The ER

I want to be an ER doc. Why? I think they define what it means to be a generalist...and I love that. Knowing a good bit about a lot is what medicine is all about to me. I don't want to be one of those doctors that is so specialized they only do one thing. God Bless those people.

There's a lot of druggies in the ER. They're always asking for pills while putting on their best game face. I imagine I won't give out a single pain pill except when absolutely necessary. But then again...there will be nights when I'm in a good mood and give pain meds to everyone just because.

One time I saw a drunk guy kick a pregnant nurse when I was shadowing

My Kind of Doctor

Dr P: “How do you know a woman is smarter than a cow?”
Me: “I dunno?”
Dr P: “A woman doesn’t shit herself when you squeeze her tits.”

My hero. This was the teacher from gross anatomy lab that would ask us what X body part was and then go and quiz the group next to us on the stuff we told him. He's also been sued so many times that all he can now do is teach.

Dr P: "What's the biggest vein in a girl's mouth?"
Me: "No clue Doc"
Dr P: "Dorsal vein of the penis"

Touch

At one point in my first year, I realized that the only other person I touched was the cadaver I was also cutting on. It was a pretty big disappointment and I'm glad I don't have to go through that hell again.

First Patient

So they make us go through the hospital randomly and ask people if we can do physical exams on them. Way to break the ice, right? Well, I go with another med student to the wards and a nurse tells me this patient will be a good one. She has this grin on her face...foreshadowing anyone?

I go in, introduce myself, and she gives me the thumbs up. So to start chatting it up she says that she's a dancer. I realize 2 seconds later that she's a stripper. I still giggle at the word "boob" and "vagina" so I'm not exactly the most mature person in the world. Also, she was really skanky. Like dirty skanky...she could have been pretty if she made herself up, but for now she was really uggo.

I ask her what she's in the hospital for, and she says she was shooting up heroine and got a big abscess. Wow. I've lived a pretty sheltered life so being with a stripper and druggy all at the same time is kind of a rush.

This patient has the wackiest history I've ever heard of. She thinks her mom poisoned her dad and paid off the autopsy people to not discover it. She does like 4 different kind of drugs. And she was my age. And she has a 8 year old kid. I'm 23 years old. Do the math.

I started with the physical exam and when I was checking her eyes (being very close), she touches my arm and says "I can show you things." Okay so it didn't register with me at first but it did with my friend who was in the room. When we came out of the room, it hit me. This skank stripper was hitting on me.

I then had to present the patient to an attending, which is actually a big deal to a medical student. As I'm presenting and going through the physical exam, she's touching my arm her or stroking my hand there. This time it's registering. I'm going blood red. The other 3 medical students (now they are girls) are giggling. My hands start to shake. I can't think straight. The attending tells me to just stop and I felt like a failure.

I get out and the attending starts laughing at me. So much for my first patient encounter. She later came and asked me for a ride home because she gave her taxi fair to the lunch lady as a tip.

Doombolt

I play this RPG (role playing game) from a while back. It's called a MUD and it's basically a text version of World of Warcraft. Basically, you have to use your imagination a lot. I play this character that is akin to a Magician or Warlock. The most powerful spell that this "mage" has is called the doombolt.

So med students have to do rectal exams as part of their "initiation" into the medical profession. It's kind of like delivering a baby...but not as glorious. As I inserted my finger into an old dude's asshole, I quietly whispered "Doombolt" to ingrain into my mind the total ownage I was going to bestow on him. Then my hand starting to quake from the insane pressure required inserting my finger into this guy's pooper.

After the guy left, the doctor looked at me and called the patient a "retard."

Floppy

One day in gross anatomy lab I saw a girl flopping around a dead guy's penis. It had a "flexi-rod" in it...and I actually got kind of turned on. Must have been a porno or something

First Quiz

After countless hours of studying for what should just be a “quiz,” I’ve met been met with the full force of the Professor Punch. Looks like medical school is going to be hard and probably kick my ass. Who would have guessed it?

The day started early like every day. I hate waking up before 11 am. I woke up an hour early (5:30 AM) because I wanted to quickly review the material before the actual quiz. Instead, I watched the hilarious sitcom Becker. I must have decided subconsciously that watching a tv show about a fake doctor was more important than learning to be a real doctor. No regrets there.

So I get to class and take this quiz. Most of the questions are 2nd and 3rd order, meaning they’ll show you a muscle and then say where does the nerve arise that innervates this muscle. It’s a great way to incorporate information (if you know it) and it’s probably the best way to raise future doctors. From my experience, usually nothing in medicine is straight up.

After getting done with the quiz everyone is moaning and groaning and bitching about it, but I just dont want to hear it. I left the class and went down to the student lounge. Everyone else, and I mean everyone, went straight to the library to study for our quiz in Histology this Thursday. I ate a nice healthy breakfast from the cafeteria and started to reflect. Medical school is going to be a marathon rather than a series of short to long sprints. I enjoyed the time off and watched people seem to already stress out.

It’s late in the afternoon now, and we were supposed to get our scores a while back but the professor emailed us saying he was stuck in a meeting. Oh well. I need to start on my next marathon, the studying of this histology. This is going to be a long 2 years. After that, the abuse that is my education will be in the clinical setting. It’s going to be a very long 2 years, then 2 more, then 3-5 more. Ugh.

On a sidenote, a friend of mine said that after reading my gross anatomy lab post, he has decided to donate his body to science after his death. Wow. I couldn’t believe I had an influence so great on someone’s life. I suppose that is what it is to be a physician.

Gross Anatomy Lab

Almost everyone wonders what medical students do to cadavers. Well, we cut them up and find everything we can. And there’s a lot to be found. The gross anatomy lab is a “right of passage” if you will for medical students making the transition from college students to real future medical professional. The bodies are treated with the utmost respect and at the end of the first day in lab, I actually felt like a medical student for the first time. Here’s how the day went.

In our first day of lab, we fit all 115 people in there. It was super crowded. The bodies were not just hanging around out in the open, but were in big metal coffin type thingys. So the tension is building. For many of us, it’s the first time to see a cadaver. I ofcourse want to see someone pass out but not me. I made sure to eat breakfast that morning and am now shifting the weight between my legs. I look retarded but I’d look even more retarded if I passed out. The metal coffins are opened.

The face is covered, thank god, and so is the lower genitalia. Judging by just the chest, our group of 6 highly intelligent men decide it’s a dude. We pick out a name to ease the tension. A unanimous decision is made for “Herman.” Why Herman? Why not!

So we turn the cadaver over so the face is now looking down. I see a blister on his butt and use a probe to touch it and it unexpectedly bursts. I barely hold my lunch down. Our first cut needs to be made. A 1/2 inch incision from the back of the head down to about the buttocks. Everyone chuckles nervously and no one makes the first move. A good friend of mine, BB, says “You do it Brownmedstudent!” Thanks good friend. Thanks a lot. Jerk. I get handed the scalpel and make the first piercing at the back of the head.

It’s insane how easily a scalpel can go into the back of someone’s head. I make the incision down the back of the neck along the spine down to where I need to stop. Time to pass on the scalpel and we make transverse cuts from the original cut towards the arms. Basically we are sectioning off this guy’s back. We really just need to clean up the back today. Everyone else is surprised by how easily he’s cut with a sharp scalpel.

Herm didnt’t look like a big guy. Big guys mean fat. Fat is hard to remove to identify structure. We were sadly mistaken. Herm is the fattest dude in the gross lab. His skin hides it so well. The professor comes over and tells us if we need a place to put the scalpel, just put it into his butt cheek. Strange, yet satisfying. I mention something about how human fat looks like popcorn butter. Since then 3/6 people in my group have sworn off of popcorn. Strangely, I am hungry. In fact, every day I get hungrier when I enter the gross lab.

Toward the end of the lab another med student comes over and asks how the dissection was on HER. We say it’s a dude. Then we look down at the genetalia. Herm’s a she. Wow. We will eventually find out the cause of death for the cadavers later, but ideas are rushing through my mind. Died during a sex change operation was the best one I could think of. Someone mentions renaming it to Mrs. Garrison. I’ve grown fond of Herm. When cleaning up the cadaver I catch a glimpse of Herm’s face. It really sends shivers down my spine and it may have been the closest I’ve come to passing out that day.

Just a quick sidenote, but I’d like to reiterate that we respect these cadavers to the utmost degree. Without the greatest of all donation these people have made, your future physician might have to rob graves like back in the ol’ days. We will eventually have a burying ceremony with the families when we are done with their cadavers. I wanted to make a mention to thank the people and their families who have donated. It has seriously made me consider doing it myself.

We clean up, and I realize that the soap dispensors dont work. Wonderful. We leave and I see girls outside the hallway sitting down with their head between their knees. Couldn’t take the cadavers eh? That’s one victory for brownmedstudent. Another thing worth mentioning is the smell. It’s horrible. Just horrible. And it sticks to your clothes and skin. People will get away from you in an elevator or in any close quarters situation. I can’t seem to describe the smell, but once you smell it once, you’d never forget it.

The Beginning

Well, I was studying for my first quiz in medical school today when I realized – “Damn, I should start a blog!” I’m in no way as good a writer as my inspiration, Panda Bear, but I’ll get over it. I welcome you to this wonderful paradise of my opinions.

Before class started, I took a a whole semester where I took bullshit classes like aerobic dance. Then, I didn’t do anything the whole summer except bum off of my parents. It was like coasting through life at 60 mph with the wind blowing through my hair, and then slamming into a brick wall. And now the medical journey has begun.

Our first week was all orientation. I was actually eager to jump into class the first day and learn some good ol’ doctoring, but we didnt do anything except go over boring HIPAA stuff and other random junk. We actually had to stand up at one point in front of our whole class and talk about ourselves. One dude stood up and said that he didn’t enjoy socialized projects. Wow, kinda weird and freakish. I’ll call him Mr. Antisocial. More about him later.

So the first week went by and we covered a lot of stuff. There’s this girl in my class that asks like 5-6 questions per class. I’ve dubbed her the name “The Riddler.” She asked the professor the other day “So…if someone breaks their arm it hurts?” Thank you admissions committee for only allowing the brightest and best into medical school. I think she just asks those questions to get attention from the professor. She may as well have a flashing “HEY LOOK AT ME PROFESSOR, I’M AT CLASS TODAY” sign. Anyways, I heard the amount of info they feed us was bad, and boy were they right. The analogy is “trying to take a sip of water from a fire hydrant.” For our first quiz we have around 200 pages worth of material that should be covered. I can’t wait for the cumulative midterm.

I seem to be addicted to naps from my earlier lazy semester (and whole collegiate career), so now I have to work around that addiction. I go to class from 8-12, go home, nap, then come back to campus to study. Doesn’t leave me a lot of free time but oh well. I’m still trying to get “into the groove” so hopefully this will change in the future.

Yesterday I was in the library when I saw Mr. Antisocial in the corner playing games on the computer. I was in a good mood so I think to myself that I should go over and talk with him…it was more like a charity from me the more I think about it. So I go over and start a conversation with him. After about our 4th round of whispering, he slams me with a “YOU NEED TO BE QUIET THIS IS A LIBRARY.” Damn that made me mad. It was like a beggar saying your money isn’t good enough for him. It was probably the only human interaction he had that day. One too many for him. Yes I make rude assumptions about people. That’s me.

More studying for now. Hopefully something awesome will come of this blog, like the retaining of my sanity.