It's Good to be Back

So, I had the best of intentions for migrating this blog over to a new server and giving the whole thing an overhaul. I also had hopes of posting on a regular basis.  Well, you know what they say about the road to hell and all of that. This blog began almost 3 years ago as a means to keep family and friends informed about my journey through medical school. Now that I have completed medical school I have been busy with my new job as stay-at-home dad, and frankly writing blog posts got pushed to the way-back burner.

But fret not gentle reader, I realized that I miss scribbling some of my vacuous thoughts here on the intertubes for both of you guys to read. So... to steal from the great bard, L.L. Cool J,
"Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years!"

What have I been up to you ask?

Well- as I said I have been up to my newly graduated physician elbows in Carpet Shark taming. This full-time, stay at home dad thing is no joke- I officially bow my head in reverence to those of you who have been doing it for years- I always understood it was a tough job- don't get me wrong. It is just one of those things in life that you just have to learn for yourself to truly understand. 

Meanwhile there are only 9 days left until Match Day- where yours truly finds out if he was fortunate enough to secure a residency- or if it is time to dust off those Welding School applications I have hidden in my sock drawer!

This Blog will be MOVING

If there are any of you out there who still read this please stay tuned for an update. I will be migrating this blog onto a different server. I am in the process of setting up the new blog and will post the new address soon.

Moving Right Along

As promised, albeit a little later than I planned, another post this millennium from yours truly.

Where to begin, I suppose an update of sorts is in order. I have just under 2 weeks left of medical school. My official last day of this rotation is December 25th but with the holiday, and missing a day for an interview- I have only 8 more days at the hospital until I am finished with the whole ball of wax. It still doesn't feel completely real just yet.

I are gonna be a doktor soon!

The interview season is in full swing and I have just returned from a trip down to Florida for an interview. The weather was amazing, the city was very cool, and the program was pretty impressive. The interviews there went well and I received a great deal of positive feedback, for what that is worth. A few more of these interviews and I can put this whole process behind me.

We are going to be moving back to the Philadelphia / So. Jersey area at the end of the month since there is no longer any reason to stay in New York and we want to be close to family for a while until I find out where I will be doing my residency in March. New York is a great place to visit and I suppose it is not too horrible to live here for a while, but I am ready to leave.

All that remains is finding a job for Kathy and a place to live.........details!

Until next time

Uno Mas!

Earlier this week I began what will be my final rotation of medical school.

It sounds weird. My LAST rotation! Yes, in just a few short weeks I will finish medical school. The reality hasn't fully set in yet.

For those who are following along at home, when last we left our hero he was up to his pons in reflex hammers and MRI scans during the Neurology rotation. After 4 weeks of diseases of the brain and nervous system, I began Hematology/Oncology.

This was not a very enjoyable rotation for a few reasons, not least among these was the rather depressing nature of seeing patient after patient in the throes of their terminal illness. It becomes almost surreal after a while. It was interesting to observe how different physicians interacted with the patients. Styles varied but most seemed to deal with the death issue very well. One can learn a great deal just being around people I suppose. From a medical student perspective, the rotation was fairly educational and the attendings were laid-back and focused on teaching. The schedule was rather long and most nights I was there way longer than any self-respecting 4th year with senioritis should have been.

Anyway, that is all behind us now and this week I began ...I'll say it again...my final rotation of medical school- Endocrinology.

So far it is completely enjoyable. There are only a few disorders that make up the lion's share of the patients we see- Diabetes, Thyroid derangements, the occasional pituitary abnormality nothing too exotic so far. The management is pretty straight forward and not too mentally exhausting, even for a medical student. Our attending is quite personable and has an excellent rapport with both his patients and his students. He seems never to be at a loss for a story, ready at a moment's notice, to illustrate a point, or teach a lesson. Most are pretty amusing . Tuesdays are spent at his private office in the heart of Brooklyn- quite an interesting experience.

Each of his patients seemed to come straight out of Central Casting. More caricatures than actual people, I half expected to hear a laugh track begin playing after each question and answer exchange, or perhaps a rimshot.

Some of the actual exchanges between our attending and his patients :

So what brought you in today?
"The bus"

And how do you take your metformin? ( a diabetes pill)
"Orally"

You have diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure; is that right?
"No I don't HAVE high blood pressure- I GIVE high blood pressure, I'm a carrier [points to his wife]

...and so it went.

Each patient seemingly trying to outdo the last in this Vaudevillian banter. I'm not sure if it was just the patient's personalities, or the fact that they had an audience in us [the medical students], but I suspect that this was part of the normal relationship our attending has with his patients. It was nice to see. Quite a refreshing change compared to my last rotation.

I realize I haven't posted in a while and have yet to mention anything about the whole applications/interview process- stay tuned. I apologize to the 3 of you who actually read this and may be interested in such things.

More posts are coming soon. Really. I mean it this time.

Trust me, I'm almost a doctor!

Halloween Pics

As requested, some Halloween pictures:

One Cute Little Pirate

One Not-So-Amused Elephant

In Search of: Candy

This year: (click the play button to see video)

Quite a difference from last year:

Okay..New Plan

I'll stop promising to blog more frequently and you'll stop pretending to believe me.

John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

I truly understand what he meant.

On the medical school front, I have just started my antepenultimate rotation: Neurology. ( ok fine- look it up, ye non Lovers-of-Latin)
Ailments of the brain and nervous system are what my world will be about for the next 4 weeks. So far the rotation started out very disorganized but when we finally got around to rounding it was rather good. My only complaint would be the hours, since I barely made it home in time for Kathy to hand-off the kids to me and head to work.

I finally completed the application process for residency and currently I am in sit-around-and-wait-mode. I have heard from only one of the programs that I applied to with a nice little email letting me know they are reviewing all the applications and will not be offering interview invitations until the first week of November. From what I hear this seems to be the modus operandi of many of the programs in Emergency Medicine, so I have not begun to worry yet.

The family is doing great and I am enjoying all the extra time being with them since my schedule has been a little easier (up until today anyway).

Kids update:

• After quite possibly the longest ping pong losing streak in history (151 games- just ask him) Johnny's systematic trouncing of the old man came to an end! I was finally able to beat him. I promptly decided to retire from play and go out on top;-) [update: My retirement was short-lived and a week later I was back to "coming in second" ]
  
• Meagan is being inducted into the National Honor Society this Wednesday, we are all very proud of her. As several people were quick to point out, she must get her brains from her mother.
  
• Kaitlyn is also doing very well in school, this is no small feat- considering that she spends almost every waking moment trying to become the world's greatest Flyers fan. Apparently she is in "Daddy, you just don't understand" kind of LOVE with several of the players and has even roped me into taking her to a Flyers practice. Not sure how I should feel that my daughter is all starry-eyed smitten with someone who is missing his front teeth.... I suppose it could be worse.
  
• Rileigh is doing quite well with the potty-training and aside from the occasional mishap, I believe that we are just about home-free. From the most recent entry in her Toddler Tricks to Horrify, Frighten, and Annoy your Parents playbook, our little darling painted her face with White-out (don't ask) and then got a hold of Dylan's tub of formula powder and decided to eat some with the convenient little scoop provided and as I was running from the other side of the room screaming attempting to redirect her, it must have sounded to her like "dump all the powder on the floor just before Daddy gets there, sweetie!" because ...yeah that is just what she did.
  
• Dylan is growing like a weed and at this rate will be as big as Rileigh any day now.

That's it for now.

Tune in soon.

I'm not dead...

Much has happened since my last posting.

I received the results of my USMLE Step 2 exam and I couldn't be happier. All the studying paid off!

I finished my GI rotation and now in the second week of Cardiology.

My oldest daughter, Meagan turned 17, passed her driver's license exam, and bought her first car- all in the same day!

Meanwhile I have been busy working on my application for residency- I am happy to say the process is just about complete and all that is left for me to do is sit around and wait for interview invitations. Hopefully some will come!

That's all for now- I hope to post more frequently now that I have a little more free time.

And When I Get That Feeling....

This week in GI, I am doing consults. It is a nice change of pace from the non-stop onslaught of colonoscopies and esophagogastroduodenoscopies. Basically, whenever one of the managing medical teams decides that their patient has a problem that may benefit from the GI service they request a consult. It is the medical world's equivalent to "Hey take a look at this and tell me what you think". There is a fair amount of consults that come into the GI service everyday so they are only too happy to let the medical students "help them out". Anyway, during a lull in the consult action I was asked to head back to the endoscopy suite to lend a hand. I was soon joined by another medical student and after taking some H&Ps we were observing a fairly routine colonoscopy.

The endoscopy suite resembles a small operating room. There is a large video monitor on the wall, a stretcher in the middle of the room, the endoscopy machine is stacked neatly on the counter, and a full array of tools, wires, hoses, and scopes are hanging neatly on the wall. The thing that makes the endoscopy room a bit different is once the procedure begins the lights are all turned down really low. I made a joke my first day there that at least they provided a little mood lighting before impaling you with large medical instruments.

Having music playing in the operating room is a fairly common thing. Many surgeons have their "pet music" that they need playing in the background while they snip and hack through tissue practice their healing arts. The endo suite is no different. Most of the doctors there are content to leave the radio on; tuned to some "office-appropriate" adult contemporary station.

The low lights, the music playing in the background, and my somewhat twisted sense of humor came together in a perfect storm today that almost had me laughing out loud.

In the middle of a procedure that involves passing anywhere between 4 and 6 feet of unfriendly colonoscope into your "Holyiest of Holyies", I happen to catch the song that was playing on the radio. I tried to stifle a giggle as I looked over at the other student and told her to listen. As luck would have it, Marvin Gaye was crooning on about his need for Sexual Healing.

And then came this lyric:

"You're my medicine. Open up and let me in.
Darling you're so great, I can't wait for you to operate.
I can't wait for you to operate. Baby, I can't wait for you to operate."


I guess you had to be there.....

The Word of the Day

You hear about in throughout medical school: The medical student closet hypochondriac who, upon learning about a disease, is JUST CONVINCED that he has said affliction. I have witnessed this phenomenon to a mild degree with a couple of my classmates. You know what they say, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

But after spending the last week watching enough colonoscopies to last several lifetimes, I got really concerned. Seeing countless diverticula, polyps, hemorrhoids, and abnormal mucosa, well, it was enough to scare the sh...well you get the idea ;-)

Anyway, the word of the day is :



Do you and your colon a favor and jam your face full of oat bran, vegetables, fruits, beans, tree bark- whatever. Just be sure to shoot for 30-40 grams per day.

This Public Service Announcement brought to you by concerned colons everywhere.


Picture Credit

The Weight of the World

I woke up this morning and something was different. I actually got a decent night's rest, something I sorely missed.

After what seems like an eternity of endless studying, I finally have come to the day where I no longer have to worry about the USMLE step 2 exam*. What a relief!

The exam yesterday went pretty much according to plan- after over a thousand practice questions, the test seemed to go by pretty quick. There was however, a series of about 5 questions near the beginning of my first block that felt like a stiff boot to the pills. They asked some off-the-wall curve-ball questions that were more of the Step 1 variety. Aside from that I felt pretty comfortable with the material and I didn't think it was too horrible.

I suppose I will know for sure in about 3 weeks when I get my results.

My son John picked me up after the exam and we met up with Jersey Pete to did a little post-exam celebrating over a few beers and the Yankee game at Brother Jimmy's.

Up next, I am reunited with my friends in GI starting Monday.


* assuming I passed