"It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown..."
The overture to Garrison Keillor's monologue in every Prairie Home Companion show, those words always make me so nostalgic. I often stumble upon the show when I've been driving for a long time, and the words themselves bring up memories of weekends as a child, many of which are foggy and unclear, but all accompanied with a feeling of being home. As I get closer and closer to adulthood - I'm not ready to admit I'm a full fledged grownup just yet - I feel home less and less. Therefore those words and the feelings I get from them grow stronger and stronger with time.
Back to the point, it's been a quiet "week" in Charlottesville, not my hometown... my life has become extremely un-blog-worthy. For instance, my last post about being sick; that was much less about drumming up sympathy and more the only interesting thing that's happened to me in weeks (PS I'm feeling much better now). Everything has just been more of the same: Class, Studying, Quizzes, and Weekends.
Class: I'll admit it to everyone right now. I am not attending class much anymore. Now don't freak out! I still attend all required small groups sessions, labs, and selected lectures that really help my understanding (ie anatomy). But I found that going to the lecture really isn't helping me; it's studying the lecture material that makes the difference. After a long day at class I just couldn't find the motivation to study anything! Thus I would lose a whole day by attending instead of studying.
Studying: This is the battle of my every day. If I'm not studying, I'm feeling guilty about not studying. If I'm studying, I'm trying hard to keep on task and not check my gmail, or the weather, or what's new on facebook, or all the blogs I monitor...anything but biochem!
Quizzes: Still the standard freak-out for me. I don't know why. They're worth a tiny percentage of my grade, yet they are my biggest source of anxiety (take home point on Anxiety: "Logic has nothing to do with it").
Weekends: My time away from school, mentally and often physically. This is often Katie-Mark time, so it's worth its weight in gold. This weekend she was here. We saw my anatomy professor play bass in a band (we 1st years took up the whole restaurant!), and went to the med school's Halloween Party dressed as Peter Pan and Tinkerbell (pictures to come). Honestly, that is about all we did this weekend. Other than that, we studied together alot, finished a 1,000 piece puzzle, and tried to find the only donut place in charlottesville (unsuccessful after 2+ hours). The beauty is that it doesn't matter what we do or don't do ... time with Katie = happy time.
So, this is why my blogging has faltered as of late, I guess. My life is currently not particularly interesting on paper. I mean, I could totally wow you with my understanding of cranial nerves and amino acid metabolism...but you don't want to hear that, I don't want to write that, and I'll probably get beat up at school just for mentioning it in my blog. One thing worth mentioning though...
Nov 17, 1pm = end of 1st semester and beginning of glorious 1 week thanksgiving break!!
Until then, it'll probably be more of the same as I struggle to find something interesting to talk about on "the online"
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Home ... Sick
The thermometer kept climbing, one point at a time, until I got my number: 101.4. I am officially out of commission and I'm really not sure how long it'll be like this.
I'm been feeling like crap for the past week, but I have also been self-treating with water, sleep, nyquill (helps with the sleep too) and ibuprofen. This arsenal has been my defense for years, all through college and beyond. I was even starting to feel better this weekend.
Then Monday came around. Between an anatomy lab snaffoo - the schedule said 3p lab, but it started at 2p! - the looming online quizzes this week, and the inevitability of an oral quiz during lab, I was beyond stressed out. Everybody kept telling me I looked ragged, I couldn't concentrate, and I again felt absolutely awful. I was convinced I only had a cold, and that my temperature spikes were related to the anxiety, so I pushed on, still self-medicating and doing my best to get my fluids and my sleep. My mom - a wonderful nurse - taught me those two cardinal rules.
Instead of waking up early for class on Tuesday, I slept in and went to study in the library. I drank 5 gatorade bottles of water at least, and peed almost on the hour. I was beating my "cold" - which now had mild lymph node swelling, feeling warm, and mucus running down my throat - and by the end of the day I felt quite well.
Today I felt worse than ever. My "nodes" were huge, and it burned like fire when I swallowed. During anatomy lab, we finally got oral quizzed, and I did okay. But about 2 hours into lab I was fading fast. I felt sicker and sicker, and since Megan told me during lab about people who were getting strep I was convinced that I had it. I left lab early to go to student health.
The people there were pleasant, and although the whole ordeal took hours, I walked out having received a thorough physical exam, lab tests for strep and mono (both negative), penicillin...just in case...and a bill for $10. Good thing I paid an arm and a leg for Student Health's preferred insrance.
So I'm sick. For real sick. I feel like I should study, but can't concentrate due to my ears ringing. I feel like I should sleep, but I'm not sleepy. So, I'm chilling out on the couch which a box of Wheat Thins and water bottle #3, or #4, since I got home 3 hours ago. I'm watching Family Guy DVDs, and almost having a good time being sick.
Anyway, I should wrap this up and...get back to my tv and wheat thins I guess. More postings later.
I'm been feeling like crap for the past week, but I have also been self-treating with water, sleep, nyquill (helps with the sleep too) and ibuprofen. This arsenal has been my defense for years, all through college and beyond. I was even starting to feel better this weekend.
Then Monday came around. Between an anatomy lab snaffoo - the schedule said 3p lab, but it started at 2p! - the looming online quizzes this week, and the inevitability of an oral quiz during lab, I was beyond stressed out. Everybody kept telling me I looked ragged, I couldn't concentrate, and I again felt absolutely awful. I was convinced I only had a cold, and that my temperature spikes were related to the anxiety, so I pushed on, still self-medicating and doing my best to get my fluids and my sleep. My mom - a wonderful nurse - taught me those two cardinal rules.
Instead of waking up early for class on Tuesday, I slept in and went to study in the library. I drank 5 gatorade bottles of water at least, and peed almost on the hour. I was beating my "cold" - which now had mild lymph node swelling, feeling warm, and mucus running down my throat - and by the end of the day I felt quite well.
Today I felt worse than ever. My "nodes" were huge, and it burned like fire when I swallowed. During anatomy lab, we finally got oral quizzed, and I did okay. But about 2 hours into lab I was fading fast. I felt sicker and sicker, and since Megan told me during lab about people who were getting strep I was convinced that I had it. I left lab early to go to student health.
The people there were pleasant, and although the whole ordeal took hours, I walked out having received a thorough physical exam, lab tests for strep and mono (both negative), penicillin...just in case...and a bill for $10. Good thing I paid an arm and a leg for Student Health's preferred insrance.
So I'm sick. For real sick. I feel like I should study, but can't concentrate due to my ears ringing. I feel like I should sleep, but I'm not sleepy. So, I'm chilling out on the couch which a box of Wheat Thins and water bottle #3, or #4, since I got home 3 hours ago. I'm watching Family Guy DVDs, and almost having a good time being sick.
Anyway, I should wrap this up and...get back to my tv and wheat thins I guess. More postings later.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
The Post I've Been Wanting to Write
I read in bed almost every night...not for my intelligence, rather because I have to give my mind something to do until I actually fall asleep. Otherwise, I just lay there thinking about the past day or about the upcoming day, or who-knows-what.
I picked up this book from my bookcase - a gift from the med school to all the entering first years - in the hopes that it would satisfy the criteria of a nighttime read, namely 1) be interesting enough to follow for two to ten pages before I get to sleep 2) be boring enough I will actually fall asleep instead of reading it until 5am (curse you, Harry Potter!!).
The book is On Doctoring, (3rd edition) edited by Richard Reynolds and John Stone (link to Amazon look-up). Note that used editions are very cheap. It is a collection of poems and short stories about what it actually meant and means to be a doctor. I say it like that because the stories and poems go way back to the 19th century. I was immediately struck by the book when I randomly opened it to a poem:
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE by Dannie Abse (1923- )
"...you, student, whistling those elusive bits
of Schubert when [...] you climbed the stone-murky steps
to the high and brilliant Dissecting Room
where nameless others, naked on the slabs,
reclined in disgraceful silences - twenty
amazing sculptures waiting to be vandalized.
You, corpse, I pried into your bloodless meat [...]
Your neck exposed, muscles, nerves, vessels,
a mere coloured plate in some anatomy book;
your right hand, too, dissected, never belonged,
it seemed, to somebody once shockingly alive,
never held, surely, another hand in greeting
or tenderness, never took up a pen to sign an authentic name..."
- I edited and slaughtered that poem (sorry Dr. Abse) to give a glimpse of what I was reading. It was written during WWII but I felt like had been written about my experience everyday in anatomy.
It's crazy how hard it is to remember that what you're dissecting was, just months earlier, walking around talking, thinking. I wonder sometimes whether the future cadavers really knew that I would be dissecting their anus (yes...I really did. We all did.) when they signed on. I mean one would naturally assume that being a cadaver means being explored inside and out, but the things we've done and will do in the name of science...
Anyway, to return to the topic, this is a great collections of works. I particularly latch on to the short stories - the poems are to artsy I think - about doctors making housecalls in the early 1900's, delivering babies, healing little kids' coughs, and holding people's hand as they die. They were the hardcore renaissance men, before specialization and pre-mixed medicines. Admittedly, they did about as much harm as good, but still I respect them for even doing what they could.
If you do decide to get this book, try out a couple passages I particularly like:
Introduction - cuz you're supposed to read them
The Girl with the Pimply Face - William Carlos William
The Old Gray Couple (II) - Archibald MacLeish
Carnal Knowledge - Dannie Abse
Imelda - Richard Selzer
A Day in the Life of an Internist - Richard C. Reynolds (editor snuck in one of his own)
The House Officer's Changing World - Joseph Hardison
Mistakes - David Hilfiker (docs actually make mistakes...)
Invasions - Perri Klass (med student perspective...very good)
Anyway, that's my commerical for the book I'm reading right now. It's pretty fantastic.
I picked up this book from my bookcase - a gift from the med school to all the entering first years - in the hopes that it would satisfy the criteria of a nighttime read, namely 1) be interesting enough to follow for two to ten pages before I get to sleep 2) be boring enough I will actually fall asleep instead of reading it until 5am (curse you, Harry Potter!!).
The book is On Doctoring, (3rd edition) edited by Richard Reynolds and John Stone (link to Amazon look-up). Note that used editions are very cheap. It is a collection of poems and short stories about what it actually meant and means to be a doctor. I say it like that because the stories and poems go way back to the 19th century. I was immediately struck by the book when I randomly opened it to a poem:
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE by Dannie Abse (1923- )
"...you, student, whistling those elusive bits
of Schubert when [...] you climbed the stone-murky steps
to the high and brilliant Dissecting Room
where nameless others, naked on the slabs,
reclined in disgraceful silences - twenty
amazing sculptures waiting to be vandalized.
You, corpse, I pried into your bloodless meat [...]
Your neck exposed, muscles, nerves, vessels,
a mere coloured plate in some anatomy book;
your right hand, too, dissected, never belonged,
it seemed, to somebody once shockingly alive,
never held, surely, another hand in greeting
or tenderness, never took up a pen to sign an authentic name..."
- I edited and slaughtered that poem (sorry Dr. Abse) to give a glimpse of what I was reading. It was written during WWII but I felt like had been written about my experience everyday in anatomy.
It's crazy how hard it is to remember that what you're dissecting was, just months earlier, walking around talking, thinking. I wonder sometimes whether the future cadavers really knew that I would be dissecting their anus (yes...I really did. We all did.) when they signed on. I mean one would naturally assume that being a cadaver means being explored inside and out, but the things we've done and will do in the name of science...
Anyway, to return to the topic, this is a great collections of works. I particularly latch on to the short stories - the poems are to artsy I think - about doctors making housecalls in the early 1900's, delivering babies, healing little kids' coughs, and holding people's hand as they die. They were the hardcore renaissance men, before specialization and pre-mixed medicines. Admittedly, they did about as much harm as good, but still I respect them for even doing what they could.
If you do decide to get this book, try out a couple passages I particularly like:
Introduction - cuz you're supposed to read them
The Girl with the Pimply Face - William Carlos William
The Old Gray Couple (II) - Archibald MacLeish
Carnal Knowledge - Dannie Abse
Imelda - Richard Selzer
A Day in the Life of an Internist - Richard C. Reynolds (editor snuck in one of his own)
The House Officer's Changing World - Joseph Hardison
Mistakes - David Hilfiker (docs actually make mistakes...)
Invasions - Perri Klass (med student perspective...very good)
Anyway, that's my commerical for the book I'm reading right now. It's pretty fantastic.
MWAHAHAHA!
A little fun Eric and I had with the digital camera (doubles as a video camera). Overlook the poor sound quality, and editing....oh and the fact that Eric is not wearing a shirt....to see the beautiful mess that is pharmacological naming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CogoEo5v9EQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CogoEo5v9EQ
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)