Quarantine Diaries Update!

 So, as you can tell from the last blog, I wanted to do a weekly update during quarantine but I was struggling with motivation and when term started I was swamped with work. I want to provide a quick update and I have been thinking about the future of this blog and the types of posts I want to make, which I will explain more at the end of this blog. So, let's get into it.  

Quarantine Week 2 (30th March-5th April) - During this week I worked with my Mum and Sister to finish decorating the shed and garden furniture. I also finished a jigsaw puzzle, watched some movies, played sims, and played minecraft with my Sister.

 

Quarantine Week 3 (6th April-12th April) - This week I brushed up on my Arterial Blood Gas results interpretation, something I've always struggled to get my head around - shout out to Geeky Medics for having such a useful page on it! (https://geekymedics.com/abg-interpretation/) I went for a "short" walk with my Mum which ended up being a couple of hours in wholly unsuitable shoes and gave me more than a couple of blisters. I also tried baking the Royal pastry chefs' spiced Easter biscuits recipe, and it turned out pretty good! (https://www.royal.uk/royal-easter-biscuits-recipe) On Easter Sunday we had an Easter Egg hunt in the garden.

 

 

Quarantine Week 4 (13th April-19th April) - I spent most of this week with my youngest sister, and Mum, preparing a festival in our garden for my other sister's birthday. Apart from being rained off on the Saturday we had a good weekend in the sunshine.

 

Quarantine Week 5 (20th April-26th April) - This week uni started again, online.This module (204) was about the Musculoskeletal and Immune Systems. I've got to admit the timetable didn't seem as full as usual. However, lectures which would take me 1 hour in the lecture theatre could easily take me up to 3 hours at home, so I was studying more than usual. I also worked on my case-based discussion essay this week, and got that submitted. 

Quarantine Weeks 6, 7 and 8 (27th April-17th May) - I've lumped these three weeks together because I was mostly just doing my uni work, enjoying the sunshine, and hanging out with my family. I guess I was also fantasising over booking a trip to Ibiza once covid has calmed down!

Quarantine Week 9 (18th May-24th May) - This week was one year since my Dad passed away so I went with my family to visit his willow tree. I picked out some nice photos and tried to write some nice pieces on my various social medias, but I'm not sure if I'll do that on here. At the end of this week some new holiday clothes I'd ordered online arrived so I tried them all on before tucking them away in a drawer for that post-covid beach holiday! 

Quarantine Weeks 10, 11 and 12 (25th May-14th June) - Again, I've lumped these three weeks together because I was mostly just studying. I had a pair work poster project to finish and submit. Unfortunately, I also had a patient study essay to finish, which took my until 5am, but on the plus side I got to watch the sun rise before I crashed into bed! More holiay clothes arrived, it's safe to say I was really feeling the need for that trip! The med school supplied us with an anatomy self-assessment quiz which was helpful to see how I was doing with the exams approaching.

Quarantine Week 13 (15th June-21st June) - This week the government announced social bubbles allowing couples living separately to meet, so I moved my place of quarantine to my other half's house. With only a week to go until exams I was spending virtually every waking hour reviewing notes and drawing anatomy posters. At the end of the week I took a couple of hours off to visit Dad's willow tree for Father's Day.

Quarantine Week 14 (22nd June-28th June) - EXAM WEEK! On the Monday I had the exam for Module 204 (musculoskeletal and immune systems) which was the module I had studied fully online. The exam seemed okay to be honest. After a few hours off it was time to crack on with final revision for module 203 (endocrinology, reproduction and gynaecology) as the exam which should have been in March was cancelled due to covid. The second exam also seemed surprisingly okay. And then I was FREE for summer! 

Quarantine Week 15 (29th June-5th July) - This week I was so grateful for free time! I would get up in the mornings, make a coffee and breakfast and sit on the sofa to eat it while watching an episode of "The Crown". It was such a little luxury to have time to enjoy it without feeling like I should be doing something else! I also did a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, played so much sims, and started working on a little handbook for year 3. This weekend I would usually have been working at my first festival of the summer so I was feeling a little lost and made sure to keep busy.

Quarantine Week 16 (6th July-12th July) - This week I caved and finally baked my own banana bread! I added some chocolate chunks for a fun little twist and it turned out so yummy! At the weekend I went to a small local zoo (Thrigby Hall Wildlife Gardens - https://www.thrigbyhall.com/) 

Quarantine Week 17 (13th July-19th July) - Out of quarantine? The tenancy on my uni house in Brighton was finishing on 15th July so I headed out on the train to meet my housemate at the station in Cambridge, we would travel the rest of the way in the car. Unfortunately, we suffered a minor accident and had to be towed back to her home, so I ended up staying the night there, a little detour on my adventure, before we borrowed her Mum's car to head down to Brighton the following day. With the help of another uni friend we got stuck into packing and storing our things for a couple of days before driving back on the 15th and I caught the train back from Ely to home. 

 

Quarantine Week 18 (20th July-26th July) - RESULTS WEEK! I was relieved to see that I had passed both of my exams (86% for 203, 88% for 204) and as I had also passed all of the other components (essays, poster, attendance, SSC, etc.) I had passed the year and I was now a THIRD YEAR! What?! That's crazy. It feels like only yesterday I was a first year and third years seemed so mature and knowledgeable. Wild! This week I visited Dad's willow tree again and told him all about my results. For the weekend I had signed up for the Tomorrowland Around the World livestream so I enjoyed watching that and making myself "festival food" to eat in the living room, haha! I also spent a couple of hours at the beach on Sunday with my sisters and we built a sandcastle! 

Quarantine Week 19 (27th July-2nd August) - This week I had to have a biopsy at the hospital (results are all okay) but I think I want to talk about my experience of this in a separate post. It was at the beginning of the week so I spent a couple of days being lazy and taking painkillers. At the weekend I headed to my Mum's for a birthday BBQ for her partner. 

Quarantine Week 20 (3rd August-9th August) - This week I had a couple of outings to play crazy golf and to the beach again. I usually like staying in but apparently after 20 weeks of being mostly indoors I was starting to feel a little crazy and my mental health was starting to decline. 

Quarantine Week 21 (10th August-16th August) - This week was my birthday week, so roll on a whole new wave of mental health struggles. I had my birthday without my Dad last year so this wasn't the first birthday without him and I was a little surprised at how unstable my mental health was this week, but it was definitely compounded by quarantine. I had a couple more trips out to go kayaking and to another zoo (Banham Zoo this time - https://www.banhamzoo.co.uk/). On my birthday my family held another garden festival and I was so grateful for how carefree and fun it was! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quarantine Weeks 22 and 23 (17th August-30th August) - These two weeks I've been mostly indoors during the weekdays, but I've spent the weekends at my Mum's finally sorting through a bunch of my things in storage from my old house. It's been so therapeutic to throw away old things with old memories, and give away some things to charity. I also packed my things to take back to uni and will be heading down to move into my new house on Sunday 6th September. I can't wait to finish buying things for my new uni room and decorate it. 

And after 24 weeks of quarantine I can't wait to see my housemates and friends, and I can't wait have some routine and structure back in my life! 

Going forward I want to have a bit more structure to this blog so I can make posts about different things and not just updates on my life! I'm hoping to cover medical topics, some personal experiences/stories, reviews of books/movies/series, and just generally more content. I hope that makes sense. 

I'm looking forward to bringing you all on this journey into Year 3 and clinical placements during covid and beyond! 

Thanks for reading!

Katherine x

Quarantine Diaries - Week 1

Monday 23rd March - Sunday 29th March

I'm spending quarantine at home with my family. This includes my Mum, Mum's partner, my brother (21) and my youngest sister (13). I don't have my own bedroom at the family home anymore which means I'm sharing a room, and a double bed, with my sister. This is how I spend my university holidays too so it's not a new concept, however, I usually stay out a few times a week which I now cannot do.

Honestly, the first week in quarantine wasn't so bad. My little sister is now doing home school so it provides a useful timetabled structure to my day too as I currently don't have any teaching from the university.

I had a few lectures which I had missed during term 2 for various reasons and so I started the week by tackling two of those on Monday. I also helped my Mum with some baking - we made banana and nut bread - and I made up a batch of seitan (meat substitute). In the evening I cooked a meal for my family - fried rice stir fry. I spent the evening with my little sister and we played some minecraft on her xbox, which honestly I'm still very slow at!

On Tuesday morning I tackled another two lectures before lunch. After lunch I set up our USB microscope and my sister and I had a look at some plant cells and talked about their features. I spent the rest of the day having a sims 4 marathon. I've been working on an underground quarantine bunker in Strangerville.

Wednesday morning I did some work on Duolingo. I usually do this before bed but I was feeling motivated that day! I'm currently studying two languages: Italian, which I have been learning for a few years; and Japanese, which I have just started a few months ago in preparation for my Brother moving out there.

 


While I was feeling motivated I worked through another two lectures. On Wednesday afternoons my sister finishes school about an hour earlier so she has kindly agreed to let me work through my clinical skills with her for an hour on Wednesdays. I also roped my Mum into marking me with a scoresheet I made from our OSCE crib sheets. I actually found it to be a really useful little session. I treated myself to Planet Zoo for my PC while it was on sale and so I spent a couple of hours starting it off before I had a test call with my tutor group on Microsoft teams. I then continued playing it after dinner.

Early on Thursday morning my Mum finished my Harry Potter Marauders' Map jigsaw I've been working on for 6 months! It was worth figuring out how to bring it home from university in the car!

When I got up I happened to mention to my Mum about a fleeting thought I'd had before bed the night before about moving the patio furniture down into the sunshine in the garden and giving it a fresh coat of paint, as the paint it had when we acquired it was starting to look quite sad. To my surprise she agreed and we got started straight away.

After this, in our infinite wisdom, my Mum and I thought we could paint the side of the duck house to match and it would look like a lovely beach house.

By the end of the day they were looking fresh and ready for spring/summer.

On Friday morning the weather was nice again and Mum and I wanted to add some detail to our beach hut!

After lunch I played some more Planet Zoo until dinner, and then I ran a hot bath and chucked in a lush bath bomb I'd been saving - Sakura. It had a beautiful smell but was very anticlimactic as it simply dissolved. No whizzing around, glitter or colour. I settled into the water with a brand new book.

Having read another book of this style by the same author I was fully expecting the story to be dark and disturbing, and it delivered. However, it was less disturbing than I expected, and I have to say I was relieved! It was a brilliant read, I couldn't put it down and finished it around 11.30pm the same night!

Over the weekend we baked some more, I skyped my friends from university, and spent most of the time playing games ... a fairly normal weekend for me! Topped it off by cuddling one of our ducks.

Thanks for reading!
Katherine x


Running Totals

Lectures - 6
Tutored hours - 0
Hours reading around - 0
Clinical practice hours - 1
Hours working on essays - 0
Total hours - 6

Books read - 1
Total pages - 318
Total hours - 5

Online fiction stories read - 1 chapter
Total words - pending
Total hours - 1

Films watched - 0
TV series episodes - 0
Total hours - 0

Hours on Sims 4 (approx) - 12
Hours on Planet Zoo - 17
Hours on Parkitect - 0
Hours on Cities Skylines - 0
Hours on Minecraft (approx) -8
Total hours - 42

Hours spent outside - 7
Hours of exercise - 0.5