thoughts about med school

I'm having a really great time in med school. Since I took most of the classes last year, I'm pretty stress free this year. For this current 10 week block, the only new class I have is Gross Anatomy. It's a little overrated, but I appreciate being able to dig around in a cadaver's body looking for all the different muscles of the arm and hand. By the way, in case you're curious, formaldehyde is bad, but the worst part is the smell of the body grease/fat that gets all over you and it doesn't go away until late at night. It's all over your hands usually since your gloves break and the grease get in. If you're curious about the actual experience, post questions and I'll answer to the best of my knowledge.

Anyway, we had a class about giving feedback to our peers. One way PIL works is that at the end of each small group session, we set aside time to give each of our peers and our facilitator feedback. We have to learn how to give good feedback that's useful instead of "criticism." It needs to be construction, not dwell on the past and focus on improvement for the future. It gives you opportunities to confront things that you're not comfortable with and allows you to get over them. It's, of course difficult at first to know what to say or even to be that observant to see things that need improvement. Generally, my group has been pretty awesome. I'm so thankful for them and I feel blessed that I'm making good friends with them.

What else, Clinic was fun last night. We had a patient who had hyperthyroidism and had enlarged thyroids. The patient also had a really high blood glucose and she showed no symptoms. She was pretty interesting and scary at the same time since her BG was so high. My dad's was that high when he suffered his stroke. So whenever I see someone with sugar that high, I always think stroke. We've had other patients w/ blood sugars just as high in the past and we've sent them to the ED because they had symptoms, but this person did not so we administered insulin, gave her meds and sent her on her way.

Today we had a lecture on abuse and maltreatment of minors. They taught us that the abuse comes in cycles consisting of an abusive period, a "honeymoon" period and a silent period and it repeats. And also that abuse and maltreatment doesn't necessarily mean physical or sexual abuse, it could be intimidation games or neglect. That it's always the right time to approach someone about a suspected problem, because they may not be alive the next time you see them. The best way to help people is to make it so that they can help themselves. I realized that for the longest time when I was younger, I knew a kid who was scared of talking to adults b/c of problems during childhood. It took him a while to get over it. He just had an inexplicable fear of speaking and communicating w/ adults. But when it comes to interacting w/ his peers, he was OK. He got over it when he started working at a place where there were older people there and he just got practice interacting with them.

My first exam is on the 14th and 15th of September. It's the midblock exam, 5 weeks into the first block.