anna in med school

Biochem and Physio finals tomorrow.  Anatomy on Friday.  And then at 4:10 pm on Friday, I’m hopping on a Megabus, Boston-bound!  Nothing celebrates the culmination of another round of exams like going “home” to the husband.

In the mean time, I might be pulling my first all-nighter of med school tonight…yeah, I’m in a bit of trouble.  But it got me thinking about the cute/weird/neurotic bedtime habits I picked up living by myself:

1) There are three locks on my front door.  Before I go to sleep, at least two of them must be locked.

2) I always, always must check under the bed for boogie monsters prior to going to sleep.  (They would need to be some scrawny boogie monsters.)

3) Jonah is a stuffed animal monkey (I think he’s supposed to be a Japanese Macaque) that my mom gave me when I was six.  When I don’t have John, I take him to bed with me.  John thought it was hilarious that I whipped him out when he was in Haiti this past January.

Okay then, wish me luck!  Thanks for all your wonderful support and encouragement!

and, yes, I know that’s not really possible.  But it’s exam week again (biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy), and as we review the circulation and innervation of the thorax, abdomen, and pelvis ad nauseum, I cannot help but equate what my brain feels like to our description of a testicle with a varicocele: bag of worms.

So, you probably know by now, when I start feeling a bit stressed, I like thinking about an inspirational story or quote or memory…something to motivate me.  Today it’s The New Yorker‘s interview with Jonathan Safran Foer from this past June, when he and his wife Nicole Krauss were named two of the top 20 writers under 40:

I am shamefully addicted to facebook, as you can probably tell.  Shamefully.  One of my favorite mini-study breaks is to scan through my friends’ new photo albums.  If they’re really good, I might go through them twice…well, these are a few of Elizabeth’s pictures to which I just kept coming back.  I can almost smell the lavender, and it’s so, so soothing.

Don’t you want to just drop everything and go lavender gathering in Portland?  Thanks, Elizabeth, for letting me share these!

Particularly for those interviewing for med school, but I think applicable to most everyone:

If you have other options, don’t wear the standard black suit and white shirt.  You look just like the other 7,000 applicants.  And, since there’re about 30 of you interviewing as a group, together you all look like you’re going to a funeral.  Be professional, but don’t be afraid of a little color and/or flare.

Regardless, you definitely show up all of us students who have reverted back to jeans and t-shirts…or scrubs with the stains of the various anatomy juices.  Apparently formaldehyde makes you hungry.

If you don’t recognize the lyric, you either had no childhood or have no pop culture sense…the husband falls into the latter category, which is why when I joyously spouted something about wanting to “frolic in the autumn mist” on our way to apple picking some years ago, John was pretty puzzled as to why I would ever string those series of words together.

Anyway, for the last three days, on my bike ride home, around 18th and Pine, I’ve smelled Fall.  You know, that delightful crispness in the air that invites you to go on hayrides and dive into piles of leaves and…well…frolic in the autumn mist, dammit!  And I remember my many many great memories at Carter Mountain Orchard in Charlottesville with some of my favorite people:

goes by the name of Dr. White, our anatomy professor.  And, yeah, he wrote the USMLE Road Map (the prep book for the boards) for Anatomy, so he knows his stuff.  I sure hope I can channel his mind for next week’s anatomy exam.

Don’t think for a second that I’m hearing his voice because I’ve been studying too much.  Trust me, I haven’t been.  He just has such a particular way of lecturing, of pronouncing and emphasizing certain words (“splanchnic nerves,” “ventral rami“).  God, I really wish there was some lecture of his on youtube or something so I could let you all have a listen; his style is terribly hard to describe.  It’s not really sing-song-y…it’s more like…well, he abruptly changes octaves and elongates words to demonstrate importance–which makes total sense–but the nasal quality of his voice and his informal yet never changing posture (to the left of the podium, one leg always propped up on a front row chair, knee bent, body weight forward) adds a whole new dimension.  It’s all pretty unmistakable.

As Dr. White would say, “Now we’re going back to this little bedtime story…”  Peripheral Nerves…my bedtime story for the next seven days or so, with illustrations:

First of all, thank you all for putting up with my bit of overly dramatic concerns regarding illness and, consequently, falling more behind on work.  (I am feeling worlds better!)  When I reflect about how easily I can work myself into a tizzy when I get a little under the weather, I can’t help but remember one particular blow-up fight John and I had in my last year in college as a result.  Looking back, it’s either incredibly hilarious or embarrassing; you be the judge.

It was mid-March and two weeks from my Distinguished Majors Vocal Recital, the equivalent of an honor’s thesis…I know, huge undergrad climatic moment: the determination of the exact words that would be presented on my diploma (Bachelor of Arts…and then: nothing; “with distinction”; “with high distinction”; or “with highest distinction”).  Big deal, right?  Anyway, I had a typical late spring cold that I just couldn’t shake and, as I felt the sore throat start to get worse and work its way into a  terrifying block of my sinuses, I started to panic.

Anyway, it was a Friday night and John wanted to go out.  I, instead, wanted to freak out.  Oh my God.  The single, most important culminating demonstration of my work as a music major, and a head cold was going to f it all up.  I was going to keep getting progressively more sick and have to squawk through my carefully selected song cycles and arias.  I would hardly be able to make my breath carry through the long lines that Ravel so lovingly composed let alone bang out the high F’s (above high C–booyah!) that Rorem had in store.  And all in front of my friends, family, and beloved professors.  And they were going to hate me as a result, of course!  And I would not graduate.  So, May would come and I would have no friends, family, and faculty supporters, and no degree…and likely no voice because I would have sung myself hoarse trying to sing through the hour and twelve minute recital.  Why couldn’t John understand that this was reason to panic?!!!

Then John said–oh God, poor thing–“I understand how you feel, now if you’ll just calm down–”  And I unleashed a rage that would put Lord Voldemort to shame.  (FYI, if you ever see me upset, you might want to avoid the phrase “calm down.”)

John later told me that it took pretty much all his self-restraint to not laugh in my face at that very moment.  Fair enough.  How in the world did I get this kid to stick with me through better or worse?

Anyway, I guess it’s never a whole lot of fun to be sick (unless copious amount of excellent drugs and ice cream are involved), but it is nice to know that the little bugs that were oh-so-problematic when I needed my singing voice to be in top form are a much lesser issue, now that I’m doing a negative amount of singing…which is an issue for another day.

In other news, to feed the fuel of my med school-induced hypochondriasis, my biochem preceptor thinks I have vitamin B12 deficiency.  Figures.  I do have a vampire fetish.  One of my classmates, after seeing one too many hernias in anatomy lab, claimed that he felt “something try to snake its way into [his] deep ring.”  He had me palpate his spermatic cord in the middle of Van Pelt library.  We’re both fine, I’m sure.  Just ridiculous ridiculous medical students.

Last night I got home from yoga and passed out…for twelve hours.  I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a mack truck.  And then I missed all of class today.  Shit.

Okay, I need to get it together in a hurry.  I’m going to study my ass off, just to pass.  All I need to do is pass.

I also need to get out of my apartment, because I’m not getting anything done here.  Good Karma Cafe just opened on my block, so I’m going to head over there to study until my eyes can’t focus anymore.  It’s game time.

This weekend I took a flying trip down to Virginia (literally 31 hours and change in length) for the naming ceremony of Ella Flora, the daughter of my dear friends Lauren and Alon.  Isn’t she a cutie?

It’s funny…I just wrote a short post about how I was starting to feel at home in Philly and making friends, and then I’m briefly surrounded by so many loved ones, and it’s just so so hard to come back to my life here.  But I am happy, truly.

I brought some anatomy flashcards and physio review notes to Virginia with me, but I didn’t crack them open once.  For 31 hours, I soaked in as much time with family and friends (are they one in the same?) as possible.  And now I’m back in Van Pelt…my heart feels a little heavy, but I can’t help but think about what we learned in anatomy about referred pain.  What circuitous network of nerves is causing this ache in the center of my sternum?

Wow, this note is turning sappy in a huge hurry…I guess that’s my cue to get to work and write a little more later, perhaps after I’ve been able to upload the pictures from my camera.  For now, thanks to Yossi:

Thanks so, so much to Matt B, Claire, Dad, Krystyna, Jill, Ken, Lauren, Alon, Ben, ELLA, Yossi, Orna, Donna, Koop, Leslie, Ashley, Liz, Zach, Leo, Jen, and many more for creating such a wonderful visit.  I miss and love you very much.

Not the vegetable.  I played it for the first time today; I found it only fitting as it is the first day of October.  I’m not really sure what that means.  There are a lot of MS1 squash players.

This experience was definitely the closest thing to being transported back into the body of a gangly middle-school girl.  I’ll be back, minus the awk, or at least with less of it?