Finished all our normal curriculum classes - feels like it's time for a break but alas, must start really hankering down on preparing for boards. I moved my board exams to later, since I will be doing a vacation first, so I have a bit more time but my prep program has a live lecture series that begins at the end of May so I need to get cracking!
As far as the last few weeks of school, they went by rather quickly, with lots of studying and crossing fingers that I wouldn't have to re-mediate anything. It's getting warmer, so perhaps I can take a break to collect insects again soon, but a medical career sure does eat up your time. I'm also trying to adopt a healthier lifestyle, incorporating more exercise and diet changes. We'll see how long that lasts.
Got back from Monterey recently, went for a week-long vacation with most of the family - I say most because my dad recently had a hernia repair complication and had to stay home to recover from that. Funny how you learn things in practical settings that they don't really discuss in medschool - like how to approach a patient who comes in with an internal bleed. Solution? If their H&H doesn't drop too low, and if the bleeding stops on its own, even with tons of swelling, you can expect the body to resorb a certain amount, and it is usually less risky than surgically draining the fluid or going in to repair a small bleed.
On another note, I've discovered I have a very particular allergy, to two products produced by the Estee Lauder parent company (Brands are Origins and Clinique). The brands are significantly different and the two moisturizers I used only share a handful of ingredients - I've narrowed it down to butyloctyl salicylate (but this is common in a lot of sunscreens that I think I have been exposed to before) and micrococcus lysate (an ocean-microbe's dissolving organ enzyme). My money is on the micrococcus lysate, because it is used in very few products and is relatively new on the market (2009) so I am curious to see if that's what it is. There is one more product out there that I know of that contains the micrococcus lysate but not the other compound, so if i test that on some skin it should produce a reaction if I have the right compound isolated. Kinda fun to experiment on oneself, but I kinda want my face and neck to stop being all inflamed and itchy. And my test arm.
