A long time and a long post

This is my house on Cotham Vale, my room’s the one in the attic at the very top

This is a pic of the landscape a Camp Wayne

This is a pic of my cousin Lyndsey with Me and my brothers John and Dave

This is from “Pirates Pub-Crawl”

This is Me and Liz on “Sexual Fantasy Party” – i’m a builder and she’s a lifeguard. Next is me and my housemate Katie at “Rubix Cube” in Birmingham (I ended with yellow and her with Orange)

Me, goaltending in Birmingham

Friday, October 20, 2006

Hello it’s been a while, so this is long, please read over a few days,

It’s been quite a while since I was last on here, but as I was at home in Canada over the summer I didn’t seem to want to make any updates, but as I am back in England now since Sept 27, I thought I better get back to this website.

As for the summer, I spent 7 wks at Camp Wayne, working as the Nature Director again and working in a bunk of 6-8 yr olds. It was loads of fun, and I met many awesome people from around the world. After returning home I spent the last month of my summer in Brockville with my family. We had our friends from Switzerland come stay with us and I got to visit my family. I mostly stayed busy seeing friends and doing odd jobs around my house, and the houses of my aunt and grandma.

My summer ended with a trip to Burlington to see my eldest cousin get married. It was a great family weekend – it’s been so long since we were all together. My cousin looked beautiful in her gown and everyone just had a really fun time together.

I got back to Bristol about 3.5 wks ago – only to find out that my housemates weren’t home, and as I didn’t have a key I was stuck at the front door. Severely jet-legged and really needing a toilet I kindly asked my neighbours if I could use their bathroom, but they responded that all of my housemates were in fact in the back yard, and simply couldn’t hear me banging at the door. I finally got in – got my key and settled in (well, I think I actually unpacked about a week later) That night I was ushered back into University life with a ‘Pirates’ themed pub-crawl with my friends. I had a stellar costume that I stole from home (my parents), and got to see many of my friends that I hadn’t seen all summer.

2 days later, I was shipped off to Bath (about 40 min east of Bristol) with ½ of my class to attend an ‘IP’ conference. IP is an excellent new term for working Inter-Professionally. So, in the healthcare sense, I was with other med students from Bristol and with Nurses, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Social Workers and many others from the University of the West of England (also in Bristol). We had to do group work together as well as attend many lectures. It was … interesting. I can understand why they want us to do this, mainly to get the perspective of other healthcare professionals, but it seemed often that the point of “working together is good” was just reiterated in all the lectures I attended – which is more common sense and not something I needed to be taught. I must say though, I did learn some things about other healthcare professionals and what they thought of doctors, so hopefully we’ll all get along well when I qualify.

After a short weekend – mostly consisting of visiting friends, and housemates returning – I started classes. It was 2 full days of teaching and introductions to clinical medicine. Which is what I’m practicing this year and will be learning in my 3rd, 4th and 5th years of medical school. It was tiring, and we still had half a day of lectures on the Wednesday. On the Thursday (Oct 5), I got to do my first clinical placement. It was joining on to a nursing shift. That’s an 8 hr nurse-shadowing shift (2pm-10pm). It was a nice ease into hospital life and I had a great time. I was working on a Urology ward, I was with a wonderful and helpful nurse, I got to see many interesting things, and I got to help out a doctor with a case, so all-in-all it was an awesome first day in hospital. We followed up the Friday with an intro to my hospital (which is HUGE by the way) … and with what they would be expecting of us in our following week of clinical teaching.

Friday, Oct 6 was also my older brother’s birthday – he’s also in England this year, at the University of Reading. He’s got a cell phone, so we had a brief chat, but haven’t managed to get together yet, will do soon though.

That weekend, I went to Birmingham with my hockey team (the one I play Goalie for). It’s the med school’s team, and we were playing Birmingham’s medical school team. We left on Saturday and headed up to Birmingham. We took a short detour to the city of Rugby to visit my friend’s parents. His mom cooked an amazing curry for the 5 of us in the car and we watched a bit of the England soccer game before continuing to Birmingham. Since our game wasn’t till Sunday morning – the Birmingham student’s had to entertain us, to we all dressed up (as we seem to do in all parties in England) as ‘Rubix Cube’ theme. You basically have to dress up in the 6 colours of the Rubix Cube and by the end of the night you must end up in one colour. So, we started a bar and then moved to the club in the University Centre. By the end of the night and a few pints later I ended up in Yellow – and I must say, I had one of the best nights out ever with my hockey team.

Sunday morning (feeling a bit tired, and a little hung-over) we all got up and trudged out to the hockey pitch at 9am for our hockey game. We lost a miserable 0-8, but were happy with the performance as we had no subs and had not played since April. Afterwards we headed back to Bristol and I got a good night’s sleep.

Monday was Thanksgiving Monday in Canada, I had classes in the morning, then had a nice chat with my brother and made pancakes for my housemates with real Canadian Maple Syrup to celebrate (didn’t feel like cooking a turkey to be honest). Then on a bit of a sugar high, I went and played hockey with the doctors – it’s a team of people who are 1 and 2 yrs out of medical school and needed a Goalie so they recruited me. We lost also, but still had a good game (I was getting a bit better at this point).

On Tuesday, I started my first week of clinical training. We were studying the cardiovascular system, specifically History Taking & Examination of the CVS. It was one of the best-weeks-of-medical-school yet, so now I’m looking forward to years 3, 4 and 5. We got to start by practicing with Actors, then we followed by lectures and going onto the wards meeting patients, examining them and taking their histories! I even got to do it on my own – I had to go out with another student, find a patient, take history, examine, and do a presentation. It was really nerve-racking but really fun and interesting at the same time.

The week ended with another themed party at the end of the week. This time it was ‘sexual fantasy.’ So, you had to dress up as a sexual fantasy. I went as a builder (hoping it was some girl’s fantasy) basically wearing a hard-hat and a reflective vest. It was a great night out meeting other fantasies such as TopGun Zorro, Playboy Bunnies, Cat-costumes and for some strange reason my housemate went as a sheep, but you can ask him about that one! I took the night off Saturday, because there was a medics pub crawl on Sunday. It was the ‘Freshers’ pub-crawl (Freshers are what they call Frosh in England). Basically everyone in the medical school goes out and has an awesome night out together, mostly to catch up and to meet the freshers. The theme – 1st years in Pyjamas, 2nd year Think-Pink, 3rd and above wear scrubs. That’s why I’m wearing pink in my photos.

This week has been pretty laid back. As we start a week early in second year, half the year does clinical and half the year gets a week off to start working on their projects. So this was my week-off. I’ve not done much on my project, but will get to it, don’t worry.

I played a hockey game on Sunday against the medics from Cardiff. We lost. But I played a game with the docs on Monday, which we also lost but only 1-0 and I played an amazing match. I just kept saving goals (not to sound to egotistic) I don’t know where it came from, maybe they just kept hitting at me instead of around me or maybe I was actually on-the-ball for a change.

Other than that all we’ve had is Mum’s and Dad’s night. Which is another night out. In medicine in pre-clinical years we have families. 2nd year parents (ie. Me) and 1st year children. It’s basically networking between years for help and advice on medical school. I have a sister and parents from last year, and now I’ve got a medic wife and kids for this year. My medic wife and I had our kids around last night, we cooked them a spaghetti dinner and had a few drinks then went to the club. (again costumes: 2nd year in Red, 1st year in White)

I’ve also been getting involved in a few different things this year. I’m still playing hockey this year but I’ve started playing ultimate Frisbee again and I’ve joined the SCUBA diving club here at Bristol. Just to get back into some old favourites of mine. Scuba’s exciting, I’m moving up another level and meeting loads of cool people, and with Frisbee I’m learning some techniques I haven’t learned before. I’m also hoping to do some form of music and service/volunteering too, but haven’t gotten that all figured out yet or sorted out if I’ll have enough time either.

I hope everyone is well, classes are starting up on Monday, so loads of work to come!

-Pete

Me and Ferg (hippo suit) – wearing our pink colours to establish that we’re 2nd years.

A pic of a camper on the ball hockey rink at Camp Wayne