Halloween

It must be said that there is nothing quite so gruesomely appropriate for Halloween as sawing a human head in half down the midline.  I have to admit, that while I didn't have a huge problem with the idea going in, seeing the violence with which a human body was literally cut into quarters was a bit...unsettling, to say the least.  Once it was done, however, it seemed perfectly acceptable as we sat back to our dissecting.  

Med school is an odd, odd experience. A point made not least by the fact that it is 10:30 on Halloween night, and I am sitting at home reviewing the embryology of the placenta and fetal membranes.  Because I have nothing better to do.**

I'm a horrible procrastinator.  I'll probably just give up and start playing Mario on the Wii here shortly. 

**Actually, I really don't have much better to do tonight...and D is off tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to a day with him with relatively little studying, which is why I commit myself to this seeming torture at present. 

I knew it would happen eventually...

Thursday, I had an experience that I have often heard about from female med students, but never really thought would happen as much as they made it out to.  I was at Starbucks, getting my weekly fix of caramel apple cider spice and a vanilla scone (oh, how my weaknesses show), and I was also working my way through our neuro self-study book.  When I initially walked in, the line was really long, so I sat down and worked until everyone had gotten their drinks.  Then, when I went up to the counter, my book was propped open to a page about the decussation of the corticospinal tract in the lower medulla.  The lady behind the counter (probably middle-age or so, I'd say) saw the page and proclaimed that that looked really difficult and hard.  Then, the question:

"So are you a nursing student?"

I politely informed her that no, I am indeed a medical student, to which she replied that she had had a roommate who was a nursing major and that the roommate had made Starbucks Lady quiz her on stuff that looked a lot like my book.  I informed her that I make my husband do the same, and we laughed.  

Once I had my delicious apple cider, I did muse for a moment over the exchange.  I'd often heard that whenever a female tells someone who is not associated with the medical field (or not often exposed to it) that they are going into medicine, people automatically assume you are a nurse.  To me, that's such a foreign concept.  If someone told me they were going into medicine, I would assume they were going to be a doctor, or physician's assistant, or something like that.  If they said they were going into nursing, I would think they were going to be a nurse.  For me, the two are completely separate in terms of how you describe them as career fields.  Nurses work in the medical field, yes, but I've never heard any of my nursing friends describe themselves as working "in medicine."  They just say, "I'm a nurse."  Same as I say, "I'm a med student."  Or maybe, "I'm crazy."  So where do people get this whole "medicine = nurse" thing?

Ah, the lovely preconceptions of the outside world. 

Honors

I got honors in histo!  I'm a straight-up bad ass.  

In all seriousness, it was quite exciting, though I'm still not sure it makes up for the 5 days of unrelenting brain-mushifying that preceded the exam.  The good news:  I also got really good grades on my gross exams two days later, despite not studying all that much.  Now we're moving on with head and neck, which, while rumored to be about the hardest part of gross all year, seems not to be that bad.  Especially considering that while there are a lot of structures that we're looking at in lab, they are all in relatively well-defined places, as opposed to the pelvis (where stuff could just arise from anywhere it damn well pleased), so that might actually make things even a tad easier.  I don't mind memorizing branchings and pathways of arteries.  It's finding a tiny little structure that should be so easy but takes 3 hours of my day that's frustrating.  

We also started embryo and neuro yesterday, and so far, I thoroughly enjoy embryo.  It's easier to remember things when it's more of a story, rather than a series of random facts like histo was.  Also, being one who hopes to someday have a child, I find it sort of...more personal?  That's probably weird or creepy or something, but it's fascinating to me all of the things that my body will do in only 8 weeks time to come up with a tiny human being.  

In the news of life outside med school...things are going quite well, though I've become consumed with blog reading lately and it's begun to infringe on my study time to a ridiculous degree.  I texted D earlier tonight to ask him if he would please, please, hold me accountable for getting done with head and neck flashcards and reviewing yesterday's embryo lecture by the time he gets home.  He said that I must study or die...so I guess I should probably get working on that. Particularly since I plan to do NO studying this weekend, as Monday is my birthday and I plan on using some well-deserved down time to celebrate. 

Freedom

Exam week went...well, it went.  It was the first time I've really understood the stuff I've read on other med blogs or from other people about the insanity of studying that is med school.  I literally crammed for the histo final for over 5 days straight.  Cramming for my undergrad histo final took about 3 hours.  My brain has never felt so overstuffed.  Luckily, however, gross comes much more easily to me (I think it's a visual thing) and so the fact that I kind of blew it off to study histo didn't bite me in the ass too bad.  It was pretty funny, though, because the night before the gross final, D was quizzing me on some of my flashcards, and after about 40 of them (out of the almost 500 I had prepared), he asked, "How in the world do you do this every day?  This is the most horribly boring thing I've ever done."  Welcome to my life, love.  

I got honors in histo, which is exciting.  It would be more exciting were it not for the fact that, due to a ridiculous extra credit opportunity that the professor meant to be used by people who were failing to bring their grades up (but instead was used to pad grades by almost everybody), 44 out of the 150 people in my class got honors too.  Oh well, an H is an H, at this point.  

The only problem I have now is that I feel like gross should be over, too.  It really does feel like we've been at this for a semester already.  Too bad it's only October.  And tomorrow, we get to replace histo with not one but TWO new classes, which are supposed to be the hardest of the year.  Oh, joy.  If I don't manage to catch up on blogging for a while, forgive me. 

This weekend, however, has been pure bliss.  I almost don't know what to do with myself since I don't have to study at all.  It's a fabulous concept.  This afternoon, I really need to mow the lawn...but I somehow think I'll end up playing on the wii instead. 

Exams, part deux

Next week is our second round of exams, and things are infinitely more spread out this time than they were last time.  Yet somehow, I feel just a bit less prepared or more behind (can't quite figure out which).  We had a practice practical for gross a few days ago, and the tags were (in my not-so-humble opinion) pretty poorly put together.  There were several where they didn't have time to clean things up, make sure you knew where an artery was going, or even that a correlating structure was in view--and those are generally the only way of knowing for sure what a structure is.  Ah well...I passed even then, and it's pretty much a given that the real thing will be infinitely easier.  I just worry because I'm good at it, I think.  

Today, by contrast, we had a practice histology practical and it went far better than expected, given that I have not really had much time to study the slides.  What I was more concerned about coming into the histo exam is that I won't have enough time to really review the written material to the point that I really know it, but I've made it through three "sections" worth of flashcards this afternoon and evening (in addition to making flashcards and doing a first run of yesterday's lecture material, which I didn't get to yesterday) and it feels like things are, for the most part, going pretty well.  I was attempting to do one more section but I just feel like at this point I'm so tired that nothing's really going to be worth it.  It's still more than I thought I would get done today...but I needed to get lots done today because tomorrow I'm going to the Old Crow Medicine Show concert!!!  If you don't know Old Crow...they're a modern bluegrass band with a fiddle player that I would seriously give my right arm to play like.  Although in a massive twist of irony, were I to actually give my right arm, I would then be completely unable to play the violin at all.  That's life for you. 

But no, in all seriousness, I really am very much looking forward to this concert.  A new friend from school was looking for someone to go with her, and I jumped at the chance, and D is actually off from work early enough to go, too, so hopefully a great time will be had by all.  My goal is to get through another 2-3 sections of histo tomorrow and take a gander at the cross-sections we're supposed to know for gross prior to going out...but we'll see how that goes, as I also really need to go birthday shopping with my mom to select things for my list.   For having a test next week, this actually stands to be a pretty good weekend. 

Med School is a Crazy Thing

I feel like I'm not being nearly as productive in studying for the upcoming exams we have next week as I was for the last exams we had.  On the other hand, I'm taking practice exams for gross and doing FINE, so I can't force myself to be too much more concerned.  And so, in lieu of reviewing the pelvic viscera, I have decided to compose a list (one of my all time favorite activities). 

Things no one tells you you get to do in med school...because they're CRAZY. 

1. Saw into a body.  Literally.  We have successfully completed dissecting the abdomen and (almost) the pelvis for our practical exam in gross next week.  However, to really get at the branches of the internal iliac artery, it was necessary to find a..."better"...view of things.  And thus, we hemisected the pelvis.  When professors tell you you're going to "hemisect the pelvis," it sounds relatively benign and medicalized and stuff.  What it really means is that you're going to cut any organs in half with a scalpel and then take a giant hacksaw to the middle of the pubic bone until you hit vertebrae and head out the other side.  Then you take that same hacksaw right above the right hip and hack through until you have, for all intents and purposes, a leg.  A leg that is vaguely reminiscent of a scene from Jurassic Park, just sitting there all by its lonesome.  And then you can turn it all over and review all the arteries and such from various positions.  You can also carry said leg across the room for a professor to look at and help you identify things when you can't get anyone's attention to help you for three hours in the lab...or maybe that's just our frustrated little group. But yeah, the point is, they let you SAW A BODY IN HALF.  So cool. 

2. You get face to face with a whole lot of nastiness.  Like poop, for example.  And not just poop.  Dead poop.  Poop from the rectum of a person who has been dead for a good six months, just chilling out in the rectum until you saw it in half (see above) and all the poop spills out on your hacksaw and lab table and gloves and EVERYWHERE.  One of the girls in my group has a baby and deals with poop daily.  Even she was grossed out.  The entire room essentially just giggled our way through it.  Perhaps this is less appropriate a respect level than you might prefer around cadavers, but really....it's poop. 

3. You will study until your face falls off.  Well...maybe not quite.  But oh my lord.  Back at the beginning of the semester, I studied a good few hours every night and felt pretty good.  I would try to review most of the stuff from the week on the weekend.  In general, I felt pretty up to speed.  Now, for some reason, be it laziness or inefficiency or who knows, I feel like I'm studying all the time and not getting anywhere.  Earlier this week in histology, we had an hour and a half lecture on the eye and ear.  This lecture was based around 17 pages of lecture notes.  That's right...17.  17 pages which I turned into 114 flashcards (and probably could have been more, because by the end I was making some pretty darn loooooong flashcards in an effort to save time and preserve my sanity).  17 pages and 114 flashcards that will account for a grand total of SEVEN exam questions.  *weeps*  But anyway, the point is that you could study 24/7 in this kind of an environment and still not know everything.  And you somehow just have to come to terms with that and do your best. 

I'm sure I'll have more to add to the list later, but for now, this is it.  I'm falling in love with lots of other med blogs, which I should probably link up at some point to this, but I'm not sure how and I don't really have time to figure out right now, because I should really go review some histology.  Man, I will be glad when this course is done in another week. 

Down There, and other thoughts

I dissected a clitoris today.  You truly know how far down into the medical school chasm you have dropped when you are standing around a table with a group of 4 people, all of whom have their faces about 2 inches from a dead woman's crotch, some of whom are holding her legs as far apart as possible, and all of whom in perfect seriousness are attempting to claw away at a clitoris to find the dorsal nerves.  As a friend of mine put the other day, "it's like being a porn star who specializes in sticking things up people's asses, except instead of making bank, we're all paying $50,000 a year for this beautiful experience."  So true, man, so true.  What this really means, though, is that gross lab is starting to take way too long to find very few structures.  On Monday, we spent 3 hours finding about 6 nerves in the ischioanal fossa.  That's right, we spent 3 hours picking fat our of a dead person's ass.  This is what happens to you if you donate your body to science.  I often wonder if our donors or their families really knew what would happen to their bodies when they made this decision.  I mean, personally, I don't think I would care, since you're not really "there" any more, but next week we are going to cut these people into quarters.  It just kind of makes you think. 

Our professor who teaches the pelvis is awesome.  Hilarious, actually.  I love him as a teacher.  Unfortunately, not so much on the material.  There's a lot of little bitty structures that go strange directions with no good pictures to use to visualize them, so rote memorization kicks in and it's kind of boring.  Especially when added to the MASSIVE amount of memorization we're doing for histology right now.  We have our histo final exam two weeks from today, and while we do have the blessing that it's not an actual cumulative final, it's still going to have twice the information on it of the last two tests, and those were brutal enough to study for.  I really don't mind studying--in fact, so far I feel like med school has been much easier than people made it out to be like--but for some reason histo just bores the living daylights out of me if I spend more than an hour or so doing it, probably because it's all just rote memorization of TINY (and I do mean tiny) differences between various things.  And it's hard to really get that you're going to need to know how to differentiate between a primary bronchus and a segmental bronchus on a slide at any point in your career, unless you become a pathologist, which I don't plan on doing.  

I find it interesting that whenever I tell people in school that I'm interested in pediatrics, I often get the response that people could never do that, that they want to do something exciting like surgery, etc.  It's rare to find someone (even among women, even among married women) who are actually currently interested in something like peds, or even ob/gyn.  Everyone, it seems, wants to be a surgeon, and I kind of feel like odd man out.  I have no interest in surgery.  I mean, I'm sure it's cool, and a good rush and all, but I have honest expectations about what I want in my lifestyle.  I want to have children before I am 35.  I'd like to start before I'm 30, although that might push it a bit.  But one reason I'm interested in peds (or possibly med/peds, since I sat in on a really interesting lecture about that the other day...but that's another blog for another time) is because I will graduate medical school at the age of 26.  Three years of peds residency puts me at 29 when I finish.  That means I could possibly have children in the last year of my residency or shortly thereafter and still be on track to not be 60 years old when they graduate high school.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that idea...but apparently there are just so many people who are content to put off the idea of family because it's not something they want *right now*.  Maybe it's because I'm already married, but I know that in six years, I am definitely going to want kids.  And I'm going to want to be around for them.  Really, I'd even like to be able to take some serious time off to spend with them, possibly even work part time if it's feasible.  And so I want to specialize in something that will accommodate that fact.  

On a completely different note...we've been having a lot of labs recently with our standardized patient.  In the past two weeks, we've learned to take vital signs and to do a lung exam (or at least to pretend that we know how to do one, since we really don't have to be able to recognize what we're hearing yet--only to demonstrate that we know how to go through the motions), and on Monday I'll do a cardiac exam.  A lot of people seem to think of these as a pain, but I love them, because I get to actually feel like a doctor and I see them as the "useful" stuff.  The "real doctor" stuff.  You get the idea.  And apparently, I'm good at the "real doctor" stuff...my SP for the lung exam told me I was the only person she'd had all day who percussed lungs the right way the first time.  Woot.  Unfortunately, I embarrassed the daylights out of myself in the vital signs lab when I walked in and the SP asked me to demonstrate how I would normally start an exam when I walked in the room.  I stuck out my hand, shook the "patient's" hand, and said, "Hello, my name is B, and I'm a medical student.  I'll be taking your vital signs today."  At which point the SP stared at me as though waiting for me to do something else.  So I continued... "What brings you in here today?"  At which point she stared more.  ...   "You need to ask for her name."   Oh....and here I thought we already had that on the chart.  Apparently not.  Ah well...it's a learning experience.  

Now, unfortunately, I must get back to memorizing the perineum, because tomorrow is the histo day from hell.