Categories
Life Lists Medical School

10 Things Vol. 4

10 Things I Wasn’t Expecting From Medical School
Some bad some good.

1) Complete and utter mental exhaustion. I used to be a mad-crazy over-analyst of all conversations, thoughts, interactions, and observations of myself and people around me. Now, I study. When I’m not studying, I’m sleeping or thinking about studying. Which means I don’t have time for self-awareness or reflection.
2) How much information can be shoved into the brain. I’ve always been taught that the brain has an infinite hard drive and I never thought I would be able to learn this much more and still know nothing at all.
3) (See #2) How much I still don’t know. It always amazes me. Never-ending wealth in every single facet of biological knowledge. Most of which is still being discovered.
4) Still not feeling worthy. Do I feel like a doctor? No. Do I feel like a future doctor? No. Do I know what I’m doing? No. Do I dance around to Taylor Swift, pick my split ends, fall asleep in class, and hug my mommy and daddy each day? Yes. Is that something I thought future doctors would do? No. Are these things that the medical professionals of tomorrow are doing while in medical school? Yes. I am still in disbelief, I still think real doctors are these incredible put-together geniuses. I’ll walk around school sometimes and pinch myself, and ask my study buddy, “Are we really going to be doctors someday?” Yes.
5) A hatred of Anatomy. I liked anatomy in undergrad, we even had cadavers. It was one of my favorite classes. Now, I dread it. It is the bane of my existence. Seriously, impossible amounts of information, structures, clinical relevances, and all the intermingled relationships of everything ends up becoming a complete mess in my head.
6) How much I miss doing nothing. It would be nice to lay on the floor for a while and just do nothing. To not need to sleep, eat, or study would just be amazing.
7) How much fun I’m having. Its really hard for me to study without anyone around. Just having people sit with me studying while I study makes it feel more like hanging out. It would be hard to be at school so dang much if I didn’t enjoy seeing my friends up here so much too.
8) School pride. Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t give a rip about college football, and I don’t particularly like orange and black together. But I’ll defend this school- and my class- to the ground. I maybe went to one high school football game in my day, and really didn’t care what went on at OBU because I was so busy. But here it feels different. Maybe its the higher level of education and it just feels more elite. I really feel like we’re just the best, and its something special we have at OSU. The experience. The community environment. All of it. I love it.
9) I really didn’t expect to become unable to talk about subjects other than school for more than two minutes. Literally, someone should time me. The lady at JC Penney? Yeah she knows I go to medical school. I text old friends and suddenly I’m talking about anatomy exam scores. I don’t mean to do it and its not braggy. There is just nothing else I know or do or understand anymore.
10) Running. I can’t do it every day. I just can’t. I started out all gung-ho and motivated had high hopes for running 30 miles a week and now I’m either too tired or too behind. Oh so chronically behind! It sucks real bad too because I’m running a half marathon in a month and haven’t run more than 12 miles a week. Oops.

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Errybody loves dat OMM.

 

Categories
Life Medical School Running

How A Random Run Reminded Me How to Med School

Its been a pretty hellish week. Last week, I think I was operating on the fumes of a month long exhaustion situation and just got flat out sick. I was nauseous, my back hurt, I had a headache, I couldn’t eat, I had no energy and no amount of coffee was helping. I was falling asleep anytime I sat still. I went home early one evening for a dentist appointment. And oh goodie, I have TMJ! Guess what causes it? STRESS! I told my dentist my situation with medical school and all got the “bless your heart” look. He knows what it’s like.
Anyway, I had a huge Friday test in Histo and then another one on Monday in Anatomy that I didn’t do well on at all. I could blame it on many things: Not feeling good, having too much material, the awful Friday/Monday test situation, etc. But, I’ll take the blame for it and just say that I was not ready for that test. Still, I know myself well enough to know that I won’t get them all. So I took the good with the bad. I did pretty well on Biomed, I just didn’t get the anatomy one this time.
I stepped outside on one of the first truly chilly nights we’ve had this October. Some generic Pandora hiphop station starts up in my earbuds and I start to feel freedom in my very first steps off the porch. I didn’t bring a watch. Didn’t need one. This run isn’t for time. Its for clarity. By 16 seconds in- I guarantee you- its not school on my mind anymore. Sometimes its nothing on my mind at all. 7 minutes in and I might as well be flying. The wind is just cold enough to bite at my throat and ears a little, but I don’t care. Chilly fall weather that you can still wear shorts in- is prime running time. Especially at night when the street lights make the wet roads look like black glass reflecting it to twice the city lights.  I blow through cross walks and stretches of street without sidewalk. Up and down curbs, around bends, and mud holes. I cross the street but am sure to run straight down the double yellow line in the middle of the road a few steps because its where I feel the most free; like nothing can stop me- not even city ordinances and 2-ton hunks of metal.
In running, it’s never mattered to me whether I’m puttering and sputtering and choking and hurting just to keep putting one foot in front of the other, or if I’m in cruise mode, just chilling at a smooth pace, enjoying the view. I could even be gutting it out, leaving it all on the line grimacing with the speed of my own legs’ muscle memory out running my own lungs. None of that matters. I’ve always just been chasing that feeling. Maybe its runner’s high. I don’t know. At a certain point, though, the body takes over- if my mind will let it.
Its a place where my leg turnover carries me further than I thought I could go after not running for 9 days 16 hours and 21 minutes. Like pedaling a bike upside down. If you crank the pedals a few times,  the wheels won’t quit spinning for quite some time. Its just residual motion and it doesn’t require any thought whatsoever. It’ll just stop whenever it stops. That’s what my legs feel like.
Or that feeling I get when I give a little extra power in my hamstring to leap an extra-long stride’s length off a curb and head downhill, busting out the bass drum tempo to my song with my feet. It’s a feeling I would imagine getting when you go up a ramp and land on the other side of ten buses all in a row and land safely on the other side.
It’s a feeling when I don’t feel like my legs or lungs want me to keep going because they’re hurting, but I keep going somehow as if the act of running were involuntary. Like it comes naturally.
Its going so fast I feel my heart up in my throat. I know I can’t hold the pace for long, its just nice to amp up and feel my body working with me not against me for once. Its slowing down and feeling the tension come out, the adrenaline ebbs and flows and I get comfortable again.
It’s feeling comfortable on a run at all. Ever.
Who ever thought running would be my biggest comfort during medical school?
Running makes me powerful, joyous, competent, and aggressive, but yet, graceful. I feel loose and free and fierce and accomplished. I feel feminine and strong and not anything near weakness. I feel confident and beautiful and happy. I never feel like I don’t measure up, because its just me there and I am running and that is all I am doing. I feel like I’m doing something, because I am.
Every step is quantifiable, definite, appreciable, and proven. Every step proves something to myself- that I can go one more step. I look back at all the steps I’ve taken and can’t even trace the path I ran 8 minutes ago with my eyes. Do you know how few times that happens in life? Where you can work- and work hard- and then look at where you came from and where you are now and SEE- actually SEE- a quantifiable difference that can’t be argued with. Its an incredible feeling. When I study and study for 14 hours a day, I go home with nothing. I have no proof I can see. I have nothing to show for it. Only time and tests will tell whether that time was worth something- if I gained anything from that work.
On a run though, I come home with work I can see. The sweat on my face and shirt. The five miles of pavement I left behind me. Chewed up, spit out, burnt up asphalt that I conquered with my own two feet. Even the pain in my left foot tells me I’ve done work.
Running gives me things I don’t get to experience a whole lot anymore. It gives me a good dose of accomplishment, stands me back up, builds confidence, and makes me happy.
It’s the whole theme of steps that gets me and keeps me going in school. The runs carry me through in more ways than I can count. That even if its baby steps, slow steps, big steps, or steps where I flat out stumble and fall and get back up again, I’m still getting somewhere. I try not to forget that when I’m endlessly studying. Each powerpoint, lecture, sentence, note, drawing, and test is a step and I’m getting somewhere whether I see it or not. My steps aren’t always the best or fastest or more graceful, but they mean I’m working. And whatever else anyone around me is doing, I get a lot of satisfaction out of knowing I’m out on the road taking laborious, painful, glorious, work-for-every-last-one-of-them steps, and everyone is driving by fast in a car acting like they’re getting somewhere.

Categories
Growing Up Life Medical School

Life Lately

I really do think about it as a past life sometimes. My life before 9 (what?!) weeks ago. It’s hard to describe to anyone not going through it, but I feel like a totally different person in some ways. I thought I was busy before, and most people in all walks of life would tell you that they are busy. Still, there’s a difference in not having enough time to do the things you want to do and not having enough time to do the things you NEED to do. Before medical school, I would pretty much agree with the statement “You have time for the things you make time for.” But now, I’m not sure. I ache to be able to run everyday. Believe me, I would make more time if I could. Some days, its just not feasible. More and more I find myself having to choose which “side” of myself to be “good to” that day.
For example, this weekend I made time to be a good aunt- and sacrificed a big chunk of my weekend to hug and hold and celebrate little girls (who are not that little anymore 🙁 ). It was worth it, believe me. Last Thursday I shut the books, and ran and lifted weights instead of eating dinner. I just wish that I was able to do all the things I have to do properly, instead of cutting some things in half or out of each day entirely. I can’t explain to you how exhausting it is to come up with time savers and then carry them out each day so that I can maybe get something else small accomplished. I brush my teeth in the shower while I’m rinsing my hair, or I check my email while I’m peeing, or I watch lectures online while sitting on the floor hanging up my clothes. Its tiring to try and save so much time.
I also used to be quite introspective. I don’t have time for silly things like self-reflection, and I feel like I’ve become a crappier writer because of it. I used to journal privately on paper AND blog. Now I’m lucky if I get to post on here each week. The only time I feel I actually get to reflect on my day and FEEL things is on my drive home, because my brain shuts off pretty quickly from the biological stuff. As with all things in medical school, feelings even have to be expressed in warp speed. It’s less tactful, said more hastily, and also said aloud to anyone that is around instead of to a few select people like I would’ve before. I’ll demand “Give me a hug, Macy!” whereas I would have expressed the emotions that led to me needing a hug. I also would have tried to sound more intelligent instead of juvenile. It’s like I’ve reverted back to that state of emotional frustration in childhood where you had feelings about what was going on, you just didn’t know how to say them.
Relationships in medical school move faster too, and its not a bad thing at all. Where it took me three years to grow into friendships with peers where there was mutual reliability and generosity, medical school classmates have so quickly become people that I not only study with, but people I rely on for support and hugs and food and empathy and commiseration and laughter and help. I would do all these same things for them in a heartbeat, and I am grateful to have this incredible network of the brightest, funniest people I have ever been amongst. A sense of belonging abounds and I guarantee you this whole thing would be approximately 19,000x harder if I didn’t enjoy going to see each and every one of them everyday.
Along with my difficulties in having time to really process all my feelings (not to mention the didactic information), the wind still gets knocked out of me sometimes. Little reminders of people and things I’ve had to leave behind, catch me off guard. Like a wound I thought was healed- a cold wind finds a fresh new facet of raw skin and it begins to sting a little again. It’s a little nostalgic and a little heartbreaking. It’s a lot of emotions to deal with and very few opportunities to have dealt with them. It feels like its been a week and yet it feels like it’s been years. It’s been hard to lose something so suddenly and yet it’s been heartbreakingly easy because of how busy I’m staying. Anytime I would usually pick up the phone, I pick up a PowerPoint copy instead. When I’m dissecting the hand on my cadaver, I think of the hands I used to hold. I’ll catch a glimpse of someone that looks similar, hear a blip of an old song and bam I feel the puncture wound in my heart, still gaping. I immediately stuff the hole with information about all the anatomical triangles in the neck and fetal circulation and move on, wondering when I’ll have time to deal with it. Does ignoring it make it better? No. But does it make it manageable? Yes- and manageable is what I have to work with for now.
I don’t know if you guys know much about elephants- but in captivity, they have certain needs to be met for their overall wellbeing. They need emotional enrichment-companions, offspring, a mate. They need physical enrichment– their diet, space to roam and play- and mental enrichment– toys, hidden treats, ropes, etc.
So obviously I am the elephant in this metaphor. My captivity is medical school, which tends to provide enough mental enrichment to satisfy my needs. (Understatement of the millennium). My physical enrichment is decent- all I ask is soft pretzels, copious amounts of caffeine, and a run to get me by. Emotional enrichment is hard to come by in my captivity. The only people that have a clue what’s going on are just as unstable in that department as me. It’s a struggle, and the general consensus among unmarried, single people in medical school is that we haven’t got a clue what we want and have to suppress everything til we figure it out later. My friend Macy and I joke about how ridiculous it is, but we tell each other to suppress all feelings and unresolved issues until Christmas break. We young medical students are in a fragile place. Capable of imploding at any moment.
The fact is- I’m going to be a doctor. I’m not the only one relying on myself to know this material anymore. The thought is sobering, but my patients need me to learn about their parietal cell Hydrogen pump in the stomach too.
So things have to be sacrificed.
I won’t sacrifice my studies because I worked too hard to get here. This was the dream all along. I’m not learning this to maybe get to do what I want- if I can get in- anymore. I’m in! I’m learning now for all of my future patients.
I’m extremely task driven anyway, so I’m still getting by based on making those “check marks” on my everlasting to do list.
And I won’t sacrifice my physical health. I need sleep and nourishment and running or I will not make it.
So some things are gonna be benched for a while, and sometimes I think its a good thing- to stay busy. Time heals all wounds, right? For right now, that means I’m going to do what I can to keep myself afloat with thoughts about anatomy until I accidentally happen upon the remnants that make me ache a little. I will swallow the lump in my throat and keep going. Old habits die hard, and I’m going to miss some things. Sometimes I think I always will. But I don’t have a choice.
I have to make it through, with or without my past life.
I knew all this was coming, when I started medical school. I knew it would be hard. It really is a rewarding and satisfying kind of hard, though, and I wouldn’t trade my medical school experience for anything. A lot of days I’ll come home at midnight and my dad will ask about the day. Exhausted, I sigh and say, “So so hard” and he says, “So you’re loving it, huh?” And really, it exactly expresses how I feel about all the hard work I do each day. Its hard but I love it. I’m so extremely lucky to be here, to be able to learn, have fun and yes, study all day and all night.
But I miss what I used to love, simply because it was once something that I used to love.