#dxmedstudent

I thought I'd introduce our little old man, Sherlock. We think he's around 14 years old, but we don't know for sure, as husband previous owner died unexpectedly so we don't have any of his vet records from before.

We discovered that he has an overactive thyroid, and he loves his medication! He's doing much better now it's under control. He's very lively for his age. He's also a polydactyl and has extra thumbs to make mischief with.

Aw thank you, this is so sweet.

Thank you for asking us @dxmedstudent !

Invasive questions link

Olga | Zuzia

5- Do you believe in ghosts and supernatural things?

Not really to be honest :D | I believe in ghosts/spirits.

12- Do you have or want any tattoos or piercings?

I have pierced ears and I’d like to have a helix piercing. Having a tattoo really tempts me, but I’m genuinely scared of getting bored of it after some time :D Also, a quick fun fact about me- for a pretty long time I really wanted to have my tongue pierced | I also have my ears pierced (just one earring in each ear) but am planning to get some more soon! I literally can’t decide if a want a tattoo or not, I’m afraid I will regret getting one.

18- What is the one food you could eat for the rest of your life without getting bored?

The first study based blog/ med/ medical tumblr I followed was @medicalstate

Ever.   

He’s no longer active, but his posts were so sobering for me to read, especially back when I was in uni. His style is a hark back to the good ol’ blogspot/ personal blog days, which I love. 

I also went on a following spree a while (year?) ago so there’s quite a few but I can’t recall all of them (and am unsure whether they’re active anymore - people seem to have moved on from here). 

At the moment @dxmedstudent and @quilavastudy are the most active on my dash. 

Me neither, Anon! Honestly? I have been meaning to come back to Tumblr a while ago, but life has been busy! I had tried to spend less time on socual media so i could focus on my membership exams, and that went too well.

Time flies, I can't believe it's been more than 10 years since I joined tumblr or graduated from med school.

I can't remember which updates I've already shared, so I'll make a list.

Married life is great - pretty similar to pre-married life. Because we started off in different cities due to my training and covid, it's honestly just a joy to live together and be able to hang out. I've been meaning to post a couple of anonymised wedding photos. It still feels amazing that we managed to get all the people we love together. We also managed to fly out to my birth country so that DxDude could meet my relatives...most of whom don't speak English. It was hilarious and lovely and he took being mobbed by an army of Eastern European Babushkas very well.

We adopted a cat! His owner died suddenly and my parents sort of got left with the cat. It was at a difficult time, as it was around the time my beloved cat passed away last year. I still miss her. But I couldn't let someone's baby, a lovely senior cat, live out his last days in a shelter. He's a little 14ish year old man called Sherlock. He loves being held and sitting on my shoulders and he drools when he gets excited. We've been trying to discourage his habit of nipping you when he wants something.

My houseplants and balcony plants may be slowly getting out of control, but I'm happy I have lots of them, and i would have more if we weren't running out of space. I'm currently waging a war against mealybugs. Send thoughts and prayers.

I did get into GP training! And it was local to where I wanted to be, which made it much easier to finally move in together. In fact, I JUST finished GP training a couple of weeks ago and am now living my GP dreams working in one of the practices that I trained in. It's very inner city London. Our patients have complex needs, and I'm honoured to ve in a team that have a lot of experience serving patients affected by substance abuse, homelessness and refugee populations and other complex issues.

We went on Honeymoon to Japan! It was amazing, and I'd still love to go again. I was bold enough to arrange my Honeymoon to be barely a month before a postgraduate exam, but I passed!

This past academic year has been filled with sitting exams and jumping through the hoops required for my eportfolio. On top of working full time as a GP. I didn't think I would do it all first time TBH, but my supervisor had more faith in me than I did. It's honestly been amazing to work for a few jobs in GP training where I felt seen and wanted and where my hard work was appreciated. I can't believe my supervisor offered me my current job, and wanted me to stay on, but they did!

I finished a diploma in sexual and reproductive health and trained in fitting contraceptive implants. I'd like to train up to fit IUDs also to try to improve local access to sexual health services.

I went on strike these past couple of years, when the junior doctors went on strike again. I'm still processing the pay offer and the new government. But I'm relieved we're no loner under the Tories.

We'd like to move house, but we've not gotten around to trying to do this seriously, because my life was already stressful enough. We do need more space, and I hope we'll find somewhere modestly nice that we can afford.

We're trying for kids, and it's sadly taking much longer than we hoped. Being a patient is...a slow and frustrating experience because it already feels like I've had to work harder than I should to advocate for appropriate care. I could say a LOT about the postcode lotteries that come with UK fertility care but I'll leave that for another post.

I've finally accepted that my hair is wavy, and I'm trying out different products to lean into the natural waves and bring them out without leaving it a frizzy Hermione-esque mess. It spent tge past years mostly in a plait or cadet bun, but I'm finally giving my hair a bit more freedom. I have NOT yet accepted that my hair is mostly white at this point. I alternate between wanting to go grey (because that would look cool) and wanting to stay brown because that's kind of how I've imagined myself for the past 35+ years.

I finally get to indulge in painting my nails. I've loved it since I was like 13 and seeing my nails sparkly and colorful brings out my inner 13 year old and she is thrilled. Every time I make my nails glow in the dark, I show them off to DxDude before bed.

My laptop died and then I inherited an old laptop from my parents which is also dying. Which is part of the reason I haven't created much art in recent years. I should probably just bite the bullet and buy a new one, but my exams and diplomas have been expensive so I've been putting it off. To be fair I also made the decision to use my limited free time to keep up with friends and family IRL and try not to feel bad about taking a break from creating. I felt like I was blaming myself for not managing to do everything I wanted to do. I've slowly accepted that none of us can do everything.

Starting this September, the BMA has moved to officially terming all doctors who have not yet completed their final postgraduate qualifications/examinations Resident doctors rather than Junior doctors. This means that foundation doctors, Core and specialty trainee SHOs and registrars and junior clinical fellows will all come under the umbrella.

The move aims to help clear up the terminology, as the wording "junior" often left patients thinking they were being seen by medical students.

Many have argued for years that the term junior is dismissive and infantilises doctors, particularly registrars who have often worked as doctors for several years. For example, I was a junior doctor for over 10 years before I finished my specialist training as a GP.

I admit it still feels a little strange to me, Brits often don't like changing anything with history, but it helps that resident is a widely used term in the US and Australia as well as other countries.

@dragon-to-tora Fellow GP high five! Congrats on finishing, even if it was a while ago!

Yeah that's the reason why I haven't yet started doing some of the training I was considering, like minor ops and contraceptive coils. Or oit of hours work. There's lots of things I'd like to do, but in reality it'll probably be a bigger commitment than I first realise.

I'd love to do these things and improve access in my community, but I wanted to make sure I didn't over extend myself because like many of us I have a tendency to over-exert myself and burn out.

My work wouldn't let me have a work laptop in the longterm as they are pretty short, I've only borrowed one briefly for audits. hich is frustrating when I have to stay late for admin, bit probably for the best as it might be too tempting to take work home with me.