Adrenaline flood

Last week, I was bordering the state of manic following the frantic revision for OSCE, meeting my family and fighting my way across London (along with six people from Malaysia) and back to Manchester. Good old adrenaline kept me going.

OSCE was on Thursday, testing our competence on neurology, psychiatry, orthopaedics and rheumatology. Almost none of the pathological signs and symptoms I spent hours upon hours revising came out. Instead we were tested mostly on basic history and examination skills, which was fair enough I suppose. To me this seems a little foolish, but it would be more foolish of me not to practise the examination sequence to a certain level of slickness. The majority of the stations are what I call (monkey) skill demonstration, a performance of a polished and well rehearsed routine. I don't think we have to even mention the obvious abnormality to pass. It was not easy for me because when I examine a patient, I'd like to do it thoroughly, in a practical way (eg I would not percuss and auscultate the thyroid routinely in real life, so why should I remember to do it to a healthy volunteer in an exam?). Nevertheless I thought it was a well organised and fair exam. There wasn't anything that I didn't know. I did a few silly mistakes, but hopefully I have compensated by doing well enough in the other stations. The residual adrenaline left me feeling high for the rest of the day.

On the evening, I met my family in London. I was so thrilled to meet them. We spent the next few days touring London and some other places. Mum was rather skeptical about the idea of wandering around the intimidating streets of London without any tour guide with arranged itineraries, but I managed to convince her that I'm perfectly capable of being their guide. In two days, we managed to visit the British Museum and Greenwich, watch a west end theatre and a Pantomime, experience the London underground and bus services. Mum even had time to very briefly see the place that she used to live in 30 odd years ago. A very expensive trip though, I must say. But we all enjoyed everything, apart from the freezing temperature. The weekend was like The Amazing Race. Two days + seven people and I have not managed to lose one of them, what a feat! On the last day before parting, we went to my mum's friend's house. She was so kind to accommodate us and to cook us a Christmas dinner. My first sister had a wee bit too much alcohol and spilled out some secret that my mum never knew...

The return trip back to Manchester was a memorable one. I had to change train at a little place called Wolverhampton. I arrived there at 1:30am and the train to Manchester was not until 6:21am. By the time I arrived at Wolverhampton by bus replacement service, the train station was closed. So I had to wait at a bus stand. I was freezing (I am pretty sure that temperature then was well below 0. So I devised various ways to keep warm, which included pacing around and lifting weights using my luggage. I felt vulnerable, there was a taxi driver who offered to drive me to a hotel free of charge. In short, I was an exhausted, sleepy young lady carrying valuables alone in the middle of no-where trying hard to fight off the bitter cold for nearly five hours. A worker at the bus stand sympathised me and gave me a cup of tea and a pack of crisp (I probably shouldn't even have accepted that). I was and am still crossed with the train company for selling that sort of ticket (which wasn't cheap by the way) and not providing a safe and comfortable waiting area for their customers and I intend to complain.

Eventhough the weekend did not go as smoothly as I expected, spending time with my family can only be the best post-exam reward for me. The only thing left to say is I was proud that I managed to stay awake and focused for the next day for my first day placement in clinical genetics. Thanks to the left over adrenaline again from the night before, no doubt.


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