Whew.

For some crazy reason I thought this week was going to be lighter than the last two, but I was very very wrong. This is the first time I have felt like I can actually sit down, take a break and breathe. It's funny, I do very well handling stress mentally, but it seems to manifest itself physically in my body in 3 ways, and they all hit hard this week! 1) My face breaks out big time, 2) I get cold sores, and 3), I chew on my lips while I sleep and wake up to a mouth full of dried blood.

Monday we had a quiz in pharm, which went ok for me. I didn't do as well as I would have liked, but I did better than It thought I was going to do and I passed so I am happy. It was a tough quiz because our lecturer is a nice guy, but he is all over the place sometimes (and I only say that because he told us himself that he doesn't like to lecture and he rambles), so it was hard knowing what to study. We then had our cardiovascular physical exam lecture where we learned about all the heart murmurs...all of them, and a lot of them sound alike/normal! They don't expect us to be able to tell them apart right away which is great, because I feel like you have to listen to hundreds of heart beats before you finally get things right.

Tuesday was fun because I got to give a tour in the morning! Interview season has officially begun, and I gave a tour with two other classmates. We had 7 applicants sit and chat with us (we got free breakfast!) and then we took them around school. I loved it because I love the school, but I also want to make people relaxed for their interviews. I think we were great tour guides too. There is a lot of interest among the class in giving tours which is great because it shows how many people like our program enough to want to encourage others to come. We then had our history and physical exam lecture on the peripheral vascular system, a lecture in Research Methods, and a presentation by the VP of the school about the history of osteopathic medicine.

Weds: DUN DUN DUN. Weds always means SP day, when we see our patients. This was the big week they took away our papers. Why is that important? Well, we have over 200 questions we need to ask our patients in the history part of the encounter, all while doing parts of the physical exam. With our papers we had everything listed out to make sure we covered everything, but not any more! I did great at memorizing the ROS, or "Review of Systems" when we ask about symptoms for every part of the body which is the bulk of the questions. My experience was a big mess though, and I'm so glad I didn't get graded. I forgot about taking the pulse and respirations, I didn't check for the patency of the nose before I examined it, I forgot to ask the nervous system ROS, let alone the fact I didn't ask about childhood health OR vaccinations!! There were a handful of times I had to ask my patient to give me a moment so I could sit and think about what I was missing. I just laughed at the end but I didn't beat myself up for it, because I did the best I could. I just didn't have any time to practice. I already gave up all my exercise time this week to get stuff done, I was studying over our lunch breaks, and I certainly wasn't watching any tv or going out. Oh well. My least favorite thing in life right now is simply not having enough time to be prepared for labs and our SPs, but I'm doing the best I can and that's all you can ask.

Thursday: We started off with a genetics exam in the morning. I made the mistake of putting off studying for genetics until this week, because it's only a 1 credit course for the entire year and I've been so busy with my other classes. I had no idea how much material we had covered, and how much I didn't know. I haven't touched genetics since 10th grade bio (ten years ago!), so I had to reteach myself so much. I spent 5 hours Weds night and 5 hours Thursday morning studying and it paid off well enough that I passed so again, I am happy. We then had a Health Policy lecture followed by small group time, so I didn't get home until 6ish which wasn't great considering I had to bake for our bake sale AND do my writeup from the week before. I was up until 11:30!!! That's so late for someone like me who wakes up at 5 a.m.

Today (Friday): Since I was up so late last night I didn't wake up until 6:30, and as a result didn't get to school until 7:40ish. My classmates were legitimately concerned that something had happened to me because I'm always the first one at school around 6am. I even got a text asking if I was ok! haha. I'm glad I set my alarm. I usually don't use an alarm because my body is good at waking up when it needs to (and I mean freakishly good, no more than +/- 4 mins when I want to be up), but I was definitely still conked out at 6:30 this morning. Since I still had to divide out the brownies and whatnot I didn't have time to shower or clean up or anything and felt like a big grub all day, especially because it was in the 90s and humid. I was a little unhappy about that since we our cardiovascular lab today, which is very important, I hadn't prepared and was pretty grubby, but thankfully my lab partner is awesome and didn't say anything haha.

After lab I went and studied/sat around with people running our bakesale. We camped out outside of the cafeteria, and when the day ended I heard we made over $400. That's crazy awesome! To be honest I was surprised about the amount of participation we got from the class and all the amazing things that were made. It's funny because the money is going towards paying our admission to the national conference, so when people ask what the money is going towards, the response is "our class trip to Vegas." We then had a lecture on domestic violence, and we were done. Now I'm catching up on a week's worth of blog reading before starting my writeup from this past Wednesday. My plan is to get caught up as much as I can this week and next.

Tomorrow is our school's outreach/community service day, which I volunteered for although I held my breath doing so as it's taking up a lot of precious study time. I figure it will be a good way to recharge though. Sunday one of my classmates is hosting a fashion show benefiting children's cancer research, which I think is incredibly awesome and want to support her in, so I will be doing that. Again, I cringe at how much study time I am giving up this weekend but I think there comes a point when you have to prioritize!