Rotation Five: Surgery [Part I]

So only a few months after my roommate, Megan (from high school, not college!) moved into our apt in Cerritos, it was finally time for me to join and move into our fantastic apt...just in time to start my surgery rotation in Downey.

Surgery was.....not my favorite rotation thus far, but not totally terrible :) The hours were long (6-6 every day) but I saw a lot of lap appys, lap choles, differerent colon/general gi surgeries, some C-Sections :) and even a breast masectomy/reconstruction, craniotomy, and ortho and vascular cases, to name a few!


Despite the grueling 12 hour days, I made time for fun things on the weekend like running a 5K obstacle course on the beach in the rain, go to football games at the Rose Bowl, go snowboarding!

Now I'm on a two week neuro elective in Newport Beach :)

Rotations Two-Four: Family Med, Pediatrics, and Pain Management

So I have royally failed at keeping up my original plan of blogging after every rotation but I'll try and play catch-up now. During the month of August, I was at Arrowhead, living at home and loving life. Family was sooo much fun, even though it was in-patient and more intense than an out-patient family rotation,, but still so awesome. I learned a ton and absolutely loved the patients and the whole experience. It really reaaffirmed my desire to do family med, plus it was really fun to be at Arrowhead (where so many of my Touro friends and colleagues are at) and constantly see and work with friends and people that I already knew!!

I had the first week of September off and used the time to fly to NYC, find an apt for 6 weeks (not stressful at all....), move in and start pediatrics! While the getting there was super stressful, the rotation as a whole and the overall experience were AMAZING!! I ended up loving pediatrics wayyyy more than I expected, the Brooklyn brownstone I lived in was awesome, and every weekend I did something fun, including visits to DC and Boston! All in all it was wonderful and even better than I expected!!


































So after an awesome 6 weeks on the east coast, I moved back home to do 2 weeks of pain management back at Arrowhead. It was an interesting rotation -- I learned a ton about different types of and treatments for pain and got to help with some awesome procedures (epidurals, nerve ablations, steroid injections) plus it was super fun to be back at Arrowhead again and enjoy my time at home and with friends before surgery started up!
















So after pain management, I officially moved into my apt in Cerritos and started surgery at Downey!! So far, I defintitely don't love it as much as pediatrics, but so far it's really interesting and I'm learning a ton! Hopefully it won't be this long before I try to document my rotation adventures on the world wide web!

Rotation One: Psych!

Well I have officially finished my first rotation. July 4-31 I was living down in San Diego, doing my psychiatry rotation there and it was amazing!! I totally loved psych and was ready to sign up to be a psychiatrist right then and there! I was at a small clinic run through the County of San Diego where I worked 4 days a week, 10 hours a day and got to see and help a lot of people. I really loved the whole clinic experience, the nurses were awesome, it was great to see the work that the therapists did, I loved getting to help facilitate the support groups, and the psychiatrist that I rotated with was amazing and so knowledgeable and it was especially neat because she is both a child and adult psychiatrist, so I got to see both kinds of psychiatry. All in all, it was super fun to live in San Diego and I loved psych and I found out that I passed both sets of boards, and was in 2 of my best friends' weddings! So far it's been a pretty awesome summer :) For now, I'm living at home, and doing my Family Med rotation at Arrowhead, which is awesome because I'm learning a ton and it's so fun to be in a big teaching hospital where you do a ton and where a lot of my friends are (yesterday I went down to the ER to do an H&P on a new admit for Family Med and the person who did the original H&P in the ER was one of my best medical school friends :))

These days, life is great.

good things come [to those who wait]

after arguable one of the most difficult times in my life these past few months, it feels as though life has begun again. I passed my USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam) with my goal score and while I'm still waiting on my COMLEX, which I need to pass to be licensed (they seriously can't tell me until the first week of August?!), I know that I have much to be thankful for. I have started my rotations and this month I am on Psych (which I absolutely LOVE) down in San Diego. If I didn't want to go abroad and didn't think that I hopefully will love my family med rotation, psych would be a pretty serious contender as a specialty. The clinic that I'm working out now is small, in the ghetto, seriously helping people, and I absolutely love it. I mostly just listen to the psychiatrist and add a little here and there, and help facilitat the support groups which is pretty awesome too (minus Friday when a woman told me she saw a man in a chair that wasn't there...). But all in all I love rotations and it's so nice to love life again :)

[hardest year ever]

since it's been oh-so-long since I've had time to post anything (and lets be honest, I don't really now), I thought I would update the world wide web on my activities:

Since September when I last blogged I have worked as a tutor for another student in my class, rocked our neurology course, found out that I'm doing my third year rotations at long beach, with potentially some rotations in the bay area, ran 3 races, been nearly pushed over the edge with stress, lost nearly 10 pounds and tried to deal with/overcome the emotional component of being a medical student in definitely the hardest part of my academic journey so far.

it's been a long 9 months.

all that being said, and despite all the stress I've been under and as pushed to the breaking point that I've felt (and I'm sure will continue to feel), I have so much to be thankful for and the Lord has no where near let me down yet. In fact, when I feel like I'm at the end of my rope and not good enough or smart enough or sane enough to deal with all that med school entails, He reminds me of His words to Moses in Exodus 4: "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Is it not I, the LORD? Now, GO; I will teach you what to say"

Some days reminding myself of that truth and living as though I believe it are easier than others, but it's a process and I'm growing and learning and thankful for all those alongside me on the way.

Hopefully my next blog will be from beautiful sunny Southern Californa :)