Tomorrow is the start of a brand new chapter in med school... Foundation #2: Energy and Metabolic Homeostasis, AND the beginning of the new campus. Lecture at 8:30 no longer means hitting the road by 7:30 and driving to another city, I can roll out of bed half and hour before class, and have time to get ready and walk! I am unbelievably excited by this: no more dependence on the car, and way more awesome people in my little city.
We got a kick-start on the social aspect of the new campus: R (from here on in to be called Saroja, meaning born of a lake, which is a perfect name for her) had a little get together for movies and many many snacks that were too delicious and irresistible to resist (normally I wouldn't worry too much about their irresistiblity (is that a word? it should be) but damn it I have a wedding dress to fit into!!). AND LOTS OF PEOPLE CAME! This is pretty awesome, considering that a little more than three months ago, we didn't know anyone here. I already feel lucky to have met Saroja and the dudes... it definitely makes moving to a new city a lot less lonely. Now, there are fifteen of us, each an interesting, fun person that I look forward to getting to know over the next two and a half years (and hopefully much longer, too).
Also: rumour has it that we will have a coffee maker at the new campus!!! Hooray!
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Life before med school....
...was not any less exciting, really.
Mercer Report Does Zero G
Been there, done that, threw up on my t-shirt.
Mercer Report Does Zero G
Been there, done that, threw up on my t-shirt.
Friday, October 10, 2008
My challenge.
Wow, the last two weeks have been really really busy (imagine that!). I've had something on campus every day, meaning that I've had to commute, losing about 10 hours/week. I used to think that 8 am lectures were bad - I had no idea then. Now, an 8 am lecture means leaving the house by 6:45, and hoping that traffic will be OK. Settling into our new campus - a 5 minute bike ride from my house - this winter will be like a wonderful dream!!
While the commute is A challenge, it is not THE challenge. That challenge is figuring out what bugs my brain so much about seeing injury, and learning how to get over it. Last week, at my first family med experience, I had the opportunity to see my doc remove a small growth. This is a minor, minor, minor procedure - yet for some reason, it made me faint. Yup, full out faint. Luckily I recognized the feelings and left the room and sat down so that I just slumped into the chair. Breaking it down: I am not 'intellectually' grossed out by what I am watching, I simply see the injury and the 'drop heart rate/blood pressure' switch in my brain is thrown. I'm hoping that with increasing knowledge I'll be able to control it. But for now, I am preparing myself with:
-Compression socks (keeps blood from pooling in my legs - more in systemic circulation)
-Candy (insta-sugar rush)
-Caffeinated drinks (Caffeine raises blood pressure)
-Multivitamins (in hopes that boosting iron will help my blood carry more oxygen)
I also bought a book on "overcoming Medical Phobias" - it has a section on how to not faint.
I can't wait for the day when I can stay conscious around surgery. I think this will probably be one of the biggest challenges I have to face during med school - the sight of injury has always bothered me, whether it is cartoon or real. It is so strange to think that the injury I'm supposed to learn (like surgery) is actually a good thing for the patient. It isn't so much the blood, which doesn't really gross me out, but the sense that it is wrong to break through our body's natural protection (skin/tissue etc).
Oh, and to make things worse: faint day was my first day shadowing this doc. What a great first impression. At least this week went way, way better. I even saw the patient again, their lesion was healing nicely and did not bother me at all (seems to not be bothering them either,which is more important!).
In other news: we have finished studying the lungs!! We're on to the heart! And next week we get our white coats, apparently so we can feel good about ourselves (full of ourselves?) and spread tons of germs to our patients (they're not the cleanest of things...).
While the commute is A challenge, it is not THE challenge. That challenge is figuring out what bugs my brain so much about seeing injury, and learning how to get over it. Last week, at my first family med experience, I had the opportunity to see my doc remove a small growth. This is a minor, minor, minor procedure - yet for some reason, it made me faint. Yup, full out faint. Luckily I recognized the feelings and left the room and sat down so that I just slumped into the chair. Breaking it down: I am not 'intellectually' grossed out by what I am watching, I simply see the injury and the 'drop heart rate/blood pressure' switch in my brain is thrown. I'm hoping that with increasing knowledge I'll be able to control it. But for now, I am preparing myself with:
-Compression socks (keeps blood from pooling in my legs - more in systemic circulation)
-Candy (insta-sugar rush)
-Caffeinated drinks (Caffeine raises blood pressure)
-Multivitamins (in hopes that boosting iron will help my blood carry more oxygen)
I also bought a book on "overcoming Medical Phobias" - it has a section on how to not faint.
I can't wait for the day when I can stay conscious around surgery. I think this will probably be one of the biggest challenges I have to face during med school - the sight of injury has always bothered me, whether it is cartoon or real. It is so strange to think that the injury I'm supposed to learn (like surgery) is actually a good thing for the patient. It isn't so much the blood, which doesn't really gross me out, but the sense that it is wrong to break through our body's natural protection (skin/tissue etc).
Oh, and to make things worse: faint day was my first day shadowing this doc. What a great first impression. At least this week went way, way better. I even saw the patient again, their lesion was healing nicely and did not bother me at all (seems to not be bothering them either,which is more important!).
In other news: we have finished studying the lungs!! We're on to the heart! And next week we get our white coats, apparently so we can feel good about ourselves (full of ourselves?) and spread tons of germs to our patients (they're not the cleanest of things...).
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Secrets of the Medical Profession!
Apparently, the only 'secret' I know so far is already out:
... although sometimes, we are taking your pulse.
So, continuing along on my medical journey, I have had real interactions with real patients! We've been learning how to take medical histories, and after practicing on each other, our clinical skills teachers took us to their emerg department and found us some patients who were kind enough to let us take their histories. Without any knowledge of what is and isn't relevant, these histories take a LONG time. Working in pairs, we spent about 45 minutes finding out about a patient, and then reported our findings back to the teachers who then helped us puzzle out the relevant details and guess at what might be happening. I lucked out with an amazingly patient (haha) and helpful patient - although we ended up having no clue about the diagnosis. Apparently, the "House" of the hospital is on the case.
Yesterday morning, we had another chance to practice interviewing - this time with standardized patients (aka actors). After the real patient, this was much less intimidating. The focus this time was also on rapport-building/communication skills rather than detailed history-gathering, and according to feedback from my patient and the teachers, I did a pretty good job of it. Yay!
Yesterday was a really, really long day. We had to be on campus by 8 am (I had to leave home before 6:30! WOW!) for our first 'test' - questions that track how well we've been learning the main concepts during our tutorials. Of the three short-answer questions, I think I did pretty well on two of them, but mixed up obstructive and restrictive lung disease on the third (big oops there). Next was the patient, from 9-12, and the first 'exam' from 1-4. Everyone in the school writes the same 'exam,' whether they are in first or third year. As first years, we're expected to do poorly - but the 2% I got sill shocked and stung. Hearing about many others who got the same mark did help. Since I was only supposed to answer questions we've learned about, I was out of the exam after half an hour - giving me more time to read up for my tutorial 4-7 (and it went really well).
Afterward, I headed over to the health professionals recruitment fair, where I was able to check out some communities where I could do my big elective next summer (I'm thinking rural family medicine, up North or possibly overseas). It was saddening to see how desperate some of the communities were to recruit doctors (and other health professionals), especially the rural communities. Sadness aside, North Bay seems pretty awesome - their slogan had me cracking up everytime I saw it: "Just North enough to be perfect!" I guess there is a longitudinal scale of perfection running up Ontario.
All in all, yesterday was 12 hours on campus, and 15 hours away from home. My sleep-in today was the awesome-est ever.
Just in case you are wondering what science/medicine I am learning, here is a list of cases/diseases I have studied to date (all relating to the respiratory system):
-Opiod-induced respiratory failure
-Shallow-water blackout
-Effects of altitude/exercise on health
-Airway obstruction
-Croup
-Guillaum-Barre Syndrome
-Pneumonia
-Asthma
-and currently, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
... although sometimes, we are taking your pulse.
So, continuing along on my medical journey, I have had real interactions with real patients! We've been learning how to take medical histories, and after practicing on each other, our clinical skills teachers took us to their emerg department and found us some patients who were kind enough to let us take their histories. Without any knowledge of what is and isn't relevant, these histories take a LONG time. Working in pairs, we spent about 45 minutes finding out about a patient, and then reported our findings back to the teachers who then helped us puzzle out the relevant details and guess at what might be happening. I lucked out with an amazingly patient (haha) and helpful patient - although we ended up having no clue about the diagnosis. Apparently, the "House" of the hospital is on the case.
Yesterday morning, we had another chance to practice interviewing - this time with standardized patients (aka actors). After the real patient, this was much less intimidating. The focus this time was also on rapport-building/communication skills rather than detailed history-gathering, and according to feedback from my patient and the teachers, I did a pretty good job of it. Yay!
Yesterday was a really, really long day. We had to be on campus by 8 am (I had to leave home before 6:30! WOW!) for our first 'test' - questions that track how well we've been learning the main concepts during our tutorials. Of the three short-answer questions, I think I did pretty well on two of them, but mixed up obstructive and restrictive lung disease on the third (big oops there). Next was the patient, from 9-12, and the first 'exam' from 1-4. Everyone in the school writes the same 'exam,' whether they are in first or third year. As first years, we're expected to do poorly - but the 2% I got sill shocked and stung. Hearing about many others who got the same mark did help. Since I was only supposed to answer questions we've learned about, I was out of the exam after half an hour - giving me more time to read up for my tutorial 4-7 (and it went really well).
Afterward, I headed over to the health professionals recruitment fair, where I was able to check out some communities where I could do my big elective next summer (I'm thinking rural family medicine, up North or possibly overseas). It was saddening to see how desperate some of the communities were to recruit doctors (and other health professionals), especially the rural communities. Sadness aside, North Bay seems pretty awesome - their slogan had me cracking up everytime I saw it: "Just North enough to be perfect!" I guess there is a longitudinal scale of perfection running up Ontario.
All in all, yesterday was 12 hours on campus, and 15 hours away from home. My sleep-in today was the awesome-est ever.
Just in case you are wondering what science/medicine I am learning, here is a list of cases/diseases I have studied to date (all relating to the respiratory system):
-Opiod-induced respiratory failure
-Shallow-water blackout
-Effects of altitude/exercise on health
-Airway obstruction
-Croup
-Guillaum-Barre Syndrome
-Pneumonia
-Asthma
-and currently, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Friday, September 12, 2008
Sigh of relief
Med school is turning out to be everything I hoped it could be. Granted, I am very much in the "honeymoon" phase, but I am loving every minute of it. I'm pretty convinced that I've found the perfect program for me - all of my 'classes' are so interesting and so far, nothing has felt like work. I'm so lucky to have found a school where the emphasis is on self-directed learning, with topics interesting enough that self-motivation isn't an issue.
I had my first 12-hour day on Wednesday, and I had been dreading it. So many things to do, so few breaks - I expected utter exhaustion. Instead, I found exhilaration. The day started off with learning some clinical skills - we were presented with a 'patient' (an actor/volunteer) and learned how to take vital signs such as blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate. Next, got my line of credit (and a free Tim Horton's gift card! woo! Take THAT, massive debt load!), and had about 20 minutes to grab a sandwich before my first ever Anatomy lecture. We seem to be blessed with the most amazing profs - I could imagine that Anatomy runs the risk of being an extremely dry topic, but this was fascinating. The lecture was followed by a more hands on application session - we looked at chest cavities and lungs (surprisingly, I'm not bothered by the cadavers). I definitely felt like I didn't know anything, as so many people in my class came from Physiology programs and are anatomy pros, but I think I'll be able to catch up.
Next, a 20 minute break, and then another clinical skills session - this time with some first-year residents who, in their sleep-deprived states, will teach us the skills we need to not come across as ignorant fools when we first start dealing with patients. We talked about history-taking (apparently 95% of all diagnoses can be reached from an accurate patient history) and then got a tour of the emergency room! By the time we were done, it was 8:30 pm and I was not the slightest bit tired. Horray for exceeded hopes!
I had my first 12-hour day on Wednesday, and I had been dreading it. So many things to do, so few breaks - I expected utter exhaustion. Instead, I found exhilaration. The day started off with learning some clinical skills - we were presented with a 'patient' (an actor/volunteer) and learned how to take vital signs such as blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate. Next, got my line of credit (and a free Tim Horton's gift card! woo! Take THAT, massive debt load!), and had about 20 minutes to grab a sandwich before my first ever Anatomy lecture. We seem to be blessed with the most amazing profs - I could imagine that Anatomy runs the risk of being an extremely dry topic, but this was fascinating. The lecture was followed by a more hands on application session - we looked at chest cavities and lungs (surprisingly, I'm not bothered by the cadavers). I definitely felt like I didn't know anything, as so many people in my class came from Physiology programs and are anatomy pros, but I think I'll be able to catch up.
Next, a 20 minute break, and then another clinical skills session - this time with some first-year residents who, in their sleep-deprived states, will teach us the skills we need to not come across as ignorant fools when we first start dealing with patients. We talked about history-taking (apparently 95% of all diagnoses can be reached from an accurate patient history) and then got a tour of the emergency room! By the time we were done, it was 8:30 pm and I was not the slightest bit tired. Horray for exceeded hopes!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Real work...
I will not write a post until I've finished my first bit of research: today's topic is respiration, mechanics of breathing, CNS control of breathing and how analgesia can screw it up.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
O-week is done!
I made it through my first week of school, though it was only orientation week so it doesn't really count. My feelings throughout the week went from overwhelmed to excited to nervous, but it was a good week and I feel like I've made some good friends and will hopefully be off to a good start.
Some of the best things: my carpool group, and the people who'll be with me in Niagara. Being actually kinda OK at making sutures (in a pig foot, not a living thing). New backpack, new t-shirt, both of which are nice. The promise of a lab coat!
I'm really looking forward to tutorials and classes starting on Tuesday - I can't wait to be a student again. As for now, I'm trying to enjoy my last truly free weekend and rest up for the week to come.
Some of the best things: my carpool group, and the people who'll be with me in Niagara. Being actually kinda OK at making sutures (in a pig foot, not a living thing). New backpack, new t-shirt, both of which are nice. The promise of a lab coat!
I'm really looking forward to tutorials and classes starting on Tuesday - I can't wait to be a student again. As for now, I'm trying to enjoy my last truly free weekend and rest up for the week to come.
Friday, August 22, 2008
The pre-blog, and freaking out.
Alright, new blog, because I want to keep this separate from the main one (not that it has seen much action lately).
It's pretty self-explanatory - I got into medical school (after three years of trying!!) and the whole thing starts next Monday. Well, that isn't completely true, what with me having to do a bunch of things over the summer: communicable disease testing, CPR/First Aid training, find an apartment etc. Oh yeah, and plan my wedding which is going to happen smack dab in the middle of my first year.
Aside from the obvious elation, I've definitely had my moments where the main feeling borders more on 'how on Earth am I going to get through this?? What have I gotten myself into?' Now that Day One is almost here, I've been having more and more moments like that. I've been out of school for two years, and haven't written an exam in four. I've NEVER taken an anatomy class, and the only times that I've watched surgery, I've fainted. Lucky for me, I am surrounded my awesome people who work very hard to make me see that I can get through it. I also tell myself that if I'm good enough to get in, I'm good enough to get through - it won't be easy but I can do it. And now I have a place to vent.
It's pretty self-explanatory - I got into medical school (after three years of trying!!) and the whole thing starts next Monday. Well, that isn't completely true, what with me having to do a bunch of things over the summer: communicable disease testing, CPR/First Aid training, find an apartment etc. Oh yeah, and plan my wedding which is going to happen smack dab in the middle of my first year.
Aside from the obvious elation, I've definitely had my moments where the main feeling borders more on 'how on Earth am I going to get through this?? What have I gotten myself into?' Now that Day One is almost here, I've been having more and more moments like that. I've been out of school for two years, and haven't written an exam in four. I've NEVER taken an anatomy class, and the only times that I've watched surgery, I've fainted. Lucky for me, I am surrounded my awesome people who work very hard to make me see that I can get through it. I also tell myself that if I'm good enough to get in, I'm good enough to get through - it won't be easy but I can do it. And now I have a place to vent.
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