Medical Elective- Day 3

It struck me today that all my numbering is out. This is ‘Elective Day 3’ as I counted my arrival day- but knowing that today is ‘Day 3’ I spent the whole day convinced it was Wednesday. My new friend is not used to me never knowing what day it is (as other friends can attest to) and, after clarifying that today is in fact Tuesday about six times, I’m sure I have now convinced him that there is very little to me beyond the odd witty quip and a good sense of lunch-break timing.

Some good news, I now officially have a friend. There is a nice young man here doing the same thing as me for one week. Good points: He is not adverse to me following him around (he thinks I’m being sensible and sticking together, rather than I don’t know where anything is and I probably wouldn’t remember to go to anything if he didn’t remind me to). He is pleasant to talk to and we have similar interests in Plastics and Facial Surgery. Bad points: He is better than me at EVERYTHING and NOT a douchebag. Bastard. He is more involved with Mr Consultant’s charity: I’m doing a little exhibition- this guy is organising a showing by a professional artist. I turned down a charity bike-ride and this guy is doing the half marathon. I’m now going to have to run the sponsored 10K so that I don’t get ‘out charity-d’. He knows more than me about stuff I have just taken exams in, despite him taking a year out to do a Masters in Research. And as such has way more papers than me and a more legitimate claim to academia. Now, all this makes me sound like a mighty jealous and shallow person. Maybe I am, as all I can think to mention after that is that I’m two inches taller than him. Win! But, seriously, he’s a nice guy and I wish him all the best and I hope he takes it as a massive compliment that I’m very jealous of him.

Having thus resolved to be better at stuff so that I don’t have to be jealous, I am now back in the sauna room writing a ranty blog. Maybe this is why I’m not getting any research published. I don’t think bitching about people who are better than you counts as research. He did give me a bit of advice, though and this evening I resolved to hit the books. It’s now ten past nine and I have watched Dara O’Brien on DVD and had a bath. I tried to read a book in the bath but was foiled repeatedly and with malice by the lighting system. The light in the bath room is based on a motion detector, which was installed about fifty years ago as far as I can tell. You start by walking into the bathroom. After waiting for a bit you wave your arms around experimentally. You then hear a ‘click...click....click...click’ sound of the detector detecting you but being struck with some kind of lighting impotence. After a bit of clicking (come on!) it starts to do an impression of a strobe light (cue discovery of latent Epilepsy) and then the light comes on. So, having run a nice bath, settled in with a book, after about three minutes the light went off. “Silly me” I thought- motion detector! So, waggling legs around out of the bath every few seconds I’m feeling really cunning. Until the light goes out again. Ok, so it seems motion detector is only to switch the light on, not to keep it on. Once on, it has three minute timer, then you get darkness. This was not conducive to reading in the bath as planned. This place just keeps getting better.

Anyway, today was pretty interesting. Handover for ward round starts five floors down from my room. For some reason the first couple of floors of the accommodation is given over to hospital business. Suits me, finally the accommodation is paying off as I left my room at five to eight for eight o’clock handover. Ward round was standard then went to Orthognathic Theatre. One tooth extraction, one BSSO. Saw absolutely nothing. Firstly, because oral surgery mostly involves you being directly over the patient’s mouth to see anything. This would mean you’d have to scrub for surgery. This would not ordinarily be a problem were it not for the six other people scrubbed. One Consultant two Registrars and three SHOs. It has been a learning experience of what it’s like to try and get anywhere in medicine in London. MaxFacs isn’t usually the most competitive of specialities, thanks to the fact that you need a degree in both Medicine and Dentistry (which the majority of people can’t be bothered to do and go into ENT instead). In the Midlands I assisted with Maxfacs procedures as a student, here I could barely fit in the room. 

However, as happens every now and again, it turned out one of the SHOs went to my high school. I definitely feel like an Old Girls Club member. I’ve run into Our Girls in other hospitals, as they all did undergraduate Medicine and are now all F2s. This particular girl was amazing. As far as I was concerned she was the same person I knew from being thirteen. She has a very Ilford accent and she was always a complete Rood Girl. Now she has accepted a highly competitive Core Training post in ENT in Essex. Like, the nice bit of Essex. I almost couldn’t believe what she was saying, I couldn’t equate that Ilford girl with what she was saying to me about her career. Obviously, she’s bright. It was a Grammar School, after all. And I thoroughly love the fact that her accent hasn’t changed one iota.

This afternoon was spent in clinic with Mr Consultant’s Reg and then Mr Consultant himself, who just continued to cement my worshipping of him. I have never heard of an irritable, angry old patient coming into a clinic, threatening to just leave, being told by Mr Consultant that she has cancer and leaving as happy as Larry. And I have it in good faith that Larry is a pretty cheerful chap. She was so enamoured with Mr Consultant, his straight talking attitude and lovely manner that she also didn’t seem to care that his phone kept going off. In all honesty, he wasn’t too chuffed either and if there had been a window I’m sure the phone would have been heading out of it. He warned that the higher up the ranks you get, the less actual work you do and the more phone calls, talks, being chair of things and taking on the EU you have to do.

So, having finished clinic at 5.30pm, we then kept Mr Consultant back til 6pm being all generally interested in stuff and trying to convey this to him (Starfish, Love Me Love Me!). I have gleaned a little information about the future of training in MaxFacs for medical graduates. It looks like the three year training may be on the way out. MaxFacs is also more competitive than I had originally given it credit. Just because no-one in my year at medical school wants to do it, there are plenty of other people in the country that want to do it. Thus I have resolved the following: a, to meet up with mad friend on Thursday and make an actual plan about putting together an art exhibition that is within the bounds of reality. b, ask Mr Consultant just straight out if he has any research projects going on that I can get involved with, emphasising that I will literally do anything. c, sit down and get on with some work. I keep berating myself for not doing anything, but I have only been on elective for two days and have already done one A3 painting, which isn’t too bad going. Just gotta keep the juice up. I will be placing my giant Plastic Surgery textbook under my pillow for osmosis and aim to think of at least one actual, doable, reasonable, not crazy research proposal by the end of the six weeks. And then preferably do it.

 *adopts Rambo-style stance*...


After some thought, and on my way to bed, I thought that I should bust out some work for the evening. I've seen people who do 'one photo for every day of the year' projects. I wonder if I can do one self-portrait for every day of the elective...