My sister, on seeing a movie..

Jess: So we'll go see that movie... I- I ... in-
Me: Inception?
Jess: Yeah that's the one. We'll go see that one Tuesday next week.
Me: You mean the tuesday next week, because there's only one tuesday.
Jess: Hi - I'm Tuesday and I'm a day of the week.

Lets stop fighting and make out - an interpretation of Alexander.

My housemate's interpretation of the movie Alexander:

Me: What are you watching?
Housemate (HM): Alexander... I'm not quite sure what's going on?
Me: Where's colin farrell
HM: I'm not sure who's side he's on... I think the persians are wearing multiple colours...
Me: And the persians are not Alexander? Is he Greek?
HM: No... Alexander was macedonian... that's north of Greece.
Me: Don't judge me... I learnt all I know about history through ancient history and like most of school - I've forgotten it all.
HM: I learnt everything I know from those fictional history books.
Me: Oh! Those ones where they were pedophiles...
HM: I don't think caesar was a pedophile... but some of the other Romans were...
Me: Was alexander one?
HM: No - I think he was a homosexual...
Me: Ooh! Have their been any sexy moments between Colin Farrell and sexy male co-stars...
I proceed to mimic a sexy kiss for some reason.
HM: No! But there was a moment before he went to war-
Me (Interrupting): and they sexy man kissed!
HM: No... they were like:


"If you die, I will avenge you"


And then they hugged.

HM: They wear very short shorts... maybe that's why they were homosexuals.
Me: Possibly...
HM: Actually - they're more like skirts. Perhaps they were like the Scottish and wore no underwear and so they were all a little turned onafter the war.
HM: Perhaps they were like 'Lets stop fighting and make out.'

The mechanic lied...

So I was reading back over my blog a little and stumbled across this entry:


So with regards to my car, turned out I had a hole in my exhaust pipe. I found this out at one of my services where I had this conversation with the mechanic.

Mechanic: So it turns out that you have a hole in your exhaust pipe.
Me: Oh gosh, do I really? Is that dangerous...
Mechanic: Oh no... not really...
Me: So I'm not likely to die from it.
Mechanic: ... well no, probably not...
Me: Then in that case, how long can I leave it.
Mechanic: I'd say you have till about 110,000km
Considering the car still has 10,000 till then.
Me: And you say it will cost how much.
Mechanic: X-dollars.
Me: See you in 10,000km.

For the next 7,000km my car became increasingly louder as the hole got larger, until I was driving through an intersection one day and...



this dropped out of the bottom of my car.
I literally drove through it, heard a kind of crumple-crash, looked in my rear-view mirror to see that lying in the middle of the road. At which stage I pulled over and called my sister who was 300m away.

Me (No idea what it is): I think my engine just dropped out of the bottom of my car...

Chinese whispers.

Learning in post-grad medicine is a lot like Chinese-whispers.

It's assumed that as post-grad entrants we're all adults and have also completed a previous degree and are therefore capable of studying the concepts of medicine on our own with as little direction AND correction as possible from the university staff. The direction that we do receive is through our PBL-sessions - twice-weekly meetings with five or six other students where we're presented with a medical case (ie. Patient X presented to hospital with symptoms-X and a past-history of...) and given a set of learning objectives.

'Learning objectives' is a broad term used to describe a list of anywhere from five to twenty concepts which we're expected to research and study, such as "Identify the pathology, clinical features and investigations of Endometrial Cancer". As I was saying - broad... very, very broad.

Although this is a fantastic way to learn - as it allows for adequate communication between students regarding the topics we're meant to be covering, it is also the FULL extent of involvement that the university has in directing our learning. This therefore means that our understanding of this topic solely relies upon the resources that we look up and the information that other students bring to the table during PBL. This means that should one student look up wikipedia for their information and the other looks up MD consult, regardless of the reliability of this information - it becomes fact.

This happened the other day in the hospital.

Registrar: Tell me about the eye-symptoms of GRAVES disease
Student A: Lid lag, lid retraction, proptosis and exophthalmus. Student recounts exactly what was learnt in PBL last year.
Registrar: Not quite. Graves Disease leads to exophthalmus (protrusion of the eye) and ophthalmoplegia (limited eye movement and double vision). Thyroid eye disease covers lid lag, lid retraction and proptosis.
Student B verifies this in the book...

Major PBL fail, because both students were from different PBLs but had both received the same information from their PBL group and because of the lack of regulation of the resources available to students by the university or the lack of regulation of what material is learnt...

I can imagine the following scenario taking place.
In PBL:
Student A: Ok - so Student B was going to tell us about pregnancies.
Student B: pregnancies... blah blah blah... can happen in men.
Student A: Hang on a second! Where did you find that?
Student B: In book C, page X, paragraph J.
Student C: Oh well, it must be right then...
In hospital.
Doctor: So tell me about pregnancies.
Student A (Thinking: they said male pregnancy is right): Pregnancy can happen in both MALES and FEMALES!

Stethoscopes

There's a quote from the book 'The House of God' that describes a doctor's stethoscope:
"He wore a butcher-length white coat and a long old-fashioned stethoscope wended its way across his chest and abdomen and disappeared mysteriously into his pants. A question flickered across my mind: WHERE DID THAT STETHOSCOPE GO?"

I remember watching a movie or a TV episode or seeing a picture about wearing stethoscopes and how wearing them in a certain way told a lot about the individual.

There was this doctor at my hospital who wears his stethoscope, so that the ear pieces are around his neck and the diaphragm dangles down to his waist. I specifically remember this position being considered the 'bastard' way because it's meant to draw attention to the crotch of the individual and I have to agree.

Whenever men wear stethoscopes which dangle of their crotches, I wonder, "Do you feel the need to listen to your penis?"

As a med student, having your stethoscope on display is a debatable topic. On the one hand, wearing your stethoscope around your neck is the most comfortable and accessible place and makes it easy to use BUT also gives the actual Doctors the wrong impression that you're actually capable of using it, which, let us be honest isn't true about any of us. Most of the time, if mines around my neck I spend my time adjusting which side is audible and then low-and-behold when I come to use it, I can't hear anything because I've switched diaphgrams. Useless. On the other hand, wearing your stethoscope around your neck is considered 'dicky' by other students, like you're showing off so a lot of students store it in their bags or their pockets and as a result above-mentioned doctors criticize our lack of commitment to the practice.

It's a conflicting situation.