I can't sleep! Caffeine + xanthine + fructose = no bueno

So What Was This Sh*t Year?

I find it hard to recount the Year of The Crap. From what I remember, it all started after finals week during Spring/ Summer 2009. Some details that are worth remembering...


-No summer break- I studied for the MCAT right after finals week Spring semester. Started working at the VA Medical Center as a volunteer research assistant for The Laboratory of GI Injury and Cancer. Took The Berkeley Review MCAT Prep course.


-MCAT August 25th. Crash and burned. Took the exam with chills, fever, and a cold. Voila. A fucking 28.


-Started Fall Semester 2009 the Monday after. What transpired in between the MCAT and Monday? Las Vegas. Couldn't remember most of what happened over there. All I know is that it involved binge drinking.


-Rest of the semester- stress, burnout, death by biochem II, genetics, neurobiology, ecology. GPA dropped down to a 3.8. Dammit. There goes my bid for Summa cum laude.


-Winter break: SLEEP. WORK. CHILL.


-This semester: we'll see.

Status Update

So it's been considerably less crazy after the shit year. This is how my typical week looks like for this semester:

M- PE class 7am. MCAT 9am until God knows when

T- Tutor 8:30-10. MCAT again. Class 2-3:15. Eat. Slack off. Class 7-9:15pm. Pass out.

W- Repeat Monday. Add research lab 10-5pm. Then MCAT until I don't know.

Th- Research 10-1. Class 2-3:15. MCAT until whenever.

F- Tutor 8:30- 11. Research until 5pm. Work 6pm until next day.

Sat- Get off work, sleep. Study when I wake up.

Sun- Sleep-in. Dim sum. Study.

Then lots of gym and basketball and leisure reading in between. So far, I've read the following books (since the semester started):

"The Game" by Neil Strauss

"The Art of War" by Sun Tzu

"The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande

And I have a "pending list" of books to be enjoyed:

1. Hitler's Pope

2. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

3. Body of Work

4. Blink

5. Freakonomics

6. Outliers

That's all.

Kbetch

Something tells me I should write again... so here I am, taking a quick break from a fun chapter in Neuroscience, spitting out randomness from my drained cerebral cortex...

Well, it's been a while and all that's percolating in my mind are just plain rants... It's been a really frustrating stretch dating back from my summer MCAT quest (which turned out horribly wrong) up to this day, where I am still feeling the remnants of an untimely burnout.

Well since it's really close to Thanksgiving Day, I'll turn this inside out. I thank the Supreme Being for all these killer challenges that will mold me into becoming a good doctor in the future...

-Summer MCAT review...been doing real great on AAMCs and The Berkeley Review Practice Exams. I've hit a few scores as low as 27 and as good as 34... been averaging 32-33.

-Night before the MCAT- Aug. 24th, 2009.... Been really bored and kinda freaking out- I SHOULD BE STUDYING! Decided to go to a coffee shop. Sipped coffee outside while going over material. Decided to JOG at Cerritos Regional Park. It was 9pm, a little foggy, and cold for a summer night. BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER.

-Exam day, August 25th. Woke up with chills. Took the exam with chills, fever, and an irritating runny nose. Realized the inevitable outcome. To temporarily remedy this, I went with my friends to a baseball game that night at Angel Stadium and got piss-drunk.

-Later that night, went to Sharkey's in Newport Beach. Had no recollection of what happened.

-Later that week, went to Las Vegas. Returned home Sunday only recalling about 1/3 of what happened in the trip. Oh shit. FALL SEMESTER BEGINS THE FOLLOWING DAY!!!

-Burnt out.

-Sept. 29, 2009. Afternoon. Studying for a midterm. Checked AAMC. Saw MCAT scores. A plunge to a 28. Did not study anymore. Got teary-eyed.

-Downward-spiral in classes. Did not talk to anyone for a solid week. Developed extreme acne. Hated the world.

-TODAY- time to recuperate. Time to repair borderline A's. Time to raise B+s to As. Time to think. Time to rise again...

It's been really tough. But I have one more chance to patch things up. One more chance to let resolute diligence to take over.

MAPS 1st Premed Meeting

Cal State LB Premeds!!!

Todd Bennett from the UC Irvine School of Medicine will be coming to talk to us about UCI SoM Admissions and the Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program...

Also, this is our FIRST committee meeting...we will be introducing our newly-revived group and we will be giving out information about our activities for the semester. This is a great chance to network and mingle with fellow premeds on campus!

See you at USU 204 12-1pm

Free Pizza!!!

MAPSPremedCommittee.Gerry.Reinier.Juan.Monica.Shrey.Esteban

Who cares?

I'm drunk and it's normal for a premed student who just took the MCAT. Yes, I am checked-in at the Treasure Island at Las Vegas and I am abusing the unnecessary brain cells utilized during my MCAT review, So yeah. F yeah.

MCAT day tomorrow...I am counting exactly 8 hours 45 minutes before I click "start" and take the dreaded exam.

Am I prepared? Yeah. I am aware that although I couldn't stash every bit of information and every bit of test tactic in my limited brain, I can still score great on this exam. Rational optimism is key at this point. I've spent the entire summer preparing for this exam and I have absolutely no plans on retaking it.

So for now...chill.

Tomorrow...KILL.


rest assured more sensible blogs detached from inner emotional predicaments will be posted in the future, after tackling the hurdle that is the MCAT and after settling the ever-apparent heart-mind discourse on that person that has definitely struck me hard in so many ways

Lesson From A Kid

A 32 y/o lady was brought in to our ER via advanced life support ambulance. She had a blood glucose level of 51. It was a really crazy night- all our nurses were busy and the priority at the moment was not this patient. I helped the medics unload her into the gurney and I started taking her vitals and started the history for the nurses. She was not that sick sick but boy, she really was in bad shape. 203/105. 102bpm. 96% sat. 96F. She was diaphoretic and very cool to touch. I had everything ready when the nurse came in and I then stepped out to get her warm blankets.

"Who called the ambulance?" I thought to myself. Obviously there might be family members around. Such a dumb question to myself. Why that question popped up- I had no clue.

"Hey Jasmine thank you for calling the ambulance, okay?" The patient uttered with a heavily-detectable hispanic accent. Who is Jasmine?

I turned to her bedside. Jasmine is her 10-year-old daughter.

Tonight, my greatest mentor and teacher wasn't Dr. Shapiro, MD, nor the ER Nurses, nor my MCAT textbook and flashcards. It was a ten-year-old girl. She taught me presence of mind- the ability to act deliberately and correctly given the circumstance, however pressing it may be. How amazing is it that a child like her can be taken for granted and blatantly overlooked, yet the same child could teach you a very important lesson that you'd only expect from seasoned adults.

"Good job!" I told her. She had the biggest smile I've ever seen in such a long time. And I know that it stems beyond my adulation to her. It saved her mom...The only one she's got.

Blog Hiatus

Looooooooooooong time!

Finals are over, but the actual work has just begun. So I started studying for my MCAT and it's been frustrating. The material is okay, obviously, but what is killing me is the verbal section...I just couldn't make the connections between the passage and the questions...the process of elimination is very helpful, but I can't solely rely on that.

Ugh.

At this point, I'm really burnt out. Not just from MCAT stuff, but also from the recent semester. Everything's taxing heavily on me, at the most inappropriate of times.

5.0 quake

After getting saturated with a crapload of diuretics while studying, I felt the natural urge to empty my bladder. I went to the Student Union restrooms and did my thing. While I was keeping my kidney, ureter, bladder, and urethra happy, I felt the room shaking...

Hmmm...the walls look like they're moving

And why is this going on for forever?

Holy cow! An earthquake!

I stayed calm and finished my physiological response. Damn. It's still shaking.

I let the shaking settle, and I ran outside the restroom. Everyone was up from their tables and were uttering WTFs.

Scary.

dive into hell week

Coffee
Red bull
Smart water
textbooks
whiteboard
markers
laptop
practice tests

library basement or student union

get to campus by 7:45am. get off class by5. study til 2am every damn day. all week.

welcome to hell week

Annoying Sorority Girls

I was walking towards the Horn Center (place on campus where you print your stuff if you're too far from the library) when these two weird-looking girls came up to me. Looks like they were part of a sorority and they were handing out pamphlets for an event. They smiled and popped the most random question I've ever got:

"Are you friendly and outgoing?"

Stunned, I thought to myself "what the hell kind of question is that?". I opened my mouth and these were the by-products of that thought percolating in my head:

"uh, NO."

Equally stunned with what I said, I walked away like nothing happened. I think the last words I found audible from them were "asshole" and "jerk"...

I laughed.

The Pen Transplant

"Dr. Wetzel, would you be interested in speaking at one of our club meetings this fall semester?"

"Huh? Like what do you mean?"

"Oh it's because you came from a Cal State too and here you are, an ER doctor...you'd be a great source of motivation for us students"

"Uhm...haha"

"Well you can violently decline doc, but..."

She laughed and left her seat to go check on one of her patients...

Although she seemed reluctant to the idea, I knew that she wanted to do it. Earlier during the shift, she agreed to come help out with the health fairs and eventually, the free clinic that me and my buddies were planning and working on launching this fall semester. So why wouldn't she come speak to one of our meetings?

A couple hours and a gazillion ER scutwork later, she called me.

"I have a mission for you, Reinier!"

"Yes ma'am!"

She took out a retractable green ballpoint pen from her pocket. It was one of those freebie pens from annoying medreps.

"You see, I love this pen, but it ran out of ink. I want to use it again. Do a pen transplant! If you do, I'll come to your meeting!"

I took the pen and smiled. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Is this a joke?

The ER wasn't that busy so I had the chance to employ my analytic skills, manual dexterity, and fresh knowledge of biochemistry, biology, calculus, physics, chinese swordsmanship and astrogardening to this critical case. This is ballpoint pen surgery. I am pioneering the pen transplant. The first of its kind in the world. No it wasn't being done at Harvard, Stanford, or Hopkins. It was here at Anaheim. And the primary surgeon was me. I call the shots. The fate of Dr. Wetzel's charting delight, the premed club meeting, and the pen relied on me. I was the- what the hell?

I analyzed the pen. Is this fine point or medium point? Hmmm...oh it has a spring mechanism. Oh cool. So I stole a bic pen and another freebie pen similar to hers.

Cool. I took the other freebie pen since it shared the same spring mechanism and parts. The bic pen was extraneous to the operation- discarding it was imminent and inevitable. As heartbreaking as it is, I had to let it go. It served no purpose. I took the functional clone, dismembered it, took out the vital ink-containing component of it which I have labeled "spine" plus the "cervical support" that employed Hooke's law (spring, idiot! F=kx^2), cut it down to size, and "transplanted" it to Dr. Wetzel's pen.

The great pen surgeon has delivered. Another first. Another breakthrough operation. It was a complete success!!!

"Here you go doc!'

"Hmmm...let's see (she scribbles TCA on my biochem pathways cheatsheet)...oh it worked!"

"So you're coming to our meeting this coming semester?"

"Yeah!"

"Suh-weeeeeeeeeet!!!"

reinier's screw moments 1

Me and two buddies just decided to screw studying that night, relax, and have fun. All in the interest of "prepping' ourselves up for the last stretch in school. Yeah, we won't have any fun time for three weeks since finals week is fast approaching. Plus we're all taking the MCAT on the same day a couple months after. So this is the only time to chill.

As with most male college students, beer was the standard. Given that we were all tired after a 12-hour school day (that's actually less than the usual) plus we had more studying to do and more assignments to worry about, we weren't in our fun mode. This yields horrible consequences, especially when it comes to pickup lines and creating conversations...

J doesn't drink a lot. So he had just a glass of beer and A LOT of water. He wanted one more glass...of water. He called the server, Mary.

"Hey can I get a glass of your delicious water?"

Mary gave her a WTF look and laughed.

"Thanks you're the best!" J followed up.

The screwup highlight:

This girl had two rings. I got curious. So I asked her what were those rings for (like, what the fuck are you doing in a bar with a wedding/engagement ring?)...she said "Oh this is from my mom and this is from my brother, blah blah blah"...

"Oh cool. I cut rings in the emergency room."

"Oh okay"

As soon as she left, it all sank in. My buddies laughed their asses off and I just realized-

"What the fuck did I just say?"

Damn. Might as well told her that I can describe the TCA cycle to her in detail. Or maybe offered her my leftover fried rice that was sitting in my car. Crap.

To this day, that line has left an indelible stigma. My buddies couldn't wait for that day when we're all in medical school doing our rotations and one of them will effin call me just to tell me that they had cut a ring in the ER for the first time. The bastards are looking forward to that.

Game Time!

This is it...the final stretch...
MCAT this summer, more tutoring this fall, more ER work, more upper-division science classes, then the AMCAS.
Bam! Let's slam this!

CSULB Minority Association of Premedical Students

Finally, after a brief hiatus, CSULB MAPS will be up and running this Fall '09. Me and five other board members are reviving this organization. This time it's gonna be different...

Although MAPS stands for Minority Assn. of Premedical Students, we welcome other pre-professional students to join the club. You don’t have to be part of a minority group to join…this club is an association of future doctors whose focus is on serving minorities in medicine, i.e., the underserved populations.

The board has defined a clear objective for the organization- To be ACTIVE pre- docs. We will minimize information-soaking meetings that mimic lectures by actually doing premed stuff. We will learn by going to conferences (instead of us bringing speakers), participating in health fairs (you want first-hand medicine and public health, right?), interacting and connecting with mentors from med schools (valuable first-hand advice from people who have gone through the process). We want you to get involved!

We will establish connections with UC Irvine Latino Medical Student Assn (LMSA) and The Student National Medical Assn (SNMA). These are two national minority physician/medical student/undergrad groups that are well-established and thus will provide us great resources in our pursuit for medical school. Check out www.lmsa.net , www.ucilmsa.org , or www.snma.org for more info.

The main project of the club is to set up the first free clinic in Long Beach, thanks to David Kramen’s (board member) ideas and experiences. We will need all the help we can get.

We will help you get into med school by providing channels for involvement in academics, mentorship, and community service.

See you next Fall!

How To Destroy A Nice Song

A shameless video clip of me practicing (destroying) Bamboo's rendition of "Waiting in Vain". Great song. Well, I suck. I know. THE reason behind me liking this song is profound-it plays around major 7th chords! The soothing, jazzy effect you hear. Ooh. Love that key!

So, enjoy practicing criticism on this piece of...whatever.

WTF?

Physics lab. So we were working on diffraction grating and we were supposed to obtain and measure angles to figure out specific wavelengths of an atom's emission spectra...i.e., we wanna see different color bands that a specific atom emits. It's beautiful!

Anyway, our experiment was supposedly planned to run a little less than three hours. Since I like to go home early, like every lab period, I didn't really bother doing ALL the work- calculations, procedures, report outlines, thinking, equipment set-up. So essentially, my lab partner has benefited tremendously from my haste. I just wanted to get out of lab. I finished everything in 1.5 hrs.

I went to my professor, signed out of lab, and waved good-bye to my lab partner who's still working on his calculations from the data that I almost entirely generated.

"Hey bro, It's okay to have fun on weekends! See you next week in lab"

Hearing that comment, I stopped for a bit...WTF?

You think I'm a dork who doesn't know anything outside the realm of studying? Whoa. Hahaha. Wrong impression, dude. Flattering though.

"Haha okay see you bro" was what I uttered. Of course my mind was thinking otherwise. I think what my mind was trying to say was "I HAVE A LIFE TOO, BRO. YOU CAN GO TO HELL".

Uhm, yeah. I think it was that.

LB Superior Court

"Next!"

Yes! After about an hour of waiting in line it was finally my turn! As I was walking to my assigned booth, I was contemplating of lines to say to the person who will decide the fate of my recent traffic ticket

"Your majesty, please grant mercy to your lowly peasant who hath nothing more to spend"
"Hey, I didn't see the stop sign. It's not my fault!"
"I don't know how to read."
"Please spare me"

Oh shit, I didn't realize I've been in the booth already and wasting the court's time

"uh...uh...here's my...ticket. Ma'am."

She looked at it. "What do you need?"

"Can...uh...I go to traffic school?"

"When was your last traffic school?"

"June...?"

"NO."

I waited for a follow up. She just stared at me.

"So what do I do now?"

"You're done. You may leave now."

ACK! That's two hundred bucks down the drain and a point in my driving record!

Thank You, Sir

It's been really tough these past few weeks. It's like everything's monotonous. Incomplete. Like everything you've been doing, or doing, seems to be pointless. That feeling of helplessness still hovering. That feeling of loss. Constant wondering. What ifs. What I hope to happen. What I have to get myself ready for. The sad part is, I have to admit, this may go on for quite a period...

I need a bit of a spark, a break from the sad reality I'm in, a reminder that I still have to do my thing.

"Fudge. What's the code to the break room again? I haven't been to work in forever (two weeks)...hmm...[toot toot toot toot toot...toooooooot]...oh okay. Cool."

I hung my jacket, grabbed my trauma scissors, pen, and some antibiotic ointment packets. Checked my assignment, and rushed to ER2.

"Holy crap...I've only been here for thirty minutes and It's been like forever."

Then it felt weird being there. Until I gradually picked up on my work efficiency and started rolling. Then it felt okay. I was in my turf. I was in a place that will guarantee my financial security for the next two weeks and the bills that I have yet to pay right now.

"Oh Reinier can you do a long-arm splint on bed 21?"

"I'm on it!"

Then I started joking with the kind sir whose arm I was going to subject to torment. I told him and his daughter that I was gonna cut his arm and replace it with a robocop prototype arm. We laughed. I then worked on the splint. After the torture and the laughter, I was out of the room and I called the transporter to take the gentleman to radiology.

Wow. It felt great. Somewhat an oasis in the middle of the desert. I felt that the patient was subtly telling me not to slip because there are a lot of people like him waiting for me.

Although it's still a tough road ahead of me- endless work to do, nauseating concepts to learn, difficult personal issues to endure, confusing emotions to tackle- I have to power through.

My patient told me so. Thank you, kind sir.