I feel like I don't have much to say about this first month of second year. We're currently in our GI module, so I've been learning all about what can go wrong with your digestive processes. Curiously, the main focus for the past five weeks has been almost exclusively pathology and infections and disease states - we've had very little instruction on the actual function of the GI system and the processes involved in breaking down food and the specific workings of the various organs. It's been a bit...weird, I guess. The previous organ modules have given us a healthy mix of topics - pharmacology, physiology, pathology, etc. - so we've all been slightly discombobulated by the change of pace in GI. We still have two weeks left of lecture to go before our miniboard, and I know this coming week we're going to be hit hard with digestion - all about fats and amino acids and vitamins and how you break down foodstuffs. But I think by the end of it we're still going to find ourselves asking...wait, what does the liver do?
A few noteworthy things from the past month:
- I hung out with all the incoming M1s for a week as we orientated them to the goings-on of medical school. This year's crowd is an interesting bunch; I have to admit, seeing a room that is 2/3 full of male faces had me feeling a bit let down. I know there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes in terms of selecting the optimal students for a new class, but there's no denying that the majority of these new M1s are guys, and that's frustrating to me as a female in a field with a history of male predominance.
- I've gotten to observe both an endoscopy and a colonoscopy as a part of clinical skills this past month. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) goes from the mouth down to the first part of the small intestine, whereas colonoscopy starts in your rear end and moves upward into your colon. Neither seems particularly pleasant. One of our faculty members was very involved in the clinical trials for many of the colonoscopy bowel preps currently available, and he had us taste test a couple while we were at the med center. Makes me really not look forward to turning 50.
- We also got to practice placing nasogastric tubes (inserted from your nose down into your stomach) during one of our skills labs. Again, seems like a rather unpleasant experience. I've had my nose scoped several times over the course of having my sinus/allergy issues checked out, and I can attest to that alone being miserable; I can't even imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have a tube drop all the way down your throat.
- Morale has been a bit on the low side this month. You'd think that after a summer away from classes and studying and the regular routine, we'd all be feeling a bit refreshed...but no. We're feeling the overwhelm. Second year is no joke.
- We have our second exam Monday. Ick.