Dear Diary

7.50 - Rise amidst much cursingness and grogginess.
8.30 - Drive to the airport
9.00 - Drive back home, open Immunology book highly reluctantly. Buck up already.
9.45 - Surprise yourself by actually beginning to find it interesting. You don’t care much for it still but find it rather brill to be able to understand, say, why mumps and measles vaccines are only given to babies after they turn one - oh you sexy IgG! Freund’s adjuvant will give you solace now. Freund’s adjuvant will be your freund now (got it?)[Give a shout out to Diana and your friend G. and Kristin who have got to be the only readers who will have a clue as to what the hell I'm going on abt.]
12.15 - Letters start swimming before your eyes in pretty unfocused patterns, decide to have a lie down on the sofa for a bit and rest before re-visiting your other good friend, the phormol.
13.15 - Entertain vague thoughts along the lines of Should get up now, class at 14.00
13.51 - Hmmmm…. *yawn, stretch, crack* Wha?? What tim…? OH FUCK!!
14.08 - Provide theatrical entertainment for colleagues upon entering lab boisterously albeit plans to the contrary, lab coat still askew. Today’s menu: kidneys and bladders. Position stool immediately by the open door, hope to evade the worst of the vapours.
14.17 - Entertain startingly concrete thoughts of throwing yourself into the river you can see from the windows.
14.21 - Only 17 jars left
14.25 - Sigh deeply, give up, don a latex glove to touch specimens and notice how hard/soft/rubbery/fibrous they are.
14.35 - Polycystic kidneys blablabla pielonephritis blablabla can you tell the diff btwn polycystic and blablabla, right, cysts are DISORGANISED
14.42 - Start crying and sneezing oh what took you so long
14.47 - Cover half of your face w lab coat and breathe through it. Notice new fashion trend throughout part of the class. Notice how some blissful souls seem to have no airways whatsoever. Marvel at that.
15.10 - Can you tell the diff btwn cat kidneys and dog kidneys? Right, stellate veins blabla, is this one a dog’s or a pig’s? Right, dog, both bean-shaped but pig’s is flat blablabla
15.12 - Be joined by the door by an alarming number of students on stools
15.28 - Still 13 jars left
15. 29 - HELP!
15.31 - Go get a coke to help w burning, scratchy and surely reddish throat. Use the chance to wash burning, scratchy and definitely reddish skin, and watery and definitely reddish eyes.
15.35 - Chuckle when colleague says “I think I’m developing a glottis oedema!" - then ask your constricted throat what the hell you’re laughing abt.
15.38 - Still 10 jars left
15.45 - Stick your head fully out of the room for the 114th time, use the chance to chat briefly w a colleague who’s graduated already and is walking by.
15.53 - Stand by the door and smoke a ciggie you bummed in the hopes of vasoconstriction being of some help, body against the doorway, arm sticking back along the wall. Realise there’s a group of students smoking in the hallway already, all a bit green in the face. And reddish.
15.59 - Tic toc tic toc tic toc…
16.12 - 8 jars left. Retrieve hope.
16.20 - 2 jars left!!
16.28 - HURRAH!
16.32 - Fill Class Evaluation Questionnaire. Give professor outstanding grades bcs really, he is very competent and a nice, funny man.
16.34 - Ask teacher as you wipe the remaining tears off your burning, reddish face if next class is a necropsy or phormol organs again, cringe as he says “organs”, tell him that you have a strong suspicion you’ll be ill that day, hear him say “Yes, who could blame you”. Feel even more righteous abt having given him good grades.
16.35 - Sign your name and flee.
17.02 - Make it finally home and throw yourself onto couch, firmly vowing never to get up again.
17.05 - Answer mother’s phone call reminding you you are to pick up parents NOW to drive to cousin’s birthday dinner outside of Lisbon in the middle of rush hour.
17.07 - Leave house groggily and cursingly.
17.16 - Drive through the inner outskirts of Lisbon hoping to evade the humungous traffic jam dreaming of MEAT, MEAT, MEAT.
18.00 - Make it to cousin’s house half-starved and nursing the beginnings of a suspiciously familiar toxic migraine.
18.15 - Convince cousin’s daughter NOT to go to a Chinese restaurant or you’ll puke your guts out, the thought alone makes you want to gag. Dream of MEAT, MEAT, MEAT.
18.17 - Curse the Portie lifestyle bcs no one and you mean NO ONE will feed you dinner before 19.00 anywhere in the country, convince family to go for a snack before dinner.
18.20 - Start annoying said family by asking every few minutes what the time is.
18.23 - What’s the time? Oh shut up. No really, what’s the time? Oh please be quiet!
18.27 - Continue to annoy said family w time question AND repeated utterances of “I really need MEAT now, I really do. Meaty, meaty, meaty, MEATY!”
18.31 - What’s the time? Please stop it.
18.33 - What’s the time? [Meaty, meaty, meaty] Oh PLEASE stop it.
18.36 - What’s the time? Oh this is just like when you were little and we’d barely entered the car!
18.39 - What’s the time? [Meaty, meaty, meaty] *groan*
18.43 - What’s the time? PLEASE STOP IT.
18.46 - What’s the tim - I mean, we could get moving now couldn’t we, NO WE COULDN’T, it’s too early.
18.49 - Meat….
18.53 - MEAAAAAAT….
18.56 - Let’s go now, please please pleaaaaase!
19.30 - Realise you’re being served half a dose comprised of a gigantic platter of rice, a mound of salad and 4 - four - FOUR - veal steaks. Feel happy at the thought of the doggy bad which will provide you with food for at least wto more meals bcs you couldn’t possibly eat all that, yey.
20.00 - Realise you just did.
20.05 - Feel very very full and annoy family by complaining abt it every few minutes.
20.08 - Very very full…
20.13 - Very very fuuuuuuull…
20.30 - Drive everyone home, drive yourself home, throw yourself on the sofa again and vow not to undertake anything tonight other than CSI-watching.
22.27 - Realise you’ve struggled with post for almost an hour bcs you can barely string two sentences together.
22.31 - Very very full….