Sunday 20 September 2009

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.

Friday 11 September 2009

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!

Monday 7 September 2009

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.