Back to the grind

Vacation time is over, hurts to say it, but it's true. My flight was at 2:15 PM yesterday, but sadly it got delayed until about 6:30 PM so that wasn't cool. I kept busy though playing chess at this really sweet restaurant at Pearson airport that had ipads at each seat where you would order from, pretty snazzy. I actually almost missed my flight because of it!

I tried to rotate this picture but technology said no.

Anyway, finally made it into New york around 8pm, I was both happy and sad to be back. Now that i think about it, mostly excited, I miss this place! Forgot how lively it is compared to my house out in the sticks back home. 

Today was my first day on my psych rotation! The best way to describe it is probably....entertaining. The morning was mostly an orientation which consisted of tours and a main take home point of "don't get cornered". After orientation we all went to our respective assigned floors/services. My floor is a general adult psych ward which happens to be the main teaching floor for the residents, which means that this is where most of the interesting cases end up, and boy did i get a little taste of that today...

The day was slowing down but the resident still had a few patients left to see, and she invited me to tag along and observe for the first day. The little med student in me was happy to do so. We walked into a room, pretty bland, but rather large with 2 single beds inside. There was a large lady laying in bed half asleep looking a little disheveled. For the sake of confidentiality lets call her Maurice. 

We asked Maurice if we could speak with her in the conference room and she was surprisingly really happy to do so. As she got out of bed I immediately got the sense that something was a little off with her. She walked like a zombie, eyes half shut staring off into the distance, she dragged her feet until we finally got to our destination. The interview started pretty damn good actually, she was really polite and almost acted like a little kid. At some magic moment in time, her attitude completely changed, she became hostile and super aggressive. She would repeat what we would say in a mocking manner, she acted as if our simple question of "were you ever admitted to another hospital before?" was somehow an attack on her intelligence.. she made it clear to us that she was the smartest person in the room and that she knows how to survive without selling her body. She then looked at my resident and said "i bet you sell your body", it made things a little uncomfortable because she kept staring my resident insinuating that she was a hooker for a good 5 minutes... 

She was an incredibly delicate and difficult patient. I thought maybe if we could speak to a family member it would help us figure out what the hell her story was because she was not willing to tell us much of anything, "figure it out yourself, you don't really care about me" she would keep telling us. Ultimately, she did give us her mothers number, i dialed it hoping to get some much needed info, but of course she made that number up completely... surprise surprise. We made little progress with her today, but she is now my first psych patient, i'll see if I can make better progress tomorrow. 

annual updates is the norm right?

so uhhh 2 years later... im back... hah.... hey....

I completely forgot about this blog (or maybe i just said screw it) and then i was searching something in my google task bar and I saw "blogger" on the drop down and i was like OH YAAA  i knew i was forgetting to do something haha. 

Looking at this blog now i strangely feel like i'm another visitor browsing through the posts even though i wrote ALL 2 GLORIOUS POSTS. I must admit, i am ECSTATIC to see that i have 2 followers and like 740 views!! KOOL! Suffice to say that you two were my motivation to click "new post" and here i am, sitting at the biggest table in starbucks sipping on my iced coffee on an exceptionally humid day writing on my blog because im a blogger, busy blogging, cuz thats what bloggers do right?  

I am going to try to sum up the past 2 years as concisely as i can while maintaining a somewhat accurate state of affairs. Grab a beer, here we go!

First and foremost: i never became a super DJ at Ibiza, in fact i never made it to my local bar. However,  i did throw down some super killer tunes at a house party and then i got all my money back when i sold my mixer on craigslist =D. 

Med school year 1: The best thing about first year was meeting the friends that i share this road with. As the year progressed "friend circles" kind of established themselves as they do in high school, and im pretty sure i ended up with the best group of friends in the school, in fact im certain of it. There are 4 guys in particular that i probably spend the most time with. I will refer to these four as whisky, Jesus, Spoody, and Lin (roommate). So first year was essentially repetition of the following cycle: chill, cram, exam, binge drink. Sprinkle in organized acts of kindness and there you have first year. In sum, friends were made, parties were had, and exams were passed. For the summer time some people went abroad, some went home, but most stayed to get involved with research in whatever field they felt drawn to. I happened to become the president of the urology club (not sure how that happened), anyway, for the summer I took part in a urology research fellowship. This was a total fail as it was super unorganized and i basically did nothing for 2 months. In fact I didn't get to start my project until 2 weeks before 2nd year started (not good). Anyway, it wasn't that terrible because by the end i drew (very confidently in permanent marker) a giant line across urology on my list of future careers.

I'll fast forward to half way through second year because guess what!! thats when we start our clinical rotations! WHOOO super fun! right right!! no. well sometimes. you see its kind of like gambling, your mostly losing and feeling like fuck why am i doing this, but then you get blackjack! and your like omg that was super kool! thats why i'm here! so on the wards its a lot of work and you begin to miss the freedom of first year, but then you come across something really cool, like the plastics resident lets you sow a nipple back on during a breast reduction surgery and your like AWESOME and call your mom and tell her how you sowed a ladies nipple. thats the blackjack of rotations. Anyway, so far i have done surgery, neurology, radiology, Emergency medicine, and anesthesiology. Surgery was kool but not kool enough to be my thing. Radiology i dont really remember because my eyes were shut 40% of the time. My favorite was definitely emergency medicine, it was amazing actually, i felt like, no i was, a productive member of the team. Not to mention i learned the most on this rotation because it covers such a broad and practical knowledge base. The faculty were phenomenal i remember thinking "i found my people". One of the attendings is such a brilliant and well rounded guy that I couldn't help but think "i wanna be like him".

Okay concise concise concise, that shit is tough, character maximums were never my thing. we are almost up to speed though! I am currently on vacation! i have 3 weeks off somehow, unfortunately a trip to thailand fell through but being home in Toronto is GREAT, i've been having a blast being back home with all my friends and family. I was planning on going back to NY a week early for a camping trip with whisky and his group of friends (aka russian bandits) but I have to stay for my brothers med school graduation party (he matched into radiology so congrats to him!). After my much needed break, i start psychiatry, which i am excited for, i love connecting with people and i just finished watching patch adams so i'm feeling extra compassionate. 

Guys, i'm proud of my summarizing, i hope i've given you guys at least a smidget of an idea of how my life has been. there are obviously a lot of things that i completely neglected, like how our hospitals got f'd by hurricane sandy, and how i started biking the streets of NY like a badass, but you know what, thats okay, the future is just as exciting and random. I'll start updating weekly for starters, i feel like i'll have some interesting stories with my upcoming psych rotation. 

I want to say thanks to my 2 followers =D, you ignited my blogfire once again, for how long is yet to be determined.

stay tuned. 

Graduated and Geared up

It's funny how a laminated piece of paper can represent all your work over the past four years. But it is what it is and I have one! HA!

So what does an accepted medical student do the summer before matriculation???

Well for me, I did a little 3 week Eurotrip, hitting up england, spain, belgium, and of course Amsterdam ^^. It was FUN to say the least. I felt oddly free, like no matter what I did or how much trouble i got into, i would go home in 3 weeks and still be the kid that the family was so proud of.

So being unemployed I decided that I need to make use of my time. First idea is pretty generic, "lets get JACKED!". I am currently doing a 6 day workout program, although due to some days of lazyness and random business related errands i run for my dad, I usually only make it 4 days a week. But here's the kool part, I also decided I need to pick up a new SKILL. yes a skill, but what?? master cooking? nahhh. learn guitar??? meh. ooo ooo i know! learn how to DJ! YES! and believe it or not, this is what i have chosen to learn. Honestly, to be good at this is quite hard! I bought myself a beginner setup and of course a hard copy of "DJing for Dummies". Actually, my buddy is a DJ and he had a gig at a nightclub friday night. He knew I was getting into it so he invited me to "shadow" him a bit so he can teach me the ropes. Suffice to say i could barely hear a word he said over the music, but I did get a better "feel" of what a DJ does. I assure you, I'll be mixing live in Ibiza in no time! =D

When i'm not doing either of these two things, ill be doing something with friends or playing a game of starcraft. Nothing says time well wasted then a few solid hours of starcraft. And i dont know if anyone else notices this but, its always SOMEONES birthday, therefore there's always somewhere you can go to have a good time if your feeling up to it. Often though, I prefer to jsut chill out with friends, go for a movie, play some poker, go out for some sushi, or whatever.

Dont be fooled though, even after your accepted there is still official business to take care of! You think med schools will just let you pay them thousands and thousands of dollars!! no!! well maybe!! but first you need to go get 7 viles of freaking blood sucked out of you, injected with a million vaccines, and you must let another human being (albeit a doctor) inspect every inch of your body. Don't forget to apply for your I-20 forms you troublesome Canadian students. pffft thinking you can just move to the US without paperwork!

Sometimes, I don't even feel like i am really starting medical school. I feel as if I will be returning to my undergrad institution in September as per usual. NYU is supposed to send out orientation material and housing assignments in the next couple of weeks. I am really excited to see if I got the building I wanted. It will certainly give me a more concrete sense of reality and I expect a surge of excitement to follow close behind.

Stay tuned.