Lucky sevens!

So I"ve just gotten the seventh (acceptable) miniCEX done.

Maybe I should explain myself in classic style.

-fzztwhirkdsafh;gssssssooooooooooooooooo-

The year is 2010, the month is January. We"ve just started 3rd year. Things are exciting!

Of course, to pass 3rd year, there are some small things to do. One being the dreaded miniCEX. I forget what it stands for (What"s that you say? It"s written on the top of the form? Don"t be silly.) but it seems that the powers of be have decided we must get these done.
A minimum of 8 of them.
From 4 different assessors.
From 4 different disciplines.
In the fires of Mt Doom.
Naked.
Without a spoon.

Anyway, basically the assessors grade us on basic skills such as history taking, examination skills, communication skills, clinical judgement and barking like a dog.

This is marked out of 7 for each category (7 in all) and that mark is averaged to give us a score of which they will take our best 8 (Why not another 7? Why suddenly 8?) and that average is worked out of a measly 10% of our final mark.

Hooray for jumping through hoops.

-fzztwhirkdsafh;gssssssooooooooooooooooo-

Flashforward, its August 30th, 2010.
I"m at my GP clinic for placement. Its great here! I"m enjoying a peppermint tea while slamming down a double coated Tim Tam (Amazing! Its choc-mint-melty-glory in my mouth!). My GP decides to brief me on the next patient. Briefly.

"Punch biopsy, its all yours!"

I try to appear cool, calm, collected as I"m licking the melted chocolate from my fingers and looking for a safe place to put my antidepressant branded mug.

My GP calls in the next patient.

I do what I have to. I ask my GP to kindly prepare a trolley while I clean my hands and find the necessary materials. Only moments later, I"m ready. I glove up and take a look at the patient"s back. There is a nice little mole in between some feathers. Wait. What?

"Don't ruin my tattoo!"

Oh goody. I clean the area and allow to dry. The gloves are off. Well, now they"re on again. Sterile this time.

As my GP supervises, I clean, get a biopsy and begin to suture.
After one suture is in and trimmed, I pause and see what the wound is like. I decide that it probably needs another suture (Well, I don"t really get the chance to suture all that much, so maybe it was more for my benefit...) due to the slow oozing of blood out of a tiny area. Moments later, I step back and start putting the instruments away for cleaning, the sharps in the sharps container and the rest in the bin.
My GP is still wiping the betadine off the patient and examining the wound. He says nothing.

After we send the patient off and tell her to call in a couple of days for results, he turns to me.

I almost flinch. Almost. I"m enjoying my cup of tea too much.

"How did you do that? The wound fit in with the tattoo perfectly!"

"Buh?" I eloquently replied.

"Natural talent!" He exclaims and pulls out the miniCEX form.


-ooooooooooooooooossssssg;hfasdkrihwtzzf-

And so that gives me lucky miniCEX number 7. Well, I think its the 11th in total, but lets not talk about the Unworthy Four.

It"s been a long day

Ah, Matchbox Twenty...

Where was I?

Oh yes, blogging. Just to switch things up, lets Tarantino this a bit. I"m going to start with the end of this story:
I had a nap. This morning. Before lunch.

Now lets flash back to the beginning:

-fzztwhirkdsafh;gssssssooooooooooooooooo-

Waking up at while its dark is not good.

Ward rounds was uneventful, though there were some quite interesting patients (with one a possible CoC subject!), the fact that it was bloody early kind of toned down my interest.

We then attended a presentation by our very own registrar, who was amusingly anxious about the whole thing, though us students didn"t really mind, we were kind of more interested in the breakfast that was provided...
A very impressive breakfast spread it was, with sweet pastries, mini quiches, a large variety of fruits and what I"m going to call "slices of closed pizza" (otherwise known as toasted focaccia).

Afterwards I went to have a chat with one of the interesting patients, taking a history and performing a basic physical examination of all systems. As a random point of interest which came up during our conversation, we found out (despite the over 40 year difference in ages as well as residence in different states) that we had previously shared the same GP! Small world indeed...

Such a long day, in fact, I"m quite tired...

-ooooooooooooooooossssssg;hfasdkrihwtzzf-

Sleep...

So I"m trying to get into the habit of keeping this regular, even if nothing interesting actually happens.

Unfortunately, that leaves my blog material much to be desired (I can never make that line make sense in my head, but cool people use it and my mum says I"m cool so I thought I should use it then...).

Luckily, the 2 people who read this probably won"t care.

I"ve just woken up from a great night of movies, though really, it really should just be known as one giant movie. Yes, some "Esteemed Colleagues" (if I may borrow a term from a brilliant blog I"ve been reading, by someone in my class!) and I decided to have a movie marathon and went through Back to the Future I, II and III!
We ended up finishing around 2am, tired, hungry, slightly intoxicated (or was that just Shawn?) but wishing that there were more great corny 80s type movies like that (or was that just me...).

One thing I haven"t mentioned is that I have been sick for the last 2 weeks now. It all started with innocent symptoms not unlike that of the common cold. Unfortunately, they then progressed until my friends were quite sure I had fluid and quite possibly consolidation in my lower lung fields. The end-inspiratory wheeze and mid-late expiratory wheeze probably didn"t help things. Not to mention the cough that actually sounds less like a cough and more like I"m fighting for dominance against some inner force for the control of my lungs...
So anyway, I"m finally going to see the doctor today (it was either on Tuesday when I still had to study for my Renal System exam, or today...), but as always, my symptoms are hiding. All I have left is a pathetic little cough.

Its really not fair.