Bird in the Hand

I got my signed recommendation letter from the DO I’ve been shadowing for the last 6 weeks…. actually I got 6 copies signed lol. I probably need one more copy since my calculations were slightly off.

I sent them overnight to AMCAS and UCSD to be filed. My stress level probably dropped faster than an OD’d hooker as soon as I walked out of the post office.

The last day of my internship-shadowing is next Tues, so my job hunt can begin!

But I’m not touching anything application related till next week. I think I deserve a weekend off.

D.O. Shadowing Week 2

I’ve finally got settled into the Family Practice clinic here. I’ve learned some of the day to day office operations so now I can work on the patient charting system they have when there are no patients or interesting cases to shadow.

As for interesting cases these week, there was a 13 yr old male with juvenile full body alopecia. That was a real head scratcher. No a hair on him except for some patchy eyebrows and other than that the kid was completely healthy. I read on some journal articles latter that early life onset usually means the condition is unresponsive to treatment. I wish I could see the case through with the endocrinologist we referred the patient too.

Interesting case of the week #2 was a 60 year old male who had been in a severe car accident the day before. He was taken to the ER via ambulance and released. It was the primary care doc’s responsibility to document the patient’s condition for insurance purposes. I learned a lot about what areas are frequently injured and what questions to ask. I must have taken 3 or 4 pages of notes during the examination.

Highlight case #3 was a patient who reported skin inflammation around a cut and was worried about it being infected. Turn out it was just an allergic reaction to overuse of neosporin! LoL.

Shadowing/Internship Week 1

I started my new internship at a Family Practice and Urgent Care clinic in the next town over my my hometown. I will admit I was very nervous to start since there was little I could do other than stand there and look pretty. But over the past few days I’ve been slowly learning my way around the clinic.

 The thing I’ve found very surprising and educational is how wide the scope of case types they deal with here. Dermatology, orthopedics, psychiatric, and the all too frequent “I have a sore throat so I took these old antibiotics I still had and they don’t work blah blah blah”.

On the application front I’ve started my paper application for one of the MD schools in the Caribbean. I gave my friend from college who is an admissions adviser a copy of my Personal Statement and she absolutely hated it. I’ve been working on a revision whenever I have time between patients. The progress is slow. Maybe I’ll have a decent copy by next cycle!  LoL…hahaha….*sigh* FML.

New Internship

I just landed an internship at the Family Practice Office of a D.O. in the next town over. I’ll be shadowing/interning there 3 days a week until about the beginning of September. Too bad my birthday falls on the first day of the job, so I dare not ask for it off.

Hopefully this will be just the right thing I need to plug the final holes in my application. Plus I’m really excited because the D.O. I’m shadowing was in the Naval Medical Corp, exactly what I want to do. LoL I almost feel like saying “When I grow up I wanna be just like you!”

I’ve never hidden the fact that military and veteran medicine is really the only type of medicine I want to do. I have no interest in vacuuming the fat out of some 40 something Orange County trophy wife nor injecting some 3 year old while he screams notes opera singers wish they could hit.

I was really nervous at first to call and interview for the position. I don’t know why. Maybe I was just very intimidated by the fact there was so much uncertainty.I’m not really used to that. Not to brag, but I’ve never been to a job interview where I wasn’t offered the position. But this time around I didn’t have that assurance and confidence I usually have. I guess the same applies to my anxiety about med applications. I’ve never really encountered something I could fail at even if I tried my hardest…which would be devastating to me….well at least that what my psychiatrist proposed to me