Harriet is currently in the throws of revising for her 4th year exams which, as you can guess, are quite important. A lot rides on these exams, including whether she gets to stay in Sri Lanka for her whole elective or not, which seems to be the driving force behind this resolve to succeed.
As a med school outsider, Harriet's "exam time" in turn means Ben's "examination time". This isn't as ominous as it sounds - in fact it's actually quite fun. Saturdays at the moment are taken up by Harriet studying and me doing other things like catching up on any work I haven't been able to do during the week amongst other things. Sometimes I will receive a signal on the bat-phone that, loosely interpreted, means Harriet requires a guinea pig. Much obliged, darling.
This morning in particular was taken up by Harriet explaining the "examination findings of valvular heart disease", which basically ended up with me having a greater understanding of blood flow around the heart and a few basic snippets of knowledge about how to spot things that are wrong. I found that although I only gained a basic understanding of what Harriet was explaining, I was able to picture some of the things we were talking about, which is quite fascinating. Again, before you med students pipe up, the lay population of the world don't all know the "ins and outs" of mitral regurgitation.
Ultimately, we decided that an examination was needed, which involved Harriet getting her stethoscope out and having a listen to various areas of my chest to check if I had something massively wrong with me. I don't, as it turns out. What I did realise though was that I had never actually listened to my own heartbeat through a stethoscope, so I had a go.
What a noisy place the human body is!
When I lived with my parents, we were about a mile and a half from the A1 - the main arterial road (see what I did there??) from London to Edinburgh. If you listened carefully you could hear the constant rumble of traffic as it went past - it wasn't an obvious sound, but you could hear it if you tried. On top of that, there were clearer sounds such as birds singing, noises in the house and much more.
When I listened to my heart and other bodily noises, I compared it with this. I heard my heart as clear as day (an incredible noise when amplified), while there seemed to be a constant hum underlying everything. I'm assuming this is simply the sound of my blood flowing around my body, mixed with other regular body noises. I found this fascinating and could quite happily go to sleep with a stethoscope in my ears, listening to the "rumble of traffic" in my body. Of course there were some mildly amusing sounds when I moved the stethoscope down to where my intestines are, but you can fill that particular gap in with your own imaginations...
So there is just a glimpse for those of you who lie awake at night, thinking: "I wonder what it is like to live with a medical student?". It is actually a really fun experience!
