Glory on high.

Things are going well.

School is amazing. Even the banal pharmacokinetics homework seems fun and I know why it seems fun - it is because it is practical. I really missed practicality. Even in my chemistry undergrad I hardly ever felt like the work I was doing was practical. It felt contrived. The long labs were useless. But now the homework, the classes, the readings all seem important. It is a nice feeling.

My favorite parts so far have to be PBL and Anatomy. PBL, if I haven't explained before, is 6 hours of class each week where we are given limited information on a made up patient and essentially made to diagnose the problem. It is surprisingly exciting - I get really into it.

And anatomy, though tedious at times, is fascinating once we start to be able to see how various systems interact. We are in the abdomen at the moment, working through the gastrointestinal system and we spend a few hours each week teasing out the arterial, venal, nervous and lymphatic systems related to the GI tract. It really is cool how complex we are. I had no idea. I guess I thought that because the medical profession had become so adept at surgery that the body was simple - that you could cut through someone, fix up a lung, and stitch the person up. Not at all. Nerves and veins and arteries run everywhere. I can't imagine, at this point, how surgery can possibly work. It will be terrifying but amazing to get into a surgery clerkship in a few years.

My life is plenty busy and getting busier. I just started working for Kaplan as an LSAT teacher (for some reason) and also just found out that I will be heading to Honduras for the summer to set up health infrastructure with the concurrent benefits of learning spanish and travelling around South America. The actual project is only about a month, but I am going to see about staying for much of the summer. Maybe I will head back to Montreal for a month ... it is just so great there.

I bought skis for the first time in maybe 13 years which is awesome. I am heading up to Big White in January for a big ski trip which will be the first time I have skied in about 10 years. I am considering getting a Whistler seasons pass, but they are pretty pricey. That said, who knows when I will have the same amount of time as I have now.

I went to a research night on thursday. I somewhat regret the research that I ended up in. I don't know why I thought I liked computers as much as I did. I totally would have prefered to have done either social research or immunity research. I am glad that I am in medical school. I shudder to think how terrible my life would have been if I had ended up in a chemistry graduate program.

But I am not. And, as if things weren't great enough, I have a handlebar mustache (to the extreme) which I am cultivating as part of Movember. I like it. I like it a lot. I may have to change my wardrobe/style/lifestyle to fit the mustache.

fashion

according to Current Obs/Gyn: for pregnant women well-fitted shoes with heels of medium height are best in pregnancy.

technology

I fucking love it.

Seriously - i just sent a text message and got a major rush of endorphins.

friday night lights

late friday night, too exhausted from a busy week ( and a tad fearful of the upcoming midterm ) to go out this evening. Shot crawl and party tomorrow night followed by a very busy day of sports and studying. At some point I have to write 5 scholarship apps.

We have already started to see patients. Last thursday was my first day. We travelled out to delta, put on our white coats and stethoscopes and sat down to interview. We have this model that is being pushed pretty hard called FIFE, which stands for Feelings/Fears, Ideas, Functioning and Expectations. We are supposed to use this model to get a good sense of our patient and how they are dealing with their illness and the disease. I find it a little frustrating - I don't necessarily want to understand how a person who is coming to fulfill their 10 year vaccine requirements feels about it. but maybe I should. I sure do want to be a compassionate physician but I can't help but feel I am being cheesy. i guess it is good practice and I can moderate it when I am for real.

Anyway, just doing the basics now: interviewing, blood pressure, other vitals. But some people are already observing c-sections, giving shots and burning off warts. So maybe I will get to do cool things soon! it is a pretty great way to learn. I can see why residency is so important. there is so much to know.

i know, I promised

Okay,

I've been chastised enough. Today is the day.

A brief recap: Montreal was spectacular. I will always love that city, at least until my liver tells me that enough is enough and shuts down my fun zone. As expected, the summer was amazing with friendly people coming out of the woodwork for a whole plethora of good times.

But that is the past. Now is medical school time.

I arrive back in Vancouver just in time for a torential downpour. Not an auspicious beginning, but I powered through. Settled in at Azim's beautiful house (right next to the ocean! I took my mug and book to the beach yesterday to "study"!) and almost immediately started school.

Orientation week was a lot of obvious stuff mixed in with invitations to drink. 256 med students plus 50 odd dental students makes for a massive class with plenty of people to meet. Three weeks on and I am still struggling with names (and faces). Friday of orientation week we were thrust into action: Gross Anatomy lab.

You could see the fear on almost everyone's face as they prepared to enter the lab. It was a low lying fear and I think for most people the excitement was overcoming any anxiety, but the fear was there. Inside the lab were 50 bags, one for each group of 6 students, zipped up though the outline of the body was obvious. These bags contained people who had given their bodies to science and to medicine and who knew that they would be dissected by first year students with no idea what they were doing. I still struggle with faith and belief and all that and I have great respect for these people who, in the face of the unknown, were willing to put their faith in science.

The professor opened his bag and, while our bags remained firmly shut, began his lesson on the dissection. This was the hardest part of the whole lab. The fumes in the lab were extremely strong but I think it was the anticipation of how one would react to seeing and touching their first cadaver that got to most people. I felt a few times like I was getting light-headed and had to hold on to the wall. Then the lesson was finished and we were invited to see our cadaver.

It was a pretty intense moment, one that I am not likely to forget. After the initial rush, we got down to the dissection and really never looked back. I don't want to go to much into it here, mainly out of respect for the person and their family.

The following Monday the lectures started for real. The lectures are fascinating, of course, though I am already amazingly behind.

No inadvertently funny profs yet, though most, if not all of the profs are hilarious is they want to be.

And UBC is really pushing the wellness front. They have about 40 of us doing yoga and mindfullness meditation. But they suckered us it - they presented a scientific paper that said we would do better in school if we meditated. They know our only weakness ... marks.

it's done!

Thursday morning I received a wonderful email telling me that I had been accepted to UBC medical school.

Barring any upsets (like Calgary giving me money) I will be in Vancouver come September, busy as all hell.

So yeah, expect this blog to become more of a place to vent and to talk about all the disgusting things I will get to see. Like Sam does. Mmmm, syphilis.

future shock

I am in a terrible purgatory.

Montreal slowly emerges from its winter-y cocoon, occasionally regressing but generally moving forward, and people seem happier. Last night, all over town, hopeful youths tested out their spring clothing (read: short skirts and striped shirts) and blessed the warmth that is 8 degrees Celsius.

I'll admit that I fell into the trap: after a delightful final four beer tasting championship at Dieu du Ciel I convinced the group to head to Casa de Popolo in the hope that the patio would already be open. It wasn't. It is still cold. We are fools.

Fucking Squirrels. Ate my bike seat. That is what long winters lead to: Desperation. I should blame winter. I should blame me - we could have fed those squirrels and they wouldn't have needed to resort to faux leather. I am sure there is a lesson here somewhere.

Back to purgatory. First, an introduction:

I have finished my med school interviews. Halifax, Calgary, Vancouver and Winnipeg. Here are my thoughts:

Halifax:

First interview so I was nervous. Stayed with Ian and saw Halifax though him and his girlfriend. The school seemed nice and the medical students, like all the students, seemed to like their school. Still, it lacked some energy. The city was damp and slushy. Ian was a little bitter. Lael and Sean bad mouth the city all the time.

I'll be honest: the city is important. I know that medicine will be pretty encompassing but still, I want to enjoy my city. I am not sure that I would enjoy Halifax.

But Dalhousie does have some interesting ideas about combining medicine and the arts/music and they are devoted to global medicine.

Calgary:

This place was surprisingly great. The school is only 3 years which I appreciate and they really pushed the PhD/MD route as an option and were not opposed to my suggestion of mixing the MD with a humanities PhD. The students were the best of any school that I had been to.

This city is maybe not that great but again, the only cities I really, really want to be in are Toronto or Montreal and that is not in the cards, at least for the next 4 years. Calgary is close to Banff and the Rockies and the students seemed to bond over hockey with is my new favorite sport so it would probably be fine.

Hung out with Grant and Sara and went to bars that I didn't really enjoy (though I loved the company). I think that my life in Calgary would certainly involve avoiding the bar scene and that cannot be bad. I would spend a lot of time skiing and heading to the mountains.

Vancouver:

I do love Vancouver but I am afraid of it now. I don't know why. This confusing fear is warping my feelings on the medical school. I didn't go on the tour nor meet many students but I feel like I know that UBC is good. It is a big class and I may have to be at UVic but still, it would be a great place to be at school.

Winnipeg:

I had a great time in Winnipeg but that may not be representative of Winnipeg in general. That said, the people who love Winnipeg love it a lot. But I am reading a Miriam Toews book that speaks on a sign on the outskirts of the city that cheers the mosquito bite rate decreasing from 48 bites per minute to 2 at the end of the rainy season. I hate bugs. I may hate bugs more than anything. Plus, can you imagine how rural the rural component would be at Manitoba. Jeebus.

The medical students were, for the most part, in Cuba so I couldn't interact with them all that much but the education centre was amazing. New next year and incredible. And I guess that the fact that all the students were together in Cuba means that it is a close knit group. I understand that there is a lot of drinking ... and I like drinking.

Those are my four options. McGill and Toronto rejected me and I hate them. I could reapply next year to McGill as an in province student (with the concurrent increase in likelihood of acceptance) but it is risky and the application process sucks.

So, here I am. I have 4 potential schools but I will not know anything until May 15th. Until then, I know nothing and I can decide nothing. I feel like I am in purgatory.