Physiological Inadequacy

Today had to have the worst seminar/practical ever devised. The practical only had two objectives, to measure fat and Body Mass Index as well as a practical on lung function. I have never felt so inadequate in my whole life.

In regards to the first practical, we need to weigh ourselves and measure height and then using callipers estimate body fat. Not only am I a measly five feet tall, but I am just above the overweight BMI. As I have bingo wings that look like they belong in KFC, the last thing I need is someone sticking bloody callipers on them. But it also didn’t help that the three people I was doing this practical with were built like TWIGS. Both the girls weighed less than me despite being 4-6 inches taller and then proceeded to complain how fat they were. And the guy was like six and a half foot. I couldn’t have felt shorter or bloody fatter in that moment. Since starting on steroids my weight has ballooned, and the last thing I need is to sit there listening to people who are practically underweight complain about how fat or short they are.

But then to make matters worse, we then had to measure each others lung function. I am a terrible asthmatic, and recently it has been really bad, so you can imagine how shit my scores were, far below the predicted values for my age and height.

So basically all in all I’ve spent the rest of the day pretty down about it. A day spent looking at weight, height and lung function, the three things I am currently depressed about.

I’ve decided when I get back down to a more “reasonable” weight, I’m going clothes shopping and I’m going to spend a ton. I don’t care, I never spend money on clothes, and normally I hate shopping. At five feet tall and not being built like a twig, buying trousers or mid-length skirts is torture. Even petite style trousers are for people around five foot 2, so they are STILL two inches too long. And mid-length skirts that are supposed to be “above the knee” sit far to below my knee to look normal, so I simply can’t buy them. Now I’m huge, most of my clothes don’t fit, but I just can’t face shopping. I have enough trouble finding trousers normally, as most short trousers are designed for skinny people, and before, even though I wasn’t skinny, I was on the thinner side so it wasn’t too bad. Now I’m overweight. It will be IMPOSSIBLE to find clothes that fit. The only trousers I have that really fit lengthwise are from America, their petite clothes are so much better, but now they are too small…

My diet isn’t going well, but considering I’m starting my two week clinical placement next week, it should keep me active, considering it’s a four hour commute as well as 8-12 hour shifts, it won’t leave much time for snacking! Also, I’ve started doing some basic thigh and arm exercises a day as well as a little cardio. It’s not much, but I’m hoping a little, often, will pay off in the long term.

Current weight: 9 stone (126 pounds) (weighed on 8th)
Weight lost so far: 10 pounds
BMI: 24.6
Weight still to lose: 7 pounds by April

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Clinical Experience

I’m due to start my first official-as-a-medical-student clinical placement in a few weeks and today we found out where we were placed. And I got, DONCASTER. It is the furthest goddamn hospital from the university and it’s around a 2-3 hour commute to get there. Also, how the hell will I get to see my consultant to check I’m not dying when I‘m at least two hours away?!

On top of that, we get £5 a day to travel to and from our placements. I live 4 miles away from the train station, so its a £3 bus ticket, then a £5 return train ticket and then another £3 bus to the hospital. So whilst everyone else is probably making money, I have to get four buses and two trains a day on five pounds. And considering for the nurses placement at least, I have to work a full 8-10 hour shift with them, add on at 4 to 6 hours travel, that leaves me with on some days only eight hours at home. How is that fair?! As if my insomnia isn’t bad enough, and then I have to write up clinical cases too.

Someone said we were supposed to get accomodation, but there has been no mention of that. How will I possibly get all my stuff there?! My medication alone is huge, when you have to take something like 14 tablets a day and two inhalers, it takes up a lot of damned space. Thank god I don’t have a nebuliser anymore because I have no idea how I’d get that there as well.

I know this is just me being pathetic, but it’s always me getting the most retardly difficult places to get to. For my patient contact, we had to visit someone at home and I got fricking Rotherham, so while everyone else got to walk down a bloody street to see their patient, mine was over 15miles away. It’s just not fair when I haven’t slept for two days I have to navigate my way through the very confusing public transport of Sheffield, and the most other people can complain about is how hungover they are because they’ve been out drinking for about 5 days in a row. IF YOU CAN’T COPE WITH THE HANGOVER DON’T DRINK.

In other slightly less depressing news, the diet from hell is working. By basically living off foods that are absolutely not fun and are not coated in chocolate I can lose some of my steroid weight. At 5ft tall I managed to almost reach 10st over Christmas, which means I’ve gained nearly 3 and a half stone since leaving hospital. I ain’t going in to goddamn double digits.

I was about 9st 3 on my last weight in monday morning, hoping to be down to 9st by Feburary. I’ve set a goal of 8st 7 in April and 8st in June. A couple of years ago I worked at the University of Surrey for a summer analysing the nutritional content of young women’s diet as part of a study the univeristy were conducting. As part of it I built a program that can analyse diet, which although it is based on USDA data, as I wouldn’t find any comprehesive UK data, it’s quite good. I’ve been averaging around 1000 calories a day, meeting my RDA for both protein and sugar (mainly through fruit), while only eating a third of the fat RDA. It seems to be working as I have lost 7 pounds in two weeks, and whilst this sounds a lot, I easily gained 7 pounds in two weeks, so if you can gain it in that time you can lose it. I’m also managing to meet my RDA’s for vitamin C, B12, E and B6, as well as iron etc. So it’s going quite well.

I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be happy to see I weighed 9st!

Current weight: 9 st 2.4 (128.4 pounds)
Weight lost so far: 7.6 pounds
BMI: 25.1
Weight still to lose: 9.4 pounds by April

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