Day 2405: My first grade of the year!

Okay. It's time for some honesty here Team Jess. Today, I received my first grade of my third year. And. It was good. So good, that I didn't even know what the letter meant when I received it (because apparently that's how little I do well in med school haha).

Background: My med school doesn't give As, Bs, or Cs. It gives Honors, High Pass, Pass. (So the same thing essentially.)

This is what I saw this afternoon:

What does this mean? Honors! High pass! THEY BOTH START WITH H!!! (Wheels turn in my brain. Wheels still turning. ...still turning (I am actually this slow people)) I THINK THIS IS AN HONORS!!! (back flip, forward flip, and now I am suddenly Ariel from Little Mermaid twirling through the ocean)

Then, four hours later, while texting a classmate, he informed me that they actually break down the grade for us. And, all you, my pretties, have to know is that I was on the low end of honors but I am pretty sure an honors is still an honors! Suckers!

In addition, we also got feedback. Here was mine:

Jessica was very self directed and was an obvious leader among her classmates. She always made herself available to see patients, participate in deliveries and surgeries. She demonstrated an increase in her knowledge base throughout the clerkship. She sought feedback and, importantly, listened to the feedback. Her questions reflected good insight into the topics at hand.

Very pleasant, enthusiastic, hard working smart student.

Look here Team Jess. I like myself. I think I'm pretty a-okay. Would I call myself a leader? Uh, no. I just ask questions that no one else wants to ask, because for lack of a better way to describe it, I don't really care how it reflects on me. Which makes me sound all James-Dean-too-cool-for-school, but all it really means is I don't care if I look dumb. My Dad told me this when I was in high school and it has always stuck with me. "Don't ever feel afraid to ask questions. How else are you going to learn things?" So. Here I am. On my clinical rotations, asking (probably dumb) questions, but how else am I going to learn? Apparently asking (dumb) questions is a pro on the clerkships.

Starting off the year strong! It's nice to know that what I was doing was (kind of/essentially) working. I have been so freaked out this past month because, at this point, I have gone through two clerkships and, until today, received zero grades. I could be passing or I could be honoring and not know it! I need to be getting honors, people! Luckily this fear has led me to study way more for my current psych clerkship (whose exam I heard is very nitpicky so I will be all ready in two weeks for those pesky details) and hopefully will motivate me to do well in all my future clerkships.

I have more stuff to blog about so look for it in the near future! Until then, friends ...yay me! ;)

Day 2402: Lunch with my attending

Things that are fantastic:

• Having your attending take you out to lunch to thank you for your work and just shoot the sh!t
• Talking about things you find interesting (race relations, racism in the US, international medical students/doctors, different cultures)
• Feeling like you've learned more about other people (colleagues and superiors alike)

I had a really rewarding lunch with my child psychiatry attending and child psychiatry fellow today. We ate crappy Chinese food, which put me in to a food coma later that day, but we got to talk about a lot of interesting things (see bullet points above).

I don't know if I've said it yet but I am really enjoying my clinical years of learning thus far. It's been wonderful to interact with different people everyday. It's been gratifying to feel like I am actually learning something, little by little, day by day. And, it's really splendid to feel like you have helped (and not hindered) your superiors.

A win for child psychiatry.

Day 2401: On psychosis

While on the phone with a dear pal of mine today, I had an interesting thought on psychiatry. Well, two interesting thoughts.

1) I may not want to do psychiatry, but seeing it has pushed me more toward a possible career in family medicine.

2) Psychosis is one of the most rewarding ailments to treat in psychiatry. I currently have two psychotic patients on my child/adolescent psych service. One is purely psychotic, which doesn't bode well for her future as an adult. She sees things that aren't there, hears voices that no one else hears and is quite paranoid. My second patient had something resembling a first-psychotic break. It may have been substance-induced, but boy was it a doozy of a psychotic episode. Hearing things. Seeing things. "Flipping out," as the patient put it. BUT. When you give these psychotic patients the proper dose of the proper medicine, it is amazing to see how quickly these patients improve. Kid #1 is showing very slow improvement each day, but improvement nonetheless. Kid #2 is looking really good and will most likely go on to lead a fairly normal life.

Psychiatry isn't all mumbo-jumbo and talking about feelings. It's a pretty fine art to differentiate between depression or a medical condition causing depression (like hypothyroidism) and other things of that nature. Psychiatry isn't for me, but it has been an interesting rotation to be a part of.

Day 2400: On child psychiatry

As if learning embryology and going through my ob/gyn rotation wasn't enough, my two-week stint on child psychiatry is showing me that making normal humans is tough noogies. On top being freaked out your baby will be deformed or mentally underdeveloped or any number of things that can happen in utero, you have to hope and pray that your baby is normal, whatever that means. I have seen kids as young as 4 on my in-patient floor and kids of varying ages in day treatment. I have teenagers on my in-patient floor who have strong suicidal thoughts, straight up psychosis (audio and visual hallucinations) and a lot of aggression and ADHD.

Seeing these kids...I'm happy to know they are getting help but it's a little intense to see a 7-year-old on 4 medications! Honestly, seeing these kids freaks me out about having children. I want some (probably, eventually) but the fact you have to try to keep them sane and normal for their entire lives is a little overwhelming, wouldn't you agree?

All in all, I have learned a decent amount. I am getting bombarded daily with psych meds, which is good to refresh what I learned last year in pharmacology. Apparently, you can use clonidine (which is typically used to treat hypertension) to treat hyperactivity and impulsivity in kids with ADHD. Huh. Whodda thunk?

I really am going to try to post more regularly. I have more time to write, but I'm actually living life a little and socializing so that has taken away some of my motivation and drive to post. My posts are so boring most of the time anyway. But I digress. Here's hoping there are more posts! With pictures at some point too!

Day 2385: On to the next one.

Neurology has come and gone. The rotation here is...not the best. You round forever. From 8:30am until whenever all the patients are covered. I was very lucky to have attendings that were excellent teachers and very eager to do so. Nevertheless, the rounding was long, the time on my feet was long, and the amount of neurology I learned didn't nearly correlate to the amount of time I was on my feet. But. It's over. I learned a lot about stroke, which is near and dear to my heart given that my grandfather died of a stroke when I was six years old.

My neuro exam today was fine. Aren't all my exams fine? I have decided I am an exceptionally average test-taker so I am sure I scored average-ly on this exam. On to the next one, as the post title suggests!

What is my next rotation? Psych. I, not so jokingly, hope I get attacked on this rotation. I do not foresee my career heading towards psychiatry, so, like my past two rotations, I hope to get as much out of this month as possible. And that means getting all the crazies in front of me!

Let's see if I blog again before this month ends. Who knew it was easier to blog about studying and books than actual clinical learning?

Day 2370: With clinical learning comes less blog posts...

...apparently.

Okay, so this is going to be short and sweet. My Ob/Gyn rotation ended on Saturday, with my final 24-hour-call shift. It was nice to end it with the second-year resident I did my first call with.

Let's see...I have my Shelf exam (basically a test given by the same company/organization that created my Step 1/boards exam) tomorrow morning. Then, my classmates and I (whom I love and adore; I realize now how lucky we seven were to really like each other and get along!) are heading out to Lake Michigan to hang out on one of our classmate's dad's 30-foot fishing boat!

Memories from Ob/Gyn:

• I delivered a heroin baby in late July. The mother used heroin and cocaine throughout the pregnancy and her beautiful baby girl was delivered in our hospital. (Un?)Fortunately, the mother left her baby in the hospital and our hospital social workers got involved to get that sweet baby girl the home she deserves.
• My first c-section was for twins! At 26 weeks! (14 weeks before term, eep!) The mom was super sweet and those babies are slowly but surely getting bigger and better every day.
• I actually really enjoyed working with most of the Ob/Gyn residents. You hear the horror stories about these residents being b!tches and it was nice to see that that is just a fallacy. Or at least wasn't true on my rotation.
• I think surgery really bores me. I don't feel the desperate need to cut as other more surgery-friendly people do. I really enjoy procedures -- suturing, etc -- and maybe I like laparoscopy but I haven't seen enough laparoscopic procedures to know. I think this lack of love for surgery may slowly, but surely, close my urology door. We'll see though.

So, Shelf tomorrow then Neuro/Psych rotation on Wednesday. The learning never ends!

Day 2341: So much to talk about!

Hi hi,

I know. I know. It's been 16 days. With a life outside of school (sort of), you would think I would blog more, but there's actually very little time in the day once I get out of the hospital (again, sort of). Okay. Here are updates in my favorite form, bullets.

• I am on Ob/Gyn for 4 more weeks. I am on gynecology for the first three, and obstetrics for the last three. I have seen a few surgeries and many many return obstetrics patients in clinic. Also. I took call (call = 24 hour shift, 7am-7am) the first night ever (July 3rd) and I delivered a baby. NBD (no big deal). Except it was a giant deal. To answer everyone's burning questions...1) No, I didn't drop it. 2) No, the mom didn't poop on me.
• Boards scores are out. I passed! I got a lower score than I would have preferred, but it was probably the score I deserved. There are so many things I would do over about that exam, but I passed and I am just fine for family med and on the low (low) side for urology. Everything happens as it happens so whatever I will be, will be whatever I will be. (There was a lot of repetition in that, hope it made sense!)

Huh. I guess I didn't have that much to talk about, haha. I thought I did. Oh well. I should post pictures again soon, hey? These text posts are bo-ring.

Okay, if/when exciting things happen, I will let you all know!