Life choices

One of the most important aspects of pursuing medicine is choosing a specialty. Each specialty has its own lifestyle associated with it, different patient population it typically sees and common personalities found in its field. While still keeping an open mind, I am very interested in ob/gyn at this point. Something every medical student also must do is eliminate specialties that they are pretty sure they are not interested in going into. I am sitting in our fifth radiology lecture, and let's just say I have crossed radiology off my list already. I just don't have much interest in looking at all these pictures. The bones are cool to look at, but all the soft tissues are just so hard to see and not all that interesting! I can probably also cross pathology off my list at this point since I don't have much interest in histology at this point, and I would rather work with live patients than dead ones...

An enlightening day

The beginning of this week was a but of a downer (biochem kicked my ass on quiz #4.  probably because we had an anatomy practical smack in the middle of our time between quiz 3 and 4).  It's alright though, I will just do better next time!

The week has just been getting better and better though.  We gave our first male pelvic and digital rectal exams (sticking our fingers up someone's rectum) on a standardized patient.  It wasn't that bad at all!  Today we had a class officer meeting, and I am really enjoying being involved with the social aspect of our class.  I am one of the officers in charge of putting our "talent act" together for the annual "roast of med school/UCD" that the school has.  So it's fun, but not TOO much of a time commitment, which I enjoy.  Also, I went to a book club meeting for Medical Students For Choice (MSFC).  I didn't get a chance to actually read the book, but that's okay because I got to listen/participate in some good convo surrounding the topic and some fellow students let me borrow the book!  I really enjoyed just going to absorb other people's thoughts and experiences.  I love hearing new ideas and expanding my mind to things that were never even on my radar to begin with, so I really enjoy going to MSFC events.

Oh also, we had an amazing "lecture" today by a truly inspiring physician in doctoring today.  It's hard to explain what he talked about (it was basically a pep talk about life as a med student/later on as a physician), but basically in a nutshell he just gave us all "warm and fuzzies" about life, medicine, and being the best person you can be.  :)  Sometimes, you just need someone to give you the warm and fuzzies.

Lung baby?

Yesterday afternoon in anatomy lab, we dissected the cadaver's chest. I took a dissection anatomy class at UCLA, so when we dissected the muscles/axilla I already knew what to expect. The chest, however, was uncharted territory for me. It was so cool because we lifted the ribcage off like the hood of a car (excuse the awkward analogy) and the lungs were just sitting there, waiting to be explored. I especially liked this particular dissection because the lungs weren't all juicy and gross (*cough* the back). Anyway, we had to remove the lungs from the chest cavity, and it felt oddly like what delivering a baby (via cesarian) might feel like... It was pretty trippy! I know this sounds gross, but I actually liked the texture of the lungs. They were really squishy and sorta felt like memory foam.

I can't to shadow an ob/gyn and actually see what a delivery is like first hand! I really hope this whole "fainting at the most mundane medical procedure" thing is not something that comes up again... Next time I am going to eat a much hardier breakfast beforehand and maybe try to expose myself to things that might make me unexpectedly faint. Ugh, it's just annoying because it's something I can't even control!