London Week 1

I arrived in London Monday morning and barely had time to make it to my hosts' house before I needed to leave to head to my first day at the clinic. That first day has seemed to set the pace for the rest of this week...


I'm staying with long time family friends of Ben's family. The Grants (Hilary & Robin) are very gracious hosts and wonderful people. They are both very busy, so we have only seen each other for a few minutes a day in passing (or a little longer if I need to get instructions on how something works in the house). Their house is situated a few blocks from the Thames on the southwest side of London in a very nice and quiet neighboorhood known as Barnes. There is one sort of main road that runs through it with a common, pond, various shops and of course a couple pubs! I haven't gone to the pubs yet though I hope to soon. The bus that I need to take to clinic picks me up about a 5 minute walk away and takes about 40-45 minutes. I get to see a lot of London that I wouldn't normally get to see and unfortunately I'd rather be staring out the bus window instead of reading my papers! The other day I saw a little girl in full riding gear on her pony, being led down the sidewalk along a very busy street...I looked around but had no idea where they were going and where she had come from, as it looked like there were just apartments and shops all around.


As far as the clinic goes, things are different enough here that I'm finding that I'm having to "forget" a lot of things that I had been taught in school this past year. I'm trying not to make too many comparisons (at least outloud) but it makes me wonder if socialized medicine is really as great as some people would like us to believe. For instance, the best, most accurate tests aren't offered to patients through the national health system because they are more expensive than some other tests that are similar but not as accurate. Patients can still do some of the more expensive tests privately, but most choose not to. My supervisor seems very nice, but a little overworked at times. She is the only genetic counselor at the hospital. Fortunately for her (but unfortunately for me) the midwives do all of the initial intakes for the patients and are usually the ones that take a family history and explain the various testing options that available. She will only see high risk cases and any that have "interesting" family histories that might be concerning. This means that I will be doing a lot of amnio counseling for high risk patients and, while I'll hopefully be very good at this by the end of the summer, I think I will also get very bored if that's the only thing that I'll get to counsel on. My plan is to just be amazing during the first counseling sessions that I can convince my supervisor that I'm able to do something more challenging. On the plus side, we only see patients on Mon, Tues, and Thurs so I have Wed and Fri to see other things in the clinic, do paperwork, study (if clinic work is finished) and be able to have to time finish things during the week so I can do fun stuff during the weekends.


I made my first foray into the city proper on Wed. evening to meet some friends for dinner near Paddington Station. I hadn't seen Jeff and Betsy since their wedding almost three years ago, after which they immediately moved to London. I half expected them to have a slight accent but I didn't notice anything. A pint of Guinness at the local pub and then off across the street to an amazing Italian restaurant where live music was playing. Two old men, one clarinet, the other guitar, played big band for a number of hours, presumably being paid in glasses of wine. Our waiter recognized my friends from previous meals and kept pouring us amazing lemoncellos after dinner until we practically had to turn our glasses upside down before he would stop! I hope to see J&B a few more times before I leave and as they're my only friends in London, there's a good chance that will happen.


This weekend will either be spent hanging out with the druids at Stonehenge or giving Ben a tour of London...both of which will most likely end up giving us a soaking. The weather has been perfect for me this last week but tomorrow it's supposed to be the beginning of a weekend-long storm.


Hope everyone is well...and until next time!


Photos- The first is of Barnes Pond, the second is the Grants' garden. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had my camera at dinner so no photos. Maybe next time!