"In Praise of Yorkshire"

Day 4 of intensive clinical experience.
There is now a routine to getting up way too early, meeting my fellow 'buddy' classmate to take a train and a bus to get to the hospital.
On the train we talk through the day over coffee and ruffle through our 'Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary' and Churchill's "Differential Diagnosis" clarifying new terms and symptoms learned the previous day.
The hospital doors swing open and we are greeted by lovely nurses and some fellow classmates. All of us far too eager and a bit shell shocked that we are now 'student doctors' -we adhere to the same regulations as our superiors and are expected to have impeccable comportment at all times. Most of our patients think we are doctors no matter how hard we try to clarify that we are only students.
Mornings begin with ward rounds with a favorite specialist nurse (God bless these super hard working people!!! With 25 years experience behind them they know just as much as the doctors, and we all know it), lunch (more talk about what we are learning and seeing and a chance to catch up with peers and to see what they've been up to), then afternoon clinics- more pamphlets and things to read up on and before we know it its 5pm and time to head home. Loads of reading and far too much crammed into our heads in a days work.
Two interesting experiences:
1. My first encounter with a bad diagnosis: having the doctor tell a patient he had prostate cancer and seeing how lovely the nurses were-by the time he walked out of the consultation he was smiling and joking around.
2. We had a young lady flat-line for 18 seconds. Someone was headed for the crash cart when she began to come around on her own. I had the oxygen ready to go. Apparently its always the young ones that are the most trouble when in comes to syncope.
Two things really struck me about this: how quickly you can lose someone, and how exciting it is to see a patient come out of a bad patch and be ok.

The heading is only because I did a neurological exam on a dear old 91 year old lady and when asked to write a sentence she wrote: In Praise of Yorkshire.
I do love me some Yorkshire folk.