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Tongue action


Sabrina

We chart the ups and downs of fabulous fresher Sabrina as she trains to be a doctor.
Entry: 3

TheSite.org follows fabulous fresher Sabrina as she trains to be a doctor, and ends up on the operating table herself.

I ended up on the operating table a lot sooner than I thought. Nothing to do with my breasts, it was my tongue that was the problem this time. Cutting a long story short, I've always had a small lump on it, and my GP always told me it was nothing to worry about, but a couple of months ago I had noticed that it had doubled in size. After looking through all my medical textbooks in a panic, I saw my new GP, and was referred to a specialist hospital straight away. The consultant thought it was a cyst, but wanted to pop it out, just to make sure. Cancer did cross my mind, which left me with a couple of sleepless nights but I was assured that it probably wasn't.

This set in a rather unusual train of thought, because when you're learning about every single thing that can go wrong with the human body, you forget that these things can still happen to you. This, if you excuse the pun, was a rather bitter pill to swallow, but in the end, I managed to accept it and just take things one day at a time.

So, I had the operation on Monday. It was very unusual to be the patient again, rather than the ditzy medical student. Being put to sleep had to be the best bit that feeling of warmth and dizziness before encountering a state of unconsciousness. They all knew I was going to be OK when I woke up, pulled the oxygen mask away from my face, and asked for a hot curry. I got a turkey sandwich instead.

What the lump turned out to be was a pool of blood that had been caused by me probably biting my tongue very hard a few years ago. This weakened the blood vessel wall, so it still has its own blood supply running through, thus as soon as they drained it, it filled up again. The lesson? When you're told to bite your tongue do it gently. I have a follow-up appointment to see whether the consultant wants to perform laser treatment on it, but its something that could take three hours, so I have to watch this space I suppose.

"Cancer did cross my mind, which left me with a couple of sleepless nights but I was assured that it probably wasn't."

Other than that, being a medical student is still a lot of fun. I've been surprised by the closed-mindedness of some of the other students though, for example we had a session where we had to decide, "Who gets the liver?" The choice was a student who took an overdose, an alcoholic celebrity footballer, someone who got Hepatitis through a transfusion, or an ex drug-addict single mother of three. A lot of the students made crass comments about mental illness with regards to the suicide attempt, and how the single mother and footballer would 'probably' end up relapsing anyway. I was taken aback because under the General Medical Council (GMC) guidelines, no one can decide who gets treatment on the basis of their past or on assumptions of their futures. I'm sure I'll encounter people who I won't want to treat, but you have to accept that's part of the job. I expect their attitudes will change in the next few years although I do look at some people and think, "Thank God you're not going to be my doctor!" But my other friends always outweigh the bad apples.

There is a lot of work to get through though, and sometimes I think to myself, How the hell did I get here? It seems fairly daunting a lot of the time, especially with money worries and the length of the course, but in the long run, I'm hoping it will be worth it.

London life is also great, I'm loving the location (just off Tottenham Court Road) so everything is pretty close. I've also been to the infamous Chinawhites (lovely interior, rude bouncers probably doing the power trip thing to make up for shortcomings in other departments), so I can tick that off my list. Haven't run through Regent's Park naked yet though.

I'm also going to be teaching sex education as one of my special study modules in February and April, which I'm really looking forward to. The students will be 14, so I have no idea how little or how much they are going to know. I can barely remember what life was like at that age, so it's going to be interesting.

And finishing this entry on the subject of anatomy, if you get the chance to go and see Puppetry of the Penis I demand that you go!


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