Update: I'm still alive and flu-free

Final term and the second year draws to a close, well, not exactly as there’s still four weeks of teaching left, and study leave, and exams. Somehow ‘Unprotected Text’ has managed to maintain and even slightly extend its readership despite the rather callous neglect I have shown it recently. With nothing noteworthy to report and an air of disinterest in medicine these past few weeks for which I place full culpability on the tediously mawkish sociology unit, I’ve been unable to muster any musing.

Meanwhile as the country remains torn between barefaced brazen fury over MPs expenses whipped up by a media storm, and perilous unmitigated panic over swine flu, we remain anxious and unsettled by the impending end of year exams, whipped up by the medical school.

To add to the fray, we have been given fairly scant details and time for applying for our third year clinical placements. I understand it will be a logistical nightmare co-ordinating and meeting the wishes of hundreds of students, but can’t help to feel that come September I will be disappointed with my placing. Yes, I’m a cynical bastard even at the best of times.

In an effort to claw back some cash I’ve decided to move home for summer. Informed my flatmates the other night, which went down with some shock and disappointment. Maybe I left it a tad late in the year, but my paranoia suggests a slight air of resentment. As the only student, expressing a lack of cash-flow seems reasonable, but with their lifestyles (and they really do piss away their salaries) they now need to find a new flatmate as they cannot afford to move into somewhere smaller.

Unfortunately, anything and everything I’ve enquired about or applied to do over the summer has fallen through. Not just with a lack of funding, it would seem that even free labour is also too much to ask. For some consolation, it would seem this is true for quite a few of my friends too. After working the entirety of last summer in a forsaken hell-hole until intellectually numb, the thought of going home for a couple of months isn’t all that bad.

In the meantime I am preparing for lockdown, to enter the strange yet familiar domain of caffeinated highs, mitral stenosis, Osler’s nodes, placenta praevia, lobar pneumonia, neuroleptics, peak expiratory flow meters, Cushing’s syndrome and the rest of the crew. Goodbye, social life!