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EgoViri
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Gender: Male
Interests: Medicine, medicine, and medicine. I have no time for anything else. Oh, and cooking. And my coffeemaker. I honestly feel that my coffeemaker is my most valuable possession.
Expertise: Nothing... yet. Gimme 4 years. Then watch as I rock your world.
Occupation: Medical
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/6/2003
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| Sweet. I just registered a new domain name. I'll be moving
there soon (probably after finals... or sooner if I get really antsy).
www.agraphia.net
bookmark it. You know you want to. This will be the
last entry on this site. I'll miss you Xanga (except not really,
because frankly I never liked Xanga). Oh, and currently
agraphia.net redirects to Xanga, so go ahead and just update your
bookmark if you've got one. It'll be a seamless transition, no
matter what host I end up using!
*edit* I just backed this entire Xanga up to word... 43 pages of Zac's ranty goodness. Nice.
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| You know, I'm reading through some other med student/medical blog sites
(www.lingualnerve.com being the one that convinced me it was a good
idea to start writing in the first place) and it's funny, there are
some consistent themes.
Endless studying. You'll never know what it's like to be
here. Difficult. No time for friends. No time for
family. Eating badly. Not enough sleep. Not enough
exercise. Swamped. No time to go to class.
Then, I look at doctor blogs. One entry that stands out in
particular from Lingual Nerve is spacefan's recent entry, where she
(the older, wiser doctor) laughs at the idealistic premeds (i.e. me a
year ago) for actually wanting to help people. Bitter.
Cynical.
Anyway. I see a lot of what I've been writing about
mirrored in other people's writings. I know I've been focusing on
the burnout, and the difficulties. I'm not really sure why,
either. Day in, day out, I'm totally happy to be here. I
love studying. I love the material. I learn something
(many things!) daily that amaze me. That being said, when I come
home at 11, I'm tired, and that
is when this blog gets updated. I'll try to remind myself to post
positives here. Frankly, I'm surprised I don't more often.
So, I guess this is my pre-finals apology to myself, and to my readers
(whoever you may be... drop me an email sometime if you care!) for
sounding as negative as I do. Maybe subconsciously I'm looking
for sympathy, or acceptance, or appreciation. I hope that's not
why I'm writing all this. I'd like to think it's because there is
an awful lot of introspection and constant new new new that's being
thrown at me, and I need an outlet.
By the way. I got to practice laparoscopic surgery on the ASTEC
simulator (UA has an incredible surgery simulation suite, including a
full out patient model with pulses, full bladders (that's right, I put
in a Foley Catheter, wincing all the while) blood supply, full windpipe
(with constricting vocal cords
so you might need to do an emergency cricothyroidotomy in case the tube
fails!) and full eye movements including pupillary dilation and
constriction). It... was awesome.
And, laparoscopic surgery is kind of like video games. Which is
sweet. And with my past history of constant video gaming
action... well, lets just say I'm not ruling anything out.
Anywho, that's what I've got to say for right now. I feel pretty
confident going into my exams, I've still got 4 days to study anything
I missed, and frankly, I love where I am in my life. Note to
self. Be positive in entries... because I always am during most
of the day.
Oh. Quick note on the "no time for class" thing I mentioned
above. Several of my colleagues (first time I've ever used THAT
word) have just blatantly stopped going to class. They feel so
overwhelmed by the amount of material to learn that they just... stop
going. Class isn't the "best use of your time" because you can
get more done in an hour of studying than an hour of lecture. I,
personally, think that sucks. Class for me is social. 8-3
class on Wednesdays means a 10-minute break at 9,10,11, and 2, plus an
hour and 10 minute lunch. That's roughly 2 solid hours of time I
get to spend with my friends. Don't really know where I'm going
with this other than to say to you, my long-lost classmates: I
miss you. Come back to us. We're a rather fun bunch if you
just spent the time to hang out with us. Books can be lonely by
themselves.
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| Its a gift and a curse, really. I can sleep for 15 minutes and
then be totally refreshed... makes studying & midday naps
amazing. Sucks when it's 1AM and I just woke up. Now
I know I won't be sleeping again until the wee hours of the morning.
Time for some anatomy video review. Fun! This skill will come in handy for rotations and call.
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| Well, yet again I'm burnt out. This time it's only been really
for the past day and a half, but the super-long 8-hour study session
marathons for 2 weeks have taken their toll. Exams are next week,
and I'm sitting here, doing laundry, chatting on IM, thinking that
maybe now would be a good time to fire up the (now dusty) PS2. I
miss video games.
I'm sure I'll do fine, but frankly it's just really, really hard to
keep struggling uphill through all of this. It's the pressure of
it, too... the pressure to perform. I mean, I'll be blatantly
honest. At this point, I'm not going to fail any of my
classes. I know several of my classmates for whom that's a
concern, and I'm grateful it's not me. Still and all, now there's
a second question. Can I honor? And does it matter?
Honoring is only important if you want to get into competitive
residencies.
I suppose I'm starting to think that it does. I know myself, and
I know that I like fun toys, and really difficult things, and
procedural stuff. That means the more competitive residencies,
whether it be laparoscopic surgery, or ER, or what. I highly
doubt I'll be a GP. It's too sedentary, in a way. That
being said, GPs are the gatekeepers, and need to keep all of their
medicine so that they can correctly funnel people's issues to the right
specialists. I'm definitely not trying to knock on GPs.
One of the 4th years I've talked to said that you find out eventually
if you have a medical or a surgical mind. Medical minds like to
sit around and think about the problem for long periods of time.
They mull over differential diagnoses. They, in an ER setting,
will pull up a patient's past history and peruse it before entering the
room. They are the kind of people who go on to be neurologists,
GPs, and shrinks. Surgical minds, on the other hand, want
answers. They like results, and quick fixes, and decisions.
They (obviously) tend to be surgeons, and ER docs, and
radiologists. They are the ER doc who walks into the room and
instinctively knows if someone is sick or faking (interestingly enough,
apparently there is some level of secondary cues that you can learn to
pick up on- acidosis, ketosis, jaundice, etc that are not normal in
healthy people).
I don't really know where I fall. I do know that sitting around
in small groups and not getting anywhere for an hour on a case kills
me. I also know that I really enjoy getting the answer
"right". Wait-and-see doesn't really appeal to me (a few entries
ago, the example of the woman with the ulcers is a perfect example).
Eh. I'm procrastinating. I should be working, so that I can
get honors, so I can go on to be a cardiovascular surgeon making
$600,000 a year with a huge house, fast cars, and 3 divorced trophy
wives I pay alimony to.
Sarcasm, of course. I guess, though, I've always been the kind of
person who likes to keep all my doors open. Keeping doors open
means honoring. Honoring means kicking my ass for the next 2
weeks, drinking 5 sodas and coffee every day, sleeping poorly, and
grunting through it.
On the blackboard outside our classroom somebody wrote "It's hard to see the forest... because the trees are in the way".
Someone else wrote in reply "...but the trees are so beautiful!"
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| I know I haven't been updating very much (or at all, depending on how
you want to look at it), but finals are coming up and I'm definitely
stepping it up a notch in terms of studying. I don't want to hit
the same hellish 5-days-before-midterms-oh-my-god rut that I was in a
couple months ago, so I've been pretty consistantly studying for 6-7
hours a day for the past week and a half or so. I don't know how
I would last in med school if I didn't enjoy studying this stuff.
Anyway, I just went to a really awesome ER medicine talk. The guy
gave a very honest presentation of ER medicine... the good, the bad,
the ugly. And there is a lot of each. I guess I'm finding
that to be true for most specialties (want to go through 2 years of
residency, work for 40 hours a week and have no stress? Fine, but
you'll be a GP and make almost nothing. Want to be hitting a half
mil? Neurosurgery may be for you... but you'll wake up at 5AM and
get home to the family at 7 every night... plus call).
There were a couple interesting things about this talk though.
First off, even though he was presenting ER with all its warts, it
still sounds fun as hell. One of the things I'd hate is to lose
all of my medicine (I mean, right now I know all my anatomy. What
happens if you become an opthamologist and focus on the eye?
That's right... you forget almost everything you knew about the rest of
the body). Obviously ER doctors are generalists in some
respect... they see everything, and they see a lot MORE of everything
than GPs do. Also, I know I've got kooky sleep schedules
already... I mean, I stay up until 8AM playing Starcraft with TJ (not
often, mind you, but it does happen from time to time) and of course,
ER docs take shiftwork at all times of the day.
'Course, you have to tell more people that family members have died
than any other specialty. And, you then have to put on your game
face because you have 20 other patients waiting to be seen. And
patients wait for 6 hours to see you, and you bill for a visit and then
receive $.14 on the dollar.
*edit* So I wrote this a couple
days ago and didn't post it, thinking I'd add more. Nope.
Not gonna happen. Studying too much. Catch you after finals.
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