It’s fiiinally SUMMER (: I’m soo relieved. Don’t get me wrong, this year has been amazing as well. I feel like I made the right decision going to Sevenoaks. My IB grades my have been the same at Conti, or perhaps even better- in the sense that it’s not as if my grades are going to measure up to my genius friends’ who are still back there- but I think I made a good choice. I’ve learned so much and grown up a whole lot- (I can do laundry, grocery shopping, internet banking, train hopping and I know that trust has to be earned and is very easily lost)- I may not seem at all different but I know I think differently. The year has FLOWN by, but it hasn’t been effortless AT ALL.
I knew from last summer that living with people is not easy no matter how great your friendship is. And that was just a month. This has been a whole YEAR. And there a couple of people who have managed to SERIOUSLY PISS ME OFF towards the end. Luckily a couple of others have been amaaazing. I’d just like to say though, that just because I’m generally laid-back and easy-going does NOT mean you can take advantage of my chilaxedness.
The end of term was nice other than coursework deadlines. EE day was fun, I really loved my lil funghi! ToK presentations was stressful but it’s nice to feel like you’ve accomplished something when the jobs are done. CAS completed too! And we’ve all got a pretty good idea of our predictions now :/ .We played a lot with the BHM’s kids and the ABHM’s kids and the new ABHM’s kids. Aaand I won a Bio Prize- granted it was just a lame merit one, so I didn’t get it at prize-giving on Founder’s Day but I was hella pleased. My rooming next term looks good as well, Michaelmas I pretty much have my own room except that C’s room is inside mine so it’s soooort of like sharing. And Lent I have my owwn sunny room with a sink. Yayy (:
The summer has started off well. I spent the first few days with Nanaboo and that was nice as Situ buys nice cherries and apricots. Though they’re taste in restaurants is pretty lame :P . I began shadowing Fuad Chacha in Guildford and that was AMAZING. Staying with Nanaboo was funny because he’d get really concerned for no reason. One morning before heading off to Guildford I left the flat earlier than usual, simply because I was done getting ready earlier. Apparantly he got reeaally worried and woke everyone up to look for me. Ahahaha. Then parents and sisters came, and the dadu came which as always was a slight source of tension. Ah well. The I went off to Luton to do more work experience there.
Soo Guildford. It was sooo amazing. FC is an interventional radiologist. I spent a lot of time following him around which was cool because while his job comes with slightly more mundane tasks like CT, MRI and X-ray reporting and doing Ultrasounds, he also does procedures like putting in Groshan Lines and PEGs and NG tubes and even more excitingg Embolisation of Fibroids! But he also arranged some time for me elsewhere. I spent some time at a Gynae Clinic with a Mr.Diab. I was of course over-excited that he was Arab (Egyptian as it turned out) and furthermore pleased when he recognised my name as being from Arabic. He was a slightly cold man, and most of his patients in the cinic were anxious women. I met in his clinic a Med Student from Prague. Who told me about her Uni and her friend who had a baby in her 3rd year at Med School but Came 3rd in the Year while pregnant and 1st in the year once the kid was born ahahaha. Also I spent some time in the CT room and saw some CT colonscopies where they basically stick a tube into the poor souls back passage and inflate them. I also spent some time in the Endoscopy Unit which was pretty cool. The doctors seemed to enjoy laughing at patients who were not around or unconscious :P. Saw tubes going in both ends there. That was my first week. Second week was equally fab if not better. I got to go to Oncology and SHADOW THIS GREY’S ANATOMY LADY. Dr.Stuart. She was so cool. She looked like a cross between Meredith Grey and Arizona Robbins. And she was hardcore. I saw her do a Radiotherapeutic Procedure on this lady with Cervical cancer and it was soo hardcooore. And then I was in her Oncology Clinic and it was amazing to see how she dealt with the patients giving them good new and really really bad news. ( I thought I was going to cry at one point when she told this woman who was in sever pain because of cancer in her lymphnodes in her leg, that the radiotherapy and chemotherapy they’d done for her had made no difference, and her metastasis were just growing and basically there was nothing they could do except try and ease the pain. It was all made worse because her mother had juuuust found a tumour in her own breast and was having a mastectomy.) In oncology I also met Dr.Saleh. Again I was overexcited as he was Arab. He asked me if I knew what my name meant, which of course I did since other than my mother telling me, my name in Arabic used to be written on the Johnson Baby Cologne and the English meaning used to be written under it :) . Anyway he was Iraqi. I liked him he was also pretty cool. And quite Grey’s like, all the nurses flirting with him ahaha. The doctors were pretty funny, at one point I was sitting in a room with Farid, Jermaine (an Afro-Caribbean Consultant) and another Afro-Caribbean Consultant. Farid was staring at the other one who was wearing a black shirt with white stripes. And the guy goes “What you staring at, man? Have you never seen a black man before?” and Jermaine goes “No he just hasn’t seen TWO black men before” and so the other guy says “Hey, what’s your probem Chemical Ali” (please note, Ali pronounce Aa-lee) and Farid says “Nothing, it’s just your shirt, I thought you’d done some skin painting or something.” One of the afternoons when there was interventional radiology, this old fellow cam to have an NG tube put in from the ITU and he just suddenly stopped breathing on the table. There was a crash cart and everything, and they were pushing atrophine and adrenaline and idk what. The next day I spent in ITU where I made more friends. There was a Paki doctor doing her fellowship and she was really nice, and a Med Student from Southampton in her fifth year, and she examined a guy with Pneumonia and she let me listen to his crackles! The consultant there wasn’t as cool but her underlings were really nice. I got to see an arterial canula being put in and there was al this blood spurting it was pretty awesome. I also a woman who smokes 100 cigarettes per day (no joke) and apparently around her house she had buckets and buckets for her sputum. The next day, Mr.Diab, who appeared to have taken a shining to me, invited me to his OR and I saw a C-section! At one stage I was worried that I was going to faint, and the anaesthesiologist told me “if you start to feel light-headed SIT ON THE FLOOR”. But I didn’t want to sit on the floor, you can’t see ANYTHING from the floor. So i just hung on to the wall ahahaha. It was pretty brutal, Mr.Diab was basically ripping her uterus open on the way in. And then BAM all of a sudden he’s in and there’s a head and then there’s a baby. Which immediately started screaming. It was a she. Then they took out the afterbirth and put it on a platter. And by that stage I wasn’t woozy any longer so I went closer and hovered over as he sewed up the different layers comprised of her uterus and the lining and the fat and the skin. WAH SO COOL. But enough to convince me abstinence is the way! forever! Anyway then this consultant from A&E came to ask FC about the x-ray of some guy who was a Tree-Surgeon (I have never before heard of this term) and fell out of the Tree and basically snapped his ulna so that the head of the bone was at ninety degrees to the rest of it. When he explained who I was she asked if I wanted to come over to A&E. of course I did! It was not very eventful, alas. There was a guy with a bee sting. And also a 99 year old man who had fallen off his chair at home and had been brought in and was totally disgruntled and kept trying to run away. By the end of it, as well as making friends with the students and some of the younger consultants and the Arabs I was pretty chummy with the nurses who I was scrubbing in with. (I LOVE SCRUBS BTW. I don’t even mind that they smell weird.) Overall Guildford was WOW.
The next week I was in Luton, at a Day Care for people with learning disabilities. At first I thought it was going to be kids, like at the Help Centre. But it was so different. They weren’t kids they were all adults, which made it even sadder in some ways. And the first 6 days I was in the unit known as Neptune. They were the most severely disabled. They were all in chairs, unable to walk and furthermore they can’t communicate. So at first you feel like they’re babies, drinking from doidy cups if they are able. And when it hits’ you that they’re not babies at all, with the youngest being in their 20s or 30s and the oldests reaching their 60s it’s just so heart wrenching. But they’re so lovely, you can’t help but adore them. I got to see PEGs that I’d seen put in in Guildford in use, and I actually was allowed to, in secret, do a flush myself. (don’t tell Health and Safety). At times it’s a bit awkward in that you don’t know what to call these people, I kept wanting to say “the kids”, but they’re not at all. And they’re not students either because strictly speaking it’s not a school. So I had to call the customers. I had favourites of course, Alan, who I think was probably the most able, and communicate to some extent- and then Jason, who smelled odd because he drooled a lot, but idk why I just took to him. They had a “Fun Day” where we did some wheel-chair races while I was there. And then one day we went to the Afro-Caribbean Centre there, which was basically a place for the elderly Afro-Caribbean community to chill. We took Lyds and Shazza and people kept mistaking them for kids- it was so sad to say stuff like, oh no, she’s not 2, she’s 32. And stuff like that. I made friends with the staff at the centre as well, and the Jamaican ladies really liked me. They’re so funny I love how they talk. The last day I was with a different group, Mars. Their primary carer was a lady called Najwa. (More Arab overexcitement. I’d just like to say when I see Arabs in London or something I avoid them. It seems I am following that old Green Day song “I wanna be the Minority”) . Anyway in Mars they were making their own tea and playing football with me (actually most of them where a whole lot better than me). They were lovely as well. I was asked to make this poor guy some tea, and me, the least house-wifey person on EARTH, had never made tea before. From instant coffee I had a vague idea that you did tea bag and sugar, and then hot water and then milk. But I didn’t really know about the proportions , especially since I like my coffee weaaaaak and sweeeet. So poor Andrew’s tea was practically milk. It was so white. I felt sooo bad, but I was just praying that he’d drink it up before anyone saw it. Poor Andrew couldn’t talk either and couldn’t even complain. Actually I was curious to know what the customers at Bramingham’s disorders and syndromes were, but they don’t generally keep a record. Lydis had Rett’s Syndrome, and I could tell some like Imad had down’s syndrome from their appearance. But I couldn’t tell with Andrew. But not long after, in the book I was reading, it mentionned Angelman’s syndrome and had a description about the characteristics of those who suffered from it, and I realised Andrew fit the profile.
So other than work experience I’ve been doing the fun stuff to. I got to see a couple of my biffles from Jeddah and one of my childhood friends who’d since moved and HONEYY (: and also some of my mom’s friends who I like. And we did the cool stuff like eating at Rainforest Cafe and Princi and Hard Rock Cafe and other places. Pictures on my tumblr. Went to Primark and somehow survived, gaining a good deal of shopping. We also went to see Eclipse, Toy Story 3 and Les Miserables, And there are plans to see Cats and Dogs 2 and Tap Dogs and possibly Inception.
Alas, I wish, since I’m not really doing anything useful in this coming week, we could have gone home earlier, but at that stage I thought I’d need all this time. I’ll only have 3 weeks at home and it will be Ramadan and as I havent started my EE at all or my Chem CW or my 111 Math Qs or my revision for my Chem Test or even UKCAT prepping I’m basically screwed. (:
On that note, I think I will sign off.
-[n][a][d][a][&][♥]
