Soooo…yeah…week one.  What can I say about my first week in med school?

It is everything I expected it to be.  I’ve heard numerous times that learning in medical school is like trying to drink from a fire hydrant.  This is 100% spot on.  Our first day, well really first two days, wasn’t that bad.  It’s always a little hard getting back into the swing of things, especially when you’ve been out of school for a while.  Wednesday was a different story.  I started out being a few minutes late for lecture.  Then we had a few pretty intense lectures in Histology and Anatomy.  In the afternoon we had orientation with our patient simulators.  (These are just human machines and that look and act like a real patient…one can even give birth!)  We were separated into groups, and they gave us a case history for a patient.  Our patient was a 22 year-old male who had become unconscious after being stung by a bee.  We then entered the room and were expected to examine the patient and come up with a diagnosis.  People started taking vitals…everything from blood pressure to respiratory rate.  I was standing there thinking, Did I miss the lecture where we learned how to do ANY of this!?  Apparently there are a LOT of students in my class who were former CNAs or EMTs, or who somehow magically knew how to use their stethoscopes…  Sadly, I am not one of them.  The doctors in our room started asking about possible diagnoses and treatment plans.  I bet the look on my face was hilarious because I had NO IDEA what to do.  I was thinking we were just going to have a nice easy orientation with how the simulators work.  BOY WAS I WRONG.

Welcome to Med School, Emily Howard.  Today we had our first embryology lecture.  It started out interesting, as we began discussing chromosomal abnormalities and the early stages of fertilization and implantation.  About half way through the lecture I was thinking, Is he even speaking English?!  I’ve heard that you learn 10,000 new words in medical school…and I think we “learned” about 1,000 of them today.  Not to mention that we had our first OTM lecture where we examined each others posture and gait, and apparently I am all messed up and the professor compared me to the hunchback in Young Frankenstein.  *Sigh*

Med school is very, very hard…but that is not to say I’m not loving it.  The information is interesting, and I do want to be here.  I don’t want anyone to pity me or feel sorry for me…I’m just saying, it’s not easy.  I have gotten a lot of support this week, from my classmates, from my family, and from my friends, and it has been MUCH appreciated.  Thanks to my mom for sending me emails every morning, thanks to my dad for calling me yesterday, thanks to my grandma and my friends for praying for me, thanks to my best friend for texting me a thumbs up, and thanks to my husband for unloading the dishwasher and making me mac and cheese.