Day 27: Keep on chugging

Today's inane images of the day:

I find chopping vegetables to be therapeutic... and they're such a bright, lively color, too!

I love salmon with greens! [Sorry to those of you that have an aversion to fish...]

I'm making progress on my deck of notecards.

Thank you for all of your support! Every ounce of encouragement helps me chug through this. You'll be happy to know that I only consumed 1 tall iced coffee, 1/2 Red Bull and 1 cup of Irish breakfast tea today. Plus, I snuck in a jog when the sun decided to finally peak from behind the dark rain clouds.

The studying is going slow, but at least it's moving a bit. I still don't feel like it's possible to cover all of the material I should know, but all I can do is my best at this point.

Back to DNA replication...

Day 27: Study day

Today's inane images of the day:

A couple of things to note: 1.) large stack of notecards only represents a small fraction of the lectures I should know by now; 2.) I really like studying in my kitchen, which leads to the issue of stress eating and consumption of foods I would normally have the will to say "no" to; 3.) What's open on my laptop: lecture and Facebook.

Yesterday's caffeinated beverages ingested: 1 solo espresso, 1 tall iced coffee, 2 Irish breakfast teas, 1/2 Red Bull

I am so behind. And frightened. And quite depressed that the clouds won't cease their downpour on this area. It's as if Mother Nature sensed that we were stressed and decided to make the weather reflect our mood [I'm going with this theory because it's supposed to be sunny and beautiful on Monday when our exam is over].

Day 25: Photos from the week, First Aid and preparing for the storm

Today's series of inane images [I felt bad about the sporadic updates this week...so I reward you with many random pictures from my life!]:

[This was from last weekend.] I was in heaven in Duarte because there are like 5 donut places within a mile of Mike's apartment. I'm not kidding. I guess that's a good reason not to move out there... I'd be twice the size.

Guess what we did today! [Oops, I just gave it away, didn't I?]

Look at my handywork! I can wrap fabric around an arm and tie it! Impressive, eh?

And I'm capable of splinting, too! [Except I tied his bind on the wrong side... oops].

"Hi, my name is Amanda Xi and I am First Aid certified -- can I help you with that?" -- I don't think you understand how many times we had to recite that today. Anyway, it's ingrained in my head now, so I'm sure if I ever need to ask for consent to help someone I could spit out that line on reflex.

Today: we started this gloomy, gross, cold and windy morning at Beaumont [Royal Oak] and did a "review" TBL. I definitely appreciated that we didn't have to learn new material for this assessment, and I thought that it was a good way to review those lectures. I didn't do as well as I could have [...though it's relatively pointless to say this since the only time you technically can't say it is when you get a 100% on something], but I'm satisfied with the very minimal amount of preparation I did for it.

Let's be realistic here, I got home last night pretty late and extremely tired so there was no way my studying was going to be productive. Actually, going to bed when I did last night was probably the best decision I could have made -- I woke up a little before 5am and got some studying done. Could I have done better on the IRAT if I had put more time into studying? Definitely. But I passed [and our GRAT was strong], so I need to just move on.

After our TBL, half of us had to drive back to OU's campus for our First Aid certification class. The last time I was certified was something like 7 or 8 years ago, so I really didn't remember much of the stuff that was covered [though most of it was common sense]. Either way, I had a lot of fun with the class. It was probably because most of us were making funny remarks here and there and I had an extremely amusing partner, but I don't think I've ever laughed that much during a class [oh, wait, class isn't supposed to be funny, eh?].

Oh, and I learned from this class that I need to work my arms out more... I couldn't turn my partner over. It was quite sad.

Now: I feel like I should be having a mental/nervous breakdown. Everyone I've talked to is frantic about this exam we have on Monday -- not only is it our first, but it also has a ton of material [I've heard something like 2,000+ slides? Don't quote me on that one...] and after a rough adjustment period. Plus, I haven't been doing well on the IRATs [when I say that, I literally mean that I am just barely passing -- not the premed, oh no I'm getting an A-/B+...]. [By the way, the cutoff for passing this class is a 70%].  Regardless of this situation, I am hoping that I maintain this serenity until the end of our exam.

We do have a "mid-term review" day tomorrow, but it's in the format of open office hours and with how little I've reviewed thus far, I don't think I'd be able to really ask any questions. Plus, I think it'd be more valuable for me to use that hour-plus of commute time to study. Or sleep.

[P.S. Do you gave any good study music suggestions? Or just good music suggestions, period?]

Day 24: Everything, all at once

Today's inane image of the day:

I am proud of how quickly I put together this board, and designed and ordered the t-shirts in time for tonight's Women in Medicine event at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak.

Today was a blur of... seemingly everything all at once. Operating on < 9 hours of sleep in total for the last two nights [while some people seem to be able to function on 4-5 hours of sleep each night, I need at least 7 to feel okay] made it difficult to study for our mini-TBL today, let alone take it [good thing it was straightforward!]. We also had a quick AMWA meeting to discuss the Women in Medicine event in the evening before heading to a very long pathology lecture, followed by a rushed [and hushed] epidemiology lecture. Thankfully, our epidemiology lecture ended early and I did not have to speed like a madwoman from the OU campus to Royal Oak Beaumont.

Since I was elected President of our [not-quite-official] branch of AMWA, I kind of took it upon myself to ensure that we had something for the event. This meant figuring out what to put on our trifold poster, ensuring that we had a shirt designed, sending the shirt design for print and making sure that the shirts actually made it to the even that we were trying to sell them at. Although we didn't get our other color of shirt that we ordered, the pink shirts we had were quite popular. The quote on the back says, "Be the doctor your mother always wanted you to marry."

Anyway, after that whole thing was done, I made it home around 7:30PM, showered and tried to clear my head for some serious TBL studying. Sadly, the red bull and exhaustion didn't make for a very successful study session...

SO! This being said, it's time to listen to my body and just give in to sleep, even though I'm not at all prepared for our TBL tomorrow. The plan is to wake up at a ridiculously early hour and study when I am able to do so best [in the morning!] -- I'll let you know how it goes.

Day 23: A brief encounter with death

Today's inane images of the day:

I usually despise anything even faintly orange-tinted... but I made an exception for this beauty!

How trippy is this flower?! You should see it in real life -- gorgeous!

Well, I made it safely home last night at around 1:30AM... my flight landed slightly later than scheduled and it took awhile to get from the airport to the parking lot where my car was. Add that to the fact that I live nearly an hour away, and you get a very tired medical student who still had two chapters worth of a medical interview text to read. Somehow, I completed the reading and survived a very full day without a nap or passing out.

Today was our first practice with medical interviewing as well as the first encounter with our cadaver in Anatomy lab.

For the interviewing practice, we actually split up into small groups of 3 and did role playing. I lost in nose goes and was forced to be the "physician" first. One of my TBL group members was my patient... and let me tell you, it was nearly impossible to not let giggles escape. For example, he referred to his son as "brother" and told me that his family only meets for very important occasions such as Abe Lincoln's birthday and flag day. I kid you not.

Although I had fun, I was slightly annoyed that pointers about open ended questions were given after I had strained to maintain a 15 minute interview with a patient who takes great pride in celebrating flag day. Plus, this embarrassing footage was recorded. Yes! I will have to relive it over and over again in the future!

Afterwards, it was my turn to be a patient, and I assure you that I was a fabulous model patient.

From there, we went to our second anatomy lecture [and as always, Dr. Bee was enthusiastic and ready to make us fall in love with the subject]. I remember walking toward the classroom and noting a stranger walking out of the door. Once I was on the other end of the door, it became apparent that I didn't recognize any of the heads that were in the back row. For a split second, I worried that I had walked into the wrong lecture hall, but as I sat down, I remembered that we were taking anatomy alongside Physical Therapy [PT] students.

Each of our anatomy groups has a couple of medical and a couple of PT students. This actually made for an extremely positive dissection experience [at least in our group] because our PT students were much more familiar with structures and names. Not to say that we were unprepared... but really, all of us have been busy cramming in biochemistry and cell biology and immunology and microbiology that anatomy kind of took a backseat. I don't know about my classmates, but I definitely felt unprepared.

I also felt unprepared to face our cadaver for the first time. Since we were the second group in, she had already had her skin and most of the adipose tissue removed. We do not see our cadavers' faces since they are covered until we work in the head region. So imagine how eerie it is to walk into your first anatomy dissection [ever] to find a body [with a covered face] and flaps of skin open to reveal the musculature beneath. She had such human features, yet nothing felt real about her at all.

Although I wasn't emotionally impacted by the situation during the dissection [I think the situation was too surreal to be able to comprehend what was going on], afterwards, it seemed to hit me like a pile of textbooks -- I had my first true encounter with death.

Day 21: Making the most of it

Today's inane image of the day:

I'm not quite leaving yet... but it's coming too soon!

The problem with flying out to California for a 3-day weekend is that it ends too soon. While I don't technically leave until tomorrow, I basically only have 24 more hours here with Mike before I return home. I feel like it was just last night that I landed here and I have to leave again!

I wish that we had more time together -- it feels good to be back in an old familiar routine [even if it's in a new place] and it definitely doesn't hurt that Mike can help me get through any stressful patches... but the reality of our relationship right now is that we are ~2,000 miles and 3 time zones apart. It's hard not to have the inklings of doubt when you haven't been able to touch your significant other for weeks at a time, but finally having these moments together again reminds you of why you love them.

So I have a confession to make: I've never really learned to cook before. For various reasons, I've never actually had to pick up the craft, so I decided that this weekend would be a good opportunity to try something new. Plus, I requested that Mike make us a pasta dish [it was fabulous!] and I thought it would only be fair if I returned the favor with something edible and hopefully tasty.

What did I end up with?

A scramble with carrots, spinach, sausage, and red onions!

I definitely cannot complain about how it turned out since we enjoyed eating it! Sadly, this now means that I no longer have the excuse of "I don't know how to cook" when Mike asks me to make food for a meal.

Alas, time to crank out [or crank into my head?] some biochemistry!