Geriatrics (old people)

Old people can be a lot of fun. A bit like kids, when people get a bit old they seem to lose a bit of their social grace. So, in the middle of a ward round when you are quietly minding your own business, trying to avoid the glance of the consultant who is trying to ask you impossible questions, someone will suddenly shout out 'OI, you with glasses, i'm hungry, get me some food'. To which the middle aged consultant reacts with shock and a little embarassment. Quite a funny event really, and for a time the lowly medical student is no longer in the spotlight - so the torrent of questions falls to a trickle.

Soon enough though, the fun of my consultant being abused by a slightly senile octogenarian wears off, and I remember that I actually know very little about healthcare of the elderly. The speciality covers many disciplines, since (rather obviously) old people can have quite a lot wrong with them. So over the past 4 weeks of my attachment I have come into a lot of contact with cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and neurological medicine. My lasting memories though will be of the smell of clostridium difficile diarrhoea, so my memories are not very pleasant. C.diff diarrhoea is big news at the moment and potentially very good material to be quizzed on at a medical school interview....hint hint.

I find the elderly patients quite interesting. Some of the patients are 99 years old, or similar. They have had very long lives and if you can find the ones that arn't suffering from dementia, you can have a very rewarding time chatting to them - regardly of what medical knowledge you're picking up (or not picking up).

The problem is it's difficult to pick up whether some of the patients have dementia until you've actually chatted to them for a bit. So, last week I sat down with a chap whom I had hitherto considered to be fairly lucid. It transpired 20 minutes later that he thought it was 1965 and that I was his commanding officer in the army. Extricating oneself politely from these situations can be testing - but I'm now becoming adept!