My Personal Hell, Otherwise known as Step 1 of the uSMLE

I can so relate to the person in this picture.

There are Part !'s of blogs that anxiously await Part 2's,   other blogs in their inception that await further development, laundry that needs to be done, meals that are uneaten, and pianos that sit idly,just waiting to be played. Meanwhile, I study, study more, and study even more. i put in a 36-hour studying marathon, followed by a four-hour snooze.  I  just arose from the 4-hour snooze, still somewhat dazed and vaguely migraine-addled.  I'm sitting in a recliner while staring across the room at my study materials.  A part of me wants to pick them up and to resume my studies. Another more compelling part of my consciousness wants to shower and then to devour half of the kitchen's contents. A  third part of me wants to vegetate until it grows dark, and then to hit every party scene within ten miles of here. Where I am right now, one doesn't necessarily have to wait until it is dark to find a party in full swing, but I'm not sure those are the parties of which I would choose to be a part.

I've taken my second and final practice  test for Part 1 of the USMLE.  On both of them I've done well, but I will not be lulled into a false sense of security by having aced a practice exam. (It's like those practice items on the yearly tests we took in elementary school, mainly to ensure that little kids no how to bubble with their no. 2 pencils inside the designated spaces; anyone who actually missed one of those practice questions was up a creek once the actual test began.) We've all been warned that the point of USMLE practice tests is to familiarize ourselves with the format and the setting of the test. The tests might just as well have been asking about the plot and characters of "The Walking Dead" as about medical content. The word on the street is that the content of questions on the practice tests is just about THAT relevant.

In a relatively short time, I'll report to a testing center somewhere in California (probably north or south) to take this test. i'll be searched almost as extensively as though I were entering a maximum security prison. I'll spend eight or so hours scouring my brain for everything i've ever learned and some things that I have not. I'll leave with a vague idea of how many questions were so foreign to me that I had little choice but to mark "C" and hope for the best, but otherwise, the scores will not arrive for at least three weeks, but probably longer. (My test may be scrutinized for longer than most because  of the number of relatives who have taken the test before me. Matthew will have taken the test three days before I do, but he will then embark on a three-day backpacking trip; I wouldn't have the opportunity to benefit from his knowledge even were I unethical enough to desire to do so.

I've done just about everything that I reasonably could have done.. I've taken two prep courses. I've taken advantage of online tutorials. I've studied with groups. I've been quizzed ad nauseum by MDs in the family. God knows that I've studied independently as much as is humanly possible, taking into account that sleep, eating, and hygiene practices must happen at least on occasion. If i'm not adequately prepared by the time the test comes around, I probably was not meant for this field.

Th evening following the test, I plan to attend a party hosted by one of my cohort mates.  i have a designated driver, so I may drink more than my customary half-bottle of Guinness.  I'll celebrate having passed through this milestone even if I didn't technically receive notification of having "passed."  I expect to pass in a technical sense. The big question is whether or not my scores will be sufficiently high to grant me choice internship and residency placement opportunities. The joke, though, may be on me. Time alone will tell.

Jesus Wants Me for a Zombie

I probably should be studying rather than posting, but as far as studying goes, there comes a time when either enough is enough or it is time to find a new course of study, I'm hoping that enough truly is enough where my studying is concerned, as I really don't want to find another course of study.

Tonight I studied independently. I did run a few things by my brother, and I consulted with my pal just around the corner from me who is an intern. I think I've committed to memory everything I can memorize up to this point. I've even memorized a few things I don't fully understand because they haven't come up yet in lecture.  I assume that it will all come together for me when it's discussed in lecture, or maybe even before. One other time I memorized a huge section of text that I didn't understand. Two nights later I had a dream about it, and then it was all perfectly clear. As I see it, my dreams work against me more often than they should, so if a dream works in my favor once in a great while, It's only fair. The only problem with dreaming about text that I've memorized is that I wake up not rested in the least. When one spends her sleeping hours working out the vagaries of medical science, one cannot expect to get quality sleep.

Midterms are coming up next week. I'll also be able to run next week. Running should help me burn off nervous energy related to midterms. i don't actually have that much nervous energy related to midterms, though. I just want to run. Testing is less work for me than lecture. with lecture, I always worry about whether or not I missed anything. /with tests, its simply a matter or regurgitating what is known and synthesizing a bit from what has been learned. It's actually much less stressful than dealing with lecture. not everyone agrees with me about this, but it's my personal philosophy and I'm sticking to it.

It's so nice to slip into a bathtub r shower without the hassle of triple-wrapping my leg in garbage bags. I'm still using my handicapped placard because I cannot yet ride my bike, and if I park in general parking, I'll be handicapped by the time I walk the distance from the outer limits of student parking to the medical science building. If it matters. my orthopedist told me to continue to use the placard until next week. At that point, I'll send it back. I'm not a total reprobate.

In just over another month, final exams will be well underway. Then shortly thereafter, my final summer vacation as I've come to know it will have begun. Maybe I should have gone to law school. I would have had one more summer vacation had I chosen law as a course of study. C'est la vie. If I earn enough money, I can eventually afford to take two to three months off every year if that's what I really want to do. It's those next few years of getting to that point that are likely to kill me before I get there, though.  

It's alive!

Surgeons aren't necessarily pleased when their victims survive surgery in all cases.

I survived the surgery, as you may have heard if you read my twin brother Matthew's update. As far as that rainbow and pot of gold nonsense is concerned, I think they're all making every bit of it up. I don't remember one single thing about seeing any rainbows on the walls, ceiling, or anywhere else.

Regarding the rest of Matthew's post, it was most sweet and touching, and in it he revealed feelings I didn't know he had. We had our times growing up together as has probably every set of siblings since the time of Cain and Abel, but I think we've emerged from the typical childhood sibling rivalries relatively unscathed. If we're lucky enough to end up with spouses who get along with each of us and with each other, we'll be home free.

My dad is going home in the morning. If I'm able, I will move back into my upstairs bedroom. It may be up a flight of stairs, and it may be technically not quite as nice as the downstairs master suite in which I'm presently staying, but it's my room even though it's still a bit sparse and sterile and not very homey. My aunt has agreed to come and decorate it the first chance she gets, which she believes will be at some point in mid-March.

I "skyped" class today, though I ended up sleeping through most of Human Health and Disease and Immunology.  I managed to remain awake for Neurobiology. Sleeping through the earlier two classes wasn't a problem because I recorded them and went over them, and the material wasn't new to me anyway, although the professors may have taken my inability to remain awake personally. I  sat in on a few lectures on some of this quarter's classes last quarter when I had unexpected breaks, so I got a bit of a jump start on the curriculum.

Tomorrow  I will actually attend classes in the flesh. It's a shorter day - ending at 3:00 or so,  and one of the classes is "Practice of Medicine." In the practicum portion I'll probably just be observing or possibly answering the odd question or two, as I don't think the Powers That Be want to have me on my feet prodding fake patients on fake examination tables. I might fall on one of the patients and injure him or her, and then Berkeley Rep would either sue us, charge us more for their "actors' " services, or cancel their contract with us.

I haven't been able to figure out how the actors are being compensated. Surely they're not showing up on an almost daily basis to feign injury or illness out of the goodness of their hearts. It's not as though they're getting any real drugs out of the deal. I don't know if each one is paid union scale wages per hour, or of the theatre company itself is paid, or if the actors get free medical care when needed (none of them look like people who actually have medical insurance from any other source) for showing up and pretending to be fake patients at our clinic. 

I'm actually going to buy a ticket and attend one of their productions when I find out that one of our frequent flyer fake patients has a prominent role in the production. I'm going to sit somewhere very close to the front of the theatre so that the actors on the stage can see me clearly, and I intend to do everything in my power to get them to break character and laugh just as I successfully do every time I "diagnose" one of them with their pretend illnesses or injuries in "Practice of Medicine" class. It's a gift I have, apparently. God knows I'm no actress, but I can make real actors and actresses, if that's what you would call these people showing up in our fake ER and clinic, lose the ability to themselves act, if they ever indeed possessed the anility in the first place. The skills of a few of them I find a bit dubious, and wonder just how they conduct themselves on stage.

I could, in theory, drive myself to class tomorrow, as it's my left foot that has the fractures and cast, but I'm going to ride with my brother to class tomorrow  since our schedules are identical.  Despite the collective amount of time I've spent on crutches, I still feel shaky on them. I'm just as happy to have someone accompanying me from the car to the buildings and back. 

I'll spend the weekend ensuring that I didn't miss anything or fall behind. The quiet guy whose parents are from India and are doctors  -- my new, or former, running buddy; I won't be doing a whole lot of running for awhile  -- is coming over Saturday morning to study with me. He's staying to watch college basketball with Matthew and some other guys in the afternoon. 

I like seeing that my new running buddy is capable of socializing even though he's quiet. He reminds me somewhat of a young version of Dr. Kutner -- the Indian-American doctor from House who offed himself. In the TV series, it ended up after the fact that even though they all worked side by side almost every day, none of the other characters really knew Kutner. They thought they knew him, but there was a great deal to his life and to himself about which they had absolutely no clue.  Just because my new friend physically resembles and shares an ethnicity with a TV character who committed suicide is no reason for me to suspect he's at risk of offing himself, but just the same, I feel better about things if I think he has friends in our cohort.

Kal Penn, talented actor and underrated human being who happens to resemble my running buddy

Incidentally, Kal Penn, who portrayed Dr. Kutner, also played the part of   Kumar in  Harold and Kumar  movie series. His undergraduate degrees were in both theatre and sociology, and he has worked in the Obama administration as, among other positions,  Associate Director of Public Engagement. He's been a visiting professor for the University of Pennsylvania. I don't know if he's completed his program or is still working on it or has put the project on hold, but he was studying for some sort of certification in International Security at a university very near the place where I study. Perhaps I'll run into him (not literally, I hope, as he's larger than I, and I'd surely wind up on the losing end of the collision and end up with more fractured bones) some day when I venture over to the main campus. Or, more interestingly, perhaps my classmate and friend will run into him. It would be interesting if they noticed the resemblance between one another.

On Sunday both of my study groups plus Matthew's are meeting together for a session, then watching a movie together.  A bit of frivolity, or even alleged frivolity, is a necessity at times whether or not one actually enjoys it. Fortunately for me, the cleaning service will come on Monday.

Jared is visiting next weekend.

One of my professors allegedly covered one of my pet peeves while I was out. This is a mistake that might [barely] understandably have been made by a lay person, particularly one with extremely limited knowledge --  of medical terminology, as in the sort of person who might think a scapula is something you use to flip pancakes. Not everyone without a medical background would know that a scapula is one of two bones that form the back portion of the shoulders, but most intelligent people, when confronted with the term, would, if it was important, look it up rather than assuming it was synonymous with spatula.

Anyway, one of my less astute classmates asked a professor of my "Practice of Medicine" if my foot or leg had been broken or merely fractured. "Exactly what do you think a fracture is?"  the professor queried the student, who was not, incidentally, Bimbo of of the recent kleptomania/hemophilia confusion fame.

"A fracture is a crack, " the student answered with [misplaced]  confidence.

"No," the professor corrected the errant student. "A fracture is a break of the bone. A cracked bone is frequently referred to as a hairline fracture. A fracture, however, is a break."  The professor went on to review last quarter's Human Anatomy I curriculum, differentiating the types of fractures, much to the pococurantism [translation: tedium; lack of interest] of the rest of the class. 

I hope the cohort blamed the slacker and not me for the less than pertinent lecture, as I know that a fractured bone is not necessarily synonymous with a cracked one.  When one starts to add up just how much we're paying for our medical school educations, then one does the arithmetic to calculate the financial output on our parts for a mere three-minute digression in instructional time, one starts to resent those digressions just a bit. We could be learning something during that time, dammit! 

The only exception to that is if the digression is truly funny, in which case it is forgiven and is considered a necessary part of medical education. Without humor, what is medical school, or what is life, even, when you really get right down to it?

one of those things, along with running, that I took for granted but am not going to be doing much of in the immediate future

All practicing and no play makes Alexis even duller than she normally is.

two friends -- though not Megan and I --- studying

I'm practicing too much. One can do too much of a good thing to the extent that the practice is counterproductive and one's skill level is either going nowhere or backwards.

My friend Megan doesn't have any classes tomorrow, so I'm visiting her about an hour away for the day. We'll just do fun things, and I'll help her with one paper she thinks is going to be difficult. I get a charge out of doing things like that. I'm not going to actually author the paper for her, but I'll give her  good start, a good finish, and an outline for her middle paragraphs. I'll help her brush up a bit on calculus as well.  It never came as easily to her as it did to me in high school.  She's no dummy, but calculus can be complicated, and I'll be available a needed to tutor her.

On Friday I'll be back to practicing, since I have my final six hours of lab internship this weekend and will only get in a bit of violin and piano practice. My aunt and uncle don't care if I practice during waking hours.

I have my first class a week from today, but then I have Friday off, just like I have every Friday off unless I need to meet with a piano or violin professor.

I'm getting a new piano professor. My old one was over-booked, so I volunteered to be one of the ones to switch. My mom is taking much of her clientele, but there's an obvious conflict of interest in my mom being my piano professor. My old professor didn't like me all that much and wasn't looking out for my best interests anyway, so I think it's best for everyone this way. She was the one who wanted me to switch my recital at the last minute to early September. Had I been given three months notice I might have considered it, but I wasn't the one who was so over-confident as to schedule my recital for early September.  They guy couldn't find anyone to trade, so he didn't get his deposit on the hall refunded, but he found an open date in November for his recital. It's like a Wednesday night, which isn't optimal, but he was lucky to get any date at all. His recital will be the Wednesday night before mine on the following Sunday. I think I'm actually glad to follow him as opposed to having him follow me. I'm reasonably certain I have the last date that is allowed. (I could have also done my recital the following quarter, but I'm glad I'm getting it out of the way this quarter, and I'm also happy to have the final piano recital of the quarter.) It's sort of like being the final skater in a competition even though we're in theory not competing with each other in our recitals.

This blog is ended. Go now in peace to love and serve the Lord and to help your friends with homework but not actually to do it for them. There is a difference, and most of us know what it is.