A new year.....

The mini-medic has not vanished into oblivion! She has simply been adapting to the perpetual balancing act that is lifeand work as a medical student. As I revise for the first set of practical and written exams in a few weeks time and wave goodbye to the rollercoaster year that was 2009- it seems a good time to pick up the blogging 'pen' and reflect on my first 4 months in medic-land.

Referring to the title of this blog:-

LIFE - well yes, life goes on. Despite the temptation to disappear into a medic shaped bubble- relationships (of every sort- good, bad, romantic, family, new, old, local, long distance) and 'normal' activities (for me it's trampolining, choir singing, and ice skating) will continue and help to keep you sane- mostly!

THE UNIVERSE- Both in the medical world and also in all things, we must look beyond our own doorstep (ok not to the universe perhaps, but nationally and internationally times are a'changin). I still spend a great deal of time keeping up with the new health stories in the news. Swine flu has not wiped us all out as we seemed to expect. The new president is making headway to free healthcare for people in the USA and we'll see on our side of the pond how the NHS will change as a result of the economic state of the world and the effect of a 'possible' new government....

GRAY'S ANATOMY- well, all I can say for starters - there's a lot of it! Our anatomy professor gleefully informed us in week 1 of med school that we were going to double our vocabularies in 3 years with new medical words. In the first lecture alone we began to 'learn the lingo' with around 100 anatomy terms. Add to that all the biochemistry, embryology, and statistics jargon we've had thrown at us this term, the muscles, arteries, veins and nerves of the GI tract which by now should be old hat and I'm starting to believe that professor. Hopefully my brain doesn't have a finite capacity for new words - There's still a LONG way to go...

Oh yeah and then there's GREY'S ANATOMY- I started watching this a few years ago- long before medicine became a realistic possibility, soon to dismiss it as another american soap only loosely rooted in reality. However - looking for a mind-numbing release my boyfriend and I revisited it a few months ago and found it not only enjoyable but also occasionally poignant.
Sure the scripts may wander a little from medical fact but here are a few Grey's anatomy 'truths' that we have found.

• We too are at the bottom of a very long food chain.
• Consultants are there to make our lives hell - but only so we learn from it!
• As mentioned- you can't shut out the real world- personal and professional lives will intertwine in hopefully not too messy way!
• Everyone is keen to get into the 'real doctor stuff' asap - but equally terrorfied killing someone!
• Yes - most doctors are in a relationship/married to doctors!

Gotta love a bit of mindless soap sometimes :-)