Musings of a Mind on Medicine

One of the fun things about WordPress is their stats page.  On it, I can see how many people visited my site, how they got to me, and what links they clicked on.  As you might guess from my underwhelming number of page visits (below) it’s generally not all that interesting.  I know I don’t exactly have the most massive readership… I just wish I knew why I get 80 page visits some days and only 14 on others.

Occasionally, people will find my site by typing something odd into their search engine.  One of my all-time favorites is “I suck at psych rotation.”  I still haven’t figured out what exactly this person was trying to learn by googling that phrase, but it made me smirk.  There have been other similarly amusing search phrases, but I can’t remember any offhand.  I should keep track of these and occasionally share them.

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I’m antsy to get back to school.  My temp job is not exactly thrilling, and I feel like I’m slipping further and further from the clinical rotations lifestyle and the clinical frame of mind.  If the Behavioral Advisory Committee approves my request to return for the rotation starting mid-March, I’ll be leaping right into orthopedics on March 22nd.

I decided that although reading the pharmacology book is good, it probably won’t be the best preparation for my ortho and surgery rotations which I’ll be doing early-on when I get back into school, so now I’m trying to devise a different plan.  My Boards and Wards book spends a disappointing four pages on orthopedics, so I need a better source for review.  Time to bust out the powerpoints, methinks… I just have to figure out how to make them portable because I don’t want to print thousands of slides.  Maybe I should just take my laptop to work with me and review them during my lunch break.

From what my classmates have said, orthopedics and surgery are two of the most grueling rotations.  It makes me a bit nervous that I’ll be doing those up-front, but on the other hand, the good news is that I’ll be getting them out of the way early on.  The other thing that makes me nervous is that I’m going to have NO breaks in my clinical schedule for about seven months straight.  I’m definitely concerned about burnout, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to develop some coping habits and work through it.

I got a bit of bad news on Friday when I learned that because I won’t be continuously enrolled throughout the semester, I won’t qualify for any federal financial aid until July.  Ouch.  Now I get to find a cosigner so I can take out a few thousand dollars in private loans.  Not fun.  I’m still waiting to hear back on my health insurance situation.

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I have a confession to make: I don’t actually read all of the new posts for all of the blogs I list in the right column and claim to follow.  The ones I do check are the student blogs, StorytellERdoc, and Medical Moments in 55 Words.  I prefer the more literary-style sites, and I hope to practice my creative writing skills a bit more once I’m seeing patients again!

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Finally, I have to give you the update on my fish tank!

I went into NYC today for a church thing in the morning, and afterward, I went to a betta breeder in the city to pick out a fishy for my little tank.  $10 later, and I now have a young red delta tail betta swimming around my aquarium!  He won’t exactly hold still for a picture (even when I ask nicely), so this is the best I’ve got:

He’s picked at the shrimp a bit, but none of them have died yet, so that’s good.  Let’s hope he gets bored with them soon.  As I type this, he’s chasing one around.  Punk.   He’s certainly active!

That’s all, folks!