Losing weight, gaining workload

The diet's going well - I've managed to lose 2st5lb so far, which leaves 6st12 to go before I hit my target weight of 9st. I saw my GP today, and he's prescribed me some Orlistat, so that should speed things up a bit - ideally I'd like to lose another stone before Christmas, although I think that might be setting the bar a bit too high? Answers on a postcard please. I'm also worried about the GI upset it can cause if I eat too much fat while I'm taking it, because I think diarrhoea combined with the sedation from the antipsychotics could be a really bad idea... we'll see!

Mental health wise, everything's on a pretty even keel - not getting worse, not getting better, just ticking along. Am managing to get a bit more work done, I'm not quite as sedated as I was before, so that's positive. I think at the moment the main thing impeding my getting on with my work is the library - as an undergrad, I'm not allowed to order inter-library loans of research papers without a signature from a member of faculty, and I'm on placements at the moment, so there aren't many members of faculty hanging around to sign my forms! Bah, humbug. Think I'll just ask my friend who's intercalating to sign them for me, he's on a Masters so he gets to order anything he likes. Hmph.

My research is getting more intense and scary - I've started analysing my first research focus group. I'm still waiting for my research tutor to get back to me about the group she said she'd organise in a different school - I don't want to hassle her, but equally, I want to keep moving - I want to get the whole prpject written up and finished with by the end of the Christmas holidays so I can focus on getting ready for Finals. Thinking about it, I should probably give her dictaphone back - oops!!

Must crack on with work, the to-do list is three pages long and unfortunately won't complete itself. Hey ho - more update soon.

Those damn badgers...

The last week or two have been all about my mental health - I've seen a psychiatrist, three GPs, a social worker, my new CPN... as yet, none of the pills or potions have made any difference, but the fact that someone's listening and trying to make things better is helping me get through bit my bit. Anyway, it's all been a bit intense and a lot of talking about stuff, so I've taken today off to give myself a bit of space - after my appointment this morning I went into town, got my eyebrows threaded (Ow!! But very pretty) bought some new makeup and had my hair cut. Looks much better, but now the roots are showing, so I'm going to have to dye it again. Am feeling much more pretty and human now anyway, and I'm off out to have a catch up with friends tonight. I probably shouldn't be eating pizza the night before weigh-in, but hey - I don't drink and a girl's got to have some vices!

Weirdly, my psychiatrist has also told me to go and get my hearing aids looked at. When I first started hearing voices, I assumed I was picking up induction coils and bluetooth from other people's electrical gadgets - it was only when I started hearing things with my aids out that I realised it had to be in my head. I guess then I owe my sanity to deafness - if I could hear normally, I'd probably have assumed the voices were real...

My work's lagging behind a bit, and I should probably be writing about epilepsy in patients with learning disabilities rather than blogging! Hey ho.

Long time, no post

Long time, no post. Sorry about that, life's been a bit hectic, and my hearing has taken a bit of a back seat. My mental health's taken a dive lately, and I'm now on some new tablets - just waiting for those to kick in, really, at the moment they're making me really drowsy but not really having any other effect.

I've also been doing my job applications for my foundation training. I did quite a lot of umming and aahing, but finally decided that I needed to move on and make a fresh start, so I've applied to move to Severn deanery. There are some good jobs going in Cheltenham and in Gloucester, and the area's good for psych training - it's also nice and close to my brother and my auntie. Filling in the form was a nightmare, though - five questions, all of which were slightly ridiculous, and each to be answered in under 200 words. Bah, humbug. Ah well, it's done now and out of my hands.

I'm really enjoying my psychiatry training, and I think this might be what I want to do with my life. I said that after doing Palliative Care as well, though, and still quite fancy being a GP... I'm sure life will take me down whichever route is right for me. I should probably stop stressing about it all! I'm also working on my research at the moment, which is proving highly frustrating. I ran my first focus group on Friday, so I'm now transcribing that - the recording's pretty poor quality and I'm having difficulty working out what they're all saying, although it helps that I was there the first time round. I'm sure it'll all come together - it's just time consuming. It was really interesting to run, though - people knew a lot more than I expected them to! I'll leave it a little while before I do my analysis, though - I'm planning on getting most of this nailed over Christmas, when I've got my psychiatry stuff out of the way. I've even nicknamed my dissertation - he's Brian - because I'm spending so much time on it that "I'm hanging out with Brian" sounds a lot more cool than "I'm in the library doing research," when people ask me what I'm doing at the weekends!

I probably ought to go back and crack on with transcribing my focus group. Will post more soon, honest!

New House, No Net

Apologies for the long time with no update. I've just moved house - again - and haven't had any internet. This has been quite a problem for the others I've just moved in with, but it's been a nightmare for me - I can't phone people, I do all my nagging housing agents, appointment-making and catching up with friends by email or MSN. It's made me realise just how dependent I am on the World Wide Web, to the extent that I dashed out on Thursday after class to get another mobile broadband dongle. I've now retrieved my old one from home, so one of the girls I'm living with has borrowed the newer one - it's helping, but I can't wait to get full-speed WIFI back up and running. This thing is unbearably slow, just uploading seven pictures I took of the house took me two hours.

The house I've moved into is structurally lovely, and it feels like home, but the previous tenants hadn't cleaned it, and it's filthy. A little better now that we've been in for almost a week, but still pretty disgusting - the agents haven't even come to take away the mouldy junk that the previous tenants left in the cupboards, and they've been promising to do it for days. I've given up expecting, and started to clean the place myself.

I've also come down with a cold in the last couple of days. My right ear is really sore, too sore for a hearing aid, which is going to make groupwork tricky tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it much, but I've just printed off all the prereading, and I'm hoping I can stay more-or-less afloat. I've got my first psychiatric placement on Tuesday, though, and I think that could be a little more problematic. I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

Will update again soon, honest.

Audit finished, and cinema reward

I finally finished the first draft of my audit today - getting the abstract done in time for the National Medical Students' Conference was a bit of a rush job, but I got it done and sent in - I'm hoping they'll be looking for content, rather than how the abstract itself was written, as mine was a bit lastminute.com (like, wrote it in 15 minutes, and I keep noticing glaring omissions!) I also sent the full draft to the people in the Palliative Care Office who helped me get the audit up and running, so they can have a look through it and see what changes need making.

As a reward, Mum and Dad took me off to the cinema to see Dorian Gray, which came out on Wednesday. I've been a fan of the book, and of Oscar Wilde in general, for years and even named my pet rat Dorian, so the film had the potential to be a great disappointment... there's nothing worse than a film making a hash of a well-loved book. Thankfully, for the book and for my evening, it was a wonderful film, although it did move away from the original text in places. I was concerned that it might be as bad as the dance interpretation of the novel I saw at the theatre in Norwich, which took everything that was just gently hinted at in the novel, and made it explicit and graphic.

I'm also really impressed with the cinema. I didn't phone ahead (obviously) and there was no information about the hearing loop, and we arrived about ten minutes before the film was due to start, so I didn't have the chance to ask anyone about telecoil - I just assumed that I'd have to muddle through based on my encyclopaedic knowledge of the text. To my amazement, not only was the loop on, but it was working really clearly too! I think I might write to them to congratulate them - I spend far too much time complaining about (and to) places that aren't fully deaf-friendly that I think they deserve a pat on the back when they do it well. Unfortunately, my organisational skills weren't as good as theirs, and about halfway through my hearing aid in my good ear went flat. I'd taken spare batteries - I take them everywhere - but I didn't fancy fiddling about trying to change them in the dark - I killed my last aid by dropping it on the floor, and I didn't fancy repeating the experience, so I was a bit lost for the latter part of the film. Still, it didn't ruin my enjoyment, so I've chalked it down to experience and decided that in future, I'm probably best to change batteries before going to cinemas or theatres!

Local audiology

I should probably preface this post by pointing out that I'm not the gentlest person when it comes to my hearing aids. I killed my old pair in two ways - I took the left one out to put my stethoscope in (back in the days when my hearing loss was milder) and it pinged across the floor and got stepped on. The other one, I put the battery in the wrong way round, didn't notice, tried to force it closed anyway, and ended up having to prise it open with the post of an earring every time I needed to change the battery. I think my audiologist despairs of me, just a little bit, although I think secretly he may enjoy the challenge...

Anyway, this time, I've snapped the earmoulds. Both of them. The left one is only partially cracked - it's still in one piece, it just pinches a little. The other is cracked through, and I can't seem to get both bits in my ear properly, so I'm whistling; it doesn't bother me much, although I suspect that the sounds I'm picking up aren't quite as clear; it's more of an annoyance to the people around me, really.

I was rapidly getting fed up with this, so I thought that rather than waiting until I'm back at uni, I'd contact a branch closer to home, so I phoned a more local office, where the same audiologist as I normally see, works. I looked up their contact details: phone number only. No email, no fax, no Minicom, and it's a service for deaf people. Hey ho, thought I, they'll just have to put up with me asking for endless repetitions.

I muddled through the first few minutes of the conversation, until she took my date of birth. "We don't treat people under 40." I asked her what deaf under-40s were meant to do, and she said they didn't have any on their books, and hung up on me: it's no wonder there aren't any on their books, if that's how they talk to us! Besides, this is the same audiologist as I've been seeing for the last three years, just at a different office, and I know he sees us young'uns.

I think a written complaint is in order, and I think I'll wait until I get back to uni to get those new earmoulds...

An Introduction

OK, so the title of the blog is a bit of a misnomer, I'm in fact not Dr yet. I'm still Miss, a fifth year medical student, but hey, I'm ambitious. Dr Death was also my nickname in the band I used to play in, and despite all my efforts to the contrary many people still seem to define my medical abilities by my audiogram, so Doctor Deaf seemed particularly apt.

I'm not one of these medical students who knows, and has always known, exactly what they want to do. I'm currently thinking about either general practice (a little bit of everything, and no ward rounds, woohoo) or palliative care (which I did my elective in, and loved every minute.) Anything except surgery, and I've threatened to jump off the top of the hospital if MTAS places me in obstetrics and gynaecology for F1 - admittedly the hospital I do most of my training in is only two storeys, but I reckon I'd still get a decent leg break that'd get me out of doing that rotation!

For the audiologically-minded, I probably ought to introduce my deafness, as well as myself. I have a bilateral profound hearing loss of 90-110dB, and although my audiograms look the same on both sides, I feel as though my right ear is the better one. Possibly I just need my left hearing aid looking at. If anyone's interested, I could at some point dig out an audiogram. I probably qualify for a cochlear implant, but I haven't plucked up the courage to ask about one yet - I'm managing without one, and so far as I'm concerned, if I'm managing without surgery, that's a pretty good reason for me not to have any. I just don't like pain.

When I'm not trying to keep my head above water in med school, I'm playing with my pet rat Dorian, taking photographs, or reading (anything I can get my hands on. The back of cereal packets, if there's nowt else.) Or catching up with friends, and drinking real ale in one of the lovely pubs around uni; I'm sure I live in the best city for ale in the whole country.

I can't think that there's much else to introduce - there probably is, of course, but my brain's gone sticky. Caffeine deficiency, possibly, or too many audit statistics gumming up my synapses. Either way, I'm sure I'll be back.