48 days and counting.

I start medicine in 48 days.

When I was 10yo, a kid from my year five class had his mum bring in an esky full of different animal organs - brains, livers, kidneys, and lungs.

I bet that's what all the parents of the kids in your year five class kept in their eskys.

Now most little girls might have run screaming at the idea of being asked to 'dissect' (read:massacre) these oddly-smelling objects which oozed fluid for the best part of the lesson, and I have to admit that for a moment I entertained the idea of copying the 'popular' girls in my class and becoming faint, but my curiosity quickly got the better of me.

In this small, grotesque, bride-of-frankenstein type anatomy lab, we learnt a number of things: all the names of the major bones in the body (which I can still remember now) and more importantly - that chewing minties cures the ails associated with cutting up bodily objects. The smell and the sound (because chewing minties is a noisy sport).

Imagine this now, I'm 10yo and I'm being told that I can ask for a mintie whenever i feel faint.

TEACHER: Now kids, I have hear a basically unlimited supply of minties, so feel free to ask for one if you feel sick.
ME (thinking): Free minties, eh? When I feel sick...
ME: Oh miss, I feel rather sick.
TEACHER: Have a mintie.
ME: Still feel sick, miss.
TEACHER: Another mintie for you then.
ME - raises my hand.
TEACHER: Still feeling sick?
ME: Sure am.

And repeat, when needed.

Now imagine my horror, when I discovered that in undergraduate dissection classes, in my science degree, where we were required to cut up human cadavers (we called our 87yo man, who'd died of a miocardial infarction - cecil) that if discovered chewing any substance - hand, skin, hair, gum, food, dead mans toe - that we'd be asked to leave immediately.

But... but... but what about my anti-fainting solution! YOU MONSTERS!

It was at this time however, when I was 10yo, that I first decided I wanted to be a doctor.

I'm now a 20-something chit of a girl, who drinks slightly too much vodka, procrastinates from going to bed by watching trashy tv-shows and who has bibliophilia (love of books), but who still wants to be a doctor and in 48 days it all starts.