Only two more weeks left of 3rd year.  It has been the longest year of my life, filled with triumphs, disappointments, and long nights.  There were rotations I loved: FM, psych, IM and rotations I did not enjoy: surgery, OB-GYN. But overall, it has been a great journey but I am looking forward to scheduling the electives I want to do and enjoying a more chill 4th year.

Scheduling Electives

the scheduling of electives is more intricate than I though initially. There are many things to consider including whether to use that year for chillin or to take electives that may be more time consuming but will allow me to gain more valuable experience.  I have heard advice from both sides. Some students and residents say that the only thing that can prepare you for residency is residency and others say that taking harder electives like ICU will make you a more prepared resident.

Another thing to consider is whether to do the electives at the same hospital or use that time to travel around and learn different hospital systems and operations.  As of right now I plan to have electives scheduled in Bakersfield, LA, Chicago, and New York just to have a varied experience and also take the opportunity to live in the major cities for a month or two and see how the culture and experience changes.

Overall, the idea of finished cores and going into fourth where I am able to pick which rotations I want to do is exciting and I hope i make the right decisions.

Night Shift

I'm convinced that I'm nocturnal.  I just seem to thrive more in the night.  The peacefulness, no interruptions, silence, and darkness.  Unfortunately, as a student I am not able to operate on this schedule usually. But now I'm doing a week of nights.  It has been extremely busy during the traumas: getting the ultrasound, cutting off clothes, rolling the patient over, gathering the history of the accident from the patient or EMS or family, gathering a history and physical of the patinet, and documenting this in a note with lab and imaging... that is until I am interuppted by the next 3 patients that come in from a motor vehicle accident, stabbing, shooting... and even the condom covered cucumber found in the colon. Trauma life has been busy busy and I've been doing this long enough to know that busy busy is not my style

Surgery

I have come to the conclusion that I would never want to go into surgery.

1) Lifestyle doesn't allow much time outside of hospital
2) Unpredictable schedule
3) In General Surgery many of the same cases
4) Military-like hierarchy
5) Lots of wound changing and unglamorous activities
6) Too much yelling

Orthopedics

Started during an orthopedics rotation. These doctors have been
Probably the coolest surgeons I've worked with so far. The theme music
For their surgeries have been hard rock and techno in constrast
To the soft pop music in obgyn.

On to the next one

Third was a tough, tough semester, but thank God I passed.  It is considered by many students to be the toughest on the island.  Microbio was really a struggle.   But hey struggles help you reaffirm your motivation for embarking on the journey in the first place.  I excelled in micro in undergrad, but this was a whole different beast entirely.  We are expected to know which media to grow the microbes on, classifications (oxidase, catalase positive or negative, etc.),  which toxins they produce, and signs and symptoms, whether a virus is single or double stranded, enveloped or non- enveloped, segmented or non-segmented, etc.  For microbiology I would recommend relying heavily on sketchy micro, picmonic, or making up your own mnemonics.  With microbiology, you can not simply understand the concepts like with physiology, you are forced to come up with some creative way to distinguish the features of a specific bacteria, fungi, or virus.   The first block, fundamentals, was also heavy on the conceptual fundamentals of pharmacology, such as drug distribution and absorption.  Our other blocks were renal physiology, GI pathology, and reproductive physiology (why do women have to be so complicated?).

Boiling Lake

We made it to the summit of Boiling Lake.  The fog is the background is from the sulfur gas rising from one of two Sulfur boiling lakes of that size in the world (according to our tour guide).  It was worth the couple days of sore legs afterwards.