Second year is going fast!

The last couple of days have been the worst few days I've experienced in a long time! I've officially been struck with some sort of virus which has made me throw up constantly and has forced me to stay in bed with a high temperature and a really bad headache. Apparently a few of my flatmates were also ill last week... and I've heard from a few others that they too experienced something similar so I guess it's been going around...I just hope you guys don't catch it too...

Second year is going just as fast as the first year, if not faster! I can't believe that there are only a few weeks left before the end of the first term and the beginning of the Christmas holidays! Then before you know it the second term will have also been over and the summer term full of exams would have begun! So far this year, I am finding the content covered in the lectures much more interesting than those covered in the first year mainly because they are either topics we have never covered before or topics that we have previously studied but in much more depth. We have a lot less labs to get through this year too but the amount of coursework we have been given is a lot more. Last Friday was the last of my immunology labs, which I thought was great because I would have Fridays off again to study all the lectures covered that week and complete my lecture notes...but the downside was the fact I now needed to do a long lab report discussing and drawing conclusions on the results I had obtained in the lab.

Labs and lectures aside, something new that we have been recently focussing on is clinical based case studies. This involves reading a brief report about a patient, trying to find out what is wrong with them based on their previous medical history and the symptoms they have reported, thinking about how we can investigate the problem further and identifying any treatment we could possibly offer them. Although I did find the problem solving side of things quite difficult at first mainly because I had not looked at any case studies like these before, after learning how to tackle such questions in the lecture and doing a few practice questions by myself and then discussing it as a group, I now feel a lot more confident working through them. I would strongly recommend all you Biomed students who are working on clinical based case studies like I am  to have a good look through the following book : Understanding Clinical Investigations: A Quick Reference Manual by Susan Ski. It is such an amazing book...I've lost count of the number of times I must have renewed it from the library!

Anyway, I better go and rest now. I hope you all take care of yourselves and wrap up warm. If anyone has any suggestions on good books that will keep me occupied whilst I'm recovering please do let me know...I'll be most grateful!