week 2

week 2 is down, we've trolled our way through another 3 horrifying papers plus a communications skills OSCE of 10 stations worth.

medicine essays were alright for me, but mcqs were again another horror. this time, i fell asleep despite during the paper despite drinking coffee in the middle of it and 3 toilet breaks to wash my face :\
plus i'm pretty sure i got a lot of questions wrong so that was even more :(
eg: young girl who is febrile, signs of SLE, renal punch +. what is your first step in mx?
others: RESUS
me: give iv ABx. :( OMG! :(

but at least i made one lucky guess - entacapone turns your urine ORANGE :D
go me, i am the queen of ridiculous answers.

modified essays were a HORROR. it's an evolving scenario but you just can't be sure of what they're asking for.
plus the questions were really really BAD.
eg: using a bone marrow aspirate to diagnose TB
eg: managing a patient with status epilepticus complicated by anaphylactic shock to phenytoin
eg: reaching a diagnosis of an elderly man who has just travelled overseas to a rural place infamous for having CSWs (commercial sex workers) with his family, and is now feeling malaise and has a fever, and you get ONE investigation. lovely.

and you know the best thing? our "lovely" prof even commented on someone's facebook note: i think all the papers to date have been fair.
FAIR???? far from fair if you ask me. give ANY ONE, including profs some of the questions we had and see how they do before you tell me it's fair.

osces was like a game, i zoomed in and out of stations and talked alot of rubbish, thankfully mock patients were nice. my hands shook so badly when i was suturing that the examiner laughed at me!
and i've never removed staples before so my prof even showed me how to do it in the middle of the station whilst saying:"girlie, it's obvious you've never done this before yah."
to which my meek reply was: " err, not really prof". duh.
at least osces was alot better!

clinicals are coming up - rumours abound about weird cases aplenty eg. von Hippel Lindau syndrome, charcot marie tooth (HSMN1), osteogenesis imperfecta etc.
i have no clue what to expect, but hopefully i'll recover from this beating by the medicine theory papers to face the clinicals with my head held high!