As I'm writing this, it is quite overcast and there is a flurry of snow breezing past my window, so it is finally starting to look like winter here in unseasonably warm Colorado. About this time last year, I was taking a sailing class in St. Petersburg, Florida. I had a most enjoyable time - if I could make a living of it, sailing would be a strong contender against surgery. Shortly after returning home, I got a scare at the dentist when I went in for a standard check-up. After several visits with that dentist and a periodontist, I was told I have gingivitis and need to get tooth cleanings every three months, get deep cleanings (read: elective torture), and possibly get surgery to graft bone onto my jaw around my tooth sockets. All very unsettling, but after the initial shock wore off, life resumed and my latest appointment was yesterday, seven months after my last cleaning (they weren't happy about the four-month delay). Still doom and gloom on the dental front and I'm going to need a mouth guard at night since I have cracks in my teeth from grinding them.
I started my last lecture-based semester in mid-January and also started going out with one of the librarians at school. She was my first girlfriend and we dated for two months before I decided we weren't as compatible as I had thought, plus I couldn't really handle a relationship being thrown into the med school mix. In some ways, I wish we hadn't started going out to begin with; it throws a twist into the overall flow of my life, but you don't get as much out of life by keeping on the same boring track, and I'm glad for the experience. Regarding the academic aspect of the beginning of the semester, I came across this line I wrote only four days after the semester started: "while starting well, [this semester] has already turned into another sleep-deprived exercise in deciding how best to manage falling behind." I'd say that typifies the med school experience, even now that I'm doing rotations. There is still a lot to read and study. It is more enjoyable getting to work in the "real world" while simultaneously being more stressful since your attending holds you accountable to rigorous daily studying.
The rest of Spring semester was the typical med school roller coaster and ended with a review course for our first board exam. I took both the mandatory DO exam and the MD exam a week apart from each other, which made for a stressful week (more detail on these exams is in the third and fourth paragraphs here). I ended up passing both of them, though, which was not the case for all of my classmates. While my scores fall in the "passing" range, they are not really in the "competitive" range, so I still have my work cut out if I want to keep my residency options open.
After boards, I went to Virginia to see a friend from college. I was glad to be able to catch up and see some sights around the area with him. They were having record high temperatures, which was miserable for a Coloradan, especially with the humidity. In a humorous twist, though, we got to cool off once at the end of our day at Colonial Williamsburg when it started raining in sheets as all the buildings were closing and we had to walk back to the car. It was a good trip overall, but I neglected to keep in mind my 1 to 1.5 week limit when staying in new places with people. By the end, I was a bit of a grump, which was an unfortunate end to the visit.
Third year started with a less than informative prep course for rotations before we actually hit the clinics. My first rotation was Family Medicine, and I was thrilled about it for several days. I have always known I don't want to do primary care, but being in the clinic was great. The novelty quickly wore off, but I still enjoy rotations more than the lecture-based years. I finished off August by doing my third annual Pikes Peak hike with a couple classmates. A brief description is in the fourth paragraph here, with pics at the bottom.
My subsequent rotations have been Cardiology, Family Medicine month 2, Psychiatry, and Internal Medicine. I have enjoyed Psychiatry the most so far. For one, it was focused on one aspect of medicine, and for another, I already had a decent conceptual understanding of psychiatric ailments. Plus, my attending gave me a good deal of responsibility and explained concepts well. This contrasts with Internal Medicine, which was three straight weeks of getting raked over the coals and shown how much I don't know. Thankfully, I was rotating with a classmate, so neither of us was stuck feeling incompetent alone, and our attending let us have this last week of December off.
I start General Surgery this Tuesday, and I'm excited to finally be getting to something more up my alley. I won't be learning many techniques and my main focus has to be all the medicine pertaining to the surgeries, but at least it's closer to my desired field than past rotations.
Have a great 2011! I'll post again at the end of January and hopefully sooner.
Scott
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