Catch Up June 16, 2009

I only have 8 days left until I’m officially an intern!! I’ve been “borrowing” someone’s wireless signal until my cable/internet guy shows up…

Anyways, these past few weeks since I’ve posted have been jam-packed.  You know how it can be painful to play “catch up” with a friend you haven’t talked to in months… I’m going to spare you all the nitty gritty details.  But just like those catch up calls, I’ll just give you the highlights:

- I graduated medical school: yep, I even giggled the first time someone from the hospital called me “Dr.”  I’ve gotten better at it now.

- I went to my home town for a joint graduation party with my lil bro that graduated highschool.  It was so much fun! My favorite food – Mexican, my favorite drinks – margaritas & appletinis, and of course lots of family and friends.  I raked in lots of cash, which will get me through the next month without a paycheck, and allow me to furnish my empty second bedroom!

- While I was home I did TONS of wedding planning in just 2 days: visited 3 reception sites with my mom and fiance, tried on 28 dresses at 3 different bridal salons with my mom and sister, picked out my bridesmaids and their dresses, and bought my wedding gown.

- I was a bridesmaid in one of my close friends’ wedding.  It was beautiful… she set the bar high for my own wedding!  I definitely have to invest in waterproof mascara for my own wedding – my tears were flowing for hers. The wedding means so much when you really know both the bride and groom, and know all the work that went into the relationship and the wedding.

- I met with Employee Health and will be cleared once I get my PPD read.  I’m surprised that I’m able to type given the soreness in my arm from my Tdap shot!

- I met with my GME officer and will be cleared once I do my ACLS and BLS training over the next few days.  It was great because I received my Resident Training License!  I was also pleased to be reminded that my $600 parking will be paid for, along with 3 new white coats (my sis got me one that’s embroidered, so I’ll be wearing that while my other ones are getting embroidered too!).  I’m also ahead of the game – apparently half of the Ob/Gyn interns will be starting a week late because they didn’t get paperwork in on time… I’m pretty shocked considering most Ob/Gyn’s at academic programs are type-A.

Well that’s the last 11 days in a nutshell!  I have ACLS tomorrow and orientation in just a week from tomorrow… getting nervous, but also excited.

Congrats Lil Bro! June 3, 2009

Today my little brother graduated from high school!  My fiance and I flew up for a quick trip since he has to work tomorrow and I have yet another medschool banquet to attend.  I actually missed the big Senior Class Banquet at the school tonight for my brother’s graduation, but I know that seeing him graduate was more important than any banquet at school.  According to the Schott Foundation for Public Education, only 47% of black males actually graduate high school.  Not that I ever doubted my little brother would graduate, but I’m still very happy that he was able to beat that disappointing statistic.  Next year he will be headed to Washington, DC to attend Howard University with a major in Architecture.  He also plans to continue running track: high jump, triple jump, and long jump.  I’m very proud of him!

Graduation Week May 31, 2009

After 4 years… make that 21 years…. of school, this week will end with the culminating event: the Hippocratic Oath Ceremony!  Yes, I will be Dr. Med Obsession in just 5 days.  Leading up to the event our school has several festivities planned out.  There are several banquets: one for the entire class, another for our affiliated school, along with a separate one for AOA.  There is also a senior send off breakfast the morning of graduation too.  Lastly, there is the graduation and a reception following.

I can’t wait for all of the events!  It’s exciting there are so many events leading up to the big celebration.  After all, it is a pretty big deal.  I guess after attending one of my good friend’s medical school graduations a few weeks ago, I realize just how special it is.  I mean, many of us have dreamed of becoming doctors for several years (myself since age 3), and now the moment is finally here.  I can’t wait for my family and friends to arrive and share this moment with me.  I’ll be checking in with you all throughout the week!

My New Home May 27, 2009

I’ve spent the last few days moving into my new apartment, which feels more like a home now!  I arrived to my new apartment city and rented a car in order to get around in my new city until my car arrived.  My new apartment said they don’t do move-ins on Saturday, but since I was coming from out of town, they made an exception for me.  I completed my move-in inspection and was pleased to find only a few items that were in need of addressing, such as the blinds being dented or a crack in a cabinet.  Anyhow, the next day my dad and 2 sisters arrived to help me clean up the place before my stuff arrived.

Early Monday morning is when it really all began.  I returned my rental car to the airport and upon returning to my apartment my own car had arrived.  At the same time, my big rig moving truck arrived to the property.  Now neither truck felt comfortable coming through the apartment gates with their large trucks.  It wasn’t a big deal for my own car since once he unloaded it I could drive down from the street to the unit.  However, that would have been crazy to be wheeling my furniture down a hill from the main street, through the gates and to my unit.  My dad was able to convince the driver to come in through the exit gate by telling him maintence had said 2 other trucks had made it in successfully!  After convincing the driver to bring the truck in, we unloaded it all in less than 90 minutes.  It was great to have such helping hands.

We’ve spent the last few days setting up furniture, unpacking boxes, and decorating!  As you may have guessed from the italic font, the decorating was the best part.  My sister is into fashion and all that creative stuff, so she suggested a new color palette.  My dad is a painter in his spare time (he’s painted the interior of my entire home-town house).  We decided to paint 2 of the walls in the living room to have an accent wall.  Then we went to the fabric store in order to make new pillow covers for the pillows that I already had.  It was so much fun picking out the new color scheme and different fabrics.  We also bought these paintings that we staggered on my wall to really pull in all the colors together.  I had a poster from New Orleans (where I did undergrad) in a frame from my prior apartment, but there was always a strip of white space above and below.  My other sister suggested using the excess fabric from the pillows to mat the frame.  It looks great!  We also bought round colored placemats, dish towels, and cute mini candy dishes with colored marbles to spread out by the dining room and kitchen.  By decorating the living room, dining room, and kitchen on my own, I was able to spend less than $175.  For this amount of money, and a little extra time, my living room has a completely new look from my old place. 

It really feels like a home now, and it’s only been 4 days.  I’m so thankful for sisters and my dad.  They each brought in their own areas of expertise and it all pulled together nicely.

Happy Mother’s Day May 10, 2009

This year I decided to switch up my traditional greeting card.  One of my classmates mailed out a link for hallmark.com.  The first thing that caught my eye was the Photo Card.  They had about 20 different templates and you can select and drag whichever pictures you would like from your computer to go on the card.  Then you can personalize it with one of their canned messages, or just write your own.

I decided to make a couple for my mom and my grandma.  My grandma opened her’s 2 days ago because she couldn’t resist.  She was so excited and had never seen anything like that before.  Her voice was shaky as she was thanking me.  It was great because for her card I put pictures of her with each of her children and her grandchildren.  It’s a nice keepsake.  My mom hasn’t opened hers quite yet, she wanted to wait until I landed in Hawaii (I wrote this before taking off), but I’m pretty sure that she’ll love it!  I’m sad to be missing the annual Mother’s Day brunch on the river, but will be there in spirit.

What did you all do to celebrate Mother’s Day?

My Facebook Addiction April 24, 2009

Right around the time that I graduated from college I heard about this site called Facebook.  I had a MySpace page that I used to keep in touch with my lil bro and sis who were in junior high and highschool at the time.  It always creeped me out a bit though with the random messages and friend requests that I would get.  The idea that Facebook was this exclusive site only available to people with .edu email addresses was appealing.  I convinced my boyfriend and best friend to join… actually I created their profiles .  I would get online occasionally and see if I could find old friends from high school, upload the occasional picture and that was about it.

Fast forward 4 years later and I’m hooked!  I log on to facebook at least once a day on my computer, not to mention the several times that I check it from my phone.  I now have 874 photos of me, 2 videos, 1100 “friends”, and countless wall posts.  I mean really… my whole life for the past 4 years has been chronicaled on facebook.  Half the time I’m not even really talking to people.  I’m looking at people’s pictures, confirming or denying friend requests, reading people’s “wall-to-wall” to be a bit nosey, and next thing you know like 3 hours have gone by!

I really hadn’t thought much about my addiction until my boyfriend told me about this recent article in Time magazine: “What Facebook Users Share: Lower Grades.”  While I haven’t had much of a problem doing well in medical school, it could be an issue for me when I have to take my knowledge to the next level in residency.  Who knows, maybe it did affect me in medical school.  Maybe I would have gotten more letters of distinction, maybe I would have gotten junior AOA instead of senior AOA… I’ll never know.  What I do know is that I’ve stood by facebook for quite sometime.  I’ve seen it go from facebook for only .edu emails to facebook for everyone to the new facebook to the new facebook to the new facebook.  I was there before the mini-feed, before the ads, and before privacy settings were so extensive.  Shoot I remember when it was just college people, now my highschool-aged little brother is on there as well as my mom and her uncle.  Practically my entire family tree is on facebook!

In light of realizing that I may be addicted to facebook, and that it may be associated with poorer school performance (haven’t seen the actual study data), and the fact that I’m entering the next stage in my professional career, I’m beginning to wonder if I need to say goodbye to facebook.  I really can’t believe that I even typed those words!  Seriously, whether I completely deactivate the account, or just remove 800 photos, I have to change my facebook habits.  I’ve already set up a few different lists with varying amount of access to my page, along with making me unsearchable on search engines.  I suppose I will have to have a marathon session on facebook (which wouldn’t be a first) and reallocate my “friends” to their appropriate lists in order to be sure it’s as private as possible.  Wish me luck battling this addiction!

What are those of you that are entering residency or new jobs or applying for professional school doing with your Facebook accounts?

Match Day! March 20, 2009

First of all, I want to say sorry for not posting yesterday (Match Day)… it was truly a busy day and I wanted to give you all the quality posts that you are used to .  Hopefully you at least saw my Twitter status with the great news!

So I show up to my match celebration 15 min before the refreshments were to begin being served, which was an hour and 15 min before we got to open our envelopes.  I was so nervous that I literally ate only 3 grapes and 2 orange slices!  I was running around talking to everyone, wishing them luck, etc.  The one day that I chose to actually be early to an event and it was driving me crazy.  About five min before it was time to open the envelopes my Dean took the stage to share some stats.  Apparently 78% of the class would be staying on the same coast – with 40% staying at hospitals affiliated with my home institution, and 24% at my home institution specifically.  As far as specialties go, 32% went into primary care, followed by 21% in surgery/surgical subspecialties, and 9% in radiology.  “All others” made up the remaining 38% (with 8% being Ob/Gyn).  Clearly I was distracting myself from the anticipation by taking notes!

Then the clock strikes and my Dean has all of our family and friends go outside to the terrace.  I had no idea what was going on.  I thought they were going to make us open the envelopes in solitude or something crazy!  Then we are told to go outside.  All of our envelopes are taped to the window in alphabetical order.  I find my envelope and grab my boyfriend.  We walk all the way to the back corner of the terrace.  I really only wanted he and I to be a part of this moment.  I flip my envelope over to open it and there’s a photographer standing right there!  So much for privacy.  I tear into the envelope (and the letter) and unfold it frantically.  There it was… the name of my #1 PROGRAM!!!  I started jumping, and laughing, and smiling.  I hugged and kissed my boyfriend so many times.  He did such a great job of capturing it all with my camera.  I was in total disbelief at what I was reading.  I must’ve read #1 program’s name over and over and over.  I actually took a picture of it to be sure!

Next I proceed to call my parents who were both excited.  I also called my best friend who got her #1 program as well!!  I spent the next hour running around to all of my classmates to see where they were going.  It was such an intense experience.  There were tears of joy and tears of disappointment filling the room.  There were hugs and kisses, screams and laughs.  Such an intense amount of emotion it was a bit overwhelming.  The hardest part was seeing the faces of the classmates that I knew didn’t get their first choice.  I suppose that’s the downside of the 3 week waiting period.  By the end, people were alot more open to sharing where they were going to end up.  So when I asked where they ended up, we both would know that they didn’t get their number 1.  Even more shocking was a classmate that was a stellar student, had stellar interviews, great personality, and got their 4th choice.  This classmate was just in shock… it’s still an amazing program, but since we’ve talked about it extensively, I knew how heartbreaking it was.  In the end though… at least we matched!

I spent the rest of the day eating and drinking.  First with my boyfriend.  Then with a few of my close classmates.  Then with my best friend and her classmates at a neighboring school.  The night concluded with me putting the final touches on my poster and heading off to the club and dancing the night away.  I suppose my school was smart for making us have to be at school the next morning for poster presentation set-up at 8am!  I definitely drank less and came home earlier because of that obligation.  That won’t stop me from partying tonight!

My last point, for those readers that have not yet applied, I will update my “Numbers” posts under the USMLE Books & Advice page if it may help to give you insight.  If I could match my #1, so can you!!

Babies? – My 1st Angry Commenter March 11, 2009

I’ve been blogging for over 2 years now and I have yet to have an angry commenter. I guess you could say it was about time!  Yesterday, I wrote a post: Babies?.  Shortly thereafter, I received a comment from FG.  I was very hurt by the attack and decided to post my response as a new post since it was a bit long for the comments section and I wanted to abbreviate the links.  Here you go:

First and foremost, I would like to say to FG, I’m sorry that you had a bad experience with the US Healthcare System in regards to your infertility treatment.  Congratulations on becoming a new mom.

Now, I will go on to discuss the fallacies in your argument.

1. The average age of a woman becoming a 1st time mother is 25.1 (source: US Census Facts for Figures).
2. The average age of a woman becoming a 1st time grandmother is 47 (source: Grandparent Demographics).
3. The age range of patients seeking IVF in the US ranges from approximately 22 to 49 (avg: 36). (source: UpToDate Chart).
4. According to the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, “ideal candidates” using their own eggs should be <44, and if using egg donors should be <50 (source: SART).

Thus, with this patient being in her mid-forties, she is much closer to the average age of a first-time grandmother (47), than a first-time mother (25).  Regarding my points #3/4, you are incorrect that doctors won’t treat patients over age 39 because it may ruin their stats.  Doctors are often realistic about a woman’s chances of a successful pregnancy, which definitely decreases after age 40, but it’s not all about their stats.  Your statement assuming that the patient was no older than 39 because she did receive IVF in the US, which implied that I was lying about her being mid-forties, is inaccurate.

In my post, I was not casting any judgments about the process of IVF.  In fact, I have met several women (personally and professionally) that have experienced the joys of motherhood through IVF.  Part of the reason that I am pursuing the field of Ob/Gyn is because I am compassionate, have a heart, and enjoy sharing that special moment when a mother first meets her new baby.  I understand that infertility can be very devastating to any woman hoping to become a mother.  However, women that have IVF over the age of 40, many times because they delayed having children do to their career demands, will only get pregnant at a rate of 2-5%.  The US Census has a great summary of data of birth rates and fertility rates separated by age and race, starting on page 30: CDC.gov Data.  I even found an article from Australia about the false hope of IVF for women over 40 since that is where you received treatment: Australia News.

If I can make a choice to attempt to have a child at an earlier age when I have more oocyte (“egg”) reserve, without the use of IVF, then that is what I would prefer.  The point of my previous post was not to bash IVF mothers, nor professional moms that delay child-bearing.  However, in light of starting my new career, I have to make it a priority to start a new family.  I would prefer to not wait until my 40s to attempt child-bearing just because I was so career-focused.   I want to make choice where I know that statistically the odds won’t be against me.  If I have infertility at a young age for other reasons, then of course I will have to seek alternative options.

Lastly, this is my blog and I am entitled to write my personal opinions here.  This is not a professional environment, so I don’t feel the need to bite my tongue when discussing my personal matters.  If you heard some of the opinions that doctors have about IVF (among other controversial topics) and thought that negative opinions/statements would be enough to have them “tossed out of the medical profession” there would be several people left without jobs.  I’m not excusing it, but simply pointing out that doctors are people with opinions too.  If you felt offended, you do not have to continue reading.  If you decide that you want to disrespect me further (you already stated that I lack compassion, have no decency, that I am heartless, vile, and would be better working at McDonald’s or with animals), then I will ban you from further commenting on my site.

Babies? March 10, 2009

Today was an interesting day… well sort of.  I’m on the second day of my ultrasound rotation.  I’ve already gotten a bit bored watching the scans considering I witnessed my preceptor during 3rd year (who I recently teamed up with for a research project as well), do at least 100 of them over the past year.  I really want a chance to try some scans on my own, but for now I must watch.

Anyhow, today there were 4 patients that were 25 years old.  This is not the norm, considering most people coming for scans are of advanced maternal age (over 35).  I guess I took it as a sign to myself.  My 25th birthday is next week.  I’ve been trying to tell myself that I’m not getting old, despite the fact that I’m no longer going to be in that 18-24 age demographic.  I had done a great job of convincing myself of this since I’m one of the youngest people in my graduating class, and plenty of the people I met on the interview trail were older than me.  Well today it sunk in, the for the non-professional world, I’m a little behind.  Not only did we have 4 patients that were 25 getting seen today, only one of them was a 1st time mom!  What really hit it home, was the one professional, career-woman that we had today was a mid-forties who had to use IVF to get pregnant.  To be perfectly honest, she looked more like a soon-to-be grandma, than a vibrant, glowing first-time mom.  I looked at this group of women and thought… man, I’d much rather be the young pregnant one.  Today made me think that maybe I want to have a baby.

Then, reality sets in.  I’m graduating at 25 and then go on to a 4 year intense residency in Ob/Gyn (i.e. no time for kids since I want to be focused on my training), which puts me at 29.  Then, assuming I match at one of my top 7 academic programs, I will likely go on to do another 3 year fellowship (i.e. no time for kids since I want to be focused on training and not being a neglectful parent), which puts me at 32.  Now, I know, I know, 32 is not bad to start having kids.  But considering that I would like to have 3 kids, spaced out a good 2 years and 9mo apart, that would put me into AMA by the time I got to my last kid.  It just seems like I will have to sacrifice something at some point along the way.  I guess the fact that I don’t want to sacrifice anything right now, means that I am not ready to have a kid.  I suppose I will one day have to change my priorities if I want to have babies without IVF!

MedObsession on Twitter March 7, 2009

During the election I was pretty hooked to CNN for the political commentary.  The broadcasters used to always talk about Twitter.  They would post questions and then read the comments live on air.  I had forgotten about it until recently.  My intern has a crackberry like me and was on “TwitterBerry” one day.  He instructed me on the ins and outs of Twitter.  Basically, it’s like constant facebook status updates.  People can become “followers” of your page to stay up to date with your posts.  You can also reply to other posters’ updates as well.

My first reaction was that this seems way too invasive!  I heard that there was a celebrity “twittering” during the delivery of her baby.  So I immediately deactivated my personal twitter.  I decided that only my close friends and family need to know what I’m doing moment-to-moment, and they can get all the updates they need by calling and texting me.

However, I thought about my readers.  My blog has had increasing numbers of readers, with 4800 views alone last month!  I know that my time during Ob/Gyn residency will be limited, and thought this could be a good way to still stay in touch with my readers.  I created a Twitter page for my blog: http://twitter.com/MedObsession, this link is also post on my blog roll.  I’ve also subscribed to my own RSS Feed and displayed it in the right-hand panel under “twitter updates.”  For those of you that don’t have twitter you can read the updates on my own blog.  For those that do, you can click on each of the status updates and it’ll take you to the page to favorite it or to reply!

We’ll see how long I keep this up…