At 51, I’m about to start work as a junior doctor. It’s been a wild ride to get here | Ben Collins
My transformation was most apparent the day I realised that a digital rectal examination can be life-saving For the last four years I’ve been breaking every rule of appropriate, normal behaviour. I’ve poked, probed, inserted, stabbed and cut people in their most intimate body parts. I’ve examined dissected bodies and riffled through a bucket of human hearts. I’ve been baptised in every bodily fluid known; dodged spurting blood, spilt oozing pus and been caught out by the force of amniotic fluid erupting from a caesarean section. Studying medicine at the age of 47, I realised in my first semester that this was not going to be like my previous experiences. Feelings of fear and ineptitude have been my almost constant companions as I was thrown into challenging situations. Continue reading...
My transformation was most apparent the day I realised that a digital rectal examination can be life-saving
For the last four years I’ve been breaking every rule of appropriate, normal behaviour. I’ve poked, probed, inserted, stabbed and cut people in their most intimate body parts. I’ve examined dissected bodies and riffled through a bucket of human hearts. I’ve been baptised in every bodily fluid known; dodged spurting blood, spilt oozing pus and been caught out by the force of amniotic fluid erupting from a caesarean section.
Studying medicine at the age of 47, I realised in my first semester that this was not going to be like my previous experiences. Feelings of fear and ineptitude have been my almost constant companions as I was thrown into challenging situations.
Continue reading...