Welcome to my blog! Here I will write about my experiences living in London and doing a pediatrics rotation at The Royal London Hospital. The Royal London Hospital... it sounds so spectacular! I'm expecting purple carpet, chandeliers, and marble poles.
I arrived in London on Sunday, just after 6AM. It took about an hour to get to where my cousin lives in Lewisham using the Tube and national rail from Heathrow. My cousin lives with her partner and their 14 year old daughter. She has a cafe just across the street of her flat. I chatted with her when I arrived and then went to take a long nap. I was really surprised to see my cousin who is taller than I am. The last time I saw her she was 11 and half my height. Now she is taller than me.
That night over dinner my cousin and I talked about the life of doctors here. Some work for both the NHS and privately. Another of my cousin, K, had to have an operation and the NHS offered for her to have it done privately. She said she never experienced anything like that. She was offered tea at the doctors office. J said that at the NHS you have to wait hours even though you have an appoitment. I said, that's not too different than the US. I think about all the doctors I've worked with during my primary care rotation who were hours behind schedule.
Today I moved into my room. K works 10 minutes walking distance from me. She she meet me at Cannon Street train station on her lunch break and walked me to my dorm. It was great. I don't think I would have found it on my own. I'm staying at Chaterhouse square. My room is pretty nice (for a dorm room). It has the basic furniture, a bed, desk, cabinet, bookshelf and sink. It even comes with a refridgerator! The communal bathrooms have a bathtub which I was really excited about until K told me no one ever uses them. I'm living on an all girls floor which I am SO excited about. Appareantly the boys floor has mice because the guys leave food and garbage out. Surprise, surprise!
When K left me to go back to work, I felt pretty sad! I started to wonder why I decided to come here. My friends are back in NYC and here I am all alone in London. Starting medical school sucked enough the first time since I didn't know anybody, and restarting sucked again for a second time. And now I'm in a way doing the same thing. Ugh.
K offered to go shopping with me after work. I walked back to her office, literally took 5 mintues to get there. From her office is a view of St. Paul's catherdral and the London eye. Pretty impressive. After picking up tea, and cereal, she treated me to dinner at pizza express.
When I got back to my room, I went by Luny (as I nicked named her since it rhymes with her real name which I had a hard time remembering) to ask to borrow her iron for my white coat. We had a really nice time chatting. Her parents and brother live close to London. Shes doing a masters degree. Diva (as I nick named her since her name sounds like Diva and was hard for me to remember), came by and turns out shes a first year medical student wanting to do pediatrics.
We talked a lot about what each of our medical schools are like. I was so shocked to learn they already learned how to place EKG lead. I told her the day I learned was on the cardiology service on medicine when my patient had positive tropoinis and my resident told me to get an EKG. I never was instructed on how to place one and of course I put the leads in the wrong place which made the EKG read out an arrhythmia. She also does not have dissections in anatomy. Everything is dissected for them. How nice. I was also terrified I'd be so old compared to the students here but she said a lot of people take time off and there are people in her class who are in their 30s.
What has surprised me so far?
1) I can't get US media websites here like pandora and hulu. That means no Bachelor or New Girl for a month :(
2) 'The Sun', one of the British tabloids, has a full frontal nuditiy shot of a girl on page 2 in each publication.
3) There is are bike rack stations where you can rent a bike and park it at another station. I've read about this before. The first one started in Paris and England decided to adopt it. It was cool to see it.
Some questions Diva has asked me which I find hilarious:
1) Are school really cliquy, like in mean girls?
2) Do you see celebrities on the street in NYC? Becasue the magazines make it seem like they are all out on the streets.
3) Do people watch 90210? Apparently the modern version is a huge hit in the UK
So tomorrow is my first day at The Royal London. I love typing that!
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