A Productive Day (for once)

I got off to a late start today, but I did get through quite a bit of hematology. And got a 45 minute walk in while doing it, so points for me exercising.

Plan for tomorrow: finish off hematology, start to tackle pharm (ackkk!!! I'm HORRIBLE at pharm....oh well, gotta start some time)

But now that I'm back in civilization, I'm going to reward myself for studying with super-yummy Steak 'n Shake.

Jesse's Boards Plan

So here's my equation for boards, we'll see how it works out.

Great success!

And Qbank, but there's no good pic of that. How lame.

Sidenote: while searching around for pics, I came across this blog: Mike's High Yield Blog forW the USMLE Step 1. What do you think? Discuss amongst yourselves.)

Signs I am spending entirely TOO much time online

So my favorite mommy blogger, dooce, just friended me on twitter. Convo with Michelle:

Michelle: yay! dooce made us her friend!

she is appearing on our twitter
Jesse: AWESOME!!!! i am officially FRIENDS with dooce!!!

i feel like i'm friends with like john lennon or something

I really should be studying surgery right now, but god nutrition is SO boring....SO boring......

Studying renal....

Convo with Katie at 2am, putting together a study-guide for the internal med test tomorrow morning:

me: primary glomerulonephritis is done

Katie: you are my sunshine

my only sunshine

you make me happy

when skies are gray

me: lol you're on fire tonight

Katie: I've lost my damn mind

National Geographic Wild: Med School Safari

My surgery group had to do a presentation today in front of the class, and then get pimped by the surgeon afterwards. Since we haven't done much of this, our whole group was a little stressed out before the presentation, so we were meeting to go over our facts. (About a disease we've never seen and surgical procedures we've never heard about before....talk about the blind leading the blind.)

Some of the other groups presented on Monday, and the people who were there (not me, I was at home sleeping) were talking about how the presentations went. I guess in one of the groups, midway through the presentation, one person walked away from their group and went and stood all by themselves on the other side of the room. That person ended up apparently getting grilled with questions at the end of the presentation.

A guy in our group brought up the fact that that's the way to get singled out, separate yourself from the group. "It's like National Geographic, separate the weak ones from the tribe, then attack!"

A particularly hilarious girl in my group (who I should get to guest post here) said, "Yep, it's just like that. Look over there! A zebra in the quicksand!"

All Scrubbed Up: Medical Video Art?

All Scrubbed Up: Medical Video Art?

Crawling the med blogs, I found this. Very cool, looks like House animation, except accurate :)

Videos like this would have made the first couple years of med school much easier to understand. And there's the trippy music in the background.

When Med Students Attack

At least it hasn't gotten this bad over here yet.....

Medical Student Tries to Attack Family with Meat Cleaver
(from CBS6Albany.com)

January 19, 2007 - 11:15PM

Members of an Albany family say they don't feel safe in their own home after a man came to their door, forced his way into the house and tried to attack them with a meat cleaver. Mary and Keith Ziobron say a man, came to their house on Monday night. Mary answered the door, and said a man she didn't know was mumbling that he was a "mad man" and said he wanted to go upstairs to her bedroom. Mary says she told the man to leave and tried to shut the door, but he forced his way in. Keith Ziobron was able to get the man, Quan Zhi Hou out of the house, and no one was hurt. But, the Ziobron's say their children have been having nightmares ever since that night. Amazingly, the Ziobron's tell us they have since found out that Quan Zhi Hou is a student at Albany Med and that the college is going to bat for him to get him out of jail. Zhi Hou is there now charged with menacing and possession of a weapon. He is due back in court next week. The Ziobron's say no matter who he is, they're worried if he makes bail, he'll try to attack someone else.

The answer is B. Man Juice

Remember Love Line? With Dr Drew? Yeah, you know you remember watching it in high school when it was on MTV, don't lie.


I found a radio station that's playing it, and here's the quick convo update with Katie:

10:49 PM me: quote from dr drew radio show i'm half listening to:

"so i think I'm allergic to....

"my boyfriend's....

.....

(giggle)

10:50 PM man juice"

Katie: lol

that seems like an allergic reaction that would not leave me giggling

me: esp to man juice

thats the medical term

10:51 PM Katie: right, I'll have to memorize that for boards

Type B-ness in the Clinical Setting

Poster: Jesse

So my HPS with Stan the human patient stimulator…fuck, no, simulator… encounter was so good today that I thought it deserved a posting.

We always have no idea what we’re doing in these things. Standing around outside, waiting for them to take us back, one guy, let’s call him Todd for now, Todd starts talking about how awesome it is that we never have an OTM lab again, and now he can rejoice in the fact that OTM doesn’t matter anyway. I tell him I’m going to report him to the OTM police. Female student number 2 shows up, we’ll call her, um, Lucy. Todd pounces on her, because she has brought her reflex hammer to the HPS encounter. And while Stan has a lot of things, he doesn’t have reflexes.

I chime in about how I brought my Bakerman’s, the little blue book with all the lab values in it, because I’m sick and tired of them giving us a patient’s chart and it meaning absolutely nothing to me because I haven’t memorized a million different normals. David, the course coordinator, and an awesome person, coughs under his breath “BS”. He clarifies that whenever a student goes in a starts racking off what they interpret normals as, more likely than not, it’s BS. This makes me in my type-B-ness feel a little better, because I just thought I was the only stupid one not to know the values, turns out I’m just the only one with balls enough to admit I don’t know the values.

Then Todd starts calling Stan a robot, which is a major no-no (They’re patients, not mannequins). First year it would have gotten you asked to leave. But I guess Todd is man enough now and is so ridiculously cocky that they put up with it and ignore it. He then asks David if we get to kill the robot today. David says no, but he’s now questioning Todd’s career choice.

Anyway, they get ready for us to all go in to the room. I’m thinking “fuck, somehow I was the first one to walk in to the room, now I’m going to have to act like I know what I’m doing.” I’m going to spare you the details of the exact case, no one who isn’t a med student really cares and I probably don’t remember enough of it to write it all down. But it is at this point that our true med student-ness starts coming out.

The doctor running the case is a hypertension-nephrologist specialist. Kind of like a person who specializes in using a salad fork, but only when its warm outside, a little too specific. He starts asking a bunch of questions, and everyone’s trying as hard as they can to get a word in, so they won’t have to answer something we have no idea about. Todd tries to answer everything, he eventually ends up being told to be quiet, some of the other students might actually have a clue too. I get excited when I get one (”What’s the best way to evaluate his renal functioning?” “BUN/Cr”), but like most of these labs are, I get pissed off because I know the answers to far more of them than I answer, I just don’t trust myself enough to say it quickly enough.

Dr. asks a question about what would cause a 20 year old to have elevated upper extremity pulses, but normal to low lower extremity. At this point, random Indian boy chimes in. Random because I have been in class with him for almost 2 years and have no idea what his name is. And have probably never heard him talk before this either. “Renal artery stenosis?” random Indian boy says. Major mistake, never answer a question with a question mark at the end of your statement. Dr gives him a slightly weird look. “No” Oh well, good try random Indian boy. The correct answer was aortic coarctation, which I of course thought of but wasn’t brave enough to say out loud.

Dr goes on to ask what would cause the same symptoms, but in a 70 year old. Random Indian boy uses a classic med student strategy, that his answer has to be right sooner or later, and this doctor is a nephrologist after all. “Renal stenosis.” Dr gives him a total wtf-who-are-you look. “No….why would you think that? Anyone else?” Random Indian boy says nothing else for the rest of the 45 minute lab. Todd gets the answer, aortic dissection. I almost start laughing because I think of Michelle saying “aortic dick-suction.”

Todd recommends we do an opthalmic exam, and of course that is exactly the correct answer. They put up a picture of what it would look like, and I want to punch Todd because he shouts out “papilledema” before I get a chance to. But then, Dr asks why papilledema, and I am the quickest to say “because the margins of the optic disc are blurred,” trying as hard as I can to sound confident and like that is the most obvious answer in the world. I get a very approving nod and repeat of my answer by the Dr. Take that Todd.

A little later on, we start talking drugs. I am a drug retard. I’m offering absolutely nothing to this conversation, except repeating other people’s answers and trying to act like I knew if to begin with. “Oh yeah, alpha 1 antagonist” etc. I’m almost afraid that I’ll look like the worst person in our group, but then I remember random Indian boy, who is now basically hiding in a corner behind me.

We leave the room and Todd complains about how we didn’t get to kill the patient.