It's been so long

Apologies folks for not writing for a week! Not good enough for a blogger- me thinks. I had an IT drama on Thursday and I've been in a virtual strop ever since. On Thursday we had the placement provider fayre where various heath and social care charities from across our local area had stalls with information encouraging us to do our community placement with them. The community placement runs from January to December 2010 and during that time we need to complete 60 hours of voluntary service and then submit a 3000 word report on our experiences, specifically reflecting on what we had learned. Most of my previous voluntary experiences have been with children or elderly people. Therefore I'm keen to work with young people who have problems I haven't personally encountered such as addictions, homelessness and living in local authority care. We had to fill in a form online stating which areas we'd like to work in and what we want to gain form the experience and our personal details. I spent ages on this (like about two hours) and when I pressed submit I got an error message and lost everything I'd entered into this form. I was sooooooooooooooo annoyed and hence have been in a huff with all computers since.

Anyway, the week ended better and we had out first patient contact. Two patients with Cystic Fibrosis came in so we could ask them about what it was like to live with the disease. One patient was also with his parents and we asked them about his diagnosis and what that time was like for them, as he was too young to remember it. It was really interesting and definitely puts what we are learning into context.

On Monday we were back in the dissection room for some basic thorax anatomy which was ace. It didn't even feel like a lesson- just like being told about something really interesting by somebody who really knew their stuff. Then we had a lesson on the osteology of the thorax and learned about the bones which make up the ribcage and spine. Finally we had our first go at body painting and had to paint on the clavicles (collarbones), sternal angle, sternal notch and xiphoid process on our partners. This is a bit weird- prodding at the chest somebody you barely know (especially as it was a girl and they have breasts which makes anything to do with the chest more complicated!). I'm sure I'll get used to it though. I must remember to cut my nails before next week so I don't scratch anybody.

Yesterday we had lectures on histology (the tissues) of the respiratory tract and then a quick refresher of how to use a light microscope. The highlight of yesterday at uni was the free lunch in the canteen provided by our tutor. Most of us had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and it was lush! In the afternoon we had an introduction to communication skills.

This morning I've had a lecture which was revision for me on cell membrane transporters. These are proteins which sit in the membrane of a cell and control the entry and exit of ions and molecules such as glucose.