Monday was the infamous injection lab.  I will say that before I started med school, the thought of having someone practice drawing blood on me was pretty much the scariest thing imaginable.   I should preface this by saying that I don’t do well having my blood drawn.  And that is when it is done by a professional, let alone a first year med student.  I don’t mind needles.  I don’t mind blood.  But for whatever reason, I sometimes almost pass out or throw up.  I think I’m going to blame it on my dad for passing down his motion sickness to me.

Anyways, the very thought of having my blood drawn makes my stomach church.  I would even go as far as to say that injection lab was the one thing that I most dreaded about medical school….like….I didn’t know if I could do it.  So I had been really dreading this.  In the end, it wasn’t so bad.  We practiced injecting fluid into grapefruit and then we practiced venipuncture on some models before attempting it on each other.  My partner did an excellent job.  We both had pretty good veins, and we both managed to draw blood on our first try.  The needle accidentally came out when he was taking the tube off, so I have a small bruise, but other than that, things went well.  I am very, VERY glad to be done with that.  On the med school scale of 1 – 10 (1 = listening to a case presentation and 10 = giving a rectal exam) I would put injection lab at about a 6.

Actually, compared to the rest of the week, injection lab was kind of a breeze.  I had an exam on Monday, a Histology Image Exam and my first physical exam yesterday.  And, today I had an ultrasound practical.  My first physical exam went pretty well.  I just had to give a wrist/elbow exam and listen to heart and lung sounds.  I had a hard time finding reflexes, but I am definitely getting better at it.  My ultrasound practical didn’t go so well today.  I managed to get all the points, but only because my grader took pity on me.  You’d think I had never seen an ultrasound machine before.  I just kind of blanked and kept switching the probe when I didn’t need to or using the wrong one.  The poor standardized patient is probably hoping that I will never be her doctor because I seemed pretty clueless.

C’est la vie.  As we say in med school, “Seven-O…D.O.”  (In case you can’t follow that, 70% = a passing grade, and thus, a D.O. degree.)  Now I get to spend the next week studying NONSTOP for ultrasound practical, our last block exam, and our whopping 8-hour final next Friday.  Thank you for your comments and prayers…they are much appreciated!