a feast of geek and good-looking goodness

So I've been trying to do some renal study lately in a relatively last minute attempt to actually understand it five years into med school, and, at the suggestion of my mentor, emailed the renal consultants to see if I could spend a morning with them on the ward during these holidays. I know, ultra geeky, I admit, going into the hospital on my own volition during my spring break but I figured, hey, it's only one morning and I knew my mentor had a point when he said I'd probably learn more from two hours on the ward than two hours of studying renal at the library... plus, in the very least it'd motivate me to actually try to study and understand renal. The renal consultants -- who have a 100% pass rate with their registrars (=residents) in their final specialist exams -- were more than happy for us to tag along on their ward round and then talk to some patients afterwards if we wanted to. I say "us" because when I told a couple friends/my OSCE study group, they decided to come along.

And you know what? It turned out to be an AWESOME morning. Yes, I learned so much more from (what turned out to be) the three-hour ward round. There turned out to be quite a big entourage and furthermore, quite a lot of drama! They had about 10 patients which is pretty epic for Renal, and some really interesting cases, not to mention an almost-code where this really young guy developed sudden onset of severe chest pain and respiratory distress ten minutes after his straightforward renal biopsy procedure. One of the nurses started calling for a doctor and there was a lot of rushing and plugging in of machines, etc, and just standing back and watching the registrars and house surgeons kick into "ABC-mode" was freakin' amazing. So much to learn from! Lesson of the day: just don't freak out. LoL. It's all about being calm and collected.

And man, during the course of the morning, WE GOT GRILLED. And with both the renal consultants there for the round it got pretty intense at times, but in hindsight it was great teaching. You'd think all my renal study leading up to this morning would've helped, but it's truly amazing how in medicine it's all about thinking laterally -- we got grilled on basic pharmacology, microbiology, general medicine, all in the context of reanl issues, plus loads of first principle concepts which we too often (sadly) failed miserably at (yet undoubtedly learnt heaps from). So all in all a very worthwhile morning.

I got home around 1pm for lunch. I was only gonna take a short break before heading back into town to get some study done at the library but I started to read some more Austen and, enveloped by the warm afternoon sun, I got hooked! Four hours later I was done with Northanger Abbey, much to my surprise. And dude, it was AWESOME. Henry is definitely up there as one of my favourite male Austen leads. :) If only I had time to get the video out before flying out on Sunday. I will, however, stop by the bookstore and pick up my next read, Wuthering Heights, which was recently highly recommended to me by a friend of mine. I caught up with her tonight for dinner and a movie, Coco avant Chanel. The movie was pretty good -- Alessandro Nivola... mhmmm... and that's about all I wanna say, lol. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the proceedings for the evening. Goodnight and good luck. :)