part deux

well, the second half of spring break was quite eventful. i'll just give the highlights...

saturday, march 17: erin go bragh, etc. corned beef was had. as well as cabbage.

sunday: more time in the morning at the hospital. i had to force myself to leave so i could drive up to boston. for real. force myself.

monday: pete and i's day. we didn't do much. i mostly just remember eating. though not just good things. story time...
we went to bertucci's for dinner. first of all, the rolls were cold. at some restaurants, that's alright. not acceptable at bertucci's. then, we ordered the mussels appetizer. when it arrived, i was surprised when the mussels were cold. though i grew more concerned when i found ice on some of them. we sent those back, only to find out that they were out of mussels. great. we got the shrimp scampi instead, which they comped, and the waitress hovered for the rest of the meal. which reminds me what else was hovering over our food. the flies. lots of little flies were very interested in what we were eating. i didn't want to look away from the food, for fear they would steal it...


tuesday: i had an interview! at 7:30 in the morning....which meant that the night before i had an emergency buy a blow dryer and nylons event. at cvs. anyway, the interview was at children's hospital and they offered to have me work there this summer, being the official orthopedics department hand specialty lackey. booyah. i then spent the rest of the day hanging around enc, with kara for a bit, then luke, and a bit of a nap in the library. i talked at enc that night about being in med school, which went well, i think.

wednesday: i drove down to leicester, near worcester, to visit an old friend. i spent the night at the durost's, and hung out with jenni the next day.

thursday: jenni-time, then went back to boston to have a small group time with pete, and some other charles river young adults. margaritas and the book of acts. excellent combo.

friday: pete and i drove up to new hampshire. he had a retreat to play at, while i went on and visited another jennie (i collect them). which was an adventure, because i was driving pete's car, which is a stick shift, and i haven't had that many hours driving one, though i do know what to do. and i also got lost...and then my cell phone died. so i had to pull over, and i charged the phone at a dunkin donuts...

saturday: hung out with jennie, then drove back to pick up pete, then drove to foxboro, then i drove back up to logan to pick up my cousin rich who had spring break in florida. whew. pete and rich and i went out to dinner that night.

sunday: i got ready to go back to syracuse. i left foxboro, started driving when BAM! my hood flew open on the highway and crashed into my windshield, forming the most extensive cracks i've ever seen in a windshield, and freaking the crap out of me. i was in the right lane, so luckily i was able to pull over on the side of the road easily. i called AAA (for the second time in less than two weeks) and pete. pete and rich came to save me on the highway, and wait with me for the towtruck. i got a tow, and went back to the boys apartment.

enter bonus spring break time:

monday: figured out bus schedules, talked to the body shop, talked to the glass people, talked to everyone again 600 times, watched that day's lectures online, missed the last bus in the evening....and made my mom's famous sausage soup, which of course was not as good as my mom's....

tuesday: woke up ridiculously early, pete drove me to south station where i made the 7:10 bus narrowly. i slept the whole way to syracuse.

this was the most eventful spring break i've ever had. and i've had spring breaks....drove to florida, stayed with a friend's crazy grandparent's one year....

for a bit of an update: my car has a new windshield, which was more of a hassle than you could imagine. the body shop didn't do anything to my car, because they wanted exactly one arm and one leg in order to do it....so we're on the lookout for a cheap used hood for a 96 saturn.....anyone have any leads?

spring break me off a piece

see, my title is one of those before and after things they have on wheel of fortune.

spring break is going particularly well. after my exam on monday the 13th, i drove on home to ct. good to see the rents again, they still like me.

tuesday i went down to my aunt's hospital to the er and shadowed a great doctor, dr. tilden. he let me take some histories, and taught me a lot about presenting cases: "a 40 year old women with a chief complaint of...." i had a good time.

i can't remember what i did on wednesday. did mom and i run errands? something like that.

thursday was girls day out for mom and i. we got our hair done, mani and pedis, and went out to lunch. mom was a little late to work after all that....what a great example. i saw the cahills of westport that evening (my sis and broinlaw) and we went out to eat.

friday was another day at the er, with a different doc this time, dr. holmes. you might also remember that friday was the nor'easter. i left the er at around noon so i could get home in a reasonable time. i got to my car, turned it on, then went to get my brush out of the trunk to wipe off the snow. as my front door clicked shut, i had the sneaking suspicion i had just locked myself out of my car.

i had.

great.

so i went back in to the er, called aaa, and waited till they came. perhaps because my motor was running, it actually didn't take that long for them to come. i drove home in the snow at about 25 miles an hour. but i made it.

ok, now i have to get ready to go up to nh for the night. the continued coverage of emily's spring break 2007 will be right back.

i know it's time, but i don't know what to say

it has been a while.

lets see. i guess i'll tell funny stories from my past exams.

so for my practice of medicine class, we had a series of three exams in the past 3 weeks. 2 were on physical examination, and one was a graded history-taking.

i guess there weren't too many funny stories from the physical exams...we partnered up for them, and i partnered with my friend afarin (who i will be living with next year, by the way...). the first exam was a bit nerve-wracking, as it had been the first time we had an exam like that, where a doctor is watching what you do. and our doctor was a bit intimidating. he would get up and move around the table, watching what you did. his comments at the end were things like, "you didn't watch her face when you were palpating her abdomen." but luckily, he didn't mark off much for anything.

the second week, we had the second half of the physical exam, which was eye/ear/etc and muscle strength/movement thing. the doctor we had watch us i actually knew from the christian fellowship on campus, so that was nice. the funny thing is, he had absolutely no comments for us. he said, "yeah, you did fine." and that was that. and then he just said that we ended early and he hoped that the people that were going after us did so he could go home early. ok.

today i had my graded history-taking thing. it was basically a role-playing thing where we had a standardized patient that was in just for a physical but it was the first time at the doctor...

well, mine was at 10:00am. i did not sleep well, i had a bad dream that when i got there, there was a physical exam part that i didn't know about....always the worst case scenario, things not being as expected...i ended up waking up at 9, showering, getting dressed, changing my clothes, drying my hair, putting on a bit of makeup, and running out of my apartment at about 9:50. sadly, we were supposed to be there at about 9:45, i didn't get there until 9:55, then when they told us which classroom to go to, i went to the wrong one but didn't realize it until they said, you aren't on the list and i was scared and then i left the room and realized that i was not where i thought i was so i went to the right room but at this point it was late (they were timing us, we had 20 minutes) so by the time i got into the little fake exam room i was a little bit frazzled.

and then at about 10:10, my cell phone goes off.

well, the history went fine. which was good. and the missed call ended up being from the lady at the apartment building that afarin and i had applied at, telling us that there was an apartment available for august. so we have a place to live! it's a two bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, for 878 a month, everything included (except parking-$30, internet and phone). which sounds pretty good to us. here's the floor plan:

now i'm dreaming about decorating. i can't wait. my little dorm room is feeling very small...and dorm-like.

non-comedogenic

in med school, you learn a lot of new words and acronyms, probably a few each day almost.

then i go and look at my bottle of lotion, and there's one of the best words i've ever seen.

non-comedogenic: does it mean?
a. will not produce comedian offspring
b. will not be funny
c. will not work with medical professionals' offspring
d. will not aggravate acne

if you guessed d, you are right (but boring).
if you guessed a-c, you are my best friend.
if you laughed, i love you.

anywho....about those exams....guess i should get back to studying...

2 down, 4 to go?

i'm talking about exams, baby.

and i'm only talking about between last friday, the 16th, and march 12. that's a lot of exams.

3 are for my practice of medicine class, we are being tested on taking a history and performing a physical exam. 3 for brain and behavior.

next week i have the second half of the practice physical with my buddy, afarin. it's nerve-wracking, but not bad. the next day is a lab exam for neuroanatomy....

i'm sorry there isn't much that's interesting in this entry.

oh! i had a good thing, though...i volunteered in the peds floor at the hospital yesterday, and got to hold and feed a little baby, he was very cute! very happy too...he had a trach which made it interesting because he couldn't make any noise...and he didn't have a very good suck so i got formula all over...luckily there was a blanket...

anyway, that was the most interesting thing that happened this week thus far. besides trying out my new rice cooker, courtesy of my friend matt. now i can make sticky white rice whenever i want!

my eyes hurt

so....much....studying....

exam on friday. on 28 lectures. or 32. depending on who you ask. don't ask.

i'm avoiding kicking myself over not doing so much of the studying thing a couple weeks ago by planning exactly how i'm going to study next week.

or more precisely, that i'm going to study. every day. pretty much.


basically, i've been reviewing all the lectures since this weekend, ranging from getting through about 4-8 per day. things have been going according to plan, i only have about 8 left to review (i say review because i went to lecture....not because i've already studied the material...but it sounds better than "cramming semi-familiar terms in my head while finally understanding concepts taught to me three weeks ago"). so i should finish that by tomorrow night, seeing as i have absolutely no plans otherwise (my v-day has been postponed...due to snow...?). then thursday i can review (for real this time) and study for the other exam i have that day, practice of medicine aka POM.

the majority of my studying has been in my kitchen, on the 2nd floor. or in the 3rd floor kitchen, because the 2nd floor gets really hot sometimes. mostly i've been along side afarin, envying the fact that she's actually reviewing (stinkin overachiever flaunting her stellar study skills grumble grumble). and it's inspiring.

however,

(and this is a very important point)

it's becoming increasingly unclear to me exactly how important it is to get good grades in these classes. ideally, you'd think that getting a high pass or honors in a class would be good for getting into a residency program or doing better in future classes or a little thing called being a better doctor....but i don't really know if that correlation exists.

there's conflicting info on this side that leaves me scratching my head. i guess advisors are basically trying to get people to relax a bit and stay sane so they say that grades really aren't that important. but then they talk about getting into a competitive residency....like in boston (gulp)...

so should i stop talking to people and work really really really hard so that i can ensure that i'll get a residency where i want it? should i keep sanity and let the grades fall where they may? should i really not even try for much higher than the passing threshold because it's just not worth it in the end? should i go to bed now?



i know the answer to at least one of those questions.
good night...

more? you want more???

more from martha's vineyard...

here's pete peering wistfully out to the ocean

us in front of gay head...yeah, pete forgot to bring a coat this weekend....yeah, it was really really cold...

the whole crew throwing rocks into the ocean. they have a long way to go, as you can tell by the rock-strewn beach...i found out they were actually aiming at one of the rocks in the water...

so the weekend was really great, though will probably take a bit of time to recover. i drove down friday afternoon, listening to some lectures i had burned onto cd. i hung out with heather for a bit friday night, as she prepared for a lockin with her youth group, while i was waiting for pete to get out of work....then we rushed down to foxboro to get his stuff and rush to wood's hole to catch the ferry, which we just made, as i mentioned.

saturday we met two young married couples that had been to charles river a few times, and we started talking about church stuff (which was the point of the weekend...sort of...). we decided that we don't particularly like church the way it is....but we are looking for some spiritual community...and we know what we want it to look like...and we have ideas about how charles river could do that...and it all sounds really cool. and makes me sad because i feel far away. but i enjoyed meeting new people, and it was still a great weekend hearing people say things that i had been thinking but didn't have other people to talk to about it (except for pete, of course. and mom's always good for talking about church's foibles...).

sunday night we watched the super bowl with lots of undergrad friends, then monday i visited kara at shrader, which was very nice. she's done a lot for the place, just look at the bulletin boards. and the flyers...and she rages against times new roman, one memo at a time...

phil, coincidentally enough, was also at shrader that day, so the three of us went out to lunch at panera and caught up. it was nice.

i drove back toward syracuse that afternoon, but decided to stop at a motel about 100 miles away from syracuse to avoid driving during snow (and i was exhausted...i had spent the previous two nights on an air mattress that deflated, and a pull out couch with no pillow). so i stayed in the charming town of palatine bridge, whose name cracks me up because the nerves and arteries that run through your hard palate, the roof of your mouth, are called the greater and lesser palatine...and there's actually a palatine bone in your skull too. so i had a definite picture of a palate-shaped bridge...

this morning i drove back to school, made it to some class, and watched 4 out of the 5 lectures i had missed during my galivanting, went to pilates, cmf (christian medical fellowship), and then worked on some homework with arlin...and now i'm here.

ok. over and out.

oh, and comments are always appreciated. though, as kara pointed out, the incomprehensible struggle of merely reading this blog, never mind wandering through the enigmatic process of leaving a comment....so if you are reading this, i praise you and thank you.

(though i still like comments... :) )

why i took this weekend off...

here are some pics from the weekend which i spent in martha's vineyard. which is beautiful. and if it's this beautiful in february, i can't even imagine what it would be like in the summer or spring....

this is the house where we stayed, owned by the messengers, who were very kind to invite the "young and restless" of charles river church to stay for the weekend...

saturday morning breakfast, with pete still looking groggy (must be his first cup of coffee)...you can just see johanna's head over pete's shoulder, and will, will's daughter sarah, and kim...

here's the messenger's other daughter, hannah...peeking at the camera in a car ride.

one of my first glimpes of the water (during the day)...pete and i just made the 9:45pm ferry on friday night...and i really mean just made it...

ahh, this was easier (photoessay2)...click on photos to see them BIG

ok, so this is the empire state building (duh)...notice macy's on the left, we're on 34th street....while i was driving in the city so we could go see les miz...it was a miracle....

and here's us outside the theater after the show. (l to r) afarin, arlin, me, matt, and tom....

arlin at the chinese restaurant we ate at before the show.

a toast. that's afarin...and lots of nameless arms...mine's the one shooting out of the camera....

photoessay

ok, this was definitely not as user-friendly as i would have hoped. but i just wanted to give you a little taste of hanging out with my friends....here is (l to r) tom, kelvin, and matt cooking one night. just such a lovely sight, the men in the kitchen...


this was from tiffany's (pink shirt) birthday party. (l to r) a random arm, arlin (standing), me, afarin, courtney, tiffany, another arm....
this is matt (throwing a highlighter) and tom (being pelted with it). this gives you a good idea of what it's like whenever these two are together. the phrase "guy love" comes to mind....

insert funny title here

thought i should update, despite the fact that i couldn't think of a good title. i'm sure you'll all forgive me. right? you will, won't you?

ok, moving on.

life has been good. gross anatomy is over, and we have moved on to brain and behavior. i'm enjoying it. something i didn't like about anatomy was that it didn't have a lot of physiology in it, we have it later. so we learned about things with very little connection to how it works a lot of times. this class is different, we're learning how things work right from the beginning.

but the days are long. lots of lecture, and lab too. my lab group is good, thus far (only three days in)...my anatomy, eh, not so much....some of them anyway.

so this weekend was excellent! i drove down with four of my friends--matt, tom, arlin, and afarin--to the city to see Les Miz on broadway. and it was just lovely.

oh, and i got to drive. city drive. it was awesome. the scariest moment was when two buses were trying to merge... into me...one on each side...we just held our breath.

someday i'll put pics up from the actual trip, but today isn't that day. my computer is broken and in the process of being fixed by hp. so until then, you'll just have to use your imagination.

oh, by the way, got an awesome camera for christmas...that my friends are in love with. i feel like it's the cool new toy. they'll beg me to pull it out, then all take lots of pics, then upload them onto their computer....then return it to me with no memory or battery. that's what friends are for.

zen and the art of....healing?

i've picked up an elective. and i'm not dropping it, because we all need something entertaining in our lives, and anatomy just doesn't cut it.

the name of it is "healer's art". it was described to me as basically being a one credit class where all you have to do is show up and talk about yourself...almost like therapy or something. the topics were things like "dealing with grief", "wholeness", etc...

my friends decided to join, i thought i would jump in the bandwagon.

the first class was thursday night. our assignment was two things: bring an object that "represents" you, and bring an open mind and heart.

we showed up to the large group session at 6:30, put on nametags, and sat down. a lady started talking, a little bit of housekeeping. then she picked up a metal bowl and a candlestick. which she then informed us was a tibetan gong thing....which she was going to bang to help guide us in our relaxation exercise.

at the gong, we were to "listen to the silence" while her calm, soothing voice told us to focus on a memory where we felt truly whole and loved, and focus on that. then we were given paper and crayons in order to express what that memory meant...i think.

i think by this point you can already tell that this is a little different than what i expected. and i'm just getting started. we had a speaker, a physician, who showed us photographs of abstract sculptures with a word like balance or happiness or collaboration above it, then described how that applied to the field of medicine....still in the strange smooth voice the other lady used.

after he spoke we broke up into our assigned small groups and went to separate classrooms. our facilitator started setting up the room. he put an overturned box in the middle of a circle of chairs, then put a prayer shawl over it, with a candle and another bowl and candlestick combination. he dimmed the lights and turned on a cd of mood music. we all placed our objects on the... altar?...and waited for him to let us know what could possibly come next.

i was wondering exactly what cult i had signed up for.

for the most part, the small group stuff was pretty painless. we each described why we brought in what we did (i brought the journal pete gave me for christmas last year) and the pictures that we drew. then came the closing...ummm....ceremony?

we stood up in the circle as our leader held the bowl. after each gong one person in the group said their name, while the rest of us sent positive thought and energy and/or prayers to them for thirty seconds, then came the next gong. it was pretty weird, but at least personally i don't feel odd about praying...so it could have been worse. after our little ritual, the leader said, "blessing and peace to you all." i was, of course, holding in the, "and also with you." or, "and with your spirit," as my anglican church up here prefers.

after class, which got out at around 9:15, my friends got together and laughed about all the craziness as we made dinner together (which is a whole other story....we ended up eating around midnight).

i don't particularly mind what they did...charles river church softened me up a bit, with the art during church and the lectio divina at simple supper...but this was med school, not church. i'm going to end up describing this class in an interview one day, i know it.

sorry it's been awhile

and to answer your question, heather, no i'm not still on vacation. class started for me on the third.

it was lovely to be home, but coming back could be worse. there's good people here.

there will be a real entry coming soon....i don't have a lot of time now. sorry to all my faithful fans (mom)....

next week at this time....

ahh, then i'll be home.

congratulations to both my mother and heather, who named the band i had quoted from. except mom didn't actually name it. and got a little confused with audio adrenaline, who did "big house". but that's ok, she gave it a valiant effort.

so last night we had a party over at courtney's apartment, who's the only one of my friends who doesn't live in my building. we had a great time. she made hot chocolate, and had baked a bajillion really good cookies and stuff. and basically we all just sat around and talked for awhile. some people told stories, like afarin and nima told how they met, then matt talked about how he met his girlfriend cynthia. arlin told a story about when he was a little boy and two girls were chasing him outside his house, trying to kiss him, and he was going around and around the house. eventually the girls tired out, but arlin just kept running, oblivious to the fact that he wasn't being chased anymore.

after an extensive story time, we started playing charades, using movie titles. some of the hard ones: "assassination of richard nixon", "maverick", "caddyshack". poor nima, the iranian canadian, got caddyshack, having never seen the movie or knew what a caddy was. he gave a good effort though.

charades lasted for a long time. then we had music time. we made arlin sing us a song, he has a lovely bass voice. he sang "chestnuts roasted on an open fire..." and it was just wonderful. then we started remembering songs that were popular in our youth, around high school, like the smashing pumpkins and chili peppers and a little bit of n'sync, just to round it out. but it was fun.

then we finally left, at 2 in the morning, 5 hours after we got there. mostly because half the people were falling asleep. the boys like to stay up late every night, playing the dang video games, so they weren't as tired. silly boys.

oh, and matt got us christmas presents. well, he actually downloaded and burned for us all the lectures from mfm, the class we took at the beginning of the year, so we could have them to study from when we're going to take the boards. sweet and nerdy at the same time. i have to say, it wasn't really on my christmas list....

what's my motivation...

i thought it was time for a new post.

i am right now watching the very special christmas episode of "the office" with my roommate...because it's funner than studying. i also went to a very special hanukkah dinner tonight because there were latkes....and it was free. i had many, many free potato pancakes. i think there should be more holidays that center around foods made in oil. christians, we are slacking.

well, things have been up and down here at school. as always. i guess it's better than all down. that'd get old after a while. today i had a long day of classes, 8:30 to 4ish...normally i get out at 2 or 3. then i decided that it was time that i did something proactive in my med school life, so i went to the bookstore to buy flashcards from my netter's, the anatomy book. but they didn't have it in stock, so i booked it down to barnes and noble to get it there. 300 some odd full color flashcards filled with wonderful things that i need to learn in the next week.


and then it's christmas.

hallelujah.


(bonus points to the first to say from where i quoted the title)

the things we have to learn....

so i thought people might be interested in a little anatomy lesson. i'll try to make it relatively painless....

ok, so about halfway down your neck, starting at cervical vertebrae number 5 (C5), theres a series of nerves that come off the spinal cord and out in between the vertebra. they combine and separate and combine and divide a few times, from your neck, running along the collarbone, to the shoulder and then down the arm. this is called the brachial plexus. all the feeling and ability to move in your arm is due to these guys (one of the nerves, the ulnar, is your funny bone).

i get a kick out of this guy because it looks like a jacob's ladder, one of those string games i always did when i was a kid. and i can still do if i want....an odd skill to holdover....anyway, here's a pic to the left.

and here's what the brachial plexus looks like, below.

just thought people might want to know something of what i have to memorize....the brachial plexus is famous among med students...

wittiness not required....

it has come to my attention that perhaps some of my readers are slow to comment, thinking i have suddenly raised the bar in asking for "witticisms". i would like to say that that was not my intent, though i have no doubt that all who read this are quite adept at witty remarks....i try not to associate with dull people.

i hope that it is now clear what i am looking for in regards to comments.

thank you.

silly med school stories....first edition

i thought i would share the funniest thing that's happened this year so far.

so i told you about my cadaver, how they gave us a shorthand version of the death certificate, but the rest was left for us to uncover? that included the sex of the body....

well, we began dissection on the thorax, the chest. by all appearances, the cadaver was male. we weren't an inquisitive bunch...so we left it at that...

though i started to have my doubts...

at the end of the thorax segment, we began on the abdomen and pelvis. we uncovered the cadaver.

yeah, definitely female. whoops!

(the best part is yet to come)

well, i wasn't really that shocked...i had doubts, as i mentioned...but then chris, one of my lab partners came in. came over to the body. and almost fell over with surprise.

it was one of the best shocked looks i have ever seen. he had no clue that we had a female. he couldn't even speak, he just stared at us, with a quizzical, "is someone playing a joke on me?" expression on his face.

just seems odd to have a relationship with a person for a few weeks and not know whether they're a boy or girl....

i don't think chris has recovered yet...

(p.s. the table next to us made a similar discovery....a week after we did...guess we weren't the only uninquisitive group of med students....)

(p.p.s. it was really funny in person...i know it's hard to write things down so everyone can appreciate it...i wish i had a pic of chris's face to help...)

hand me that piano

so it was thanksgiving. i had my exam, it was hard, but it's now but a distant memory...until my grade comes back...ignorance is bliss.

break was very nice, as breaks should be. i saw lots of family, and friends. pete came up, i held my baby cousin, and we moved a piano. which was not easy (who's shocked?).

school went well today. i feel much more ready to go than i did at the beginning of the last segment. we started on the neck today. i really like dissecting. you only really dissect for a couple days, then you just spend lab time pointing at things and naming them. that's boring. the fun part is the first couple days, picking apart the vessels from the muscles, et cetera.

i also went swimming today, for the first time in weeks. it felt wonderful, except for when my ankle started hurting (i sprained it a couple weeks ago), so then i stopped. but it's good to be back, people are in better moods, we have time to hang out, no one looks like zombie. we feel like people again.

oh, and for auntie karen: here's a map of nz. looks like christchurch is on the water. though i don't remember seeing it when i was there.

nap time...for arlin.....

i was studying with arlin for my exam on wednesday (yeah, studying with arlin again, it's good), when he laid back and closed his eyes and started answering my questions with grunts. so i sent him upstairs to his room for a nap, and i thought i'd take the opportunity to write in here.

so, an exam. whoop-de-do. kinda feels like i just had one, right? yeah, for me too. but this one will be much harder...lots more information...both practical and written...on the abdom and pelvis....i'm realizing how much stuff i missed when i was in my distracted/worried state for most of the other week. there's like blackholes in my knowledge, and now it's getting harder to figure stuff out.

well, i just had a visitor, jen the nurse. she likes to come by and chat right when i'd like to do something else. but she's alright. since she's actually working in the hospital, she'll remind us of what we are here for. which apparently has a lot of poo involved.

~~edit~~

Arlin came back, we studied a bit more. now i'm watching elf on tv. how lovely...