This week was a good week (: We went to Burton late Monday night coz we only started on Tuesday. So had 1 more day in Leicester :D You never realise that absence makes the heart fonder until absence makes your heart fonder. While good ol' quiet Burt is a nice place nothing beats the familiarity of 2nd home, except for my 1st home. Despite human (or maybe just my) tendency to complain about what they've got, I actually do find Leicester quite a nice little place and appreciate it a lot more now.

Another yay point about the week is that we got to go back to Leicester today instead of tomorrow! And Sania came with us this time coz we have PPD day at school tomorrow. And everyone was in a good mood coz we were going back to Leicester early and coz everyone was excited about seeing their friends the next day at school (I dun quite share their excitement to be honest but of course I smiled along excitedly). So I had someone more familiar to talk to on the train ride home, which is always nice. The others are very nice people but 1. different wavelength 2. not so close. And I happened to be high on coffee as well so I was able to converse very brightly and naturally with everyone this time (ignoring my shaky hands and restless legs). Sania didn't let me have another Wether's original cos she said it would add sugar high to my system ):

Although it was a relatively chilled out 3 days where we didn't pack our timetables and try to squeeze as much as we could between 9a.m. and 6p.m. somehow it was more productive.. I guess we were more focused on what we wanted to get out of the day. Today we started off our day by being stood up by the radiologist, then being rejected by the phlebotomists, which is stupid because we had been running around the past 3 weeks taking bloods already, yet when we ask for supervision they say they are not allowed to let us do it. So we are allowed to take bloods without supervision, but not with supervision. Hm. Anyway. We asked the nice teddy bear FY for nice patients and went off to take 2 very very long histories for the morning. In our defence, the histories were very detailed and the patients were bored (and old) so they chatted with us half the time and answered our questions the other half. I still haven't mastered the skill of interrupting patients. After that we thought, since they were so nice, and so bored, we should take advantage of it and examine them. Which was lucky because we got to hear/feel good signs in both :D We felt an AF pulse, heard a gallop rhythm, basal crackles and a good murmur today. I must write all this down while I can still remember them.

We also got to perform ECGs this week. But to be honest, a lot of the time I just pretend to be measuring but really just estimate and pray hard that I roughly got the right places. Quite lucky so far cos I got all males (but to be fair each one was progressively older and fatter so it was like Level 1: Beginner. Young fit man. Level 2: Senior beginner. Middle-aged plump man. Level 3: Intermediate. Old fat hairy man.). I bet the next time I am going to get a woman. Shit and then there's OLD woman D: Then old plump woman T_T

A lot of times knowledgeable old people brighten when they hear that I am from Singapore. Their eyes light up with recognition and they say, "I went there 60 years ago during the war" or "My husband used to go there on business and he stayed in...". I used to appreciate that recognition, but then sometimes these bored people get a tad enthusiastic and start showing us photographs =O There was this nice old man who showed us pictures of the ship he sailed on to Singapore, and another nice old lady who showed us pictures of her house and garage. While I find that quite endearing and somehow quite enjoy the easy chats (as compared to more reserved patients) it also makes it reeaaally hard to stick to the relevant stuff. Ok I sound like a bitch now. Next time I will tell all patients that I was born in.. Cornwall. Or like, Gloucesterhamptonfordshire.