Onwards and upwards!

I have been sticking very strictly to our proposed update schedule, as advertised in the top right-hand corner, i.e. infrequent and irregular. So much so that I'd forgotten I'd meant to update at all. Here comes a potentially long, definitely rambling blog post with little structure or purpose.

I'm amused to be able to tell you all that the reason I could hear nothing through my stethoscope originally was because I hadn't realised you had to rotate the end-that-goes-on-the-patient so that you're listening to the noises coming FROM THE PATIENT. Let me try to explain: at one end of your stethoscope are the ear pieces. You put these in your ears; even I'd figured that one out. At the other end is the round bit that you put on whatever you're trying to listen to. My stethoscope features two sides to this: one with a bit of plastic on it, and one without. You can only listen to noises from ONE of these two sides at a time; you have to twist it so you're listening to the right one. It was probably about three weeks before anyone realised I wasn't doing this. Turns out, those noises are way more obvious when you're using the stethoscope right.

Related note: I'm pretty sure people don't realise that you can just buy stethoscopes. Like, online. For money. In case you are ever in a hospital, ever: they do not check you have a medical degree before they sell you a stethoscope. Owning a stethoscope does not guarantee any medical knowledge whatsoever. Please do not let someone put needles in you just because they have a stethoscope and ask. They need an ID badge before they get to steal your bodily fluids. Remember this.

Also useful to remember: if your doctor seems like they aren't listening to you, it's probably because they're not. Unfortunately, if they are a doctor (as opposed to a medical student, say) there is almost nothing you can do about this except develop a more interesting problem.

Final point: from teaching on Wednesday, I now know that injecting yourself with laboratory substrates is not a good way to try to kill yourself, especially if you pick two chemicals with opposing actions. While each of them may have killed you on its own, if you give yourself a drug and something that is effectively the antidote to that drug at the same time, you will probably not die. This is why the French put the antidote to paracetamol in their paracetamol tablets.

The things we learn from our patients

If you're going through family stress, cocaine's probably not a great way to help you cope.

If you've been detained under the mental health act, your best course of action is probably not grabbing the nearest medical student and asking them to let you leave, while claiming your nursing staff are 'deranged'.

Signs that I'm going to die

Waking up at 2a.m. with the smoke alarm going off is never ideal. While in halls, it usually means someone's cooking toast or the test is being particularly malicious. When in a private flat, it probably means you're going to die. However, this was my train of thought:

'It's warm, I'm not getting up. Wait, that's the smoke alarm. I should probably check that out. I smell bacon, it's probably just that. Time to sleep. Oh, my flatmates are up. If I'm going to die, they'll probably wake me up first. Sleepy time now. Bacon smell makes me hungry, harder to sleep. Shame.'

For the record, my flat was actually filled with smoke at the time I was thinking all of this. Good to know.