does anyone out there in the cyberworld have a copy of the kareoke version of "Go Go Go Joseph" from the Joseph and the amazing technicolour dreamcoat soundtrack?

I just came home from our first and hopefully second last rehearsal for our class dance for the med school talent show coming up. After 3 hours at the gym, it put me over the edge of annoyance that people in the class wouldn't shut up and starting talking at every break while the girl who choreographed our number tried to tell us what the next steps were. Yeesh. Some people.

I'm guessing that writing in my blog isn't on the list of things to do to study more efficiently, but I get a pat on the back for not being asleep right no as I wish I was. I just find endocrinology so boring... actually, I kind of find all of internal medicine boring. I can't wait to get through it and go on to obs/gyn. I would have probably gone into obs/gyn in another life where I didn't care about having a family and spending time with my loved ones and not being on call for the rest of my life. I find it exceedingly fascinating, but from what I know, it just doesn't mesh with the lifestyle I want. I know that people say that it's getting better, but the fact is that the schedules are less flexible than family med, it's hard to do it in a small town where you're the only obs/gyn there, and you still have to do call way too often for my liking.

I guess I should get back to learning about osteoporosis, hrmph.

A note to lecturers

If what you have lectured on for an hour takes me over 5 hours to review, you probably glossed over an obscene amount of information in your small time slot. I appreciate that it's difficult to say everything about everything in the hour you are given, but please, next time don't appendix 15 pages of notes to your one hour talk that we need to learn for the exam. Perhaps you could try to highlight what is important instead of just saying "everything is important".

Electives Disaster

So,
I got an email last week about an elective I applied for at U of T. It seems that my first choice has been turned down. That started a whole cascade into a panic attack for me and now I constantly have this sea of "what if's" in my head about having my other 2 choices turned down. U of T has a bit of a different system from other schools. Basically, if you know someone in the department you want to do an elective in, you can circumvent the system and arrange electives privately with that person. This means that you basically jump the que ahead of people like me who don't know anyone at U of T. This means that even if I got my application in in plenty of time, I could possibly not get an elective because other people have connections. This is stressing me out. I wish I'd known about his earlier and could have canvassed everyone I know in Toronto to see if they knew an emerg doc at Sunnybrook or North York General. As it is, I'm at the mercy of the electives coordinator. Sigh.

And, I was stupid and lost my copy of my McMaster elective form and am now having a brain meltdown because I'm not sure if I applied for a 3 or a 4 week elective there. It looks bad for me to contact them and ask how long an elective I applied for! But, I need to fill all 10 weeks of electives so might have to pick up an extra 1 week elective at my own school to fill that last 1 week slot. Argh. I wish I'd been more organized when i was filling out all of this paperwork. Unfortunatly, the talk we got that gave us all of these great tips about being organized when applying for electives happened after I'd already applied for all of mine. Bah Humbug!

work out fanatic

Lately I've become a bit of a fitness fanatic and it's starting to impact on my school work. I mean, I haven't really ever been one to do things early or get on studying in the first week of school, but now that I spend at least an hour in the gym every day, I don't really feel like doing anything when I come home. My work is mostly done on afternoons off and it's a bare minimum at that. I keep telling myself that this is for my mental health and that it's ok to take some time for myself - but really, is it ok to take time for yourself in medical school? It's a 4 year period in which you're supposed to learn everything about medicine, that's a lot, especially when you add in personal growth and development, relationships and extracurricular activities to make that all important dean's letter look good. There aren't enough hours in the day for everything I want to accomplish but I don't want to sacrifice the things that make me feel good about myself, like fitness. It's a good way to ward off those winter blues and to meet people outside of medicine. I need to start studying for finals soon though - 6 weeks and counting...

Ben and I had a very romantic weekend. We planned to meet at the cottage - him coming from the west and me from the east. I got there at about 4:00 pm to discover that the furnace was not working. I lit both fires and tried to warm the place up while calling all of the furnace people in my family to ask for advice. After trying all possible furnace fixes, I concluded that it was broken and would need a repair man. It was now after 5:30 and I figured we'd have to wait until the next day for someone to come. So, I made the best of the situation and set up a make-shift bed in front of the fire in the living room. Ben came in around 10 exhausted from his 5 hour drive through rush-hour and dark country roads ready to hit the hay. We snuggled in for the night, it had become nice and warm by then in the living room. At around 5 am we woke up freezing our bums off, as the fire had gone out and the room was quickly losing heat through the lovely big windows. Ben got up and got us another duvet and stoked the fire. We slept until 9.

Then we called the furnace guy who fixed it, but not until after he'd said he wasn't going to crawl below the cottage because he has a fake leg.

After the furnace started working, we discovered that it wouldn't shut off - leading to a day of turning and breaker for the furnace on and off and Ben trying to fix the thermostat while I contended that it wasn't a thermostat problem but a controller problem at the furnace level (engineering arguments - how boring). Yet again I woke up at 5 am freezing my bum off because Ben insisted on turning off the furnace before we went to bed, citing the "it's better to be a bit cold and snuggle rather than sweating" argument. He was probably right, but I was damn cold when I woke up! Despite all this, we managed to have a lovely day on Saturday and a romantic dinner for our anniversary (3 years!) with my Jamie Oliver Cauliflower and Broccoli Cannelloni (It was not as easy as it looked on Jamie at Home) and a nice Riesling.

Today we took all the boats out of the water and stowed them under the cottage - earned our hearty vegetable soup and cheese toasties lunch!

Election Day

Well,
26 doesn't feel all that different from 25, but, I had a really nice sushi dinner with my friends last night and got some awesome gifts from my girls and Ben. The nice thing about having your birthday on facebook is that you get happy birthdays from the most random people - but it's nice.

I hope that everyone who reads this and lives in Ontario has gone to vote or is planning on voting today - I already have. Yes to MMP and a big "F You" to John Tory.

Tomorrow I am 26.

Two weeks ago in family clinic we referred an elderly lady to the ER with suspicious pain and an existing condition that made us think she needed urgent care. She went there and they couldn't find anything but admitted her for observation - on the way to the floor she coded and died. She had lots of plans for the future with her husband and had a loving child who lived in another city and was on his way to see her. He didn't make it on time. It really does make you think that life is too short. Now her husband and child have some big decisions to make - will he move to another city to be with family or will he stay with his friends here. Will he follow her in short order as so many do?

Somewhat better

I found out yesterday that the meeting isn't to decide regional placements - what I really care about. It's only to decide which specialties we do for our medicine specialties rotation. I am not too attached to any specialty in particular, so, I don't think the consequences of missing the meeting will be too bad. Thanks for everyone's support!