Don’t threaten me with lack of funding when you never told me that my file was “incomplete” to begin with. You don’t scare me because I’m in the MD/PhD program, which means I will get my money regardless of what you say or do. Oh, and if you make trouble for me, it’ll be your ass on the line, not mine (God forbid anyone give one of our most precious investments MD/PhD students any trouble). And most certainly don’t tell me that you have a heavy load when that onerous load consists of 500 students at most split between at least five of you. Cry me a river when you’re working for the undergrad financial aid office once I get your ass fired for behaving like a bitch to me.
Sincerely,
mylifemypace
Don’t forget to check out Grand Rounds at From MedSkool.
…you listen to my major professor spout off the most non-sensical theory ever about Alzheimer’s disease and believe him.
There are two new volunteers joining my lab. And they’re both MDs. God knows why they’re not out there actually using their shiny MDs for better things. Frankly, I don’t care. But I can’t understand how they can actually be fooled by my major professor’s faulty reasoning and not see the gaping holes in his hypothesis and methods when even two former not-worthy-of-med-school volunteers saw these holes as clear as day.
Maybe I should be glad that these two aren’t actually out there practicing medicine.
I hate to break it to you, but med school is so like high school that it’s not even funny. Everywhere you turn, there’s just drama, drama, drama. You would think that med students are a horny bunch who have never gotten any before in their lives the way everyone was hooking up with everyone while having significant others on the side. Triangles abounded. Things got ugly. Some couples made it through though and got married. But most of them just crashed and burned. Even I wasn’t immune and spent the first two years of med school with a narcissistic, spoiled, mama’s boy who couldn’t give his “ex-girlfriend” the boot. Now that you know, let’s never speak of this again.
In honor of all of the incest that goes in med school, my song for the week is Bittersweet – The Mating Game. The next time you’re tempted to hook up with a med student, you should first wonder where he/she’s been…it’s likely that after such consideration, you might not be so tempted anymore. Unless he/she is extremely hot, of course.
Song suggestions? Send them to me here.
Published on
2 years, 9 months ago in
asides.
Published on
2 years, 9 months ago in
asides.
Rumor is that they’re planning to get rid of the Hummer H2 because of slow sales. Now if only they would get rid of all Hummers. And SUVs and big trucks.
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Published on
2 years, 9 months ago in
asides.
This lame study showed that if your ring finger is longer than your index finger, then you’re good at math and if your ring finger is shorter than your index finger, then you’re good at reading. Um, right. My index finger is longer than my ring finger and I’m better at math than I am with reading (though I’m way better at reading than most people anyway). So there. Such BS.
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Maybe I’ve been inhaling too much waste isoflurane the last couple of days, but I seem to be deluding myself into believing that these failed experiments of mine are actually useful in the most minute way. You see, I prepare all of the monitors, IVs, and catheters for these experiments, which has taught me how to do such things and what to check when I’m trying to explain an anomalous reading. Not only that, but I’ve gotten plenty of experience with reading pressure curves to guide the placement of a Swan-Ganz catheter. I also know what to watch out for when an animal is under anesthesia.
But most importantly, I’ve learned how to not freak out and freeze when something goes wrong. Not so long ago, I accidentally pulled a stopcock out on a pressure line and froze, letting blood ooze out from the line onto the ground until the surgeon fixed it for me. Yesterday, I forgot to close a stopcock and blood started oozing back precipitously into the line. But instead of panicking and freezing, I traced the problem to the stopcock and closed it myself, leaving no one the wiser. And today, as I was helping the surgeon introduce a catheter into the external jugular vein, he turned away and the catheter popped out, resulting in a nice stream of blood shooting straight out (surprising considering it was a vein). While he freaked out for a second, I merely pulled back on the ties around the vessel to close it off and stop the flow.
And the ultimate adrenaline rush of the day: I was supposed to be retracting on the carotid artery as the surgeon introduced a nick to place yet another catheter, but I wasn’t sure of how much to retract (I was afraid of pulling too hard and tearing the vessel, which would have been disastrous) and apparently did not retract enough. The instant he pulled his little mini scissors away, we were met with a huge spray of blood. I freaked for a mere split second, long enough to utter the words, “what the” before instinctively pulling back on the ties and averting a disaster. If this had happened but a couple of months ago, I would have probably freaked out so badly that I would have completely froze and released the ties, leading to complete and utter disaster. But all of these otherwise useless experiments have taught me how to be calm when things go wrong during surgery. So I guess I can at least take these lessons with me when I go back to med school (if ever). Oh, and I now know the secret trick to not cutting sutures too close to the knot (which tends to cause them to unravel, which isn’t good). Yes, I guess these last four years of my life haven’t been a complete waste.
