Lucky

Today some good things happened. Firstly I am very excited about something which seems trivial but made me very happy - last week I purchased a new MP3 player because my old one had started to randomly switch off which was very annoying. When I have a salary I intend to get an iPod, but right now I can't afford it and there's no way I can last six months without portable music, so I bought a Creative 1G to tide me over. It's small, pretty, and plays music, which is what I need, although the filing system is a little confusing and I haven't quite figured out where all my music is yet! Anyway, I noticed the other day that the battery cover was missing from the back - it's a tiny piece of white plastic, but I thought, it's okay, it'll be in my bag/pocket/room.

It wasn't.

It's very annoying to lose the back of a brand new player which has to last 6 months at least, and despite me retracing my footsteps and hunting high and low, there was no sign. I was just giving up and trying to work out a way of holding in the battery with micropore (magic stuff) which would look a bit crap but would mean nothing else fell off, when my flatmate came back from the shop down the road waving the precious piece of plastic at me! Hurrah! It had survived three days in the gutter with only a few scratches, so I was very happy.

So that was good thing number one.

The other good thing is that I got one of my boxes signed off this morning which was proving very difficult - as part of our course we have to get about a million boxes signed off, some for procedures we have to do/see, some for examinations, that kind of thing, and I'm now down to the last four boxes which are a bit of a chore. Anyway, I managed to go with a patient to mammography this morning, which was not only a great box-signing opportunity while avoiding the masses of students who have to queue up to see a mammogram at the clinic, but also a great chance to spend some time with a patient and chat - I really like talking to people as people and not just as 'lady with mastitis' or 'man with bowel obstruction', and this lady actually said as we got back to the ward that she appreciated having me come with her as she was able to ask question and it took her mind off things, so that made me feel like something I did today was worthwhile and actually made a difference to someone, which is a rare thing to feel as a medical student since we spend a lot of time filling in forms and taking blood. I'm aware that come August I won't have time to go with patients to investigations and get to know them a bit better, so it's also a priviledged position to be in as a student, and one which I hope I'll be able to be in more in my last few weeks.

On a more scary note, I'm still bricking it about starting work - I'm painfully aware of all the things I don't know and think I really should, so this weekend will be a lot of reading and learning I think, partly to alleviate my rising panic and partly to avoid the embarassment of having your FY2 saying 'you need to know this, you'll be a doctor in a few months' in front of the fourth years!