This is what happens when I:

1) Buy avocados on a whim (they cost so much in the US but they’re so good!)

2) Am feeling particularly hungry and indulgent

3) Am not entirely exhausted from being in the hospital

4) Have cooked bacon in the freezer (leftover from my bacon-kale frittata) and turkey in the fridge (bought, but not eaten, by my boyfriend when he visited, so now it’s mine).

5) Actually have bread

And now I need to not curl up in bed for a post-food coma nap, but find an interesting article on pancreatitis to present to my team tomorrow morning.

My boyfriend visited this past weekend, and on Saturday we went for our first run together. Much to our delight, we came across this family of two geese and five goslings! So far most of my runs have been indoors on the treadmill, but my outdoor runs are far more uplifting (Forest Park is just so pretty; I love living close to it), and I find I push myself harder outside too.

It was a wonderful weekend, and it’s left me feeling refreshed and ready to tackle my last four weeks of third year, and my last shelf exam! I was feeling rather burned out while I was on Inpatient Cardiology, though thankfully my Outpatient rotation was a relaxing change of pace (and still very educational).

I just finished my four weeks on Outpatient medicine, and the Doctor I worked with was very social. When I followed him around the hospital, he was always saying hi to people: janitors, nurses, administrative people, etc. I think he’s also the Director of his division, so some of it comes with the job, but he’s also just that sort of person. At the end of every heart catheterization, he would thank each of his support staff, and they always seemed genuinely happy when they realized he’d be working in their operating room that day.

His office partner, also a cardiologist, was quite different. He seemed like a nice, friendly guy, and he often poked his head in on occasion to chat (and often about life, not just about patients). He’s good to the office staff too, but he doesn’t socialize much outside of his office, apparently. On two or three occasions I heard people ask the doctor I was with about him, and mention that he doesn’t really smile much. I think he’s just new though, and probably takes a bit of time to warm up to people.

I’m not a chatty person, and I enjoy disappearing into my thoughts. I used to hate getting my hair done as a pre-teen because my mother would always complain that I would just read and not smile at the hairdressers or talk to them. I understand her point, especially now, but at the time I didn’t want to be there in the first place, and it was tolerable because I just read throughout the experience and stayed in my own little world.

But I make an effort to be pleasant.  Especially in the hospital, but I also extend this to life in general. I’m not going to suddenly turn into the kind of person who talks to everyone about anything, but I’m quick to smile and nod a hello. To at least acknowledge them and trade generic greetings. People notice these things, and they appreciate it.

I don’t need to lose weight, I shouldn’t lose weight, and I don’t want to either. I know how to maintain where I am (I gain weight if I eat a lot. So… I don’t eat a lot. Which is fairly simple for me because I hate hate hate the feeling of being overstuffed and I have strong satiety signals).

But there’s a term out there called “skinny fat” for people who are skinny, but so inactive that they still suffer from a lot of the health problems that you’d associate with those who are overweight. I’m not quite “skinny fat” because I’m not completely sedentary (I bike to school most days and I’m on my feet a lot in clinic and in the hospital), but I don’t do much activity that really gets my heart rate going.

I’m now done with week 2 of the Couch to 5K program, and I’m definitely a big fan. I still get some vasodilatory itching in my legs, but I’m hoping that will pass soon. Also, I love my running shoes. I wanted to buy Vibrams, but my toes wouldn’t cooperate, so I bought an alternative barefoot shoe model by Merrell. Yup, I’m wearing them without socks, though I’ve tried them with and it feels almost the same to me.

Another reason I’ve started running is because I’m going into Psychiatry (have I mentioned that I’ve made my decision and I’m going into Psychiatry?), and it’s said that one of the best things you can do for your mental health is to exercise. I better start practicing what I’m going to be preaching, right? I still have one more week of Outpatient clinic, so the real challenge is going to be if I can keep this up once I’m back on Inpatient medicine. The problem is that I love to run in the morning, because when I come home, all I want to do is stay home and decompress. But that requires being strict again about early bedtimes. Wish me luck!

I’ve learned so much during third year, but there’s a significant foundation of your education that you don’t learn until you do your Internal Medicine rotation. I bought the year long subscription to the UWorld Step 2 question bank, and I’ve been doing the questions for each rotation to study for my Shelf exams. Most rotations had around 200 or so questions to do. Internal Medicine? About 1400. That plus doing the MKSAP 5 questions (around 500) means that even though I have twelve weeks total to prep for this shelf exam, I don’t get to take time off studying for days at a time or I’ll never finish everything. Most of my classmates try to read Step Up to Medicine to prepare for this exam, but I got my best shelf score ever on Ob/gyn and all I did was lots and lots of questions, so I’m going to see if that approach works for IM too.

I really can’t complain though, because I’ve had the time to do things like eat strawberries and  ice cream for breakfast. And I’m trying to pick up running! I’m starting really slow and easy, with the Couch to 5K program. I’ve also had more time to do things like watch Game of Thrones with my friends on Sundays, and I finally packed together some stuff to take to Goodwill after clinic this afternoon.

So yeah, not a bad end to my third year, especially with the rough start that Surgery was! And just 6.5 more weeks left!

And that plus leftover frittata (which tastes great cold, so I don’t need to worry about a microwave) plus the fact that I weirdly don’t get hungry till I’ve been up for an hour or more, means that I pack this for breakfast to eat after I pre-round on my patients:

I’d post a recipe, except I made it up. And you can too! The basic idea behind a frittata seems to be “saute the vegetables/meat/etc, beat the eggs, add the eggs and cook on the stove briefly, add cheese if desired, then bake in a 350F oven for ~30 minutes). It tastes very good hot, and I’m hoping it will taste good cold too.

I got an A in that class. Best motivation ever is to have someone tell me I can’t do something that I think I can.

A few nights ago I was at a post-match 3rd years/4th years meeting, and in the Psychiatry small group, someone asked the fourth year about how people on other rotations talk about the Psychiatry residents here and what he thinks about how they seem to be less “Academic” (which he was pressured into clarifying as meaning intelligent).

So this makes me want to keep pushing myself on my Medicine rotation, even though I know I can easily get a High Pass without much extra effort. Psych patients deserve smart, hard working doctors too.

I’m now on my second week of Internal Medicine, and I just wanted to write a quick post about Ob/Gyn before it’s too far off my mind. I think it’s really unfortunate how many medical students end up having bad experiences on this rotation (at my school and nationwide). It was definitely mixed among my classmates, and very heavily based on which residents you had, and which sub-rotations you had (on Gynecology Oncology for example, just about everyone is miserable). I was definitely very stressed out my first two weeks because I didn’t feel like I was clicking well with my team (and then surprise, my Chief Resident actually graded me really well and gave me some really nice feedback).

My second two weeks, working at a government funded clinic with five different Attendings, was an amazing experience. I loved all the Attendings, the patient population was interesting (never heard that much spanish in Saint Louis this entire time I’ve been here!), and I in general just really enjoy outpatient Gynecology and Obstetrics. One of the Attendings runs Centering Pregnancy groups, which is a model where you select a group of women with due dates within a relatively close range, and they do their prenatal visits as group sessions. Most of the women in her groups were under 25 (in one group only one or two of them were old enough to drink) and most were first time mothers. Young mothers who didn’t intend to get pregnant are an unfortunate demographic, but one that is really satisfying to help. And sexual education and access to birth control are two topics rather near and dear to my heart, so it was nice to see and work with the population that I want to help out and the outcomes I’d like to work toward preventing.

I’m also apparently rather good at speculum exams, for a medical student. Unfortunately, this won’t be a very useful skill for my future career path, and it’s really not much of a party trick either…

Labor and Delivery nights was another good experience (minus the night shift part), because I really lucked out and had solid and friendly Residents. I learned how to “catch” a baby, and watched how amazing and beautiful and grotesque all deliveries are, from C-Sections to births with epidurals to the “omg there is no time for an epidural because this baby is coming out NOW!” births. Unfortunately, the women who tended to want fewer interventions or who wanted to do water births always requested no medical students in the room, so I never saw those. What I learned from Labor and Delivery is that Ob/Gyn is definitely not for me, because C-Sections are one of my least favorite kinds of surgery, and vaginal deliveries aren’t something I really want to do routinely either. I love the medicine of Ob/Gyn, but not the procedural aspect. I probably could have loved being an Ob/Gyn nurse practitioner, and delivering low risk patients, but that’s not the path I’m on, and I think I’m really going to enjoy Psychiatry. =)

But as I said, sexual education and birth control are still important topics to me, so I hope someday to find a way to advocate for what I believe in, and to help make a change, even if I’m not going to be a direct provider.

I’ve always had a love of planning, and I spend a lot of time staring at and re-organizing my google calendar and adding in everything I know about so far (like my match day! And my graduation day!).

I’m not sure whether I’ll make it out to watch Match Day at my school this year, but I’m definitely excited to see the list!