What I Did Right After Getting Finals Results

The email I sent immediately after getting results. Okay so my exam co-ordinator's name isn't really Awesomesauce, but she is AWESOME. SAUCE. 
I've taken a lot of crap from some of Imperial's admin departments, but she's God's gift to administrative services. (And speedy email replies -  these two emails were like 45 seconds apart. Which begs the question - how in God's name does she type so fast?)

In my last post I mentioned that what I did right after getting my results was send an email to my university asking for confirmation that these were really exam results and they weren't playing a massive April Fool's joke on me as revenge for all the times I fell asleep in lectures. You guys thought I was joking, right? I wasn't. Here's the proof. These images are a little doctored* to protect anonymity, but they are original, complete with crappy Imperial College email client background.

Seriously. I couldn't believe it. I thought they were trolling me one last time. Only after getting that second email did I finally start to celebrate (and by "celebrate" I may or may not mean lying on the ground in a fetal position crying my eyes out screaming "IT'S FINALLYYY OVERRRR". Cough. These are emotional moments, okay?! --Editor).

*AHAHA seewhatIdidthere? "Doctored", cos this was the email that told me I'd become a doctor, geddit geddit? Yes? No? Hello? Hi mom!

The Angry Medic Becomes The Angry Doctor

My graduation at Imperial College London, October 2011.  What's that you say? 

Your mother could Photoshop better than me? Oh, shaddap.

Yes, that's right folks. Amidst stunned looks of disbelief, screams of fainting ladies and angry curses muttered by my med school lecturers, I finally graduated as a doctor in October 2011. Why the long wait to update? Cos I've been sitting here for the past few months pinching myself repeatedly asking myself if I didn't just dream the whole thing.
(I'm only joking. Partly. --Editor)

It wasn't easy. The finals were tough, and I didn't think I did as well as I ended up doing. I had a LOT of help along the way, and sitting the exams was a truly humbling experience. I could never, never have done it without the help of a few key people whom I hope to thank in coming posts (in a completely serious and non-humorous manner. Cough. Why are you looking at me like that? --Ed.) In fact, the first thing I did when I got the results email was contact the exams co-ordinator right away asking if the results were real. No, really. Don't tell my mom.

Also, now that I'm safely far far away, I can finally reveal the university I've been terrorising studying at for the past 3 years after Cambridge:

Geddit geddit? Cos it's Imperial College, and the bad guys in Star Wars are Imperials, 

so it's funny cos I drew Imperials in Imperial, hahaha...

okay so I haven't done this for a while, okay? Leave me alone.

So yeah. I'm a real doctor now. 

How does it feel? Is it worth it? Short answer: I'm scared shitless. Long answer: That's for another post, the second part to my Cambridge graduation post. (MWAHAHA now you have to come back and read more of my crap if you want to find out! Or you could...not come back. Probably healthier in the long run. --Ed.)

If you've been here before, thanks for staying with me all these years. I'll write again soon about graduation and what it's like to be a Real Doctor (in two words: scared shitless. Oh wait, did I say that already? --Ed.). Happy Chinese New Year!

The Trials and Tribulations of General Practice, Part 2

"Hello ma'am, is it ok for my medical student to help insert your contraceptive patch?"

"Um, but...he's male."

"Is that a problem?"

"What? He's MALE! What do THEY understand about contraception?!"

o_O

The Trials and Tribulations of General Practice

What's a GP? That much-loved, much-maligned creature that nobody ever knows quite how to classify, that first-line defence against common illnesses, that gatekeeper to the entire healthcare system - everybody has a different opinion of GPs.

So what's a GP?

I don't know, and I don't give a rat's arse either.

All I do know is that for the next 3 weeks, I am medical student (read: unpaid secretary, general dogsbody and coffee bitch --Ed.) to five of 'em. And I'm already finding out that contrary to all the tales of cushy, boring, golf-afternoon-filled lives we've all heard about GPs, their lives are anything but boring.

But because I'm far too generous and giving (snigger --Ed.) to keep all my misery to myself, I'll be sharing choice morsels of my adventures in GP-land with all my glorious fans (yes, all two of you! I lost one reader last month. --Ed.) in an attempt to 1. stave off all the hate mail I've been getting since stopping blogging, and 2. stop my brain from leaking out of my ears in boredom whilst I wait for this damn tea kettle to start working for the 36th time today. God, you'd think with all this money they'd at least get a working kettle.

*****

These are actual anecdotes heard in clinic. You can't make this shit up, folks.

To an 87-year-old woman today: "Hello ma'am, I'm going to give you your injection."

"What?"

"Hello ma'am, I'm going to GIVE you your INJECTION."

"Eh? What?"

"HELLO MA'AM I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU YOUR INJECTION!"

"Quiet, boy. What d'you think I am, deaf?"

*****

"Hello sir, how can I help you today?"

"Promise me you won't judge me, doctor."

"Um, okay. What seems to be the problem?"

"I can't stop eating those Big Daddy boxes from KFC, doctor."

"Sigh...I know the feeling."

Censored

Recently my blog was discovered.

I've spoken many times about freedom of speech on the Internet, especially for medical bloggers. Protecting your identity becomes a lot more than just wondering what your boyfriend will think when he learns you've been ranting about your sex life online. When you have a real job, with real patients, and unfortunately very real whackjobs for colleagues and superiors, blogging becomes a catharsis of sorts.

But unfortunately it can also get you into very real trouble. Remember HospitalPhoenix. Remember Angry NHS Doctor. Even The Little Medic got into some trouble back in his student days. And now people are whispering that the highest of the high, the Big Daddy of Go-Ahead-Try-And-Find-My-Identity-Out, NHS Blog Doctor himself, was forced to retire because someone finally found out who he was.

It never mattered to me, because right from the start I wasn't anonymous, and my only real enemy was the University of Cambridge, whose policy on hate mail is basically "nyah nyah we're bigger than you". But it had to happen someday - and now it has.

I've been discovered.

And by people whose opinions, unfortunately, matter to me. You can only adopt a screw-you-I-don't-care-what-you-think policy for so long, because as every movie villain in history knows, there's always someone whose opinions you can't afford to ignore. So these days when I drag my sorry carcass into my room after a long hard day and just feel like jumping online and ranting about that midwife who yelled at me using the most colourful expletives possible --

I stop. And remember that somebody's watching me.

It feels horrible.

Happy New Year - Now Gimme Your Stuff

Brand new year! Full of energy, I walk into my hospital's locker room on my first day, brimming with love and joy and the desire to help as many patients as possible. My mind full of all the reasons I chose medicine and all the ways I can make humanity better today, I walk to my locker and see this:


Thankfully even a mince-pie-addled idiot like me knew better than to leave anything in it over the holidays. As I turn away I see this pasted on the back of the door, along with some astute medical student's scribbled warning underneath:


Nice of them to give us warning though, isn't it?

Merry Christmas and a Very Angry New Year

Contrary to popular opinion (and by popular opinion I mean moronic spammers who scoop their brains back out of the toilet bowl every morning after their daily dump and whose vocabulary is limited to Chris Rock lines minus all the bits that are actually clever -- man that felt good. --Editor), I am still alive! Just busy, very busy. Which I'll admit most people are (except for aforementioned spammers --Ed.) except that most people have better time management skills than those of a mentally challenged amoeba. But enough about spammers.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all, and I'll see you after the New Year.

Oh and (massive Doctor Who spoilers - if you haven't watched the Christmas special STOP READING AND CLICK HERE FOO' --Ed.)

THEY TURNED OBAMA INTO JOHN SIMM!

FTW!!!!!11!!

Writer's Block

Everyone gets it. Sometimes you sit in front of the computer, and you want to write, but it just. Doesn't. Happen.

It's not that I've been lazy to update this blog. It's not that I have no stories to tell - on the contrary I've just finished my General Practice rotation, and have had my whole worldview on GPs radically altered. It's not that I haven't pissed off any doctors/nurses/janitors with access to lots of sharp pointy objects recently - on the contrary some of my colleagues have suggested wearing a paper bag on to the wards to avoid persecution.

And I've had ups and downs. Rollercoaster rides the likes of which I haven't experienced in years. People who've come into my life whom I can't decide whether I love or hate. In short, the things that medical school does to you.

But it's all happened so...suddenly.

So I'm kinda reeling from it all right now. And I ask for your patience (yes, all three of you who still bother to check this blog. It's an old joke, but probably never more true than now. --Editor) Updates will come soon. You'll laugh. You'll cry. But most of all, you'll wonder--

How the hell did they allow this guy into medical school?

Do Not Disturb: Medical Students At Work

Newly graduated doctors, class of 2009.

As a medical student you get used to a feeling of power very quickly. Striding down the hospital hallways, stethoscope draped prominently across your shoulders and an important look on your face, patients and staff make way for you, reverent looks on their faces. There is an implicit trust across the consultation room table, even though the only lives you're going to save anytime soon are those of your greedy intestinal bacteria as you choose which sandwich you're going to have for lunch.

It is with full awareness of this trust that I bring to you these vignettes from med school. I've only been on the wards one week, but have managed to piss off two consultants, three janitors and one VERY large clinical teaching co-ordinator who may or may not have been the local wrestling champion in her original village in Africa. Stay tuned for more faith-reinforcing tales like this:

On Tuesday afternoon, three supposedly world-class medical students in a supposedly world-class university stand in the hallway of a supposedly world-class hospital. Their brows are furrowed in intense concentration, as if lives hung in the balance of their deliberations. Thick textbooks are clutched in their hands. The conversation goes something like this:

"Hey dudes. You watch House, right?"

"Um yeah. Why?"

"Cause here comes Asian Cuddy. Act natural."

"Dude, why're you using that textbook to cover your--"

"ACT NATURAL!"

Three supposedly world-class medical students, between them holding degrees in Cardiology, Surgery & Anaesthesia and Experimental Psychology, whistle nonchalantly as the Clinical Teaching Co-ordinator walks by, smiling sweetly as she chats on the phone.

"Dude that did NOT look like Cuddy."

"It so totally DID! Did you see the cleavage on that one?"

"Meh...I see the resemblance. But-- ooh she dropped a pen. She's bending over!"

Silence for a moment.

"Okay."

"Yeah."

"NOW she looks like Dr Cuddy."

More silence.

"Hey, didn't surgical rounds start like ten minutes ago?"

"SHIT."

In Memoriam: Yasmin Ahmad, 1958-2009

One of my favourite filmmakers, the talented indie film genius Yasmin Ahmad, has passed on.

Her films were often controversial and like so many geniuses throughout history, she endured censure from many quarters for daring to speak her mind; still others saw her genius and showered international praise on her work for being ahead of its time.

Her films have been screened and praised at film festivals all across the world: Cannes, Berlin, San Francisco, Singapore, Tokyo, the Créteil International Women's Film Festival ; you name it, she's been there. And been applauded. And been told her work is visionary.

Yasmin Ahmad passed away with the same drama that sadly plagued her whole life: whilst recording a program for national television, she suffered a stroke and slumped forward in her chair, motionless. She was rushed to hospital and successfully thrombolysed, but sadly succumbed to intracranial haemorrhage 48 hours later.

Her first breakout film was filmed in my old school. We all developed a special affinity for her, and she never let us down, even in the face of censure and resistance.

Another shining star in the international arts scene has been extinguished. She will be missed.

Christopher Lee Finally Knighted; Balance of Universe Restored

Note: If you've been living under a rock for the last 60 years (or are a first-year houseman doctor) and do not know who Sir Christopher Lee is, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE DO NOT POST THIS IN THE COMMENTS OR SO HELP ME GOD I WILL TRACK YOU DOWN AND BITE YOUR HEAD OFF WITH MY BLUNT, GAP-TOOTHED, CAVITY-RIDDEN FRONT TEETH. You think those terrorists who capture reporters and saw their heads off on camera with blunt knives are scary? You ain't seen my front teeth. There's a reason why I alone out of 500 students was asked not to smile in my graduation photo. Now excuse me whilst I go take my Ritalin. --Editor

Image taken from the official website. He holds the Guinness World Record for most movie roles, so you've definitely seen or heard him before. If you haven't, FOR GOD'S SAKE DO NOT POST THIS IN THE COMMENTS. If you do, hire a bodyguard and tell him to watch specifically for crazed fanboys.

Veteran actor Christopher Lee, one of my favourite people in the world (see above Note), has been conferred a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, making him Sir Christopher Lee.

Lee, 87, has spent his career terrifying cinema-goers.

As well as appearing in classic horror films such as 1958's "Dracula" and 1959's "The Mummy", Sir Christopher also played memorable baddie Scaramanga in the 1974 James Bond classic "The Man With The Golden Gun".

In recent years he starred as Saruman in "The Lord Of The Rings" trilogy and Count Dooku in the "Star Wars" prequels.

All I have to say to this is:

LIKE, DUDES! FINALLY!

You know, I was the one who originally broke to the world the news that Christopher Lee was reprising his role as Count Dooku in the animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I posted the question on his official website and his son-in-law replied, making the official announcement that was picked up by news sites everywhere. Yep, that was me, folks. And my mom said I'd never make an impact in life. Hah! (Oh wait, my parents read this blog. Hi mom! You look lovely today! --Ed.)

Actual Star Wars statuette by Gentle Giant. No, I do not own a signed edition
which I keep in my room surrounded by flowers and love candles. Really.
Stop asking or I'll hit you with my signed edition Force FX Count Dooku lightsaber.

In Search Of Unprotected Text - Another Blogger Bites The Dust (Or Does He?)

(Apologies in advance for those of you arriving at this post from Google expecting a discreet dating service or Thailand travel agents. Not that I can't tell you about both, including which massage parlours to avoid - gonorrhoea's a bitch. --Editor)

If you've been reading the comments on my last post, you'll have heard that the Unprotected Text blog has mysteriously disappeared without explanation. There's a comment on my last post by an anonymous visitor announcing the worst:

I've (sic) very sorry to report that the author of 'Unprotected Text' blog tragically died earlier this week in a road accident. His family requested the blog be taken down, and this was done so in accordance to their wishes. My thoughts are with them this week.

A couple of other commenters, who seem to know Unprotected Text's author and refer to him by name (which the above bad-news bear doesn't), have found no sign of this being the case. I hope he's okay - sometimes shit just happens to bloggers and they have to stop blogging. (Or, as in my case, you're so lazy you have sloths protesting outside your door for putting their species to shame. --Ed.)

This reminds me of the Dr Crippen death hoax last year, which I covered in this post, and which was revealed when Dr Crippen suddenly came back to life, becoming the world's first zombie doctor. The culprit was a disgruntled nurse who took offense at his nurse-bashing ways and took advantage of the good doctor's writer's block/holiday/meltdown. Things ended well there though (well, except that I slaved for hours on Photoshop to create this masterpiece for him and he didn't even mention it. Ungrateful old man. All I wanted was a little love, daddy! *cocks gun*)

Any news on Unprotected Text's status would be appreciated. Coming up: Christopher Lee FINA-friggin-LLY gets knighted, and I reveal my fetish for old British men. Completely unrelated posts, of course. Cough.

Look at this shit! I slaved for hours to create this Da Vinci-shaming
artistic brilliance! What's that you say? Your Indonesian maid could

do better and she just learnt to use Photoshop yesterday? Oh screw you.

Free Surgery For Spammers!

The changing room door squeaks loudly as I enter, hoping to change quickly and sneak into theatre without anyone noticing how ridiculously late I am. Naturally, this catches the attention of everyone in the changing room, and who should be sitting closest to the door but my latest boss, Komrad Konsultant Surgeon. God must still be mad at me from last week when I kicked that little puppy down my road. (I was reading a textbook whilst walking, okay? Also said textbook may then have ended up on said puppy. NOT MY FAULT. --Editor) I mutter under my breath to the door, "Thanks a lot, asshole." (And yes, I talk to inanimate objects, okay? It makes up for the fact that I have no friends. DON'T JUDGE ME. --Ed.)

Komrad Konsultant sweeps out the door, giving me a look that would make even Ron Jeremy's* unmentionables shrivel so much he'd need Viagra for the rest of his life. I go to theatre and look at the surgery list for the day, and I swear God must've heard what I called that door, because typed on that sheet were 2 haemorrhoid repairs, 2 anal fistulotomies (back-to-back!) and a rectal biopsy.

Bummer**.

As I scanned the list and prepared for an afternoon of going where no man had gone before (colonoscopes don't count), I swear all I could think of was -

how I wish these patients were all the spammers on my blog.

Hell, I'd do it for free. I'd even give them a huge discount on anaesthetics.

It was a while before I realised the scrub nurses were staring at my evil grinning and hand-rubbing. Man, I hate spammers.

*Famous porn star known for his huge-- um, ego. Good friend of mine. Birds of a feather must stick together. Right ladies?
**No pun intended***.
***Oh, who am I kidding.

What They Don't Tell You About Medical School

1. That calling a doctor "Sister" or worse, "Nursie" by mistake is going to earn you an hour-long scolding (during which the word "bastard" is used, and not in reference to the illegitimate child being born to the crack-dealing prostitute in the next ward), a very sore ear from previously-mentioned scolding, and a knowing snigger from every nurse you pass by for the next two weeks. (Not that I'd know anything about that, of course. Cough.)

2. That when you put in a cannula in an elderly patient in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) for the first time, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET IT RIGHT. And yes, the ward nurse WILL call you in two hours telling you that the patient's arm has swelled up bigger than Donald Trump's ego, and the patient's family wants to know which third-rate night-school retard doctor put that cannula in. (Not that I'd know anything about that either, of course. Cough cough.)

3. That your time management skills are going to decrease to those of a hyperactive chimpanzee addicted to Ritalin, and that this combined with a succession of emo posts and a very unfortunate exam timetable (Sunday afternoon clinical OSCE. 'Cos that's the only time they can clear the hospital's outpatients department --Editor) is going to reduce your previously impressive blog readership (three whole readers! --Ed.) to shameful (myself. Ooh, and my flatmate's dog. --Ed.)

That's all for now, folks, but right after exams I'm going to start posting reasonably regularly again. Med school has once again become the widescreen madhouse it started out to be, and hey I figure as long as I'm suffering, I might as well make some people laugh. (And if exams DON'T go well, forget the blog - come see me at your local McDonald's and I'll tell you the story in person. I'll be the guy mopping the floors - did you know they DON'T pay minimum wage? --Ed.)

The Power To Choose, Part One

The sun shines into the room as it slowly begins to set over the small hill behind the hospital, dotted with cottages and church steeples. I squint in the dusky light as Komrad Konsultant Kardiologist, my latest boss, flips open my end-of-term assessment form and sits down at his table.

"So, Angry...let's see." He begins.

I brace myself. Here come the hard questions about why I wasn't at ward rounds, why his patients have no idea who I am, and that one time I fell asleep in a patient's bed...

But Komrad Konsultant stops flipping the file, and looks out the window. "I think you've done quite well, Angry. I think you'll go far, in fact."

I blink. Me, going far? ME? Has he got the wrong file? What has he been smoking?

Komrad Konsultant adjusts his glasses as the sun glints off them. "You see...all this work you do now may sometimes seem pointless. All the slogging, all the early mornings, all the nasty doctors ordering you around..." He closes the file.

"What you have to remember is that you're storing choice for the future." Now he looks at me directly. "The really successful people in life, Angry, they reach a level where they can choose where they want to go. Which hospital, which specialty, which job. They write their own tickets. Everybody else, they have to hope and pray. But if you're REALLY good...you get to choose."

He signs the assessment form, ticks the 'EXCELLENT' box and hands it to me. "I think you're one of those who'll get to choose."

I sit for a while, just staring at him, stunned. Then I walk out of his room in a bit of a daze.

I don't think I deserved such high praise. Not at all. I haven't been focusing my energies where I should be lately. And to some extent I've betrayed my dream of clinical medicine, after moaning and ranting about it for three years in Cambridge. And I've made a few big mistakes. But hopefully it's not too late to correct them.

And it's not just me Komrad Konsultant was talking about. We all deserve the power to choose. So here's to working harder. Here's to storing up choice for the future. Thanks, Dr B.

Pain Management

Life's been tough recently. Events have been crashing together and teaching me the real meaning of what it means to be a clinical medic in London. Trials and tribulations never seem to stop, and come at you from all different directions - from hospital, from fellow students, from non-medical friends, even from the people you least expect.

And just like in medicine, what you thought was something you knew, turns out to be quite a different thing altogether.

Two big events have thrown me off-balance recently and forced me to seriously evaluate my direction in life. And I've also come to realise that I'm a little immature for my age. (Hey, just look at any other entry on this blog for proof. --Editor) But it's okay to crash and burn every once in a while - everybody does it. It's a human survival strategy.

The pain, however, is difficult to manage. I can't just put up a paracetamol or morphine drip like I would for a patient in hospital. So I have to work this out from basics, and do a few things that scare me. But hey, the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.

Image credit: troymayr.com

A Confession

I have to come clean with something.

You know when people reach this sort of decision, it means that the guilt they're keeping inside is unbearable. It is the kind where you lose sleep thinking about it, wake up being reminded of it and go through your day with it slowly eating away at your insides. But it's over now - I'm washing my hands clean of this horrible truth I have been keeping bottled up inside.

I know I'm going to disappoint a lot of people out there. Hell, I'll probably get more than a few raised eyebrows and people disowning me as a friend, and some of my senior doctors will probably write me bad references and ruin my future job prospects. But I'd like to let you know that I appreciate our friendships thus far and all the good times we've had together.

I just watched Gossip Girl and I like it... *sigh*
(This post was shamelessly stolen from a buddy who also came to this confession a year ago. Since then he has been in therapy for his obliterated self-esteem. At least I'll have company when I join his psychiatrist.)

Diagnosis: Obama Fever

President Abraham Lincoln would be proud.

A glimpse of how Cambridge feels today:

Photo taken of actual notice board from one of the Cambridge colleges.

WOOHOO!

An Awkward Moment

Ward rounds this morning in hospital with Komrade Konsultant. I am as usual performing my Oscar-winning routine of acting awake whilst actually falling asleep on the nearest comatose patient's bed. Then Komrade Konsultant's cardiac arrest pager goes off.

Everyone freezes. I snap wide awake. Ooh, a cardiac arrest! Surely he'll take some of us poor medical students along, right? Finally, I get to see if it's actually like E.R. or Grey's Anatomy. I grab my stethoscope, close my folder and almost kick some old lady's wheelchair over in my rush to get to the door--

--and Komrade Konsultant turns his pager off, tosses it back into his pocket and turns back to the patient's folder, saying:

"Cardiac arrest? Screw that, I haven't even had my Starbucks yet."


Gives you real faith in the hospital system doesn't it?

Lost In Translation

Me being examined by Dr Kim Jong-il. (Fine, so I've put on a bit of weight, okay?)

After an extended Christmas holiday spent mostly getting fat on turkey and junk food (see above picture) and trying very, very hard to get the lyrics for this hilarious Saturday Night Live music video (and it's medically-related too! --Ed.) out of my head, I returned to Stalingrad General Hospital for a week of lectures this week. And I don't know if it was just me or Komrade Professor's droning voice putting even the flies in the lecture theatre to sleep, but I heard some pretty weird stuff every time I actually paid attention to what was being said:

"You may be surprised to hear that the field of medicine is not so like to the aviation industry. In fact, the two fields are quite different." Heard during a lecture on patient safety and statistics (and almost certainly taken out of context, because I heard it as soon as I woke up.) No shit, Sherlock! DU-UH.

"Be careful what you say during your exams. I once examined a student who gave 'Huntington's chorea' as an answer, and so I followed up by asking him "So what can you tell me about chorea?" The student sat there for a second, then leaned forward slowly and, in all seriousness, asked me, "Which one? North or South Korea?" "

Okay that woke me up.

Happy New Year to my loyal readers (yes, all three of you) and stay tuned - I've got no shortage of miserable tales to keep you entertained. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a Suicidal Medical Students support group meeting to go to. Bonne nuit!