Almost the end of placement!

It is a week I never thought woud come and boy its been one hell of a ride! This was the placement I was least looking forward to doing right from the first day I signed up for the MSc and it is almost finally over. I know I have done but I can't complain too the people (staff) I have been working with have been great and had quite a good laugh with them but the whol setting is just a bit brain boggling, and I don't think I have had a day I have been able to come home an switch off, which is all rather draining. The first two days of this week saw my main supervisor take a two day holiday meaning I got to spread myself around the wards without too much pressure on me, I already worked enough overtime so I could get Friday off which means tomorrow is the last day he will see me before I get my markon Thursday. There has also been a presentation set for Thursday and my essay (which if I fail again will result in my expulsion from the course) is also in on Thursday. So today has been pretty hectic trying to revise, prepare and finish everything off, tomorrow I made the daft decision to organise a few beers down the pub with the football so it looks like I won't be doing too much work then.

A couple of funny bits: I was in a deep conversation with my supervisor regarding a patient, discussing the disease and conditions, aims of rehab, ventilatory support he should be on, drugs he could be given, appropriateness for chest physio and whether his blood gasses where adequate trying to make sure I did not get much wrong and look like a gimp as his relatives were floating around as well. He then took me over to view his X-rays and CT scan for analysis where I talked through everything I saw and what the effect of it may be... after a good 20mins of quite intense questioning he said to me 'yeh you are pretty much right he is definately an AF BUNDY' 'I looked at him nodding my head in agreement not knowing what the fuk he was talking about but not looking to want to look stupid' there was then that horrible moment when he was obviously waiting for a response and I didn't know what to say... pretending I had not heard him I asked him to repeat what he said, and not having the vaguest idea what it was this time I said I didn't know what it was. He replied with 'Absolutely Fucked But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet' s guys and gals if you are ever in ICU yourself or have a loved one in there and ar called that your in some trouble.

Finally the lady I have been treating since my first week had her speaking valve put in today so for the first time could speak to me. This little old lady who had been quite pleasant and smiled at me all the way through my 3 weeks of helping keeping her alive said this when I asked if she wanted to sit out in a chair.

'why do you want to be a physiotherapist?' ....'job satisfaction, its of interest to me blah blah blah' I replied. 'you could be something else though' ... wait for it I thought a compliment to pick me up at the end of a long placement... a doctor or a professor perhaps... 'you could be a bin man or a bus driver'....'then you wouldn't have to terrorise people and make their lives hell'.

Thanks Daphne, I will certainly leave this placement with fond memories.

Why is there so many f....ng Irish here?

I suddenly had a flashback today and it made me giggle. My morning had just ended and I had rushed through a patient assessment so I could get to lunch. Off to the canteen grab some food and a quick brain rest then back up to the wards. As I went to sit down on a table on my own with my roast beef, Yorkshire pud and very dodgy looking stuffing I was called across to another table of student physios (all from the BSc course) that I did not know. I went to join them and mixed in with the normal niceties ...how is your day? what ward are you on? is it difficult? how long do you have left?? bla bla bla as all I really wanted to do is tuck into my food, I soon realised that bar one of the 7 I was sat with they were all Irish. I worked this out from all the 'top o' the mornin to ya' and talk about leprechauns with the one on the end drinking a Guinness chasing a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. So I asked them fairly bluntly as they were interrupting the one part of the day I get to myself....'why are there so many f....ng Irish here?' they all laughed and said it was just a coincidence. One even said I had a 'cute' accent ....in her dreams!

It brought back a very vivid flashback to Magaluf several years ago when I remember us being amused at how everyone seemed to be Irish... Gary was off chatting up an Irish girl and I remember in a drunken state waltzing over and asking her the same question as I asked the group at dinner to which the response wasn't so good as she got pissed off and stormed off. For the next half hour or so I had Gary telling me off for scaring her off until we found some squeaky toys called Malcolm to entertain us. I have tried to attach both the picture of the Irish girl (I think this was her) and the picture of Malcolm.

Gary, Irish, J

Malcolm

Photos

Going to be a boring blog entry today but I was just amazed at how many photos Gary is tagged in on facebook....it is a whopping 2,721 at present, this is a hell of a lot of photos. In the race for 1,000 photos here is the current league table out of the rest of the near contenders:

1st - Darren Marsh - 982 photos
2nd - Lawrence Crew - 877 photos
3rd - Alex Porter - 781 photos
4th - James Sparks - 781 photos
5th - Gareth Jones - 759 photos

So Darren looks like toppling the 1,000 mark imminently followed by Chopper before a very close contest with Alex, J and Gareth, I fully expect J to reclaim third place after his trip to Dubai.

I think you can probably tell by this post I am immensely bored and have even taken to texting a few people I vaguely know from uni to try and find someone to drink with as I am not feeling pointless and in desperate need of bent.

Tuesday Thoughts

I am sat in the library awaiting my tutorial that I have been pleading with my tutor for for the last 2 weeks, so fingers crossed she turns up, she's already late! Fat malteese cow! Great to have the other bloggers back in the game, with only 2 left that havent recently posted (Gary - 1month, and Gareth 2months) sort yourselves out.

Sun seems to have swept the nation and guess what it didn't miss Middlesbrough although I did think it was looking nice yesterday went for a run and it was bloody freezing, knob head here thought he would brave it in just his 'cesc' shirt, very bad idea.

The Apprentice starts tomorrow so I am looking forward to that as it seems to have been away for ages, now I will be content once again on my Wednesday evenings, that is until I miss it for two weeks over Easter where no doubt the others and I will be tearing up some part of Eastcote, Ruislip, Pinner or equivalent. There then will be the endless times I miss it for football, hoping that I will make it til the next morning where I can watch it again without seeing who has gone from a friendly text, radio report, newspaper article or a friendly little pop up on the internet!

International break once again and the whole country seems to sigh... Endless reports about who is actually our best keeper, why we have no prolific striker and will Beckham get his millionth cap!! Does anyone care and has anyone noticed Carlton Cole is in the squad??? Have I missed something or is he not a lanky Darren Bent that can't score for toffee? Today's papers seem to be covering Ledley 'I can only play once a month' King, another ridiculous call up to the squad. Just retire Ledley no one wants you around any more!

Sunday

Plan for the day:

1) Wake up relatively early - finish assignment and prepare questions for my tutorial on Tuesday.
2) Have quick run before lunch
3) Lunch with wigan v hull
4) Print out notes on sepsis and critical illness polyneuropathy and read them in the sunshine
5) Watch Liverpool beat Villa
6) Enjoy dinner with a few beers and a chilled evening with a dvd

Reality:

1) Woke up relatively early - fucked around moving paragraphs to a different space on the page then deciding they were best left where they were.
2) Haven't finished the essay so can't justify leaving the house for a run, carry on with essay.
3) Get pissed off that still not finished the essay so give up eat lunch with last part of the wigan v hull game, and leave to carry on with work missing the only goal of the game.
4) Print out notes on sepsis and critical illness polyneuropathy - leave them on my desk while I fart around seeing if anyone interesting is online and searching random football websites.
5) Read my notes for the firts half of the football then realise at half time that I have no idea what I have just read.
6) Put dinner in and realise that I forgot to turn the oven on or put beers in the fridge this morning so sat watching dancing on shit waiting for it to cook

Football and Gary

Well potentially this could be one of the best weekends of football for a very long time. Man U lost, Chelsea lost, Arsenal win and Liverpool v Villa to come! Whatever happens in that game we will either pull further away from Villa or pull closer to the teams above - win win situation! On top of that Everton lost and West Ham drew just to well and truly stop them getting any silly ideas of joining the party. I have also realised why the results have suddenly gone our way...it is because I no longer live with my Man Utd housemate! All the time I lived with him we have been pretty dreadful. For five seasons now I have lived with him and we have won 1 FA Cup, lost in a Carling cup final a Champions League final and not done anything in the league. A prime example is the results where I was living at home at the start of the season or when I was living away on placement. Out of the first 9 games we won, 7, drew 1 and lost 1, scored 24 conceeded 5. The day I arrived back up here with Paul we lost 2-0 to Hull and it all went Pete Tong. In comparison Utd's first 9 games when I wasn't with Paul they only won 3 games, drew 4 and lost 2, scoring 5 and conceeding 6!! Since then they went on an unbelievable run and you all know what happened to Arsenal. I have now been back up here (not living with Paul) for 2 weeks and in those 2 weeks we have won 4 games and a thrilling penalty shoot out, Man U have just played 3 games beating Inter but losing embarrassingly to Liverpool and to Fulham!!!

Separately from football, Gary called me last night and it was a highly amusing conversation, whilst discussing football and love lifes as he was off to meet his new bit of stuff he would randomly completely change the conversation it went a little something like this.....'I really like Diaby at the moment he's playing really....have we been to Potter's Bar before? well, I think he's going to be the new Vieira, I'm really looking forward to the Villareal matc.....who have I been to Sainsbury's in Potter's Bar with before then? Do you know where the cab firm is? This carried on for a while and I listened to Gary ask some random foreign lady where he could find a cab, when I heard her reply at the train station that he had just come from he responded with 'oh fuck i've just come from there!' So on we went with the conversation and he arrived at the taxi rank where I could hear a lot of giggling girls 'is your name Gary' Gary said to me 'Alex there is a load of weirdo girls here' loud enough so they could obviously hear as well and apparently they completely guessed his name out of thin air, Gary offered me the chance to keep in on the conversation but I thought I would leave him to it, would have been quite impressive if he managed to pull whilst on the way to the Royal Vetinary College where he was meeting his next Lay! Anway thought I would tell you about that as Gary was absol and I thought it would be nice of him to have someone else remember the evening's entertainment as I'm guessing Gary you may have forgotten lol!

Where There's Pain....

Went to the gym this morning to take allieviate some of my stress, it was not made better when on the pulley cord machine. I was completing some internal rotation shoulder exercises when the cord snapped in half!!! My arm is absolutely killing me now and think I've buggered pretty badly, luckily as it was a nice day I had run down rather than driving as that would be impossible at the moment. Generally I hate going to the gym at evenings/weekends due to the pure mass of people there however, working normal hours and 5 days a week at the moment it is my only real chance to get down there. When it feel it made such a clatter that the whole gym seemed to turn to look at me and I was in bloody agony so could hardly even cover it up, it must have look like I had been a complete knob and the fitness instructor came over and started shouting as if I had broken it!! They soon realised that the cable had snapped in half - God knows how, I can only think someone must have tampered with it, there doesn't seem to be any other solution?

Anyway in summary my arm kills not sure whether I need to go to A&E to get some sort of referral or whether I should wait to Monday to get to the docs, but there has got to be a claim against fitness first in their somewhere!

Thursday B - or lack of it!

Hi guys! Me again... Was looking for something to comment on and was going to look at Arsenal and Phil Brown but J seems to have had that pretty sorted so I will leave that for now. My life is still extremely stressful at the moment and I'm not going to moan as my previous post pledged. I have done reasonably well on this placement to avoid seeing things I haven't wanted too i.e. genitalia and excrement. Today I wasn't so lucky. After having to roll an old lady onto her side for hoisting, her gown came completely undone and with only me offering support from behind I had to hold her there while the nurses sorted her. If the view I got wasn't bad enough she decided to projectile shit which I did very well to avoid. Having to hold her there for 5 mins while the nurses cleaned her up and checked her catheter insertion was not a very nice 5 mins for me and this was just before lunch. I made my way down to the canteen and what was on offer..... beef stroganoff...which looked all too much like what I had seen a few mins earlier, the only other option was fish (and those of you who know me know my views on seafood) so I decided to buy a chocolate bar and starve myself for the day.

Tomorrow I have my half-way assessment and a lady is coming quiz me, I have know idea who she is and still am fairly sketchy in my knowledge of this area so it could make for an interesting morning. I have a few other stories from placement which I shall try and inform you about another time. One that particularly made me laugh was a guy who when he came around in ITU fully believed he was dead... it was quite sad he was asking what was next and where should he go, and could he see his family or was that not allowed? He absolutely was convinced he was dead no matter what anyone told him. After 2 days of this and speaking general gobbledigook he made an improvement in his condition and I went to see him in the morning. He again asked me if he was dead, to which I replied that he wasn't but he was in hospital in Middlebrough bla bla bla. He seemed to understand and asked how long he had been in for, 'so that makes today the 17th is that right?' he asked 'yes' I replied. 'Oh fuck, that means I miss out on my pint on St Patrick's Day doesn't it!!' This guy was hillarious, he was convinced he was dead up to a few minutes before and seemed more gutted at not being able to get his Guiness than happy that he was alive.

Just heard from J about a lack of heads for tonight down the den, and I am rather jealous as I am stuck here revising and would do anything for a few cheeky ones right now. Only 2 weeks left!!! Also it makes me sad that apart from J, I look to the right of my blog screen and see the other links haven't been updated in the last month! Chops whats happening with Kluft? Daz hows Aaron Lennon and the world of dietetics and of course your new mystery woman? Gary how are all the women your screwing at work and Gareth you still in tennis training?

Muggy P

Firstly, I am going to make a pledge not to be so dreary on here anymore. I felt that a dreary post would be better than no post at all, however, I think I may have been wrong. Bare in mind I still have another 3 weeks left on this placement so we will see if it lasts.

I have refused to watch the Villa v Scum game as I am busy working on my essay and it seems a typical game that would piss me off one way or another, but it is on in the other room so I am seeing snippets and to my delight.... erm not delight... horror.... no not horror .... suprise.. Tottenham are doing us a favour but it sounds like Villa are all over them. So I am having a muggy p with paddypower at 11/2 for Villa to win. Put it this way Tottenham never ever do us a favour, back in the last game of the season several years ago when they went 1-0 up against Utd before crumbling to a 2-1 loss and snatching the title away from us, even to a couple of seasons ago when ex Scum player Teddy Sheringham deliberately missed his penalty against them to help them reach fourth spot. If it wasn't for the ever thoughtful Monsieur Wenger having had a word with the Arsenal chef the day before it could have been oh so different.

So in short, I can't imagine them doing us a favour today but I am willing to put £10 of money I don't have on the fact they will end up throwing away their win. I am willing to state though I would rather lose that tenner and continue the terrible run of results Villa are currently on!!

Come on the scum!

Death

I am not sure of the view that any readers I have may have on death but seeing as I am surrounded by it on a fairly constant basis at the moment I thought I would write a morbid blog post.

I have thought this a few times but I really don't want to get too old. Some of the horrible horrible illness/diseases people have are really bad. Bowell cancer, kidney failure, liver failure, prolapsed vaginas to name a select few are some I am seeing on a fairly regular basis at the moment and you can see how much excruciating pain these poor people are in. Being a bit of a wimp myself I really don't want to get these types of problems, having said that a lot of the conditions patients come in with are of their own doing (alcohol abuse, heavy smokers, fatties) but an awful lot aren't and that's where it isn't really fair. Now I am not saying I want to be taken before my time (now would be a good point to mention Jade Goody blah blah blah, but I will resist) and if there is something that can be done about a condition then great, one guy who was in intensive care, sedated, looking particularly awful was running up and down the stairs today singing with me and had made a brilliant recovery. A lot of people we see though have such a poor prognosis that I would really prefer to be put out my misery.

Anyway I have seen a tracheotomy inserted yesterday and the surgeons/anaesthetists etc were all really cool, if I had my time again and was a little more intelligent then being a surgeon/consultant would be pretty damn good if a little stressful. They were both really decent and I had to help with preparation of the area and I was shitting it that I would drop something or knock something over or touch something sterile that I wasn't supposed to but all went well and he said I made a good assistant! They involved me in the discussion of what was to be done and asked for my opinions on things (probably just to humour me, but it was nice they were trying to keep me involved). A tracheotomy is what they do to people with a biro in all the films by the way but the way these guys did it was a bit more technical than whipping out the pen and shoving the biro tube hard and fast into their neck. They made a small cut in the neck then wiggled scissors in to make it bigger revealing the trachea. The dude then stuck a camera down the ladies throat until it reached the trachea area they were going to cut, this was the good bit as he got me to have a look with his telescope device as the surgeon prodded the trachea to make sure they were going to insert it in the right place. The other bloke then continued to watch as he stuck the needle in to ensure he didn't go straight through the trachea and out the other side into the oesophagus. Anyway that was the best bit followed by placing the tube in removing the other one and attaching the ventilator. They got me to keep looking through the camera and I found it extremely interesting even if everyone has pressed the little x in the corner of your screen to stop reading!

They have invited me to another operation that they will do in a few days to see an oesophagectomy which in total is about an 8 hour operation, involving deflating the lung and lots of cutting through tissues, muscles, ribs and stuff which should be very good. I think they only asked due to the fact the other student that is on my course also at the hospital who watched a tracheotomy earlier in the week passed out, ended up being taken to A&E where they were filming for Sky One! He is now the laughing stock amongst all staff at the hospital!

Oh and guys.....why is no one blogging????

Lost

Oh dear guys and gals I am completely lost on this placement in every sense of the word. The hospital is an absolute maze, only made worse by the fact they refuse to give students door passes, so we have to go a set route to get to where we need to go and it is near impossible to find the route. That unfortunately is the last of my worries as this placement is bloody hard. It was the placement I was least looking forward to and for those of you that have forgotten or weren't listening before it was a Cardio/Respiratory placement. I have been put on intensive care, high dependeny unit and surgical wards (basically seeing very sick patients all the time) loads have had some sort of kidney/bladder/bowel type surgical procedure so on top of knowing any respiratory and cardio knowledge as well as general anatomy involved the renal and gastro intestinal system needs learning and its bloody hard. One example was today when before doing anything very physio related you need to check all the obs charts including shit loads of silly letters with numbers next to it, anyone who has been to a ICU or seen holby city may know what I'm talking about. A slight decrease in any of the normal values can have massive indications on the person's well being. For example a normal pH value is between 7.35 and 7.45 if this drops below 7 your dead and so it is vital to pick up any small changes, on top of that I keep getting quizzed on why it may be low/high what could be affecting it and what could we do to prevent it. It's a nightmare!! Anyway I am actually boring myself repeating this to you so God knows if anyones made it this far reading this. Guess I am going to just get on with it.

I did have a little chuckle to myself earlier as two other snippets from the other night came back to me.... the excitement in one guys face when we turned up at the party on Saturday nights as he turned to his friends 'guys the 26 year olds are here!!!' and secondly LT talking about LH 'I don't know why she doesn't like me, we haven't done anything to her.... apart from put a brick through her window'

Peace out

Thanks Dors

Firstly I want to thank all the dor's for a great week back in the fold. In the words of Tinchy Strider 'I can't live without ya, oh oh oh, dors i cant live without ya oh oh, oh oh, oh oh oh, oh.' The last week has had lots of memorable nights and too many to discuss all of them which is good!! Some memorable moments include:

1) Random nights out with the looosieees, both unexpected and good bent. This also included receiving a text from Daz the day after saying 'well what was she gonna do give me a good seeing to while you were waiting in the kitchen'...sorry to have ruined the moment DJ.
2) Lock in at the RE with G-dor, Adam Wilson and the foreign barman discussing alcholism vs alchol dependency.
3) Mad Thursday night bent including an unfinished darts match between me and chopper, dancing around to Kid Cudi, swigging free beer, throwing darts whilst not looking at the board, dancing in between throws and much more top notch banter.
4) Gareth asking a random girl on the train to show him her underwear!
5) 2 really good nights at the Manor....yes the Manor. I had never expected to return there and yet we did twice. It included J texting the DJ requesting songs, which he did.

So thank you to all the heads that managed to stay out late on a school night, or made it out of their sick bed, or just turned up as it made it a good one.

To end this I'm just going to refer to a statement J made on Saturday at how we had drank more than 8 pints every night we went out and at how the average recommended drinking for a week is not even 8 pints....I was certainly glad for a rest from it on Sunday...until I arrived up here and was greeted by a glass of wine. To put it in a little bit of perspective my first two patients today were sedated, very ill, very sick, very yellow alcoholics which I had to suction as they struggled, winced in pain, and spluttered phlegm everywhere. So I am now off to the gym and in for a booze free night.....maybe.

A day without BENT is a day not worth getting out of bed for!

There has been a long delay in my blogging mainly due to the last post taking it out of me somewhat. I do have some ideas for good blog posts which will be appearing soon so do not fear. I am back in the hood for a few days and so far bent has been good, random trips out always make fr a better night and yesterday was definately one of those days.Other bent has included a rather wasted night on Saturday and a near full head count on Monday, well done for coming out this week it certainly makes me eager to return home when there is a good amount of heads out.

J seems to be covering the Arsenal Villa situation admirably so I won't post about that too much only to say UP THE ARSE!!!