Friday, January 23, 2009

Recapping

I know, I know....its been forever. I have tried to sit down and write--several times---but I had so many different things to say and they would have been so many different blog entries. So instead I'm compiling everything into one huge cluster. Its not so different as my life! :)

Interviews: I am done with interviewing! I actually finished a few weeks ago. It was exhausting, but pieces of it was really fun. Here are some memories from that experience:
*I flew 5 different airlines, set foot in 12 different cities in a period of 2 months--all while doing an anatomy and an ED rotation (ok the schedule was flexible---but it still was a rotation!)
* Interviewing with up to 6 different people for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time---which felt more like speed dating than anything.
* Meeting the biggest gunner of each interview, and just hoping their number one didn't match mine.
* Having a residency director respond to my comment that I like classical music (I listen to it when I study) that he doesn't because it makes him feel depressed. And then he mentioned that he is probably just someone who is more apt to feel depressed anyway.
* Being asked where I am going next year aka what is my number one pick---ILLEGAL QUESTION---at several of my interviews and me just smiling away with a big "I dunno response."
* Being asked about 150 times if I had any other questions about the program.

Working in the Peds Ed for the past month has been interesting as well:
* A father knew the first day of his 16yr old daughters last menstrual period.
* The same 16 yr old girl replied to my question about being sexually active (I kicked the dad out by this point) as "Oh, Its been ages since I did that." When? I asked. 3 weeks prior to her dysuria. I didn't realize teenagers had such awful dry spells.
* I walked into the room of a 20something mom bringing her 2 year old son in because of an abscess. He was sucking on a starburst. Only she hadn't unwrapped it for him so he was also chewing on the paper.
*After waiting for 45 minutes to be seen, taking the history and doing the physical of a kiddo with asthma, the mom tells me she really doesn't want to be in the ED anymore. She'd rather just take her kiddo home.
* I have seen more "viral syndrome" URIs (aka colds) than I thought possible while working in the ED.

I've also been working on the yearbook for my medical school class. Its been sorta tiring, but fun to revisit everything we've been through and all the fun times we had. Motivating medical students to do something, though, its a challenge that I didn't appreciate until this task....

I am heading international next week. I will be gone for 6 weeks! I am doing an OB rotation in Nepal---its going to be amazing but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a bit nervous as well. I hope to write at least one entry while I'm there, but we will see what sort of access to Internet I will have!!

Which means I have to make my rank list. It is due Feb25th. AGHH!