Oh, housewives of orange county, beverly hills, atlanta and wherever else...nouveau riche is SO last year!

Both my primary laptop and backup laptop are fried. My phone is my only Internet source and I have no charger except in my car, which has to be running for it to charge. So no blog posts for a bit sorry :(

It wouldn't be so bad if I weren't the world's worst file backer-upper...

In light of the holiday...just can't believe how many people who have families that choose not to go the extra mile (literally and figuratively) one day a year.

Know it's a bit hypocritical, as I was complaining a bit about the long trip (for those of you who follow me on Twitter), but I just can't believe how many great minds and wonderful souls have been abandoned by their families once the benefits are less appealing than the work required to obtain them.

This is probably my last Christmas that I won't have to work..so kudos to everyone (including my sister, who spent many hours serving Christmas meals at a retirement center serving meals to those still here) who spent the day serving others.

Is this not the quintessence of Christmas spirit??

So I visited my family in Raleigh this weekend.  Bandaid came with me; here's how most of the 10-hour car rides went:

Really wish he had just sat there...but he did a lot of spinning and re-adjusting and blocking my view of the road and trying to help steer.  We made it back safely, thank goodness!

Reading a book called Oogy, which is so far very heart-warming.  If anyone wants to know what day-to-day life is like with Bandaid, read this book.  Other than having a history of being a bait dog, this is pretty much Bandaid.

How to be a jerk 101

My biggest question before entering med school: is there a how-to-be-a-jerk class?

No joke.

So having completed 1.5 years of med school, I think I've found the answer: no, there's not one class.  Every aspect of it turns you into this whole different person.  Yeah, some doctors may seem indifferent, unsympathetic, impatient and even downright rude....but there really are valid reasons for this one-sided facet of personality that patients often see.

Studies have shown that around the third year, med students pretty much lose a lot of their empathy:

"The study authors suggested that reasons for the decline include a lack of role models, the volume of materials to learn, time pressures, and patient and environmental factors, such as overly demanding patients and restrictions on caregivers' autonomy."

 Anyway, in my own words, here's a list - albeit brief - of some reasons why doctors are the way they are.

1. For four years in undergrad, all you do is study.  And study.  And more studying...and test-taking, and interviewing, and stressing.

2. For two years in med school all you do is study.  And study.  And more studying...and test-taking, and interviewing, and stressing.

3. On Mondays you wish it was the weekend, and on weekends you wish it was Monday.  Because on weekends you study 12 hours a day.

4. You're never prepared for the exam.  There's really no way to learn all the material; that's the point.

5. You hand in your exam that takes you 6 hours, and they give you the notes for the next exam.  Sleep Friday, start studying Saturday.

6. 3-inch thick stack of notes for 5 weeks.

7. It's pretty much like solitary confinement in prison.  It will make ANYONE go crazy.

8. If you're studying you want to be doing something else.  If you do something else you feel guilty for not studying.

9. You have a ridiculous amount of debt.  When I graduate I'll owe around $300,000 at 8% interest.  That means I'll be paying about twice that much back in the long run.

10. You think doctors make good money?  For 8 years after I graduate I'll be making less than $40,000/yr for 80+ hour work weeks.

11. Your non-med school friends desert you because you can't spend time with them (ok, all but one, Jen!).  Your med school friends can't hang out, because you're always studying.


12.You have to know ridiculous details.  Like a translocation of chromosomes 8 and 14 cause Burkitt's lymphoma. Or that many cystic fibrosis patients have a mutation on chromosome 7 at amino acid #508.  And there are a freaking crapload of leukemias and a crapload of anemias. 

13. Caffeine in the morning, ambien at night, alcohol on the weekends.  Don't ask me for a liver.

14. You can't learn good patient care in the classroom, but real patients won't let you touch them because you're a student.

15. New life motto: "P for pass" and/or "P=MD."  The pass/fail system is my best friend.

16. AML, PPV, ALL, AVPU, CAGE, MCV, MSO4, PPI, HCT, BMP, HIT, TTP, ITP...there are thousands and thousands of abbreviations.  Mnemonics don't work.  Except maybe the cranial nerve one, but I only remember the first half of it anyway.

17. Your diet SUCKS.  Last week I baked cupcakes.  They were breakfast, lunch, and dinner 2 days in a row.

18. You spend your entire first year with your face in a cadaver.  If I don't die of liver failure or a heart attack I will die of cancer from the formaldehyde poisoning.

19. Most of lecture is spent exchanging "that's what she said" exclamations.  Or naps.

20. Ok that's all I can think of right now, but only 19 in a list triggers some OCD anxiety.

Disclaimer: due to the prevalence of jerks in the general population, it is safe to assume that some doctors were just born jerks...but this applies to the rest of us.

I have lost a lot of important personal qualities during the past year and a half in medical school.  Still want to be a doc but wish I could get back some of those qualities.  Mostly the patience one.

Why?  Because all activities outside of medical school still require those qualities.  My neighbors directly above me (I'm going to assume it's not the police lady) apparently decided to walk around with 100lb ankle weights all day long.  All over the apartment.  And talk very loudly.  And jump up and down.  And then hammer the wall.  And open and close very loud drawers....more times than there are drawers on a standard dresser.  (I would guess that a drawer has been opened at least 50 times today.  In fact, one was just opened as I typed this sentence.)  And loudly slam the front door.

And a lot more stuff but I have to get back to studying since I've been distracted enough by them already today.

------

Addendum: now there is a preschool-aged child upstairs.  One who is in that stage where they do not stop babbling ("Mommy the cat is polka-dotted like the velcro on my juice box which is purple then tomorrow is fun day and that dog is peeing and I want more juice but only the polka-dot kind....")

Ok, so I no longer have any sympathy for the woman of "limited mobility" on the fourth floor.  Twice now, she has cornered me while walking Bandaid to let me know that I need to find a police officer to "make him obedient before he becomes uncontrollable" and have to give him up. She also had the balls to tell me "LOVE YOU THOUGH!" before walker-ing out the front door.  Really??  There are so many ways I could reply.  I'm trying to be neutral.

But the next time she stops me I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to restrain myself.  I think I'm going to tell her that I called 911 to ask about getting an officer to train my dog, and that I gave them her information in recognition of her wonderful referral, so she should expect a visit from law enforcement in the near future.

I know I'll probably get coal for Christmas for doing that but I'm done with this situation.

reminiscing....
this was taken one of my last days as a paramedic.

Jen if you still have some of the other ones from FB would you mind sending them to me??