Hope, and then some

First exams came and went and I did really well.  Continuing to study was almost painful at first but getting easier again as we continue in the swing of things, finding my rhythm.  Finally got to go play trivia again last night, which was a much needed release.  Something about my goofy guys just relaxes me...  I find it odd and even a bit surprising that one of D's best friends (best man at our wedding, no less) has slowly but surely become one of mine.  I say odd because we're definitely not your typical "best friends"...I mean, we don't call each other a lot or talk about much on our own, but we do hang out sometimes when he comes to stay at our house and we wait for Daniel to get off work, and he can always make me laugh.  I hope every day that he finds a great girl and we can all laugh together, because laughter is something we could just all use more of.  

The past couple of weeks (maybe three, even...) have been a complete roller coaster on the personal level.  School has been, well, school, and everything's fine there, but there have just been a lot of personal issues for D and me.  Some of them very long-standing, others new, but it's been very emotional.  I think, now, that we've finally gotten to a point of upswing.  We've made some deals and compromises that I hope we can keep, and I hope they can help him (and me) to climb out of the dark place we've found ourselves in lately.  Today, things went really well, no problems...and for maybe the first time I'm actually allowing myself to hope that we might yet work our way out of this.  He's started running again.  It was kind of a fluke...I read somewhere that lots of people who are in his situation (which I'm sorry, for anyone who might ever read this, but I'll not name here...) benefit a great deal from exercise, especially those who used to be big athletes like he was.  Last night at trivia, I asked one of his good friends who also used to run to make him do it again.  And right now, they're off at the park.  I'm hoping it will help ground him, give him a bigger friend base to lean on, and work off some of the energy he can build up sometimes.  Meanwhile, it gives me time to reflect and study and mow the lawn.  It's one day at a time....but hope is like air around here right now.  

Black Monday

Should be a Led Zeppelin song.  Instead, it's the day when our med school initiates us into its ranks with a barrage of 4 exams, including histo written and practical and gross anatomy written and practical.  It was yesterday.  I spent all weekend studying, hampered by the lovely arrival of hurrican Ike on Sunday (which, yes, was *actually* classified as a tropical storm as it trampled on us here in the midwest).  The power went out at about noon on Sunday and my dearly beloved laptop decided to bite the dust about 2 hours later (along with all of my study material), and so I headed out to the local hospital where my sister is currently residing thanks to her dastardly appendix.  At least I knew they'd have power.  The tests went fine--I got well above the average on both of the gross exams, and I feel pretty good about the histo written.  The histo practical was my weakest showing and I don't think it was a very fair test compared to the first one, but ah well.  I'm at least reasonably sure I landed around the average of slightly above.  Hopefully those scores will be posted tomorrow morning so we can at least know the damage.  

We had a clinical lecture today about skin cancer.  Newly added to the list of disease I would never want to have: malignant melanoma.  Those were some NASTY pictures.  Yuck.  Also, you'd think that the day after we were just tormented with 4 exams they might give us a slight break from life, but no, we had class from 9:30-5 today.  It's really hard to make your brain focus on histology and the integument when you're completely mentally exhausted.  Actually, I'm not that tired...I actually seem to have fared better and been much better prepared than a lot of people for the tests yesterday, but still.  It's cruel.  I need a holiday or something.  

There was also a meeting about med/peds residency today at lunch, which I found reasonably interesting.  Right now I'm most interested in going into pediatrics, but this did seem to have some good points about the relative merits of being board certified in both internal medicine and peds.  If you see patients, for instance, you have the advantage of seeing them their whole lives in continuity, you have a distinct advantage in the niche of adolescent medicine (wherein most pediatricians don't necessarily know as much about the issues of a 16 year old and most internists really don't deal with anyone under 18), and you get a nice variety rather than getting burned out on stuffy noses or hypertension as you might if you did one or the other.  Something to think about, at least.  

Another one bites the dust

Had our first exam today in histology, and I think it went ok.  There were maybe 4-5 questions that I was iffy about, one of which I'm almost positive I missed (but that's because it was a poorly-asked question, in my opinion).  Still, even if I missed all the ones I wasn't sure about, I'll still end up with like an 85% or more, which is fine by me.  I'm desperately trying to kick the old pre-med competitive attitude out the window--not that I'm competitive with other people, but with myself I am ruthless.  I hate not doing as well as I think I should've, which, considering my record in undergrad, is basically perfect.  I don't know if I'm quite satisfied with an 85%, but considering I don't feel like I could've done much more to help myself do better, I'll have to just take it and run.  I think the next test will be better, and I'm actually kind of looking forward to the first gross exam just because I enjoy the concepts of gross more, so studying is more enjoyable than the rote memorization of tiny minutiae required of histology.  

Unfortunately, my pre-test "ritual" of sorts was interrupted this morning by the fact that my poor littlest sister was in the ER having to have her appendix removed.  She's been sick since Monday, went to urgent care yesterday, and finally returned to the ER at about one this morning, where a cat scan showed her appendix had perforated.  By the time they operated, it had ruptured, but she's done with surgery and doing much better now.  The saddest thing about the whole situation was the medical student in me, upon hearing the news that she would need surgery at about 5:30am, could only think "dear God please let the on-call surgeon have gotten some sleep."  So sad, but so true. 

Last Friday was a great day in anatomy lab.  Our course director actually complimented how well my side of the body was dissected in the mediastinum, and we got out extremely early.  Good times.