Wayfaring MD
And for the 5,000th time, let me clarify that I am female.
Disclaimer:
HIPAA is for reals, folks. All of my "patient stories" have been changed to protect patient privacy. I will change any or all identifiers, including age, location, race/ethnicity, sex, medical history, and quotes.
A new academic year is beginning, which means there is a whole new crop of thousands of first years who are, at any given moment, this close to peeing themselves out of excitement or utter fear. So to calm your worries, I’ve compiled a little advice column. Here goes:
1. Don’t look at the cadaver’s face on the first day of dissection. Save that emotional challenge for a week or two in.
2. Take the amount of time you think you’ll need to study and double it. Seriously.
3. Yes, you really do have to know that minute detail about the alpha subunit of the cholera toxin molecule (there’s a reason why I still remember it. Hello first day of medical school… ah the memories).
4. Don’t pull all-nighters. If you don’t know it by 10pm, you won’t know it at 3am.
Attending: I need you to chaperone me while I do a prostate exam on the man in room 3.
Me: No can do.
Attending (thinking I’m a little smart @$$, no doubt): Why not?
Me: Because that’s my pastor.
Once again, my community med doc handed me a triage sheet and told me to go get a history from the patient. I did my comm med rotation in my hometown, so by then I had gotten used to seeing people I knew.
He explained that this patient was a frequent flier drug seeker, and he added a little colorful commentary on his thoughts on her acting skills.
Without reading the name on the triage sheet, I opened the door to the room.
I looked up and realized that the patient was
.
.
.
my step-sister’s mom.
A little gem from my first year.
Community Med Attending: Go in room 2 and get a history from the patient.
Me as a first year student: Umm, I know her. We go way back. We went to kindergarten together.
Attending: She knows a student is coming in. She said it’s ok.
Me: *sigh* ok.
Me, talking to patient: Hey girl, so what’s going on with you?
Patient: I think I got chlamydia.
Me (in my head): of course you do.
- Prof: Hey *******, this is Dr. R. I just wanted to let you know you've been accepted to (insert med school name here)!
- Me (meekly): reeeeallly?
- Prof: Really. Ok, now call your mom.
- Getting accepted to med school.
- The first time you can recite or write all the steps of glycolysis and the Krebs Cycle from memory.
- Draining your first highlighter, and then getting a fresh pack of highlighters for Christmas.
- The first time you understand what House is talking about.
- The first time you catch an error on a medical tv show.
- The first time you actually know the answer to a family member’s medical question.
- The first time you diagnose yourself with a rare or fatal disease.
- Passing your first test.
- The first time you get to wear your white coat.
- Getting to see real patients for the first time.
- Not being the first person in your class to drop out.
- Finishing the year with no fails.
Hand Dropping Test in Pseudocoma:
When a patient is truly in a coma and their hand is released directly above their face, their hand should strike their face on its way down.
Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases by Hal Blumenfeld.
As if every one has never tried this on their sleeping younger siblings… I laughed out loud when I read it.
(via drshutterbug)
You can name more amino acids than past presidents.
Philip K. Dick
Our test yesterday was nuts. With 45 minutes left (the test was 8:00 to 1 with no breaks), I still had about 75 questions left. But I always leave the sections I’m best at for the end just in case I do need to rush though. I finished with about four minutes to spare, but I failed it. By one point. Life is crap. Luckily, we get to challenge questions on the test that we thought were ridiculous, and we usually get one or two points back, so I’m counting on that. And I have a feeling that a bunch of people are in the same predicament as me, so there will be lots of challenges.
………………………….And I passed my clinical skills exams that I took like 3 weeks ago (funny how it takes 4 hours to grade our MDEs and 3 weeks to grade clinical skills)! Woo! Mo is “depressed” because she didn’t do as well as she wanted. But she got a point higher than me. crazy.
As of 10 am tomorrow when my SOCA is finished, I will be a second year medical student who DID NOT FAIL A SINGLE TEST in her first year! Woo! Just got my score posted from today’s test. It was pretty mediocre like all my test grades, but hey, it was passing!
Wish my life was this awesome. Alas, my only study break thus far today (aside from these here tumblr posts) was walking downstairs to get bills out of the mailbox and pick up a box left by FedEx. Yesterday my break actually came pre-studying, as I had to go to the wonderful Health Dept to get that one final shot.
So yesterday my mom and I drove out to Havana and picked heaping pails of blueberries in the hot hot sun, and afterwards drank quarts of ice water and parked the car under a big oak tree to eat our Burger King.
Today I played a complicated game of centipedes versus people in the pool with my nine-year-old sister-in-law and chased frogs. And in the evening a group of friends and I discussed Love in the Ruins.
And tonight I came home to John and we watched an episode of Star Trek Next Generation overdue to the library, and he ate 13-month-old wedding cake and I ate blueberries and vanilla ice cream from my favorite bowl and remembered afternoons eating G&D Oxford Blue ice cream at the shop near our flat.
And all was well, despite the sunburn.
The it’s-the-last-test-of-my-first-year-of-medical-school-and-I’d-like-to-say-I-passed-all-6-but-study-time-is-running-out-and-I’m-stressed-because-I’m-also-packing-for-India Study Nest. Note the giant cup o’ tea.
I’ve been reading one of my pharm books today and I just came across the term “therapeutic abortion”. It really pains me. One more reason why I really REALLY hate reading Pharm.
So… one of the ladies who is in charge of grading our tests and posting the grades couldn’t come to work today. Come to find out, she’s got Bell’s Palsy. Heh. So hilarious that someone couldn’t grade our neuro exams because of a neurological problem. For those who don’t know what Bell’s Palsy is, it’s not serious. It is a paralysis of one side of the face and it lasts a couple of weeks. Anyway, just thought it was ironic.
