What It's Really Like

My Home : Stanton Gerber Hall

Well, I can say almost made it through my first week of medical school. No one said med school is easy; they're right. This has to have been one of the longest weeks of my life. Was it really just four days ago that I knew absolutely nothing about the back or cadavers or what it's really like to "go to med school"?
I've studied more this past week then I ever did last semester. My typical day starts around 6:30 in order to be prepared and in my seat at 8am for class. Then it's lunchtime around noon and more class until 3 or 4pm. If I'm lucky I can go home then and spend a few hours eating dinner and working out unless my group and I didn't finish our dissection and have to go back to the lab. Then it's back to the books for a few more hours before I finally call it a night only to get up and do it again.
Someone once told me that part of learning medicine is like learning a language. I think they're right. I mean how often do you hear words like semispinalis capitus and conus medullaris and the dorsal scapular nerve innervates the levator spinae? Yeah, if I could just know what half of what I read meant, I think I'd be doing ok. Netter's atlas pages are permenantly etched on my mind (I hope at least until Wednesday). I think the two key words for me over the next two years are balance and discipline.
It's going to be hard work, but it's not all drudgery. Yesterday I had my first patient. Ok...so he was a standardized patient paid to let us practice vital signs on him, but he was still a patient. In my white coat and all dressed up th my new instruments in hand, I felt like a little girl playing doctor :o). Tomorrow night, my advisor is taking myself and her other advisees out to her house on the lake for dinner.
Tonight I took the time to attend CMDA's (Christian Medical and Dental Association) barbeque. It was nice to spend time with some of the older students and know that it's possible to make it through your first year, and that there are Christian doctors out there. I'm looking foward to a speaker they're having next month, the author of one of my favorite books, Jesus M.D. . I can already tell that it will be a constant struggle to not let the academic side of medicine overwhelm me so that it quenches my spiritual fervor and zeal that led me to this career in the first place. I ask for your prayers on this and for my first test coming up this Wednesday.
Well, I should probably go spend some time with old Mr.Netter. Sometimes I wonder if I can really do this or if I've gotten myself in over my head. Guess I'll find out next Wednesday. Until then...