Sickly me

Well it is the end of another exciting week of med school here. Mostly this week has been marked by me blowing my nose incessantly and generally feeling like crap. Good times! It seems a lot of people are similarly afflicted in my class so it must be a bug that's going around. We had our first quiz on monday in microbiology. It was pretty easy. We just had a lot of questions where they said the patient had gram positive, catalase negative, optochin sensitive cocci in their blood. What bacteria is it??? It sounds complicated but they gave us a list with all these bacteria on it so we just had to memorize their characteristics. I did well on the quiz so no bad grades yet.

Also this week we had our first videotaped interviews with fake patients. The U has a bunch of exam rooms with cameras in them where we will be spending a lot of time for the next two years apparently. So this was our first time on our own with a patient for 20 minutes where we had to go through the whole interview process. We were assigned a second year "buddy" who will watch our videos and critique them. Also we have groups of 12 classmates plus two doctors who will watch them. All of this sounds a little scary to me. Mostly because I don't want to watch myself on video in front of my peers. But overall, I thought I did okay with the interview and wasn't as awkward as I could have been. I get to tape another one next week so that should be double the fun.

This weekend is going to be long and cold. We get Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day or something. Public school is great for getting days off. But mostly I need to catch up with my studies, since I spent most of this week resting and not studying. We have a neuro quiz in a week which should be fun and an extra credit thing due on wednesday that is worth a whole 4 points. They warned us though that in the past 4 points have made the difference between passing and failing so I suppose I should do it. One thing that was cool this week was we had a demonstration of an electrocardiogram. So one of my classmates we got to see his heart through an ultrasound type thing. I didn't think we would be able to see much but we could see the heart valves and the muscle and the aorta and everything. It was very cool. They could also add color so you could see which way the blood was flowing to make sure everything was normal. Sometimes it's nice to have a reminder of all the cool stuff we will get to do in the future. Gives me more motivation to study hard now. Anyway, I'm going to eat sushi and then watch a movie with my friends tonight so that should be fun. A break before the studying begins!