The last haul...(& de-crippling myself)

Almost done now...! I've been in such a complaining mood lately and am actually getting really restless and missing home very much- I really can't wait to feel the cool breeze and smell of the sea and drive around in my funky scooter #daydreaming.

Histology was a tough one yesterday- I've now realised that I definitely need more than 120 minutes to complete 100 MCQs in order to have the chance to think twice about what I enter into the answer sheet!!!!
But for what it's worth; it was a very fair test compared to anatomy which was pure evil....
Oh well, only the practical exam on Friday left before I get to go home (!!!!!) Practising on the quiz section of the department website right now- just have to keep looking at all of the slides until Friday so they'll stick to my brain I guess. It's all very monotonous and mostly just splashes of pink and purple, but there are a few ones I really like:

Filiform papilla stained with AZAN staining- wooow this is actually really colourful!

http://www.histologia.cm-uj.krakow.pl/Repetytorium/repetyt.html

Silver stained liver ; central vein - my definite favourite!

Respiratory bronchiole- kind of pretty I guess

http://www.histologia.cm-uj.krakow.pl/Repetytorium/repetyt.html

Most of the slides look like even more boring versions of the bronchiole, so there's a lot of pink mush that we need to be able to differentiate. Bah..!

I spent the time after the test yesterday packing up my room and chilling without having a bad conscience because the chemistry retake was going on this morning so I didn't feel like it was time spent skiving (slept until 8 this morning and it felt strangely nice) I'm packing up now because we have to move out of the flat :( It's such a shame because we really like it here, but the owner has decided to sell the flat- quite cheaply for what it is, but still none of us can afford to buy it- otherwise I seriously would! We only found out ~a week ago that we need to find a new place for next year. Luckily we have now found a place that is quite ideal. We will probably know by tomorrow if we can move in.

Also I really can't stand the crutches any more, so I decided to de-cripple myself and will stop by the hospital tomorrow to see if anyone can squeeze me in at some point....



I think I've compressed my ulnar nerve while using the crutches too because my little and ring finger is tingling a little. Oh, the things you learn in first grade!



.n

Crippled.

Hello hello, stupid day!

It's just my foot. It sort of hurts. A lot.

Last night got me no quality sleep whatsoever and even considered going to the emergency department in the middle of the night for some advice but held on until 5:30 this morning. Karoline helped me out and I skipped my way to a clinic which is literally down the road and up a side street. We got there in time for 7am which is when they open. The receptionist did not speak English and did not even try to understand what was wrong. I just skipped back out once I'd used up my taxi-Polish-skills and gotten nowhere. She did give us the address to another clinic where I could get some help though. So we call a taxi, it never shows up and luckily Karoline manages to hail one off the side street. We get in and it feels really strange taking a cab to a place I'd normally walk to within 5 minutes....

This place was allegedly the emergency department of the university hospital and we're guided down the stairs to a strange little hallway where people register. They manage to find someone who speaks English and she's initially just like- "this is strictly for emergency situations like fractures and sprains, so you should actually just go to THIS address!" .....and writes down the address of the clinic we just came from. I actually asked her whether she was kidding me or not and after showing her a little pain-burst she let me register and wait for an English speaking doctor to arrive at 8am. We wait in the hallway for almost an hour and around 8:45 they ask me to come in, put me in a wheelchair (fun....) and send me to radiology. A cool paramedic guy rolled me away to take an x-ray and rolled me back, placing me in a corner for another hour. I did some chit chatting with an older Polish lady who actually knew the odd English phrase which was quite sweet.

I started to get a bit impatient and whipped out a fabulous "przepraszam" to get their attention. The so-called English-speaking doctor kept jabbering in Polish even after I said "nie mowie po polsku" TWICE, so he found the nurse I met earlier who said there were no fractures, just a dark shadow on my x-ray which means I have to wear this stupid CAST for a week:

at least 4 out of my 5 toenails were painted and are now nicely on display...

She gave me a few other papers including a prescription for anti-coagulant injections which I have to inject myself for 10 days or so because this shadow could apparently be a sign of clot formations (?). I even got my x-rays on a CD- which made me slightly amused...

I was told to go to get the cast on my leg somewhere close to radiology and Karoline rolled me down the halls. Got redirected to 3 places before finding a place to register for getting a cast and the line was so immense I just wanted to cry. Karo even offered to go home and get our histology notes so we wouldn't just sit there waiting for 3 hours with nothing to do. I registered to this place again miraculously being able to communicate with the grumpy reception lady and we went back in line. Then we somehow managed to find another doctor who spoke English and explained the situation, so he took us to a completely different place to get the cast. Met the paramedic guy again, this time on his lunch break in the cast-making room. I got the cast and realised that what's normal practice in Norway is not necessarily the same here- they could not offer me any crutches! Paramedic guy gave me the "see, this is the way out country works"-look and this is where we parted. Karo rolled me into a cab and we were outside the flat at noon. Skipped my way to one of the medical shops next door and bought these fancy teal crutches in the pic above. Gotta love the stylishness of the situation!

So yeah, to sum it up:

I'm wearing this stupid cast and walking on fabulous crutches until the 22nd (hopefully without the horrible pain at some point) injecting those anti-coagulants every day and going back after my last histology exam on the 22nd for a health check. Hopefully won't need to crutch-up again for my flight on the 23rd... crossing my fingers and healthy toes as we speak.

How it happened, you say? I have __no__ frickin clue. If I have to get my foot casted every time I go out jogging, this could be a really sad life!




.n

First block down.

So far I've had three finals and they keep getting more and more ridiculous.

Theoretical anatomy was a nasty slap in the face and I'm not even exaggerating when I estimate a failing percentage of 25% of the class (not entirely sure here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was that high). It was literally like playing odd one out/spinning the bottle/bingo/yatzy/whatever luck-related children's board game you wanna call it.
I guess they really wanted to give us a killer of a test to see who had read all the blue and yellow boxes with the tiny print in italics, which is fine to include, but filling up half of the test with crap I was explicitly told not to focus too much on defeats the point of an exam! Seriously, who cares whether the MALE nipple is located on the level of the 4th rib or 4th intercostal space?? Just for the sake of feeling even dumber I even tried palpating my own ribs and nipples during the exam- still managing to get the answer wrong ^^

Walking out of the exam seeing everyone else's WTF-just-happened-faces was disturbingly reassuring. I started to mentally preparing myself for an early return after the summer break even before making my way out of the anatomy building. What's quite good about our school though is that they process the results of the exams pretty quickly- not like in Edinburgh where you get your results months after when you've probably even forgotten which exam you sat.. So people start getting their results roughly an hour after the test. Lucky me waited for 4 1/2 hrs- 2 1/2 of which I sat in front of the computer refreshing and re-logging into the result page. Bah... whatever, I passed and I am proud to the bone!

That evening I went to party with people from the choir which was a nice breath of fresh air before cramming some organic chemistry for the rest of the weekend- time that could have been well spent doing histology, but whatever. At the end of the day I could truly identify with this entry from http://whatshouldwecallmedschool.tumblr.com

Cramming for my exam late at night and then I'm like: 

 

The exam- again in my opinion- was a tad difficult, probably emphasised by my don't-give-an-f attitude. Anyways, the chem teacher actually lowered the pass mark because the test was "clearly very hard", so this just proved my thinking of not really taking any of this seriously to start with.... I guess a "YAAAY" is in order here.


But it gets better..

Today was another round in the hall, this time for Polish and medical history. I for one quite like the last part of it- not as interested in the first mainly because of the way it was incorporated into the curriculum as "we know you really don't care about how Poland came to be, so we're just going to have a bunch of mandatory lectures, let you sign your friends in if they're not present and give the answers to the questions we may ask beforehand" So I went quite well prepared compared to others in my class and we're all in a tiny room that could barely fit us all so we sat next to each other even in the aisle. Knowing this the professor had made two tests to distribute with the idea of people sitting next to each other having non-identical questions- to minimise cheating I'm assuming..  No shit, Sherlock. We just switched around the papers and talked our way through the answers. I guess he was fully aware it was going to happen though- hilarious man & no hard feelings. I'll be disappointed if I didn't score 100% on this...

As you can see, things get a bit silly here at times. Now I'm hoping I can actually go to that Coldplay concert in September instead of writing up another histology final...!

Motivation? "I ain't got time for your histo!"

Leave all the following statements unmarked EXCEPT the best one::

a) Examination days are the ultimate days for dressing up in the skirt I own with the tightest/most painful waistline 
b) The anterior cardiac vein drains into the coronary sinus
c) I didn't feel the need to pop any NSAIDs yesterday AT ALL
d) It's too late to start panicking now anyway.


Seriously hoping to pass this shit..


Right answer: D