Clinicals and Classes

Yesterday, we went to a local nursing home and saw our first patient as 3rd year medical students. As I previously noted, we drove to the nursing home on Monday to ensure we knew where we were going. This drive took about 20 minutes, so we decided to leave an hour early: an hour wasn't long enough. Traffic was extra crazy (first day back after the three day weekend for Memorial Day) and I was getting a bit nervous about being late, as they will make you leave and you may or may not get to reschedule the event (which can greatly affect your grade). Luckily, Farley and I put the school's phone number in our phones and he called as I drove. I dropped him off at the door at 9:00am on the button and then looked for parking. Farley just made it in the the nick of time, but the school had not yet reached the professors about our phone call when Farley walked in. Ten minutes later when I arrived, I was greeted with a happy professor (once I said my name) who told me not to sweat it since we called in advance. The car load of people who arrived after me, however, we not welcomed and were sent home.

Farley and I got to interview one patient together and he was an extremely ill man who had a stroke. He had lost mobility and feeling, and had delayed speech. In a way it was exhausting, but I was glad that we were able to spend a few hours with him. I got the impression that he didn't have many visitors and I don't think he can leave his room very often. When I first walked by his room and heard the loud Motown music, I thought, "Now, that is the room Farley and I belong in." The professors tried to give us two other patients that didn't work out before we went to our patient's room and this may sound silly, but I think we were meant to go to that room and spend some time with him. Besides, how often do you get to talk about how wonderful Barry White's music is with a patient?? I don't think many of our peers appreciate Barry White as much as we do--we were the right medical students for this patient. Parts of our interview and physical were fun and other parts were very sad given his illnesses. It is easy to forget about the humanity of medicine when you spend all day reading books and seeing this relatively young man be so genuinely happy with all of his struggles was a great reminder of the humanity in medicine. Given his illnesses, it will be a more difficult history and physical (H&P) to write up, but at least we had fun with our patient and the H&P will be interesting!

Classes today were okay (our entire class meets on Wednesdays), but I have a bit of a cold so I was trying to blow my nose and write notes at the same time, while continually using hand sanitizer as to not make my peers ill. I was glad that we took the metrorail (train) rather than driving (it much quicker and easier to take public transit). It was so nice to get home tonight.

Over the river and through the woods!

Tomorrow, I'm going to be headed to a nursing home on the other side of Miami to see a patient. We heard that it is difficult to find this nursing home, so Farley and I went today. No kidding it is hard to find! We crossed over into a bad area of town, then crossed some railroad tracts, then went over a draw bridge. That is right--we crossed a draw bridge to get there. This is literally over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house!! I just hope that I do a good job on grandma's history and physical! She will be stuck with me for three hours (yeah, real Doctors don't get three hours per history and physical--remember I'm only in my 3rd year).

I PASSED THE COMPREHENSIVE EXAM ON THE 1ST TRY!!!!

The comprehensive exam is an exam written by our friends at the NBME (they also write the shelf exams and the boards). It covers all of the first two years of medical school and can be considered a "practice" exam for the first set of boards, known as Step 1. My school is unique in that you must past the comprehensive exam to be eligible to take Step 1 (most schools just use the comprehensive exam as a tool to measure where a student is weak, but most schools do not mandate that all students take it). Anyway, my school not only makes us take it, pass it with an equivalent score to passing the boards, they also will expel you if you cannot pass it in three attempts. Now, it should also be noted that most people spend 1-3 months preparing before taking Step 1 so it would make sense that my school should have us ample time to prepare for the "pre-test" since they expect that we would score high enough to pass the boards. Rather than 1-3 months, we get about 14 days. Needless to say, it is extremely important and extremely difficult and I've heard that anywhere from 40-60% of people from my school do not earn an equivalent score to passing Step 1 on the first try. I can't express how relieved and proud I am that I passed on the first try.

From now until August, I'll study for the boards in addition to starting my 3rd year of medical school and then from September until November it will be full study for Step 1. Today is a great day!

PDAD...

I think I'm exhibiting symptoms of PDAD---Post Dominica Adjustment Disorder. Our professors said that it would take a while to readjust to being home in the States, but I didn't really believe them. I'm excited over the little things about being back in the States, like doing my own laundry, grocery stores that have fresh foods, not finding insects everywhere, hot water for showers, a dishwasher, and having an oven that has more than two settings (my oven in Dominica was either off or so hot it caused 3rd degree burns from touching it). I realized that I have symptoms of PDAD when I was eating a turkey melt sandwich. I saw the brownish black crumbs out of the corner of my eye and the first thing I thought was, "How did ants get on my plate?" I have also stopped myself checking for insects in all dried goods (like boxes of pasta) before cooking. However, I'm not the only one with PDAD. The other day, Farley saw something in my salad and very seriously pulled it out. It was a stem from a strawberry, but he thought it was a bug.

Dominica was fun while it lasted, but I'm so glad to be back in the United States!

I took this picture after dinner the other night. I didn't have time to run to the roof of my condo to get a picture without power lines obstructing the view. Have I mentioned that there is a car wash on the roof of my condo? The U.S.A. is such a wonderful place!!



This is my favorite photo that I've taken in Miami so far. You can see the sunset reflecting off the Ross 7000 Building from my balcony.

Goodbye Dominica, Hello Miami!

The last few days on the island were tough. We had so many exams and so much to do before leaving the island. The last week was especially bad, but we did it. In fact, we were so busy I haven't been able to write to my blog in about two weeks.

The cows decided to hang around my apartment because they knew I was leaving and they wanted to say a proper goodbye. Lucky me. The whole heard was out walking around down in the grass below me, but this picture is only of part of the heard.

Then on our last study day a giant lizard decided to hang out on that same grass before proceeding to hang out in the balcony two floors below mine. Needless to say, I decided to study inside that day. There he is in the field and the second picture is of his tail when he was sitting in the balcony below me. He was probably at least a 20-30 pound lizard.

After we finally finished our exams, we had to pack our barrel with books and extra supplies that we could not carry on the plane (there is a 70Lb weight limit for checked and a 40Lb weight limit for carry on items, which isn't much when you are moving from somewhere you've lived for about a year and a half AND you've accumulated lots of text books during that time). We also had to give away a lot of items, which was actually sort of fun because we gave many things to local Dominicans that we became friends with. I'm glad we were able to give everything away rather than throwing it all away. It took us much longer than we thought to pack up everything and we didn't get to go to a few last minute touristy things on the island. We did have a chance to go out to dinner a few more times (especially since we returned the propane tank from our stove on Friday...I really couldn't cook anything) and we did have a chance to have a drink with friends in the warm Dominica nights. In fact, we even saw a shooting star or a comet one night while having a glass of wine with a friend. There was a bright light falling toward the sea that went behind the clouds and then turned the sky to green and yellow. Farley took a ton of pictures the last couple days and posted them to his blog.

Here is a picture of Farley and I going out to dinner on one of the last days on the island and the last sunset picture I took in Dominica:

On Sunday the 26th, we left Dominica for probably the last time headed to San Juan then onto Miami. We had a more eventful flight than I would have liked on the way to San Juan, a mean stewardess. Then we had a lay over in San Juan and ate dinner with a friend. Obviously the first thing we saw in San Juan was an advertisement for Ross University: Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.

That's right, this Ross University advertisement took up an entire airport wall.

We managed to get into Miami in one piece, with all our luggage, and took a took a taxi to a hotel not too far from our apartment. We met with our landlord the morning on April 27th and got settled. Here is the outside of the Condo:

We didn't have too much time to hang out in Miami because we were catching a flight that evening to Texas to see Farley's family. In the morning, while watching my favorite channel, CNN, we heard that there were storms in the Huston area. I figured that they would be gone by the time we got into Texas: I was wrong. Bush International in Huston was closed for a while so we got to fly in circle over the Gulf of Mexico. Then our pilot decided that since the storm was going to New Orleans, which was our alternative spot for landing, we should fly over the storm and prepare for landing in Austin. From this point on, my head was between my knees as I tried not to get motion sick. After flying over the thunderstorm, the airport reopened and we were one of the first flights to land, we were so lucky our pilot decided to fly us over the storm. Despite being lucky to land earlier than most others, we had pretty severe turbulence for about 45-60 minutes. Once in Huston, we had to run around the airport like crazy people because flights were being cancelled, delayed and moved. Luckily, we were able to catch our next flight and we were at Farley's house just a couple hours late.

I had such a wonderful time in Texas with Farley's family. His mom took off a day and we all went shopping at a really nice outlet mall (it is like the one that is north of Seattle--designers!). His dad taught us some Cardiology and even let us observe a few procedures in the Cath Lab--we were SO LUCKY! Farley and I went to several movies, which were fun. My favorite move we saw was State of Play, but I think Farley's favorite movie was X-Men Origins Wolverine that we saw on opening night with his youngest brother. Overall, it was a wonderful vacation and great to see Farley's family. I just wish we could have stayed longer.

We flew back to Miami, on two uneventful flights, and headed straight to Costco to buy some bulk supplies. It was like coming around full circle as we went to Costco in North Miami before leaving for Dominica and this time we were at Costco in Miami getting ready to start our 3rd year of medical school and our semester in Miami. We also had to run to Target and to Winn Dixie (local grocery store) to get some other supplies. We are going to rent a car for the semester (we don't know how long we will be in Miami which is why I'm not shipping Zoey the Super Subaru) but we don't need it for a few weeks so we took a couple taxis but have mainly walked or taken the metro (it is just across the street from our condo). The apartment has two master bedrooms (each has a bath room with extra large tub, a walk-in closet and regular closet) Here are some pictures of the apartment:

My bedroom--you can't see the whole room but you get the idea. There is a slider that leads to a balcony that you cannot see in the picture.

It's not the best picture, but here is my walk in closet--one of THREE closets in my bedroom and bathroom!!
Here is a picture of the living room. You can't see but there is a dining table in the corner and there are two stools at the breakfast bar:

My favorite room in the house: the Kitchen with granite counter tops! The washer and dryer are in a closet in the kitchen too. I've heard of people who don't like washer and dryers in the kitchen, but they obviously have not lived in Dominica where you have two options for your laundry: pay someone or wash it in the stream.

Here is the view from the apartment. The view in Dominica is the only thing was better than this apartment, but who cares! The mirrored building on the left is Ross' Miami Campus, which is only about two blocks away, but it looks much farther in this picture.

I have to end this post with a sunset picture. This is from one of our first days back in Miami:

My cell phone number is the same as it was in Spokane and I'd love to have you call or I'll try to call you. My U.S. phone disappeared in Dominica so I don't have everyone's number. I have an exam on May 18th that is a review of the first two years of medical school, so I probably won't really be able to talk until after that. Right now, it's back to the books but after the exam, I'll be excited to talk to everyone!!