Going, Going, Back, Back, To Med School, Med School

Oh, how sweet my short-lived break was. But alas, I have been back in school for two weeks, and I feel as though I won't get back in the swing of school until we get another break for Christmas in a week and a half! It's not easy to jump right in and study like that after enjoying a nice break. And I even studied a little bit during the break for my board exam coming in June! It's nuts!

But classes are good, nevertheless. Everything seems to continue to grow more and more clinical. We are in the midst of scheduling our clinical rotations for next year, which is insanely confusing, as they only talked to us for about 10 minutes regarding the process, thus making our lives even more frustrating and stressful than they already are thanks to Pathology, Pharmacology, and Microbiology! We have 3 tests over the next week. Tomorrow we have a Pathology test on the GI system. I love that my professor prefaced this with being a super short test, covering only 14 hours of lecture. However, the amount of material this test covers is extensive, and our objectives packets are longer than in the past, irrespective of how much she covered in lecture time! Oh, well, I guess we'll have to see how this one turns out. Then we'll turn around and have a Micro test on Friday and a Pharm test on the following Monday. Hopefully I'll do better on that one than I did on my final!

After the Pharm test on the 17th, we still have classes through the 20th, but no tests until after the new year. So a bunch of us are going to go see the new movie "I Am Legend" with Will Smith Monday afternoon at the IMAX by our school! Then on our last day, Thursday the 20th, I have my last interactive OSCE (simulated clinical experiences). Those have been very helpful for me with my clinical skills! We are paired up in 3's and we see a simulated patient who has a group of symptoms. We share responsibilities in that one student performs a detailed history and asks the questions, then another student performs a focused physical exam according to the information gathered in the history, and then from that the third student gives a patient presentation with an assessment, differential diagnosis, and plan of action. since we have 3 of these, we rotate responsibilties each time. After break, we will have 2 individual OSCE's where we are by ourselves and do the whole exam before receiving feedback from a physician facilatator. Yikes! It should actually be really fun. I'm looking forward to it! The clinical aspect of medicine is what really excites me. My Osteopathic Medicine class has also been more clinically focused. We went through a low back pain module and walked through different clincial scenarios and how we can treat those problems. That's what I love about osteopathic medicine. When someone comes in with neuromusculoskeletal pain, we can actually treat the pain and the underlying problem and not just mask it with medications. But we can always augment our treatments with pain relievers or muscle relaxants! It's awesome!

But, going back to the break, it went way too fast! We had a really nice Thanksgiving, though. In the morning, I went and played in our ward's turkey bowl, which didn't have a good turnout at first, but people slowly showed up, including the Elder's, and we had a fun game! Later in the day I took Braylei swimming, as the pool is heated (and we live in Arizona and it hasn't been that cold, anyways). Then we had our families over to our house for dinner. It was really nice not having to take the kids out and about, especially with both families close by. It's so hard to take them out all day and into the evening when they go to bed. It throws everyone's schedule off and then it's harder to get back into. Then of course came Black Friday. This has been a longstanding tradition with Meghan's family. Thanksgiving evening we go through all the ads, decide what everyone wants to try to get, and then we split up to the various stores. I went to Best Buy to try to get a computer for Meghan's parents. I got there around 2:30 am, thinking that would be enough time to get a good spot. Oh, how I was wrong! When I arrived, an incredible line was already formed past the outside of the store plus 2 adjacent stores! Apparently, people had been waiting in line since about 7pm the previous night! How insane is that!? At least they handed out tickets for the various door buster items around 3:30am so by 4am I knew for sure that I was out of luck so I could go home. Meanwhile, Meghan and her dad were out at Toys R Us really early too, and had slightly better luck than I did, but not much!

And finally, we enjoyed the opportunity before I headed back to school to put up the Christmas tree and holiday decorations! Braylei was a big help and had a lot of fun. I invite all to see some of the video clips that are on the YouTube bar at the top right of the blog! Or you can see all the videos post on YouTube at http://youtube.com/thejschro. We have tons of decorations for the inside of our house, most of them Meghan has made herself! But we are lacking in the outside ornations. I think we will wait until after Christmas and buy stuff while it's 90% off and save it for next year!

The kids are doing well. Braylei continues to grow and astonish us all with her development. Last week, Meghan had some of her file folder matching games she had made for when she taught preschool, which are 3-5 year old level, and let Braylei play with them and Braylei did them all! I can tell she has so much of Meghan in her! Meghan is the master of memory games and stuff like that and Braylei is definitely following in pursuit. Tayscen continues to be just a happy-go-lucky kid. He loves his jumperoo so much! And he just got in his first tooth! We saw the ridges of it yesterday!

On a sadder note, my uncle, Ron Hottman, passed away recently from small cell carcinoma of the lungs. He was able to spend his last days at home. Our thoughts and prayers are with my aunt Janet (my dad's sister) during this very difficult time. Also, Meghan's uncle, Jay, recently suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Luckily, doctor were able to find it before it ruptured. He has since, however, had many complications from the various procedures and treatments and our prayers are with him as well, hoping that he will recover soon!