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Wilkommen to my blog - my name is Karin Purshouse, and I'm a doctor in the UK. If you're looking for ramblings on life as a cancer doctor, my attempts to dual-moonlight as a scientist and balancing all that madness with a life, you've come to the right place. I'm training to be a cancer specialist, and am currently doing a PhD in cancer stem cell biology. All original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Being a doctor being a patient.

 A mix of emotions from top left clockwise - how I feel now,
how I felt a lot of my night shifts, how I felt when occasionally
panicking, what I spent the first half an hour after
my shift feeling like i.e. ahhhhh!
Apart from slightly losing my marbles circa 6am, and perhaps again at 9.15am, I have survived the first two weeks of my new job as the medical SHO which have thus far consisted of night shifts and nothing else.  Finishing yesterday morning was another great wave of half-relief-half-nausea, relieved somewhat by having a cuppa with some of my old lab chums.  Remember how I said clinical medicine seemed the comfortable norm?  Hmmm... rose tinted glasses, much!  Although I must say I kind of enjoyed it (Kind of, in the sense that it is tough to say your enjoyment is complete when you are at work over an entire sunny weekend, sleeping during the day and up all night). 
The last fortnight has been completely insane.  Apart from a bunch of night shifts, I've also done a day-and-a-half of exams, written an assessed essay, work on a conference agenda, done prescribing-related teaching for all the house officers and then an afternoon of simulation teaching.  I managed to catch up with some of my favourite university people in between these various studious things, before you think I'm a total social loser.  

But actually the weirdest thing of the last fortnight is that I had a flavour of being a patient.  

I've had a couple of health worries on my mind and the first of these I found out about via a poorly timed (by me) phone call to my GP surgery.  It was really quite unfortunate and perhaps my fault that I ended up finding out over the phone that I needed to have some more tests done.  I wondered whether it was more worrying because being a doctor means knowing a bit too much about the worst case scenario.  I guess I was also a bit distressed because I'd like to think I am quite particular about the when/where/who/why of any news I am dishing out to patients, and realised that because the news breaker probably didn't realise they were 'breaking news' I wasn't given that sort of consideration.  I then found out I had a second medical issue that needed investigation, and within a fortnight I found myself with two hospital referrals and a whole bunch of worry.  

Any social recluse-ing I've been guilty of recently has been a genuine apathy symptom of compartmentalising stress.  I'm quite an open person, and it's strange having things that you don't feel able to share with friends and family.  I felt quite irrational as I knew that it was all cautionary really, but also perhaps felt that by vocalising my worries, it made it all more real.  Even sitting in the waiting room is a bizarre and lonely experience.  It's a bit like being in a massive herd of cattle, waiting to be picked out and painted.  Once you're in the room, it turns out the 'so what do you do for a job' question is pretty much numero uno, so there was no hiding my professional identity.  It's pretty weird going to see a doctor in the place that you also work.  I accepted that I might know them - in the event I was quite glad I didn't as it made it easier to slot into the patient role, although I must say everyone I encountered was excellent without exception.  

Anyway, as expected everything was absolutely fine and dandy with nothing further needed, and I could worry about my night shifts in peace.  But there's nothing like experiencing what it's like on the other side before being on call for a whole weekend to remind you that every patient is a human being with worries, fears and a life.  

Excepting the odd panic moments, it was these thoughts that kept a smile broadly stuck to my face the whole weekend, hopefully staying cheerful and providing a chuckle or two as I dashed across seven floors of a hospital.  

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