Mourning

The Medics Of Newnham are in mourning.

Why? I hear you cry. Well, in order to answer that, I have to explain a little history.

After our arrival at Newnham, we rapidly came to realise that transport in Cambridge means either walking or a bike. Or both. So it came to pass, in a rather Biblical turn of phrase, that we bought ourselves bikes. In particular, several of us bought second-hand, reconditioned bikes from OWL bikes, a charity in Cambridge. These bikes were given names. Names such as Felicity, Geraldine, Jo (I think it's short for Joanne? or maybe Joanna...) and Julio (Julio is fluorescent pink and green, very flamboyantly gay, and we keep on catching him having rampant bike sex with bikes we don't know).

These names we adopted (well, Geraldine and I adopted them, anyway) as our names for posting on here (just in case we say something dim and might get in trouble for it, also because who doesn't like a little alter ego in their life?). We feel even closer to our much-beloved and relied-upon bikes as a result.

I went home this weekend, leaving my bike chained up outside the station. I think you can see where this story is going, can't you?

When I returned to Cambridge (laden with bags, and after a truly horrific journey, filled with bus replacement services and delayed trains and missed connections), I found Felicity (the bike) had gone.

Felicity has been stolen. I am very, very, very upset.

A moment's silence, if you please, for a lilac bike that only ever wanted to console, with her charming whirring-squeak and falling-off mudguards.

Love, through my sadness,
Felicity (the medic)

College Scarves

Useful things, these. But not only because they let us walk around Cambridge being Newnham-proud (yes, I went there) and keep our necks warm and suchlike, oh no. They have MANY MANY MYRIAD uses.

1. Oven mitts. When taking a bowl of hot soup/baked beans/jacket potato out of the microwave, you cast your eyes around the kitchen and realise that once again, there isn't a teatowel. You put your hands around the bowl - gingerly - and yank them back because, damn, it's hot. You look around the kitchen again, in hopes that a teatowel will have materialised. No such luck. You fold your college scarf in half, and use that instead, and it keeps your hands from burning. Excellent

2. General-purpose cloth. Admittedly, being woven wool, they're not ideal for this, but they're better than nothing. You get to your bike; it is pouring it down rain and you either forgot to put a plastic bag over the seat, or you didn't think it'd rain so it wasn't necessary, or it's been torn, or you thought your bike was undercover but the driving winds meant it got wet anyway...you don't want to sit on a sopping wet bike saddle in your jeans. You also don't want to stand on the pedals the whole way home, for stability's sake (what with your tonne-weight of lecture notes in a bag over one of the handlebars, you understand). You get your college scarf, and you wipe the saddle down, and it is all a little bit better.

3. Muff. One of our lecture theatres is freezing, I think because the air-conditioning is apparently still on, despite it being November and cold. I always forget this when I get dressed in the morning, though, so I quite often end up wearing tops that leave my arms bare. Brrrr. The solution? Wrap the Newnham college scarf around your forearms! It's long enough that you can actually carry on writing after you've done this.

...don't you just HATE it when you start a list and it was going to be beautiful and long and then you forget half of it? That just happened. I'll put the others in later when I remember them/if I remember them/when people remind me of them.

Love,
Felicity

A brief aside

Clinical Training

Yes, you're quite right, I have work I ought to be doing. On the other hand...

Love,
Felicity

Outside the Cambridge Bubble

I heard this rumour that something was happening in America...?

OK, I'll be sensible.  America are voting for their next President tonight (our time).  I am TERRIFIED.  There are basically two reasons for this:

1. Sarah Palin.  God, that woman scares me.  I wake up from nightmares in a cold sweat and screaming in which she was chosen for vice-presidential candidate...and then I realise IT'S ALL TRUE.

2. The possibility that McCain might be elected.  This used to be OK, on the grounds that he's old and natural causes or forced retirement or something might take him out of the picture soon; now it's NOT OK because he's old and if he gets taken out of the picture, we get probably the most powerful country on the planet being run by a woman who doesn't know whether it's Pakistan or Palestine Israel's got that problem with...

I am NOT going down to the Union to watch live coverage; I choose to spend tonight sleeping on my brand-new mattress (hopefully I will recover from the back pain the old one gave me...) for possibly my last night EVER of safe, peaceful sleep in a relatively sane world.

I so don't want to see the words "MCCAIN WINS IN LANDSLIDE" anywhere tomorrow morning.

AND another thing...

Boo to having "formal assessments" with only a family-filled weekend in which to prepare...we have a test on the muscles, nerves, bones and generally everything to do with the upper limb (medical-speak for what you plebs call an arm) sometime this week and I KNOW NOTHING.

*panic*

Love, Felicity

Glossary

Well, it's not really a glossary, because that would imply some sort of order, and also a point.  It's more a randomised guide to things that become normal as a medical student at Cambridge.

Formaldehyde:  Smells horrid.  It gets used to embalm the cadavers we cut up, and it is just REVOLTING.  It burns my nose and throat and makes my eyes water (not everyone gets this), and it also makes my stomach churn.  On top of which - I was eating macaroni cheese last night, and I put a forkful in my mouth and suddenly I could TASTE formaldehyde.  I stopped eating...so we could add "macaroni cheese" to the list of "things dissection has ruined for me".

On top of which: when you cut into an embalmed body, embalming fluid comes out.  EW.  You have to drain it out of the body-bag.  Also EW.  And then, sometimes, like today, when you're happily reflecting the skin, the skinflap slips out of your forceps, because it's slippery and your hand aches from holding them closed.  And then you get splashed with embalming fluid.  That has been in a dead body.  EW.  Then you spend five minutes washing your face and generally freaking out.

Obesity:  using the BMI guide (something to do with height and weight squared, or the other way round, or something...I'll get back to you on this one), most of our textbooks are obese.  

Poverty:  textbooks are expensive; we need two or three per course; we do three courses.  And then you have anatomical atlases and medical dictionaries (it's a whole new language) and anatomy colouring books and revision guides and CDs of people talking about anatomy and...yeah.  It gets expensive.  Hurrah for grants from College!

Procrastination:  Yeah...guess what this is?  This is what you can file everything that's not WORK under...

Workaholism:  Alternatively, always being miles behind where you should be.  No two ways about it; choose your path, medics!

Wow, look at that - I achieved alphabetical order without meaning to.

Love, Felicity

Things that dissection has ruined for me.

Ribena
Orange Juice
Custard
Banana
Loft insulation (which is weird...what's there to ruin about it?)

I'm sure that this list will grow over time.

New additions as of 21/11/08:
Pancakes (particularly sad about this one)
Chocolate
Wagamama's (thanks to one of the boys on one of the dissection tables...more on him later)
Crayola markers
Onion (weird but true)

And again, 3/12/08:
Wrapping christmas presents, or presents in general

15/4/09:
Well, I knew I would lose track, and I have. Basically, if you hear someone at your dissection table say, 'You know what this reminds me of?' in the middle of a session, do everything you possibly can to silence them.

Geraldine xxx