Acceptable, again

My school has an interesting way of grading our exam results: Acceptable, Cause for Concern and Unacceptable. You also get to know the range of the class’s score and the median result. But no A’s or B’s or curving the grade.

And I’m acceptable. More accurately I’m a bit above-average. And that is something I’m entirely happy with, because frankly, I’ve needed a win for a while now. I’ve been bogged down in feeling like I wasn’t good enough to, like I should stop this nonsense and head back into nursing where I could make a buck, be good at something and not feel like I was a pretender. My grade for the mock OSCE put me a little above average which is where I have been throughout my educational career. Primary school, secondary school, A-levels, previous university life - above average. Not top of the class, not a notably able student who’s full of promise, just a pretty good student.

So I can go into revision for the next round of exams (2 and a bit weeks time) with a more positive feeling than I went into the mock OSCE. And I've just finished a weekend at the family homestead, being fed and watered, drinking someone else's booze and seeing how my father is getting along. Aside from not being allowed raise his arm above his head, he's doing just great, which has also taken a load off my mind (and his, I rather suspect - and the rest of the family!)

Which reminds me, thanks for all your continuing words of support and comfort, it's really meant a lot to me.

I hope you've all had as good a weekend as I have :)

How much is enough?

words of wisdom from Wonderella

Today was rectal exam day.

But more importantly, it reminded me how I don't have enough time or energy or ability to be the best.

And how, on a low day, this is really dragging me down.

I don't understand it all, my clinical skill set from nursing is yet to be useful and I am surrounded by over-achievers, Rainman's marginally more socially adept cousin or full-on alpha males. And me, I just want to pass.

I know I can be a good doctor. I know this. Get me on the ward, give me the chance to flex a little communication skill, let me lay hands on a genuinely ill person or something where I can show my quality. I'm tired of the let's pretend of clinical skills where say all the things we don't see (no sign of clubbing, splinter haemorrhages, xanthelasma etc etc) , the PBL sessions dominated by pointless displays of obscure, clinically irrelevant, scientific knowledge, the lectures that wander around the point without actually helping me learn.

I laughed when I saw the entry on Stuff Medical Students Like about "Time". But it's funny because it's true, to quote Homer. I don't feel like there is time enough in the day. It is some small degree of schadenfreude that most people I talk to on the course say this. I think the worst bit of it all is that I feel guilty for any time I spend not doing something to help me with medicine. Go to the pub? Go to the gym? Go to the cinema? This is all time I could better spend learning about Vitamin A metabolism or the pathways of the facial nerve or any number of the myriad little bits of information I need to have at my fingertips, because as one of today's lecturers said:

"One day you're going to be sat in A+E at 3am and not have a bloody clue what is sat in front of you"

And that, I guess, is what scares me the most. That I don't feel I have enough time now to be the best and one day, someone's life may well rest on me remembering that symptom X is a tell-tale sign of disease Y which if not picked up will kill them in a couple of hours.

So I work as hard as I can, but I don't feel like I've covered everything. And it doesn't matter how many times I can answer the lecturer's questions, the one time I can't, some else can - which undermines any sense of confidence I have about the topic. It's sick really.

On the upside, Father's had his angio which showed, to quote the radiologist "pristine coronary arteries", so that's something :)

A delay in resuming normal programming

Sorry for not having posted anything this week, it's been due to various factors: essay writing, OSCE fallout, exhaustion and Father's illness. People have asked for updates so I thought I'd pop them into a post rather than in the comments section.

He's still in CCU, awaiting an angio (hey, this is the NHS after all and he's not on his last legs so he gets to wait), no meds, no real interventions to speak of, brady sinus ~40bpm and proving something of an oddity to all and sundry.

Apparently his consultant is known to have sat on the edge of Father's bed, head in his hands, and say things such as "we just don't understand what's wrong with you". Which whilst being less than useful is more humorous (in a bleak sort of way) than anything else.

My mother is doing okay, I think she feels the strain of it more at night when she's away from him. She was an RN for many years so she has a bit more insight than most as to how things work in a hospital and I'm able to speak medicalese to her when she asks questions I can answer about Father's treatment. That said, she is doesn't want to read the leaflet about the complications of having an angio.

I am... Maybe not coping as well as I thought? I'm not really sure. Outwardly, I'm not really phased by this. I know, rationally, that people get ill. Especially people over 60 (as my Father is). That he was otherwise fit and healthy goes someway to explaining how he appears to be almost entirely symptomless. He is not acutely *unwell*. He's probably going to have a pacemaker fitted "just in case" - because medics can rarely leave well enough alone. He is at very, very low risk of complications from the angio. He will go on for many years to come with little in the way of long term complications from this experience. The numbers are with him on this one.

And yet.

Myself and Mrs Absentbabinski sat with bowlfuls of chilli watching the TV on Friday night and I just didn't have an appetite. I wasn't even watching the TV. I wasn't really doing anything at all. I wasn't even thinking, directly, about Father. I was just zoned out. A bit shell-shocked and very, very, tired.

So maybe I'm not doing as great as I thought I was. But I'm okay. And so is everyone else. We shall see what Monday's angio brings, I guess.

And now a word from our sponsors

from phunkstarr's flickr photostream

So this was going to be a post apologising for not having put anything up over the weekend and talking about OSCE's, stupid sociology essays and my favourite blogs/ applications.

However...

I've just had a 'phone call from my mother telling me that my 60-something, otherwise fit and healthy father has just been admitted to the local CCU with a pulse in the 30's and feeling a bit "funny".

That he drove to the GP who told him to pack a bag and present at A+E and then drove home is testament to the fact he doesn't feel unwell, per se.

But from what I could gather from my mother on the 'phone he doesn't have a P wave on his ECG. And a borderline troponin. So they're hanging onto him over night and talking about maybe a pacemaker as a treatment.

I know that without all the facts any research I do is just so much guesswork and I'm bound to focus on the worst possible diagnosis I can find. But I don't know what else to do. Mother told me she would call tomorrow to let me know what the consultant said after the ward round tomorrow morning.

All I can do is wait, bury my nose in Kumar and Clarke and feel a little bit nauseous. I think it's the nerd in me that finds this the easiest way to try and process being told this kind of thing, even down to feeling annoyed I can't see his ECG for myself. My friend Hazel suggested it was the alpha male in me - something which made me smile as I don't think anyone has ever described me as an alpha male in my life.

I guess it also goes someway to explaining why I ended up in medical school.

This is not a great feeling at all.