It is going to be a long night...

Only have time to say a few words here before diving back into studying again... We had our Pathology practical today. It wasn't too bad but still trickier than I expected. Hit or miss again.

Tomorrow we have a full day of studying and day after is the 3rd Mini. And let me tell you - it is TERRIFYING. I am trying the shove and pack all these drugs into my head (Pharmacology) and it feels like nothing is sticking. Hopefully this is just an unreliable feeling. Praying hard these days. Ok I will update soon after my exam with more interesting things hopefully.

My friend Adrian's memorial service was amazing - just thought I'd mention :)

In memories of a wonderful friend.

Loss, is a difficult concept. It is a hidden monster in the back of your memory that causes chaos when you are the least prepared. The most vulnerable. No moment is a good moment to lose someone you love, someone you have embraced whole-heartedly. Recently we lost a friend, a beautiful mind, a soul radiating positive energy. Two more weeks till his 24th birthday. Two more weeks till he reaches yet another milestone and moves one step closer to his dream of serving others. This news came so suddenly that it tore a big chunk off our aching hearts as it penetrated the thick air on this campus, stirring up endless questions without answers. Why? You wonder. Why him? Why such a lovable spirit?

I will remember you. You have left a deep impression in my memories. You are the inspiration of me and many others who have been touched by your love, your smile, your encouraging words. Your dream will no longer be carried by yourself, as we are all in this together and your dream is our dream. Let us remember our dearest friend Adrian. Let us not forget the reason why we are here striving for what seems so difficult to reach. Let us carry on with Adrian watching over us, surrounded by beautiful angels.

Finally, just reach for the phone and call someone you love but unable to see right now. Do tell them, that they have stolen a piece of your heart.



We miss you, Adrian.

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...

A short and sweet summary...

It has been a struggle to wake up for the past 2 weeks in the morning. Apparently this is what a burn-out feels like and it will not get better from this point on (according to a 4th semester friend). Despite all this insanity, I have been making myself go to the gym at least twice a week. We'll see how long that is going to last. My body has been protesting against my long study days... BIG time, to the point where I couldn't ignore it anymore.

Our second Mini is in 12 days. Where did all the time go??? Really. I do not understand. Wish things would slow down a little so I could rest a bit. The second year of med school is so miserable, in all honesty, even though the content is amazingly interesting. Of course it is always 'so much to do and so little time x 1,000,000,000'. A very inspirational friend just got matched with her residency program recently! I am so proud and happy for her as I know EXACTLY how painful and difficult it is to get through all these years of torture. At the same time I am very envious and can't wait to be able to celebrate that wonderful moment myself. Must get through this...

On March 17 I will be singing at the school's talent show with a friend on the acoustic guitar. That will be a nice distraction from all the unhealthy study habits.

I miss Vancouver and wish I was home for the Olympic craze. 'Nuff said. Back to studying till my brain farts. G'night everyone!

ps. I put up Miho's picture because he just looks SO FUNNY in this photo... perhaps a little too serious??

Volcanic Eruption

On Feb 11 I believe around midnight, a dome of a volcano collapsed in Montserrat. How did I know? The next morning when I woke up and opened the door, everything was hazy outside. For a second, I had to pause and take it all in, trying to decide what exactly was different that morning compared to before. I stepped off the porch and slowly walked to the gate, slipping on volcanic ash the entire way. Well of course at that time I had no idea that it was volcanic ash that I was stepping on. I thought there was a sand storm when I was asleep... wait now, where did Dominica get all this sand?? When I got to school and had a chat with the locals, they told me about the volcanic eruption in Montserrat. That entire day I was inhaling all that ash - school was giving out masks for the respiratory-sensitive, and many students picked up a mask for themselves. It was SARS-memoir all over again... I didn't bother. Instead, I just breathed normally outside, deeply. Then I coughed a bit. Ha, oh well.

Good news is that my Mini turned out well. Behaviour is a bit disappointing but not to the point of no return. I could work on it for the next exam and impress myself then. All the other hard subjects, namely Pharm, Path, and Micro turned out decent. Phew! My effort was not in vain, though I really need to learn to curb this pre-exam anxiety (that hit me this time... that was tough)! Alright, gotta get back to studying. Hope everyone is enjoying the Olympics! Wish I was home for the opening. All the best to the Olympians!

Yet another screaming wound...

So... I wonder when these will stop? Guess never ever. And ever. Today's exam was difficult. Definitely a wake-up call on how much harder and more efficient I need to be in terms of studying. The Mini consisted of Pharm, Micro, Path, and Behavioural, with Behavioural being the toughest! Now, I was warned that Behavioural is going to require quite some effort, but I didn't expect the questions to be so heartbreaking on the exam. As I was reading through them, it felt like they were tearing my cornea into pieces, little by little... The exam was longer than usual as well, a total of 143 questions in 2hr and 45min. Here is a taste of only the crust of medicine. Yet it is intense.

Pharmacology was tricky with the calculations. I was never sure if I remembered the formulas correctly. Leading up to the exam I tried to do practice questions more than once. But there was so little time that I had to carefully plan out my study time so I could look at every lecture at least once. And once it was - for Behavioural and some Path lectures. Lesson learned: I need a new way of studying this semester. Forget the 'let's read a few chapters in the book to understand this better'. It is all about how to maximize your brain capacity for the shortest amount of time given - so you can pass and make it to the next semester. Initially I tried to set my goal as to learn to retain information for the long run. Well, it is not gonna work if I continue to be a Ross student. The amount of material we are being fed is so overwhelming that I think I might just have to master rote learning (which is difficult for me)...

However, I am thankful that Mom was there for me today when I needed to let out my sadness and frustration in how incompetent med school makes me feel. She is always great at steering me away from silly depressing thoughts. I spent the night with a close friend pigging out on Chinese food and watching Wolverine (a quite awesome movie, actually, with some amazing effects). Enough said, I think I am ready to be up on my feet again tomorrow and go at it full speed for the next exam!

You can push me over but you can't keep me down.

Burn baby burn!

One day and a half left for studying. Maybe two days - if I don't sleep... yes I am considering it but my body will most certainly not approve. My brain feels like it will undergo self-combustion any time now. My eyes are tired and dry. My vision is blurry from too much reading in one setting. AHH! And I can't scream because my landlord is sleeping and my roommate is on the phone. If I didn't pursue medicine, I'd probably be running my marathons right now. The only stress I'd be experiencing would be the physical stress from logging those miles while exercising my heart! One can dream... right?

The electron micrograph on the left is of Schistosoma mansoni, a parasitic worm that can directly penetrate skin and cause what is called 'swimmer's itch'. It is also part of the reason why my brain is overloaded... Since I am wasting my time blogging, I am going to bore y'all with some of what I am trying to learn in the next 30hr. We had a lecture on parasitic worms and protozoans. Wish I took a class on Latin - that's all I can say...

Hermaphroditic flukes (Definitive host: mammals. 1st intermediate host: crabs. 2nd intermediate host: fish, crustaceans, aquatic plants/vegetables)
Paragonimus westermanii - in crab meat, infects the lungs, eggs found in sputum
Clonorchis sinenesis - in fish, infects the liver and bile duct, eggs found in feces
Fasciola hepatica - in aquatic plants, infects the liver
Fasciolopsis buski - in aquatic plants, infects the GI tract, eggs found in feces
Heterophyes heterophyes - found in fish, infects the GI tract

Schistosomes (aka. blood flukes, distinguished by presence/shape of spines on their eggs. Definitive host: mammals. Intermediate host: snails) Schistosoma mansoni - in contaminated water, intestinal - blood smear ID
Schistosoma japonicum - in contaminated water, intestinal - ID eggs in feces
Schistosoma hematobium - in contaminated water, urinary - ID eggs in urine
All the above listed are Trematodes (aka. flukes) and now all the species below are Cestodes (aka. tapeworms). Yes, those cute looking creatures... (staining photograph on the right is of Paragonimus westermanii).

Diphylobothrium latum - fish tapeworm
Taenia saginata - beef tapeworm
Taenia solium - pork tapeworm
Note: For Taenia spp. ID eggs and proglottids in feces. If ingest contaminated meat, intestinal disease develops. If ingest eggs (of T. solium only), will develop tissue disease -> Cysticercosis

There are still 3 more pages to go... but I think you are all falling asleep just like me. Good night!