Sweet Home Alabamaaaa

Well hello! It's been a while since my last post. I finished school last week and I've been kinda unhooked to the world lately (and by that I mean, away from my laptop, thus the internet).
I think I did fairly well this semester, at least grade-wise. My final grades will be up probably by tomorrow. Anyways...

So after my last exam on Wednesday, 3 of my cousins came visit me. Thursday we crossed the US border and went shopping to San Antonio, TX. Jeez! Crazy doesn't even begin to cover it. You see, the Friday after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday which according to WP is one of the busiest retail shopping day of the year, it's supposed to be the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Whatever, bottom line: cheap cheap clothes! heh What can I say, I'm a girl with a limited budget and an urgent need for a wardrobe renewal. Next year we're expected to wear formal attire to school everyday, and my washed-out jeans and t-shirts don't really match that description. So switched my target stores. I feel old! Specially when buying my shoes. You see, I really love shoes. I think heels are soooo pretty, and boots, and stilettos 'n all! But I'm such a wuss when it comes to wearing them. My feet just can't take it. So since next year we'll be on call for very long hours I skipped Nine West and went straight to Rockport, Aerosoles, Naturalizer and Easy Spirit. I felt like such an old lady buying the most comfy shoes regardless of the looks. heh However I know my feet will appreciate it next year.

I flied back home Tuesday night and basically slept through Wednesday. Today my mother had to get out of town, so me and my siblings went out for sushi and coffee.

I'm tired, so good night to you.

The beginning of the end

Today we finally had the verbal presentation to our business plan. It was ok, I guess. Anyways, the important thing about today was the meeting we had afterwards. All the 4th year medstudents in my school met with the dean of the clinical department for a brief introduction to next year (otherwise known as the year we sell our lives and souls to the devil).

I guess some explanation is in order. Here in Mexico -well, at least at my school- the 5^th year of Medschool consists of 4 rotations through the major divisions of clinical medicine. That is, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Ob Gyn and Surgery. According to today’s metting this is to prepare you in all the basic fields and to let you try a little bit of everything before deciding the field you want to pursue. The whole class is divided in 4 groups of 30-40 people; each group rotates through all the clerkships but in different order. The order of your rotations and the people in it is decided with a lottery. You get to choose your small team, which consists of 10 people. It’s good to think about your team beforehand, because otherwise you get stuck with all the anarchists, jerks, or questionable admissions in the class, and that is not good. You want to be with people you can work with, who can stand you on your worst stressed mood, and who you can tolerate in such mood too. A lot of people take this too personally. They just want to be with their ultra-intimate group of friends, even if they suck at team work or work at all, and then take it personally if they decide to join another team.

Anyways, the meeting started quite well. I'm already scared to death of the dean so his laughing and joking didn't fool me. (I'll call him Dr. E -as in evil heh- for the purpose of this blog) I never let my guard down, its like I'm always expecting the moment he uncovers his true self and starts eating us alive. Luckily, that didn't happen, yet.

• As I already mentioned, there are 4 twelve-week rotations to be covered next year. And well, if you do the math 4*12= 48 weeks and considering the year has 52 weeks... we'll have only 2 two-week vacation breaks next year (last half of Jun and Dec). In between the other rotations we have like a weekend (my dad doesn't believes this part, I bet he swears I'm just exaggerating as always, I wish I was)
• The typical workweek has about 80 hrs (here Dr. E added the sarcastically cheerfull comment, "and sometimes more or possibly less, but hey! You're 5th years know! You can't complain! Your soul belongs to me!! Muajajaja" well, that last part I added, but Im sure he though that)
• The first rotation starts January 4th, though originally it was January 2nd!! Sick doctors! Who in the world would want to star classes a day after new year? Luckily for us, apparently not that many docs.
• We are the bottom step of whichever hierarchy you can think of. Anyone you've ever seen in a hospital sure has more authority than I do.
  
  After these announcements, Dr. E. told us to give him the list of names of each team. A couple of friends and I started thinking about this group thing since last semester and sort of agreed on it. Well, this last week there was a series of unfortunate events (heh) that almost disintegrated the team. We ended up being 6 of the original team and 2 unexpected additions. I think it’s a fairly good group. Not my first option, but I hope we’ll do fine. So, after the chaos of writing up the names of the teams, Dr. E. made the raffle.
  
  The order of the rotations can be very important for a lot of people. What I think is the most feared is Internal Medicine. If only I believed in prayer, I would have prayed for anything but IM. It’s the most-failed clerkship, and I think it’s the hardest. I just didn’t want to do it first because so early on you just don’t know what the fuck you are doing, don’t know the hospital, don’t know anyone who has been through it, etc. It’s just scary, at least for me. I didn’t want to start with Peds either, basically because I guess I see Peds as an easy rotation (heh y andale que repuebo esa!), and also because Jan-Mar is flu season and the Peds department is packed with contagious and crying kids. Ob Gyn can be very bad if you start at a public health hospital. It’s too much work and in very poor conditions. Some people quit in the first weeks of that rotation. Surgery is frowned upon because you’ll finish 5^th year with Ob Gyn and that means no Christmas vacations. Anyways, it’s a lottery, so it’s not really up to you.
  
  My team starts with Surgery, which in itself isn't that bad, if you ignore the fact that you wont get Christmas vacations. My team is a good one, I like it. However I cannot say the same for the rest of the people in my rotation. Lets just hope it all goes well.
  
  So, my schedule for next year is:
  
  • SURGERY - January 4- March 30
  • INTERNAL MEDICINE- March 31 - June 20
  • PEDIATRICS - July 7 - September 27
  • OB GYN - September 29 - December 19 (theoretically... though they already told us they are moving the dates in order to ruin or Christmas heh
  And so... this is the beginning of my doom. I'm apologizing beforehand for whatever disgusting, whinny, rude, etc post I shall put up here next year. I'll try to record my experiences of my Hell year in here.
  
  Well, let me go back to obsessively checking amazon.com for book prices and recommendations. I've got a ton of books to buy and pretend to read this December.

PS: I don't know how I messed up the margins but I did. So, an apology for that. My lack of Html knowledge restrains me from correcting that

Almost over

I haven't updated for a while, not because I've been too busy, it's just that my life is quite boring lately. But good-boring, heh, if that can be said.

I've finished most of my exams and I'm kinda just hangin'. The 2 exams I had last Wednesday went quite well. The doctor in charged of that subject decided to give us an early Christmas present and made the Pharmacology section extra-easy. So it went well.

On Thursday I had a Public Health exam with a doctor who seems like his hundredth birthday is just around the corner. As always, no one knew what to study, and to be honest I didn't even bother to read my notes. The test ended up being about some Ob Gyn clinical scenario -please note that we studied Ob Gyn almost 2 years ago in a totally unrelated course- in which we had to evaluate the actions taken by all the departments involved (Family Medicine, ER, Ob Gyn). Why did is he asking this, appeared to be general question since the syllabus for the course was basically biostatistics, epidemiology concepts, and such. But hell, I didn't stress about it much, mainly because the doctor usually grades me fairly well but also because after Wednesday 2-exam combo I just didn't care much about anything. I'm completely burn out. I really need some vacations, and sleep, a lot of sleep.

On Friday my roomie and I went to the Red Cross. One of the docs there is a former teacher and friend of ours. We sort of helped out sorting the drugs to be sent to Tabasco for the injured by the flood over there and played doctor for a while. We saw some bloody and gross cases. One was a fifty-something male who had amputated and severed various fingers with an electric saw. Jeez! It looked ugly! We transferred him to a bigger hospital with Plastic Surgery so he could get Surgery to try and keep most of the functionality of his hand. Poor guy, I felt bad we couldn't do much for him, but hopefully he ended in much better hands. We also saw this old guy with TB. I was quite reluctant to examine him, because I'm sure he was soooo contigious at that moment. I swear, I could almost see an aura of mycobacterium tuberculosis around him! I know this probably makes me a none-so-good doc, but hey! I rather live with that, than live with TB! I'm so not into infectious diseases, or really sick people for what that matters. Anyways, the morning at the Red Cross was fairly productive. We learned some stuff that will come handy next year while we rotate. So kudos for that!

That same day I also cleaned my house. Not all of it, but almost. At least the bathroom and kitchen are acceptably clean. I'm happy about it. I've come to realize that I'm very much of a freak when it comes to cleaning. I blame my mother for it. Let me get this straight, I don't like cleaning, yet I love it when things are clean. I, as everybody else in the world, hate cleaning the bathroom, however I get this strange satisfaction when I see the sparkling whiteness of my bathroom hehe. I now, I am that weird. So anyways, I don't really mind cleaning my house, basically because I believe its a small price to pay to see everything shiny and pretty, but also because I let my OCD-self free while I'm at it. I can get pretty obsessive when I clean. Anyways, what I hate most about cleaning, is that people just don't seem to even acknowledge the cleanliness of things and they don't even bother to try and keep things that way. I mean, all the plates are washed, the table is clean, and he comes anyone and just leaves a dirty plates on the table, or get crumbles on my recently-broomed floor. Grrr! It gets on my nerves, because I'm a freak like that.

Anyways...

Later that day a friend of mine arrived and we went to have dinner with her. She's staying at my place so we stayed up until very late yesterday catching up and just girl-talking.

I'm supposed to drive she and her boyfriend to a concert so I gotta go.

Boredom

I'm bored. Like, really, really bored. I haven't been out of my house all day, but for a quick run to the 7/11 2 blocks away. Today was a suck-y day. I've been trying to study, but the more I try, the more my mind wanders. I'm feel like in one of those cartoon where there's an angel and a devil on each of my shoulders:

GOOD-ME
Focus! Your exam is in barely 3 days!

BAD-ME
Oh my god, have you seen Angelina Jolie lately, she is so skinny...

REAL-ME
She is!! I should loose some weight...

GOOD-ME
Dumb-ass! Concentrate!

REAL-ME
Right, right ... so "HIV is a nontransforming human retrovirus belonging to the lentivirus family..." Lentivirus, heh thats a funny word.

BAD-ME
Yeah! Its like the lenticular nucleus

REAL-ME
It is! heh heh

GOOD-ME
Ahem!!

REAL-ME
Right, right... so "The virus core contains the mayor capsid protein p24, nucleocapsid protein p7/p9, two copies of genomic RNA" I wonder if this shit is important. I mean, I'm not going to remember all this dumb proteins by tomorrow. Maybe I should ask someone what they are studying...

(logs to IM)
...

-an hour and a half after-

BAD-ME
Hey, I'm kinda hungry!!

REAL-ME
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So this is basically what's been happening to me all day. It's not my fault, my intentions are good. I just don't have the will power to go through with them.

Anyways, I'm going to go make some coffee, maybe that'll help. Or not. Whatever, coffee is always good.

Rock on!!

Yesterday was a friend's birthday (as you might have already inferred from my last post) and since his parents came visiting we had great home-y food at his place. We ate seafood prepared in various ways. I ate a little bit too much, and by that I really mean, I ate like there was no tomorrow. I tasted everything, I couldn't help it. My advise to you: never sit right in front of the big food platters. Even if I was already full whenever a new dish came out of the kitchen, with all its deliciousness streaming from it, I had to try it. And don't get me wrong, I tried to fight my gluttony, but in the end I realized I'm weak. I caved in every time. But hell, in my sad situation of being a student, there's usually not much good food around. I had to take advantage of the rare occasion. Or at least, that's what I tell myself. Overall, it was all very nice and fun. I had a really good time.

One of the best part of yesterday was the concert we went to later on. We went to see Soda Stereo, and Oh god, it was so much fun! The whole process to getting to the concert was not so great. I wasn't in such a good mood because of a certain person in my party. But anyways, once the music started, it was all forgotten. You see, Madonna was right, music makes the people come together, heh. We were pretty far from the stage and most of the time I was watching the big screens rather that the stage itself. I know certain people (read: my brother) don't really appreciate the beauty of concerts, specially such massive concerts as this one, and I can understand why. I mean, who could possible like all that many people pushing you, the endless lines to enter the place, the portable W.C.s and the expensive drinks? I don't. However, I think its a small price you pay for being there. Oh, and let me clarify, I'm not Soda Stereo biggest fan, or a music fan whatsoever. I just love concerts. To me there is just no comparison between listening to a song from your ipod or computer to listening to it live. You can feel the music when its live. You can feel people's vibe while thousands of people sing along the same song whereas that can never happen when you're sitting at home listening to a CD. Or, you know, maybe I just have shitty speakers.

Anyways, I had a great time yesterday. I knew and liked most of the songs they played. It was a good day.

***

Today I woke up really late and just as I was about to pretend to do homework, my room-mate remembered me it was another friend's birthday. So we ended up going to a restaurant with a bunch of people to celebrate. Then I came back home, read a bit about sepsis and then this evil thing called facebook caught me and made me start uploading some photos. I hate facebook. But anyways, since I like to pretend I'm cool 'n all I use it.
I also had a temporary ant invasion. But don't worry, its all right now. I took care of it heh. It wasn't really much of an invasion rather a small conglomeration of ants around some crumbles in the floor. But I exaggerate, as I always. I sweeped the floor and mopped with a mop impregnated with antibug liquid. So in the end it was a good thing because it made me clean up my house a little.

Anyways, I gotta go, I have to study at least a little while.

Feliz Cumpleaños

Happy Birthday, Birthday-boy!!
Hope you liked my present :)

xo

Lola

PS: no quiero soñar mil veces las mismas cosas... ni contemplarlas sabiamente

Creep

Hi!

Good news people! Remember the business plan I've been bitching about so much? Well, today -after a month-long absence- we finally meet again with the teacher. Apparently none of the other teams have started their papers, which turns out great for us, because we've almost finished ours. Its just a matter of tiny details what's left to do. Yei! Besides, next week we start our finals, so its going to be a very very busy week. I'm so glad I stressed so much about it early enough, heh

On a totally unrelated topic, you've got to watch this!!! It's just way too cool!

gotta go

xo
Lola

Back to my cruel life

Hi there!

I'm back from my break. I had a great time back home. I was so sad as I was saying my goodbyes and getting ready to board the plane. I cannot stop thinking that this December will be my last real vacations with my family in a long long time. You see, as of January 2nd, 2008 I start my clinical practices, like, for real. No crappy calls every few days, this is going to be the real shit. The medstudent cliché of exploitation to probably illegal degrees. Hooray! I can't wait! Bring it on, bitches! (I'm obvioulsy being sarcastic here).

When I get some time I'll talk about it a bit more. Right now I'm supposed to be studying for some test tomorrow morning. But my brain is just starting to become none-responsive, I'm like Glasgow 3 right now. So forgive my rambling and run-ons.

So these days back I haven't done much. I've been studying for my test, and doing the damn business plan I've been whining about. Oh, and I also did a ton of laundry with the subsequent folding -which I hate- and cleaned my room a little. Yes, my life is that boring.

Anyway, I not really thinking clear right now. I guess I should just go and sleep a few hours before I give TB and Dengue another shot. Good night y'all!

xo
Lola

Juegos de Manos son de Villanos

Well, gotta go sleep on my unbelievably-comfy bed because tomorrow will be another day of family bonding and great food. Yei!

Delayed

Hi there!
I haven't mentioned it yet, but I currently live and go to school at a different city than the one my family lives. The cities are in 2 different states and are quite far one from the other. One is in the northeast and the other is in central Mexico.
Anyways, somehow this week my schedule worked out in a way that I had no classes or lectures on Friday which means, Hooray! long weekend!! So ,today I'm flying to my hometown to visit my family. I was supposed to be boarding right now, but because of some none-sense reason we're at leas 1 hour delayed. It sucks! I hate being stuck at the airport. It so boring!
Besides, it makes one realize all the Hollywood-esque fun stuff happening during plane delays are just a big fat lie! I see absolutely no little carts waiting for me to jump in and drive around all happily while some fat and clumsy security guy tries to chase me down. Nor the typical weird or mean kid who I'll hate at first sight but eventually realize is my soul-mate or new BFF.
Now, that would be fun.
Yet, I'm stuck in an uncomfortable waiting-room chair, hungry and cranky, refusing to eat airport food. I'm not playing their game, I'm not buying some 3 dollar soda or 5 dollar bag of chips. I rather spend that money later on ranitidine to treat my incipient ulcer than give it to them.

***

On another subject, today we had an appointment with an accountant to check our progress in the business plan I told you about yesterday. Well, as you may already imagine, it went bad. Basically all we have done is the part my roomy and I did yesterday, which is almost finished, but that in the big picture is very very little. I don't like my team anymore. In fact, the members of the team I didn't like from the beginning, I'm hatting right now. Damn lazy persons! They have done absolutely nothing!! For goodness sake, I doubt they have even understood what the hell our company is supposed to do. Argghhh! I shall kill them in their sleep.

I'm bored and my laptop battery is about to die. I guess I'll go and buy a celebrity magazine or something. I just hope they are not overpriced like the chips and the soda.

xo

Lola