A bit under the weather and the case of an over-achiever

Good news: I am FINALLY done with my oncology rotation. I honestly dont know how i was able to survive it all, super-long hours, crazy hard subject I wasn't particularly fond of, a super over-achiever classmate as my partner, patients who are extremely complicated, and flying all over the nation for interviews (and getting rejected). Wow, that's a handful. But I think like I said before, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Looking back I am extremely proud that I had survived it, and I can tell people now that I took 2 rotations at a cancer hospital and did well (well, well enough I guess). It was funny that I also kept running into people I know yesterday, some of them underclassmen, some of them in my class. When they found out that I chose an oncology rotation their eyes nearly popped out. They were talking about how much they hated the oncology module and so on. I guess it was very ambitious and silly of me at the time when I was choosing my rotation to think I can do it all. But all of my decisions are actually pretty thought-out. At the time i wanted to do something that can help with my industry-related interests, and possibly hospital, if i changed my mind. Oncology just sounds like a good field because it's a growing market, not as played-out as cardiovascular or diabetes, and all the drug companies/hospitals want a foot in oncology now. However I can also picture myself two years ago, all that I wanted to do was to graduate as smoothly as possible. I wanted all the easy rotations, and I looked strangely at the fourth years who talked passionately about the hard rotations and thought they must be crazy. And now i'm that crazy fourth year....I guess people do change. :)

BUT, I have to say that although I became more interested in certain fields of my study, i am never an over-achiever like some people. Another part of this rotation that makes it hard is that, my classmate who is my partner for this rotation, had a niche for oncology since a long time ago. She had plenty of experience in-patient. She picked pretty much ALL her rotations in a cancer hospital. She knew the drugs well and she went the extra mile for any assignments we may have. For that I had to push myself even harder in fear of looking like the stupider student. So whenever we had topic discussions in the afternoon she would provide us with lots and lots of handouts that she made or articles she pulled, completed with pictures and graphs and whatnot. Well, I couldn't exactly match THAT, but I did have to sacrifice my lunchtime to make 'outlines' for my topic presentation days (usually these are days when you just talk about a certain disease state informally). Which worked out fine, in my case I guess. My preceptor was cool with just having an outline which they could look at while I did my talk. Another thing she did was asking 'rhetorical questions'. questions she already knew the answers of, but making it a self-answered format. It bugged the HECK out of me, because she obviously did the research so she knew the answer, or she studied and memorized it, or whatever, but she would be asking it like "is this drug so and so because it causes so and so to happen in the 'insert and organ' so we need to watch out for side effects like so and so"? and i was like, YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER! and she did this even on readings that we were both assigned and just talked and talked so that i couldn't have a chance to prove myself (of course, i later learned to 'compete' for the right the answer). and of course on our final presentation, on which we had a time limit of 30 minuites, she made it into a ONE FRIGGIN HOUR presentation completed all and every aspect of the disease possible and ALL treatment options, and that's a lot in the world of pharmacy and medicine. so that of course made my 30-minuite presenation look somewhat like sh*t. I did a fine job, but in the presence of her over-achieving presentation i was getting comments like "I would like to see more studies done" "I want to see all treatment options available for this other disease". Um, my topic was "Eculizumab in the treatment of Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria". If you didnt' come for the "eculizumab" part of it or the "PNH" part of it, then you were in the wrong room. I did, judiciously, briefly go over the other medications but what use is it for me to spend another 30 minuites on the background information when all am trying to do is introducing the new drug available? Although through this experience, i've learned that my forte is still " knowing my patient and knowing them well". I like to put everyone's life into a story in my head and the treatments they've gone through because I dont just care about them like they are case studies. And I think that realy helps. Even when I talk about some of the diseases I always connect them to patients I have seen. So I guess THAT is my niche.



so my body usually goes into over drive with I have a ton of stress, and I have finally reached my 'off'rotation during which I have 6 weeks off. this morning when i woke up I immediately felt a bit under the weather. my nose is runny and my head hurts. My eyes are somwhat swollen maybe from drinking too much water or the sickness itself. In anycase, I hope I do feel better soon. I plan to get a facial sometime this weekend because i feel pretty disgusting over all and my face is a bit broken out. It would be nice to have a spa day to de-stress. :)