It's been a fairly boring past couple of months, which is why I have not written. By boring, I mean very, very normal, and I don't want to bore you all with details of my normalness. Also, I've realized that the interesting things that do happen are immediately shared via Gchat. So don't blame me, blame Gmail (*shakes fist at Gmail).
As far as school goes, we're finishing up the year. It's a nice feeling to be half way through medical school, although the first of our licensing exams is in June and that is very scary. Just as a heads up, I will be disappearing some time around mid-May and resurfacing about a month later so you all are aware of this ahead of time.
I took a final exam for my physical exam skills today, which was ridiculous. They had a pelvic exam station where we had to explain the pelvic exam to a standardized patient and then perform the exam on a plastic model. It sounds easy, but examining a plastic model made our brains not take it seriously. I forgot to look at the cervix. Whoops. Another person forgot to put on gloves, which is just dirty. Someone else popped the cervix out of the model when she was retracting the speculum. It was ridiculous. It's really funny listening to med students after these sorts of things because it makes you realize how unprepared we are for working in the hospital. There's so much to remember and so much to do that it is really hard to keep straight. One kid forgot to take the vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, etc), which is so routine it's not even funny. I asked a patient how much they smoke, but not for how long (i'm retarded). Watching us medical students fumble around must be really amusing for our teachers. We do some stupid shit.
As for our bullshit afternoon class (unfortunately no more Shakespeare), we're doing the ethics of the medical profession itself covering topics like resource allocation, medical mistakes, abortion, physician-assisted suicide, etc. The one saving grace of this class is our small group leader. He tells us funny stories, and if we actually get in a debate about something, he tells a joke and calms us all down. Mostly he tells us funny stories. He told us about how he gets his obese patients who are particularly at risk for heart disease to lose weight. He asks them "If you had a heart attack tomorrow, would anyone be surprised?" You have to realize that this goes against all of the politically correct sensitivity training forced on us for the past 2 years. We all found this amazing and hilarious.
This past week though, this doctor wasn't in class and my college mentor sat in. It sucked. He's a nice guy, but he had no idea how to ask questions that would stimulate actual discussion, so he just picked on people. The topic was medical mistakes, and it brought out a lot of ridiculous hypothetical questions like: "What if I see my resident make a mistake?" "What if it's the attending that makes the mistake?" "What if I don't like my coworker?" "What if...blah blah blah?" I hate hypothetical situations. Hate hate hate. Deal with it when/if it happens. And if you are incapable of using common sense...then ask someone else what to do. Shocking! A 2-hour class summed up in 2 sentences. It was one of those classes where I just sat there and stared at people talking, so my mentor had me read off a sheet describing an ethical dilemma. Yup. I'm back in the 4th grade. He actually had me read off a sheet so I would be participating. He also looked at me afterward to indicate that I should answer the first question, so I just stared back and thankfully another student jumped in with the answer. I think my apathy was actually palpable at that point. Good thing I don't need a letter of recommendation from him. :)
Other than that, I've been relatively more social. I went to lunch with a couple people at a vegetarian "diner" which was pretty good. The food itself was average, but it's always nice to be able to order anything on the menu. The desserts, however, were all vegan and fucking amazing. I remember going to another vegetarian restaurant here, and the vegan cake was god awful. We ordered tiramisu and got something that looked like german chocolate cake and tasted like bananas (the waiter also looked highly offended when we said it tasted nothing like tiramisu...the dumbass). At this restaurant, I ordered the turtle cheesecake, which actually tasted like cheesecake. Seriously, writing about it makes me salivate. It was that good.
So that's all for now. I'm hopefully going to see Wolverine this weekend (dorky goodness), but otherwise I predict much studying and being boring.
