinko. I wasn't planning to: I stumbled across an arcade in Chinatown with all these machines and I figured, I would've tried it if I was in Japan, so...

Mystifying game controls

I should've realised that there wouldn't be any English instructions! So I just tried not to lose all the little metal balls by spinning the ball release thingy at the bottom right of the photo above. Obviously I failed.

Also, believe it or not, I've never had a temporary tattoo so I got to scratch that one off my list too...

Spray gun

Looks like this:

Yes, it's a dinosaur naturally!

Apparently it will last about 2 weeks. I've had it for over a week now and it's only just starting to fade. And no, I wouldn't get a real one :P

So what else is happening right now? I'm working a lot (surgery is MUCH longer hours!), I've decided not to be a surgeon after all, and someone special has walked into my life, and he brought me these yesterday:

Life as an Intern: Revelations and Brain Explosions

2011-04-06T18:37:00.000+10:00

So I'm doing surgery right now. And on Sunday night I had an epiphany.

Surgery is very cool and very awesome and I love going to theatre. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing it. And I'm not prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. My heart doesn't ache when I'm not doing surgery.

Unfortunately when I was scrubbing up with my boss this afternoon I didn't engage my brain to mouth filter and what happened was the following conversation:

Boss: So what are you going to do when you grow up?
Me: Not this.
Boss: Really? *laughs* So which surgeon put you off?

And later while operating:

Boss: *finishes suturing the skin* Doesn't watching that make you want to do surgery?
Me: Um, no...

I found out later that my boss told one of the other surgical teams that his new resident was very honest!

Morals of the story:
1. I'm not going to be a surgeon
2. I need a brain-mouth filter check up
3. I'm lucky that my boss has a very good sense of humour.

Stepping Up

2011-03-28T10:00:00.000+11:00

Last week, I got to work at my usual time of 8:30am and was sitting in front of a computer going through blood test results when one of the nurses came to tell me that my patient's blood pressure was 89/50 and they were going to make a PACE call.

PACE stands for Patient with Acute Condition for Escalation and is a type of emergency call. If someone's observations deviate from an acceptable level (blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate) the medical team must review the patient within 30 minutes.

I've been to more PACE calls than I can count, and they're not really that urgent (since you have up to 30 minutes to respond) and I walked down to the end of the ward where my patient was thinking I'd check the BP again and ask the nurses to get the patient to drink a couple of glasses of water and elevate his feet (which usually fixes most low BPs that aren't due to say, bleeding out).

So I draw back the curtains to find my patient and he's very quiet. Too quiet. In fact, he's almost unresponsive. To get him to open his eyes I have to do sternal rubbing.

This isn't a simple case of low blood pressure anymore.

I start by checking his airway: thank goodness, he's breathing on his own and keeping his own windpipe open. I then listen to his chest, check the position of his windpipe in his throat and ask the nurses to give him lots of oxygen through a mask. I'm thinking tension pneumothorax (air in the lung cavity) because yesterday my registrar drained some fluid from this man's lungs using a needle. Luckily he doesn't have one.

The next thing I do is call for a nurse to bring me an IV cannula set up so I can get some lines in. In the meantime I'm checking this man's pulse which is very, very faint. By this time the nurse in charge of the ward has arrived and she wants to know if I want an ECG. It's an excellent thought and one I'd forgotten. As she turns to leave I call out that I'd like a blood sugar level too.

In the meantime the IV setup has arrived and I start 2 small IV lines, one in each hand. It's not fantastic because ideally we'd like 2 large lines but this is all I can get. The blood sugar level is back and it's 1.4. That's more than dangerous. And explains why this man in unresponsive. By this point there's another senior nurse on hand and I ask her to set up an infusion of 50% glucose solution and to push it through quickly.

Later, when it's all over, one of the nurses will tell me that I seemed very calm in all this. But at that very moment I'm calm on the outside and screaming for my registrar in panic on the inside.

The glucose is running in and we still have a very faint pulse. One of the other registrars has arrived to help me and I breathe a sigh of relief. Five minutes later my own registrar arrives and we correct the patient's blood pressure with IV fluids (he had gone down to 70/40 during all this).

Meanwhile the glucose has taken effect and my patient is waking up. Waking up sufficiently that he's looking like he'll yank out his IV lines accidentally and so while my registrar reviews him I secure his IV lines with crepe bandages.

When it's all over and he's stable and I'm writing in the notes it really hits me how out of my depth I felt. I was so close to forgetting about checking the blood sugar level and if I hadn't remembered (and I don't even know what triggered me to remember and ask) he could have been hypoglycaemic for another 15 minutes. Both registrars tell me I did well and that the feeling of internal panic will go away as I get more experienced. I find the nurses (there were 4 or 5 in the end) who were helping and thank them for their assistance, especially the two senior ones whose presence stopped me panicking completely.

That was the difference between medical school and being a doctor. In medical school, it doesn't matter if you forget something, or you panic and think of things out of order. It sounds so obvious but being a doctor means actually doing it, and knowing that there are consequences if you get it wrong. And believe me, the first time you have to step up, it's freaking scary.

Life as an Intern: End of Term and You Wouldn't Freaking Believe It...

2011-03-26T16:20:00.000+11:00

... after all that, I'm doing Surgical Oncology again. Everyone involved agreed, but the JMO office didn't approve the swap. I also heard a lot of interesting things from some of the other residents about how what I was told about the surgical oncology consultant wanting the current resident to stay may not have been entirely true and that I may have been given an economical version of the truth... but at the end of the day it's all he said she said and I'm still doing the job. I may need to read up on mastectomy, thyroidectomy and hernia repair tomorrow.

In other news, I finished my Geriatrics term and had a successful end of term assessment with my boss, who said that I was doing above average for a first term intern and that the only thing I needed to do was ask more questions. We had a big gathering for lunch at a local Thai place with all the consultants, registrars and JMOs (the bosses bought us all lunch :D) to say farewell. And on Friday my registrar insisted on taking me out to lunch as well. I'll miss him... he's taught me a lot and he was really friendly and if I ever needed help he always either answered the phone or came up to the ward.

There was lots of chocolate and cake on the ward yesterday as all the JMOs brought food to say goodbye and thank you to the ward staff. At the end of the day I said farewells to all the people I've worked with but it's really only temporary because I'll still cover that ward during my overtime shifts! I also got given hugs from the ward clerk and occupational therapist :)

The only sad part was that my last official duty as a Geriatrics intern was to pronounce and certify the death of one of my patients.

In the evening there was a big end of term party organised by the RMO association. We joined forces with three other hospitals and had a really good time (and enormous bar tab) at Kit and Kaboodle in Kings Cross. (Yes, doctors do like to party.)

To finish I'd like to share this really awesome video:

Life as an Intern: Switcheroo

2011-03-22T16:55:00.000+11:00

In my last blog post I told you how I was going to take the Surgical Oncology job next week. Well, that's changed again.

The Surgical Oncology registrar is taking exams so his position will be filled by a series of relieving registrars. The current resident on that team was originally supposed to move to Neurosurgery (where I was originally supposed to go). She's really keen on surgical oncology, she's applying for the program and starting a research project with that team, and has since found out that she's not actually needed by the neurosurgeons (who will accept either an intern or a resident). The surgical oncology consultant supervising wants her to stay on with their team since she'll know all the patients and the job (and somebody needs to if the registrars are only temporary). He was prepared to take me since it was thought that she was needed at neurosurgery.

The resident came to see me today to see if I'd be willing to swap back. I agreed. There are several reasons for this, and why I'm not fighting to keep the surgical oncology job:

First and foremost, I'm not prepared to work for a boss who would rather have someone else doing the job. Also, I think there are situations where you have to stand up and fight your ground, but 2nd term of internship with another general surgical job the following term is not the right time to do it. I know there are people who will think I've just passed up a great opportunity to advance my prospects for a career in surgery and I'm being too passive, but I don't see how insisting that I move to surgical oncology when I know that the consultant wants someone else to do the job does anything for my position. In summary, I really didn't have a leg to stand on. And I can always apply for it next year (though it's not guaranteed I'll get it, and I have to accept that fact).

The way I see it, I won't be following a very motivated and successful resident into a job which the boss wants her to do and not me, I won't be doing my first surgical term alone (neurosurgery has 2 interns who work together), and I've got extra credit with the Junior Medical Officers Unit for being prepared to be flexible. (And I should also point out I can't complain about what they've given me: 2nd preference medical term, 2nd preference surgical term, annual leave in the term I requested, and no rural secondment).

Sigh. I was all psyched up to do surgical oncology, and now I have to psych myself up for neurosurgery.

Must think of the glass as being half full!

Life as an Intern: Change of Plans

2011-03-20T20:08:00.000+11:00

I was originally down to do Neurosurgery next term but there's been a change of plans: I'm now going to do the Surgical Oncology job.

Surgical Oncology was my first preference but I pretty much wrote off any chance of getting it. It's accredited as both an intern and resident jon but is traditionally done by a resident or senior resident. The resident originally rostered for it has resigned as he matched to a surgical job in America. As there are more interns than residents and neurosurgery actually had an extra intern, they thought it would be better to move an intern over (which happened to be me). The consultant supervising has agreed to have an intern and the resident is going to work the first two weeks with me to hold my hand and make sure I don't do anything stupid.

Obviously I'm really happy... but nervous too. The supervising consultant is on the board for selecting for the surgery training program. If I do a good job I may well be remembered well if I decide to apply for general surgery. But if I screw up I'm pretty much slamming the door shut on a career in surgery.

And I still get to keep my Upper GI job the following term, so I'll be doing 6 months of general surgery in a row.

Only one week of Geriatrics (including my end of term assessment) and then it's onwards to surgery... please wish me luck, I'll need it!!!

The Spot Food and Film Festival

2011-03-13T21:22:00.000+11:00

The Spot Food and Film Festival in Randwick was held today from 1pm to 8pm and promised food stalls... so I went to check it out.

Lovely sunshine, and the gozleme stall :)

I got there about 1:30pm and already the streets of The Spot were crowded with hundreds of people enjoying a hot sunny day and plenty of food on offering. Many of the Spot restaurants were out in force with stalls, while others had their doors open and special promotions on their food and drink.

Elysium's stall: their spit roast rolls seemed very popular

I had fresh lemonade and gozleme for lunch, sitting on the pavement along with lots of other people (my spot was outside the Post Office, in the shade). The ice cream truck was doing a brisk trade, as well as the Gelatissimo mobile van.

My favourite Thai place :)

To escape the heat I went to the Ritz and saw the film Conviction. It wasn't bad, but a little bit slow meaning that it didn't pass my "looking at my watch" test.

The guys from El Bulli and much, much paella...

By the time I got out of the movie it was about 5pm and so I decided on an early dinner of nachos with macaroons from the Sweet Spot Patisserie stall to round it off...

Shaded seating was much needed

I'd definitely stop by again next year, it was a really fun afternoon out and there's plenty to choose from food wise!

Guinness World Records Certified Largest Hamburger by the people at Ambrosia Cafe!

Life as an Intern: Accumulated Days Off

2011-03-11T12:33:00.000+11:00

Today is Friday and I have the day off. Yes that's right, a long weekend for me!

I'm sure some of you are wondering about the title of this post: Accumulated Day Off. Otherwise known as an ADO, it's basically a part of our contract as Medical Officers. We work half an hour of each eight hour day for no pay. In return, we get a day off once a month. This is usually a Friday. On a day like this, the hospital functions on a skeleton staff similar to the weekend (so five junior doctors to cover the wards, with medical and surgical registrar cover). This is *supposedly* to save the hospital money. The doctors who work on the ADO get what would have been their day off to take as they please during the year. Which can be difficult in practice as your team has to agree to let you off for the day.

Last month I was rostered to work on the Saturday after the Friday ADO, hence splitting up a three day long weekend and making that shift extremely difficult to swap out of. That's why I'm so happy about this weekend, since I have all 3 days off!

So what am I doing with all this free time? Well, this morning was spent mostly in running errands and having breakfast out (normally breakfast is something eaten on the walk to work). I'm meeting up with friends from medical school tonight. Tomorrow I may go shopping in the city, although to be honest my pay packet this fortnight wasn't as well padded since I hadn't done any rostered overtime... and then a lazy Sunday to round it all off!

Context Sensitive

2011-03-05T16:26:00.000+11:00

I had this rather surreal (and could be worrying if you didn't know the context) conversation while out with my friend S today, in a Spotlight store of all places.

*BGDino's phone rings*

BGDino: Hello?

Registrar: Hi BGDino, random question. That lady, is she dead?

BGDino: Mrs XYZ? Yes, I'm pretty sure she died. Why?

Registrar: Oh, the boss wanted to know and I thought I'd better check. Thanks and sorry for spoiling your weekend. See you Monday.

BGDino: Bye.

*click*

I seriously didn't think anything of it until S pointed out that anyone who heard my end of the conversation and didn't know I was a doctor might have thoughts of calling the police!

New Year's Resolution 2011: March Edition

2011-03-01T19:30:00.000+11:00

So today is March 1st, and that means another installment of my New Year's Resolution. I chose to colour my hair (yes, believe it or not, I've never coloured my hair, it's been its natural colour for 24 years).

The colours don't show up very well I know, I seriously struggled with lighting for half an hour and this was the best shot I got. So I had a semi-permanent dye to all of my hair with a combination of violet and red, and then half a head of foils in a colour called ruby red. In real life the red colour is more vibrant and obvious.

If I get a better lighting situation this week I'll attempt another photo.

So goodbye February and summer, and hello to March and autumn!

Food Review: Java Indonesian Restaurant

2011-02-22T19:10:00.000+11:00

A couple of weeks ago a group of us from medical school met up and had dinner at Java Indonesian Restaurant. It's on Avoca Street in Randwick and it isn't very big, but it's usually busy.

I had what I think is Nasi Rames but I might be mistaken. Basically you get a portion of rice, a piece of fried chicken, some beef rendang, half a chilli egg, some gado gado (vegetables with peanut sauce) with a giant prawn cracker on top. I highly recommend this, you get a bit of everything and there's plenty to make you full.

My dinner

Two of my friends had the beef rendang which I'm told was very tasty. The other two had fried chicken and vegetable curry. I'm told that the chicken does NOT taste like KFC.

Ayam goreng: fried chicken

Beef rendang: tastes much better than it looks

I haven't eaten much Indonesian food at all so I can't comment on authenticity, but if you want an inexpensive casual meal that's a change from Thai or Italian, you couldn't go much wrong with this place.

Java Indonesian Restaurant
151 Avoca St Randwick
9398 6990

Life as an Intern: Being On Call

2011-02-20T11:46:00.000+11:00

I was on call yesterday. That means I have to be available to fill in for any intern shift from 0800 Saturday to 0800 Sunday. The rules: I have to be within a reasonable distance (1 hour traveling time) of the hospital, be contactable 24/7, and be sober.

On weekends the two shifts are overtime 0800-2300 and night 1100-0800. So unless something happens to someone mid shift (which pretty much never happens), if I haven't been called at 8am or 11pm I'm pretty safe.

So what did I do? Well, I went to visit my mum and dad who have just moved into a new apartment. They're about a 30 minute drive from the hospital so there was no problem staying. We went to yum cha and then Mum and I did a bit of shopping and I bought a dress (I really need to stop doing that, I've bought a new dress almost every weekend since I started working!)

That evening we went out to dinner. By 11pm I hadn't been called. Yay for not being called in! As an aside, you get paid $20 for being on call for a day.

I'm not on call again for another couple of weeks I think. Most of my overtime for the term is done, I think there's only 2 weeknight overtimes and a couple of on calls left.

Hope you all had a good weekend! I'm set for a lazy Sunday today: family lunch at the pub and then back to my place for a doona evening with Sunday night TV and tea!

Life as an Intern: Weekend Rostered Overtime Saturday O4 Edition

2011-02-14T00:16:00.000+11:00

I worked Saturday. I did the O4 shift, which I've never done before. The O4 can be either an intern or resident and covers the following wards:

Cardiology
Cardiothoracic surgery (ward patients)
General Rehabilitation
Acute Spinal
Spinal Rehabilitation
Operating Theatre Recovery
Perioperative (closed on weekends)

It was a LONG 15 hours. I've done plenty of O1 and O2 shifts so I'm quite comfortable with them but seriously I am not a fan of O4.

My morning started with reviewing half a dozen ECGs. Now I know that I'm supposed to be able to do this since I did manage to get myself a medical degree, but believe me it's a lot harder when your interpretation actually matters... At this point I'd like to shout out a thanks to the EMOC who I messaged feeling a bit overwhelmed and who replied with a message of moral support and a good tip of using a piece of paper to check for ST elevation (sign of a heart attack on ECGs).

I spent about six hours on the cardiology ward and that's a conservative estimate. There was just one job after another! I try to visit each ward 2-3 times on a weekend shift but I didn't get down to general rehab until 10pm only to find I had to review a patient and order him more albumin. I asked the nurses to page me when the last infusion was done and although they paged constantly about many other less important jobs during the day they forgot this one. And the patient was cranky with me when I went to see him. A really crappy way to finish off a shift.

I also failed 3 cannula resides which sucked. Although admittedly all 3 were difficult: a man with autonomic dysreflexia in one arm which I couldn't use who was also extremely anxious, a lady in the spinal ward with very few veins and lots of peripheral oedema, and a paraplegic man who only wanted me to use the top of his arms as he needed his joints and arm backs unhindered so he could actually mobilise. And I actually don't remember how many cannulas I got in... It seems only the ones I miss register.

Oh and the advanced practice nurse gave me a really good cannulation tip. I was taught in 4th year to go in at a 30-45 degree angle. That's wrong, go as flat as you can. It might seem self explanatory to you but I didn't know, this way you have much less chance of going out the other side of the vein.

Well that's enough for tonight. Work tomorrow with a consultant round. And I'm doing the O1 shift on Tuesday!

10 Things: Things I Say A Lot At Work

2011-02-11T23:39:00.000+11:00

1. Hi, this is BGDino, the Geries [geriatrics] intern, you paged?

2. I'm just going to call the med reg.

3. Yes I'm Dr X's intern, what's up?

4. You must be Patient XYZ's wife/husband/son/daughter/brother/sister/other relation, the nurses said you wanted to talk?

5. Are you looking after bed X?

6. Who's got bed X's med chart/notes?

7. Hello Dr XYZ, my name's BGDino and I'm an intern at ABC Hospital looking after your patient Mr Q.

8. I'm going off the ward, page if you need me.

9. Hi, is that the med reg? Can I run a patient past you?

10. Hello Switch, can you please give me the number for...?

Adventures in Food: Coconut Water

2011-02-09T22:33:00.000+11:00

I got given this bottle of coconut water as part of a welcome gift when I signed up for medical indemnity cover.

It has a really funny aftertaste with the first sip. To me, it tastes nothing like those young green coconuts you get with the top chopped off and a straw put in like when you're on holiday. I think it tastes like an old brown coconut which has been cut open to make coconut milk and cream, and you're drinking the leftover fluid.

Another intern tried some and she thinks it tastes nothing like "real" coconut water.

It claims that it's an isotonic drink and will keep your electrolytes balanced, and that if you drink it regularly you'll have smooth, soft skin.

I wouldn't be able to drink it regularly even if you gave it to me for free for the rest of my life.

I certainly wouldn't pay money for it.

Curled Side Ponytail Hairstyle

2011-02-05T09:40:00.001+11:00

Things you need

♥ Foam curlers

♥ Hairspray

♥ Bobby pins

♥ Hair elastic in a colour that matches your hair

♥ Large hair accessory

1. Wash and dry your hair, then set in foam curlers. Take them out when your hair is curled (I'm not going to detail this since it varies from person to person and I do it differently depending on how much time I have).

Not a good look, I know.

2. This is important: Do NOT separate the curls with your fingers. Just turn your head upside down and shake.

Also not a good look...

3. Gently gather the curls into a low side ponytail just under one ear. Fasten loosely but securely with the hair elastic.

4. Take a 1 inch section of hair and wind it around and over the hair elastic and pin the ends in place to hide.

5. Add your large hair accessory, finish with hairspray.

New Year's Resolution 2011: February Edition

2011-02-03T18:58:00.000+11:00

I was working yesterday so the February "something new" for my Resolution couldn't be too big or complicated.

I've made lots of cakes and cupcakes over the years but as a general rule I don't use premade cake mixes for anything. So I decided that my "something new" for February would be to make a Betty Crocker cake.

I have to admit I was disappointed when I opened the box. One plastic bag of flour/cocoa/sugar, 12 cupcake cases and a foil pouch of icing. I had to add from my own stores 2/3 cup of water, 2 eggs and 60g of melted butter. To be honest I figured that making cupcakes from scratch wasn't really that much more effort.

So I melted my butter and then added everything into a big mixing bowl. It looked pretty sad.

The instructions on the box said to beat the mixture for 30 seconds on low speed and 2 minutes on medium speed. Duly noted and carried out.

Then all I had to do was spoon the batter into the cases and pop them in an oven at 180C.

Once they were cooled I iced them with the premade icing from the foil packet. I have to say, there's not a lot of icing to go over 12 cupcakes!

To transport the cupcakes I put them back in the tin and covered them with Glad Wrap.

The doctors, nurses and allied health staff on the ward seemed to like the cupcakes. I actually didn't get to taste one... so the taste of Betty Crocker cake will remain a mystery for me.

Anyway, that's the February edition of New Year's Resolution completed! Wonder what I'll do for March...

Oh, and Happy Chinese New Year to everyone!

Poll Results

2011-02-02T16:05:00.000+11:00

Thanks to the people who voted in my poll! I have to admit the results were surprising. The kind of posts that you guys would like to see more of on Big Green Dinosaur is...

Life as an Intern

I will do my best to write more of these in that case!

Life as an Intern: Reality Check

2011-01-31T21:00:00.000+11:00

I got to work this morning in a pretty good mood thanks to iPhone music, sunshine and a pretty dress. The first thing that went wrong today was that the software that we all use to print patient lists and view and order blood tests wasn't working... heaven help a doctor without his rounds list!!!

Then the ward clerk came over to me with a pile of paperwork and two forms I've never had to fill out before.

One of my patients died this morning.

The first of the forms I had to fill out was a checklist to ensure that my patient's death was not a case for the coroner. The other was the death certificate.

My registrar came over and helped me to fill out the forms. Then I signed my name on the dotted line.

And that was it. This is the part of being a doctor that many people (including myself) do forget. We can't always make everyone better and send them home again. Sometimes, we can't save them and all we can do is watch them die and help to make it as comfortable and dignified as possible.

Perhaps some of you might think that I'm sad about this, but I'm not.

This gentleman was 98 years old, and had lived a full life, but was now at the end stage of dementia (which I think is one of the cruellest conditions). He died surrounded by his family, with dignity, and without suffering and pain.

May he rest in peace.

10 things: My Essentials for Surviving Internship

2011-01-29T22:19:00.000+11:00

1. Comfortable shoes (because you're on your feet a lot)

2. Easy Mac (quick and easy food that will do you for dinner at 11pm after overtime)

3. Micropore tape (because the one thing you can never find on the ward is tape)

4. Mobile phone (for calling your registrar when you don't know what to do, and for calling your fellow interns to see who's going down to the pub on Friday evening)

5. Portable snacks (e.g. cheese and crackers, fruit bars, for when you don't have time to eat a proper meal)

6. Tea (for relaxing when you're not working)

7. Spare pen (an intern must-have, since paperwork is most of your day job)

8. Caffeine of some description (self-explanatory)

9. Bandaids (for covering up the sore spots on your feet)

10. A sense of humour

Life as an Intern: A Normal Day on Geriatrics

2011-01-27T21:20:00.001+11:00

A normal day at work today. I got a new registrar at the beginning of the week. Unfortunately my brain was in serious slow motion gear after my 15 hour Australia Day overtime yesterday. I'm surprised my registrar (we'll call him the Happy Teacher, because he's the happiest registrar I've ever worked with, and he teaches me stuff all the time) didn't smack me upside the head.

Anyway the morning wasn't any different from a usual day where the Boss (consultant) isn't around. I got to the ward at about 8:30am and printed off our patient list. Since yesterday was a public holiday, I also checked and noted down the blood results. By this time Happy Teacher had arrived and we went to the "whiteboard" meeting which is where all the nurses, allied health staff (physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers, dieticians) and doctors get an update on each patient's progress and the things they need to get them ready for being discharged.

After the whiteboard meeting Happy Teacher and I did the ward round. Geriatrics at my hospital is very well staffed, there are three consultants who admit onto the acute ward and a registrar and resident/intern for each. Happy Teacher and I look after about 10 patients.

When the ward round is done, I get on with any paperwork and organising any extra tests that our patients need. Today one of our patients needed an arterial blood gas (ABG) to assess whether or not she qualified for home oxygen. I've done five of these as a student and failed to get a sample every time. Today Happy Teacher walked me through one and showed me a much better technique:

Most people will tell you that when doing an ABG, you feel for the pulse with your index finger and then put the needle in right beside it, with the needle at a 90 degree angle to the patient's wrist. Happy Teacher's technique is to feel for the pulse with your index AND middle finger, leaving a small space between. This way you can be sure you're right over the radial artery. Then put the needle in at a 45 degree angle to the wrist, in line with the artery. I did it his way and... Big Success :D

This afternoon was spent doing more paperwork and filling in prescriptions for the patients who are likely to be going home tomorrow. Later on Happy Teacher and I went through the day's blood results and ordered the tests for tomorrow morning (my registrar last week left this to me, but each registrar has their own system).

At 5pm, just before the day's work officially ends, one of our patients fell out of bed. We reviewed her and she was fine, just a bit sheepish and luckily nothing was broken or injured.

I walked off the ward at 5:15pm which is pretty good. Tomorrow the Boss will do a ward round in the morning. More importantly, tomorrow is Friday, which means the weekend, and I'm not working this time!!! XD

Life as an Intern: Weekend Rostered Overtime

2011-01-25T21:55:00.000+11:00

Last week I told you all about weekday rostered overtime. Last Sunday I worked weekend rostered overtime. This is a 15 hour shift from 8am to 11pm. I did the O1 shift so I covered the following wards:

Neurology/Neurosurgery
Orthopaedics
Plastics/ENT
Aged Care Rehabilitation
Justice Health (i.e. the prison ward)

It was BRUTAL. There was no other way to describe it. The wards I cover are on 4 different floors so I spent the day and night getting paged and running between them. Some of the problems I had to sort out included possible septicaemia, pneumonia, and seizures. The O1 intern also covers operating theatre during the shift, and I was called at about 7pm to assist with a laparoscopic appendicectomy (i.e. hold the camera). Scrubbing up for the first time in months felt good. It was the fastest hour of my day, actually.

After 11pm the on call for operating theatre is shared between the O1 intern and O5 resident. Luckily for me it was the O5's turn and I could go home knowing that I wouldn't be called back.

I can break down very easily the reasons why this first weekend overtime was so scary.

1. There is a LOT of work to be done. And because it's your first week, it will take you longer to do the work than the residents.

2. You don't know most of the patients. You have no idea about what their presentation and medical history is like, and you're relying on the patient's medical charts to fill in the blanks.

3. You haven't learned to stratify urgency. Now obviously if a Code Blue is called you know you have to drop everything and go, but what if you are called about 3 different patients who have 3 different problems you need to sort out? How do you know who needs to be seen first and who can wait? When you're new, it feels like everything is urgent.

4. You aren't used to making medical decisions. For the first half of the day I felt like I had to call the medical registrar to OK every single decision and judgement I made. As the day went on I felt like I was more able to determine what things were ok for me to decide and what things I needed help with.

And the other, more practical lessons that I learned:

1. It's okay to take a break to eat. Seriously. Otherwise your brain will stop working to the point that you don't know which ward you're actually on at that point in time (in all seriousness, by 5pm, having not eaten since 8am, I thought I was on the aged care ward when actually I was on neurology/neurological sciences).

2. Dinner is an essential. Even if you miss lunch, you must eat dinner. Eat anything! Otherwise you'll never get to 11pm in one piece. It also recharges you and gives you a second wind. I was positively dopey before I grabbed a sandwich for dinner. That food gave me an extra boost and got me through the rest of the evening.

3. Put a snack in your back pocket for just-in-case. I wish I'd known this on Sunday, it's something I only figured out yesterday. If you can't get away for lunch, the snack will tide you over.

4. Drink fluids.

5. Caffeine and sugar will get you by if you really don't have time to eat. I had Coke for lunch on Sunday. It wasn't fantastic, but it was all I had time for, and it kept me functional.

6. Stash rare supplies that you need but often can't find on the wards in your back pocket when you do find them. For me this is things like pink and blue cannulas, cannula bungs and Luer lock syringes. I hate putting in saline flushes without a Luer lock syringe, the tip pops out of the cannula bung and saline goes everywhere. Carrying a spare or two in my pocket saves me when I can't find one in a hurry on a ward. Same goes for the cannulas - you don't want to be trying to put a green 20 gauge cannula in a patient when the only place you find veins is in the back of their hand.

7. Wear comfortable shoes. You do a LOT of walking.

And finally, a piece of advice from the senior respiratory registrar who gave us a tutorial this afternoon on shortness of breath:

Never run to a code blue. By the time you get there, you'll be so out of breath that you won't be able to do/say anything useful.

Tomorrow is Australia Day, so for anyone Aussie who's reading this, I hope you have a great day off! I won't be, because I'm working O1 again tomorrow :'(

Life as an Intern: Day to Day Lessons

2011-01-19T22:33:00.000+11:00

Today started off on the wrong foot completely. I was a few minutes late so got paged on my way to the hospital. Then I went to see one of our patients who had spiked a fever and needed a cannula and blood cultures. She had NO VEINS whatsoever. I was still trying to figure out what I should do and my registrar showed up, probably because I was taking too long, and ended up doing the cannula.

Our consultant was running late so our ward round schedule got thrown off a bit and so we saw almost everyone twice in the end, once with the boss and once without. So we didn't finish our rounds until about 1:45pm. Managed to grab something to eat.

My registrar was off the ward from 3pm attending teaching sessions so I could only reach her by text message and not page unless it was urgent. I planned to spend the afternoon catching up on my paperwork but I kept getting interrupted and being handed a new patient for tomorrow. Then one of my patient's blood results came back and showed that the amount of potassium in her blood was too high. I started sorting that out and then went to the handover meeting at 4:30pm to tell the overtime staff about her situation.

At 4:50pm (10 minutes before I'm supposed to officially finish work) I was paged about a patient who had had increasingly swollen legs and difficulty passing urine all afternoon. I went up to his ward and spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out what the problem was. 3 text messages to my registrar and a phone call to the medical registrar later, I concluded that he was fluid overloaded but didn't have wet lungs (again, if you've been a doctor for awhile, please forgive me), and went downstairs to finish the discharge prescription for a patient going home tomorrow morning (which needed to be done today). I finally left the hospital at 6pm, so the health service got an hour of free work out of me today.

Today's lessons:

1. Even if it's an hour or two after you'd normally eat lunch, eat it anyway. You'll feel better.
2. You won't get paged about someone who's got a new medical issue until there's not enough time for you to sort it out without having to stay back, even if the patient's had that problem for hours already.
3. Days with consultant ward rounds are always busier than days without
4. It's much easier to trust your examination findings when you're a student and there are no consequences, then when you are a doctor and those findings determine your next steps
5. Junk food doesn't make you feel better at the end of a bad day (I confess I tried it today)
6. Your fellow interns are your rocks (thank you J for your second opinion on my fluid overloaded patient!)

No consultant round tomorrow. I've made a start on most of the paperwork that needs to be done by the end of the week. I really hope I can get out of work at 5:00pm tomorrow as there's housework to do and groceries to buy.

Life as an Intern: Weekday Rostered Overtime

2011-01-18T23:56:00.000+11:00

I just (i.e. half an hour ago) got home from my first overtime shift. In that time I've showered, dried my hair, devoured a bowl of Easy Mac with a glass of water and a handful of cherries, and checked Facebook, email, Google Reader and Twitter. Note of explanation: I live 5 minutes from the hospital.

As I mentioned in a previous post, weekday overtime runs from 5pm to 11pm. Because this is the first overtime shift for many interns, today we were paired up with another intern and also a resident "buddy" who was there to give advice, help out and generally make sure we weren't doing anything stupid. Tonight I was on the O2 shift, which meant I covered the Geriatrics and Acute Stroke Wards, and the Psychiatric General, Observation and Acute wards.

My overtime started off on the wrong foot when I was called to see a patient at about 4:00pm who had become unwell with a fever. Since the day teams hand over patients they are concerned about at 4:30pm this gave me 30 minutes to see the patient and start his management. 30 minutes might seem like an eternity to those of you reading who have been doctors for longer than me, but this is only my second day as an intern.

One very messy cannula, a phone call to my registrar and a septic workup later, I made it to handover.

The rest of evening was pretty uneventful until about 7:00pm when one of the patients on the Orthopedics ward crashed. This is called Code Blue and all the overtime doctors are paged and must attend. I was one floor down on the Geriatrics ward doing some paperwork when my pager went off so I ran up the stairs and onto the ward. Already there were the arrest team, ICU registrar and fellow and 2 medical registrars. The patient's heart restarted after more than 30 minutes of resuscitation and he's now in intensive care. We're not sure what his outcome is going to be.

After dinner the rest of the evening was unusually quiet. Your main job on overtime is to see any patients who become unwell during the evening and manage them until the night shift takes over. You also get called for things like IV fluids and medication charts that have run out and should have been done by the day team (it's extremely poor form as a day doctor to leave these jobs for the overtime doctors if you've had a quiet day). Since I'm on the Geriatrics team, I did those things during the day because I didn't want to be paged about them during tonight. (At this point I'd like to say THANK YOU to the other residents and interns on the Geriatrics team who did the same thing and made my evening so much quieter!)

I did one last round of the wards at 10:15pm. One of the patients on the Geriatrics ward had become very "chesty" according to the nurses. I reviewed him quickly and came to the conclusion that he was either fluid overloaded or had an upper respiratory tract infection (again if you've been a doctor for awhile, please have mercy). By this point it was 10:30pm and time to hand over to the night team (yes, another handover meeting) . They will review the patient and most probably give him some diuretics to take the fluid off his lungs.

Anyway I'm really quite tired and tomorrow I have a ward round with my consultant so I might be off to bed. I'm working weekend overtime on Sunday so you'll have a post about that at some point too.

Poll

2011-01-16T23:41:00.000+11:00

Less than 9 hours to go before I officially start work as a doctor!

I've added a poll to the top left hand side of the blog. I'd love for you to vote, so I can find out what you'd like to see more/less of on here. It will be open until the end of the month.

I had a very relaxing weekend. Friday night was drinks with all the doctors at the local pub. Saturday I went home and saw my parents, and made plans for a family holiday during my annual leave at the end of the year. More on that later :) Today I went out for lunch with my parents and in the afternoon I taught my mum how to use email on my Dell Netbook.

Tonight's mini craft project:

Finally got round to making a collar for little Smudge :)

I better organise a work outfit for tomorrow and go to bed!

Review: Yogi Bear

2011-01-13T23:11:00.000+11:00

Picture from the official movie website

Yogi Bear is a remake of the classic cartoon. With Dan Aykroyd as Yogi and Justin Timberlake as Boo Boo, the movie centres around Yogi's insistence that he is "smarter than the average bear", Ranger Smith's love of Jellystone Park, and the Mayor of the City's schemes to close down the park and sell it off to loggers, in order to raise money for his campaign running for Governor.

I didn't watch the original cartoon series so I didn't have many preconceptions about the movie beforehand (except the idea that pic-a-nic baskets would be involved, but that's another story). The movie is very clearly aimed at kids but there are a few moments thrown in which are designed to make the adults in the audience have a laugh as well.

I thought that considering this was an animated film, there were a couple of CGI sequences that were a bit clunky. Other than that, the story was pretty good, the jokes were actually funny, and with a running time of about an hour and a half it won't exhaust your interest.

Overall, I would recommend this movie if you want to release your inner five year old and indulge in a little bit of light hearted laughter.

And I'm thinking I'd like to have a pic-a-nic myself!

Life as an Intern: Working Hours

2011-01-11T17:58:00.000+11:00

Hello, I'm back again! I've had two days of orientation so far and received my rotations for the year. My 2011 looks like this:

Term 1: Geriatrics
Term 2: Neurosurgery
Term 3: Upper GI Surgery
Term 4: Emergency
Term 5: Relief

In terms of working hours, it looks like this. I work a standard 8.5 hour day, plus any unrostered overtime needed. The time I start and finish work and the amount of unrostered overtime I work varies between rotations, so for example I can expect longer hours in Neurosurgery than I might do in Geriatrics. But around 5 hours of unrostered overtime a week is pretty standard. Some of this I can claim pay for, some of it I can't.

In addition to my normal hours and unrostered overtime, I also work rostered overtime. This is from 4:30pm until 11:00pm on a weekday and from 8:00am to 11:00pm on a weekend. I have roughly 2 overtime shifts per fortnight, one weekday and one weekend. However my first week I'm working two weekday overtime shifts, and also on Australia Day the following week.

There's also the matter of being on call. I am on call for theatre once this term, which means that on that night I work a rostered overtime shift till 11pm, during which time I can be called into theatre if they need a spare pair of hands. But when I finish and go home, I'm still on call until the morning, so I can be asked to return to the hospital if there's a big emergency operation. (Luckily I live really close to the hospital.) There is also being on call for overtime and night duty. If you are on call you are so for 24 hours and can be called anytime to replace someone who cannot work.

It will be hard work and long hours but I knew I was getting into it, and a lot of how I manage will be down to learning time-management skills.

If you think that I'm going to be working a lot of hours, I should point out that the registrars work much more than we do. So basically, if you're looking for a job that has social-friendly hours, this one might not be the best fit!

... Wish me luck!

Sandakan

2011-01-04T19:55:00.000+11:00

To many people, Sandakan is associated with Australian POWs captured by the Japanese in World War Two.

I know it as my mum's hometown.

The last time I visited was 14 years ago, aged ten. I went back with my parents and brother the other day. Some things have changed, and some stayed the same.

The outskirts of Sandakan, in the rain, through the window of a taxi

Close up of some of the vegetation by the side of the road: there are coconut trees here and there, too

Sandakan is in Sabah, one of two states on the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. It has an official population of about 300,000 people, plus the thousands of illegal immigrants from the Philippines and other countries. It isn't as well developed as other parts of Malaysia: Sabah's economy is a lot less successful than that of other states.

In the evening we met up with some of my mum's family for dinner. I didn't photograph all the food but these two starters were interesting:

Two interesting starters: both completely unknown at first...

This one turned out to contain a mixture of mango and crab meat.

This one is best described as a sweet and sour sausage...

I noticed that the airport in Sandakan hasn't changed since I remember it in 1997. My dad says it hasn't since 1986!!!

Outside of Sandakan airport

Inside of Sandakan airport: the departure lounge. There are two gates: Malaysia Airlines uses Gate A, and Air Asia uses Gate B.

Tomorrow I'm flying to Hong Kong, my dad's hometown.

2011 and New Year's Resolutions

2011-01-02T03:10:00.000+11:00

Hello all! I hope you had a Happy New Year just as I did!

I'm in Malaysia with my family. 2011 started for us with watching the fireworks from our hotel balcony. I'm afraid all my photos turned out seriously dodgy due to lack of knowledge about light and exposures etc; so sorry about the quality!

New Year's Fireworks

I spent the day lazing by the pool with a good book. So far I've read The Red Queen by Phillipa Gregory, Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin (part of his Inspector Rebus series) and a "political thriller" called Protect and Defend by Richard North Patterson. I love reading, it's something I've always enjoyed since childhood and I didn't have enough time for it during medical school. Unfortunately I read really, really fast so books never seem to last long enough...

Anyway, on to my New Year's Resolution for 2011:

To try something new on the first day of each month.

So January's new experience: parasailing. And here's the photographic proof that I did it:

It was very very fun and also a bit scary when the parachute took you high above the water, but I'm so glad I did it!

The rest of the day was less adrenaline-filled. Lunch by the poolside, a pina colada...

... and nasi goreng with beef satay and prawn crackers, shared with my mum (who I also have to credit with the photo of me dangling from the parachute, she had to go onto the parasailing boat to take it, and she doesn't like boat rides!)

Lunch

Tomorrow I'm off to another part of Malaysia to see my mum's side of the family.

Skiing and all that

2010-12-27T06:09:00.000+11:00

Hello and I hope you all had a Merry Christmas with lots of fun, family and food!

At the moment I'm using the free internet at Zurich airport waiting for a flight to Hong Kong. I also keep getting my y and z keys mixed up because this keyboard has them switched places, so if there are any typos in this post, I'm sorrz.

I've spent the past 10 days having fantabulous fun skiing in Zermatt, after having first travelled for 38 hours from home in Sydney the morning of the day after graduation to the door of the hotel. We had some good snow and some bumpy snow, some awesome sunny weather and some never-mind-being-able-to-see-where-you're-going type of weather. I also have two massive, dark bruises, on the top of each leg, due to falling on hard surfaces and my general lack of coordination.

My flight for Hong Kong is tonight, we'll hopefully be catching up with some relatives there before going on to Malaysia to see my mum's side of the family. One thing that didn't go according to plan this holiday was that because of the bad weather in the UK my dad's parents weren't able to get over to Zermatt to join us for Christmas. It was very strange not having them there (first time in 24 years we haven't all been together) but at the end of the day there wasn't much that could be done and I was very glad that they were at home nice and warm in their own house with plenty of food and not stuck in Heathrow for days on end. My grandfather told me he managed to get some mince pies for Christmas Day! :)

Anyway that's all for my little update for now. Looking forward to more travels and to New Year's (and making a Resolution!)

Review: Sherlock - A Study in Pink

2010-12-15T23:17:00.000+11:00

Picture from the official BBC Sherlock website

I watched the first episode of the first series of the BBC's Sherlock, A Study in Pink, on the plane today. It is based on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle but set in modern times.

I was a little skeptical, but it completely won me over. Benedict Cumberbatch (Holmes) and Martin Freeman (Watson) play off each other really well, and I like how they introduced the characters of Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes.

A Study in Pink is clearly based on the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet. I thought this first episode was really entertaining and the hour and a half just flew by without me noticing.

I don't have anything much more to say at this point, except that I am putting this series on the very top of my DVD wish list, and considering I don't buy that many DVDs, that's saying something.

Graduated

2010-12-14T18:16:00.000+11:00

Well, I'm officially Dr. BGDino!

Bai Bai!

2010-12-13T16:39:00.000+11:00

Ahhh! Sorry about the recent lack of blog post-age, but I've been so busy getting ready for graduation (which is tomorrow!!!) and going overseas, that I haven't had time to come up with anything decent.

Tomorrow I have to pick up my gown at 8:00am, the graduation ceremony is at 10:00am. I'll finally become a doctor! Today we had a graduation brunch (sponsored by MDA National, one of the medical indemnity organisations) at the uni. The eggs benedict and champagne were very nice! Tonight one of my med school friends is having a farewell at the Lowenbrau Keller in the city (she's moving to Melbourne next year). So today is very busy all round.

I'm currently packing for my overseas trip, I always seem to fall into the trap of taking waaaay too much stuff. This time I've written a list which should hopefully mean that a) I haven't overpacked and b) I haven't forgotten anything.

I don't know if I'll be able to post while I'm away, but I'll be back to document the start of my life as a doctor in early January.

In case I'm not back before then: to everyone who's reading, thank you for reading, and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

xXx (soon to be Dr) BGDino

Silly in Singapore

2010-12-09T00:58:00.001+11:00

Just a quick post about some of the sillier things I saw in Singapore.

The laziest food in the world just got lazier.

ZOMG ZOMG Snoopy chips!!! Best. Packaging. Ever.

Okonomiyaki burger from MOS Burger. Epic Fail.

I feel I must elaborate on the okonomiyaki burger. Its main problem was that thinking battered miscellaneous vegetables with BBQ sauce and mayo on top is an okonomiyaki. I'm sorry. It isn't. The concept failed as a result.

The next one was found on the wall above a set of comfy couches in the Mandarin Gallery.

So in summary, no fun, then?

Best. Sign. Ever.

Just A Short Note

2010-12-05T15:55:00.000+11:00

to say Hello I'm back!

I had a fantastic time in Singapore, and did waaaay too much shopping, eating and drinking with my mum! Postings will follow I promise.

Right now I'm cleaning out my room at my mum and dad's house (they're thinking of downsizing soon). So far I've come across lots of things from school (all my high school homework diaries, an unopened packet of school tights, my Year 12 timetable, an awards folder, lots of photos...) and have filled two big garbage bags of stuff to get rid of.

Anyways, it's great to be back in Sydney, I'm just waiting for graduation now!

Until later!

Gone Away... Back Soon

2010-11-27T12:38:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow I'm off to Singapore with my mum, I'll be back at the end of next week.

Until then!

xXx BGDino

10 things: Happy Moments

2010-11-27T11:17:00.000+11:00

I should add the disclaimer that these aren't the only happy moments I've had recently, but the especially happy ones!

1. Getting all dressed up for the Graduation Ball

2. Being given a surprise graduation gift from a very special family friend. (FYI, it was a set of surgical grade stainless steel kitchen knives, and the instruction that I "don't use them for surgery!"

3. Having my last ever student rotation signed off

4. Getting my new haircut

5. Seeing my good friend (and housemate last year) at the airport when I went to pick her up, for the first time since before HER graduation last year

6. Sitting at the kitchen table in my parents' house with my mum and cups of tea and planning our trip to Singapore

7. Finishing my mum's Christmas present

8. Playing Big 2 with my med friends and winning a game for the first time without the EMOC leaning over my shoulder telling me which cards to play :P

9. Watching the fourth year students get through their end of year exam

10. Walking out of the clinical school building as a student for the very last time

Yes, that's right, I HAVE OFFICIALLY FINISHED MEDICAL SCHOOL :D

New Hair, Bad Photo

2010-11-24T21:39:00.000+11:00

Excuse the terrible webcam photo (and my lack of make-up). I've had about 4 inches cut off and it's had long layers cut in. My hair hasn't been this short in at least 2 years!

(Dino is hanging out in the background being his usual cool self.)

The End Is Nigh... and so are my holidays!

2010-11-24T15:16:00.000+11:00

Wallace, my graduation bear (a present from a good friend, and named after the UNSW Wallace Wurth School of Medicine...). He's wearing correct graduation colours for a medicine degree!

Well, it's pretty much over. I got signed off for my last ever student rotation on Monday, and barring any problems, I'm only two days away from officially finishing medical school. Only two days of PRINT clerkship stand between me and my freedom.

There's this funny end-of-term feeling at the clinical school right now, the final years are really the only ones left on campus. The fourth years finished their exams yesterday. I volunteered as an exam marshall, and when I saw them lining up to come into the exam area, I really felt like holding up a big sign that said, "DON'T PANIC! EVERYTHING WILL BE OK!" The fifth years are taking their biomedical sciences viva exam today and tomorrow. The junior students (first to third year) have been on holidays for at least two weeks already!

I'm so looking forward to holidays. One, it's been a really big (and stressful!) year and I'm seriously looking forward to some down time with family. And two, it's the last biggish break I'll have for awhile. So what are my plans?

Well, there's the rather mundane task of cleaning and rearranging my apartment, which I'm doing now (there are 48 stairs to my apartment and no lift, and I swear I've been up and down 5 times already today so far, and I'm not done yet!).

I'm off to Singapore with my mum on Sunday :D which I'm super crazy excited about (and so is she!). My graduation ceremony is December 14th, then the whole family is off to Europe (to see one side of the family) and Malaysia (to see the other).

To say I'm excited and can't wait for this week to end is perhaps the understatement of the century.

Two days to go!!! Yay!!! :D :D :D

Cooking with BGDino: Pancakes

2010-11-21T22:35:00.000+11:00

I made pancakes on Saturday night. Credit for this recipe is to Jamie Oliver, it's from his book Happy Days with the Naked Chef, and the best one for pancakes I've come across.

♥ Ingredients ♥
120g plain flour
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
3 large eggs
140ml milk
Pinch of caster sugar
Oil for frying

1. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.

2. Separate the eggs. Add the caster sugar to the eggwhites and whisk to firm peaks (I use an electric whisk!). Add the yolks to the flour, along with the milk, and mix to a smooth batter.

3. Use the biggest metal spoon you have to fold the egg whites into the batter. I take a spoonful of egg white and beat it into the batter first, before folding in the rest, it seems to make it easier.

4. Heat a non-stick pan on medium high heat and add a very thin film of oil. Add a spoonful of pancake batter and cook until it bubbles, then flip and cook the other side. Repeat until the bowl of batter is empty!

5. I usually put my pancakes in a baking tray covered with foil in the oven to keep them warm, or serve them to people as they come out of the pan.

6. Serve with whatever you like: I like bananas and melted chocolate, my parents tried chestnut jam and vanilla ice cream the other day and declared it a winner, and my grandfather loves his with apricot jam.

PS. You may notice there are blueberries in the bottom pancake in the picture. To add them, just sprinkle them on top of the pancake after you pour the batter in the pan. I like to poke them in with the edge of a spatula so they don't fall out. Also, I've found fresh berries work better than frozen because they don't fall out, burst or create so many stains... :)

Outfit Post: Graduation Ball :)

2010-11-18T11:21:00.000+11:00

♥ Dress: Hart's
♥ Shoes: Carvela (from London)
♥ Clutch: VS (gift from my parents, each bag has a unique pattern)
♥ Black chiffon wrap (not pictured): Hart's
♥ Necklace and earrings: Chomel (from Singapore)
♥ Ring: Esprit (gift for my 16th birthday from my mum)
♥ Hair and makeup: Me :P

I'm ready for my close up!

Hair detail shot

Food Face Off: McDonalds' Crispy Chicken Deluxe Versus McChicken Burger

2010-11-15T23:16:00.001+11:00

*EDIT: I must give credit to the Iron Stomach for all the photos!*

The other day (well, actually, very late at night) my housemate (we'll call him the Iron Stomach) and I came up with an idea to compare two of McDonalds' chicken burger products side by side in a comprehensive taste test.

Here is our report. We should also point out, we were not sponsored or encouraged by McDonalds in any way in this post, the burgers were paid for out of our own pockets.

On the first visual inspection, the McChicken looks a lot smaller, a lot sadder, and a lot less tasty. While the Deluxe is garnished with tomato, lettuce leaves and cheddar, the McChicken had a very meagre allowance of shredded lettuce.

After the scientific process of cutting the burgers in half we were able to do a preliminary analysis of structural integrity.

While a McChicken can be sliced in half with ease and remain structurally sound, the same cannot be said of the Deluxe, which has a propensity to tilt to one side like the Leaning Tower. It was also noted that a half-eaten McChicken can be replaced on a plate/in the box and remain intact while it is impossible to do the same with a Deluxe.

But the proof is in the tasting, you may say. Well, the Iron Stomach and I had half of each burger and here we present our findings.

Both the Iron Stomach and I found the taste of the chicken in the Deluxe burger to be inferior to that of the McChicken. To me it tasted like a KFC fillet but with none of the spices. I much preferred the slightly spicy taste of the McChicken patty.

The lettuce and mayo on the McChicken provided a better taste than the condiments on the Deluxe. The Iron Stomach thought the lettuce on the Deluxe was pretty poor quality and taste, and I have to agree. I felt the tomato went well with the burger but that the cheese was unnecessary.

I objected to the bread used for the Deluxe, preferring the standard McDonalds bun, but the Iron Stomach did not seem to mind the bread.

Overall, both he and I agree that the Deluxe is simply not tasty enough to justify the extra money. If you want a tasty chicken burger from McDonalds, we suggest you stick to the classic McChicken.

PS. We're also considering forwarding this review to McDonalds. What do you think?

An Apology

2010-11-08T18:45:00.000+11:00

I must apologise for not posting anything in the last couple of days, I'm working on a few things. Life is getting a little busy right now, so I'm going to take a short break for a week and hopefully come back with some new and interesting posts.

See you soon!

Happy Birthday

2010-11-03T01:05:00.002+11:00

... to Dino, the Industrial Strength Moral Support Dinosaur, who is 4 years old today!!!

Food Review: EnCasa Restaurant

2010-11-01T11:42:00.000+11:00

One of the best things about not having exams to study for is all the time you have free for socialising. On Saturday night 8 of us from med school went out for dinner at EnCasa Restaurant, near World Square in the city.

We ordered a selection of tapas, a margarita pizza (not authentic Spanish I know!) and some garlic bread. All of them were tasty, the octopus, chorizo and mushrooms were particularly good and we ended up ordering second portions of each. The prawns were not exactly value for money, there wasn't enough for one per person. You can order 1.25L jugs of sangria but we didn't as some on our table don't drink.

The restaurant is very busy on a Saturday night and booking is absolutely essential (it was full at 5:30pm). There's a good atmosphere and the service is prompt and efficient. I'd definitely go back, and maybe try the Tortilla Espanola (omelette with potato and onion) as it's a classic tapas dish, we didn't order it because I overlooked it on the menu! >.<

NB: I would like to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to my friend H who took all the photos, and has let me use them for this blog!

Mejillones a la Marinera: Black mussels in fresh tomato sauce with basil and chilli

Gambas Sevillanas: Peeled king prawns in spicy tomato salsa

Pulpo a la Plancha: Grilled fresh baby octopus

Chorizo a la Plancha: Grilled Spanish sausage

Albondigas: Beef meatballs in almond sauce

Pinchos de Pollo con Mojo: Chicken skewers with red capsicum, olive oil, cumin, vinegar

Patatas Bravas: Fried potato with garlic mayonnaise and spicy tomato salsa

Champinones al Ajillo: Sizzling garlic mushrooms

Pizza Margherita

EnCasa Restaurant
423 Pitt Street Sydney (near World Square and the Capitol Theatre)
Ph: 9211 4257
Lunch Mon - Fri 1200 - 1400
Dinner Mon - Sat 1730 - late

10 things: Things That Made Me Smile Recently

2010-10-29T17:38:00.000+11:00

1. This congratulations card from my uncle, which arrived from the UK.

2. Hot chocolate

3. Dinner and karaoke with med school friends

4. New craft projects

5. Getting home from the hospital and not having to study

6. Finding out that one of my bestest friends is coming to visit in November :D

7. Snoopy notebooks

8. Receiving my offer of employment letter which began "Dear Dr [BGDino]"...

9. My new cherry blossom scented candle from Dusk - the "Destinations: Osaka" range

Photo from the Dusk website (www.dusk.com.au)

10. Trying on my graduation ball dress and figuring out jewellery, shoes, bag, hair and makeup to go with it (it's not until November 12th, but hey I'm excited!)

On Buying Christmas Presents

2010-10-27T20:39:00.000+11:00

It's less than two months till Christmas, which means that I'm starting to think (and panic) about getting presents for my family and friends. I've actually done quite well this year, with most of my gifts sorted out already (I have to confess I bought my brother's present back in July!!!) Anyway, here are some of my thoughts on gift-giving ideas.

♥ Food and Drink ♥
Always a good standby if you really don't know what to get someone, chocolate and wine never seem to go down badly!

♥ Gift Cards ♥
I've got mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, they enable the receiver to choose something they'd really like, or had had an eye on but couldn't quite afford. They're also really good choices for presents which have to be mailed, or if you're travelling some distance to see the recipient and can't carry lots and lots of packages. On the other hand, a generic gift card from a generic store bought with little or no thought about what the person likes or dislikes shows clearly that not a lot of effort has gone into the present (e.g. buying someone a David Jones gift card when they never buy anything from there).

♥ Homemade Gifts ♥
I've only really gotten into this one this year (four or five of my gifts are going to be handmade). Having said that, this only really works if you have the skills to make an item. Homemade gifts are some of the most thoughtful ones to give because they show that you put the effort in to create something unique and special for the recipient. Home-baked goodies like chocolate chip cookies or chocolate truffles also fall into this category and go down well :)

♥ The Internet ♥
An absolute lifesaver when it comes to buying for those people for whom you just don't know what to get. There are all sorts of quirky and cool gift items available on the Internet, and as long as you watch out for shipping charges the prices can be quite reasonable. Some of the places I've been browsing for gift ideas this year are:

CoolThings Australia: quirky, geeky or just plain cool gadgets and gizmos
Catch of the Day: one-off bargains, items available do vary and they sell out fast!
Strapya World: all things mobile phone related from Japan

Outfit Post: A Blustery Sort of Day

2010-10-24T16:02:00.000+11:00

Today in Sydney it's cold and grey. I went out to get some lunch and buy groceries so I wanted an outfit which was presentable yet comfortable, but more importantly, warm!

♥ Grey tunic: Target
♥ Black cardigan: Esprit (last year)
♥ Black top underneath: Esprit (two or three years ago)
♥ Leggings: Ambra, from Myer

♥ Suede boots: Nordstrom (from a trip to San Francisco two years ago)

♥ Earrings: Baku (gift for my 21st from friends)

One Last Student Rotation

2010-10-21T18:19:00.000+11:00

So what does a medical student do with their time between finishing final exams and getting their degree?

PRINT (Preparation for Internship).

I'm doing it now, six weeks of following a team around learning your job as an intern for next year. It's pretty similar to a clerkship except that your focus is now obviously practical on-the-job stuff as opposed to learning for the exams.

Every student does two attachments, one medical and one surgical. I'm doing the surgical one to start with and am with the colorectal surgery team. I have awesome supervisors and an awesome resident and registrar to work with, who are doing their best to teach me everything I need to know for next year!

After that I'm moving over to Infectious Diseases where I'll hopefully get a handle on all the different antibiotics I'm supposed to know about.

It's not too busy at the moment, but I predict that we'll be run off our feet next week as the bosses (consultants) for our team are on call and we'll be getting a lot of new patients. One thing that is a little hard for me at the moment is getting used to the 0730 starts, my last term-and-a-half before the exams were "set your own timetable" sorts of rotations so it's a bit of a shock to go back!

Other exciting things on the cards: well, Graduation Ball is on the 12th of November so I'm planning hair and makeup (and trying to lose a kilo or two!). And Graduation Day itself is the 14th of December, after which I'll be on summer holidays :D Oh, and it's my birthday in just under two weeks' time. I'll be 24 years old...

Why I Go Home for Sunday Lunch...

2010-10-18T17:36:00.000+11:00

... apart from the obvious reasons, being that I love my parents and brother and want to spend time with them because a) it's enjoyable and b) it's important.

This is what my mum made for lunch last Sunday. It's a Beef Wellington, one of her "specialty" dishes... a fillet of beef wrapped in pastry with a layer of pate/mushrooms/bacony goodness between. The hard part is making sure you don't undercook your pastry OR overcook your beef...

After my dad has done his precision carving job:

The beautiful (and yummy!) contents within, plated up (shown only with broccoli but there was also cauliflower and green beans):

As I said previously, my mum is awesome.

Adventures in Food: Canned Clam Chowder

2010-10-14T08:08:00.000+11:00

I bought this canned clam chowder at David Jones Food Hall about a month ago I think. Anyway I got round to trying it out, here are my findings.

Preparation: easy. Just scoop out the condensed soup into a saucepan, and add a canful of milk (I used Lite White).

It looks pretty wrong.

Heat it up slowly, don't let it boil. I had my doubts about whether it would mix, but it does.

Serve with crackers or sourdough bread. And here follow my opinions.

1. It doesn't taste like clam chowder that's not out of a can. (A little surprising but maybe I was hoping for too much.)

2. You need to add salt and pepper. (Surprisingly, other canned soups I've had don't need it.)

3. Texture wise... it's a soup.

4. Colour wise... not incredibly appealing but not distasteful either.

5. Smell wise... smells a lot like fish when you first get it out of the can, but the fish smell becomes less potent as it cooks.

6. Taste wise. Ah, herein lie the problems. It tastes like watery fish chowder, I can't taste or see any clams, and it's positively bland without seasoning. Maybe I've been spoiled by having the real thing, but this doesn't match up.

Conclusions: It was a quick and simple meal to prepare, but didn't satisfy me either hunger wise or mind wise. If I'm going to go for canned soup, I think I'll stick to good old Campbell's Cream of Chicken.

Retry? NO.

Night Noodle Markets

2010-10-13T20:16:00.000+11:00

Out and about in the city today I noticed the Night Noodle Markets are on in Hyde Park as part of the Sydney International Food Festival.

I must confess I didn't actually eat any noodles! There are quite a few stalls but predictably Thai and Chinese predominate.

Har gau from the East Ocean (?) stall. A bit sticky, but lots of prawn inside :)

Peking Duck pancake from a Chinese stall whose name I unfortunately didn't take note of. Lots of crispy skin and meat inside, massive thumbs up! (I sort of wish I'd bought more than one...) Also apologies for the half-eaten shot but I wanted to show inside the pancake...

Dessert from the St Honore stall: a glutinous rice ball with custard filling (very filling!) and an egg custard tart (very nice!)

What: Night Noodle Markets, part of the Sydney International Food Festival

Where: Hyde Park

When: October 11-15 and 18-22, 5pm to 9:30pm weeknights

Big Catch-Up Post: Crafting!

2010-10-13T20:01:00.000+11:00

The long awaited catch-up post, I did promise you photos and here they are!

First is my kimono fabric bag. I'm really pleased with how this turned out, although it's quite small (about A5 size) since that's all the fabric I had.

I also made a matching zipper pouch with a strip of leftover fabric as contrast. Damn I hated putting the zip in, my brain started to hurt!

Here's a decoupage box I made which is destined to be a Christmas present for a friend. It's done with a cardboard box that I bought from Riot Art and Craft I think, covered with washi origami paper on the outside and painted with acrylic paint on the inside. I varnished the outside with some PVA glue. Planning on making another one tonight! :)

A pincushion for my grandma's Christmas present:

This started off as a plain black skirt which I bought about 4 or 5 years ago. I was going to throw it out but then I decided I might as well practise some sewing skills. So I added the gingham hem at the bottom and the red elastic panel at the waistband. The red overlay is because I ran out of gingham and just stitched the bottom together and I needed something to cover it! I wouldn't wear it out in public but it might come in handy for a fancy dress party or something...

The rosette headband now lives with Violet LeBeaux, if you want to see how it turned out it's in this post.

Finally here's my piranha pinata:

The Amazing Cream-less Quiche Lorraine

2010-10-13T10:15:00.000+11:00

I made this for dinner with my parents last week.

Ingredients
1 sheet frozen pre-rolled shortcrust pastry (yeah I don't make pastry from scratch!), thawed
3 eggs
100g Gruyere cheese
150g rindless bacon
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
About 1 cup milk
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

1. Preheat your oven to 180C.

2. Line a shallow round cake tin/pie plate/tart pan with your pastry.

3. Bake your pastry blind: line it with baking paper, fill with rice or baking beads and bake (I didn't leave it in the oven for quite long enough so can't advise on how long it needs to be in!)

4. Meanwhile, grate your cheese and cut your bacon into thin strips.

5. Fry your bacon until cooked.

6. Remove your pastry from the oven.

7. In a bowl, combine breadcrumbs, cheese and bacon and mix thoroughly.

8. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs with about a quarter of a cup of milk, add a pinch of nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.

9. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. It should be about the consistency of cake batter, if it's too dry add more milk, if too wet add breadcrumbs, drier is better than too wet (again sorry for lack of advice, I went with instinct and guesswork).

10. Pour filling into pastry shell and bake in the oven until the filling is set and the eggs are cooked. Serve with a green salad.

Oh, and just for a bonus photo, this is what my mum made for dinner one night last week: steak with garlic and thyme, served with broccoli and cheese and green beans.

(My mum is awesome.)

Big Catch-Up Post: Cooking with BGDino

2010-10-12T18:26:00.000+11:00

I'm having a lovely post-exams break so far, and now that I'm back at my apartment I can post some photos of the cooking projects I've done over the last week or two (craft ones will follow!).

First up, scones with cream and jam for afternoon tea...

More baby cupcakes! (vanilla iced with vanilla buttercream)

The Amazing Cream-less Quiche Lorraine (recipe coming soon!)

Dinner. From the front, clockwise: sourdough olive and rosemary bread (bought from a bakery), cannellini bean and serrano ham salad; insalata caprese; tomato, cucumber and parsley salad; grilled halloumi cheese; lamb cutlets marinated in lemon, garlic and basil.

Banana muffins (we had two overripe bananas to use up)

Finally, Nigella Lawson's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake (dessert for Sunday Lunch).

A Sunday of Craft

2010-10-11T00:49:00.000+11:00

Sunday is a good day for crafting! But first I must apologise for the total lack of photos in my last posts, I've been at my parents place without my camera cable. Later this week there'll be a HUGE photo post to update you on all my projects! :)

I made a little pincushion for my grandma for Christmas, also I started work on a decoupage placemat, and decorated a little box with Japanese washi origami paper and felt which I'm going to varnish with PVA glue tomorrow. I also made a cake the night before, Nigella Lawson's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake from her book Feast. It was a bit dry when we ate it today but it did look quite pretty!

The pinata is finished, as I think I might have said before. I'm going to try not to buy any more craft supplies, it seems like I have lots at the moment! I'm going back to my apartment on Tuesday to sort some things out and do some cleaning and tidying as I'm having a small party with my med school friends on Friday night.

Anyway, it's almost 1AM so I think bedtime is in order!!!

I PASSED MY FINALS!!!

2010-10-08T13:42:00.000+11:00

I got the email around 11am today. I passed the written, clinical and viva exams!

Still waiting on the portfolio results but basically I'm through safely, and I'm going to be a doctor next year!

:D :D :D

Preliminary Results Release Tomorrow

2010-10-07T12:06:00.002+11:00

Tomorrow we get told if we have to do a single discipline resit for the exams.

Fingers crossed that I'm ok....

Craft Projects List Update 2

2010-10-05T23:32:00.001+11:00

Again, sorry about the lack of photos. When everything's finished and I'm back home (where my camera cords are!) I'll put up pictures of all the projects.

1. Kimono fabric bag
I've finished this project, and am really glad with how it turned out, as this was my first attempt at sewing a bag with a lining.

2. Multilayered ruffled skirt
Having serious problems here. I've started with an old black skirt as a base, and last night I cut out a panel from the waistband and finished its edges intending to add a ribbon-laced feature, but struggling to figure out what to do next.

3. Tank top modification
Originally I was going to add coloured sleeves to an old tank top, but I abandoned this project in favour of making a drawstring shoe bag, which is now complete as well.

4. Rosette headband
Finished as stated on previous craft project update, now in the post to its recipient :)

5. Cherry blossom hairpins
Abandoned as previously stated, haven't come up with a replacement project yet.

6. Decoupage placemat
Haven't started, should probably get a move on with this one

7. Piranha pinata
Papier mache finished and the balloon removed, now drying and awaiting its paint job :)

8. Cardboard Christmas tree
Done as previously stated

9. Applique pillowcase
Not started, I need to draft a pattern for the applique pieces and am putting it off

10. Kimono zipper pouch
This project is intended to make me learn how to put in a zipper. I haven't got any kimono cotton fabric left so will have to substitute another fabric instead. Still to be commenced

Like I said, photos will come eventually! I'm really enjoying working on these projects, they're things I wanted to do during stuvac and it keeps my hands busy (so I don't snack while watching the Commonwealth Games on TV!)

What craft projects do you have in mind or are working on?

Astral Bar

2010-10-03T10:05:00.000+11:00

Last night I went to Astral Bar (in Star City) with a group of med students.The bar has a great view of Darling Harbour, the only downside was the very very loud music which made it hard to have a conversation.

Our plan was to eat and have a few drinks, then try our luck in the casino. The first thing didn't happen because our group got to Star City in two stages, and many of the food outlets were closed due to renovations/special events. The second thing happened (details below), and the third was a no-go because one of the group (the one who organised the night!) forgot her ID and wasn't allowed onto the casino floor.

So the drinks. First up this is a "10cane Colada" which ended up being a "Bartender had to improvise on the alcohol cos he'd run out of 10cane rum" Colada. It's made with coconut sorbet instead of coconut cream which I really liked because you got all the creamy coconut without the massive cream hit.

This one is a Watermelon Martini, which I liked very much.

This one is possibly the most foul-tasting cocktail in the world, I don't even know what it's called and the guy who ordered it couldn't bring himself to finish it. Note the chilli garnish!

Oh, and I have a couple of outfit shots (sorry about the take a photo with the mirror technique, I was running late and didn't have time to set up the tripod).

♥ Jacket: Kenji
♥ Top: Target
♥ Black jeans: Sportsgirl
♥ Boots: Sandler (last year)

Earrings:

Craft Projects List Update

2010-10-02T00:30:00.000+10:00

Unfortunately I don't have photos at the moment, since I left my camera at home, but here's a little update on which craft projects I've been doing with my glorious free time.

Rosette headband: finished.

Cherry blossom hairpins: Epic fail. Couldn't get the bobby pins to stick to the flower backs, glue got everywhere.

Piranha pinata: work in progress. First layer of papier mache is drying in the garage overnight

Cardboard Christmas tree: awaiting a trunk and decorations

Can't wait to get started on some of the others. Kimono fabric bag is next on my list, I've got to look around for a pattern or figure out how to make my own.

Tomorrow I'm... cleaning my apartment! :P And going out with a group of med students.

Photos will follow, I promise!

Exams part four: Viva and finish

2010-09-29T17:40:00.000+10:00

I'm finished. The last exam, management viva, was this morning. Overall I think it was ok for the most part, I had one bad station (psychiatry) where I made a huge mistake, but the other seven people doing the exam at the same time as me made the same one, so at least I don't stand out.

I made up for my mistake in the surgery clinical last week... for sure! (The examiner told me what mark I got and I couldn't possibly be happier :D).

Now all that's left is to wait for the provisional results on October 8th, and the final ones about a week later.

Until then, I'm going to relax, and do all the things I've been putting off until the exams were over, including lots of crafting.

I'm freeeee!!! :D :D :D

Exams part three: Portfolio

2010-09-28T16:22:00.000+10:00

Not sure if other medical schools have it, but today was my Portfolio exam, where you're expected to talk about the experiences you've had in the last two years and what you've learned from them, and what you've improved on that needed working on from previous years.

I really don't know how to call this one. Either they liked what I said, or they didn't. It's as simple as that. I thought I saw some dodgy looking grades on the marksheet, but I'm not sure. My mum reminded me that I had a really bad feeling about my entrance interview six years ago, and that the feeling turned out to be completely wrong, and to relax and not stress out for tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the viva, the last of my final exams. I can see the finishing line!

Study Burnout and Results Angst

2010-09-27T22:23:00.000+10:00

Well, it's the evening before my portfolio exam and I thought I'd write a quick post while printing out my notes.

I think it's safe to say that a lot of the final year students are burning out revision wise. Since finishing the term on September 10th we've been in stu-vac and focusing completely on the finals. Some of us are halfway through the four exams we need to sit, others have only done one (the written) and are waiting to start.

I also found out today that the medical faculty will let us know on October 8th if we need to do an immediate resit of one discipline. But if you don't have to, it doesn't mean that you're in the clear. Either you are, or you've failed more than one discipline and have to resit the whole thing at the end of November. We won't find out for sure if we're safely through until mid October.

Perhaps the faculty has its reasons for this system, but I don't like it. I don't see why they can't just let you know one of three outcomes on October 8th: a) you're in the clear; b) you need to resit one discipline; c) you need to resit the whole thing. Their way means that people will still be anxious after October 8th and have to wait another week to know for sure if they're safe. They operated the same system last year for the 5th year biomedical sciences exam and even though the wait was much, MUCH shorter (you found out if you needed an immediate resit the evening of the exam day) it was still painful. I'm the kind of person who will worry and worry about whether or not I'm safe, so October 8th isn't going to help me much. It'll be in the back of my mind all the time, no matter what I'm doing, and I won't be able to relax completely until the day the full results come out and I know whether I'm safe or not.

It doesn't help that I'm starting to freak out about the viva exam on Wednesday. The more study I do the more things I realise that I don't know and when I think about my poor showing at the clinical last week I'm inclined to think that I'm beyond redemption and haven't got a chance of getting through. Also the burnout is making it more difficult to focus and concentrate, which makes me less productive, which makes me stress more, and round and round it goes.

Such is life at medical school. A girl who was in final year last year told me that this would be the worst year of my life. I wouldn't go as far as to say that, and I know there are lots of people out there who have lives way way more stressful than mine and have much more to worry about, but I know I'll definitely look back on 2010 next year and wonder how I got through it (if indeed, I do).

Do I Not Like That.

2010-09-26T14:55:00.000+10:00

Dear Clinical Pharmacology,

I wish you would go away and die. You're boring as all hell and there are lots of other things I could be cramming up on but no, I have to put you on the list too. Screw you.

Yours,

BGDino.

Sorry, a bit of study rant-age today. I'm in the uni library right now, cramming clinical pharmacology with First Year Buddy, and we're both nervous as hell, fed up, and burnt out. Not a good combination of things to be with my exam three days away. I know this week will go by really fast and it'll be all over before I know it, but at the moment it just seems like there's too much to revise and not enough time to do it in, and that it's probably a lost cause. We're struggling to stay motivated, and even though I've done my best to try and put last week's clinical exam screw-up behind me, it's still at the back of my mind, haunting my preparations for the viva exam. And then I start worrying about all the other things I haven't gone through yet...

Enough! There's still an hour to go on our room booking and I'm sure I can learn a few more drugs in that time.

Not long to go now...

10 things: Craft Projects

2010-09-25T14:27:00.001+10:00

Right now I'm at the uni library taking a break from study. Anyway here's my list of craft projects I'd like to do during my break and over the summer:

1. Kimono fabric bag

2. Multilayered ruffle skirt

3. Tank top modification

4. Rosette headband

5. Cherry blossom hairpins

6. Decoupage placemat

7. Piranha pinata

8. Cardboard Christmas tree

9. Applique pillowcase

10. Kimono fabric zipper pouch

10 things: The Distract-Myself-While-Waiting-For-Results-List

2010-09-24T00:24:00.002+10:00

For when it's all over and I have to sweat it out for 12 days until the results come out...

1. Make a Piranha Pinata for my Piranha Party at which I'm serving Grand Piranha cocktails and Piranha snacks (courtesy of simonfoodfavourites' competition)

2. Buy alcohol and learn how to make said cocktails

3. Hit up the shoe shops and the Lindt cafe with Partner in Crime

4. Acquire a Nintendo Wii

5. Play said Nintendo with my mum (while sober) and First Year Buddy (while intoxicated)

6. Arrange to have new flyscreens put in my house

7. Buy/make Christmas presents

8. Make my kimono fabric tote bag

9. Figure out how to make a cardboard Christmas tree for an early Christmas dinner with my college friends to celebrate the end of our uni days

10. Attempt to upcycle a few pieces of clothing into a skirt

Exams part two: Clinical

2010-09-22T16:43:00.000+10:00

I just got back from my clinical exam this afternoon. I feel even more nauseous now than I did before the exam.

I'm fairly certain I failed one of the surgical stations. I needed lots of prompts from the examiner, lost my head, I don't think I even examined the right system, and when I turned to leave I could see the examiner's pen hovering over the "fail" side of the marksheet.

I can make it up, only if my other surgical station went well, and I don't think it did. The only thing left I can do is study my ass off for the vivas and completely pwn the surgery ones. Then I might have a chance of pulling my overall grade high enough to pass that discipline.

Every minute that goes by I think of more things that I forgot, or didn't say, or said and shouldn't have. I'm not even sure about all the other stations, and I think I'm looking at overall failure square in the face.

I have until next Wednesday to get ready for the vivas. To say I'm now freaking out is the understatement of the century.

Again, why am I doing this?

I'm Not Doing So Well Tonight

2010-09-21T22:08:00.000+10:00

It's 10pm. I still need to go over endocrine, frontal lobe testing, psychiatric mental state assessment and dermatology.

The exam is at 1pm tomorrow.

I feel nervous enough to feel nauseous, and also have stomach cramps for no particular reason.

I don't know if I can pass tomorrow.

Why am I doing this?

Exams part one: Written

2010-09-20T13:27:00.000+10:00

I just got home from the first of my final exams, the written, which was this morning.

I actually managed to get some sleep last night, probably because I was staying at my parents' place. Talking to some of the other students it sounds like sleep was in short supply last night.

Our written exam was a computer-based part multiple choice and part short answer with 120 questions and 3 hours. It was hard. Even He Who Has the Largest Brain found it tricky. (Partner in Crime and First Year Buddy are doing the afternoon session exam).

At least it's over, and we're now one quarter way through the finals.

Next up: clinicals on Wednesday afternoon. For now though, I need two things: food, and to get the laundry on (life doesn't stop for exams...)

This Is It, Wish Me Luck!

2010-09-19T21:23:00.000+10:00

My first exam is tomorrow morning, a three hour written. I've read until my eyes hurt, and had study group after study group, wound myself up into knots, and tried to unwind and relax again. Tonight I ended up eating Ben and Jerry's Choc Chip Cookie Dough ice cream and watching Ninja Warrior and Ultimate Banzuke on SBS Two to chill out.

I get a day's break then it's clinical on Wednesday, then almost a week before portfolio the following Tuesday and vivas on Wednesday. So I'll have my freedom back by the evening of the 29th, for better or worse. I really hope I'll be okay and that I'll get through. I think nerves are 50% of my battle, to be honest, and judging by how I'm feeling as I type this, I've got a battle ahead of me.

Wish me luck. I'll probably report back tomorrow evening to tell you how I went, for anyone out there who's thinking about med school, this is the second worst part of the whole experience (the worst was the trying to get in in the first place!)

Please think good thoughts for me tomorrow morning. 9:30am, it starts!

10 things: Strange Ways I Have De-Stressed During Finals

2010-09-18T12:49:00.000+10:00

1. Tried (and failed) to learn to do the Running Man in my living room

2. Looked online for roller skates (I want to try skating)

3. Cleaned the bathroom (if this is preferable to study, then you're officially desperate)

4. Looked online at crushable trilby hats (I want one for summer...)

5. Added a countdown to "End of Exams" onto my blog

6. Read travel guides

7. Gone for Maccas (not recommended for your cardiovascular/gastrointestinal health BTW :P)

8. Taken all the decoration off my blinged-out iPhone case (it was strangely therapeutic, and I'm going to redo it after the exams anyway)

9. Bought groceries (I need to eat...)

10. Studied (strangely enough...)

Head down, tail up

2010-09-10T22:50:00.000+10:00

To ye who are reading:

Well, it's come to this. The last nine days before the start of exams. Eighteen days until it's all over and I have my freedom back and am hopefully out the other side of six years of medical education.

So head down and tail up from now on. Or as an old college friend would say - "Studymode: ON".

See you on the other side. I need to concentrate on this final stretch. Please bear with the hiatus, I'll be back when the madness is over, I promise.

Yours,

BGDino

My Last Day of Clerkship

2010-09-08T17:25:00.000+10:00

Today was my last day of clerkship.

Alright, I still have six weeks of Preparation for Internship IF I pass my finals... but that's basically doing a sub-internship and working for NSW Health for free so I'm not counting that...

I finished my portfolio essay this afternoon, and I'm just summoning up the courage to submit it into the system. I might celebrate by getting dinner out... (and then I don't have to cook!)

What does it feel like, knowing my last clerkship is done?

GOOD.

Has the last five-and-a-half years all been worth it?

We'll see when I come out the other side of finals.

Tuesday Night for Medical Students: Essay Hell

2010-09-07T21:38:00.000+10:00

So, Partner in Crime, First Year Buddy and I were supposed to have our viva session tonight, but when we all met up at the uni library we came to a mutual decision to cancel and go home and write our portfolio essays, which are basically an essay in which we reflect on our experiences and how they've helped up learn and become better students/doctors.

It sounds so simple, but half the problem is knowing what the faculty wants you to say, and the other half of the problem is articulating what you want to say in suitable language. It's not like you're doing a literature review where you have to report facts, it's probably a bit like writing a personal statement or a cover letter or something like that.

And it's also FREAKING painful. I've been trying to get mine done all day, and the fact that it's 1200 words doesn't actually make it any easier, because it has to be deep and meaningful AND concise.

I don't know any other medical schools that make their students do this "reflective writing". It's pretty much the last thing I need to be doing right now, what with exams about ten days away and all the viva and clinical practice and reading that I could be doing. Instead I'm sitting at my computer trying to write this piece. Or rather, blogging about it since I've hit a brick wall in terms of what to write.

Arghhh finals are seriously getting to me! I feel stressed out all the time, and my sleep and eating patterns are all over the place. It's moments like these when you wonder whether it's all worth it, even though you know that once it's over, you're glad this is what you do. But it's hard to see that right now. If you asked me last night, at 3AM when I was desperately trying to fall asleep, whether med school is a good thing, I would have seriously said "NO. Get out while you can! Don't go here!"

Ask me again when it's all over.

Monday Night for Medical Students: Clinical Examination Practice

2010-09-06T22:32:00.000+10:00

So studying medicine isn't always about having your head stuck in a dry textbook. Tonight was clinical examination practice at my apartment, so Partner in Crime and First Year Buddy were at my place, and we were going through some of the systems examinations. Oh, first we had to have dinner, so that meant pizza (kindly provided by Partner in Crime). After our stomachs were sated we moved on to actual study. This consisted of examining each others' hands/brains/necks/knees/hips, faking different deformities and symptoms (resting tremors, disorientation to time and place etc;).

At one point this involved me wearing shorts and lying on my dining table (which took the place of the examination bed, obviously) while First Year Buddy checked that my legs were the same length. My right is 0.5cm shorter than my left. Also, my hip joints crack when flexed. Anyway.

We also ate ice cream and drank Coke (sugar and caffeine are good for making your brain work). And watched the classic video "Orthopedia vs Anesthesia".

Then it was back to it, testing me for dementia and delirium, and running through all the different things you can do to test the frontal lobe of the brain (name as many animals as you can, name as many objects as you can starting with the letter C, tell me what this proverb means, draw a clock face and add the hands to show the time is twenty to two)...

By the time that was done, it was time for Partner in Crime and First Year Buddy to go. We're having a viva session tomorrow. All I can say is, studying with a group is much more fun and sometimes more productive than studying alone! And I'll never look at my dining table the same way again...

Practice Multiple Choice Exam, and an Apology in Advance

2010-09-05T13:05:00.001+10:00

Yesterday I went into the city to take a practice multiple choice exam run by the Australian Medical Council. It ran from 8:30am to 4:30pm so my brain did fry quite epicly. And I'm willing to bet that the results are going to be ATROCIOUS. Actually, I know they're going to be, because from talking to classmates after the exam, I've got MANY MANY things wrong.

Oh well. I still have two weeks to fix it, and the whole point of doing the practice was to a) give myself a feel for this kind of test and b) identify areas I need to focus on.

Anyway, afterwards I stopped by Coles to buy some groceries and what do you know I came across some stick on diamantes, like the ones that I used to decorate my iPhone case. Not sure what I'll use them for, but I'm sure there's something around that needs decorating (after the exams...)

Anyway, on to my Advance Apology. As you can probably tell by my little countdown timer, it's getting near the sharp and pointy end of exam preparation, so I won't have as much time to write blog posts. So there may be a sharp deterioration in new material over the next three weeks, perhaps even resulting in a short hiatus (which at the moment always makes me think of hiatus hernias, that's how med-brained I am right now... :S). So if there's nothing new on here for the next few weeks, I'm sorry, and I'll make up for it when I regain my freedom (which is on the 29th of September, by the way). Perhaps I might manage the odd Adventure in Food, after all, I still have to eat...

New Shoes

2010-09-04T08:43:00.001+10:00

These are the new shoes I bought off eBay last week! They're from I ♥ Billy.

I wore them for a couple of hours on Saturday when I was out buying food, they're quite comfortable except that they do nip you in the heel (but I find that lots of new shoes do that until you've broken them in).

My one small gripe was after this short period of wear the lining on the left shoe inside came away, but some craft glue seems to have fixed the problem. Unfortunately, when I wore them to hospital on Wednesday, the lining on the right shoe came away... time to break out the glue again. They also started to hurt after awhile so now I have blisters... but I still love these shoes!

They do slap you over the head with the girliness, since they're shiny red and have big ribbon bows, but I totally think I could incorporate them into my hospital-wear, if I keep my skirt and blouse very business-like. What do you think?

10 things: Recent Moments of Warm Fuzziness

2010-09-03T10:21:00.000+10:00

1. Phone call to my mum and grandfather

2. Takeaway tempura udon on a Saturday night

3. Hugging Dino

4. Dancing around my living room to Chris Brown's Forever

5. Playing music in the bathroom while showering

6. My grandfather's birthday (he turned 85 on Monday)

7. Watching the Top Gear Campervans Challenge on their website

8. Starting to think about what to give family/friends for Christmas

9. Looking through the old photos that I managed to retrieve from my broken laptop

10. Getting good feedback from the other med students for my Common Room Cookies

September Wishlist

2010-09-02T09:47:00.002+10:00

♥ Diana Ferrari metallic sandals
♥ Phone gem stickers to redecorate my phone
♥ Lonely Planet travel guides
♥ A paper clay kit