TONY: Where In The World Is…

I apologize for the extended absence, but once more the truth is back.  I believe that it has been nigh on four months since my last post.  I promise that I’ve been busy though!  Clearly we have a lot of ground to cover, so I will summarize my life since my last post in succinct bullet-points.  Prepare yourself—this will be a journey:

-    I took Step 1 of the NBME board exam on January 16th.  I know that other bloggers have mentioned this test and alluded to related anxiety/terror.  For those of you who don’t know, this is the first of many exams administered by the National Board of Medical Examiners that one must pass in order to become licensed to practice medicine.  It’s designed to evaluate everything that you’ve learned in the first two years of medical school.  People have been known to spend anywhere between four weeks to three months studying for this test, and the degree of sanity loss that you’ll witness among your classmates during this time is astounding.  Personally, I spent about five and a half weeks studying approximately eight to ten hours a day for six days out of each week.  Then I knocked it out in January so that I’d have six weeks of vacation.  If you have any questions about the experience of studying, feel free to contact me!

-    After the test I skipped town and headed up the coast to Washington DC.  I missed the inauguration by one day, but the spirit of merriment was still in full swing.  A few college friends and I met up for a mini-reunion, and we did our best to leave our mark on the nation’s capital.

-    I learned first-hand that parrots are the absolute worst possible pets.  Ever.  Did you know that in addition to learning how to imitate human sounds, they’re also very skilled at imitating alarm clocks and cell phone ringers?  In fact, they’re so good at these sounds that they often choose to share the full repertoire at the crack of dawn.  Seriously.  Own a goldfish.

-    My next stop was good old NYC, where I relaxed with my Mom, and saw some old friends.  Perhaps most importantly, I ate the best pizza that the world has to offer.  Every day.  Multiple times a day.  For two weeks straight.

-    Next stop:  Las Vegas for four nights.  We all know that what happens in Vegas is fated to remain in that heathen desert city, but I will give you one tiny sliver of a story.  Apparently, according to many Las Vegas residents, this guy:

plus this:

equals this much more famous guy:

And because of this mix-up, everyone was a winner.

-     The final excursion on my world tour was Costa Rica.  I flew into this country a city-dwelling, non-spanish speaking boy.  I returned a zip-lining, volcano-climbing, surfing, wildlife-loving, salsa dancing, occasionally-fluent-in-Spanish man.  I had a bunch of pictures that I’d been meaning to share with you, but unfortunately I lost them when I was robbed on a bus!  Ah well.  As one of my patients this week said, “Ain’t no time to look back, only forward”.  And as the Costa Ricans say, “Pura Vida!”

And now I’m back in Atlanta starting my clinical rotations!  Starting out with Internal Medicine at Grady has kept me quite busy, but I have a lot of thoughts on my experience thus far that I will definitely be sharing with you.

Until next time,

C-Q

JACKIE: Psych Wards

To be honest, I thought the inpatient Psychiatry ward would sort of resemble “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Alright, I didn’t really think that, but I did expect my experience on the ward to be much scarier than it has been thus far. It appears that psych patients, for the most part, are relatively gentle, despite their severe depression and hallucinatory psychoses. They are interesting people with intriguing stories and fascinating minds. No matter how many schizophrenic patients I encounter, I still find it hard to believe that people can “hear voices”, have full awareness that no one else can hear these voices and that the voices are only in their own heads, and yet the mind continues to produce these voices. Why does the mind insist on creating hallucinations when the patient knows they aren’t real? And why is there such a drastic difference in the insight patients possess? Some completely understand that they are psychotic, others resolutely believe that what they are hearing and seeing is real.

I didn’t think I’d be interested in Psychiatry, and I am not yet convinced that I am. Still, this is the only second clerkship I have done thus far, and I am entirely convinced that there is something to be gained from every moment I spend on the wards. Interacting with patients, learning the practice of medicine, pondering the depths of the human mind, examining my own response to hierarchy and stress and expectation- what could be more exciting…

KEVIN: *blows dust off blogging keyboard*

A few of us have completed our very first clinical rotation of the new curriculum. Rotations are set up in two-month blocks; the “big” ones take up all eight weeks of the block, while the “smaller” ones are combined. For example, Medicine is eight weeks long, while Radiology’s two weeks are combined with Psychiatry’s six weeks. This makes sense for organizational reasons — everyone will be on a new rotation every eight weeks.

Having just completed my Radiology rotation, I actually learned some useful skills that should help me during my “big” rotations. I appreciated not having to study nearly as much as I did during, say, Step One. (Which, by the way, did not suffer any worse scores from our class, if whisperings are to be believed. But you didn’t hear it from me.) One of the residents I followed during my rotation graciously dug up an old case of situs inversus, which Scrubs fans will immediately recognize.

Two weeks was not nearly enough time to confirm Radiology as a future career choice, but it did allow many of us to rule out Radiology as such. In any case, I think most of us are excited about seeing patients than reading chest X-rays, so next week’s Psych rotation should be a lot of fun.

As a non sequitur, here is a picture of the White House that I took during Inauguration Day