Hospital Day and Surgical Skills!

I'm pretty stoked to finally write about a part of medical school that doesn't involve books and long hours of studying! Most of the first year was simply reading, studying and taking exam after exam after exam. Not a whole lot of excitement to post on a blog. The 2nd year still has lots of exams and lots of studying but we have other more clinically applicable activities going on as well. The first happened on tuesday. We had hospital day where residency directors came from their hospitals from all parts of the country to recruit us to consider their program for residency and rotations. As you can see I was dressed up in my nice white coat along with the snazzy outfit that was given to me to wear for Jami's wedding reception. I gotta give a shout out to Jami because I got more compliments on how I looked with the tie and outfit than I can ever remember getting on a single occasion. One director(it was a lady) even asked me if I dressed myself that morning or if someone else helped me put it together! haha. Anyway, we had over 100 representatives from hospitals in several states including Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, South dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and South Carolina. It was cool to see so many respected hospitals there hoping that we would consider their residency program or do a rotation with them. It also provided alot of valuable information and about these programs and good advice on how to prepare. But it was also a poignant reminder to me that in about a year and a half I will have to choose a specialty and make a decision as to where I will be doing residency! Crazy! I don't know what I like or do not like yet! Even more crazy is the fact that in 4 months I have to decide where to do my 3rd and 4th year rotations. I can choose to stay in Des Moines or I can go elsewhere and commit to a hospital for the third year and the following year rotate at potential places I want to do my residency. If I had to decide today, I would choose to go to the Doctor's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. I've been itching to move to a bigger city, there is a temple in columbus, a couple of singles wards, college football, not to mention that the hospital is top notch. A close second choice would be to the Henry Ford hospital just outside of Detroit. I will be finding out in January where I'm headed after the school holds it's lottery, where each student gives their top 3 choices and then a lottery is done to see who goes where. I don't know all the details yet but will find out more in November.

The other exciting happening at med school is that I started my surgical skills class two weeks ago! The picture above is the device they gave us to learn how to tie the surgeon's knot and other important knots necessary for suturing. We started off with a nice big rope to get the hang of it and then progressed the next week to the real stuff!

What you see here is a needle holder, forceps, cutting needle, and a nylon non-absorbable suture. The pad is a represtation of skin with the epidermis, dermis and sub cutaneous layers all there. I'm practicing as much as time will allow between studying for my other classes so I'll be ready for rotations(which isn't as much as i'd like sadly). During the lab, we practiced cutting incisions on pig's feet and learned different techniques for how to do sutures on various parts of the body. It was really cool! We also learned how to put in a catheter and a nasogastric tube.

The previous week we learned how to start an IV, and practiced putting one in another student and had them practice on us. I was very nervous to have someone poke me for their first time ever and was worried that I might pass out! Luckily it went just fine...although as my partner gave me the shot to numb up my hand before putting in the IV, he was shaking like crazy and as he stuck my hand he dropped the syringe as he tried to push in the plunger which caused the needle to push up into my skin...but other than that it was no big deal! There were others who passed out but I was not one of them!

Chicago for labor day weekend

Over labor day weekend I travelled up to Chicago to spend time with Brad and Jacob Priest and see the city for the first time. It worked out that I didn't have any exams until friday of the following week so it turned out to be a perfectly relaxing weekend void of studying! Brad travelled from Milwaukee and met me there and Jacob is doing a Ph.D program at Purdue-chicago extention and lives in a small safe zone in the south side Chicago called Hyde Park that is surrounded by some very shady and scary areas. So scary in fact that the guys that I caught a ride with to Chicago who are from there would not drop me off at Jacob's house but had us meet Jacob and Brad near the freeway. The guys I rode with were from India and Pakistan and devout Muslims. We had an excellent 5 1/2 hour trip and the bulk of our conversation was about religion which was very interesting! I was very glad for the skills I learned on my mission(although a bit rusty) when they sort of attacked my beliefs by saying there was no need for prophets today and that Christ was merely a prophet and nothing more. I kept my cool and was able turn a potentially hostile argument into something much better by agreeing on what we had in common and respecting there beliefs and teaching why a prophet and the Savior was necessary. They asked if I thought my religion was better than all other religions and after feeling trapped and not wanting to appear arrogant said that "I believed all religions were good and taught truth but ours enhanced and added upon those truths and that is why I served a mission to help enhance others beliefs" (thank you President Hinckley for verbalizing our mission as a church) it went over very well! Now back to the Chicago trip. After Brad and Jacob picked us up we drove around downtown and saw how gorgeous Chicago is at night. We drove by Obama's house but didn't get to go too close because of all the barricades and fences that were set up and the 5 police cars that were assigned to protect his house. We made it back to Jacobs nice condo around 11:30 pm and caught up til the early morning hours. On Saturday with Jacob as our guide we walked around downtown after beginning the day at the original pancake house. I had some delicious pinapple pancakes with a tropical syrup. We walked around Millenium and Grant park where a Jazz festival was going on, saw the beautiful Navy pier on lake Michigan, and walked along the streets of downtown looking up at the skyscrapers. Jacob learned really fast how cheap Brad and I are. Whenever we passed by something to do whether it was a boat or building tour, a show, a museum or something else Jacob would ask if we wanted to do it and our first question would be "does it cost money?" and if the answer was yes, our answer was always "No." I think you can have lots of fun in Chicago and not spend any money, hopefully Jacob feels the same way! We did spend money on two things. First we had to try the famous deep dish pizza at Giordano's. It was so good! I tried not to think of the recent nutrition class I just finished as I put into my mouth the 3 inches thick of cheese, pepperoni, black olives, canadian bacon and sauce. I was full after two slices! We enjoyed watching the Utes beat Michigan as we ate and stayed at the restaurant for a long time after our pizza was done because it was such a good game. The other thing we spent money on was wicked. I mean the broadway musical Wicked! We chose not to buy tickets online and try our luck in the drawing they hold at the borders bookstore across the street from the theatre that I heard about on Tyler Squires blog. I thought for sure Brad would have the first year of med school luck that I had and get his name drawn out(my first year luck included winning a golf bag, golf balls, scrubs and a 20 dollar gift certificate to the old chicago pizza factory for getting closest to the hole during an alumni golf tournament...anyone who has seen me golf would know it had to be luck!). Sadly we didn't get drawn out which would have allowed us to get tickets for 25 dollars. Brad convinced me it was a once in a lifetime experience and that we should go anyway and since we were going we should do it right by getting the best seats still available. So I spent 95 dollars for a 5th row seat. I had a little bit of remorse after seeing the reciept and realizing how much I had spent, but it didn't last long. It was so amazing! The music was fantastic, the actors amazing, the set unbelievable and the story extremely entertaining! I felt like I got my moneys worth! Thanks Brad for convincing me to go! Sunday we went to church with Jacob and afterward he drove us around and we saw the Bahai temple, several universities and drove by wrigley field! It really was a great trip and one of the best weekends i've had since moving to Iowa! Thanks Jacob for letting us stay and your condo and being our guide, and thanks Brad for coming down it was fun spending time with both of you!