Gap Summer!

I'm currently posting from a pay-per-a-minute internet cafe in Cambodia so apolagies if this post is even less coherant than normal!

Well I got through my intercalated finals, worked my last shifts at the S.U bar, packed up my halls and headed home briefly before heading off on my very own gap summer. Part of my less academic motivations for intercalating were that it would give me a MASSIVE summer holiday right before my elective that I could use for travelling and in a way make up for never having a gap year as I always feel pretty jealous hearing about all the exciting things friends have got up to on theirs.

My orginial plan was to travel in the country I am doing my elective before heading to the hospital for that. Hasnt quite worked out like that as I am doing my elective in Tanzania but couldn't find others who wanted to travel there first and didn't feel it would be the safest place to travel as a lone female. So intead I am travelling through S.E. Asia with a group of friends as one of the group, my housemate is doing her elective in thailand at the thai/burma border where there is a small hospital set up for refugees from burma and having also intercalated she was keen to travel here first. So currently I am in cambodia having already been in Thailand for the past 3 weeks and I'm heading soon to Laos. Then I will head back to the UK for just 5 days before heading straight to Tanzania, pretty excited!

Am having an amazing time but won't dwell on it much as is very non medical for the most part. Gained my intercalated degree grade whilst here and got a 2.1, tad disappointed to be honest as was let down my my dissertation which was a 2.1 - most of my other modules were firsts or only just off but as dissertation was a 1/3 of my grade and that was a lowish 2.1 the other modules couldn't pull my grade up enough. But I'm not too gutted because I had an amazing year that I will never forget and met a lot of truly awesome people so when it comes to it I see getting a 2.1 as a bit of a bonus on top of a good year :). Plus this year has allowed me to save up to be where I am at the moment so can't complain too much!

The only medical experience I have had here was giving blood at a cambodian childrens hospital as we had seen posters everywhere asking for tourists to donate as there is a current epidemic of dengue haemorragic fever - a tropical disease that like malaria is transmitted by mosquito bites. I've been cramming a bit for my elective during the long bus journeys and this was one of the tropical diseases I had learnt about so it felt pretty good to do a bit to help those kids suffering from it. It was also interesting to compare the blood giving process here to that of england, there were actually very few differences and I was impressed at how efficient and well carried out it was here (not that I am saying the UKs process isnt! Because we have a great blood donating scheme) despite Cambodia being a very poor country.

Like England we got free snacks after donating to help prevent feeling faint, unlike England we also got this very fetching free t shirt. Win!

Now on to my elective... For those reading this from a non medical background, an elective is where we get the chance to carry out an 8 week placement in a hospital/ clinic anywhere in the world. The only stipulation is that it is safe to visit - ie not in the middle of a war. This is a pretty amazing opportunity and not one that I intend to squander so whilst I know some students view it as a chance for a holiday somewhere sunny, I really hope to get stuck in with the work at the hospital and hopefully gain a lot of valuable experience and make some kind of difference at the hospital. This is part of my medical school training that I have been looking forward to since before I even started med school and I imagine lots of medical students/ wannabe medical students who possibly read this may feel the same so I will try and blog lots throughout my elective - or at least write in a diary and type up later if I can't get the computer access.

But thats all for now, hope everyone has a great summer! Halfadoc x

Finals, but not final Finals

Am now in the middle of finals revision. It is quite an odd experience as this is my intercalated degree finals not my medical finals. So for most people at Lufbra this is the last set of exams before they finally graduate and so this revision period is the final effort to finish their 3 (or more years) of study and then its real world time. However for us intercalators it is just the end of this year and then right back to medical school.

Its quite hectic partly because have deadlines for medical school stuff to be sorting out (such as vaccinations and visas for my elective which is now very soon) but at least I have it easier than some of the intercalators from other medical schools - some of them officially start their next year at medical school before they have finished their exams here! (Lufbra is quite late finishing compared to other unis) . Nonetheless am currently in exam hell, so this is the extent of update that I am writing for now; first exam on monday, last on the following tuesday - so all nicely rammed together, fun fun fun! Module I am currently revising is horrific as for some unknown reason it contains lots of maths including stuff like magic/imaginary numbers. I remain unsure of why or where the relevance is.... Still week and a half then: intercalated degree= tick,done!

Sports science vs medicine.

So what does sports science involve then? This was pretty much what I wondered during my first week of lectures. Turn out the answer is very simple: The science of sport. Oh.

I haven't brushed up on my anatomy to the extent I was hoping because it turns out that is first and second year sports science and so they are expected to know it already, have however covered a much broader spectrum of subjects than I anticipated ranging from module in sports medicine itself to physiology of health to the sociology of sports deviance.

The actual sports medicine module was awesome and we had some fantastic lecturers who taught us about issues such as eating disorders in sport or drug cheating amongst athletes. As mentioned in a blog last year (http://halfadoctor.blogspot.com/2010/03/easter-holiday-envy-welcome-to-your.html) following doing a student selected module on eating disorders this is an area of medicine that has fascinated me. Last year I met a patient with chronic anorexia nervosa who did ballet and now was a ballet teacher. It was her ambition to be great at ballet which caused the development of her eating disorder in the first place (ballet is a sport where your body is very on show to the public causing self consiousness and in addition ballet dancers are encouraged to be light for lifts etc) but her eating disorder was now impeding her career as it had caused physical symptoms such as brittle bones that broke easily even when she was performing relatively low impact dance moves. Having met a patient who had AN for this reason it was very interesting to learn more about the science of the disease and why athletes may be prone to the disease. I'm not sure I learnt that much that I hadn't already been taught last year, but it remains my favorite lecture of the year and it was interesting to have my information refreshed by someone who was very knowledgeable on the topic.

Another lecturer told us all about how different types of drugs that athletes use work and the side effects that they may have. This was a very useful lecture for my future clinic

al practice because I may well come across patients in the future who are using illicit medication for enhancing reasons and it will be good to have a firm knowledge of the possible health consquences so that I can warn the patient about these in the hope that increased knowledge will persuade them against taking them. However seeing as one study showed that of those questioned 50% of elite american athletes said that they would take a pill that would guarrantee them a gold olympic medal even if they would die 12 months later, I suppose being warned of the consquences by a doctor is unlikely to have much impact. The mindset of an elite athlete is an interesting thing.

The mindset of athletes is something we learnt more about during our sociology of sport module. A lot of the students at loughborough are extreme athletes themselves. Case example: During the introductory lecture the module leader asked why two students weren't present and was told they were competing in the commonwealth games. :O. Wow. I have never felt so unsporty as I do this year! In other module I was sitting feeling quite proud of myself for having woken up early enough to go for a pre lecture swim only to hear someone behind me describe themselves as first of "Alright" at swimming and then express their hope to get on the olympic team.... So bearing this in mind debates in this module about aspects such as cheating, sports violence and drug taking, were interesting to listen to from a relatively outside of sports world perspective. I was frankly shocked by the number of my classmates who viewed drug cheating or violence as ok and part of doing your best to win. One classmate expressed "Being a sportsman is about being the best you can be, training isn't natural, so what different about taking enhancing drugs - thats truely being the best you can be"... :O . Personally I found this viewpoint shocking and I was surprised how many people seemed to agree with it. I hope the viewpoints were to an extent just playing devils advocate, otherwise you can guarrantee drugs cheating in sport is not going away anytime soon..

<---- My personal opinion

We have also had quite a lot of lab sessions testing things like markers of cardiovascular fitness. Fun undoubtably, but some of them quite embarrassing to carry out in the company of hardcore athletes.... I blame my faster resting heart beat on my morning caffiene fix ;)