jenniferhawke.com

dearest Nevis,

this month feels like it has taken forever to come to a close.

and yet, wasn’t it only yesterday that i was tearfully saying good-bye to Jonathan at the airport and accepting comforting words from the oversized Nevisian cleaning ladies?

after a bit of a shaky start to the new year, i think i’m finally hitting my stride with shoelaces tied tight and eyes on the horizon.

but, i miss my family. i miss my good friends. i miss coffee shops and sidewalks and wide-aisles in grocery stores. it deeply sucks that i am missing out on the doggy surprise birthday party and don’t get to be the Significant Other at the work function and am no longer in a time zone where we can actually talk on the phone every day. some of the things i miss are small. but they add up. and sometimes it’s hard to believe i’m only 1/4 of the way through this island journey.

am i happy? overall, yes. but not every minute of every day.

but that’s life, right?

on another note, dearest island, i’m afraid your Nevis Nice* reputation may be in danger. January was a challenging month as i gained personal and direct experience with some of your more disturbing “societal norms”, like dog poisoning. a number of students are also grouping together to complain about repeated home break-ins, personal threats, and an overall sense of unease with their landlords, neighbours, or people downtown.

thankfully, i haven’t experienced any threat to my personal safety first-hand. my impression of this island is one of close-knit comfort because everyone knows (or is related to) just about everyone else. i was surprised to hear so many stories of student unease (and downright violation) in such a short time, but i’m glad people are speaking up and not assuming it’s just a “norm” they have to take with the island.

speaking of “norms”, as much as i like to make fun of doggy clothes and puppy boutiques back home, i am sad that pets are not viewed as family members here. i attended the Nevis Humane Society meeting early in the month and was shocked to hear that at least 300 dogs were poisoned on the island in the last year. i can’t imagine another 300 dogs (and their litters!) running around this tiny island, but even population control should be much more preventative and humane.

through the humane society and a primary school mentoring program, i am immersing myself in your communities more this month. i am inside my little school-bicycle-home bubble a lot of the time and can easily forget there are people living in third-world conditions right next door to the Four Seasons resort. it is important to contribute to your own backyard. wherever that backyard may be.

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*motto printed on most vehicle license plates.

… sugar-free (non-ant-attracting) beverages now allowed in the classroom!

this is great news for someone that loves her coffee black. : D

[looking for MED 1?]

physiology
- membrane potentials (i used to hate Nernst, but now we’re pretty good buddies)
- action potentials (give it your all-or-nothing, baby!)
- neuromuscular transmission (where brain meets muscle)
- synaptic transmission (signals from pre-to-post and the pitfalls in-between)
- muscle: cardiac, skeletal, spindle, smooth, reflexes (calcium is important! who knew?!)
- autonomic nervous system (sympathetic and not-so-sympathetic)
- hemodynamics (the movement of blood through your body)
- cardiac action potentials, conduction velocity and muscle contraction (♥)
- ECG (squiggly lines named P Q R S T)

>> most interesting thing learned: after taking pre-med pre-requisite science for four years, i think i’m sick of regular old basic science theory. it’s the practical Doctor Stuff that really grabs my attention. as such, i loved learning to read ECGs! i finally know what all those squiggly lines mean! the more i learn about the heart, the more i think it’s a pretty darn cool little machine.

biochemistry
- amino acids (yes, you need to know every little thing about each one. there’s only 20!)
- proteins: globular (hemoglobin) and fibrous (collagen)
- enzymes (oxidases and transaminases and lyases and ligases and helperases)
- oxidative phosphorylation (not as scary as the name sounds)
- metabolism (an introduction to the Rest of Your Life)

>> most interesting thing learned: carbon monoxide is toxic because it actually increases your blood’s affinity for oxygen. it binds to one of the four spots reserved for oxygen. once one parking spot is filled up, the other three spots want to be full too. since your blood has a Super Duper High affinity for carbon monoxide, it doesn’t want to let go! which means it doesn’t want to let go of the other three oxygens. which means no oxygen to tissues. which is bad!

psychology
- psychodynamic theory (Freud was a bit of an odd duck)
- DSM diagnosis (axes of evil just about anything that can go wrong with your brain)
- suicide (predisposing factors, greatest risk, etc)
- depression and depressive episodes (*SIGH*)
- mania and manic episodes (*WHEE*)
- bipolar I and II (see *SIGH* and *WHEE*)
- dysthymia (bit of a depressing way to go through life)
- cyclothymia (when you’re up, you’re up and when you’re down, you’re down)
- adjustment disorder (having problems settling in on a tiny island in the Caribbean)
- factitious disorders (faking symptoms to get yourself admitted to a hospital)
- malingering (calling in sick to work – when you just want to skip out and go shopping)
- pharmacology of affective disorders (drugs are neat!)
- combined treatment of affective disorders (ECT, vagus nerve stimulation, psychotherapy)

>> most interesting thing learned: sleep deprivation can significantly (albeit only temporarily) relieve depression and premenstrual dysphoria. i find this insanely cool.

medical ethics
- societal norms (they differ depending on what society you’re in! surprise!)
- religion (do you give a Jehovah’s Witness an emergency blood transfusion?)
- lying (right before serious surgery a patient asks you to tell them it’s going to be “okay.” their prognosis is not good. what do you say?)

>> most interesting thing learned: most of my class believes it’s never okay to lie to a patient, even if it’s a white lie or the truth would adversely affect their health/prognosis.

my grades are now password protected. not for any particular reason except a random quote that struck me the right way today…

“If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z.
Where x = work, y = play, and, z = keeping your mouth shut.”

~ Albert Einstein

i figure anyone that knows my middle name is included in the small-ish group of folks i want to keep updated.

and yes, i realize it’s probably quite easy to figure out my middle name (although the Jennifer Hawke-Petit strangling from last summer might mess up your Google searches). the intention is not to create Fort Knox, but to keep out curiouser and curiouser passers-by that find me sharing my grades with friends and family to be humiliatingly vain.

haven’t had much time to write here lately. obviously. mostly it has to do with 4am alarm clocks and 7pm slightly slouched and sorta sleepy dinners. if i was waiting for this term to pick up momentum, it has arrived. i’m rolling down a very steep hill this weekend!

i will be back Monday afternoon with the usual “block re-cap”.

“What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.”

~ P. D. James

today i met my new Little Sister. i have always wanted to participate in the Big Sister program back home, but never seemed to be able to find the time.

here on Nevis, and more than ever before, it seems important that i make the time.

Shenelle and i will be hanging out for a couple of hours every week in a mentor-type program founded by a Peace Corps group a few years ago. i hope we get to do lots of colouring because i’m pretty sure my algebra skills are too weak (hah!) to tutor her grade 5 level. we already have one super cool thing in common and are going to experiment with my camera next week.

i’m excited. i think i need to order more colouring books from Amazon…

the nerve-wracking process of choosing and matching to a residency program is still a ways off for me yet, but i found this informational video to be actually, well, informational. it is encouraging to see IMGs included so extensively in the Canadian process. yay!

[image links to a .wmv video from the Canadian Residency Matching Service website]

anyone that knows anything about MUA has probably heard more than a few nasty rumours about cheating. as gossip goes, whatever you heard is most likely exaggerated and inflated, but has a fair share of truth*.

i tend to just keep my nose in my books and am fairly immune to a lot of campus gossip. i am the last to hear Big News on just about any topic from who’s-dating-who to why we ran out of paper towel in the women’s bathroom. as such, cheating doesn’t really affect me. i haven’t been offered any resources. i can’t name a single person in our class that i know is cheating or that i know has copies of old exams.

and up until recently, i really couldn’t care less.

as far as i’m concerned, cheating really only cheats yourself. who cares if you got straight As from a Caribbean med school if you can’t back it up by passing the USMLE Step 1 with a decent score? or on your first try? who cares if half the class totally slam-dunked the Block 3 Biochemistry exam with a cheat sheet? we aren’t curved against each other, so it doesn’t affect me at all. the only thing that goes on my transcript is my performance. and the only thing that sits down to write USMLE Step 1 is me and my brain. no offense, but i really don’t care about you.

what gave me pause in my self-contained bubble of cheating-doesn’t-affect-me was a lecture on plagiarism the other day. the topic itself isn’t totally relevant to MUA because we don’t write a lot of papers, but the message about cheating certainly hit home. how many times have you heard in your undergrad career that cheating devalues your education? basically, if your school is known for passing and promoting cheaters into upper-level courses, by the time you get out, no one will look at your degree the same way. i never really thought twice about this before because big established academic institutions seem to be fairly immune.

but small schools that have only been around for 10 years and are already fighting the Caribbean med school bad rep?

most people that have been reading this site for any length of time know that i *love* MUA. i think we have great professors, excellent resources, a good curriculum, and are more than adequately prepared to rock the North American boards in our 20 months here. i believe i am investing my money in a legitimate and valuable resource that will help me become a doctor someday. i wouldn’t be here if i didn’t. but the thought of my education being devalued by fellow students looking for an easy ride obviously gives me pause.

i am happy to report that MUA administration seems to be taking this cheating stuff extremely seriously this semester. MUA wants to boost its’ overall First Time USMLE Pass Rate to 85% and that can’t happen if cheaters are promoted to upper levels. no two ways around it: cheating your way through med school expecting to cram in everything 2 months before the boards does not work for 85% of the student population. working hard and accurately evaluating your progress with regular shelf exams before finishing Basic Sciences and re-entering the North American evaluation system does.

there are always stories of people that smoke their entire lives and don’t get lung cancer. there are also stories of people who did crappy (or cheated) through Basic Sciences and totally rocked the boards. personally, i put my faith in hard work because i have a hard time believing the odds could ever be that much in my favour.

otherwise i would spend a lot more time at the casino.

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*apparently a few professors use the same exam between some semesters, so there is a substantial pool of Questions Students Remember circulating. and using the same Kaplan post-test for each exiting MED 5 semester is a situation begging to be taken advantage of.

[photo by my sister, Janice]

with a video from my mom.

missing her so much. but obviously happy to see her happy. : )

this is my broken freezer defrosting. i’m sure the inside of my head looks sort of similar.

i have been trying to think of something to write about that has to do with school, but keep coming short of a full blog post. so, instead of pretending i have a coherent topic to talk about, here is a jumble of odd ‘n ends from this month so far…

- it was fun sitting back and watching the new MED 1 class unload the container. they grumbled as much as we did, but we were unloading in the high heat of summer! this winter business is for wimps. ; )

- i sort of miss of wearing scrubs. they were really comfortable! mine have been hanging in the laundry room airing out the formaldehyde smell since November.

- sitting through 4 solid hours of physio and biochem in the late afternoon is as challenging as it sounds. you should see the 3pm caffeine line-up in the cafeteria.

- when the a/c kicks off the last 3 of those 4 hours are even more impossible.

- biochemistry is okay so far, but i’m getting a few scary undergrad flashbacks. still, i can’t complain because at least i have seen the material before. that puts me ahead of almost everyone in my class.

- action potentials are my friend. i love that i studied these to death in undergrad neuroscience courses. in fact, majoring in psychology is proving to be a big bonus this term: medical ethics, psychology, and the current material in physiology, are all review.

- still haven’t hit my groove or any sort of a routine. each day sort of feels like the first day all of classes all over again. where the heck is that momentum i’ve been waiting for?

… and how is your month going? hitting all those resolutions you resolved to be resolute about? or wishing it was December and you could start all over again? i’m glad it’s not December anymore, but it sure doesn’t feel much like January.