What a week. Words can't describe how unbelievably hard it was. It was a hard schedule on paper, but then I make decisions like going to Boston and visiting friends and family for the weekend before, and playing intramural basketball at school, which makes things 10x worse. With all the snow and crappy weather we've been having, part of last week's schedule was added onto this week, so basically we had 3 days to learn how to identify and manage 30 different infectious diseases (malaria, MRSA, West Nile Virus, etc). We had our GI exam last Friday, where I only got 4-5 hours of sleep that week in order to study for that; then I took the overnight bus to Boston figuring I would be able to sleep since I was so tired. Wrong! I didn't fall asleep until 4am, and the bus pulled into South Station at 5:20. I got back to Philly wicked late on Sunday, so I started off the week pretty sleep deprived.

Then there's basketball. I wasn't going to play because our schedule is so ridiculous, and I didn't think I had 3 or 4 hours a week to give up, but I am 100% glad I'm playing. I haven't had this much fun playing in such a long time, even though I'm one of the few girls in the league. It's a perfect mental break (and it doesn't hurt that I'm on a good team :))

We had our first ID exam yesterday, and I haven't felt that unprepared walking into an exam in a long time. I didn't expect to get any higher than a 60, but somehow I managed to pull off a passing grade. We have our second ID next week, along with two other exams and our thesis proposal being due. And then we have a week of cumulative finals...which theoretically you should study for far in advance, but how can you when you have 2-3 exams a week + other stuff due? This is why PA school makes no sense. I love it but you really do have to trust the profs when they say that they know it will seem like we aren't learning anything but we will be ok in the end.

Today was fun though. We had class 8:30-2:30 today which sounds like a drag, but today was clinical skills day. We learned how to do different kinds of shots, test blood sugar levels, get arterial blood gases (to see if the blood is acidic or alkaline), start IVs, put in naso-gastric tubes (a tube that can suck the contents out of your stomach through your nose), test for blood in stool (we used chocolate pudding, haha), and draw blood for lab work. I was great at everything except venipuncture...(I was 0-2). It's hard practicing that kind of skill though, because you are technically hurting the person and you have no idea what you're doing!

Here is a picture of my first PPD (which is the test for tuberculosis, you have to inject the solution under the very top layer of the skin)