It hasn't sunk in yet

In 25 days, I will be somewhere above the Pacific on a flight headed to Southeast Asia to volunteer aboard a Navy hospital ship and serve as part of an international medical relief mission. Even though my plane tickets are bought, my immunizations are scheduled, and I have a packing list in my head, it still hasn't sunk in that this is happening so soon, or even at all.

I have yet to accept the fact that I will be spending six weeks working...

1. as a medical team member,
2. on a boat, and
3. in a foreign country.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this is a dream come true.

And because it has been my dream for so long, I just can't believe that it's happening so soon in my medical "career". It just seems way too good to be true.

Two years ago I re-began the journey towards being a doctor by signing up for a few pre-med prerequisites. At the time, applying to medical school seemed so far away and I couldn't wait to be done with all of it. I just wanted to be in medical school then and not wait the years it would take me to finish up everything.

Instead of the expected long, hard slog, these last two years have flown by and I'm much closer to my goal of being a doctor. Even with all the work I've already put in, I still have a lot to do before I leave.

But when I get on that plane on May 22nd, my MCAT will have been taken, my medical school application will be finished, and I will have decided on which schools to apply to. That is a very scary thought.

Postponing the MCAT (again)

Ever since I saw that all the seats for the May 19th MCAT were filled, I've been obsessively checking the rescheduling website to see if anything has opened up. Eventually I resigned myself to taking the MCAT on the 12th and stopped checking the site. On a whim, I opened up the AAMC website today and lo and behold, May 19th was open!

So after much thought (and I really mean a lot of phone calls and discussions), I gave another $70 to AAMC to move my test date by one week.

You'd think this would be an easy decision to get another seven days of studying, but 1) I suck at making decisions for myself, and 2) I leave the country at 6:19 am on May 22nd for two months. So a May 19th MCAT puts me in a bit of time crunch with regards to getting all my things in order before the trip.

With this move, I have now had 7 confirmed and pseudo-confirmed (in my head) test dates, but really only 1 actual change (my wallet thanks me!). Luckily for my sanity, this is the last possible date I can take the MCAT without putting in a super late application for medical school.

So no more changing for me! D-Day is officially 5/19/12.

But, if I change my mind again and really want to go back to the May 12th test date, I'm sure I won't have a problem getting my spot back, as not many people are going to be pushing up their MCAT exams. The chances of that happening are slim to none.

My first practice MCAT

Even though I'm about a week behind on studying for the MCAT according to my schedule and technically still need to review a whole bunch of chapters, I decided to begin taking the practice tests now because my real test is only 5 weeks away. That doesn't seem like very long considering all the things I have to learn and do between now and May 12th. It's very overwhelming, actually.

As it stands, I've finished all the content review and just have to re-read chapters and review my answers. So it's not a bad time to get a general idea of my weak points so I can focus on those instead of feeling the need to memorize everything.

And...drum roll please...I scored a 33, with the breakdown being 11, 11, 11. While it's not a score that I'm happy with (I'm shooting for 36+), the 11 in Verbal Reasoning is incredibly reassuring.

When I first started doing Verbal passages, I was consistently scoring 7 and I was absolutely terrified because that is not something you can just cram for like you can for the other two sections. Lately, though, my scores have risen to 9 and then 11 on the last two sets of practice passages I've taken, so this "official" MCAT score lends credence to my thinking that I'm getting better.

Also, my timing is amazing on these tests to the point that I have 10 minutes left on each section to go over any answers that I'm unsure about. And the Biological Sciences section is a lot easier than my practice passages, while physics is not nearly as emphasized in Physical Sciences as I thought it would be. And that's very good because I haven't taken physics in eight years.

All in all, I think that if I had had a bit more confidence and read a bit more carefully, I could have scored at least 12 on both Biological and Physical Sciences because I missed at least a few questions in each section due to careless mistakes.

But since I have 7 more tests to take and whole bunch of passages still to do, I think I can improve in both of those areas.

Shadowing in the OR

This week I shadowed an orthopedic surgeon in the operating room and watched him do two cases. At first, I was a bit grossed out by seeing the surgical fellow pull on stuff inside the dude's knee, mostly because I was imagining how much it would hurt to have my tendons stretched like that. But then I remembered the patient had a nerve block, was under general anesthesia, and was prescribed some serious pain killers for recovery, and the feeling of empathetic pain went away.

For the first procedure, I had some decent questions to ask the surgeon because I have a bit of background with that injury and knew generally what to ask. So it wasn't so awkward. But the second procedure consisted of me standing quietly in the corner not saying a word, until the surgeon mentioned he had lived in Italy and I inquired where because I, too, had lived in Italy recently. Other than that, I kept my mouth shut, which is not the way to go apparently.

My interactions didn't get any better after that, and instead I managed to communicate the fact that my undergrad GPA was crap and that I don't like evening classes, which resulted in the surgeon chuckling a bit under his breath. Oops. Way to make a good impression. Not! I should just learn to keep my mouth shut.

One of the biggest issues I had with shadowing was not knowing when it was ok to ask questions. The surgeon also had a fellow doing most of the work so he was teaching a fair amount of the time, and I didn't want to interrupt that. He was also doing a lot of shop talk with the biomedical sales reps so that didn't seem like a good time to interject with a question. But there was also a lot of silence, so I can't use all that as an excuse.

My other problems included not being prepared for the second procedure, and being too afraid to ask "stupid" questions. The thing is, as a pre-med, I'm not expected to know anything so unless I'm asking things like "What the heck is a shoulder?", my questions most likely aren't perceived as idiotic.

I'm generally a very curious person, so why do I have such difficulty being around doctors? Why am I so quiet and insecure about medicine? These are the questions to answer.

And since this was supposed to be a learning opportunity, here are some lessons learned:

1. Being prepared is always a good thing.
   I should have looked up the second procedure before I observed one because then maybe I could've asked some decently intelligent questions.
2. I don't have to come off as awesome all the time.
   I need to stop being afraid to ask seemingly stupid questions. Usually, they're not stupid and I have a right not to know the answer.
3. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
   I need to learn to paint myself in the best possible light and stay away from the self-deprecating talk. I shouldn't lay out my flaws for everyone to see.
4. Doctors usually like teaching.
   This especially applies to those at teaching hospitals and those who take on fellows, so I should not be too intimidated to ask questions. They are most likely more than happy to answer them. At least that has been my experience with all the doctors I've encountered. They've been pretty awesome.

I may ask to shadow this same surgeon again over the summer to see a joint replacement. The two procedures I had yesterday were mostly arthroscopic so replacements would be a nice change. And it would give me a shot at redemption.

Mostly, I want a re-do because if I get into the local medical school, I will most likely be asking to do research with this surgeon. So I need to make a better impression of preparedness than I did this time.

Oh, I almost forgot to add...I posted a thread about this to SDN and this was one of the replies:

Physicians will know that a college student won't know much medicine/surgery, so don't be afraid to ask basic questions. It would be strange to NOT ask questions at your stage.

I guess I was the strange kid in the corner then. Oops.

The good part was that I was fairly animated outside of the operating room, except by that point, I had verbal diarrhea. Here I go with the self-deprecation again. It's a vicious cycle, I tell ya!