Life of a medical student

Give me drugs

Life of a medical student Part 4: January 2018

Current activity: Sitting in theatre 4 tea room at 8am awaiting the anaesthetist to acknowledge our presence.

Pro: Pending...

Con: I just finished a 12 hour night shift and now I'm on call on a Saturday morning. I should be sleeping right.

Music track: "No one like you" by the Scorpions (OMG this epicness and guitar solo definitely will kick start your weekend on a good note).

I think I'm in denial. Like seriously I'm three weeks into the new year as a fifth year student and I still feel like I'm on holiday. "Bad student bad student," I chide myself...but on the other side I'm like (in a cute baby voice), "but I like to party. Come join me in the dark side. We have hot guys, music and whiskey." You see how tempting it is! And then I convince myself that I am invincible and that I  can do everything. This ends up in a weekend in which I party Friday and Saturday night till 3am, study the whole of Saturday day and go hiking early Sunday morning (cuz I'm trying to be a healthy proactive fitness nut in tune with nature and stuff). Suffice to say this amazing weekend functioning on five hours of sleep came to a close with me crashing early Sunday night.

I would totally do all that over again. So worth it. I told you I'm in denial. I'm genuinely afraid to calculate how many hours I stay awake. My engineering friend told me I was still going for 40 hours and I still went to gym. Apparently a 2 hour nap doesn't change the 40 hour part. I'll see how long I can keep this up...an internal challenge it shall be.

The funny thing is when I get tired. I first feel exhausted. Then I hit the giggly phase where I laugh at everything. Including my own thoughts. Not just laughing but the full blown tears streaming down your face crying of laughter. Last night I started giggling while rereading the same line of my study notes "Gas solubility is expressed by the blood gas partition coefficient." I found this funny because it sounds like a tongue twister if you say the last four words really fast. When I reach that phase I know – yup I'm tired. If I push myself even further I get to the teary  over emotional stage. I'm so so tired that I struggle to sleep and anything that goes wrong I just start crying. For example two days ago I was trying to take a 2 hour nap before work and our two yorkies started barking at the neighbours wall. Goodness knows why. In absolute despair I call my mother (who was downstairs) in tears. Basically wailing through the phone, "I'm trying to sleep (sniff sniff) and the dogs won't shut up (sob). Can we just shoot them? (More incoherent wailing)." (A/N of course I would never shoot a dog). So all this sounds funny now but to be honest it doesn't feel all that great.

I have also come to the re-conclusion that I cannot attend lectures. I say "re-" because this fact has been confirmed numerous times by previously failed attempts. As I regard myself to be of one of those intellectual beings I learn from mistakes and disasters and have thus removed myself from negative energy pertaining environments (A.k.a lecture halls) and study on my own terms; be it at home or at a coffee shop. But there are times when such traumatic experiences cannot be avoided. Oh how I wish it weren't so. If only the universe could have sheltered me from such horror. None-the-less during my sleep deprived nightmare of a week I started my anaesthesiology rotation. Rotation is mainly hospital work which includes ward work (examining patients, drawing bloods, putting up drips, etc.) and shadowing doctors or consultants. On the rare occasion they give short tutorial classes too. On Wednesday our rotation group was informed that we would start with an orientation. They DID NOT, I repeat, DID NOT mention that this orientation would be followed by five hours of tutorial lectures.

Now let me set the scene for you. "You have just finished another 12 hour nightshift after writing a test the day before. Your first day on a new, never encountered before subject. The lectures comes in and starts speaking a foreign language and you are like what the fuck is going on?"

Basically they went head first into anaesthetic machinery and just went skip skip skip through the slides. Now I'm the kind of person that if I don't grasp something while the lecturer continues to teach further baseing everything on that one thing I did not grasp – I start hyperventilating. I. Could. Not. Breathe. All I heard were words. If you looks at the notes I took down in that session all you see is random jotted down words and phrases: "yellow", "blue", "sevoflurane", "Mapelson A" and something about an "arterial versus an end tidal wave carbon dioxide". End of story is that I had no idea what was going on. So there I was hyperventilating and not absorbing any information at all. When the second tutorial started I didn't even hear a word being said as blood rushed through my ears and I frantically attempted to find the lecture notes or at least a prescribed textbook online. I ended up bunking the rest of the lectures and drove straight to the nearest student printing store PostNet so that I could print the notes and calm the fuck down. My conclusion has once again been confirmed – lectures are hazardous affairs that must be avoided at all costs. If you attend you are of one of the brave. My heart swells in pride for you but don't you dare try convince me to join you in your self-inflicted hours of torture. No jokes – I got home after that traumatic experience, poured myself a single whiskey on the rocks (Johnnie Walker Black if you're interested) and went straight to sleep. First night this week that I slept over eight hours and it was heaven! I swear I'm in love with my bed. He's so amazing and he just gets me you know. Hard to find someone like that these days. So sensitive and in tune with his comforting and embracing warmth. Haha when I'm on a train of talking bullshit you can also deduce that I'm tired. And thus the cascade continues!

I'm also attempting to improve my vocabulary. I'm studying medicine and I feel like I have become stupid and mute. Doctors ask you questions or how to describe a condition/ case and my mind goes blank. I end up using the most basic terminology that even a grade seven could speak more eloquently. So this attempt involves me catching on to or noticing more sophisticated vocabulary and attempting to use them in everyday sentences. It's pretty cool. You feel so smarticle. So far I have used the word "elective" probably five times today and "vicarious" once. It has proven to be a challenge to remember my new vocab pertaining resolution but fear not! I shall prevail! When I remember to anyway.

Tick tock. Tick tock. There appears to be a lot of waiting time allocated in this degree. Captain obvious strikes again. Hopefully I get to see and learn something today.