Is it almost over already?

Back home again from americaland - I'm starting to get tired of jumping back and forth across the border so often, and sleeping in my own bed again is definitely a plus. New Year's was exactly as awesome as I wanted it to be (the less said about that, the better. Safe to say my dignity remained more or less intact this year!), and the time has come to start thinking about packing for my trip to the bitter wastelands of BC (okay, so the Okanogan is neither bitter nor a wasteland. It just feels that way) for 8 weeks of self-enforced solitude and studying starting next Monday. Perhaps I'll emerge a better person or discover the secrets of the universe or something, but I'll settle for rocking Step 1.

One more week of fun and irresponsibility ahead of me. Still need to see Avatar (I've been waiting to see it in 3D at the IMAX) but Nine was weirdly brilliant and Sherlock Holmes was fun - I recommend either of them if you're looking for a diversion. 12th Night is this weekend, so I need to get my garb together and finish my mask and figure out my ride. And last, flashcarding First Aid is way behind schedule (though I expected this, so it's okay), so part of my remaining time will be devoted to finishing up that particular task (as little as I want to sacrifice my vacation to it, better that than losing study time).

Not much else to say, really. Partying and running around doesn't translate into text very well, at least not when it needs to be PG-13 and non-incriminating.

Vacation, studying, and NBME

So I made it home in one piece (obviously), and Grenada is already little more than a fading memory that haunts me at inopportune times. The whirlwind of parties (xmas party at the Taj Mahole was brilliant, Yule even more so), visits (I *think* I've finally seen everyone by now. If I haven't run into you yet, give me a shout!), and family stuff is finally over with, and all that remains is NYE eve tomorrow (Town Pants = awesome - I'm really looking forward to seeing them live again), NYE in B'ham with Maggie's Fury again (though I promise to be a bit less enthusiastic compared to last year!), and 12th Night in Ocean Shores before I have to get down to some serious work.

Xmas was good, and I mostly got money and gift cards which were promptly spent at Boxing Day sales on winter-friendly clothes (I'm not sure where all mine ended up, or even if I ever really had any to begin with) and fun stuff. I haven't really studied at all yet, but I've been slowly transcribing my First Aid onto flash cards and transferring notes from my old edition to my new edition in my spare time. It hasn't progressed as far as I'd have liked but it's too early to really worry about any of it yet. After all, I have almost 2 weeks before panic needs to set in for real yet!

Oh, and I finally got my NBME score back! I rocked behavioral (no surprise there) and renal (HUGE surprise there!), failed miserably at musculoskeletal (meh), and did somewhere in between for all the other subjects. According to the predictor thingie, if the NBME had been the USMLE, I'd have passed quite handily but still done nowhere nea as well as I'd like. All in all, not too bad for a stupid test for which I didn't prepare at all and protested heavily.

Now, the Wizard of Oz is on TV, and I have a list of Martini recipes to work my way through. Later, and happy New Year!

Lots of chocolate, though.

26 years, still no pony. Oh well - happy non-denominational winter celebration everyone!

Like I never left

True love is parents who'll cook a roast beef dinner with all the pertinent trimmings for your 2am arrival home on a Sunday night, then stay up with you watching So You Think You Can Dance while you eat it despite having to leave for work in 4 hours.

Also, it's snowing!

Last Day!

As per Srav's post, an accounting of my last hours in Grenada:

0755 - refuse to wake up. Not gonna!
0820 - give in the inevitable, open eyes.
0830-0930 - put last night's laundry in the dryer. Watch 5 Centimeters Per Second on Mega Video.
0931 - try to understand poignancy of classic anime. Fail. Go collect dry laundry.
0935 - attempt to answer the age old question: popcorn or stroganoff for breakfast?
0936 - question answered!
0945 - answer regretted. Inventing time travel is too difficult; decide to live with the decision.
0946-1030 - pack, clean, and pack some more. Is it really worth it to keep all my pens?
1031 - yes, it is. Dress, pack beach bag, head to the highway.
1045 - desire a frappucino. Catch Reggae bus to St George's.
1050 - ponder life's meaning in a world where contrary to all expectation, the reggae bus is playing Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water 2 weeks before xmas.
1015 - imitation frappucino success! Mmmmmmmmm. Suddenly I desire a hemp ankle bracelet in Grenada colours.
1116-1200 - visit every vendor in St George's. Buy 4 spice necklaces and a banana but fail to find anyone who knows what hemp is. Politely ignore 3 marriage proposals, 7 offers to "show me around," and one "Hey, white meat!". (Well, maybe I wasn't so polite about that last one).
1201 - Success! Hemp crisis averted.
1210 - Hey, it's P! Hi P! And Hi P's family! Sure, I'd love to hear humorous stories about your son's adolescence! I exchange, I will share humorous stories about P's Banana's adventures!
1212 - or maybe not. Hey, is that a Reggae bus?
1230 - Beach time! Find perfect spot, lie down and commence baking.
1235 - sigh as a small army of 14-year-old boys appears and starts playing soccer, using you as one of the goalposts. Moving is too much work. Mmmmm...sun.
1400 - roll over. Wonder if I'm tanned dark enough that people will believe I was actually here yet. Shake fist at boys for missing the goal, again.
1545-1615 - Good enough. Wander around, say goodbyes, debate the relative merits of tan lines.
1620 - mmmmmmm....smoothie.
1640 - home again. More packing!
1830 - dinner! Debate throwing the dishes in the trash so as to not have to wash them.
1845 - wash dishes. Curse parents for raising me right.
1900-2200- putter. Chat on skype, wonder why so many of my friends are getting married this summer, and why they all have to live so far apart. Start reading my airplane book.
2200ish - become less scruffy. Wander down to Banana's, beg to be allowed in sans cover because I barely have 5ec to my name (not including leaving tax). Bat lashes at the bartender until I get a pity drink.

Much later - sweet talk a taxi driver into giving me a free ride home, wondering how I could ever have imagined that going out was a good idea.

Bye bye Grenada!

Take that, Basic Sciences!

Victory is mine.

On second thought, it was a bad idea.

So in light of the upcoming end of our basic sciences, DSO and I decided to preemptively celebrate by going diving this morning. After all, it's our last reasonable day for it and Aquanauts was doing Bianca C and since I still hadn't managed to do it, it seemed like fate was stepping in to encourage this retrospectively foolhardy action on our parts.

What a disaster! Between the two of us I think we had every issue in the book: illness, unusually choppy water, non drowsy Dramamine mysteriously replaced with drowsy Dramamine, no sun and yet sunburns still occurring, dive computer issues, vest issues, ear pressure issues, visibility suckage...on and on and on. Afterwards, burgers at Stewart's which may or may not have poisoned us (the jury's still out on that one), at least one migraine (mostly - opiates to the rescue!), and back to campus just in time to realize that neither of us have any idea what's going on in pharm.

The next time I see it, Fate and I are going to have a little talk.

Now, exhausted, moderately-high on antihistamines, Dramamine, and Tylenol 3 (decongestant for the dive, anti-emetic for the boat, and anti-migraine for the migraine), and with an unhappy stomach, studying must be done. And it WILL be done.

Details

Now that the excitement's worn down a little, more thoughts on my placement:

Despite all promises that most people get their first or second choice for placements, I got my third. And strangely, I'm actually really pleased about this. First because I rather like many of the people who also got assigned to the same hospital (and conversely because I don't particularly enjoy the company of many who got sent to my top choice). And second, because while it's my third choice, it's my third choice of some 20 or 30 hospitals - not too shabby when you put it that way. (A couple of people I know didn't get anything even remotely resembling their top choices - one selected all NY hospitals and got a Cali placement, another chose all clinical centres and got stuck in the middle of nowhere for a single rotation, etc). And third because hey, it's a decent hospital in a decent location - why wouldn't I be happy about it?

(As an aside, besides mentioning that I'm going to NY, I've decided not to say specifically which hospital I'm going to here in the possibly misguided attempt to avoid violating HIPPA in the future. If you REALLY want to know where I am, send me a message and I'll let you know)

That said, the excitement's still a little premature - the placement's still preliminary and I won't know for sure where I'm going till I get in all my requirements and have my USMLE scores. They tell us about 80% of people go to their prelim in the end, so I still have a 1 in 5 chance of getting shipped out to Baltimore in June - not really a happy thought (not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with Baltimore; it's just the first place that came to mind). But that's in the future, and assumes I'll even get off this island in a week (still holding my breath over that one and being REALLY careful when I leave the house), let alone sit my boards on time and pass them.

This still hasn't stopped me from checking out apartments in the area on Craigslist, but there's no harm in thinking ahead, right?

Second to last exam of basic sciences is tomorrow! Words cannot express it.

Placements are up..

And I'll be spending the next two years in...

And then there were 10.

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I'm down to 10 days left on the island. I know - weird, right? I'm still not sure if it's sunk in yet - I keep expecting to fall down the stairs and shatter my pelvis and get stuck here for another term (or something - I am being very careful where I step).

Today was my last small group, ever (BSFCR doesn't count, because I say so). Pharm, in case you're wondering, and relatively painless considering how woefully unprepared I was for it. Anyway, goodbye group Ma to Mc! It was...well, not exactly fun, but certainly something. I won't miss you but I'll probably remember you for a few years at least, unless something more interesting distracts me.

Monday was the NBME, which fulfilled it's job of freaking the class out over the upcoming USMLE (I mean more so than we already were) adequately. Marks will be back in about a week, meaning we'll be lucky if we see them before we leave the island forever. BSCE grades are up (passed!) but the breakdown is not. I'm okay with this.

In other news, we were supposed to receive out hospital placements yesterday. Obviously, we did not. I'm not sure why it takes 3 weeks to do the assignments, but the current ETA is Friday so we'll probably get them around the second Wednesday in January. I am cranky but unsurprised by this.

Oh, and for some reason pathophys scheduled Derm (incidentally, the ONLY new subject taught in this class this term, since path made a point of pretending it didn't exist) for this week, the last before finals. Why? I have no idea. The notes are good, though. I assume the lecturer is as well, but hiking up the hill seems like an awfully lot of work to find out.

Drugs!

Things I learned today in between slacking:

The lethal dose of caffeine is 10g (about 100 cups), and death is due to cardiac arrhythmia. (My espresso tablero game a couple of years ago involved me drinking 22 shots (for the win!), which was about 1.5g total. According to our notes, this much caffeine can cause anxiety, tremors, and palpitations. Um, yeah.)

Caffeine is not officially listed as an addictive drug. It is also the most consumed addictive drug in north America. Um...

Ethanol is the cure for antifreeze and methanol poisoning. Lots and lots of ethanol. In fact, it's better to start drinking now as prophylaxis, just in case. You can never be too careful, after all.

Nicotine improves attention, learning, problem solving, and reaction time and is an appetite suppressant. I'm starting to wonder why it's considered a bad thing, actually.

There are 61 different cannabinoids in marijuana smoke, of which THC is the one most responsible for its effects. THC is legally available in the US by proscription under the generic name Dronabinol, which is marketed for relief of nausea, vomiting, and anorexia in AIDS and cancer patients.

That is all.

Almost

Note much to say at this point, really. I've been studying (read: slacking) a bit (my attention span is currently comparable to that of an 8-year-old), getting out to the beach or to friends' houses or to various restaurants a ton, and generally trying to make time go faster while also slowing it down enough to get to do everything one last time. Classes are still going strong but my life here seems to be winding down - I started packing and my refusal to buy more than absolute necessities means I have no food in the house that isn't dried pasta and instant mashed potatoes, so I'm eating a lot of campus food. OSCE's are done, NBME is on monday, and after that it's all over except for the finals and the bonfire.

Also, I found this:

Inside The Jaymis: Skeleton Animation - Wide Time from Jaymis on Vimeo.

It's an axial skeleton CT scan, set to music. Enjoy!

Step 1

Scheduled for March 10. Terror doesn't even begin to describe it.

After all, it's not as though I dislike *everything* here

With just 3 weeks left to go before the end of all this, it's occurred to me that there really are a great number of things that I'll miss about this place when I'm gone. In no specific order, here's the highlights:

Mrs Patel's odd little carrot and pineapple flatbread pizzas. They've been an impending-exam staple for me since first term and a comfort on days when my only human interaction has been "hello, dear" and a brief discussion about the weather.

The Van Guys' fresh passion fruit juice - it's fresh-squeezed (or however they get it out of the rind) and delicious. Boxed doesn't come anywhere close.

Fresh fruit off my landlord's trees, off the back of a truck, from a stand on the side of the road...apples and cherries don't always measure up to papayas and mangoes.

The beach, the sun, and the heat, for obvious reasons. Also, warm-water diving without a thermocline.

Little lizards everywhere, because they make me happy.

Seeing and chatting with people I know any time I go anywhere - the beach, IGA, anywhere on campus, downtown, on tours, on boats...(this will also be something I'm glad to leave)

Various people! I mean, of course. S, K, M, M, DSO, J, A, B, M, T, S, others - we'll stay in contact and probably see a lot of each other over the next couple of years, but it's not quite the same.

Having no responsibilities outside of studying and showing up occasionally to a small group - it's been a lot like high school actually. It'll be kind of weird to get back to bills and parking and dentist appointments and schedules that actually matter.

Cheap rum, especially cheap pina coladas. (Though I won't miss carib. Actually, I'll be ecstatic to finally leave carib!)

Always knowing what someone's going to say next because there's only so many topics of conversation - this gets old fast, but it's also like a verbal shortcut. You can get as much information across in a few words as an entire paragraph, because everyone knows exactly how you're feeling and what you mean before you even open your mouth.

See? I'm not ALL doom and despair, there's plenty to like about GND, and the fact that I'm only discovering this 3 weeks before leaving forever in no way negates this. (and on the flip side, it in no way negates my joy at getting to leave forever!)

In case you didn't know

note: it is generally a good idea to eat lunch before heading into the second round of 200 questions for the BSCE 2. Otherwise, the distraction of the growling of one's stomach as it fights the spinal cord for supreme rulership of the abdomen (Live! On pay per view!) will lead you to race through the last 50 questions by filling in whatever answer looks vaguely familiar and skipping large portions of the question stems. This in turn will lead to failing the exam, not being allowed to sit the USMLE, and being forced to sell your body on the lower east side for crack money while hiding out from your creditors for the rest of your life.

In other words - woo! BSCE 2 = done. For those curious, is was much like part 1 (actually, the first half was *exactly* like part one), but with fewer garbled, mistyped, and generally confusing question stems. I think it was actually a bit easier too - less detailed than the first - but this might just be wishful thinking on my part. In any case, I finished both halves with lots of time to spare, so I'm going to be responsible and spend the rest of the day catching up on my pharm, which against all intent (though entirely as expected) I have let slide again.

27 days (but who's counting?)