Books.

Did you know that MedKids have to have a certain fitness level as well as mental level to be able to graduate MedSchool? I mean, if you had a weak heart or something HOW THE HELL are you supposed to carry all your text books around! Seriously, they should have an upper body strength test as part of the interview process to weed out all the weedy kids - some of them only Arnold Schwarzenegger would be able to carry.

Take the Cecil Textbook of Internal Medicine by Goldman & Ausiello (which will be fondly referred to as Cecil's from here on in) for example. It is one mean 3000+ page mother goose with over 200 chapters, at least 7kg. Just taking Cecil would mean I had to pay extra for frigging Tiger tickets. Seriously, its so big, it could kill you. Not from the severe internal bleeding you'll get when somebody throws it at you because they think you're an arrogant prick for lugging such a big book (read subtext). No instead, you'll die from the psychological trauma of holding so much knowledge in your hands - if you hold onto it for too long, your head will explode. 

Another noteworthy text book/reference is Rohen's Colour Atlas of Anatomy, by Yokochi & Lutjen-Drecoll, not because it's insanely expensive (which it is, but more on that later) or because it is insanely huge (is an elephants backside huge?) but because of its awesome description in our textbook guide - "Say hello to the cadaver on your bookshelf!" I ABSOLUTELY LOVE dead bodies! Apparently this book "allows you to revise what you have seen in resource sessions (i.e. happy-cutting-up-people time) ... without the smell of formaldehyde!" 

Ok I couldn't help myself, sorry. I also can't help but verbally emesisise how expensive Med texts are. For example, Cecil costs $275. And that's just ONE text. In total, I'm looking at around $1000 just for books. This doesn't include essential equipment such as a stethoscope or lab coat or sphygmomanometer (roll THAT around your mouth a couple of times and tell me you're not getting hypertension!). All that will cost another $10 at least - that is if you're buying the plastic dress-up-as-Barbie's-Gynaecologist set (which isn't necessarily a bad thing...). But seriously, a decdent Litmann steth can cost as much as $200 with many digital steth's fetching well over one grand. Moral of the story: why can't the Government fork out a little extra to subsidise (partially?) our text books and equipment when in the long run, we'll be paying the community back many many times over. 

It'll also give me an earlier opportunity to gawk at the genitals of END POST.

On a side note

Ye Olde readers will have realised that I've removed all my old posts. Do not fret! I copied the contents of each individual post into about a gazillion notepad documents. So if one of you requests a post to be well, reposted then I'll gladly put it back up. Probably.

Please say ahhhhhhhh!

OK so my week so far has been jam packed full of O week fun! It's been wandering-around-campus-feeling-lost galore! Hurrah. 

So far the message I've been getting from the Adelaide MBBS staff is that they are ABSOLUTELY ANAL about "professionalism" and such. An MLTU (Medicine Learning and Teaching Unit) staff member lectured us, literally, on how important it is to address Professors with "Professor" and send emails with capital "I"s and no spelling mistakes and WE'RE NOT LITTLE KIDS OK, WE'RE SMART ENOUGH TO GET INTO MEDICINE, SO I THINK WE'RE SMART ENOUGH AND MATURE ENOUGH TO SHOW RESPECT WHERE IT IS DUE.

On the topic of maturity however, it seems that MedKid's are the ones that party the hardest. MedCamp is next week and to be honest, I'm scared. The shit that happens at MedCamp is the stuff of legends - young children from all over the world have been threatened with being sent to MedCamp if they don't become REAL DOCTOR'S. Rawrs. I dunno. I've just heard some pretty crazy stories of guys losing all their clothes (and dignity too) after some notorious sexing in the undergrowth and then getting losing their way in their drunken stupor, resulting in search parties from Adelaide being sent up to look for them.


HM. I don't think I've bitched about my timetable yet. 

I'm not sure what you can see, but what I see is a BITCH of a timetable. Monday is a 8am to 5pm day with one hour break in between. That's a 6 hour lecture-fest followed by another 3 hours of fun and games. Oh and following this from 6-7.30pm is Adelaide Medical Students Orchestra (AUMO) practice. FML. Fuck Monday Lah.

Tuesday and Wednesday are also 8-5 days. But on the otherhand, Thursday is my half day of respite, where I can hopefully find time to speel about other aspects of my MedLife. Yay!

So in total, I'm getting something like 28 contact hours a week - somebody please tell me this is less than what MonashKid's get or else I'm going to kick some(bodies) balls real hard. Stupid 5 year courses. @__@

Oh and I met a new MedPhrase today. I was flicking through this anatomy text book (I think) and written at the top of the page was "ANAL WINK". It made my day.

Day 2 and a 1/2

I'm going to take this opportunity to bitch about how intimidating the girls doing med are. HOLY FUCK! THEY ARE SO HOT OMFG AND SMART TOO WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING HERE THEY ARE SO HOT HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP AND INSANELY SMART TOO ITS TIMES LIKE THESE I WISH I... I DON'T KNOW. BEING SMART AND FUNNY AND HANDSOME AND RICH JUST DOESN'T CUT IT WITH THESE PEOPLE. >___>

*BREATH IN* *BREATH OUT* *BREATH IN* *BREATH OUT*
Ok. As I was saying before some idiot interrupted my meticulously calm stream of thought (that all Doctors have), Adelaide is not as bad as some people say. Below are some reasons:

1) Everything is really close together. But that's probably because Adelaide is a hole, and the points on the surface of the hole are physically closer together (shown in diagram 1). Of course in this case I say "hole" with a certain kind of fondness to it. Like how Homer Simpson would feel if he were talking about donut "holes". idk.

Diagram 1. This phenomenon can also be seen in Perth.
(Adapted from Google Maps, 2010.)

2) The water isn't too bad. You get used to drinking orange juice all day. Especially Black Label orange juice. Yum. The only problem with this is the withdrawal symptoms you get when you drink 1.5L a day and you realise that you've run out of money. You tend to become delirious and start having multiple personalities.

3) There's a free tram route in the middle of the city. It also happens to be the only tram route. In the entire city. Also, the trams smell like sunscreen.

4) Some of the buses actually go to 100km/h even though there aren't any freeways in Adelaide. Instead they have dedicated "bus lanes" that make the buses little more than glorified bumper cars. If you think that's bad enough, its also called the O-Bahn (which means "bull" in Scandinavian). And my stop is Klemzig (which is also "shit" in Klingon).

So despite all this rage over the many short comings of Adelaide, I'm slowly being brainwashed (despite only drinking the smallest amounts of Adelaide water) and finding it not all that bad. God help me.

The Three R's

Resurrection, Renovation and Revamp... tion. That is what this blog needs.
And for you my dearest readers, that is what this blog, dying from acute myocardial infarction, will get.

I have decided to give my piece of internet a new spark of life; restart it's tiny virtual heart, with the defibrillator of my new found status as ©Medkid™®. *Gasp*. That's right folks, a real ©Medkid™®! I can't believe it too right! I'm a real ©Medkid™®!

Shit my nose just grew a little longer. OK, OK. So I'm not really a ©Medkid™®. I'm still just a MedNoob, but I WILL become a doctor one day. Like Dr House! Yes. And like, work in like, Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital. And like OMG have sex with all the hot nurses too... yeah. Thats right. Right there. Oh Yeah.

Yeah.

But I digress. The true purpose of this possibly impulsive decision to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation is to breathe life into this potential vessel of verbal emesis. That sentence probably increased my vocab by about 5%. (You suck n-emesis.)

To be brutally honest, I know that med is going to be a long, convoluted road with littered with bumps it's going to look and feel like a pretzel. Since my place is bonded, it's going to be at least 18 years until I can finally do whatever I want i.e. work in a hospital where I get paid to cut open people's brains. And I've heard that the course itself is hellish. Everynight spent studying till 12am, and waking up at 7 to go to lectures. Then more study, and tutes. Then lectures. And lectures. And lectures. Sigh.

But not to worry! I am tank. I have Perseverance. (10 Damage, 5 HP Regeneration, 125% Mana Regeneration).