SSC weeks: Life in a mess

SSC's finally due and I was among the first ones to hand my essay in on Thursday afternoon. For the record, I haven't slept for three nights for SSC. I stayed up on Sunday night for the SSC - can't finish it. On monday night, St Andrews students came to Manchester and I played host for two of them (Sarah and Camilla). I gave up my bed for one of them while I stayed up the whole night to finish my essay. And I did finished my essay and emailed my two abstracts to Dr Hollingsworth for comments. I received his reply on the afternoon itself. At that point, the quality of the essay was a little crappy as I was trying too hard to fit in the content first. So, I spent the next two days and nights polishing up my essay. It was torturous. Yet I just would not forgive myself for spending the little extra time sleeping when I could well be perfecting the essay. If I could pass up the essay on today, I would probably have not sleep last night to work on it. Now I begin to see how destructive my perfectionist and self critical attitude is. I bet it will kill me one day. But anyway, I'm really really glad that it's all done and over.

As I've suggested, my life over these two weeks had been a mess. Eventhough we have a full two weeks off to work on our SSC, I just couldn't get my head around it. But I wasn't the only one. Most first year medics I met were just like zombies. I met Dr Bundy last Wednesday to ask some psychosocial questions that she didn't answer through email. It was really interesting. Did you know that animals actually have a sense of themselves? It was really funny learning experiments of having dolphins looking at mirrors and things like that... And she was the second person after Dr Hollingsworth to ask me about life in general. I suppose it sounds stupid but I just love talking about myself, especially telling people about the fact that I make an effort to adapt and how happy I am with my life now. Then on last Friday, I met Dr Hollingsworth again to discuss about my half-way-done essay. It's really a great pleasure talking to him. He didn't comment much about the scientific content except that 'you seems to know more than I do already'. What he really commented on was the language. He corrected all my English error in the essay with red ink as though I was back in school. I wasn't expecting that from a university senior lecturer... He's just so nice... He asked me whether or not English is my second language, and I told him that English is actually my third language (After Chinese and Malay). And he was like 'Wo... I'm impressed!'. You see why I enjoy talking to him? He just makes me feel flattered all the time... What more can you ask for? He really knows how to compliment critisism with flattering. Contrary to my rants about SSC above, in a way, I thought it was a rather rewarding experience because of him as my supervisor.

I went to two of the base hospitals in this two weeks. On last Wednesday, I visited Preston. It was my second time being there and I retained my excellent impression of the hospital after the visit. It has great facilities and everything was new and shiny. It is particularly reputable as the best teaching hospital. The people are really friendly. The early experience facilitator, Siobhan, whom I've only met once last semester, actually remembered my name when I came for my first hospital placement early this semester. Preston has three really cool and sophisticated simulator for students to learn ATLS and clinical skills and they are in the process of aquiring a pediatric model. They were really wonderful. It has pulse, can breathe, talk, bleed and even cries and dies (and reincarnates). I recon I'd really benefit from these dummies. The only setback for Preston is that it is an hour away from Manchester. So if I were to choose this one, I'd be cut off from all my friends in Manchester, which would definitely be sad...
I also visited Hope Hospital. Though not as shiny as Preston, I still felt really welcomed. I talked to some of the third years and from the sound of it, there's plenty of opportunity to learn in Hope as all the staff are really eager to teach medical students. All we got to do is to look eager in response like a dog and we'll be allowed and trusted to perform or observe procedures that we're probably not suppose to be doing. The only thing is that I don't think I really like the speciality they have there, but that probably doesn't matter as I'll most probably change my mind quicker than I'd have imagine.
I haven't had the chance to visit to Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) as I was teaching primary school kids on its open afternoon but I'd probably not choose that one as I heard that it's quite disorganized and we won't get good support (being an attention seeker, that's really a priority...) eventhough it's just right across the road and has all the specialities I'm interested in. And finally, Wythenshawe Hospital is another hospital I will not want to go simply because I have bad experience with a patient there during one of my hospital placement. So, in order of preference, my choice of base hospital are 1. Hope 2. Preston 3. MRI 4. Wythenshawe.
Hope I don't have to bump into circumstance to make me rethink and chance my mind again. It's so difficult to make choices like this, especially when it's going to affect you for your three clinical years and probably mould the fundamental attitude as a doctor.

Student Selected Component (SSC)

I finally gather enough strength to start my SSC. I emailed Dr Hollingsworth the week before saying that I already have an outline and I'd like to see him to discuss the plan. In fact, I was lying. I didn't have a plan. I wanted to make an appointment to see him on a set date so that it would push me to get something done. The topic for my SSC sounds quite simple: How can coughing be reduced by drugs? To my surprise, coughing is not a simple matter at all. There're all kinds of receptors in the airway involved, transmiting impulses via various afferant fibres, then to other second order relay neorons and finally to the medulla. In the medulla, there are about five other parts of the brain which can influence the medullary activity. After the interpretation of impulses in the brain, electrical signals are sent to various motoneurons which target expiratory muscles in the thorax and abdomen for the coughing action. Drugs can act on anywhere along this pathway to suppress cough. There were huge amount of information to be understood, absorbed and properly organized in my head. I was actually quite surprise that I manage to come up with an outline on Thursday morning.

The meeting with Dr Hollingsworth was especially pleasant. To start with, I really appreciated the fact that he said he was impressed by my outline. Totally didn't expect that. Rather, I thought my outline was so crappy that I was prepared to have him telling me off for wasting his time... He asked me a number of really useful questions that led me to the direction which I'm suppose to head. In the process of describing to him what I've understood thus far, it helped me reorganize the messy chunks of information I've read from various textbooks and review articles. After the discussion about SSC, he asked me things about how am I coping as international student. He was the very first academic staff who talked to me about the PBL method from international students' perspective, which I had much to say about. And from our discussion, it became apparent that I'm actually one of the very few international student who manage to adapt really well in every aspect of a new life here, from PBL to the way of life. (Really, the only thing I can't stand is the weather), and I'm really proud of myself because of that!

Last week was quite a hectic week for me. I spent quite a huge amount of time facing the computer reading electronic journals for the SSC. I went for Judo training on Monday and Wednesday evening. On Tuesday, I spent the whole evening donating my blood. On Wednesday evening, I went to St Pauls' High School to teach CPR (What an experience seeing the kids getting so fascinated watching Annie's chest rise as we blow air into it's mouth..). Right after the meeting with Dr Hollingsworth on Thursday, I went to mentor the Somali kids with After School Club in Green Hayers Adult Education Centre. I was quite exhausted last week, but I'm entirely satisfied with my life now. I've always wanted my life to be very eventful, and now I've got what I wanted.

Also, i just want to mention that I answered a question in Dr Christine Bundy's lecture. It was just a quick and simple one, but that just added a sense of achievement for myself. It was only my second time speaking up in a theatre event... what a loser. But now everything's changed. I'm slowly but surely building up my self esteem and I am never going to be a loser ever!