Hippocratic Oats

Comfortably Numb

December 19, 2009 at 9:19 pm 1 comment

I’m done (at least for 2 weeks)! I’ve made it through 12.5% of my med school education! I can’t believe it. I remember starting back in August, and thinking that December seemed so far away. Five exams later, and I’m done with Anatomy and Vicki is back in the USA. I just can’t believe the semester is over with. It hasn’t really hit me yet. I still have that pre-test feeling. I’m numb and that inevitable overwhelming sense of relief hasn’t hit me yet.

The exam was tough to say the least. MCP went well, but then physiology, as Tara said, “felt like it hit me over the head with something really heavy.” I won’t know how I did for a while, but hopefully it went OK. This test was incredibly well written. Most tests allow for some metagaming. After reading the question stem, if I don’t know the correct answer immediately, I can usually eliminate an answer choice or two using the basic strategies we all learned from watching Sesame Street. On the last MCP exam, I got 3 questions right just by looking at the wording and placement of the answer choices. Unfortunately, that was not the case for this exam….

Regardless of how I did on this test, I’m still very happy with where I’m at. My practice of medicine teacher, a local family medicine doctor, told us something during our very first POM class that has stuck with me throughout the weeks. Essentially, he said that it’s not a race to the finish line In fact, there is no finish line. During these first few years of med school, our goal is to learn as much as possible and move as far away from our starting point as we can. As a doctor, you’re always learning and you’ll never know absolutely everything there is to know about medicine. When I look back to my starting line, and I see how far I’ve made it in only 4 short months, I’m shocked. I by no means think I’m anywhere near where I need to be before I earn my MD, but my general knowledge of the human body and the diseases that affect it is has increased so much. After 4 months, I’ve learned about almost every structure in the body, I can do a full physical exam, and I now know more about asbestosis than I ever wanted to know

Anyway, after the exam, we kept up our post-test lunch tradition. Anna, Andrea, Tara, Erica, Rikat, Tom and I headed over to Marshall street to eat at AppeThaizing, a local Thai restaurant.

Not the best photo of the restaurant, but AppeThaizing has a great atmosphere. It’s super colorful, and they went all out decorating for Christmas!

  

Anna and Tara checking out the menu.

Caught Andrea and Erica by surprise. Erica was loving that candy cane!

Tara ordered some Thai Iced Tea.

So sweet, so good!

Erica and I ordered spring rolls. Sooo good.

For my entree, I ordered “Brown Noodle with chicken.” Essentially, it was Pad See Ew (my favorite Thai dish besides Kao Sarn’s crispy pad thai).

After lunch, I headed back to my apartment to do some cleaning and packing. Throughout the week before the exam, I tend to let my apartment go (dishes pile up in the sink, dust collects all over the furniture etc.), so it really really needed a good scrub down. I got most of the major cleaning done, and I’ll have to finish the rest up when I get back for Near Year’s Eve. Andrea and I did one last dinner at Wegman’s before we needed to head over to the airport so she could catch her 6pm flight. Afterwards I headed back to Madison to finish packing he car. Let’s just say I brought a lot of laundry home and it took more than one trip Just before I hopped in the car to make the drive home, I looked behind me and saw the hospital in the distance. I got a little sappy and snapped this photo. It’s hard to make out, but that’s the view of the hospital from the top of my apartment parking garage. Goodbye Upstate! See you next year!

Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: Food, School, Syracuse Restaurants.