What am I supposed to be doing?

I am currently not studying for my final tomorrow (obviously, because I am writing this blog instead). I am not sufficiently prepared, nor am I extremely anxious about it. I am strangely calm. My theory is that I am so overwhelmed by the volume of information I need to have in my head by tomorrow morning that I do not even know where to start. If I were to start to think about it, I would have a panic attack like no other panic attack I have ever had before, my heart would stop and I would die. My body is obviously aware of this and therefore, as a defense mechanism, is diverting my mind from thinking about the test. Instead maybe I will start writing my 20 page paper that is due on Friday and that I haven't started. No, that sounds pretty stressful too. Im just going to continue with my little brain vacation for now.

Have you ever seen a heart before?

Holy crap! I absolutely love my new rotation with a Thoracic and Cardiovascular surgeon. He is harsh and mean and kills my self esteem but he is teaching me so much I can't really hold it against him. The first day we walked in, he asked if we had ever seen an open heart before and before we could answer, swung open the operating room doors to reveal an open heart surgery in action. I was totally not prepared for that. In the last week I have seen a beating heart 2 feet in front of my face, a lobectomy, an endoarterectomy and I even got to assist in surgery by changing a pacemaker battery!! I love using that cauterizer thingy. I should probably figure out what its called before I go back on Tuesday. Im so excited!

5th semester failure...so far

I feel totally unprepared to be a doctor. In 5th semester so far, the theme of lectures seems to be "you learned this wrong on the island and you look like an idiot doing it." Things have not been going that well with tests and papers either. I did pass the COMP exam on the first try (by like 1 point) but I am starting to think that is a disadvantage. Pretty much everyone I know failed it the first time, but you can take it 3 times and it does not count in your grade for 5th. The problem is that you have exactly 6 months from the day you passed the COMP to take the Step 1 exam. Therefore, passing it right away means I also have to take the Step right away and I am definitely not ready for that. For our first paper on a patient, I received an "unsatisfactory" which is basically an F. Granted, I do not know a single person who passed the paper and it was probably the worst paper I have ever written in my life, but that just shows again what we learned wrong on the island and have to relearn here. Thank God I passed the ACLS class easily, however if I actually had to run a code I think I would have a heart attack myself. This poor track record for 5th so far is not very encouraging and I have a midterm this coming Monday. Great. Lets hope for a change in the tides this Monday. Wish me luck!!

PS - I cut and dyed my hair and got another tattoo, just to keep you all updated.

Wedding pics!

I am very excited and distracted right now. I got back my wedding photos and I am looking at them instead of studying. Check them out CLICK HERE! OK, back to work!

Hola From Miami

I know you probably all thought I was dead, but no. I have just been really busy. Actually, that is a huge understatement. I have been ridiculously, terribly, extremely busy! Lets see. In the last few weeks I have passed 4th semester, moved from Dominica back home to San Diego, gotten married, moved to Miami, started 5th semester, and taken the COMP exam. Crap, I am tired just typing all of that. It is pretty exciting though because I actually feel like I may become a real doctor someday. I have my first clinical experience in the United States on Tuesday! When I take a history, I wont have to ask what kind of bush medicine my patient is taking or figure out why he swallowed 3 slugs to treat his ulcer! Actually, now that I am in Miami, I probably wont be able to understand a word my patient is saying since everyone here speaks Spanish and I can only count to 10 and ask where the bathroom is. Hopefully there will be a translator! Haha! OK, I have to go relearn the entire physical exam so I don't look like an idiot on Tuesday. Wish me luck.

Goljan is my God

Everyone here has their own way of studying for shelf exams. By far, the most popular way amongst students to study for Pathology is to listen to audio files from Goljan. He is magic. He talks and you suddenly understand everything. In the first 30 seconds of listening to him he says "not everything that ends in '-oma' is benign." Oh my god! That would have been nice to know about 6 months ago. I vote for Ross to pay him a million dollars and just come teach us Path. For now I am just going to have to settle for the bootleg copy audio files.

Senioritis

Holy moly I have 347.5 tests in the next two weeks. Ok, maybe only 6, but it feels like a million. I normally thrive on stress, it gives me motivation. But this is crazy, this is system overload. All I want to do is go climb in bed and curl up to some mindless television. It is taking everything in me to sit in front of this computer and study. What is worse, is that when I am done with these tests I am leaving the island for good. FOR GOOD! So my mind keeps drifting to thoughts of America and I find myself shopping online for clothes and cars and toys. As a future doctor, I am going to have to diagnose myself with senioritis...do they make a pill for that?

Don't Drink the Water

It has been raining a lot here lately. When that happens, the water in the apartment buildings turns brown. We have all learned to cope with this and head over to campus with empty water bottles to fill up from the triple filtered water fountains. That is exactly what happened yesterday and as usual you could see everyone stocking up on campus water to take home and use. Unfortunately, this afternoon we all received an email with the following title in bright red:

Drinking Campus Water Advisory Warning!

Basically it said the water on campus has not been safe to drink, cook with, bathe in, etc for the last 24 hours. Great! This would have been nice to know 24 hours ago. So now I probably have giardia lamblia or something. I guess I am going to be spending some quality time with the toilet tonight. There is a picture of him above, isn't he cute. Too bad he causes diarrhea.

Nothing is Free

I am a big fan of free. I think being a poor medical student has something to do with it. But, I also happen to think that free food tastes better. I'm also constantly on a diet and for some reason it's easier to justify eating cake if it is offered at some meeting, or having a hershey's kiss if its in a bowl on someones desk. During the beginning of the semester here at Ross, all the clubs have their orientation meetings and there is free food everywhere. I find myself attending meetings for everything from Physicians for Human Rights to the Vietnamese students association (they have great spring rolls!). However, this semester I have been caught and now realize that nothing is for free. One of the last meetings I snuck into was the Neuroscience Society. Dr. Odutola was the guest speaker and went over taking a neurological history. At the end of the meeting, I asked him a quick question and happened to mention that I was a neuroscience major at UCLA for undergrad. Oops! He corners me and before I know what happened, I am the new Historian for the Neuroscience in the News Newsletter. As if I didn't have enough to do this semester! So what I thought was free pizza ended up being one of the most expensive meal I have had here. Oh well, at least I actually like neuroscience!

Semester 3 - check!

Yay! It's finally here. I get to go home for break. I thought this day would never come. I am physically sitting in the departure lobby at the Dominica airport. I can almost smell America. No wait, thats airplane exhaust. This semester was particularly difficult, even with Phil here to support me. I am still waiting for my final grades, so I don't want to jinx it, but I am pretty sure I am a fourth semester when I get back to the island. It will be my last semester here in Dominica and I am thrilled beyond words. This journey has been very trying for me, more emotionally than academically but it was still a big struggle. I think the promise of getting off the island for good is going to give me renewed energy to get through the next semester. There is NO WAY I am repeating 4th!!
As usual, getting to the airport this morning was like Disneyland's Jungle Cruise on wheels. There were exotic animals jumping out at us and palm leaves slapping our faces through the open windows. I kept expecting someone to get on the loud speaker with "...and to our left are natives bathing in the river." Our car's name was "Shadow Warrior" and our driver seemed like he could have driven the hour and a half trip blindfolded. He checked his phone messages more than he checked the road. In true Dominica fashion, we had to stop twice so passengers could throw up. Thankfully, I am here safe and tomorrow I will be home! If I miss Dominica, I'll go to Disneyland, but I'll get churros and mickey mouse soft pretzels instead of chicken and ground provisions.