My time in Bedford is coming to an end. I've been here for almost 10 weeks now on attachment (5 weeks of medicine, and 5 weeks of surgery). At first it was a bit of a pain not being in Cambridge where my nice warm bed and other modern conveniences are - but after a while Bedford does sort of grow on you (not like a fungus as someone remarked to me earlier).

I'm finishing off my vascular surgery attachment this week. I've quite enjoyed it so far, although as i've said earlier it's about the most minging thing i've ever seen. People literally have huge ulcers centimetres deep on their legs filled with pus and other oozing stuff! But it's really satisfying being able to treat them at the end of the day, and slowly but surely you can see that even these quite painful and miserable looking ulcers can end up healing (even if you do it by chucking a tea bag of maggots into the wound!).

The other side of vascular surgery is a bit more acute and sudden. An aneurysm is when an artery gets really dilated. You can feel them pulsating, and they can rupture causing big problems for the patients (perhaps not quite akin to something out of the Alien films. but close enough). If somones aneurysm bursts sometimes you have to rush them to the operating theatre straight away. That kind of excitement and rapid fixing of problems really appeals to me. Plus I bet you feel pretty cool as the surgeon doing all the chopping - saving someones life in real time, rather than over the course of a long period of time!

Anyway, next week I shall be back in Cambridge at Addenbrooke's ready for a week of lectures before I start my next attachment!