Let's Try This Again

I looked at my blog today and realized that I hadn't posted since last September. That, in the words of Josiah, is pretty lame. So, let's try this again and see if I can post more regularly.

I am currently in the midst of my last summer break, well, for the rest of my life. Next summer I will be studying for USMLE Step 1 (which is basically a huge test that I get to be all nervous about because I have to pass to keep going, etc, etc). We will also (hopefully) be moving back to Orlando to attend the FSU Med regional campus for my 3rd and 4th year clinical rotations. So this year I am just relaxing by the pool, traveling the world......oh wait, that's not me. I have children to feed and no student loan money with which to buy food. That left me with having to find something to do with myself this summer that actually brought in some semblance of an income. When all the dust settled, I decided to apply to be a teaching assistant for the new first years' doctoring class. Which I got.

What is a Doctoring TA? I am still trying to completely figure that out. The doctoring course is the introduction to patient care, teaching communication skills, history taking and physical exam skills. My TA partner and myself are working on sessions with the students that integrate the physical exams with the gross anatomy information they are learning. It is interesting. It is fun. It is not enough work to fill our days. So we spend some time researching health topics, attending conferences, and finding meaningful things to do (aka, surfing the internet, playing on Facebook and reading blogs). Now, don't get me wrong. We work hard when we have things on our to-do lists. But there just isn't enough to have a to-do list going ALL the time. So we have to piddle around in-between.

Anyway, enough school. There will be plenty of that to talk about come fall when I have 22 credit hours worth of classes (trying to hold in the screams of terror). Well, before I move on, let me show you my fall schedule. It is the ingredients for a good nightmare if you ask me.

Looks like fun, huh? I think it may be, if the stress of it doesn't kill me first.

I HAVE been able to do some fun things this summer with the kids. We took them to see Toy Story 3 this last week. We have visited my parents, are going to see my mother-in-law and sister-in-law for the 4th of July, and may go down to Orlando. Yesterday, I took the kids to an activity pool (the city pools here are great!) They played, got worn out and it was fun. Next time I will take my camera so I have better pictures than the little ones my iPhone takes. Don't get me wrong, my iPhone is awesome, but trying to make the little picture files viewable on anything other than a camera or Facebook is a challenge.

Well, look! A whole post! Maybe I will do this again before another 9 months goes by!

Year 1

The fact that I have not posted anything in 6.5 months is both a product of my lack of time and lack of writing prowress. I started school at the end of May and life has been a whirlwind since then. Instead of trying to play catch up of what has happened in the last several months, I will just give you a glimpse of what things look like right now.

My weeks are made of two kinds of days, generally speaking. Here is a general Monday schedule:
6:45am Wake up.
8:00am Get to school
8am to 12pm Study
12pm to 1pm Eat lunch, chat with people, review notes
1pm to 4pm Attend lectures, attempt to stay awake if the lecturer is dull
4pm to 5:30pm Go to the library to study
5:30 Head home
6pm to 9pm Eat dinner, play with kids, etc
9pm to 11pm Study (in theory) and perhaps convince Gabe he should sleep

The other kinds of days I have are like Tuesday:
6:00am Wake up
7:30am Get to school
7:45am to 9am Doctoring lecture
9am to 10:30 am Doctoring small group
10:30am to 12pm Study
12 to 1pm Eat lunch
1pm to 4pm Lectures
4pm to 5:30pm Study in library
Then my evening schedule is the same

I am usually exhausted by the end of the day, and by the end of the week, I am toast. The days are busy and there always seems to be some inane thing that gets added to our schedule mid week that cuts into my study time. Sometimes my own fatigue cuts into my study time. But in spite of the schedule and the fatigue, I love what I am doing. It is hard work and sometimes I just want a nap, but I love it. We are learning things that are clinically relevant and working with patients (standardized though they are). I am learning that A's aren't everything in med school, even though you can still get them. It has been challenging to try to do this will 3 kids, but I find that they give me much more support than they take away in time and energy. And that time and energy they require is always worth it. Now if I could just get Gabe to fall asleep before 10pm every night and we'd be in business......

Finally!!!

....7 years after I originally planned
....after 8.5 years of marriage
....after 3 kids
....after adventures in homeschooling
....after 3 majors and 3 stints of undergrad work
....after stressing, worrying, and more stressing
....after hundreds of hours of studying
....after dozens of hours of praying
....after even more worrying and second-guessing



I AM GOING TO MEDICAL SCHOOL!!!

There were times that I was worried about even picking this blog name prior to be accepted to med school. Would I look stupid calling myself Med School Mommy when I was just 'Mommy' ?
Well now that is a moot point. As of May 26, 2009, I will be a first year medical student at Florida State Univeristy. There was a time when I considered it my 'fall back' school, but not anymore. I really want to go there. The atmosphere, the faculty, the entire package, is such a good fit for me. It is definitely tough when I think about leaving my friends here, our 7 years of history here, our community, schools, DOCTORS (geez, I am really sad about that), etc. I know that God will pave the way for us in Tallahassee and I am excited about starting this amazing journey, but there is definitely some loss involved here as well.

I have spent the majority of my time since getting accepted dealing with paperwork. I had several forms that had to be returned to FSU right away. Then I had to start the process of having transcripts sent, FAFSAs filled out and immunization records dug out of archives. I also had to have some vaccines. (And let me tell you, if you had a reaction to the DTP as a child, then the new Tetanus/diptheria vaccine may affect you the same way. I have had a huge red, hot welt on my arm since Monday.)

Amid all this hubbub, I am still in a bit of a haze. Is this really real? Is this really happening? It is a total shift in my mind from "possibly, in the future", to "definitely happening, in 2.5 months". When I think about starting classes though, I get excited. We start with a 10 week summer session where we taken Clinical Anatomy (our body dissection class), Embryology (yeah!) , Imaging and Doctoring 101. In August, we have our white coat ceremony, which is a big deal and something I hope my parents will be able to make it for. Before all that though, we have to figure out everything with the move. Housing, schools, jobs, babysitters, etc. We have some leads and we are going up to Tallahassee on April 4. There is an open house at the medical school where David will get to hear things about the school and take a tour. We will also spend some time checking out housing/school options and trying a church on Sunday.

Well, I am being paged. Not by a pager, but by Gabe, who is standing next to me saying "ma, ma, ma", hoping I will pick him up and nurse him. :)

This Wait is Killing Me

There must be something to learn from this excruciating wait during interview season. Perhaps that we will always be waiting as doctors? For lab results, patients, nurses, other doctors, free time....I have to hope that there is some redeeming quality to this eternal wait for interview requests or else I will start leaking brain matter out of my ears. (And we all know I need all the brain matter I can muster to deal with 7-8 years of medical training on the horizon.) Maybe if I was only half sold on the idea of becoming a physician, I wouldn't care so much if I heard back. But as is probably the case with most medical school applicants, we don't do much of anything half way. My enthusiasm and commitment to this course of action in my education is second only to the passion I have for God and my family.

On another note, I have been toying with an idea lately. I am very interested in looking into pursuing a Masters in Public Health to go along with my medical degree. This interest was first sparked when I read "Better" by Atul Gawande. It was an excellent read. In Gawande's book he talks about how MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infections in hospitals can often be traced to poor hand washing routines. Hand washing!!! That should be simple to fix, right? No. The hospital where he worked enacted policies to try to get people to wash hands more frequently, but still have to have people roaming the halls to enforce these policies. They did see some decrease in infection rates, but much work was under taken to insure this change. These types of things would fall under the heading of public health. I find them interesting and important. So, I am starting to toy with the idea of turning my interest into a possible educational endeavour. I know, someone should remind me that I have 3 kids and my time is already going to be stretched thin. Ha!

Lastly, I am very excited that a friend of mine is having a baby on Wednesday. I am done having babies. And while that is bittersweet, I know it is the right choice. But I love babies, and I love to hold them. And I love to know that I will not be the one waking up with them in the middle of the night. My sister in law is having my first niece in April and I am thrilled to pieces about that. I am looking forward to spoiling the heck out of her, as I can't do that so much with my own (you know, parental responsibility and all that). I wish she didn't live so far away, but I will have to make up for that with presents. :) Maybe I will get accepted to med school in their state and get to see more of my little niece. We shall see, but first.....I have to hear back about interviews!! We have come full circle. I guess I just continue to wait.

An Update

So it has been 5 months since I posted on here. Much has happened in that time. I finished my AMCAS application for medical school. I received 12 secondary application requests (from all 12 schools I applied to)! That was when the fun began. It was like having to redo my entire application with much more detail and stress. I have completed half of them--not sure if I will be doing all 12. My baby turned one. My brother got married. My husband started two new jobs. The kids started school, etc, etc, etc. Life has been busy.

Right now I am in this weird limbo time waiting for interview requests. Most of the schools send out their standard letter stating that interviews occur from October to March, I could be contacted any time, don't worry if you don't hear from us for months........and tumbleweeds shaped like stethoscopes start blowing around my living room. Maybe they make this process so tedious and emotionally draining so as to weed out those who aren't really on board. Who knows?

Now this has nothing to do with medical school, but it does have to do with being a mom. What is it with babies when they turn one? Do they have some kind of genetic programming that gets switched on the first time they taste cake (i.e. the presumed first cake is tasted at the first birthday......I think Gabe had cake much earlier....)? Gabe has followed in the footsteps of his other brother. He likes to rip the house apart. Josiah loved to take everything off every shelf he could reach at this age. Every VHS tape (DVDs were still kinda new then) was taken off the shelf and scattered across the living room. Gabe has the same drive. DVDs are littered across the family room, some inserts removed. Any magazine or paper item in his reach is ripped and the shards scattered. I feel like I should just hook a roomba onto his diaper to follow him around. And he BITES! My older two kids never were biters. Gabe is. He bites you for fun. He bites for attention. He will bite your arm, leg, fingers, anything he can get his little chompers on. And it hurts!! He is such a little stinker.

So the verdict is in.......

So life with kids is sometimes unpredictable, and these last few months have been crazy. I sat for the MCAT on April 5 and it seems like I have been playing catch up ever since. The test went well, but I wasn't sure if I had done as well as I hoped. It seemed like as soon as I finished a section, the memory of it was no longer with me. To be honest, I can only remember one set of questions from the whole test. I honestly don't remember any of the other topics covered. I waffled for weeks feeling like I had done well and other times was paranoid that I would get a 28 or something, just below my desired 30. I felt like getting a 30 would push me into that category of "her MCAT score started with a 3, that's pretty good." I felt like I needed that to help make up for my lack of research experience. I just didn't want my MCAT score to be mediocre.

So my score came back this week. It was supposed to be posted after 5pm on Tuesday, but when I doubled checked the site on Monday evening, the scores were up. I got a 30!! 9PS/10VR/11BS. A 9 in physical science and 11 in biological science were both better than I was getting on my practice tests. The 10 in verbal reasoning was less than I had been practice testing but I was happy for it all to pan out with a 30 composite score.

Next up, I am going to have to start working on my AMCAS application. Let's all cross our fingers and pray really hard!

Or So I Thought

Ha ha ha! What was I thinking? That I could actually blog and study too?! Oh poor overachieving self, you were so, so wrong. Who needs to study torque and mass defects when you can have a baby with an ear infection? Or perhaps my focus should be more on helicases and meiosis--would that ward off the walking pneumonia in my 6 year old? It has been a never ending circus of sick people in this house. And who do kids want when they are sick? Yes, that's right, Mommy! Needless to say, the studying is coming, but it is at a much slower rate than I was hoping for. One upside of all this was that when my son was diagnosed with pneumonia, the doctor asked if I wanted to hear the chest noises. He knows I am studying for the MCAT right now, and he took time to give me a brief explanation of different chest sounds and then let me listen to Josiah's. I was pretty excited (not about the pneumonia, of course). :)