I'm a Terrible Blogger

So in case you didn't realize it yet...I'm a terrible blogger. I had a LOT of fun this weekend. Apparently I got the second highest score in my class on my Unit 1 test, so I'm feeling really good about that. It's time for bed now, story time later. If I don't end up sharing everything, long story short, everyone got wasted and then it got nuts.

TEST TOMORROW!!!

So we have our first medical school test tomorrow. It is on the entire first third of my medical school experience. I hope to tell you how great it went soon, but until then, it's a waiting game. I told my professor today that I know I'm going to pass this first test, so right now I'm just shooting for style points. It seemed a lot less cocky when I said it, but I do still feel that way. For me, passing never was the question, the question was how well am I gonna do. Right now, I feel confident; I feel smart; I feel great. Tomorrow is gonna be great and I can't wait to tell you about it. There have also been some awesome stories from this week as medical school insanity has slowly robbed everyone in our class of their marbles. I'll have to share those later, but they are gems.

Test Week Approaches

Alright, so life has been crazy and hectic, but that's mainly due to the impending test week starting this Monday. We have 2 days of dissection, a day for review, a day off and then it's 8-5 testing on Friday. It will probably be the most time consuming test I will have taken since the MCAT. If you're looking for students on the brink of mental breakdown, visit the UFHSC this Friday.

---Mental Saturation---

Well, at this point of learning, I feel that I can't fit any more info into my brain. I'll just blank completely on information that I knew perfectly a week before. Hopefully I can train my brain to bring all that old info to the forefront before I hit test day. Thankfully, there is little to no more information that I have to learn. This week is all about packing it in.

---Weekend Partytime---

I feel that I am partying just a little too much on Friday nights now. I feel completely demolished by Saturday morning and it kind of robs the gator games of their typical joys (although that might be due to the way the Gators have been playing recently). I'm going to try and moderate my fun times over the next couple week to hopefully find a good balance.

---Undergrad Peeps and Piano Bars---

At the Gator game this Saturday, I had the pleasure of seeing my friend David from undergrad. We had a fun time at the game and then went back to Mother's Pub to have a few beers and watch the Alabama-Penn State game with my friend Joe. The game wasn't that great, but David, Joe, and I had some awesome conversations. I learned about the "Angry Dragon" I think it was called as well as David's experience with cougars. Overall, it was a great time. Enough so that this upcoming weekend after my big test, I am probably gonna head down to Tampa/Orlando to visit Dave and go to a piano bar and have some fun. It's just the something I need to look forward to after my test.

---JO Buddies and Trolling---

So I believe some of my new friends in med school are some of the most ridiculous people that I have ever met. For hours on end, we'll carry on talking about Craigslist ads and the term "JOing". Additionally, they have started going on the SDN website (a website for premed students to talk about MCATs and interviews) and trolling ("maliciously playing with" for you non-internet savvy people) the kids looking for info on UF interview days and the school. It's quite hilarious, because no one is more serious about med school than a pre-med student going into interviews and they're being met by the least serious (and probably least sane) people out there, current 1st year students. Hilarity ensues everytime. I love these people.

Regardless of how hard/tiring/burdensome/wild/crazy/overwhelming/sanity-grating it gets, I am having a blast through it all. Med school, FTW.

Human Variation...siiiiiiiiigh

So today we started our dissection of the thigh. It was wholly annoying. We had to first remove the skin and fascia (and other assorted nightmare fodder) from the anterior surface of the leg. After that, we had to clean out everything, find the femoral artery, vein, and nerve and clean out those structures. I accidentally sliced right through our great saphenous vein and became extremely frustrated at that point. It didn't help that one of my lab-mates (that is incapable of pronouncing any structure's name correctly) decided it was his job to act like an ass to me about everything I got frustrated about. In addition, I would tell him about my frustrations and he would repeat them back to me two minutes later and ask me why I hadn't fixed it yet. By the end of the day, I was wholly peeved and exhausted.

The one bright point of dissection today was Dr. Williams. Dr. Williams is one of my faculty instructors for Anatomy and Cell Biology. My lab group promised her baked goods during the first lab so I brought her some Amish friendship bread that my roommate made. It was delectable, and now, she will come at the drop of a hat if I can't find a structure. During orientation though, she told me that at some point, we would get frustrated because we wouldn't be able to find a structure, and that is when she would just pull me aside, pat me on the back and say "Human Variation Frank, Human Variation." Well at the end of the lab today, Dr. Williams was trying to find our medial circumflex femoral artery and couldn't locate it no matter where she searched. In the end we just had to assume that it came from a common trunk with the lateral circumflex femoral artery. "I'm really unsatisfied with that conclusion, but I just can't find it on this body," said Dr. Williams. I turned to her, patted her on the back and said, "Human Variation Dr. William, Human Variation." She looked at me and said, "Well, that came back to bite me in the butt."

Even the frustrating days have highlights. lol

Week in Review

Okay, in advance, I'd like to apologize to the shitty frequency with which I am posting stuff on this blog. I like to produce concise and delightfully arranged blog posts which doesn't happen in a few seconds. However, I will be limiting content and quality to get my news to you on a more regular basis.

Here are the highlights from this week.

---We finished the arms!---

Well, we are a two weeks out from test time and we have finished the arms. Now we just have to finish the legs in the next week and we'll be ready to go. It only looks like we're getting more hectic from here on out, but per usual, I'm trying to keep things balanced. Dissecting the hands was so terrible because there are so many small structures and so much fat in the way of those structures. It really is so complex that you kind of take it for granted.

---Med School Nightmare---

This week brought my first medical school nightmare. I have had many med school dreams over the past couple weeks. I have assessed innervations of the arm at a sorority pool party, I have danced with skeletons, I have trekked down the brachial plexus to the promise land of the axilla, but this was my first nightmare. I was dissecting the flexor muscles of the arm (as I did earlier that day in lab), and all I could see everywhere was connective tissue and fascial planes. There was fascia under that fascia and I had to clean it all out so I could see the muscles underneath. After I cleaned out one layer, there was another layer right underneath that. It was so stressful that I woke up with my heart racing. When I tried to go back to sleep, all I could see were more fascial planes. In the end, I had to take two Tylenol PM to get asleep, and 3 hours later I had to be up for class. Hopefully, that won't be the norm.

---HISTOLOGY QUIZ---

The first test of medical school knowledge came last Thursday when we had a practice quiz in Cell and Tissue Biology. It wasn't that bad and most of the questions were pretty fair. I got 24/25 right and the only one I missed was because I didn't read the question correctly. Starting out med school with a 96% is a good confidence boost for me, showing that I am actually learning something. Woot.

---Smoking Cessation---

After the quiz Thursday, we spent a full day learning how to stop people from smoking, using motivational techniques and patient-centered interviewing. As great as that may seem, I think spending more than 2 mins on motivational interviewing is enough and we had a whole day on it. Although it did introduce me to some fresh nursing students that apparently already have the hots for me, in all my doctory glory. LOL Hopefully, some of these motivational interviewing techniques will help me motivate my parents to eat healthier, although I don't think anyone will be able to manage that anytime soon.

---I have my first nickname of med school....sadly.---

Well my classmate Marcos gave me my first med school nickname the other day. While studying for our Histology quiz, Marcos and I were quizzing each other when he decided he was going to start calling me Frankenstein. Sadly, this story does not end there. He then went on to tell me that he was essentially a master of Histology and started spitting out knowledge about catenins and junctional complexes. Given his cocky demeanor, I decided to put him back in his place, informing him that about half the stuff he just said was wrong. I then made the mistake of following up my correction with the statement, "You know Marcos, if you're gonna just walk around here wagging your d**k around like you're hot shit, somebody is gonna smack it back in your face." Marcos found this so hilarious that he decided to append my nickname to "Frankenstein, the D**k-Smacker". He even came up with a whole comic book storyline history for the character. That was all well and good, but this story came up again in lab, to where I went to hang out with somebody the other day and they said, "Frank, why do you smack d**ks?" As embarrassing as this nickname is, it has made me more approachable to a lot of people and I'm enjoy the new social activities.

---Grand Rounds This Week---

This week at Grand Rounds, we had a paraplegic guy come and talk about his high school football accident that landed him in his wheelchair. It is very interesting to note that the myelitis that took his ability to walk was brought on by trauma, not infection or a virus. Inflammation in precisely the right place at precisely the right time can be devastating for the nervous system.

In my own personal life, I have been having fun with a lot of my classmates and finding new friends everyday. It is probably the most enjoyable time of my life so far. I might even be starting a band with some of my classmates. I got back my car from the repairmen, so expect pictures of that soon. Til later.