A Med School Memoir

So I was in the hospital seeing patients with my preceptor the other day. One patient in particular was interesting. It was a seemingly uncomplicated case–the woman had been having some gastrointestinal issues and I had been asked to perform a focused history and physical. As part of my work-up, I asked her about her gynecological history. “Do you have any children?” I asked.

“Yes, I have three children,” she said. Before I could even ask my follow-up question, she answered it for me, “three live births, and 36 abortions.” As much as I tried to keep a straight face, I’m sure my eyes lit up like a slot machine that has just hit a jackpot.  ”Okay…” I said, not knowing how to appropriately respond to such a statement.  It’s not my place to judge, and after all, this woman, who had obviously had a rough life from what I gathered in other parts of her history, had been judged enough as it was.  But at the same time, it’s very difficult to not react to something as out of the ordinary as her claims of 36 abortions were.  But she was, for the moment, my patient, and it was my job to ask her questions and figure out what was wrong with her.  Judging her past decisions would not serve to achieve that goal, and if anything, would only undermine it.

When I later presented her case to my attending, he had a similar reaction as me.  ”36?  That’s a new record for me,” he said.

In other news, man, the anxiety is killing me right now.  I woke up super early with an anxiety dream that ranks up there in its intensity and vividness with a dream I had last year that led me to (mis)diagnose myself with pheochromocytoma.  The dream was really bizarre and doesn’t really make much sense, but it involved my loved ones leaving me to (more or less) live with skanky rednecks and work in the sex trade.  There was also another, unrelated dream where I had voluminous diarrhea for an extended period of time, not unlike the toilet scene in Dumb and Dumber. I’m going to attribute that to reviewing E. coli, Salmonella, and Shigella right before bed last night.

So yeah, obviously the stress is getting to me and messing with my head a little bit, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.  While the stress of finals this year is pretty intense, it still can’t compete with the stress I had last year when my family was pretty much falling apart around me as I was transitioning into med school, so I really can’t complain.  I mean, if the most stressful my life gets is spending most of the day with my face buried in Harpavat’s Microcards and First Aid, then I should consider myself lucky!  On that note, I had my first NBME final recently and let me just say that of all the review materials I looked at, I was amazed at how spot on First Aid was.  While First Aid isn’t as in-depth as other review sources, everything I saw on my Pharmacology NBME was in First Aid.  It might have been the first NBME I’ve ever taken where I felt like I had seen everything on the exam.  That’s not to say that I was fluent in 100% of the information, but I wasn’t surprised by anything.  I’m definitely going to incorporate First Aid into my studying for the rest of my NBMEs.

Tags:   abortion · anxiety · diarrhea · dreams · Finals · first aid · NBME · preceptorshipNo Comments