Hiya!
Strangely, I’ve had a pretty quiet week in terms of lectures. We’re covering the topic of mental health, focusing on stress, depression and anxiety in particular. As a result, most lectures are filled with stats (25% of adults suffer with mental health issues at some point) and plenty of ‘coping’ mechanisms. Mindfulness has been mentioned at least 20 times, as well as the ‘power of positive thinking’. If I’m totally honest with you – and I know that some people will strongly disagree with me – I think that this stuff a bit too ‘airy fairy’ 🙈. Yes, it helps some people out and makes them feel better, but personally I’m not a big believer in meditation and all that jazz 😶.
We’ve also started back in the dissection room this year, looking at the nervous system. We’re not dissecting cadavers in the DR anymore; we’re simply looking at prosections and handling bones to get a feel for the anatomy. This week’s practical was based on the back, which meant that we looked at the vertebrae, nerves and coverings of the spinal cord. The session was split into 3 different activities; radiology (looking at X rays and stuff), osteology (bones) and the finally a prosection. My favourite one this time was osteology, where all the different bones in the spinal cord had been laid out on a table. Our task was to put the spine back together again in the correct order, making sure we put the right vertebrae in the right place (it’s a lot harder than it looks, trust me!). It was kind of like doing a puzzle, except all the pieces look exactly the same…
I’ve also been carrying on my driving lessons at uni this term. I started learning how to drive in July last year, took a break in the summer holiday and restarted during September. Unfortunately, I had to take another month off in Christmas and I’ve just had my first couple of lessons in the New Year. I think I’m pretty confident at the moment (I’m hoping to take my test in the next couple of months), but on Thursday afternoon I had a bit of a scary experience. I was following a bus down one of the main roads in the city centre, and my instructor asked me to overtake it. There were some bollards on the other side of me, so the space was pretty narrow, but he said that it should be okay. Bracing myself, I started to drive through, only for the bus driver to pull away from the bus stop at the exact same time! Luckily, I’m learning in a dual control car, so my instructor hit the brakes before anything serious happened, but it could have easily been a very different situation…
(If you want to see what I was doing this time last year, click here!)
See you in my next post!
doctor2be2022 x
doctor2be2022 