Fetch!!

For a while, I thought my sweet kitty, Queen Elizabeth, was a little "delayed."  Seriously.  She barely knew how to meow.  But now, she has developed a new skill and I can't stop bragging about it.

You guys, my cat fetches!!!!!!! YES!!

Also, I'm so sorry for posting two cat related posts in a row.  So embarrassing.

Surprise!!

Oh hey guys.  Sure, it's been a bunch of months since I've posted anything, but I think this is worth it:

I love it so much.

White Coat Ceremony

The other day, my classmate, D, and I were lucky enough to give a welcome speech to the incoming MS1s at their White Coat Ceremony.  Here is a copy of our speech (with our notes included in brackets).  Enjoy!

Hi Class of 2016!  I’m D, AMSG Co-President.

And I’m J, 4^th year class Co-president.  On behalf of the class of 2013 and the rest of the student body, we’d like to congratulate you on starting medical school!  This is a huge accomplishment and it is an honor to share this moment with you and your family and friends. 

[pause]

J:  Aaand… That’s all we’ve got for you.  We’ve been kind of busy watching the Olympics, [coughs] learning medicine, and we didn’t get a chance to actually prepare a speech for you.  Sooo… good job guys!

[J&D give a thumbs up with cheesy smiles]

iPad torch

D: But really, the Olympic Fever, commonly found among medical students and diagnosed by the inability to focus on anything but the games of the 30^th Olympiad got us thinking about what a team effort medicine really is.

D: We can think of tonight as the Opening Ceremonies.  Sure, there’s no torch… unless… is there an app for that?  [J: holds up ipad with torch app… F YEAH!!!!] (Aside: Medical education in the digital age!)  But I’m pretty sure you all just paraded in front of us to receive your coats and we’ll have an awesome performance by the medleys to come. 

J: More important than the ceremony is what happened before the ceremony.  Like the Olympians in this year’s games, you have all worked hard to get here.  Years of school, hours of volunteering, and numerous research projects later, here you are.  You’ve made it.  And for that, you should be truly proud of yourselves.

[applause]

D: Don’t get too comfortable, though.  You still have your work cut out for you.  Luckily, the Admissions Office knows how to pick a great team.  Soon, you’ll have study groups formed and next thing you know, you’ll have made some of the closest friends of your life.  Look to your left, look to your right.  By the end of medical school, you will have made out with one of them.

[nailed it!]

J: But seriously, we already have 3 engagements within our class… so, just be careful when you pick your study group.

D: Every team has its uniform and for medicine it is the white coat.  In receiving your white coat today, you have taken your first true step towards becoming a doctor.  With wearing the white coat comes the responsibility to discover, teach, and heal.  And while your white coat’s short length conveys your humble position as a student, your patients may not know the difference and will turn to you for their care, regardless. 

Class of 2016 taking the Oath

J: Over the past three years, D and I have learned that 50% of medicine is looking the part (just kidding, Dean Clayman).  Here are some Do’s and Don’ts to help you avoid making rookie mistakes and so you can look like a pro on the wards, or at least at the Clinical Skills Center:

[for this section, why don’t we model the “DO” examples and get the medleys to come out for the DO NOT]

J: Let’s start with a big one that for some reason, people have a tough time grasping: Cleanliness .  Do: try and keep your coat clean.  Unfortunately this is the cleanest your coat will ever be for the next four years.  Try to wash and press your coat as often as you have time to do laundry.  Use bleach and hot water.  Stain remover is your friend.  

D: DO NOT: Walk around with dirt rings on your sleeves and coffee stains down your front.  Would you trust a doctor who smells like Pig Pen and looks like you’re guaranteed to catch 10 diseases from his coat?  Neither will your patients.  [med student approaches pt looking dirty and pt runs away in disgust]

D: Next up, Writing Utensils.  DO: Carry a couple pens and, perhaps, a hi-lighter.  You’ll look like a star when your resident needs a pen and you magically provide one before she even has a chance to ask.

J: DO NOT: Carry a 24-color crayola marker pack unless you’re using it to color every muscle of the upper extremity.   Not only will this weigh down your coat, you will feel like a fool when you bend down to examine a patient and your pens fall all over him.  [med student with a bunch of pens in coat bends over to examine a patient and dumps out contents of coat and scrambles to pick them up]

J: Definitely stock your pockets with those tools you’ve always wanted to use--your stethoscope, penlight, reflex hammer, surgilube (J&D: because you just never know).

D: But DO NOT go overboard.  You’ll find that the weight of all of these tools quickly adds up and we’ve heard of many med students acquiring back problems from lugging a 20+ pound coat around all day.  Plus, is that speculum really necessary on your psychiatry rotation? [med student walks out completely burdened with stuff… coat stuffed and awkwardly weighed down… hold’s up the speculum sheepishly]

D: It’s always helpful to carry a snack with you.  Granola bars are great because you can quickly gobble them on the run between seeing patients or going to meetings.

J: DO NOT: Make your coat a lunch buffet.  It’s just… gross. [maybe get in ‘n out boxes or something to put in the coat, med student sipping from a straw]

J: Finally, there’s flare.  Just like a gold medal, there’s nothing I love more than a good accessory.  Today, you received your first few items of flare: pins that represent your team – UCI SOM and our mission to “discover, teach, heal” and to include Humanism in medicine. 

D: DO NOT: get too over the top.  This is not Chili's and you are not Michael Phelps.  Plus, what is that boa?  [med students come out with various pieces of bling, medal, boa]

And with these tips, combined with the camaraderie and support of your classmates and faculty and staff here at UCI, you’ll be sure to find yourself atop the podium in just 4 years (or 7 if you’re an MD/PhD).   We are excited to welcome you to our team.

UCI chant?!

And now, we’d like to introduce the Medleys, UCI SOM’s talented singing group.  See.  We told you it was like the opening ceremonies ;)

MS3

Oh, hey guys! Yeah, I know. It's been a couple of months since I've written anything. Sorry. It's just that things are kind of busy during third year! And stressful! Plus, up until last week, I was elbow deep in vaginas (okay, sorry. That was gross. And only partially true).

I had meant to write at least one post during each of my rotations, but that failed after R1 (pediatrics). Now, I've completely missed OB/GYN (R2) and I'm onto Family Medicine (R3).

Here are some general thoughts about being a third year medical student:

• My new name is "Medical Student." As in, "Medical Student! Shred this document." Or "Medical Student! There is a chart in the hall and someone needs to see that patient." Or "Medical Student, you are sitting in my chair... Now, you're standing too close behind me." I've realized that I'm pretty much interchangeable with any other person in a short white coat. The other day a resident (who I had worked closely with for a couple of weeks) mistook me for my classmate, who is blonde. The best part was that he just walked over and started listing off tasks I should do while I shook my head in defiance (I was on a completely different service at that point). In his defense, he felt pretty bad about it.
• I feel like an idiot 90% of the time. Simple tasks, like cutting a suture or making a phone call, are suddenly incredibly difficult. You guys! "Cutting a suture" sounds fancy, but it is literally cutting a string with scissors. But you have to hold the scissors a certain way. And you don't want to cut the string too long/short. Sometimes the string is thicker and more difficult to cut. And you have to use the tip of the scissors so as not to risk cutting tissue. AH! STRESS. Don't even get me started on phone calls...
• I live in a constant state of anxiety/discomfort. This is because we are constantly changing services or clinic locations; just last week, I worked at 3 different clinics, each one totally different in the way things were done from the other. Every time we are in a new place, we need to figure out our roles and expectations for us. For example, at one clinic I was simply shadowing (lame) while earlier that morning I had been independently seeing patients, writing notes, and presenting my findings to the attending physician who did very little to double check what I had done. Of course, nobody explicitly says what we're supposed to be doing; we just have to figure it out. This can be on a even more basic level. Once a fellow med student and I awkwardly hovered in the residents' room with our lunches for 10 minutes, waiting for the residents to give us permission to eat/tell us where the lunch room was. We would have asked them, but they were in deep conversation (basically gossiping) and it was not our place to interrupt.

Despite these things (and I'm sure there are more - feel free to add your own experiences in the comments), Third Year is fun! Yup, you heard me. Even though I feel like an idiot and I'm constantly nervous about screwing up, I finally get to talk to patients and do doctory things. For example, a couple of weeks ago I delivered a baby. You guys, I delivered an effing baby! So what I'm saying is even though I'm kind of a stressed out mess, I'm also kind of loving it.

USMLE: Working on Our Fitness

Every day we get out of our Kaplan class at like 4 or 5 and go straight to the gym. I love this because it is so stereotypically overachieving med student-y. It's like, "We just sat in class for 8-9 hours and we have a bunch of studying to do afterwards, but we care about our health (and we don't want to get fat)."

Pretty much the entire Kaplan class goes to they gym. Not some of us. Like all of us (okay fine, like 1/2 of us... that's still a lot!). I don't even usually go the UCI gym (called the Anteater Recreation Center or ARC, which I love) and I've been going. It's just such a scene!

It's kind of great because everyone is in a pretty good mood. Like we're suddenly super happy to see each other. As if we hadn't spent the entire day sitting in lecture, standing in the sun during breaks, or eating lunch together. It's like none of us really saw the Post-Kaplan Gym Rush (PKGR) coming and it's such a pleasant surprise that we're all working out together. And it happens every day (well, I can only vouch for days that I go to Fancy Pants Gym for yoga... but I'm pretty sure it happens every day).

We pretty much storm the ARC. Suddenly, all of the machines are being used by med students. Some people study while working out (D), while others (A and myself) harass our classmates from our elliptical machines. Other people make rounds and show off their big muscles (R and J). It's total social hour!

I've been getting super strong, mostly because I do pushups with A. Together. At the same time. We've been recruiting other med students to join us... today our group was up to 5. We're so cool. See people, med students are so cool! We do awesome things like spend all day in class together and then go do synchronized pushups at the gym.

The other fun thing about the PKGR is that we run into our classmates that we haven't seen since school ended. Even though it has only been a few weeks, it feels like it has been months; we greet each other as if we're old friends reuniting after a long separation. Then the non-Kaplan people say something like "Whoa! It's weird to see so many med students here all at once. I don't really like it." And the Kaplan people are like, "Really? We spend all of our time together including changing in the locker room complaining about how we still can't poop."

It's awesome.

In Class: Printing

You guys. I have to bitch about something: I effing hate printing stuff out for med school. And I have to do it daily. For no reason at all, it is the most stressful thing EVER.

Actually, that's a lie. There are plenty of reasons why it's stressful. First of all, there are only 3 working computers in the Medical Education Building where we do our printing. WTF?! So first off, you have to hope to get a computer to even start the printing process. Lame.

Once you finally go through like 4 windows on Internet Explorer (because for whatever reason, Merlin doesn't pop up first thing) and FINALLY print out the powerpoint/core notes/whatever, you have to walk out of the room to check the printer to see if everything came out okay. Usually, there's some form of drama like a paper jam or "the stapler is broken and everything has been canceled." Or my favorite from the other day: someone decided to print a 100+ page PDF cookbook that paused for 30 seconds between each page. Really?!

You can't even claim victory over the printing process once your stuff has come out. Well, first you have you find what you printed. You may think this would be easy since most things come with labeled cover pages, but it is still surprisingly difficult with the volume of printing going on in MedEd. Plus people steal stuff (A message to you, whoever you are: I will find you and hunt you down and you'll be sorry!! Okay, probably not, but still. It's not cool).

When FINALLY you get your printouts, there's always a chance of discovering a mistaken formatting error. Like accidently printing 1 slide per page of a 78 slide powerpoint presentation. Or worse: printing 24 slides per page (so, so tiny). Oh the agony you go through when this happens! You've come so far only to find that rather than a nice printout of a powerpoint presentation (I personally prefer 4 slides/page), you have papers covered with microscopic text about who knows what. Time to return to the computers to start the process again!

Oh, and usually, we're all crunched for time because this is all taking place during our 5 minute break between classes and we couldn't print before because the professor just posted his slides. TOTAL STRESS! Just the other day, I saw a classmate freak out in frustration, yelling and kicking at the printer. Like actually kicking the machine. To some, this may seem like the act of a stressed out med student, but honestly, anyone would snap if they had to deal with that printer on a daily basis. Or ever.

MS1

I started med school, you guys! So far, my life has been filled with dramatic changes. For example, I recently changed my igoogle theme from "farm animals" to "radiohead." I also changed my gmail theme from "candy" to "ninjas." This last one has been life-changing. Remember how much I used to love those cutesy little cartoon girls eating their cutesy candies? Well, the new med student version of me is way too hardcore to put up with such saccharine google themes. "Ninjas" is much better suited for my new lifestyle. Now, every time I log onto email (which is, admittedly, significantly less often than I used to), I see cutesy cartoon ninjas kickin' ass all over my emails. Kickin' ass just like I am in med school!*

Another fairly significant change in my life is that I study all the time. And it's not just me. Everyone around me is studying pretty much always. I've actually never heard of so much studying before. It's pretty much all that everyone ever talks about.

For example: It's Friday afternoon and everyone is going his/her separate way (i.e. to his/her respective study group). In parting, this conversation can frequently be overheard (I will color coordinate the speakers to avoid confusion):

"Hey! Whatcha gonna do this weekend? Study?!"

"Yeah, I'm pretty much going to study all weekend."

"Me too, I have so much to do. There is just SO MUCH material. I just really need to study it all."

"Well, if you want, maybe we can study together later."

"Yeah, sounds good... maybe after I study this a little on my own first."

"Okay, well see you later! Good luck with your studying!"

WTF?! Are you kidding me?! Studying should never be the subject of conversation for longer than, let's say... um... EVER! Hopefully we'll develop personalities and start talking about important/interesting things. Like who is going to hook up at this weekend's student-faculty retreat.

*Just to clarify, my school is pass/fail and intent on fostering a non-competitive and cooperative learning environment; we are learning to be "good friends," in the words of the head of the Biochemistry department. So, when I say I'm "kickin' ass," I mean, I'm kickin' biochemistry's ass. And by "kickin' biochemistry's ass," I mean, I just want to pass.