Learning to Love Dermatology

Having received a few messages recently from people who have said that they're enjoying reading my blog (shout out for dedication has to go to my Grandma who sent me a card via airmail that took 10 days to reach me!) I realised that it's been over a week since my last post.

To reassure you that I'm still safe and sound I thought I'd post an update about hospital life again.

Generic photo of the hospital entrance, taken after sunset, hence no blue sky

I spent most of the last week in the doctor's outpatient department with one of the dermatology doctors, Dr Evangelynn. For those not in the know, dermatology's the study of diseases involving the skin.  My training in this speciality  so far compromised of two clinics and some evening teaching in deepest darkest Somerset. Needless to say that I was never that inspired, firmly believing that a lot of the pictures shown looked exactly the same. As part of finals we had a list of about 100 different conditions that we had to be able to recognise, half of which I'd never heard of beforehand. 

If I was given that list now I'd probably be able to say that I've seen over 90% of them first hand! 

In Britain the commonest complaints are eczema, psoriasis, acne and skin cancers. Here, psoriasis, acne and eczema are common but cancers are extremely rare as the skin colour of Asians protects them.  To make up for the work load (and there's a lot of workload with 3 full time dermatologists) there's a lot of vitiligo - skin losing its colour, that would be unrecognisable on most white people, and then a whole host of stuff that I'd only thought I'd ever see on Google images when preparing for exams.

To the medically minded readers these include bullous pemphigus and pemphigoid, discoid lupus, neurofibromatosis, cutaneous amyloidosis and pityrosporum folliculitis to name but a few excitingly named ones.

Even though you may think that there's little point in being able to recognise these conditions I'm really pleased that Dr Evangelynn is asking me to make a spot diagnosis on almost every patient. At some point in my career I'm bound to see some of these rarer conditions, and it's been useful to be questioned on the "bread and butter" that will undoubtedly come up in the future. Two clinics in Yeovil didn't give me much chance to do this, and Google tends to display the extremes.

I'm also learning to see why doctors would pursue a career in this field - it's extremely satisfying to be able to diagnose based on your sight and knowledge alone. At the same time there are a lot of patients who don't necessarily fit into one box meaning that you'd never have a day when you've been 100% certain of your decision 100% of the time. 

It also has a pretty good quality of life!

Generic photo of hospital entrance again, because blogs look better with pictures

In other news, yesterday I had the great joy of eating my meals in the guesthouse with a British couple, Amelia and Andrew, who were visiting for the day having spent time at home fundraising for TLM and therefore wanting to see the work that was done here. I was very surprised when Amelia mentioned that we share a mutual friend back in Bristol! It was good to swap stories with them, exchange tips on travel in India, and talk about where we used to live in Clifton - talk about the world being smaller these days!

To follow at a later date: "Learning to Love Surgery" - I'm half way there, believe it or not...