!tsal ta gnirpS

Dare I say it?! “Spring” has finally arrived! The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and we reached a high temperature of 55°F this past week!

To celebrate the weather, I went on a few nice runs in the week—one to Little Venice along Regent’s canal. The mood changed as the scenery changed-- from stately mansions near Regent’s Park to a castle-cum-pub and rainbow neon lights in Camden Town. All of it was fantastically different.

I spent almost 30 hours volunteering this past week. Although I am now allowed to work on wards, I spent a majority of my time on the Shop Trolley this week. It seems that because I’ve been doing such a good job with it, the volunteer coordinators are reluctant to have me do anything else. I need to be more assertive. Working on the wards can be rewarding, although it can be deadly dull as well. I spent some time this past week in the Emergency room, making teas for people and talking to them. I spoke for a while with a man from the Seychelles, who was very interesting, and another woman who I think had dementia and couldn’t remember how to get home. Upstairs, I took the tea and coffee cart around to the patients on a ward and took their dinner orders a few times. Some of the people there have been in the hospital for almost a year—it’s quite sad.

Last weekend I made brunch for a few friends of mine—we had baked eggs with spinach and cream, homemade biscuits, orange and pineapple ambrosia, mimosas, and banana pudding (the latter two were brought by a good friend). The theme was, of course, a Southern style brunch. It went over very well!

MCAT studying is going… well… ok. I took another practice test yesterday, and although my score was OK, I need to score higher. MD/PhD programs are super-competitive, and I’m quite certain that they play the numbers game. I just need to buckle down, I think, and stop making stupid mistakes. 27 days until test day, and I’m almost finished with my review of material. Soon, it’ll be constant practice tests.

gniwodahS

I apologize for the absence of an update this past week. I have been very busy.

My last week was spent mostly studying and volunteering. At the hospital, I worked either at the information desk or on the shop trolley. I had a good time, but it started to get a little repetitive. Thank goodness my criminal background check passed. Now I will be able to work on the wards and interact with patients more!

The week before last, we saw a nice play called London Assurance. It was written in the 1840's and was put on at the National Theatre. The play was well acted-- somewhat like an Oscar Wilde piece but not quite the same level of wittiness. One of the leading roles was played by Fiona Shaw (Mrs. Dursley).

On Sunday I met with an alumna from my university who worked in my position back in 1991 at our house in Italy. I originally got in contact with her because she was trying to sell some tickets to see David Sedaris. I like David Sedaris and offered to buy them from her. She met with me and her English husband in a pub in Highgate and spent a good two hours chatting. We had a nice afternoon, and I'm looking forward to the reading.

I spent the past week mostly shadowing at the hospital near our house. Back when I was in the US, I contacted a consultant physician at the hospital, a man who is apparently one of the best thoracic doctors in the country, and he set me up to follow different doctors around for the week. On Monday, I shadowed a senior house officer on the ward where people are sent after they are admitted to the emergency room. On Tuesday morning, I watched endoscopy of the lungs (saw a tumor up close and personal), and in the afternoon I followed a lung registrar around the hospital as he followed up on his referrals. Wednesday morning was spent in the thoracic clinic with another registrar. That afternoon I went back to the post-emergency ward (and got to see an example of pyoderma gangrenosum). Thursday I went to a hospital out in the suburbs to watch some day-surgeries-- hernia repair, varicose veins, and cataract removal. The afternoon was spent following a consultant physician around a vascular surgery clinic. We had one patient with an ulcer that had almost tunneled its way through his leg! This morning, I shadowed a dermatologist. This man was great to watch-- one of those doctors who is super professional but has a really good touch with the patients. He also does a ton of research (he has an MD and MBBS, see below), so he was a really interesting person with whom to discuss research and medicine as a career. I think I'm going to try to follow him around again.

By the way, some medical terminology is different in the UK (of course). Surgeons are referenced as "Mr." or "Ms." After medical school (which is normally an undergraduate course of education), students continue training in hospitals as house officers (residents), then become senior house officers (residents), then become registrars (chief residents/fellows), then rise to the level of consultant physicians (attending physicians). Doctors usually receive a "bachelor of medicine" which is termed either MBBS or BMBCh; an MD is the equivalent of a PhD in medical research.

On Tuesday, I went to see Judi Dench in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose Theatre in Kingston. It was fantastic. Judi Dench was so, so good. I'm so glad I went. I may have seen her car leave the theatre, but I'm not sure.

My MCAT studying is coming along ok. On Saturday I took a full-length exam written by ExamKrackers, not the AAMC. I didn't do particularly well, partly because I didn't eat lunch. I also don't like the way EK writes their test questions in general (and they do not explain their answers well at all). I'm taking another full-length test tomorrow, and from now on I'm just going to take AAMC tests. Hopefully I'll do better this time, otherwise I'm going to get discouraged. I still have a month before the exam, but I haven't been able to study much this week and am starting to feel anxious.

This week I'm volunteering a lot and hopefully studying a lot!!!

dooF emoS, gnireetnuloV emoS, pirT A

If I were naive, I'd say that spring is starting to poke itself through the blanket of wet and dismal weather we've been experiencing in London for the past week. But I'm not. I know that spring weather in England doesn't arrive for good until April, May, or sometimes even June. That hasn't stopped the sun from shining for the past few days, or the intense purple crocuses with vibrant yellow stamens from carpeting the backyard of our house, or snowdrops from peeking through the undergrowth in English gardens.

These past few days of sunshine and (relative) warmth have been welcome break in the clouds indeed. It comes just in time for the students to vent some of the pressure that has built up in the house over the past few weeks due to hard work and perhaps a tinge of cabin fever. The half-semester vacation which begins this weekend is much needed indeed.

The students and I had a little prelude to this break on our day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon last week. We hired a bus and drove 2.5 hours to Warwickshire and unloaded next to the river Avon. Our stops for the day included the church where Shakespeare is buried (the organ was being tuned and make for an earsplitting ambiance), two period houses which belonged to younger relations of his (which were nice), and his birthplace. Although I enjoyed seeing the Jacobean architecture in the flesh and walking around the houses, something about the town was just a little too kitschy for me. In November last year I went to Salem, Massachusetts where the witch trials took place. Though the town was very pretty in the autumnal season, the kitsch factor of the tourist attractions in the town was almost nauseating. Something about Stratford smacked of Salem. I imagine in the spring when flowers bloom, it's much better.

In the evening we had a lovely dinner and then went to see a performance King Lear by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre. Greg Hicks, a famous British theatrical talent, played in the starring role of one of the most technically advanced and overall focused pieces of theater I will perhaps ever see. I walked away speechless. The actors all did a tremendous job with their roles (except for the Fool, whom I could not understand). The depth of the plot meshed so well with the gritty/post-tribal/post-industrial/World War II set and costumes. At one point, when King Lear laments his isolation, rain pours down on him from above in a circle as he is elevated on a small platform. Incredible.

Other than the trip to Stratford, I managed to get out of the house a few times to volunteer at the hospital this past week. On Friday, my partner on the trolley was a lovely sunny lady, and I had lots of fun with her. On Tuesday, my partner was a little less sunny and a little more protective over what stock went on the trolley. Who's to blame her? She's been doing this for five years.

I went for a late Shrove Tuesday celebration this past Wednesday at a friend of a friend's house, which was very nice. And I've studied for the MCATs, which has taken up lots of time. And I cooked dinner for the house last Monday. Beef and bean burritos (a request from one of the students) with fresh salsa, rice, and fried bananas in orange ginger sauce over ice cream for desert. Tonight, the dinner prepared by the professor and crew was southern comfort food-- oven fried chicken, fried okra, oven baked sweet potato fries (which I salvaged from a soggy fate by frying them at the last minute), macaroni and cheese, biscuits, and chocolate chip cookies. Yum.