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!

Clerkship Freak out

So, today I had my first clerkship freak out. I'm not sure how I've held on this long without having one, but anyways, today was the first. There's a big meeting that is held in the fall of our clerkship year during which we decide where everyone is going for their rotations, and which specialties people will be doing during medicine specialties and surgical specialties. I AM GOING TO BE AT A CONFERENCE IN ANOTHER PROVINCE THE DAY THAT HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED FOR THE MEETING. I. AM. FREAKING. OUT.

This basically means that I'm going to have no say whatsoever about where I go and what I do and I've really been looking forward to this meeting because I have some very specific ideas about where I want to be. I know that I want to do my obstetrics and surgery in a smaller regional hospital. I hope to god to get clinics instead of wards for at least one of my medicine subspecialties. I want to do urology instead of ortho. And, guess what, none of this is probably going to happen. Yes, I can get a friend to try and advocate for me at the meeting, but when it comes down to it the person who isn't there usually gets the things that nobody wants.

Why the hell didn't they give us this date earlier. I've been signed up to present at this conference since the summer. I have a plane ticket and can't back out now. I had a crying breakdown and thankfully my roommate was able to talk me down off the window ledge, but I'm still very freaked out. This is the next 1.5 years of my life we're talking about - the remainder of my medical training. I want it to be the best that it can be. Does anyone want to go to this meeting as my representative?

Patient Follow Up

My days in family clinic are coming to an end soon. I only have two sessions left and then I'll have to move on to other things - that makes me really sad. I really like my preceptor and the patients I've seen and next week I'll be seeing my first patient for follow-up. It makes everything we learn in medical school feel both real and oversimplified at the same time. My preceptor and I have been talking a lot about evidence based medicine and intuition and how practice takes a bit of both. There just aren't evidence based guidelines for everything, and there are different motivations for doing things that aren't necessarily based on evidence. For example, patient reassurance. I took someone's temperature the other day to reassure her that she didn't have a fever. There really wasn't any indication for it, but it didn't cause any harm - I think that's ok. We sent a patient who was clearly a vasculopath for a stress test. There aren't any specific guidelines for his situation, but we thought it would be prudent from a preventative health perspective - so we did it and I think that's ok.

I used to think that I would love family medicine except for the boring office part. Now I'm realizing that the office part isn't really boring at all. It's one of the things I've come to like the most about family med.

Yesterday I had my first patient express regret that I wasn't going to be able to follow her as her family doctor. Now, if you're cynical, you could think that she was just trying to play me for drugs or buttering me up for a sick note, but I really think she was sincere and it made me feel really good. I like being able to have a good chat with people about their health and where they're at. I like being able to find a solution to a problem that makes everyone happy. I like family medicine.

private practice

Tonight we're watching the first episode of "private practice", the new spinoff of Grey's Anatomy. As of now, it has yet to disappoint - good drama, good characters, good bad medicine. Yes!

I'm feeling a little better today and a successful family medicine event and a great day in family clinic have definitely buoyed my spirits. I also saw a previous PBL preceptor today and it was SO nice to see her. I haven't seen her since Christmas last year and I forgot how much I like her. It's nice to be gathering mentors with time during medical school.

I'll write more later - I'm on a sugar high and a cold low. Sorry I haven't written too much lately.

*** Edit: Private Practice definitely went downhill after I wrote that post (the first 10 minutes). I'm not sure I'll be watching next week.

sick

i feel like crap.

Electives

Applying for medical clerkship electives is kind of like putting all your future plans + 100 dollars into a bottle and hoping that someone will pick it up out of the ocean and call you in 4 months to offer you a spot. The system seems so impersonal and confusing and full of forms that don't make sense or that you need to shoehorn your electives into. For example - a form says "hospital and faculty" and I'm applying for an elective that a) has no listed hospital in the electives catalog and the school won't reply to my emails about which hospital it's at and b) could be from two different faculties and which one isn't clear in the email and the school won't reply to my emails. The whole thing makes me feel like an idiot.

I had a nap this afternoon and now I fear I won't be able to sleep tonight because of a combination of a) not working out today b) maynards swedish berries and c) cherry vanilla coke.

Two babies!

One big, one small. My labour and delivery shift last night was awesome. I ended up staying until 1:30 am because I wanted to see a woman who had been there since I arrived go through all of the pushing and end up with a baby! The other deliveries I've seen have been of the last minute run into the room and the babies are pushed out variety so I wanted to see the process. It was very interesting and I don't think I've seen a happier mother. I'm not very tired now (I didn't want to wake up though) but I woke up with a bitch of a headache. I was going to go to the gym right after class again today but now I think I might go home and take a nap.

Tonight we're having the first event of the year for the family medicine interest group at my school. We're showing a family medicine movie and we're trying to recruit lots of first years. Hopefully we're still in the keen phase where they come out to everything because we got a LOT of food!!!! I could be eating subs for the rest of the week....

Anyway, I'm too tired to write anything else and I need some tea, so, adieu.

My bathroom mate was very happy about the cleanliness and was appropriately appreciative, for which I am grateful. There's nothing like doing something and having nobody notice to dissuade you from doing it again. I'm just killing some time at school looking up pediatric rashes before heading off to the gym. I have my labour and delivery shift tonight for our obs/gyne block and I'm pretty stoked about that. I hope there are some deliveries this time because I've had mixed luck the other times I've been there. I don't think there are too many residents/clerks on so that should give me a good idea what it will be like to be a clerk. Which, by the way, still terrifies me.

We finished endocrinology today (thank god) and are moving on to Obs/Gyne tomorrow. I'm stoked for that and think it should be relatively easy learning. I finally finished the report for my summer project that has been hanging over my head so hopefully my friend who's reading it won't think it's too bad and I can hand it in to my supervisor to be marked. I sent her an email the other week apologizing for being so tardy and telling her it would be in soon - I didn't get a reply... I hope that isn't a bad sign.

Ben and I had an active weekend filled with mountain biking at a new place (where I had a small breakdown over the fact that I couldn't ride anything but then recovered and we moved on and I'm chalking that down to PMS), running, snuggling and eating. The days went pretty fast because we were so busy with activities but we both felt pretty good about ourselves so that's always a nice way to come out of the weekend. We did less work than we were supposed to do though, more play!

Next weekend I need to do some fabric shopping and sewing. The dress I made last year for party season has been to all of the parties so I need to make a new one to wear to all of this year's parties. I'm going to make this. It's very similar to this one I made last year but the style works for me so I'm going to go with it. I think I'm going to make it out of broadcloth because it's cheap and then put in a nice accent fabric for the waist accent. Hopefully the sewing will go well!!!!

The bathroom in my new place was filthy when I moved in and nobody seemed to notice... I went on a cleaning frenzy this weekend and now it's spotless. I put in a new shower head because the old one sucked. I hope somebody notices.

Fitness Frenzy

This week I've kind of entered a fitness frenzy. I'm not sure why, this is kind of uncharacteristic of me. I guess it's because I'm semi-addicted to spinning class, although I've realized that it may not be the ultimate workout for me (I need a bit more abs in my life so I'm going to add them in after). This week I've done 2 spinning classes, a yoga/pilates class and a step class. Tomorrow I'm going to do another spin and Saturday Ben and I are going biking. All in all I think this is a good change for me, but I'm not sure I"ll be able to maintain it. I've also been trying to change my diet to be a bit healthier. No more treating myself for going to the gym with ice cream, no more waffles for breakfast, no more bread. My diet this week has been mostly salad with avocado, goat's cheese, cranberries and tomatoes for lunch, and some kind of whole wheat based italian dinner (which the exception of stirfry and trout tonight). I'm not on a diet per se, I just want to eat less junk and make more things from scratch. I froze some tomatoes last week that a classmate gave me from his garden and I'm excited to use them for making sauces. I really want to learn how to make marinara sauce from scratch and a good thick pasta sauce. I will always remember my first tomato sauce experience in Rome and I long to be able to reproduce that. Send me your recipes!

I hope everyone else is having a good few first days/weeks of school. Harry, you start soon, good luck!