KEVIN: Ice to See You

Since I last posted, we’ve finished our first year and had an epic three week vacation. The new M1s have started their classes, and their bright faces are a welcome sight compared to ours, which have grown haggard, worn, wrinkly and old. Personally, I’ve moved into my new place in downtown Decatur, and am gradually stocking the place with furniture. This is an insidious process, and when your furniture doesn’t arrive for FIVE WEEKS, you must adapt:

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Two weekends ago, I attended my friend’s wedding in San Jose, CA. It was a fantastic event. My brain can’t begin to comprehend the amount of time, energy, and money that went into the whole thing. Hundreds of guests, a twelve course dinner, enormous wedding cake, and about 3000 wine bottles are but wedding staples these days. Newer weddings are all about the ice sculptures, photobooths for your guests (and their girlfriends) to take pictures to paste into your sign-in book (this was actually brilliant), and live dance performances by America’s Best Dance Crews:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS19igjtXPg (skip to 1:55)!

The twist is that my friend was planning this event while completing his first year of medical school at the University of Wisconsin – similar to the four people in my class who also tied their knots during their summer breaks. The takeaway message is that your social life doesn’t disappear with medical school, as far as I can tell. It is certainly possible, and recommended, for students to modify their social lives to fit their education, spending their free time planning or attending weddings.

If anyone out there is reading this and still deciding where to apply, my advice to you is to find a school where students have at least some modicum of flexibility in their lives.

(Apply to Emory)

JACKIE: Atlanta is Super Fun

This past Friday we had our Endocrine Module exam. The weekend/week after an exam is always (relatively) care free and super duper fun. To give y’all a taste of what super duper fun there is to be had here in the ATL, I thought I’d give you a play by play of what I have done since the exam ended and what I will be doing the rest of the week.

Friday after the exam: A few friends and I had a celebratory slice at Fellini’s- an outdoor, delicious pizza place in Candler Park. We dropped one of our comrades off and headed to a surprise birthday party for a fellow classmate at a glorious apartment complex with a pool where there was lots of great food from Dusty’s, the local BBQ place near campus. After we had eaten and swam to our heart’s delight, we took a trip to this cool bar, Aces, in Kirkwood and played pinball and other such arcade games. Finally we skidaddled over to Shout, a cool place in Midtown where they have (relatively) good music and a nice outdoor patio. I know: outdoors in the summer in Atlanta? Insane. But actually the weather has been fantastic here for the last four or five days.

Saturday: I slept until whenever I wanted to get up (which was late and I won’t share the embarrassment of the exact time). After a leisurely breakfast, I lay by the pool, listened to music, and read for fun (a rarity). Then my two fun friends came to pick me up and we went to get bubble tea on Buford Highway. Delicious bubble tea initiated a hunger for further consumption, so we went and did a little post-test celebratory shopping. They dropped me back off at home and I soon took off for this cool outdoor wine bar on Krog Street, and then went out to dinner at this delicious Greek restaurant called Avra in Midtown. Full from dinner, I went to a friend’s house to sit on the couch and watch the Olympics. Finally, I ended the evening at a classmate’s house playing Rockband.

Sunday: I woke up early to head to the Scott’s Antique Market–a great market that takes place once a month a little south of the city– and then I went to lunch at Carol Street Cafe in Cabbagetown. Somewhat exhausted, I went home and watched some more Olympics while cleaning my apartment (the week of an exam the ol’ apartment tends to decline in cleanliness quite a bit). Later that afternoon I went to Park Tavern (it’s a restaurant/bar on Piedmont Park), sat outside and listened to the live music while hanging out with good friends, and then I went to a BBQ at another good friend’s house. Sunday ended with some of the folks at the BBQ trying to teach me to play Halo, which didn’t work out that well, but was rather fun.

Now it’s Tuesday and I am studying Hematology, but…tonight I am going to the Braves game, last night I went to a fun dinner at P.F Chang’s, tomorrow night I am going to watch 3 hours of Project Runway, and Thursday night I am going to a play. After that, it will be Friday again!

Ah, medical school is so fun…

ANTOINETTE: Eating a baby (burrito)

Med school livin’ isn’t always the healthiest livin’. Let’s do a number crunch of my day…

 

- 10 min walk from the parking lot to the SOM: 31.8 calories burned

- Corned beef reuben + chips: 900 calories

- Frozen yogurt + cone: 200 calories

- Root beer float with vanilla ice cream: 250 calories

- Chocolate brownie: 150 calories

- Chipotle fajita burrito: 955 calories

- Hours spent in a chair: 10 hours

 

It’s exam week.

I do what I want.

 

PEARL: Boards, Electives, and Break… Oh My!

It has been very busy the past month, but things are definitely exciting down here in the ATL. Here’s a quick re-cap of my life at the SOM.

BOARDS: are coming. Now that we’ve started second year, this fact is sinking in. We have only three months of classes left, followed by a month of organized board review, and then we’ll be studying full time for the boards after winter break. It is simultaneously amazing to me how much we have learned in twelve months and how much more we have to learn. Right now, we’re three weeks into our endocrine module. Part of our reading assignments are case reports from the New England Journal, which are fascinating, complex cases that I would not have understood a year ago (see nejm.org for examples). These cases have inspired me (uber geek that I am) to get a subscription to the journal so that I can read them for fun on the shuttle in to school.

ELECTIVES: Right now, I’m hanging out on the 8th floor of Grady, monitoring a pager that will let me know when a trauma patient arrives, so that I can head down to the ER to collect data on the fluids that patient has received before reaching the hospital. I just watched a patient with a gunshot wound to the left chest lose 450 cc’s of blood through his chest tube. He stabilized and things calmed down in the trauma bay for about 10 minutes, until his blood pressure started to drop and his heart rate slowed. The nurses quickly got his fluid and blood IVs flowing, the head of his bed was dropped, and within perhaps a minute and a half, his pressure was back up. It may be cliché, but I love that people in medicine are prepared to deal with such critical situations. It certainly has the potential to be depressing when your best effort fails, but you’ll always be able to say that you did something important at the end of the day.

This research project is part of my sophomore elective in trauma surgery. In addition to collecting data one night a week, we will regularly shadow a trauma surgeon, read weekly articles related to the field, and write up at least two case reports. There’s a lot of flexibility built into the course, so that if we decide that we’re really interested in cardiac surgery, we can shadow cardiothoracic surgeons. Best of all, our mentor is an amazing surgeon and compassionate doctor, with whom I am thrilled to be working. Our class is in the process of choosing electives this week, and there is an incredible variety – emergency medicine, radiology, medical Spanish, humanities in medicine, and independent studies in anything with a faculty mentor.

BREAK: We had a three week break at the end of June. I spent the first half of it in Costa Rica, practicing my Spanish, surfing, ziplining, horseback riding, and mountain biking. I went home to Maine for the second half, sailing, hiking, swimming, biking, and blueberrying. Basically, I spent the entire time “verbing” – trying to pack as many activities into three weeks as I could, and it was fabulous.

MISC: A few final miscellaneous notes. I’ve joined a women’s cycling club that was co-founded by one of my classmates (Sorella cycling). I’m hoping to compete in a few road races before the end of the season, which should be exciting and hopefully not too dangerous. I am also in the process of hunting down a mountain bike, which should provide for many adventures in the months to come. Oh, and I competed in my first triathlon about two months ago. Who said you can’t have fun in medical school?!