Charlie goes to Medical School

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.

Old Microscope by Flavio@Flickr

Today was the cumulative lab practical exam for our histology component. Histo has been a lot of fun, but I think everyone is glad to start sloughing off the responsibilities associated with each component of this curriculum. I’m one step closer to summer.

We also handed in our scopes and slides today, so I am no longer responsible for the equipment which happens to cost way too much money.

I was actually bragging to Wife over the weekend about how well done the histology labs are. The first year class is split into four sections in four different rooms, with our class taught over video conference while other instructors facilitate inside the room after the demonstration video.

The great thing about it is these demos are recorded and we have access to all of them. Most of the past few days, I’ve been intently reviewing the lab demonstrations…at around x1.5 speed. During this process, I discovered that our instructor starts each video with the phrase “Today’s Lab Session is on the…”, so that’ll be a catchphrase here soon.

I also spent some time reviewing electron micrographs, the last edition of our textbook and a set of histology flashcards that I bought. Had I to do over again, I would have spent an extra 10-20 bucks and bought an extra old histo book or two to cut up for flashcards instead. The other thing I do for these practicals is spend some time just looking at the words and saying them over in my head. There have been more than a few times where I know exactly what something is during its name…except for its name. Apparently “that thing next to the other thing” is not an acceptable answer.

The lab exam was mostly the same as every other practical exam we’ve had. It seemed to go pretty well.

Sorry this post is pretty short. I’m moving on to the next subject. We have a review tomorrow, and I don’t want to go in cold for it. So off to study!