2007

This is it. This is the year that I get to start calling myself a Medical Student. In three week's time, I'll walk into a lecture theatre filled with my fellow students and begin the adventure of becoming a full-time student again.

To say that I'm excited would be an understatement.

In a month's time things are going to be going full-speed ahead. But for now I am tying off the old threads of my current life and getting prepared for a lot of things to change completely.

It is quite tough emotionally leaving one career in which you have become established and experienced in order to begin another from the lowest possible level. I'll really miss the regularity and (relative) predictability of work, and I'll especially miss the money and my workmates. My goodbye party is next week, and I don't think I'm quite ready for it. There will be tears. But I think I'm going to get so much enjoyment out of studying medicine that it will make up for all of it.

I have worked in large hospitals for years, and I am just so thrilled to be able to focus on the why and how of health and disease and people, rather than being expected to only know the minimum necessary to do my job. I want to know these things and now I'm getting the chance!

I can't wait to wander around a hospital for the first time as a med student. I have done it before as a student for my current job, and I was so unsure of myself that I didn't really enjoy it. I'm grown up and experienced this time and am very excited.

I can't wait to learn to pop in a cannula. Yes, I know it sounds mundane. I've been trying to get into a cannulation training course at work for a little while now but never quite managed to convince management that it was necessary enough. (They would have thought it was odd if I had tried to convince them any more than I did.) I'm looking forward to doing it and getting good at it. (One day I may have to place one in a baby, and THERE AND THEN is where all of the practise and training will come in handy.)

I can't wait to actually spend time in various specialty areas as a medical student rather than somebody who breezes in and breezes out, just doing the requested service in the area. Areas that I'm particularly excited about spending time in include psychiatry (yes, I've heard the stories, but I've always been interested in it and am curious to see what it is like), oncology, gastroenterology, and surgery. I'll probably change my mind during the course and afterwards, but I like being excited about things and having something to look forward to.

This year is going to be so exciting. And exhausting. But I'm a bit of an Energiser Bunny when I need to be (I keep "goingandgoingandgoingandgoing") so I'm not too worried. I'm also old enough to know when to say stop. Thank God I didn't study medicine any earlier in life.

Bring it on, baby, bring it on!!