Day fourteen - Sunday

Halfway through my Fort William placement! Gone so quick so far. Up early again today, 0720 to get in for 0830. Decided to go in today, even though Sunday, as I missed Thursday to go cragging and also hopefully more stuff to do as less students/people around. Met Neil in the morning, he's the F1 on today, and Aaron was covering A&E. Had the board round, followed by a brief surgical ward round where we got the jobs, mainly bloods and xray/ultrasound requests. I did four of the bloods for Neil, whilst he cracked on with some of the other jobs. Was great - felt useful and like I was saving him time.

Ran them up to the lab and had an impromptu teaching session with the lab technician around collecting samples, the differences between the blood bottles and the order in which they should be collected. It started as I'd insufficiently filled one of the tubes, but in my defence I'd used a butterfly needle to take it, and the tech acknowledged that there were known problems with these. The butterfly has a long tube on the back, so when taking the blood to fill the bottle so by the time the vacuum inside is used up the bottle is only half full, as half the vacuum was spent sucking the blood down the length of tube. Consequently it's impossible to fill up the blood bottle just using the built in syringe. An advantage for the old system of needle and syringe!

Back on the ward it was time for the medical round - a few more jobs were added to the list, one of which being taking blood from a patient with a central line. I'd never seen this done before, and it was a chance for Neil to learn. Simple enough, just a lot of steps to remember, one of the most crucial being to flush it at the end to prevent the tubes clotting off and blocking. Before long things had quietened down enough for me to nip upstairs for a brew. Chatted to Eleanor about the placement, I was feeling like things were quite slow. I think the problem is having six students here - it's too many for a hospital this size. That is, too many if we are all in at once. Hence why today I was actually getting to do things and feel useful, as it was just Neil and myself on the ward. Think I'll try and go in at more random times during the last two weeks of the placement, maybe do a night shift or at least a couple of twilight shifts.

Lunch and back downstairs, where things were picking up again. Inspected an oral abscess, went to A&E where there was a pretty gruesome pre-tibial laceration as well as an infected joint that needed irrigation. Then got the chance to cannulate a guy with massive veins - bit of a confidence booster one as if I'd missed those veins I would have been devastated! Nice just to keep the cannulas ticking over, the easy ones building up the skill so that I can try with more confidence with the more difficult ones.

Back to the ward and Neil was filling out some pretty important forms for the first time, so I tried to help with those. By this time it was 1430 and I'd heard rumours on our med student whatsapp group that people were in Spoons for afternoon food/coffee so I headed off. Had been a great day in the hospital! Met up with everyone in Spoons not long after, had a coffee and then after seeing Ann's icecream sundae I ordered myself the belgian waffles with icecream and maple syrup... Mmmmmmmmmmmm, only 600 odd calories (it lists them in the menu) - amazing! Unbelievably the menu stated that the nachos had ~1300 calories in, that's over half your daily allowance in one 'side' plate! Good banter with everyone, heard about their days. It had been raining on and off all day so no opportunities for anything too exciting. Tom and Brett had been up Ben Nevis yesterday, whilst I was having my lie in!

Back to the house, watched a bit of the athletics and did 90mins violin, really satisfying. Need to learn vibrato though, would make the world of difference to the sound. That and some more rosin. In the middle of practicing I tuned in to the 100m final to watch Bolt win again, in the pouring rain. Amazing athlete. Got me in the running mood so after I finished practising I pulled on my new running socks and went for a run up Cow Hill. On the first weekend I was here I did it in 27mins up, 20mins down. Today took 26m22s up, 18m31s down. Felt much faster, actually ran the whole way up, albeit quite slowly in places. Midway up it started raining, and I glanced behind me to see that the whole valley was now hidden by a rain storm - provided motivation to keep running in the opposite direction! On way down properly let rip with my stride, got into a rhythm where my heels were kicking all the way back and my toes were properly launching forward with the grip on the shoes - felt awesome! Could only sustain for a couple of minutes though before having to slow it down again. 44m53s round trip - dipped under 45m!

Back at the house had quick shower before baked potato dinner, lovely. Chilled out with a bit of TV and family guy. Need to finish off Frankenstein, haven't read any more of it for ages. All my spare time recently has been either violin or just flopping out infront of TV! Undecided about tomorrow, think I probably will go in for board round, but need to think about what times I want to go in during the next two weeks, to try and maximise what I can get out of the rest of the placement...