Melissa's Bio

Melissa's Diary

Wow! I recently realized that nearly a month has passed since I last wrote! Doesn’t seem possible that it has been that long! Fortunately, I’ve gotten back into the swing of things since I last wrote and am plugging along decently. Getting ready to start the 7th week of school now!

I have survived my first round of exams in each class and am doing well on the tests overall (a bit better than last semester). We’re done with neurophysiology (YAY!) and have moved on to cardiophysiology, which I enjoy much more. As part of cardiophys we’ve been learning how to interpret 12-lead EKGs. I now see why physics is a med school prerequisite. None of the physics involved is difficult, but you have to know it to get the basic physiology concepts.

My first neuroanatomy exam went well. Of course, it should have since my study partner and I spent 2 weeks preparing for it! We had so many structures to ID for the lab portion (some brain/spinal cord specimens, others slides of spinal cord/brainstem sections, also some CTs and MRIs) that we decided to really spread the studying out. Also, there were only 3 sets of the slides for my entire class (89 med students and 1 graduate student) to study off of. Needless to say, there was stiff competition for them the last couple of days before the test! Tensions did run high (in fact, the way lots of people were acting it felt a bit like finals week) and there were some conflicts over who should have slide sets for how long. We were glad that we we’re absolutely desperate for them, although we did get our hands on some. We found that spreading out the studying and taking the spinal cord/brainstem tracts one-at-a-time made the information much more manageable. Hopefully, we’ll be able to spread it out again for the next test. It looks like much of the information coming up overlaps the old info, so I’m also hoping that my brain holds on to everything!

Our epidemiology class (called Medical Information Systems) is my freebie class. I had both epidemiology and biostatistics in graduate school, so this course is all review. Its nice to have one subject that I don’t have to put much effort into, but I wish I could have a freebie in a class that is worth more than one credit!

There have been other goings-on around here. I am the treasurer for the Family Practice club for next school year and I’m going to run for president of the Emergency Medicine club in a few weeks. I didn’t have any competition for the family practice spot, but I will for emergency medicine. Should be interesting.

At home things are going hanging on okay, despite some bumps in the road. Last week my daughter was sick for a few days. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem because both of my parents have somewhat flexible work schedules and can take care of her. Unfortunately, she got sick the evening before my parents went out of town for a couple of days. She missed 2 days of school (fortunately she was sick over President’s Day weekend) so my husband and I split the time. I ended up only missing ½ day of school (we have Friday afternoons off), so I was able to catch up okay. The other hitch we’re having is that my husband will have to have a tonsillectomy. We’ve been putting it off, but have now scheduled for him to have it over my spring break. That way I can actually be home to take care of him after the surgery. I feel bad that he has to wait (he’s having quite a bit of trouble breathing when he lays down), but right now he’s doing decently and is willing to wait.

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*Some names have been changed.