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...).