Victory!

Dragon = slain.

Anatomy midterm = passed!

Image courtesy of: http://www.webweaver.nu/clipart/img/fantasy/dragons/dragon-dead.gif

Hunting a dragon

(less than) 48 hours to go before I redeem myself.

Anatomy mid-term, I’m winning this time!

Image courtesy of www.metal-archives.com

Slaying the dragon...

 

Wet Lab Shenanigans

NOTE: I would NEVER condone disrespecting the cadavers. We should be forever mindful that these people gave their last worldly possession, their body, for us to study.

… The above being said, what I’m about to tell you relates to a couple of professors ranking on each other, specifically about their own bodies.

Normally, Dr. S and Dr. Y are two of the most straightforward no-bullshit people you’ll meet. The other day, however, I think there was a little bit more formalin in the air than usual. A few buddies and I, under the guidance of Dr. Y., were reviewing the heart for our upcoming midterm exam. Dr. S was doing the same with another group of people. Lacking a proper heart for his demonstration, as the one he’d selected was torn to shreds (as unfortunately happens when too many students handle the specimens too roughly), Dr. Y asked Dr. S if he could “borrow his heart,” at which point Dr. S. launches into this hilarious tirade about how his “heart’s too small”. I think there was another corny crack about getting at the “heart of the matter”… ha, ha. Dr. S. told Dr. Y. that Dr. Y’s heart was “plenty big” and sufficient for demonstration to which Dr. Y. replies “What are you suggesting? Autocardiothoracodectomy?” (AKA: “Self-directed removal of heart from thorax”).

Mind you, we’re all cracking up the whole time as Dr. S. and Dr. Y. are trading barbs.
And then the visiting professors arrive and we all get back to work.

“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”

A quote from the book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Chris Hedges). A quote that can be changed a little to apply to medical school: “The rush of battle is a potent addiction,  for the desire to succeed is a drug.”

We are at war. With ourselves, with the AAMC. With those who told us that we can’t, those who deemed us not “good enough” to be granted admission into an American medical school. Midterms start next week for the first termers, and I have my Anatomy midterm in two weeks. I feel like a soldier on D-Day, in the moments before those landing crafts hit the beach… the anxiety of knowing and not knowing what will confront me once that door drops. I’m training as best I can – reviewing my notes as often as I can, going into the wet lab as much as I can, doing as many practice problems as I can, but the anxiety of anticipation is ever-present. The idea of preparing as much as humanly possible and yet getting taken by that one fact I neglected to look at.

I want to succeed, no, I have to succeed. I failed this damn thing once and I can’t let this happen again…. I will not fail. I will not fail. I will. not. fail.

Ladies & Gentlemen, pardon the interruption…

I know it’s been nearly a month since my last post. In truth, I kind of forgot about this blog (sorry!) I got caught up in school
and life developments and writing fell by the wayside. So… now to fill you all in on nearly a month’s worth of stuff in as succinct a form as I can…

For starters, I’m repeating Anatomy this term. Last term I got taken on the midterm exam, had a veritable panic attack and subsequent cerebral shut down. In my state of reduced functioning, I missed the pass mark on the midterm by a few points and consequently was advised (in truth, more “forced”) to decel. It will take me an extra term to graduate, but that’s certainly preferable to failing Anatomy and getting dismissed from the school.

I’ve been keeping myself busy with involvement in several clubs and tutoring Biochemistry… This of course, is all secondary to spending much more time with Anatomy.

One of the advantages to taking only Anatomy this term is that I now have enough time to do what I didn’t do last term, namely go into the wet lab more often and spend more time doing the Gray’s Anatomy Review questions. All first termers at SGU are advised to do these questions at least twice through before both the midterm and final, not least because the head of our Anatomy department wrote the book! Last term, I had difficulty juggling Anatomy/Histology/Biochemistry and so doing these questions several times over fell by the wayside. Wet lab, too. Given that my last name starts with a “B”, my group activities like Histology lab and Biochem small group were first thing in the morning. Those would finish up by 10 AM and if I went to the wet lab after that it would usually be so crowded I would waste my time and not see a damn thing. This term, without the commitment to those small groups, I can go into the wet lab early in the morning when there’s no one there and really take my time and look things over carefully.

On that point… it’s a very humbling experience to be alone in the wet lab with a bunch of cadavers. It’s the realization that a member of the formerly living made the altruistic choice to donate his or her body to us medical students. I’m not sure how I’d feel about a bunch of bumbling first term medical students rooting around my viscera, but all the same given that others have so kindly donated their bodies for us to use I feel compelled to do the same when it’s my time to go.

On the point of death….
…
…
…
…
Two weeks ago, my ex-girlfriend passed away from acute promyelocytic leukemia. It came out of nowhere, ravaged her body, shut down her major organs, and caused cerebral hemorrhaging. Her parents ultimately decided to take her off the respirator because she wouldn’t have wanted to survive, not live mind you, SURVIVE, as an empty shell of herself. I’d dated her for almost three years prior to this point, and we’d broken up last August. She told me that she didn’t see our relationship “going anywhere” and that she didn’t want to “wait for me to finish medical school”. I understand her reasoning, and for the record, I’m not angry or spiteful or anything about it… I came to terms with our breakup. It’s the fact that someone can be wrenched from this earth with such fury and violence and tradecraft fails to stop this process… and I’m not one to betray emotionality or powerlessness. Too often medicine professes to “have all the answers” and when it fails, you start wondering about the path you’ve chosen. Doctors are cited as being too coldly rational when the family of the suffering is an emotional wreck but I’ll tell you the only way to function in such a situation is to be emotionally distant. Emotions mess with rational decision making. It takes real skill to be coldly rational and personally tactful simultaneously, and that’s a skill very few physicians possess.

Of course I was a wreck when I found out this news. Thank God, though, for the SGU community – several close friends helped me through this difficult period and I’ve managed to make my peace. Her funeral was last Saturday and although I couldn’t physically be there a condolence letter I had written her parents was displayed…. so at the very least I was there in spirit.

Return

So I made it to Grenada somehow in one piece after a 36-hour grind. Long story short: I don’t travel well… AKA I can’t sleep when I travel.

Friday morning went about routine things, went lifting, then started packing. I Spent some time with my grandmother as she is visiting my family for the week and hopped a shuttle to the airport at around 6:45 PM. I arrived at the airport around 8 PM then killed four hours people watching, mostly. My flight took off at 12:45 AM.

And because I can’t sleep when I travel… well… I didn’t sleep. In truth, I took a series of short naps but that’s nowhere near as restful as an uninterrupted sleep.

7AM Saturday I was back in my dorm room at SGU and told myself I couldn’t sleep until I got my stuff unpacked and set up… I finally collapsed into bed around 10PM and woke up today feeling great! Most of today was spent getting the last few things in order, saying hello to friends, and flipping through my Anatomy textbook. Classes start tomorrow. Time to get this done so I can move on.

<Odd segue>

The funny thing about traveling is that you could meet some interesting people along the way.  The cabbie I took to the airport, for instance, was a 20-year expat from Turkey. He moved to the US, he told me, because opportunities in Turkey were scarce. His two principal businesses are an ice cream truck during the summer and driving airport shuttles during the winter. Conversing with him helped the two hour shuttle ride to the airport fly by (pun intended). At the airport bar met this one barmaid, and this stuck in my mind, who told me that her life’s dream was to be a veterinarian. She told me that she couldn’t get into vet school at the time she graduated college because the “climate for acceptance” (her words) was bad. So now she works at the bar nights and does personal fitness training during the day. Told me that she used to be a competitive powerlifter… and she was wearing a chain with a barbell medallion on it (go figure!) She gave me a few pointers on how to up my bench press, which was nice, and also told me that when she retired from her jobs would probably get involved with the ASPCA. The hilarious thing is that my flight was full of vet students and correspondingly, animals.

</Odd segue>… Just needed to put it down somewhere.

Back to The Rock…

I’m returning Grenada on Saturday. The objective for this term is to finally put Anatomy behind me and not let the course director fuck with my head. Hopefully the extra time I have, given that Anatomy is the only class I’ll be taking, will be beneficial. The struggle, though, will be staying calm. But this has to get done, if I have any hope of continuing on this path that I’ve chosen. And this is something that I want. Period.

“…The question is, do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far is as needed?”

A quote from Boondock Saints, a once-upon-a-time favorite movie of mine. It pretty much summarizes what it is I’m doing here: I’m pushing my body and brain to their fullest potential in hopes that one day I will be able to introduce myself as “Doctor”. It seems, however, that it will take me a little bit longer than I intended provided my luck doesn’t run out first (will be explained a little bit later).

I failed my Anatomy midterm two weeks ago. The exam was incredibly difficult, my colleagues will corroborate that statement, but what happened to me was more of a psychological thing. I’d made Anatomy such a monster in my own head, got bogged down in the sheer volume of details that we were expected to have committed to memory, that when I sat for the exam I went into a “flat spin”. I couldn’t think straight and frankly I was having a panic attack in the middle of the exam hall. When you’re in the trenches, though, the only thing you can do is grit your teeth and power through as best as possible. I tried as best as I could, to no avail.

There was that and there was also the fact that my now ex-girlfriend decided to call it quits. “I can’t handle this distance, and you can’t expect me to wait for you and not have any idea where this is going” is what she told me. A three year relationship flushed down the tubes in the amount of time it took her to say that sentence.

Talk about a double-whammy. I was a wreck for quite a while… I can’t even remember how long. Thank God for my colleagues, though. They helped me out of it.

All problem are, however, solvable. I entered the IAP program (affectionately known as “decelling”) wherein next term I will be taking only anatomy. Technically there is still no guarantee that I will pass the class but given that it’s the only class I’ll be taking the odds are heavily in my favor to have my way with this beast. The only problem I foresee is that my colleagues will all be ahead in Term 2 classes while I’ll be stuck in Term 1, but it’s a small sacrifice to make to ensure my dream does not die.

And most recently, a certain someone has made things more… enjoyable… shall we say. That is all I’m saying about that.

Note: Entry written at three different points in time over the same night, so I apologize if it’s vague and disjointed.

I never thought I’d go this far, without a star to cross the seas…

… So far from shores I left behind, still far from shores I’ve yet to reach… (VNV Nation, Homeward)

Tonight is a very good night. A little beer+ some jazz music + noise-cancelling headphones = zen… which is funny, because this morning was hairy, by comparison. We had our anatomy final this morning, and it was nothing like any of us were expecting. For those who don’t know, our anatomy course was divided into halves (pre- and post- midterm) and each half was divided in two again by a quiz. The first post-midterm half (up until the second quiz) covered the digestive and genitourinary systems, while the second post-midterm half covered the brain, CNS, PNS, ANS, and spinal cord. One of my CFP-mates asked the course director what the final exam would be weighted more heavily towards and the course director told him that the final would consist of mostly neuroanatomy and would test very little of the pre-quiz-2 material. In the course director’s words “It’ll be something of a 90-10 split between neuroanatomy and pre-quiz-2 material.”

Such was not the case. The exam was more like 60% neuroanatomy and 40% pre-quiz-2 material, which knocked a lot people (myself included) for a loop. I swear that if I end up not making the cut because of this one final I’m going to flip. It means, therefore, that I must work extremely hard these next few days and ensure that the rest of my finals go well so as to offset a possible bad final grade (I’ve been trying to convince myself all night that I did OK, but that remains to be seen).

The remainder of our final exam period goes like this: next Wednesday is Biochemistry, next Thursday is Abnormal Psychology, and next Friday is Physiology. Biochem and Physio are the two exams that I’m worried about because it’s a lot of detail-rich material. I’m not so worried about Ab Psych because the professor for Ab Psych is a saint and makes sure that we understand everything (plus, it was a component of my major in college so I’ve got a soft spot for it in my heart). And the following Monday, the 9th, is the PMSCE, which is SGU’s home-cooked version of the MCAT (AKA a cumulative exam). I have a problem with the fact that passing this damn thing is a requirement, because those of us in CFP have already taken the MCAT to get here so I feel like it’s a sucker punch to make us prove ourselves again. I hear from former CFP-ers that the PMSCE is a “joke”…. and I’m not sure if I believe them.

In spite of all this hullabaloo surrounding exams and my impending departure from the island (I joked with a friend earlier today that I’ll shed tears of joy when I see the door of that Caribbean Airlines airplane) I’ve still found time to enjoy the small things. For instance, SGU has recently acquired several brand new shuttle buses. This is great because the suspensions on the old buses suck whereas the new ones have a really smooth ride. Being on one of the new ones is a treat (no joke, being on this rock for so long has made something as trivial as a new bus a major event), although for the life of me I can’t understand why they only have three of them…

And I’d also like to say that I feel for some of my professors. The professor teaching us biochem, though he wasn’t with us for part of the semester, got a little bit emotional in his “farewell” speech. Granted we’ll see him again in first term but if I was in his shoes I’d get a little bit emotional too.

I don’t know about you, but I love rambling entries where I’m just talking about whatever is on my mind. It’s therapeutic.

Image courtesy of http://193.105.21.101/image?id=5014&hsearch=sailship

Success!

My anatomy grade was finally posted today. I got an A on the exam!

This means I’m still in the game. As my anatomy prof put it: “Keep your head on straight and you’ll get your white coat.”

Duly noted.