February 2010
28 posts
Day 175
You know how when you pack for a trip you get all your shirts and pants and essential stuff in first and then right before you leave you look around your room and throw in a few extra small things you may or may not need just in case? That’s what the day before the test is like. Do I need those branches of the vestibular nerve? Maybe, maybe not, lets take them just in case. What about...
January 2010
32 posts
Day 174
If you don’t know anything about my life right now, basically, all I do is study. That pretty much sums it up. There is a point I always reach in the test cycle where I “know” everything. The problem is, I haven’t memorized everything. Understanding and recalling are two very different things. I can say I’m intelligent because I have the ability to comprehend the...
Day 173
I spent the morning in the anatomy lab with Kimberly doing the practice practical. Half of it wasn’t bad but the other half seemed sort of impossible. Afterward, we talked to our course director who told us to watch the videos he made of the dissections online. So I did, later, and found them really helpful except for one fact: the quality is terrible.
The picture is so fuzzy,...
Day 172
I had a PD skills workshop this afternoon that was supposed to include a session on how to palpate the neck and head except my groups preceptor doc was 70 years old and all flustered because he showed up 10 minutes late because he couldn’t find parking so he rattled off a bunch of ridiculous terms and rushed through some loose palpation format that failed to include any of us actually...
Day 171
Just a bunch of reviews in the morning, then a long study break while waiting for Kimberly to finish her PD skills workshop prompted a little romp outside with my computer to finish some neuro questions:
Lame webcam photo, I know, but it was bloody brilliant weather outside and I was starting to get stressed in the histo lab. Later, I went through the entire 170 or so structures on the...
Day 170
I watched an interesting brochoscopy in LCE this morning. The doctor had to inflate one of the airways with a balloon but when he did he inadvertently tore a big piece of scar tissue from the side and later had to use this kind of snare contraption to get it out completely.
Also, there was a patient who was very sensitive to drugs and fell unconscious when he was given a small dose. I watched...
Day 169
2 hours of lecture + 1 hour of lunch + 2 hours of lecture + 4 online lectures = my monday.
And on a positive note, the eye/optic nerve pathway is incredible. The design is unlike anything we would have made up ourselves and it’s pure genius. There is no camera that works quite like it, or quite as well I think. When you have about eight hours of lecture on a single subject, it makes it...
Day 168
Study some more. Oh and I started writing a behavioral medicine paper on Peter Parker/Spiderman. What is the point you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose it’s their way of making the course “hip” or something. I think it would be nice to just not have to do busy work in med school. Just sayin.
Day 167
Study Study Study
Day 166
Not much to report about this day except we started studying the details of the eye and to my surprise some of the lecture material sounded very similar to the kind of stuff we did in molecular medicine. Thankfully, this time around I have the advantage of knowing that I learn this kind of information best through formulating stories.
Day 165
After a morning of learning how to conduct yet another type of neuro exam (which included our professor playing around with these funny, low quality, animated online eye simulators), I headed down to TGH to spend all afternoon with my LCE doctor. Thursday afternoons is when they initially examine and interview patients who may potentially receive a lung transplant. I sat in as my LCE doctor took...
Day 164
We learned about how the ear works this morning from a new lecturer in neuroscience. I thought he was pretty good and funny to boot. Then in the afternoon we met for the first time with our LCE small groups where we will be presenting cases to each other. I have a good group of people except my facilitator is TERRIBLE. He is probably the most demanding, egocentric, unsympathetic faculty member...
Day 163
Developing
Today was remarkable.
Today, I think I actually did well on an exam.
I have not known this feeling, ever, in medical school.
But instead of feeling fulfilled or satisfied, it left me wanting. Wanting to do well on the next one.
It is the slightest feeling of confidence, not in that I know a lot but that I am capable of knowing a lot. It’s a good feeling. And...
Day 162
Whattheheckawesome!
So remember those “Make a Mix, Take a Mix” boxes I set up in the histo lab a while back? Well I found a new mix in one of them last night and decided to take it for the drive home. As you can see, it’s pink and wrapped in a greeting card envelope with gel pen on it so I was pretty sure it was from a girl and I was also pretty sure it was gonna end up...
Day 161
In case you didn’t know, med school is just like high school. Socially speaking.
It’s about 11pm right now and I’m sitting in the histo lab reviewing cranial nerves. Across the room a group of guys is sitting around, studying, and engaging in ridiculous banter about all kinds of nonsense. It’s slightly distracting but funny and it reminds me of being on the soccer...
Day 160
I am overwhelmed with the fact that the human body is an incredible work of art. In fact, I believe it is the MOST artistically stunning form to ever exist on this earth. It is one that we could never create ourselves and so we must be content with attempting to restore it to the most functional and beautiful state possible. That is what physicians do: art restoration. It may sound demeaning...
Day 159
Descent
Just a couple of review sessions this morning then home to study. My good friend Paul Tran stopped by this afternoon to say hi. We talked cameras and lenses briefly. He told me he hadn’t been taking many photos lately which makes me sad because he’s a good photographer. Then I realized I hadn’t concentrated on photography in a while either. It’s a shame...
Day 158
This morning in On Doctoring we watched clips from the film Babel to supplement our behavioral medicine class. I only saw this movie once, a long time ago, but I really like it.
Other events of the day included: a hilarious lecture in behavioral medicine and one that was quite serious on the subject of death and dying, a PD skills workshop that taught us how to give mini-mental exams and...
Day 157
Two hours of behavioral medicine “lecture” is not a bad way to start your day when the professor is pretty much guaranteed to say something awkwardly inappropriate every 10 minutes. It remains the only class where I don’t constantly check the time to see when it will be over.
I studied for a few hours until lunch in the histo lab and then after lunch till 6:30 in the library...
Day 156
LCE was pretty stellar this morning. I was able to perform two more lung biopsies with my LCE doctor. What’s strange though is I think I actually like doing rounds more than the bronchoscopies. In rounds you get to see a new patient every every 10 minutes or so where as with bronchs you are with the same patient for around 25 minutes and most of the time you are looking at some screen...
Day 155
Late last night, I decided to try and be super positive about everything.
And, for today at least, it worked!
We had a great neuro clinical exercise this morning where we had to figure out where the lesion, stroke, or other problem was from a set of signs and symptoms.
Behavioral medicine in the afternoon was a hilarious, politically incorrect romp through adolescence. I’m still not...
Day 154
The only thing good that happened today was that I finished the last two lines of that song I was writing. Hopefully I can record it after the next test.
I had to watch a movie tonight for my On Doctoring class that was pretty lame. It’s called Pieces of April. The acting, dialog, and writing was hit or miss and the cinematography was pretty terrible all around. It just sucks that the...
Day 153
Study Study Study
Day 152
I had a meeting with our associate dean of education today about the new alternative film series we’re starting up at the med school. He’s all for it and even offered a few suggestions. Turns out he’s some kind of connoisseur of off the wall films and independent cinema. Figures, he’s from the S.F. bay area. I also met with our associate dean of student affairs for...
Day 151
Okay. I’m starting to get my bearings back.
After two fluffy hours of behavioral medicine (which all sounds like common sense to most of us in class) in the morning, I attended the lunch time liaison meeting. The liaison meetings are kind of funny to me now because, since On Doctoring only happens once every few weeks, there’s not much for me to officially say. So I end up just...
Day 150
Void
It’s like waking up from a nightmare and realizing you were never asleep.
No one has any answers. It’s really as bad as you thought.
This is your life falling through the cracks. Cracks that are the size of the Grand Canyon.
Thank God for moms who make you sandwiches, girlfriends who bring you hot chocolate and best friends who will hug you at the door for as long as...
Day 149
I feel completely incapable and entirely unhappy.
I have never wanted to quit so much in my life.
Day 148
I am finally starting to grasp the practical aspect of the art of elimination. It was something that Rob Bell spoke about a few months ago when I saw him give a speech at the performing arts center downtown. By the time I go to bed tonight I will have been awake for about 16 hours and out of that I am estimating about 13 of them were spent actively engaged in some kind of medical material either...
Day 147
Today was cold. Very cold. But it was the perfect day to work on songwriting. So I sat at the piano and hammered out a few verses and chorus that seems too simplistic to me so I’m gonna push myself to write a better one later and not settle. The good thing is, this song will have piano, drums, and lead guitar like “Winter of ‘83” and that’s the direction I was...
Day 146
Here are my top 15 favorite albums of 2009:
1. St. Vincent – Actor
2. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
3. Manchester Orchestra – Mean Everything To Nothing
4. Sleeping At Last – Storyboards
5. Sufjan Stevens – The BQE
6. MuteMath – Armistice
7. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
9. Casiotone for...
Day 145
Kicking off the new year right, I went over to Sarah Wilson’s house in the morning to storyboard one of the most tricky scenes in the film with her and our director of photography, Colin. It was nice to finally work with Colin after hearing about him and storyboarding on our own. He obviously has a much larger grasp on lighting techniques than I do and throws out some terms that Sarah and...
Day 144
Fire Works
New Years Eve included half a day of working on the new film with decent results. First wardrobe shopping with Nick Cakouros and Sarah Wilson during which we found various return policies that may allow us to buy nice costumes and return them without spending anything really. Also, we found a really nice white jacket for Nick’s character. In the afternoon, we decided to check...