Relief!

The suspense of waiting... waiting... waiting. We were told we'd have our exam results by the end of last week. Each day the school apologised and made us wait another day.  It got to the point that I was dreaming about opening my results fearing that I had got the dreaded 49%. Today around 11am they were finally released! I did as I had hoped, and so I am glad.

I'm a little bit sad that I haven't written anything deep or profound lately. It's just so much easier to write when life seems terribly hard. So I'm taking it as a sign that Perth is feeling like home, med is feeling doable and I'm feeling more and more like 'Annabel' again and less like a 'med student'.

My new study routine is WORKING!!! Somehow I'm getting through the content and revising and still have time just to do non med things.  It's amazing how taking time out to just 'be' clears my mind to 'do' study and keep me more than sane. Perhaps a day of 'rest' is a good investment after all. Please don't be fooled, med is still hard and sometimes stretches my brain more than I think is possible. However it's a lot more fun to study knowing that I can actually pass, rather than constantly fearing that I don't have what it takes.

Each week we have a class when we practice clinical skills. At the moment we are studying mental illness. We walked into class ready to practice taking a psychiatric history on each other. Instead we had some actors come in. The actress we had was incredible. For a while I got lost in the role play and actually believed that she had schizophrenia. She was responding to voices, paranoid, agitated and afraid. Afterwards I practiced with a friend and pretended to have grandiose delusions- I was 'Annabel the Great'. Although I'm sure mental illness is not at all fun- acting it out is. My tute group talked about an experiment conducted in a psychology class. The professor told his students what symptoms to act out and present themselves to a psychiatric institution. They all got admitted. After a few days they stopped acting and were just their normal selves again. Unfortunately the staff refused to discharge them. The professor had to convince the institutions that they were just students. It's interesting how a label affects people's perceptions. Perhaps first impressions work in the same way?

Tomorrow I start my first placement, observing a GP. I don't know how, but they managed to place me with the only doctor I have seen in Perth! The uni has assured me that there are no ethical implications. I am glad as the doctor seemed to be really kind and he lives very close to where I live. So I'm rather excited about this and the med ball which is on this Saturday. I did not realise when I got into med that it'd involve more than most of my time and brain power. It also involves wonderful peripheral things like wearing lovely dresses and meeting lots of interesting people.

I'll leave you with a photo of my stethoscope case that I made during the holidays and the scarf I knitted during exams.

The caterpillar ate my eggplant.

Last time I wrote was was in the mist of exams and now I'm only a few days off knowing how I went. This is a little scary. To be honest I probably passed, but there is always that doubt. It is weird to go into exams hoping for at least 50%, rather than something over 70%. I guess that is medicine!

These are my favourite memories from the exam time:

1. The cadaver fridge breaking. This meant that our exam which was meant to revolve around dead bodies involved printed pictures and plastic models. This was good as cadavers smell, require a cold room and everything is a pink-grey colour. I prefer plastic models which have lovely defined shapes and colours. That being said, two years back when I was lucky enough to watch some surgeries, I was entranced by the vibrant colours of the ALIVE human body. The red blood, the yellow fat, the white nerves leave cadavers well for ...dead. Sorry bad joke, but I am glad that we have cadavers- it's probably my favourite class of the week.

2. Getting locked in my own house on the morning of my exam. The windows were locked shut. My keys had disappeared and my housemates were interstate and on placement. After some frantic running from door to window to door and desperate prayers I found my housemate's keys and managed to get to my exam and hour early. Two days later I found my keys... in the back door, on the outside! Med brain, it never ceases to amaze me.

3. Practising for my practical exam where we take histories and examine patients. I temporarily stole my housemate's bear and dressed him up as every patient and spent two days talking to and examining him. During these two days a med friend texted me a picture of a teddy bear she'd been practising on. It was the exact same bear.

4. An Adelaide friend was over during this week, she helped to keep me sane and in the evenings before exams. We knitted and watched wonderful med shows such as Grey's and Offspring.

5. Coming home from my final exam to find that one of my housemates and her boyfriend had put all these balloons up in celebration and then we ate a massive feast of curry, naan bread and chocolate pudding.

Exams being over I got to spend two wonderful weeks at home. Two weeks of no study. For the first time in 6 months I felt intelligent again. I also felt so loved. It is rather overwhelming how good my friends and family are to me.

Space away from study gave me room to reflect on my Perth life. I realised that my love of med was perhaps even bigger than at the start of the year. Yet I am more than medicine. My biggest fear when starting med was that I would lose all the little things that I love. That I would no longer get to go on long walks, that I'd stop knitting, that I'd stop learning new recipes, that I'd stop writing stories. I have lost a little of each of these. So if possible I am going to take at least half a day off a week just to do whatever. More importantly this semester I am going to start to make Perth my home, and maybe even build up a community outside of medicine.

Let me end with my beloved veggie patch. Out of everything I originally planted (aside from food ) scraps) only the eggplant remains. I came back from my holiday and picked the one eggplant and cut it open. A caterpillar crawled out. What a tragedy! Oh well, at least it made me laugh. Maybe the newly planted sweet peas will fare better.