A new chapter...

So, this blog has been pretty quiet lately, which was not intentional, but appears to have been an unavoidable side effect of second year medical school. I think it's probably more surprising that I managed to make a fair number of posts last semester than it is that I made almost none second semester.

But! The semester is finally over, and now that "summer" is here, I may actually have a bit more time for this. I don't really get a break in any meaningful sense of the word, as I am studying 40+ hours a week for my Board exam in a month, then I start my surgery rotation at the beginning of July. But this is much improved over last year, when I spent all morning and afternoon studying at school, only to come home and study a bit more before bedtime.

I don't want this blog to die off, because even though I haven't had much time for it, I still like the idea of track of this journey through medical school. Even if almost no one even knows it exists, hopefully I'll have some stories and insights over the course of my education that are meaningful to me. Someday, when I'm a happy doctor, looking back fondly on my med school days, I'll have a reminder of what things were really like.

My somewhat optimistic goal is one post per week, though I'm not sure if that will be manageable past July. But we'll see...

I think I'll end this post with a list of all the reasons why next year has to be better than the last two years. I've been told by several people that it will be, but I also thought that second year would be much better than first, and that didn't exactly go as planned. But maybe if I make a list, I'll be able to remember why the pre-clinical years were no fun, so I don't get too depressed with my crazy on-call schedule next year or whatever.

1. Patients! Finally, finally, finally, I will be able to stop spending every waking hour reading or thinking about reading about whatever random organ system. I mean, if course I'll still be looking things up and studying, but that should be nicely weighed out by getting to see and help real people (which is way better than the standardized patients that I had mostly been working with).

2. Individual attention. I didn't really think I'd mind that much, but I actually quite disliked not knowing my professors and having them not know who I was. Next year, there should be more opportunity to work more closely with Residents or Attendings or 4th years, or SOMEONE who will know who I am outside of the name on the top of the test. (Though I don't even think my current teachers had that, since our tests are computerized.)

3.Tests worth less than 50% of the course grade! This year especially, most of our tests were upwards of 60-70% of the total grade (and this is a single final exam, not two tests each worth 35% or something). That's stressful, having to worry so much about the single exam. And add to it the fact that most courses were curved, meaning there was no set grading scale and so no way to anticipate how well you needed to do to get whatever grade. Instead, I just had to hope that I studied harder than most of the rest of the class. In med school, that's less likely than it might have been at other points in my life.

4. Showing off clinical skills. I've generally gotten good feedback from instructors in my Doctoring class, saying that I do a good job working with patients. But that hasn't meant that much up to this point, as basically anyone who can talk coherently to a patient gets an A in Doctoring, so I didn't really have anything to show for it. But next year, this is a much bigger deal and a bigger part of our grades, so I'm hoping it will give me an advantage.

I'm sure there are more, but it's just about time to start getting ready for bed, so maybe I'll continue the list in a later post. Either way, this already has me looking forward to July. Let's hope I'm not deceiving myself!

Pop quiz!

My throat was numb for the better part of this afternoon because:
A. I drank too much ice water
B. It was sprayed with lidocaine
C. Of a weird side effect of my allergy nasal spray
D. Strange things like that just happen sometimes

If you guessed B, you win the prize! Now, you may ask, why did I have lidocaine in my throat? For the laryngoscopy, of course! That probably doesn't clarify much, so here's the story:

For my Doctoring class, we were learning about how to do an ENT exam, so we were assigned to a couple hours with ENT residents to learn about their exams. And instead of using standardized patients (ie actors), they had us do it with student volunteers. So for the laryngoscope exam, I volunteered to be the patient. No one else really wanted to, and our class gunner was trying to volunteer a different girl, so I said I'd do it so she didn't have to. I really didn't mind, actually, it was pretty cool to see my own throat up close, and it really didn't hurt or anything (thanks to the lidocaine, of course). And now I know what it feels like, in case I ever get the chance to do it on a patient!