11/24/06

Here I am, a couple of weeks out from having written anything here, simply because time has been so short. Welcome to the jungle, Baby. You know where you are? You're in the jungle, Baby. You gonna die!!!

Won't you bring you to your knees.

I think this second block of second year medical school is the single-most causative factor for why people say medical school is hard. I mean, it's pretty intense. As I write this, I think of Michael Lyerly, Amber Gordon, Leah Rankine, and others, who have an aura about them that portends infinite studential success. Future doctor Lyerly brought home a 97+% in gross anatomy, a feat that boggles my mind, and appropriately awarded him with the highest honor in anatomy for the year. Amber, who was briefly my study-buddy with Hilary Hornbuckle during cellular biology, was clearly an excellent student, who got all her Is dotted and Ts crossed. Leah, with whom I share a bond of struggle against US immigration, among others, impressed me during an anatomy case study by far surpassing my understanding of the causitive factors associated with Horner's syndrome. She just pulled a thought out of the thin air that I had yet to reach, and I'll not forget that. It was a brilliant moment.

Others including, and in no particular order, Brad Coker, Chad Corrigan, Mohammed Zhaki, Michelle Downing, Dan Riherd, Jinnie Kim, Don Baker, J.T. O'Neil, Charles Khoury, Doug Johnson, Jody Marks, Heather Johns, Rachel Paisley, Cosby Stone, Dan McMahon, John Miller, John Hunter, John Hardeman, Stephen Tanner, Cynthia Irby, Chris Key, Tim Priestley, Wes Reynolds. Anup Vora, Kimberly Roark, Martha Phillips, Amanda Barner, Simi Akinsiku, Joe Beshears, Eva Clark, Seth Knight, St. Nick Patel, Shek, Kristin Porter, Willie Harper...where was I going with this?  Man, we, all of us, have passed through a high hoop, and lived through to tell the tale. It's something to be proud of, and moreover, it's something that I trust will serve us in our futures as physicians.

I think that sounds exclusive, just naming a fraction of the class, but truly, all of us who have passed muster thus far, we have taken the thus-far-necessary-steps to get us to being competent physicians. And Hallelujah for that! Jumping the hoops...

There are some who haven't, for a number of reasons which are all 100%-or-more valid. I met with Nancy Hinson today, who leads a program in charge of preparing UAB scholars for the transition to residency, on-the-job-training programs. And without identifying details, she described some of the challenges faced by some who do not make the minimum, golden 70 required to continue on in medical school. To place a number on the effort required to study in medical school is to short-shrift the dedication that has gotten all medical school entrants to any stage of this process. What I'm trying to say is this: I believe that anybody who has survived a semester of the gruel of medical education in the United States has the wherewithal to survive the gruel of any challenge. It may be that this particular challenge is not meant for them, but these individuals are up to any challenge, nonetheless. It is to these spectacular individuals, who find a different calling, that I dedicate this blog.

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I started this writing because I felt a need to purge the built up pressure of my current life, and my means is by writing it out, unadulterated and raw.

I wanted to write the stand-out impressions of my life over the last several weeks, and to catch up. This will probably go in reverse order, from most recent to the distant past.

What the hell?

I spent the last night awake, reviewing pharm cards, reviewing online images of diseases processes, reviewing sample questions that might indicate my understanding of several diseases. One AM hit, and it wasn't that bad. 3AM hit, and I did feel a nodding off as I reviewed questions of pathology, so I stood, and I walked around in the downstairs bathroom, staring at the door, indicating with my arm as I recited some pharmaceutical agents to myself, prompted by the pharm cards in my hand. 4AM. 5AM. And somewhere in there I put my ear plugs in so that I wouldn't hear Maggie and Estelle getting up, upstairs.  After 6, and I took a shower, for the first time in two days, gratefully.

I sped to school, listening to my iPod, that gracious increaser of my quality of life, and entered the parking lot, parking near the exit, a concert-goers experience exercised, with one of my favorite classmates entering immediately behind me, Rachel Curvin Paisley. I hadn't shaved, and Rachel hadn't put on make-up. We were both equally beautiful in our bedraggled student splendour, in my opinion.

9 PM and I am watching "The Gangs of New York" for the fist time as I write this. In the fictional film, the Irish prevail. The under-served, the minority, the people whose lives are lost under the radar of technology - these are they who win in the end.

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More random thoughts.

I had lunch at the invite of Matthew Purcell, who serves as the first-year class president. It was nice. He's a nice guy that is married, like I, and lives just nearby, walking distance. We chatted about life as a medical student, as an older medical student, as a President, as a family man, as an out-of-stater, with perhaps exceptional loans to boot. It was good. Matthew is a good lad, in my humble opinion.

Studying...that's my dominant purview. I didn't sleep for a day. I didn't shave for maybe three days. I didn't exercise for maybe five days. I did spend quality time with Maggie, going to the store to get groceries, as pointless and as banal as that may seem, on Thursday. I did sleep a bit, at least two days before. And I spent more time with my computer than I did with my wife.

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I reach the confusing, what-the-fuck point where I wonder where the hell I am with all of this. I think this is where inadvertent mentoring comes in, where your friend who is a doctor already and who is a great conversationalist sheds a little light on the meaning of all this seemingly bullshit that we are going through. Dr. Saag is one for me. Lee Camp, too.  I recall Dr. Saag saying that 95% of what he goes through on a daily basis, medically, ties in to his learning during the first two basic science years of medical school. That's inadvertent mentoring. Lee said that, "You'd be surprised how what you're learning will come back to [visit you again] on the wards."

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