Hello!

I finally wrapped up my year in Berlin with an intense, five-week long stretch of experiments, data analysis, bureacratic tasks and packing. I spent my last few weeks in Berlin crossing off tasks from a colossal and ever-growing checklist and getting very little sleep. In addition to my lab work, the first year of my MSc Internal Medicine course at the University of Edinburgh ended recently with the final exam of the last module before the summer break. The year at Edinburgh ended with one of my favourite topics – radiology. We had a tough but exciting hands-on exam where we were required to interpret clinical images and make management decisions based on radiological investigations.

I had to move all my belongings not once, but twice this past month – within Berlin to a new apartment and then back home for a well-deserved three week vacation. My priorities for the coming weeks are first and foremost to spend some quality time with my family before heading off to Bordeaux in early September, although I will also have to write up my lab report (due in a month) and work on some presentations (including my upcoming poster in Toulouse!).

I must admit that his year has been a challenge for me. Despite having gone through the mental massacre that is medical school just a few years ago, handling two postgraduate degree courses at once was a difficult task. Especially since one was an online distance learning course that required immense motivation and commitment on my behalf and was heavily based on self-study and personal time management.

The program at Edinburgh has exceeded my expectations so far. I had initially joined to keep my clinical knowledge ‘fresh’ while studying for my masters in a non-clinical discipline. I ended up not only learning an immense amount of new information, but also dramatically changing the way I approach the practice of medicine for the better.

Exhausting as the past year has been, I’m trying  to think of things positively, albeit by quoting a cliché in medicine. In the words of the Roman poet Vigil: Miseris succurrere disco (I learn to relieve the suffering). 

More posts to come soon, once I’m at home and settled – I’m writing this at a height of 30,000 feet above sea level (I won’t be posting it until I hit the ground, in-flight internet costs WAY too much!).