Oh my. The bicycle fitting was an amazing experience. It took hours, and involved cycling on a stationary, highly adjustable test bike. My riding was video-taped, and the pressure differentials between my 2 feet were measured. My femur and leg lengths were measured, my range of motion was measured. Little wedges were placed under the cleats on my bicycle shoes. The difference was incredible. Just slight adjustments made it much easier to achieve the same wattage. I loved it.

Now it's a matter of waiting to see whether the man in the shop can fit my measurements to a suitable frame or not. If not, I might get one custom-made in pink-coated steel. And then insure it heavily.

In fact, yesterday was altogether a wonderful day. I saw an old friend for the first time in a year and spent the afternoon catching up on his travel adventures. In the evening I met a new friend, with whom I clicked instantly. We talked non-stop for 4 1/2 hours and only stopped when the restaurant kicked us out. Although the interaction with old and new friends is very different, both were wonderful in their way. It strange to see someone I had known so well and not seen for ages. The conversation just fell into place as if it had never stopped. With the new friend, it was strange that the conversation picked up as if we were old friends, as we found more and more attitudes, strengths and vices in common. I think it will be an interesting summer all round, what with being newly single, new friends being made, old ones rediscovered, a new job on the way and no more revision to do.

Off to Sweden tomorrow, to catch up with a friend I met in Tanzania on elective back in November, when this blog fizzled out. I will let you know how that goes when I get back on Monday.

Spending my inheritance

I am about to go into London to spend a great chunk of my inheritance.

My very elderly grandmother died around Easter this year, freeing her from immobility and vascular dementia, but depriving me of my visits to her for still very entertaining chats. In her will, she left money to me and my cousins, which she wanted us to enjoy. My investment (I will insist on calling it an investment, as well as an indulgence!) is to be a new bicycle, fitted to me so that my myriad injuries are accommodated as well as can be. The fitting alone will cost over £150, which is more than I have spent in one go (except on flights) for a couple of years. I'm very excited about it, and will post again later on how it goes.

It does seem a little over-board, as I am starting work in a district general hospital in August. I will be living in, so I won't need the bike to commute as I did in London. Still, next year I hope to be back in London as a cycle-commuter again, and this year I shall use the bike for adventures in the countryside around my new hospital. Today is a bit of bleak day for a cycle ride, but I refuse to let the English weather dampen my enthusiasm.

Super Duper Doctor Holidays

Finals really takes it out of you! For days after exams I awoke early, full of nervous energy. For a few brief and awful moments I would worry about all the work I'd have to do in the day ahead. Then realisation would dawn that I was finished. No more exams, no more revision, no more stressing out. Once results came out I didn't even have to worry about that! Yet, it was still only 2 weeks after the last exam, when we graduated, that it felt real. I am in fact a doctor. Wow!

In celebration, I went away on a super-duper doctor holiday to Greece with 7 other newly minted baby doctors, a med student and a lawyer. The busy days were filled with swimming in the sea, lying on the beach or the terrace reading novels (novels, I tell you, novels! Not a text-book to be seen!), eating souvlaki, ice-cream or fish and drinking ouzo or beer. I had afternoon naps, lie-ins, pointless wanders round shops and games of pictionary all with no guilt and no need to rush off to study. The sheer bliss of this can be best understood by everyone who ever did medical finals, or perhaps a big dissertation. When your life has been occupied by constant, all-consuming study for literally years on end, nothing is quite so disconcerting and yet rewarding as knowing it's all over!

Ms Medic is a DOCTOR!

I passed! I passed finals! It's all over. I have a hell of a headache from the celebratory drinking already, but I think well earned. More news later, I think I'm going to curl up in a ball now.

Sobering up

Well, I have sobered up. The Boxwood Cafe is really really good, not that I ever like plugging things much. We had a really good meal, went out for drinks in our dresses and stayed up, 8 of us, drinking rum and gossiping til 4am on Saturday morning, when the sun came up and scared us all into bed.

Saturday I wandered round Oxford Street and nursed my hangover. I remembered why I didn't like going to Oxford Street, especially on a Saturday, since it took me about an hour to make it about 400yards down the road. People are bonkers. I never seem to get road-rage in a car, and I only get bike-rage if someone came really really close to killing me. But somehow, I am very prone to pedestrian-rage. There is something in me that snaps when the umpteenth group of selfish dopes decide to stop in the narrowest part of a crowded street, spread out and have a think about what to do next. They seem to pick areas like beside a bus-stop, or by the traffic lights. If you try to squeeze through the middle, all 'excuse me' and 'pardon' they look insulted that you interrupted the conversation. Well, dearest tourists and assembled self-absorbed idiots. you interrupted my wander! How dare you look at me like I'm in the way when you're the one blocking one of the world's busiest footpaths!

Anyway, rant over. I abandoned Oxford Street and went home to get ready for our finalists ball. The tickets cost a fortune, so I was a bit skeptical about the the whole thing, feeling like it might be a bit of a rip-off. Then I got there to find it was far more exciting than I had expected! The venue was beautiful and it turns out the medics scrub up pretty well when you take the grey mask of revision away and put them in full finery. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole event. Even the food was pretty good. Still, another 4am bedtime nearly killed me. I'm not that old to need a respectable bedtime, but I think I'm out of practice. I spent yesterday and this morning recovering at home with the kitten, who helpfully bit me a few times and then curled up exhausted on my knee. It really does seem tiring to be a kitten, all that running about to do, sofas to claw, curtains to climb and people to shout at. I'm feeling pretty tired just watching him. Or maybe that is the cumulative effect of finals. I am certainly enjoying the recovery period, but I wonder if I am alone in finding it hard to shake a lingering guilt at doing nothing? It's been so long since I last slugged about on a sofa with a novel and a cup of tea that I feel like I should be busy working on something. I hope I will get better at lazing about with practice, so I shall be taking my cup of tea back to the cat, the sofa and the tv!

Over and out

Finals are over.

My short case OSCE was on Wednesday and now I have nothing to do! I felt at a very loose end, but filled it with moving out of halls. I am now at home surrounded by boxes and bags and not sure what to do with myself now I don't have to revise! It's exciting, but none of us seem to know what to think. It's not exactly an anti-climax, but we've been so busy for so long now I think we're a bit lost without revision! No-one has done anything exciting lately and we haven't had any normal conversation for a while, so I think everyone is stuck.

I hope it will get fixed with a posh dinner tomorrow and the ball on Saturday! I'll report again when I sober up.

3 down, 2 to go

Written finals, I never want to see you again!

On Wednesday I had my pathology and data-interpretation paper for 3 hours, followed by my clinical single best answer paper, for another 3 hours. The path paper was off the map, I have never seen an exam like it, and we have been examined at least twice a year for the last 6. The paper bore no resemblance at all to the pre-exam lectures. None. We were told to look at some pictures of histology, but not to worry too much, because we'd get a history with the picture in the exam, and that's what we were really expected to interpret, with the picture for added clues. Well, there were at least 3 pictures with no history at all and one that said "this patient has a cough". Well, that narrows it down! For Heaven's sake, if you want us to learn histopath, fine, we're trained to learn what's required. But why tell us outright not to do so?! Nutters. I was not a happy bunny.

Then in the afternoon, shattered, we went back for the clinical questions. Ok, clinical is easier for final year medics than path, because it relates much more closely to what we do and see on the wards. Still, there were some startlingly ambiguous questions. One started with a patient who had sensory loss in the feet, then went on to say they had no sensory loss. Helpful. Did they or didn't they? I was now not happy and disgruntled, and exhausted!

Luckily, the paper on Thursday morning was so incredibly straightforward that I worried I might have been given the 3rd year's paper instead. Baffling. All that stress on Wednesday and a perfectly reasonable Thursday morning. So on Friday my body gave up and got my usual post-exam cold. I have been so sleepy ever since, you'd think I was gearing up for summer holidays. This might prove to be a mistake as I have my long cases exam on Tuesday and a short case OSCE ('objective structured clinical exam', which is a pretty biased and chaotic exam for medical students) on Wednesday. Let's hope I start getting the fear back or I risk falling asleep in the middle of the exam...