I can't believe my last blog post was during orientation -- as in, it was in August! How are we already half way through the month of September?
Let me catch you up with what's been going on.
Since I forced Tom to take (and post) a "first day of school" photo, he made me promise to do the same. I snuck out of the house without one, but then felt guilty and sent him this photo on my first day of my second year of medical school:
Right now I'm taking pharmacology, pathology and Introduction to Clinical Medicine II. It's only two classes, so perhaps it sounds easy, but it's 25 hours of lecture per week and each lecture is chock FULL of medications that I need to memorize and histology slides of cancer and other diseases that I have to be able to recognize. We're two weeks in and 99 drugs in. I'm a big note taker so, I've been writing and re-writing my notes (it's how I learn, what can I say?). At the end of week one I was shocked because my brand new pen was out of ink:
Then, I was less surprised when at the end of week 2 of classes, I sent Tom this photo of pen #2. At this rate, I'll need one pen per week between now and Christmas break :).
But, besides taking up a lot of ink (and time), the pace of things I think is pretty laid back compared to what I'm hearing about what it will be like when October hits--that's when it's going to get crazy. We start going through "blocks" of courses related to each organ system. We go through the urinary system first, followed by cardiovascular, respiratory, reproductive....and that's as far ahead as I've thought about it. We essentially have 3-5 weeks of all things related to that system. I think it sounds great, to be able to focus on just the embryology, anatomy, drugs, pathology and physiology of each system. But, apparently it's really intense, really fast paced and really overwhelming. But, we'll see when I get there.
In the mean time, we've had some fun in the first few weeks. We watched the UW volleyball team take on the Canadian national team at the Key Arena. We won (4 games to 1) and we were yet again reminded of what a beautiful city we live in.
We found an online coupon for Seattle Community Theater which just so happens to take place in a building inside Magnuson Park--which, as you know, is right across the street from our house!
Friday night we took in opening night of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."
It was fun, funny and so great o be a part of a local production like that. The lead actress was a PLU graduate!
This morning Tom and I started our first of what will now be a monthly volunteer event. We will be cooking breakfast at a youth homeless shelter called Roots the third Thursday of every month. It's a shelter that is exclusively for youth (under age 25 I think) that is, sadly, always full. But they aren't all homeless. A lot of the kids are runaways that just don't want to be at home for whatever reason and Roots doesn't turn them away. They need volunteers from 6:30-8:30 AM to feed the masses.
We cooked up a big old batch of eggs, bacon and sausage on some giant cook stoves--felt like I was back at summer camp!
Then (after a full day of studying) we had a combined September birthday celebration for Tom, Diana and her sister Kathy. Grammy Jean was our host and what a venue she has to host us in! She is now a resident of Bayview Retirement Community right down the street from the space needle. Here she is sporting her newly made T-shirt by Katie of her and her adorable dogs on a bench outside of her new home. She was featured in the Bayview brochure with the photo!
We had a lovely set up in the party room on the 10th floor with the best view in Seattle!
We enjoyed a potluck and watched the storm roll in over downtown Seattle.
It was a controversial start time to the birthday party because it conflicted with the start of the Seahawks game, but it turns out we ended up with a great show during dinner and the game got delayed by the lightning so we were able to enjoy some time together as a family. At first we had no cups, so Tom made great use of the fish-bowl sized glass found in one of the cabinets :)
We made it home in time for the 2nd quarter and, since it's half time while I write this, I hope it's a victory!
Tomorrow I have my first midterm examination for pathology. I can't believe it's midterms already...time flies when you study all the time! :) Oh, and I got some good news this week, I was was selected to receive a $250 travel grant from UWSOM to get me to the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference in February. I will find out at the end of the month if I was accepted to the conference, and if so, I'll have the money to pay the plane fare to get there (and Dr. Tom Lendvay will pay for my hotel). Woo Hoo!
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