what a week!

Seems like I have been away for aaages and not just 5 days!

I've had such a wonderful and busy week!

It's always sad to be away from home; living out of a suitcase in one small room for a month or more ain't fun (I miss Chris, I miss Mass, the food ain't great, and it's shocking how dependent I am on the internet!!)...but on the plus side, being away means you really get to do A LOT of medicine! Because there are no distractions in my room, and really nothing other than medicine to do, I end up spending ages in the hospital seeing patients and doing stuff, and then get loooads and looooads of revision and studying done in the evening.

And as nerdy as it sounds, there is something really exhilerating and satisfying about learning!! And it's great when you've been revising something, and then you see it in a patient and suddenly everything falls into place and you understand it and remember it!

That's the thing about medicine; it's really not *that* difficult. The concepts are pretty easy. It's just the sheer volume of stuff to know that can be a problem fitting it into your brain!

I am definitly having one of my oooh-I-love-medicine moments!

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I'm spending the next month doing heart & lung surgery. I've now come home for the weekend, but will be back there on Monday.

I got to see open heart surgery this week too! I saw a coronary artery bypass graft, and a valve replacement.
I never realised that they actually totally stop the heart and lungs from working during these operation and put the person on a bypass machine, which basically does the job of the heart and lungs.
It's amazing how well it works too!

So yeh, now I can say that I've seen a beating human heart!

(also, another exciting part of my week was that I got to hear mitral stenosis! I'm sure medics can appreciate how exciting this is! It's a rare heart murmur which as medical students we have to learn all about, and it makes a very unusual grumbling, rumbling noise, quite unlike other heart murmurs. But because it's quite rare you don't often get to hear it. So it was very helpful that I got to hear one with week!)


anyway! Enough about medicine!


In other news....we have a new house!! woohooo!

Some of you may remember a few months ago I said that our land-lady had decided to sell this house and not extend our contract, so we had to move out in January.

So yeh, in a week we have to move!

And we only found out about 4 days ago that we *do* have another house! Yey! Thank you St. Joseph!
The new house is basically the only one on the market at the moment that was the price/location/etc that we needed.

It was all a bit tricky because originally the new house was only going to be avaliable a week after we were due to leave this house...but now everything has been worked out and the dates match up well!
So thank you to the wonderful St. J!

So I have a fun weekend ahead of me of packing up the entire house....and then when I get back next weekend, I'll have a weekend of moving!
(we haven't yet sorted how exactly we are going to move all our stuff to the new house...I'm still counting on St. J to provide us with some sort of transport!!)


anyway, I think I have chattered away enough for the moment.

I have been seriously deprived of fruit & veg during this last week, so now it's dinner time and I am going to overload myself in the veg department!


Just one final thing...

this is such a beautiful quote I found:

Our Lady's love is like a stream that has its source in the Eternal Fountains, quenches the thirst of all, can never be drained, and ever flows back to its Source.

– St. Marguerite Bourgeoys

Oh sweet Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us as we have recourse to Thee!

Blessed be the great mother of God, Mary most holy!

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