Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match!

Hello!

Match week 2019 is finally upon us. After 4 long years filled with endless amounts of studying, a ridiculous number of exams, clinical rotations, and residency interviews, I'm proud to say that I will officially become an OB-Gyn!

Becoming a doctor has been a dream of mine since I was 4 years old (yes, really). Medical school has definitely been difficult, but I never truly doubted my ability to actually achieve this dream until I started to apply for residencies this past fall. My friends will tell you that I'm crazy for making that statement, but let me explain myself. I consider myself an average applicant for the field of OB-Gyn. My step 1 score is right on average for past OB-Gyn applicants. I made Honors and High Passes in almost all my courses but was not high achieving enough to qualify for AOA*. I had a good number of volunteer experiences and a handful of leadership experiences. I participated in research but was never able to publish anything. Overall, I felt I checked all the boxes and had many meaningful experiences that I could talk about on the interview trail. Now, you may be thinking, "You're definitely crazy! All of that sounds amazing!" The reasons why I continue to insist I'm an average applicant are because my step 1 score is average and the field of OB-Gyn is becoming more and more competitive. Theoretically, I interviewed and ranked enough programs, but you can just never be sure especially after having met so many amazing applicants who were interviewing at top-notch programs on the interview trail. Regardless, by the grace of God, I have matched to an OB-Gyn residency position!

I'll find out where I will be training on Match Day on Friday, March 15th. Keep a look out for that announcement. I also still plan on writing more blog posts about my residency application and interview experience. I've been holding off because it didn't feel right to give you all my perspective and advice without knowing if it actually worked for me!

To any fellow MS4s reading this: congrats if you've matched as well! If not and you're currently going through SOAP, just remember that this experience doesn't define you. You are an amazing and successful individual who has reached an education level that only 1% of the world's population have also achieved. There is a reason for everything and just trust that there is a reason for your current struggles, a plan for your life, and many people who love you.

Much love and talk to you all again soon!


*Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) is a national medical school honor society. Members are the highest achieving students in their respective medical school classes and chosen based on basic science and clerkship grades.

Lessons from my First Year of Medical School

Some of these will be more serious, others are very tongue-in-cheek.

1. It's okay to abide by the P=M.D. mentality (pass=M.D.) when first starting out or even for your entire medical school career.*
2. It's also okay to push yourself to achieve that Honors if that's what you want. Just don't let it stress you out and turn you into a gunner.**
3. Be confident and proud of where you are. You were chosen for a reason, own it.
4. With #3 being said, don't let your achievements and experience get to your head. You do still need to be humble.
5. The phrase "high-yield" will become a part of your daily vernacular.
6. The medical field has purposely tried to over-complicate things by creating new words for simple things like bruises and nose bleeds.
7. Every space, line, ridge, and bump in the human body has a name that you will have to learn in anatomy.
8. Your white coat and medical school I.D. can open many doors for you. You no longer have to beg doctors to let you shadow them.
• Subpoint: people outside of the medical field will mistake you for a doctor if you're wearing the socially accepted uniform of scrubs and white coat 
9. Your professors are great people and will do almost anything to help you succeed.
10. Your undergrad degree, if useful at all for medicine, sorry liberal arts majors, will probably only help you in certain classes for 1 lecture at best. . . the material is much more in-depth now.
11. You will encounter people who are really high-strung and stressful to you, don't feel like you have to associate with them. Choose to surround yourself with people that will encourage you and help you.
12. Don't feel like you have to follow the advice of the upperclassmen or even your classmates. If their study methods don't work for you, don't use them.
13. It's okay if you slip up in your grades a bit. There's a learning-curve and a big transition from undergrad to medical school. What's important is that you adapt and persevere. Also see #1.
14. Some people in your class will know 100% what they want to do when they grow up. It's awesome if you are one of those people. It's also completely fine if you're not.
15. Try to get along with your anatomy tankmates if you don't already. It'll make the 2-3 hours dissections that much more bearable.
16. Wash your anatomy scrubs at the end of every week. If you don't keep up with it, they will stink forever.
17. Try to desensitize yourself to your cadaver somewhat, especially when doing crazy things like cutting the body in half.
18. With #17 being said, do occasionally remember that your cadaver was a person with a life and a family who graciously donated their bodies for your education.
19. Don't worry about Step 1 just yet. Some of your classmates will talk about reading First Aid, but don't worry about them. Focus on completing your first year first.
20. Some members of your class will want to party and drink every weekend. If that's you, great, but don't forget about why you're here. If that's not you, don't feel like you have to become that person. Do the things that you love during your free time, because free time will be hard to come by.
21. Figure out what are the things you need in your life to keep you sane. Medical school is demanding and you're going to have to prioritize things in order to keep doing them.
22. You can get sucked into studying all day, every day. Don't feel like you have to to keep up with the work. It's important to still feel like a human being. See #21.
23. Keep up with your friends who aren't in medical school. You'll need to have some conversations that aren't about the brachial plexus and drug interactions.
24. Don't get upset if your friends and family who aren't in medicine don't think it's cool that you held and dissected a heart in anatomy lab. Everyone has their own criteria for what they consider cool.
25. Stay connected with the events that are going on in the world. There are things going on out there besides the Circle of Willis.
26. Never before has not having anything to do ever been so glorious
27. You might start freaking out now about rotations, Step, and match, but don't! You'll get there in your own time and when you do you will conquer them head on.

* My school still follows a Marginal Pass to Honor grading system. This won't fully apply to you if your school is on a Pass/Fail system.
**Gunner: a person who tends to sabotage peers in order to get ahead

1st Semester Recap

Why hello there!

The last time I was able to write on this blog, or even think about writing about this blog, I was about 2 weeks away from starting medical school. Since that last post, a lot of things have happened in my life with regards to medical school. In fact, these past 4 months have probably been the quickest, most stressful, and busiest months of my life so far. Highlights, in no specific order, include:

1. Officially donned my white coat for the first time and said the Hippocratic Oath
2. Met my first patient (my cadaver) and successfully completed anatomy lab without vomiting or passing out
3. Took my first National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Shelf exam and did decently well
4. Worked with my first standardized patient (SP) and learned almost all aspects of the physical exam (Neuro is to come next semester)
5. Became an Ambassador for my school and talked to interviewees and high school students about our school and med school life in general
6. Joined a women's Bible study and became a member of the leadership team for the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA)
7. Got selected to go on a Spring Break global health trip to Santa Ana, Honduras
8. Met a great group of friends who are supportive and totally not gunners
9. Took 8 exams in 2 weeks and received a Pass or better on all of them
10. Finished my first semester of medical school with High Passes and Honors in all of my classes

Even though there have been bumps along the way, especially during my first block week of exams and finals, I don't think I've been much happier than I am now. I feel like I belong at school and as #8 reflects, found friends who will build each other up rather than tear each other down to get to the top. My top 2 criterion for a medical school were a supportive class and great opportunities to get clinical experience. My school exceeds both of those criterion by miles and I am so glad to be here. Thus, I have truly learned that school rank doesn't matter. What matters for me in my medical education is that I am happy and surrounded by people that will do anything to help me succeed, because how I'm feeling has a greater impact on my performance than my school's ranking.

I learned a lot this semester. . . probably more than I ever did in a year at undergrad, and I know I have a lot of learning to do. The biggest lesson for me, however, was that I am competent. I earned my spot in my class and I don't think the admissions committee made a mistake. I thank God everyday that He has put me on this path and is with me every step of the way.

I have a long road in front of me and a lot of things still left to figure out, but for now, I'm proud and happy to say that I am 1/8th an M.D! 

Life Update - Being an Adult is Hard

Hello again,

I always seem to come back to this blog in times of reflection and semi-boredom. . . no offense. It's not that I will only write posts if there's nothing better to do, I'm just unable to make myself seem coherent when I have some extra time on my hands.

Moving on, the biggest lesson I've learned this summer is: being an adult is hard. I don't really consider myself an adult (or just don't want to accept it) yet as I still have 4 more years of schooling left, but this summer I have had to deal with the inevitable search for an apartment and all the associated adulty things like finding an electricity provider, buying renter's insurance, finding an internet provider, and creating a budget.

My biggest realization in dealing with all of this is: being an adult means making a lot of phone calls. I really dislike making phone calls. I'm a millennial; I am used to sending emails and text messages. I'm also an introvert; I prefer staying indoors and limiting my interaction with other human beings, especially human beings that sound like they resent every phone call they get from a (potential) customer.

Regardless, I'm really proud of how I've handled everything. Even though it's been really stressful, I'm very happy with how I've handled things and relieved/glad that things are working out. (I'm signing the lease and moving into my apartment in a week!) If anything, this only makes me a little more confident that I'll be able to handle medical school like a champion which leads me to the second update I want to provide. (Good segue*, me!)

Medical school will officially start for me in t-minus 18 days. (Insert screaming emoji) I've bought scrubs embroidered with my school's logo, ordered my white coat, bought a new (required) laptop, registered for MS1 retreat, and looked into stethoscopes. In 12 days I'll get my ID badge and all the fancy computer/website authorizations needed to do medical school. In 2 weeks, I'll attend orientation and participate in the white coat ceremony! A lot of things are happening/soon to happen and it is so daunting, scary, nerve-wracking, and exciting.

I hope to keep you all updated on how things go. This blog is already a mixed bag of topics/themes, but hey I have a mixed bag of interests/experiences, so I hope to continue the focus on my journey to becoming a doctor. Actually, as I type this, I think I will try to make a video or write a post about medical school interviews and my experience.

Until next time guys. (Hopefully next time will be soon, but no guarantees.)


*Don't you think segue is spelled funny? It's like it's trying to compensate for something by being weird to spell.

How to Shadow a Doctor

Hey guys!

In order to accompany the recent bombardment of blog posts about my doctor shadowing experience, I have made a YouTube video giving you guys some tips of accomplishing this task yourselves. It's a very general video to help give you guys a basic understanding of what to do and what to expect. If you would like any specific questions answered feel free to leave them in the comments of this post or in the comments of my video which will be below. If you want to read about my experiences in a more detailed manner be sure to read the three posts I have written as well. And if you guys like to know more about my pre-med experience so far please let me know because I would love to tell you about the other things I've been doing to help me with my medical school applications.

OR Observation

Hey guys!

Long time no blog! Sorry. :/

As you guys may already know, I want to become a doctor. And as you have seen, I reposted my posts about my ER shadowing experience. Well last week (7/18/13) I completed my third doctor shadowing experience by following an anesthesiologist. While I know many will wonder why I didn't choose a surgeon to shadow, it's because I hoped to be exposed to many different types of surgeries rather than those limited to the type of surgeon I shadow.

My experience began with a rocky start because the OR was slow and the anesthesiologist I was supposed to shadow was allowed to take the day off. Luckily, two other anesthesiologists were kind enough to allow me to shadow them instead. After changing into scrubs, a cap, mask, and shoe covers, I felt like a real member of the medical care team. During the first case I was able to view down a patient's throat and see the cords before a breathing tube was put in place. Instead of staying and watching that procedure I was able to go and watch a CABG from start to finish. This is an open heart surgery and more commonly known as a heart bypass. Rather than taking a vein from the leg, the surgeon chose to use a mammary artery from the chest wall. Then because the patient had very small and delicate vessels, the surgeon chose to put the patient on the heart-lung machine. All in all, the entire procedure was very awesome and only took about two hours.

Before I had to leave, I was able to watch an epidural be administered for a patient having a procedure done on his prostate. While much less interesting than an open heart surgery, it was still interesting to see a first hand viewpoint of a very popular form of anesthesia, especially for pregnant women in labor. My conclusion about whether I would want one for if/when I have a baby is that the worst part isn't even when the medicine is administered, it's when the doctor numbs the area with a local anesthetic. Interesting enough, that medicine is used a lot for patients who need stitches.

The rest of my OR experience was a little less eventful. The number of surgeries and procedures was too low for there to be a need for three anesthesiologists and so another doctor was allowed to go home. This then put more pressure on the remaining doctor I was shadowing to complete all the tasks and prevented me from properly viewing more procedures. 

Nevertheless, I am very grateful to the doctors and OR department for allowing me to stick around even when my prior shadowing agreement fell through. I also realized just how much authority and responsibility a doctor has especially in a department like the OR that has a strict schedule and rules to follow. Anesthesiologists have to keep track of all nurse anesthetists making sure a patient remains under anesthesia during the procedure and that all surgeries start on time so that every other member of the operating team can move on with their jobs.

Let me know if there is more information you would like about shadowing doctors or just the pre-med experience in general.

ER Observation 2

Hello!

Today (3/14/13) I did my second day of shadowing in the ER. Same doctor, same hospital, but a whole lot more chaotic. Well maybe not a whole lot but definitely more eventful for me in regards of procedures.

The main thing that stands out in my mind is the code that came into the ER. I know this sounds really bad, but before I went for my first day of shadowing, I told my friend that I kinda wanted someone to code so I could see how a hospital tries to revive a patient. I guess I got my wish. . . in a really morbid way. I was with the doctor in a patient room getting a better history on a patient that came in due to lack of consciousness and some chest pain. Out in the hallway was some yelling and a gurney with a doctor doing compressions. One of the other doctors came in and asked if he could steal me and led me to the room where they were trying to revive the John Doe who came into the ER in cardiac arrest. The main difference I noticed from a code in real life and a code on TV is the speed of compressions administered to the patient. While on TV, it does appear rushed and urgent, it doesn't come close to the extent in real life. In order to revive a patient and continue blood profusion to the brain, you need to do 100 beats in a minute and those doctors/nurses/transport did a good job doing compressions at about 121 beats per minute. It was also exciting for me because I got to help slightly. If they needed more gloves, I got them gloves. I opened and prepared epinephrine when the nurses arms were full. And finally I held an IV pump so that fluids would be administered. Also, the whole rubbing paddles together and shocking the patient with 300 joules of electricity doesn't happen anymore. They have a defibrillator that delivers the shock for them and it only goes up to 200 joules. They did get a sinus rhythm for about 5 minutes but never got a strong pulse and eventually lost the rhythm. Sadly, they eventually decided to stop and call it.

In comparison, the rest of my day was a little uneventful. Rather than a theme of abdominal pain like Monday, today's theme was shortness of breath. Other than that I watched an echocardiogram done and and abscess removed.

I guess upon my immediate reflection of my shadowing at the ER, I realized I can handle the blood, stool, and puke that comes with being a doctor. All in all, this was a success.

ER Observation 1

Hi guys!

Today (3/11/13) I shadowed a doctor for the first time. He is the director of the Emergency Department and has been practicing medicine for about 20 years.

Now on to my experience. The hospital I shadowed at isn't a major trauma center so it definitely wasn't like you see on TV where every patient who comes in on an ambulance has a gun shot wound or was in a major car crash. No one coded and no one went running to save a persons life. Really today's theme was sutures and abdominal pain. . . not the most exciting day of my life. But it had its perks. I had never seen anyone suture a real laceration. I mean I had done practice sutures on a pig foot during a summer program but I'd never seen it done on a real patient and trying to consider if the skin is strong enough or how to make the cut heal in a pretty manner.

The only other thing that was really apparent to me was how amazing it is for doctors to take the information from a patient history and additional labs and determine a diagnosis. For the ER the goal is to discover what is the cause of their complaint and how can that cause be fixed. Or if the patient has a simple problem like a deep cut to the face, then the solution is to simply put in sutures.

I am a little disappointed that there wasn't a big mysterious case that ended in a huge surgery, but that is the reality of being a doctor. There was a patient that came in screaming, seeing dead relatives and believing that the doctor was God, but really the only problem was she hadn't been taking her anti-psychotic medication.

That's all I have for you guys! Part of the reason for this post was to keep you up to date with my life, but to also help remind me two years down the road of what happened during my doctor shadowing.

ECT Observation

I had meant to post this a long time ago seeing as I observed on November 26. . .

Hello!

As a part of my financial aid for college, I was given work study money. Since I know I want to become a doctor I hoped that my job would be something research or at least science related. After a lot of disappointing rejections and interview, I finally got a job at a local geriatric hospital/outpatient center/health center. As you can probably tell, this place helps patients with a lot of different ailments but the common factor among all of them is their age. More specifically, I work with the department of psychiatry that addresses depression in the elderly. Since the medical community does not know very much about depression and other mental illness no matter what the age, the place where I work tries to create more awareness for the problems depression patients face. When patients with depression do not respond or cannot tolerate depression medication, ECT or electroconvulsive therapy, is suggested.

Electroconvulsive therapy sounds scary and if you know anything about what ECT is you are probably thinking about extremely dangerous and harmful treatments where the patients are shocked. Yes, an electrical current is sent through there brain, but no, its not in anyway harmful or painful for the patient. The patients are put under general anesthesia and monitored by a doctor, nurse, and anesthesiologist the entire time. When I went in to observe, I was expecting a long treatment time, but the goal is to send as strong of a current a patient can tolerate in about an 8 second period. It seems like it takes longer to get the patients hooked up to the heart monitor and EEG than it is to actually administer the treatment.

Getting to observe ECT was particularly rewarding to me also because I was able to help with the procedure. In no way were they going to let me administer the drugs or hyper/hypoventilate the patients, but I was able to interact with the patients and aid in the process some. There was one patient who was particularly difficult for the nurses to handle. She was trying to pull out her IV, get out of the bed, and kept muttering, "She wants to get out, I have to help her get out!" Turns out this patient has a history of dementia. I ended up holding her hand and trying to calm her down enough for the anesthesiologist to get the medicine into her IV line and eventually put her to sleep. The entire time we were working with this patient I was scared and worried I would screw something up, a feeling I had the entire time I was there, but it ended up working out really well.

I wish I could have stayed and watched more procedures done, but I had to go to class. I also wish I had asked the questions that have been rattling around in my brain ever since that day, but I was just trying to take everything in and not get in their way. Either way, I have no regrets about becoming a doctor because this experience was so invigorating and I left that place with a sense of accomplishment and a smile on my face.

Have you interned anywhere pertaining to the field you want to enter?