With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept

Well, it's all over. The NBME exam went fairly well; we will find out in a few days whether or not we passed. We got back our exam grades from Monday, and I passed with a 92!!! Whoop whoop! I was just short of an A for the block, but I am satisfied with a B. Yesterday we had a morning presentation over healthcare reform, which was incredibly informative and helpful. I feel much more positive about my future and the future of healthcare after getting an unbiased breakdown of how everything works without the bullshit media distortions and disinformation.

I'll be spending a few days in College Station to make the most of my time here before heading home for the holidays. Our break is only 2 weeks, as we have class starting January 3rd. This will probably be my last post for awhile, so until then... Merry Christmas!

The Way Out Is Through

Well, I've never felt as good about an exam as I did about that one. It was surprisingly straightforward, and it helps that I studied like a madman. Here's to hoping for my first "A". Maybe I can even pull an A for the block... we shall see. For now I must sleep. The NBME is on Friday, although I'm not particularly worried. I got my hands on a good set of review notes and I'll just look over those for the next few days. This is the last hurdle before Christmas break; if I could only get my sleep schedule back on track before then. Perhaps some melatonin may help...

Go to Sleep.

Well, the clinical skills exam was easy as expected... I've been studying the head pretty much nonstop since then. Last night I stayed up the entire night at HPEB, followed by a long visit to Denny's with my laptop. Here is a peek at my schedule for the rest of the weekend:

Saturday
8am-12pm: sleep (4h)
12pm-10pm: study (10h)
10pm-4am: sleep (6h)
Sunday
4am-8pm: study (16h)
8pm-3am: sleep (7h)
Monday
3am-1pm: study (10h)
1pm: EXAM TIME

The End Has No End

We are officially one exam away from being done with Phase I, as our last lecture was today. Monday we studied the embryological development of the pharynx, and then went over the temporal and infratemporal regions of the head. In the afternoon, we dissected the nerves and muscles of the mouth and tongue. This morning we had histo lab for the last time, and spent it looking at slides of various structures in the eye and ear. Our final lecture was given by Dr. Chen and was about congenital anomalies. We are done with humanities and clinical skills as well, although we have a final exam tomorrow morning in clinical skills over all the vocab we've learned this semester.

Tomorrow we can go to lab and look at prosections of the larynx and ear, as both will be on our last exam. The exam is on Monday, and is followed by the NBME exam the following Friday. It's crunch time.

Eat That Up, It's Good For You

Wow, what a crazy end to the week. Wednesday morning was our last clinical skills session, which had to do with examining very old or very young patients. We then had a talk on professionalism followed by anatomy lab. We actually had to decapitate our cadaver by cutting the ligaments attaching the skull to the vertebral column and then pulling the head forward until the head detached. This allowed us to view the prevertebral region between the pharynx and vertebral column. Thursday we went over the anatomy of the pharynx and studied Maxillary nerve (V2) and all the structures it innervates in the head... it goes all over the place. We had a clinical correlation in the afternoon where we got to watch various surgeries in the neck region. Friday was our first histo lecture in a long time, but this one was actually interesting. We learned about the special senses of hearing and vision, and were able to see on a microscopic scale how the eyes and ears work - how sound and light are converted into a signal to be interpreted by your brain. Very interesting stuff. In the afternoon we had a lecture over the larynx, immediately followed by another anatomy lab. This time we had to saw our cadaver's skull in half along the midline so we could look into the nasal cavity and sinuses. Another very cool lab.

This weekend will be spent trying to stuff 10 lectures into the limited confines of my mind. This will be interesting.