22 Days

Here is me, representing the 'Canucks' during the football championship at Ross, singing Oh Canada! Second time around, but still super nervous! I guess that is why I am not doing performance arts for a career. Our girls won the game, but this time it was a tight one as the lower semester team was quite feisty! They were a bunch of small-framed girls but heck, I totally underestimated them. They did really well on the field, as did our girls.

So, I did my ICM exam on Monday and I was so bummed for the rest of the day. I picked out the JVP exam and I KNEW IT WELL. At least I thought I did. I had been practicing everyday for the week before for at least 2hr a day and I STILL forgot to describe the JVP waves to the examiner after the physical exam. Stupid me... I wish she gave me a hint like she did for some other students though. Even with a slight hint I could have given her a complete detailed description! Sigh, I still got nervous and that part just slipped my mind...

No breaks. Now is time to catch up in Pharm. The drugs are building up. Psychopharm is crazy (unintended pun)!!! I almost feel like I need to take some of these prescription drugs to keep myself grounded here. Today we have a Behavioural exam in which we will be performing an interview on a 'patient' to try to figure out the diagnosis by asking the right questions (hopefully). We will have 8min including the summary. I hope this one goes well...

And carry on.

Almost time for some heavy music!

This is an amazing painting that I came across today on the internet. Just wanted to share it with everyone, and I guess in a way to express how much I miss my violin, piano, and purely making music with friends. But I don't have to wait too long now for a little taste of paradise! This Friday our school is having a culture/talent show and my friend Polina and I will be playing for sure! We are the second to perform, which is great. We have been thinking about doing a song together since we met, and finally we acted on it (after 2.5 semesters)!

Today was an exciting day. We had our Standardized Patient exam in the morning. Basically each student is assigned another as a partner, pair up, and perform a 45min interview + physical exam on a 'patient'. Those standardized patients are volunteers, most of whom are spouses of the fellow Ross students. They were given a scenario and would be acting out the symptoms for the students being tested. We had a gentleman who presented with severe chest pain. But my partner and I worked well as a team. We missed a couple of things during the physical but these were not on the marking scheme. Basically, we got a perfect score! :) I am quite surprised and pleased about that.

It is interesting how important it is to practice doing physical exams with ONE very essential factor in mind. And that is - as (future) physicians, our focus should be the PATIENT. You would be surprised how many students get in the zone of the exam and forget that simple yet critical fact! We all get nervous because we are being graded on what we do and it is easy to forget that patient comfort is the number one priority! But my partner and I did well in that regard and our 'patient' was happy with that despite the chest pain, hehe. I must remember that as I continue with my schooling.

Anyhow, I sat down for 6hr after my exam and finished the rough draft of my paper (yes we have to write up a paper on the patient interview/physical exam). Now I am just waiting for a little feedback from my genius friends and will be editing it tomorrow before submission. And I am so happy that I finally got to talk to my dad tonite. I miss him so much! My mom is in China right now visiting relatives so I can't really catch her till she is back. We are just connecting via email at the moment. I feel really loved and I am grateful for that. Life is good.

Hope everyone is carrying on well! Remember to do something nice for someone today, or tomorrow :) because it feels good.

Rain

Our exam was over today. Thank goodness. Of course no one said it was going to be easy but no one said it was going to be this hard. HA! No, I saw it coming. There were some Pharm questions on the exam that required just straight up recall. It was either you remember it or you don't. That was the tough part. Path wasn't bad, but that was only because we have a professor who is an absolute sweetheart and she makes things so straightforward that there is really no guessing involved. Behavioural... let's just leave it at that.

It rained today and the air was fresh. The plants are happy and I could almost feel it. I went out tonite with some friends.. Normally I don't go out after Mini's but I felt the need to tonight. I have been studying so hard that I felt that my mind was gonna give. And some fun and relaxation were definitely called upon. Thank god for friends.

Tomorrow I have to wake up early and finish my PBL assignment and then get on with the day. I think we have a full day of class again. No breaks? A neverending journey huh... Just keep on trucking!

Dark dark days...

Four days till the dreaded Mini 2. Sorry for the lack of update. I have been trying to buckle down and focus on studying. Pharmacology has an insanely amount of material for us to memorize even though it has the fewest questions on the exam and also worth the least!!!

Praying...