Poisonous witches and nonsense journalism

I was directed by a post on Doctors.net to a blog on the News of The World posted on the 1st of June. Now, I know that the rag in question is not famed for it's quality investigative journalism, but the sheer screaming vitriol of this article, it's absence of factual accuracy, made me want to throttle the writer. Her name is Carole Malone and she basically blames doctors for all that's wrong with world.

Very sadly, her father died of colon cancer. She feels this is the fault of his GP for referring him too late. However, rather than complaining to the GP or through appropriate channels, she has written a spiteful rant about how all GPs do is cadge money from the government for doing less and less work, in fact, it's their fault the NHS is short of cash and they get paid a quarter of a million pounds each.

If only! I don't understand why people are allowed to write journalistic articles containing such wild inaccuracies. Firstly, GPs don't really earn anything like that much. The income to their practice (as a partner) has to pay for the whole practice for heavens sake. And just because they had horrendous hours in the the past, for which they were not renumerated, doesn't mean they should be treated even worse now. And whatever the GPs salary, she's not publishing her own in the national press, is she?

I just don't know why people have it in for doctors at the moment, I really don't. 2 days before my finals is not a good time to be thinking this is really not a promising profession.

My black eye

I have had dark circles under my eyes for weeks now. There's something about the quality of revision sleep that means it isn't refreshing, no matter how many or few hours you get. I'm constantly sleepy, possibly because I have been constantly bored by revision. Pathology and surgery and now done I think, and just haematology and oncology to go before I give up on medicine as well and move on to practise questions. The dark circles I think will stay until after the post-exam drinking.

Now, though, I have one eye with an extra-dark circle. And a small claw mark. My parent's new kitten thought surgery revision looked boring too, and decided to help cheer me up by playing with my ponytail. When he fell over my shoulder and onto my lap he looked up into my glassy eyes and I was cheered up. So far, so good Mr Kitten. But then he saw some escaped hair hanging over my eyes. He sized it up and jumped, perfectly swiping the hair in mid-flight. And catching me square in the eye on the follow-through. Oh well, it was worth it since he's so cute.

7 days to go

The clock is ticking away, the days disappear underneath me and the exams loom large on the horizon. And am I panicking? Am I finally getting my arse in gear and becoming more productive? Am I confident and collected?

Well, no.

In fact, I am so de-motivated I can barely work up the energy to worry about it, let alone work effectively. Oh dear. Let's just hope my consultants told the truth when they said what counts is to be on the wards every day and get involved in managing patients. I think it'll come good in the OSCE and the long cases, but I fear for the pathology written paper, I really do. My knowledge is patchy, so I pop with things like BCR-ABL and can't work out which antibiotics work on gram negative bacteria. Let's hope it's enough!

Charlie Brooker and the pathology of heart disease

Yesterday I abandoned ship. There's only so much time you can spend in your room with a laptop and a pathology revision guide without very bad things happening to your will to live. I ran away to my parent's house and spent the day there, with the laptop and the pathology, but most importantly, a kitten. I felt much better reading with a kitten on my knee.

This morning I was back in my flat, with (you guessed it) the laptop and the pathology. No kittens available here, so instead I have the Guardian online and the joys of Charlie Brooker. He is the perfect expression of how I feel about the world at the moment, that is, not friendly toward it. Not only is it raining, Boris is Mayor of London, people are dying in China and Burma, not to mention Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan, AND I have to revise. Oh what a joy to be alive. So, now I am still avoiding work, but with a warm love for grumpy Charlie B in my heart and a cup of tea.

If I pass these exams, I shall have write him a thank you note.

PS

And thank you for the encouragement Little Medic, every little helps at the moment.

Pathology

So today I have been trying to read pathology for surgery, and I was so bored I could have eaten my own brain with a spoon. Luckily, I decided watching "Mean Girls' on tv was a better plan. And drinking Pimms. Oh dear. I have to say, it's a good thing for patients everywhere that I want to be a surgeon and not a histopath or they would be in real trouble. So far, I have worked out what red blood cells look like under the microscope and then I gave up. I can just about manage to pay attention enough to have learned the acid-base stuff and calcium metabolism. But that felt like such an achievement that I got nothing else much done after it.

Oh dear. I know that revision always makes every subject feel awful and dull, but I do hope that I get my joy back before I start FY1 in August. I really have lost interest at the moment.

Finals are approaching...

So this blog dropped off the map a bit when I went to Tanzania. I have been back about 6 months now, dragging myself through final year and towards exams. Being in a different place for clinics every single month is tiring and unsettling, so I have got to this point (10 days from finals) with an underlying sense of grump and the overwhelming desire to be on holiday already. Oh well, not long to go now and I start working as a junior doctor...