The only thing....

The only thing more moronic than accidentally hitting reply all and sending your response to a student body wide e-mail is in turn sending an e-mail saying you accidentally received said e-mail....and ALSO sending it to the entire student body.
Twice.

Idiots.

This is My Life

And it SUCKS.
#$(*&^%# drugs.

Sign #32 you've been in med school too long

You have to resist the urge to injure yourself to see if you bruise too easily...just in case you have thrombocytopenia... I mean, you've been kinda tired lately...

Hello Term 5!! (is it time to say goodbye yet?)

*peers around nad swpies in vain at a few dustbunnies* Man, it's been forever since I typed a blog entry. This is usually the point where I make some inane comment as to 'how did that happen??' but, really, it's not much a secret. Fourth term came through like that frieght train down the city road in Inception (which, by the way, if you haven't seen yet, you really should) - so, large, unexpected and destructive. However! I cannot compain unduly since I managed to come through with my skin (relatively) intact and hopefully enough path knowledge crammed into my little brain to get me through this terms freight train which is, not much to my surprise, PHARMACOLOGY.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I usually write a little eulogy, er, hindsight 20/20 entry about each term. *sheepish* These usually come out better if I write them immediately after said term ends and not a summer break and three weeks into the new term later. I'll be short and to the point since I have much to say about this term which is shaping up to be a 'fun' one.

So. What to say about 4th term? First, a heartfelt wish to those souls in my class who had to decel because of the 13 credit monster - may it treat you better the second time around and may you show off your hard gained knowledge to the tutors and your groups thusly. Be strong!

Here are the bullet points of random advice and studying methods I found to work for me:

--> READ ROBBINS!!!! Anyone who tells you that Robbins isn't necessary is LYING to you. That book is flat out one of the most excellently written textbooks I've ever studied from. If you know Robbins you know what you need to know. It's concise (no, really!), relevant and wonderfully arranged. I was always aghast at people who tried to convince me that reading robbins was a waste of time.

--> Go to class! Ok, this one clearly isn't as universal as the previous point but I though that the lectures, for the most part (bone path excluded), were fascinating and well done. I really enjoyed that the department made a point of having specialists from each particular field come to teach us (so a respiratory pathologist taught us respiratory path and so forth - makes sense to me!). I find that it usually motivates the lecturer to, well, enjoy lecturing if it's on 'their' topic. And I don't care what anyone said - testable or not, the clinical stories made the lectures just that much more interesting! Bring them on!

--> Make the most out of your path group! I think a lot of people underutlized the path lab time but either half assing their slides or zoning out when other people presented. This is a mistake. You have to be in lab anyways and it's a significant number of hours each week so you might as well utilize them - even if you might want to take a mini rocket launcher to take out groups around you that don't understand the concept of 'inside voice'. Not that I'd ever do something like that....*whistling innocently*

--> This tidbit was offered to me. I sniffed at it, made many noises about eating it but ultimately fell into the same trap most of our class did (which was not eating said tidbit). So here I am offering it to you (whoever you may be) : DON'T fall behind in MICRO!!!! It's a five credit class people and it, while having 'easy' tests (comparatively speaking), will be very unforgiving if you don't know what you need to. And it's five credits, so not exacly a small class. I too fell into the trap of thinking "What? 5 credits? Hah! Path is 13 freaking credits! No way am I taking time from my path studies!". MISTAKE. Big mistake people. Think about it like this, if you keep up it's an easy A. And the credit count is the same as physio or neuro - think how much time you put into those classes. Also, keep your micro notes/tables and whatnot. You'll need them 5th term.

-->CPD. Yes, it's annoying. Yes, we all treated it like an obstacle to getting back to studying path. However, it will come back for you. It pays to have all the physical exam skills down pat and nicely tucked away in your memory. We've started our hospital visits this term which mostly seem to involve sending groups of us off to interview and do pertinent physical exams on *gasp* real patients! Not the time to stop and think "Hmm, now how did Pratt's test go again?".

That's all I can think of for now. Luckily for any poor sap who's managed to read through my drivel this far there's enough time separation between me and the beast that was 4th term for any more prattling of advice. This weekend I'll post about how 5th term's been going so far.

Preview: Pharm is hard! There are many, many, many, many drugs and we have to know aaaaalllll about them. Eep!

Ahh, back in grenada. As much as I complain, the sunsets here continue to be stubbornly gorgeous regardless of my stress levels. I live in a beautiful place.

donedonedonedone

With 4th term!! YEA!!!!!

A tad crispy

I hesitate to use the phrase 'burn out' since that implies that I'm no longer able to study (a fact of which would cause me considerable stress) so I'm sticking with "crispy". Just a bit, around the edges. Nothing a little scraping can't fix.

This past week was an exercise in stamina. We had lab every single day as well as class every freaking day. We whipped though bone and neuropathology (oh, and there were a few cpd lectures sprinkled around just to make sure I couldn't sleep in). When the visiting neuropathologist lecturer made some comment about his topic being 'an afterthought' for the course I choked a little bit. Afterthought??? Sorry, but seven lectures this close to the exam is not an afterthought, it's a freaking eulogy to any free time I might have had this last week. I spent every evening in Taylor studying like a good little study zombie (it only took be a year and a half to finally be sucked into Taylor studying) and I still have bits and pieces that I haven't made a first run through of yet. Oi vey. To say nothing of the endocrine monster from the previous week. My study sessions in the car on the way to class may be the only time I ever review adrenal gland related things at the rate I'm going. I hate it when I make the same goal every day and never even get to it. "Oh, I just have those last fifteen pages or so of endocrine to get through, I'll do it this evening...." And then bone path happened, and then neuropath happened. Then I remembered that I still hadn't gone back to finish up studying MGT (remember my total lack of recall on bladder cancer?). Oh, and now cpd has assigned us yet another pointless piece of busy work. What? We have ANOTHER concept map due in path lab tomorrow afternoon? That'll have to happen today too.

.....

It's not wonder I can't seem to shake this headache. So I've been trying to memorize the differences between types of ovarian cancers while very carefully not moving my head to much. Which is hard when I'm looking at the computer screen and then looking down at my book. I keep forgetting my little brain isn't happy and end up clutching it in pain.

So of course I decided to type another blog entry (head not moving!). Good plan. Right.

I am SOOOO ready to go home right now. As each day passes I start thinking more about 'leaving related things'. What I'm going to pack, what restaurant I should go to first when I get back to the states, how utterly wonderful it will feel to be finished with 4th term. Invariably I have to come back to reality though. Yes, I'm really close to leaving but in between me and that wonderful Boeing 737 is a week of tests. Ugh. Stupid tests.

And on that note, I will be returning to my path notes. Onward!
Listening to: old music from Dec '08

Just Keep Swimming

As I come down to the last two weeks before my final path test I find myself alternating between burnout and mild panic (neither of which is particularly pleasant). Especially when my roommate skypes me to ask about the difference between squamous and transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder and the link with schistosomiasis and all I can do is stare blankly thinking "Did we learn that???". NOT a good sign. I clearly need to go back and review MGT. *sigh* It was only two lectures but the path department has long since proven they can fit an inordinate amount of material into a mere two hours.

I think I'm in better shape now than I was the last 2 week pre-test (which, now that I think about it, wasn't all that long ago). But it's hard to tell. I think that now I know how incredibly fifth order the test is going to be (damn you second path test!) I'm prematurely convinced I'm doomed. Hmm, perhaps that's a bit harsh, but that second test seriously whipped me.

For comparison, the first path test was like this:

What profession are you studying for? a) medicine b) nursing c) lawyer d) janitor

The second test was like this:

Long ass clinical vignette where they give you lots of non-specific symptoms and muddy the waters as much as possible with no diagnosis with the questions being something like "Now, what is the underlying genetic basis of the rare complication that only 1% of the patients present with in another disease that has a similar histological presentation to the one that that the above patient has (whatever the hell that might have been)?" And then if that wasn't cruel enough, it was following by a second linked question! So if you didn't get that one, which, let's face it, you didn't, there was no hope of getting the second one.

Ugh. I'm making myself queasy just thinking about it. Perhaps I exaggerated a bit, but not by much. That stupid test made almost visible waves of unhappiness in my term.

ANYWAYS. That is behind me, I barely scraped by and will be making a much better showing on the third test (I hope) now that I've been made painfully aware of the level of complexity required.

Sadly, I wrote this as a form of procrastinating. I was about to drag myself to Taylor to study (if I don't remove myself from my computer this evening will be a complete wash) and randomly decided to type a blog entry. I really hope this last few weeks moves by painlessly. Although if the past few weeks are any indication....they won't.

So, my fellow fourth termers, just remember the following and keep swimming!!!

On Nutrition and the Never Ending Path Story

It's been brought to my attention that people apparently still read my blog, even with my spectacular lack of entries. And taking into account that today is a holiday (thank you religious grenadian people) I have a smidgen of 'free time' (in quotations since there is no such actual entity in my sphere of existence anymore). So I thought I'd type about the latest one credit wonder, Medical Nutrition. We had our final on monday, which already feels like a small universe ago so if I don't type about it now it'll be regulated to 'that thing that happened after micro that made be get up early'.

So, just a bit about the class in general. As I mentioned it's the next in line of one credit wonders. After micro finished *angels sing* they replaced it with two solid weeks of nutrition. We had two classes mon-friday from 8-10. There were two lecturers for the class, both were guest speakers from the UK. I was pleasantly surprised by both speakers, especially Dr. Grimble. I'm not sure if it was the are of Britain that he was from but the man was spot on for the narrators of the Nova documentaries. I just kept expected him to break out into "....and then the female lion leaps out of the brush towards the hapless zebra who has caught her eye as...." and so forth. Accent aside, he was a wonderful speaker who had obviously spent his entire life researching the field. I'm a sucker for a good research paper and so really enjoyed that much of the data he presented was from his own projects.

As expected much of the class was common sense (hmm, eat more fruits and vegetables? ya think?) but it was nice to have it all laid out in a more scientific manner than what the media and GNC try to feed us. Supplements? Totally not necessary except, obviously, in situations were you have an actual deficiency or are pregnant/trying to be pregnant (take folic acid! It can't hurt and can do serious amounts of good). I'd always held this particular belief (that supplements are universally pretty much a bunch of crap) and it was a relief that my medical education agreed with my assessment. Here's the thing people. Because of some stupid ruling some years ago the FDA does NOT have jurisdiction over anything considered a 'supplement' so the companies that make said pills/powers/elixirs etc. are essentially on their honor to do the proper research and then present their products accordingly. Hmm. Who here thinks these profit driving totally unaccountable companies are trustworthy? Let's see a raise of hands. No one? I thought not. Also, if you look carefully at the concentrations of 'active' ingredient in many of these supplements and do the math there isn't even a significant amount to have any effect on you! You might as well eat dirt. Actually, the dirt might be better, what with all the trace minerals and such.
Ok, perhaps that was a tad of an exaggeration but I think I've belaboured my point enough.

Ok, what people want to know about. The test! It was very straightforward and pretty much directly from the note packets we were give. Make sure you know the meaning of all the graphs - it will come up. It's also a good reason to go class, so you can get the explanations. Granted, the graphs are not exactly rocket science but it does shave time off your studying to have them explained (and they really aren't in the the text of the handouts).

So, that was nutrition. Good bye, we hardly knew ya and will probably not think about you ever again - unless I need to step up on my supplement soap box again ;)

Also. Path. Need study more. Go now. >_>

The poor mouse!

Sometimes I learn the most random, random things. Did you know that in the 'old timey days' a pregnancy test involved

->urine

->a needle

->a mouse

->cyanide

->and then a dead mouse...in that order.

Fun huh? I think it might have just been easier to see if the women gave birth in nine months.

Back to studying!

p.s. Fourth term is HARD. That is why my blogging has dropped off to near extinction. Sorry~ I will attempt to back document the more amusing and/or torturous moments of this term after it's (hopefully successfully) over.

Listening to : Move Along

P.S. Dear Path Department. Please review the following diagram.

Best Laid Plans

Amazingly, the best laid plans of mice and men (and medical students) are actually going pretty well for me. That or I'm in complete and utter denial about how screwed I am for monday's upcoming path test. I was recently accused of being replaced with an alien clone for my apparent lack of panic for said test.

I should be so lucky. The alien probably wouldn't need to study. And I'd get to leave the planet! How cool would that be? Even if I did have to leave as an attraction in an alien circus. Aaaand here we have an odd specimen indeed from a small planet called Earth. It's a second year medical student. Behold! It does tricks! *holds up photomicrograph*

"Er, liquefactive necrosis with infiltrating gitter cells?" *rattles cage hopefully*

*crowd oohs and ahh's* Come back tomorrow to see it identify cytoplasmic inclusions!

Hmm, something tells me I'd have a pretty short run as a main attraction. Maybe I'll stick to my initial plan of medical school. But I digress.

I wanted to throw out a 'thank you!!' to the path department for their merciful scheduling of this last week. Not only do we not have path class lab today or tomorrow the blocked out the time in the master schedule so no one else could give us class during their time. How great is that?? The physio and neuro departments should take note of this. And the last two path modules have been relatively light. Environmental was a breeze and the immuno path section is 99% review from Immunology. So all you term 2 people out there - make sure to learn your immuno well! Otherwise it WILL come back to haunt you. I'd be seriously scrambling if I hadn't paid attention in immuno last term. Because essentially, the majority of the immuno class was summed up in path in three hours of lecture. Truly. Just when I think they can't condense massive amounts of material into smaller packages... they do. I'm continually impressed. And this is not to imply that we have to know the material in any less detail this time around. I was actually surprised they gave us the three hours of review that they did. Something tells me though that we won't be receiving any mercy for the second and third exams so I'm going to enjoy it now while I can. ^_^'

For reasons best left unsaid the following has been running through my head as of late:

Anyone remember this old cartoon? Good times.

Back to my multiple of slides on necrosis and things that colonize you and then eat you little bits at a time. Ah, tissue tropism, how disturbing you are.

Listening to: 風と丘のバラード

Hello Term 4

Greetings anyone who is still checking my defunct blog! I am still alive and am well into the 'dreaded' term 4. I thought I'd make an entry about my initial term 4 impressions since our first test is in a little over a week and no doubt after being through that particular fun my opinions will be overshadowed by the test itself. Because really... I like this term! A lot. I know, it's a surprise to me as well. Granted, I enjoy histology related things and path in general but this term has been built up and built up by upper term students to the point where we've been led to believe they were going to line us up and shoot us. Well. At least not until the second test.

Don't get me wrong. The schedule is just as exhausting as promised. And I know that I'm still happily in general path and systemic is where it becomes difficult. What can I say? I like it. The classes are really interesting. The professors don't waste time on boring things *coughthirdtermcough* and it just finally feels like 'medicine'. I learn a new horrible way you can die every day. It's great!! ^_^

Awful way to die # 47: amniotic fluid embolism (also doubles as 'reason not have children' #542)

Yes, I'm strange. Why do you ask?

Anyways. So, a bit about 4th term. Classes are in the am and held in charter hall which is much nicer than Bell Hall. We have a whole stage! Nya, nya! And the seats are a bit more comfortable if a tad smaller. Path lab is mon-thurs from either 1-3 or 3-5 depending on how early you signed up your group. Additionally, we have CPD (communication & physical diagnosis) lab twice a week for an hour and a half each. So as you can see there is considerably less free time available to us compared to the first three terms. By the end of the week I'm usually barely conscious. And I've heard people speak of functioning of 2-3 hours of sleep (I'm not personally capable of such a feat for long periods of time).

How lab is set up is somewhat up to the discretion of your group. They assign modules of slides for particular days and each group decides how to split them up among themselves. The slides are just pictures with captions (sometimes lacking even that) and you are responsible for researching and presenting your slides for the week. In my group each person presents about 2-3 times each week. For each image you have to come up with it's identity (amazingly, sometimes this is even tricky), the pathological disease, morphological/structural changes (gross and histological), etiology, pathogenesis, symptoms/signs, investigation/course, highlights and a clinical vignette or two. Every group has a slightly different format but they look something like this:

They take a fair amount of time to make and prepare to present so it's a pretty big drain on the afternoons during the week, especially if you have to present two or three days in a row. See how the time just vanishes like smoke?

As important as the slides are there are clinical tutors (MD's) who are assigned to each group (they rotate weekly) to ensure that no one is passing on incorrect information or leaving out important details. And just to make their advice that much more vital they are the folks who are writing the test questions! I'm only slightly disturbed by this fact. Apparently they spend time every day writing questions based off of our lab sessions.

So that's path lab. Incredibly time consuming both in its duration and in preparation. Time will tell how useful it is for our test.

CPD lab so far has consisted purely of the 'communication' side of things. We've been let lose on standardized patients to practice our dubious history taking skills. For the most part it's been interesting. In my group we've all come to know our respective styles very well. I'm the 'exam style person'. Which is the nice way of saying I interview in a rapid fire fashion. :p And on the other side of the spectrum there is a guy in my group who takes forty five minutes to get a history. And everybody else falls somewhere in between. We've developed quite the camaraderie among ourselves since we change tutors every lab session and each tutor seems to what the history taking in a slightly different way. It's been interesting to say the least. But for the most part it's been amusing if maybe not an excellent use of our time at this stage. Better now than at the start of clinicals I suppose.

All in all, my initial impressions of this term are as follows:

FUN but TIRING

Listening to: 犬夜叉～完結編～ 遠い道の先で

So.. fourth term

Is so far living up to it's expectations. That is all. *runs away*

In Honor of Valentine's Day

I give you.. Penile Injuries from Vacuum Cleaners:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26852192/vp/29914319#29914319

Who says that medical school lectures are boring? Well, for many of 3rd term's classes this has been the sad truth. Mr. Young, JD however pledged to be as non-PC as possible and did well in his endeavour. The most memorable was the above video clip which he showed in class. ^_^'

Also in honor of this chocolate filled day I share with this comic:I'm not sure what it says to my character but I find the thought of someone being konked on the head with a rock intrinsically funny, pretty much no matter what the situation is.

Sorry for my lack of blogging lately. I can't even blame it on lack of time on my part either. Third term, otherwise known as 'the easy term' or more appropriately 'Behavioral Sciences and Medicine' has been almost universally dull. Don't get me wrong, there have been interesting spots here and there but for the most part I've felt like the classes could have been shortened to half the time *coughbiostatscough* or should have been left out all together (epidemiology) since it's just repeat information from CPM of last term. I seriously studied the day before the midterm and did just fine on it. Compared to neuro and physio of last term and the terror inducing impending 4th term behavioral just doesn't engender any fear whatsoever. In fact, I don't even think my pre-test anxiety kicked in until the morning of the midterm when I though "huh, I suppose I should look at biostats before the test". This is classic accommodation in action here. The amount of material I've been forced to synthesize and memorize before any one test here has been so high that a mere three weeks of 'soft sciences' isn't enough to even raise my adrenaline levels barely above baseline. *laughing* Although I am keenly aware that things are about to get much, much worse than first year. More than one person, both in and out of med school, have told me to savor this time since it'll never come again. Sorry guys! I'm mostly just ready for third term to be over. I need the rush of being challenged again! Hmm. Why do I feel like if I go back and read this sometime next term (or at any point over the next few years) I will have to suppress the urge to kick my myself for thinking such a thing? Aw well.

So. Third Term. Let me give you a quick of run down of what we've done so far. We're technically only taking one class at a whopping 6 credits. It's been composed of several smaller 'modules'. We have behavioral science, health systems, biostatistics, jurisprudence, epidemiology and clinical ethics. There has been a great range of quality in out professors this term. Some have been excellent and even entertaining and others it's been an almost physical struggle to stay awake through their classes. I'm looking forward to the end. This coming friday is our final and then the long awaited fourth term will start! *cue impending doom*

Listening to: デュラララ!! Trust Me

Snow... not for me

SNOW! There was FREAKING FOOT OF SNOW IN DALLAS yesterday! The most snow the south has seen in 32 years. What is likely my one and only chance to that much snow in my home and I'm stuck here.... in the 6th circle of hell. In other news I would like to send out this memo to my classmates:

1. Don't leave your phone on during class and then leave for break and come back five minutes after class restarts. Because invariably your phone will start ringing and people will start going through your backpack to find it while the entire class laughs (including professor). Then, everybody will look at you when you slink back in late.

2. shut up - I realize a few of you just love the sound of your own voice but, really, 400+ people don't need you to interrupt class to ask pointless rhetorical questions over and over. There's a time and place for that - after class or during the breaks.

Ok. Sorry my first post in several months is a catty one but this was just not the best week. >_>