Jan 14, 2011

Drinking and brain surgery...

It has been recently brought to my attention that I have increasing time between blog posts, to which I responded something like "I'm not doing anything interesting right now... just drinking and brain surgery... er, not in that order". I'm also losing sight of what constitutes interesting. When I was on the island, at least if people reading this are anything like I was reading other people's blog, I was hanging on every word of people's daily activities because you're in another country. Where I ate, where I shopped, where I did laundry, that is all relevant information.

Now, I live in Brooklyn. Finding awesome things is as easy as throwing a rock in any direction, having the person you hit with the rock flip you off and scream stuff before rooster tailing you with snow, and then look at the business their car was in front of, and boom. Awesomeness.

I'm also not sure how relevant my interview shennanigans are. I ate oysters in New Hampshire, walked around in the Chicago blizzard, walked around in the NYC blizzard, and took a vacation from all this blizzard nonsense to interview a couple of times in New Orleans. The first time, I slept at a hostel in the Garden District, opened my toe in the shower and tracked blood all over the place. The second time, I went with two of my closest friends and stayed at an extremely opulent hotel while drinking hurricanes in a rooftop hot tub, because damn, medical school can be awesome sometimes.

But is that like medical schoolish? Is it Caribbean MDish? Is it travel blogish? I've always kind of wanted Samantha Brown's job.

My father had the whole heart attack thing, and that sucked, to put it in medical terms. I added a trip out to North Carolina for that in the middle of the Snowmagedopocalype of the Century and holy crap why did no one plow? It's frigging LaGuardia for chrissake. And there's the news worthyness of simply being in yet another Brooklyn insane weather moment. There was over a foot of snow on top of my *air conditioner*. There were taxi cabs stranded everywhere and it looked like the Day After Tomorrow. I tried to take a stroll through Rockefeller Plaza to see the tree and possibly take a skate because when the weather alerts on my phone say things like "GET OUT!!! SAVE YOURSELVES!! LEAVE THE CHILDREN!!" I think "Nah... they don't mean me."

Now I'm back in rotations and the interview trail is stammering to a close with a couple more out of state trips and then the blissful rest until March. I think it's going well. I'm doing neurosurgery so I got to touch someone's brain, so that's pretty awesome. No one in NS seems to begrudge my chosen field, which is particularly awesome, since I had one guy in family actually say the phrase "What can I do to keep you from going into pathology?" "Uhhh.... Give me Samantha Brown's job?" I'm also not cut out to wear lead vests. That crap is heavy. For the next surgery, I may just let the x-rays fry my eggs. I don't know how cops and rads techs do it. And lead vests while scrubbed? Good god, they should do that to prisoners. No wonder neurosurgeons and urologists make so much frigging money.

In other news, my doctor is more concerned with my thyroid than I am because apparently it was throwing off some abnormal levels in July, and being a responsible medical student, I ignored it until I needed a prescription renewed. Then my doctor was like "Oh, you need to come see me" which meant "I'm going to recheck your thyroid levels if I have to drag you into this office myself and no more baby-ex for you until you do.". I'm not sure why it's important because so long as it's not flashing in the danger zone, it's not like I'm going to do anything about it. He also seemed really surprised by my reaction to having my blood drawn because first he said "Don't look", and I'm like "Uhhh... no?" And then he said "You weren't scared at all!" "I'm 30. And a medical student. Now give me my Dora the Explorer sticker."

Next month I'm doing anesthesiology because... uh... yeah. Then a couple two week electives, some paperwork, and wow. Lincoln Center. My mom's already planning to cry at the ceremony. I'm just hoping they have a steel drum band. Grenada repreSENT!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Ishie. Your blog is such an inspiration. You have accomplished so much. Wish you all the best in your chosen field. I am in fifth term right now in Grenada and looking to take the boards in a few months. I will consider myself fortunate if I can replicate atleast some of your accomplishements.

Ishie said...

Thank you so much :) That's really nice of you to say and good luck on getting out! Make sure you do some Grenada bucket list stuff before you go, or you'll regret it later. I'm still mad I never made it out to Carriacou.

Anonymous said...

Ishie-are you in the mood to dole out some advice? How do you study for Pathophys? I do certainly want to get out of the Island and looks like it is a daunting task right now with Pharm and Pathophys. Any suggestions?
And plesae don't stop your blog.. it helps a lot of people see the light at the end of the tunnel

Ishie said...

Someone else just asked me this. Hammering you guys, are they?

Here's the post: http://sgumd.blogspot.com/2008/09/good-professor.html My comment is the last one and I put in what I know about pathophys farther than "hope that everyone is as lost as you for the curve."

Hope this helps and good luck! You'll make it through the last section, though if it's like our term, no one will think that they're going to.