Charlie goes to Medical School

What US Health Care Needs (via Slashdot)

I’m not going to add too much to this.  I’m not exactly a non-partisan guy, but both sides are eventually going to have to buy in to make health care reform work.

Other than that, I’m trying to keep this blog pretty non-political, so everyone enjoy their morning coffee.

[Time Shifted Post: This post was a quick one that I wrote before going to visit my parents. It was basically a recap of that first week or so of summer vacation. Nothing really super about this post, but I didn't have time to proof it when I wrote it. Hope everyone out there is doing well.]

Summer research has already started getting underway, but I don’t start it full time until next week. I wish I had come up with a little more organized plan to enjoy these couple of weeks out of school, but I had spent the previous few weeks trying not to think about summer in order to get my studying done.

Last week, I worked on the apartment for a little bit getting some spring cleaning done. The mess that was my desk is now completely under control, and desk II is back to being our dining room table. Admin cat has been enjoying watching my toils.

We had a spot of bad news with our previous living space which we have had on the market for sale for a while now. Wife and I had a pretty good offer come in, and unfortunately it fell through. If anyone out there is thinking about medical school, start getting rid of responsibilities like this. I have been trying to avoid renting because it is one more thing to worry about, but in this market it is the best option. Hopefully, we can rent it for now and then get it back on the market and sold by the time I am in residency and be done with the whole mess.

I have had a few meetings about my summer research since school got out of school. It was useful as it has taken me a while to get into the right frame of mind. My mentors have been guiding me along for a little bit, but it wound up taking some time and going through their old literature review materials before the right frame of mind sank in. Now that I understand our approach a little more clearly, I am going to update their literature review to look for anything recent and get things under way. I’ll be ready to hit the ground running.

I am trying to branch out a bit with my research. I have met one person who works in a different hospital as a statistician. I want to take an afternoon and meet with her to discuss our methods and get another take on how we are examining our results. I also will be getting some shadowing opportunities which is required of everyone in the program whether their research is in the clinically-based or not.

You don’t get to do everything during a break, so you try to find the stuff you most want to do, but don’t sweat what you can’t. You are supposed to be on a break after all.

You don’t want to return to school or work more tired than you left it.

• It’s official. I don’t have time to post this summer. Well, it’s going to get better. After taking a couple of weeks to travel and do nothing, Wife and I got me into the new work routine and we tried to get onto a diet. After the first week on this diet, I gained weight. My response to this was to freak out and go completely strict on the diet. In the ensuing weeks, I’ve manage to lose 8 or so pounds. The diet involves a lot of clif bars (blueberry crisp and crunchy peanut butter) with a fairly restricted dinner and a popcorn snack at around 10-11. I’ve been using an app on my phone to keep track of calories and trying to stay around 1500. The exercise routine is running about 25 minutes during the week and about 30 minutes on the weekends (the time limit on the machines at school) and hitting the bikes afterwards. Wife has been joining me at the gym, and we’ve gotten good at keeping each other on track. My goal is to lose enough weight to make staying on the diet significantly easier during the school year when I will be needing all of my energy for studying.
• Research has been a little crazy. I was hoping to have a little more time for literature review and preparation for my data collection in the next couple of weeks, but there was a pretty big snafu with my IRB approval involving some misplaced paperwork. This big issue aside, everyone has been very cooperative and quick on the turnaround (which isn’t normally the case, but it is nice to know you can easily get things escalated). The IRB and the people managing summer research have been great. I was actually in the IRB office and was trying to express my appreciation for their help. I said something like to the effect that they were being very fastidious, but that was great because I also appreciate them looking out for my research subjects. However, they were also very quick on the turnaround to me when they could which helped make my approval possible. I should point out that my situation is a little unique because I am doing data collection with actual people which most people don’t try to squeeze into a summer research project. I’m also doing my collection off-site which most people aren’t stupid enough to try to get through for a short summer research project. I am also doing a pediatric study, and people under 18 automatically get the extra special scrutiny for any research project at any IRB. That all being said, I got my IRB approval on Friday!
• Wife and I have friends from my class, one of whom is moving. Not much to say here except I’m glad we did the move at night instead of during the day, and my entire body is sore two days later. I’m having a time even getting up off the couch, but I do want to workout today.
• I still have some posts that I need to finish and publish. However, I’ve lost my eye for proofing lately, so I’m going to have to wait for Wife to get home today to look over them.

I have two or three posts written, but haven’t had time to clean them up. Will try to sit down and clean them up before the weekend is through.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Just quick post. There are a couple of tools out there to help you identify pills. Chances are if you are a doctor, you have some form of Epocrates or the like which you refer to. PillBox offers one feature that I’ve seen before in reference software which is pill identification. Color, shape, and the numbers etched in the side can help you identify that pill that for some reason you have pulled out of its container (this can be helpful if a patient shows up with one of those pill-a-day boxes, but can’t remember the names of those pills). The difference here is that PillBox is by the NIH as opposed to some random company that might be more likely to think about charging you. They do caution that you double check any result, but it might help fill in some of those gaps when taking a history.

PillBox via Lifehacker

Another year has passed, in more ways than one.

Three years ago, I was ready to start out on my new career. A change that I was not completely ready to make, but wound up having to make a quick choice. Luckily at that point, I had thought about medicine for a long while. The choice that I had to make was an easy one. Wife was by my side. For my birthday that year, she took me to one of those themed restaurants where the knights joust and sword fight each other. I entered school unprepared mentally and struggled a bit under the stress. However, thanks to some hard work and the well-stuck lessons taught to me by my high school science teachers, I succeeded at transitioning into my post-bacc work.

Two years ago, I had finished my first year of my post-bacc work. I was excelling at my classes, and was starting to prepare to take one more class over the summer before studying for the MCAT. When that did happen, it was me, a card table and several very thick books. I was strung out and playing video games every 4-6 hours just to maintain my sanity. One evening, I cooked Wife a meal and sliced through my left index finger. Wife was not there, so I had to drive myself to the quick care where Wife met me. Wife nearly passed out because she was so concerned for me. I did well on the MCAT. In the fall, I started to take some of the more recommended courses. And I applied to many, many medical schools.

One year ago, I got accepted to one of those medical schools. Wife found a new job and followed me here. We moved here over the summer and I matriculated. I ran headlong into a wall of knowledge. I tried to absorb everything. I drank from the fire hose. I did well in class. I did well in group discussion. I did well in lab.

Today, Wife and I have been married for three years. I have finished my first year of medical school. We are struggling to get our old place sold on a soft market. She drives longer than she should for a job that is not quite what she wants to do. She definitely could have found an easier life for herself. She has stuck by me as I picked myself up from a career that I hated and stumbled into a new career that I love.

Happy anniversary, Wife.

Gonna kick back and relax for a minute.

Last night was a late one. I got a lot of studying done last night not wanting to be up late tonight with my last test being tomorrow. I’m so tired, it takes me a while to wake up on any given morning. On these heavy study days, I tend to kick back for a bit with a cup of coffee before trying to study. It would feel like the calm before the storm, but I’ve gotten good at focusing on the coffee and just relaxing a bit while I wake up. See you all on the other side.

Andreas Vesalius - De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body) Huntington Library. Detail of the Anterior Aspect of the Bones of the Human Body Assembled Together. From the Description in the Huntington Library. Picture by Brewbooks.

Thank you…thank you very much.

For starters, today’s exam was rough. I think I did pretty alright, but it was a clear demonstration of what I know and what I am unsure that I know and what I don’t know.

I spent the entire weekend reviewing stuff from class, but clearly I’m getting to where I might benefit from a bit of outside help. These aids tend to highlight high-yield subject areas as well as some specific topics that not every school will get to.

I started with a clean white board for my physio review…it was filled after cardio and pulm. This meant kidney, GI and endo all were off in on note cards and legal pads.

We are going to need a bigger board.

However, the exam was much past this with a lot of the questions geared more towards practical application of this knowledge, so memorizing is no longer enough. You have to know how to apply all of this stuff. This really was the same as the approach to the anatomy/dev exam…it was just harder with physio.

Biochem is my last exam, and after I will officially be done with my first year of medical school. I don’t really have a strong plan in place for what I need to get done with all the free time that I am about to have. But needless to say, I’ve put off enough stuff that summer is going to be pretty busy.

Any of my free time needs to either be directed at relaxing or studying for Boards. However, my day job is going to be research. Maybe I need to clear the white board after biochem and use it for the “must do” list for summer.

I can't draw for crap.

I’m pretty tired. I need to start studying, but I was up late last night…the last three nights. Studying for the Anatomy final exam which went pretty well, but I wish I had started studying on a different tack than I did.

I’ve been saving my flashcards which has been somewhat helpful, but not as much as I would have liked. Ultimately, I made them too all inclusive, and what I’ve been needing are the highlights. I did use them to cover stuff from the fall once before moving to the high-level review, but most of the cards I didn’t have time for.

I mainly concentrated on the clinical correlations that were given to us throughout the year. The result is that the granular study early on and going back over stuff from the fall (especially the muscle compartments of the limbs) made the clinical correlations really stick. Half of the questions on the exam I answered in less than 10-15 seconds.

Where I really wish I had taken more time to review was some of the development which was also on the exam. Overall, there were a couple of really tough questions that I had to really guess on, but I don’t know that I ever would have known them.

One thing that sort of helped was drawing and scribbling a few notes on my white board. I wasn’t entirely successful at determining what should have been on the board, but it did help me out more than a few times. My drawings are all awful. You should see some of the other students in our class. It amazes me that medical professionals who universally have awful handwriting can do some of the best illustrations.

I’m feeling better about this subject now that I’ve taken the test. I was pretty unsure about things going in, but I think that was just because I did such a high-level review…although sometimes that is all that is needed.