27th day

I had a histo lab in the morning. The school website that is used to access our lectures and other course info. was down during the weekend, so many people were having problems. Fortunately, I finished the histo lab prior to those problems. When it was my turn to present, as usual, things were very smooth. I was answering questions from the students more than the prof. was. It's like I gave the prof. a break when I present. It's funny how many times you have to repeat yourself though. Some students forgot about the basic things that we learned in Lab 1 and the discussion ended up clearing concepts in Lab 1. We are on Lab 3! This kind of wasted our time, but oh well.

After the histo lab, I changed into my scrubs and went into the anatomy lab for some practice. There was already a prof. in there with a large group of students going over the forearm. I joined the group and just watched. He later asked to identify a muscle on the forearm and it seemed nobody knew. Since nobody answered, I gave him the answer. There was a guy from FTM in the group. I said hi to him, no response except a mean look as if he was frustrated. Oh well, to be expected. I can't help it if I know the answer.

Eventually, some of my friends from the Histo group also came and one of my friends from Mac. I was still answering questions from the prof. while they came, so I guess they figured out I knew my stuff. After the prof. was done, they all asked me if I could review everything the prof. went over. I said sure, why not and I went over all the muscles of the forearm with them. It was fun, I felt like the doctor teaching students. Some students I didn't even know joined the group thinking I was one of the upper year students. Haha feels good to be respected.

After the lab, I heard there was a "special" session going on with the prof. in another room. Me and my friends checked it out, but it ended up being students asking the prof. any questions they were confused about. It wasn't helpful to me, so I came out of the session and did something more important - preread for the upcoming lectures. I went to the library and finished pre-reading.

There were 2 lectures of Histo followed by 2 lectures of Ethics. After the Histo lectures, more than half the class leaves. I stayed because I'm used to not skipping class even for ethics. It was, however, pretty boring. After the 4 hours of lectures and 4 hours of starvation, I thought I deserved some really good food. I went to the indians selling indian food at the bus stop. They are there everyday, but it's not the healthiest nor the best indian food. However, I was in the mood, so I got chicken biryani+palak paneer+chicken+roti for 25 EC. Not bad. I ate it cold, but it wasn't bad. The chicken biryani was good and I haven't had roti since I got to Grenada, so that was good too. Overall, I would say 5/10, but I'm used to it by now. If I warmed it up, it would probably be 6/10.

I stayed at school because there were apparently some meetings going on that have something to do with internships with WHO. How could I resist?

26th day

I finished Histology in the morning. It took quite a while actually, but I wanted to be thorough. I was doing my laundry while studying. I went to school to withdraw some money, but the ATM wasn't working! (TIG) So I took a bus to Grand Anse and used their ATM machines. There's only 2 ATM machines within the area. I then went to the grocery store to do some shopping. I then went to a new place that wasn't there before, New York's Bagels! I went inside and it was the same guy from the New York Bagels from campus. He recognized me straight away and we had a long talk about his business and how he would be moving. The guy is desi and he's going to add some desi stuff to his menu. I had no idea he was the owner hehe I got connections now. After that, I went back home.

Since all subjects (biochem, histo, anatomy, and ethics) are pretty much done, it's time for review! I have a lot of practice questions for each subject, so I'll end up doing them. Anatomy is the most fun as I have a book that has more than 200 practice clinical related questions that would help me for the USMLE. Obviously, I can't do all 200, at least not yet. Therefore, I will be doing some practice questions the profs. themselves posted and also some old practice tests that students have been able to get their hands on via mac daddy. I explained mac daddy in my earlier posts.

Facebook statuses - something to be used wisely

I woke up this morning and checked for any email or facebook msges. Instead of a blog like this, a lot of people rather just use facebook to publish their status updates. I would do that, but I would end up insulting waay too many people. Here is example of the type of medical students that go here say:

"thinks that MCAT scores and GPA matters very little when it comes to entry into med school. As long as you're SUPER DUPER socially retarded...you're in. Oh, wait, they accept about 10% normal kids...and see how they react to the other 90% socially awkward people."

The person who said this took FTM twice..ahem they dropped out of pre-med midway the first time. Also, obviously, the only people who agreed with this statement were former FTM students. It's funny because I've been wanting to say something similar for a while, but I can't. For me, the statement is the same except change socially to mentally. If these guys were looking for a major in which their "ultimate" social skills mattered, maybe they should have considered acting, but oh wait, acting requires brains to memorize lines.

25th day - A productive Saturday

It's a saturday, so I should be getting my full sleep today. Apparently, I woke up at 7:44 am without an alarm. Looks like my biological clock has already adjusted. I made oatmeal today and kichidi for lunch. Some of the bottom part of the kichidi got burnt, oh well, still ate the top part.

I finished DNA replication, packaging, transcription, and post-transcription. This was the hardest part for me so far, so I'm glad I could finish all 4 of them. The 2nd hardest part was embryology, but I finished that after I finished the DNA stuff. It's easy if you read through it slowly.

There has been a persistent mosquito in my room. Every time I try to kill it, I fail. It's as if the mosquito is getting smarter. I even gave it direct hit with the bug spray, yet it still lives. Way to go evolution.

Since I finished both embryology and DNA, I watched a movie and even got to exercise today. I'm trying to exercise 3 times a week, fri-sun. Since my roomate is gone, his master bedroom is available. I use it for my exercise room and it's very good. I exercised a lot today, almost as much as I do when I go for my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes. I took a shower and a protein shake afterwards.

I still had some time in the day, so I finished reviewing respiratory disorders as well. The only thing left now is Histology, which I should finish tomorrow.

24th day - Curiosity kills the cat, only if the cat is stupid

Today was a biochemistry small case study group. Here, we are given case studies, but have to apply biochemistry concepts to solve and diagnose it. Simple stuff. However, not so simple when I ask a question about the "why". We had 2 cases, both dealing with heart attacks. I solved all the questions with ease, but after the session was over, I asked a simple question, "In case 1, why did the patient feel the chest pain for the first heart attack and not the chest pain for the 2nd one?". The teacher said that the first one was due to ischemia which caused some pain. This result caused more cells to die, leading to another heart attack. That is, the 2nd heart attack was not due to ischemia and that is why she didn't feel pain. This was the wrong reason and I proved her wrong. We were given a graph analyzing her serum and after a heart attack, there is a sharp peak of CK-MB. After two days, these CK-MB levels return to baseline and then she has her 2nd heart attack where the CK-MB levels peak again. If the 2nd heart attack was not due to ischemia and due to cells continually dying from the 1st ischemia, then the CK-MB levels would be constantly increasing after the 1st peak, but they were not. They were decreasing! She agreed with me and we went to the biochemistry course director to ask this question. After a lot of talking, the biochem prof. said "you will encounter many things in medicine that you will not know the answer to."

I wasn't exactly happy with this answer, so I went to the anatomy course director later. I showed him the case and asked him the question. He gave me a looong speech about how there are many cases wehere people are healthy and get sick suddenly. This does not answer my question. Eventually, he admitted he does not know the answer. I had my own theory on this that had to do with neuroscience.

My theory was that sensory fibers of the heart that carry pain sensation are sympathetic fibers and they normally cross in the chest OR arm. In the 1st heart attack, the area of the heart that died had sensory fibers crossing to the chest wall, while in the 2nd heart attack, it was an area that the sensory fibers carried to the left arm. This was just a case study, so I couldn't ask the patient if she felt any pain in her left arm, but most likely she did. This was my final answer and it made sense to me. I think a neurology prof. would have reached the same conclusion, but I don't have anymore time to run around and ask more profs.

In class today, I actually sat with the FTM crowd, but it was with the good people. It was nice, I had a nice conversation with them.

23rd day - Blackout!

Today was an easy day. I finished pre-reading the heart and lipids in 2 hours, so it gave me some free time. During class, it was raining like crazy. The electricity went away twice in the class and the teacher had to restart.

I went back home. It was my roomate's last day, so we were gonna go to this restaurant to eat that was close-by. It was walking distance and as soon as we approached the restaurant, LIGHTS OUT! Power outage of the entire island for the next 2 hours. I went back home and watched a movie on my laptop with the remaining battery life that I had left.

Once the power came back on, I saw people's comments on facebook that it was a complete blackout for them, even on campus and that there was no generator. All I can say is TIG.

22nd day

It's a Wednesday, which means nothing in the morning today. I could wake up at 8 instead of 6. I was able to pre-read all 4 lectures of anatomy+histo. I came to school, ate lunch, went to class. I found out that I ended up pre-reading 5 lectures, not 4 by mistake, oh well, that happens a lot. Now I'm ahead :)

I still have to read that post-transcription stuff, but I'll dedicate the day for ethics today. In ethics, they gave us a course manual, around 100 pages. I'm on page 20, so I'll read 80 pages today and I'm done with the course. We only have 1 exam that's in 3 weeks. Everything else, I'm caught up with and will take me 1 hour max to review all the lectures from any course. In 2 weeks, we have a test called the Unified, it's a test that comprises of all our courses - Anatomy, Histo, and Biochem. Ethics is not included. For Anatomy, I have practice questions from the Gray's Anatomy Review book, for Histo, I have quizbank questions from last year, and for Biochem, there are practice questions online. I'm all set in terms of preparation.

After class, I went to one of my friends' dorms on campus today and man, it was SMALL!! Take my room and cut it in half and that's what room he had. He was even sharing it with a roomate, so you have to cut it in half once again. The reason I went to his dorm is because he had a program that I was looking for called "MacDaddy". It's a program passed around from student to student that contains all of the questions, lectures, etc. from upper-term students. Obviously, it will not contain tests, since those change from year to year and are never given out. However, that's where I found quizbank for Histo.