In the week leading up to orientation I became very active online with Ross students just to make sure everything was in order going into the start of my rotations (also called clinicals). Just a reminder, the next two years of my medical experience is called my rotations or clinicals, not residency. (residency comes later in the timeline) Anywho, in the days leading up I noticed that several people in my class were informed to report to the hospital on Thursday (5 days prior to when I thought my rotation started). When I noticed this it was Wednesday. So I began what any sane person does: Freak. Out.
Luckily some friends of mine sorted out that the important email I missed stating the time to arrive Thursday had been sent to my Junk mail folder (ugh). So I know now to be more careful.
Was I ready to start? Mentally I still had five days, but in reality I had hours. So I prepared what I could and went to bed knowing the big day had arrived.
Orientation was held in a room that would have been better used as a greenhouse. It was smoldering. This day was -10 F outside and the room temperature was somewhere in the vicinity of making humans melt. Nonetheless orientation was helpful in filling me in on the basics of what to expect. A student that had just completed the "track" program at my hospital gave us the quick and dirty ways to study for the "Shelf" exams and for the Boards. ( A track is when I complete all of my core rotations [Psych, OBGYN, Peds, Surgery, Family Medicine, Internal medicine etc.] all at the same hospital, as opposed to traveling all over the USA doing one here and there.) (A shelf exam is the exam I take after each rotation mentioned above) (The boards are one of the 3 major exams that if I pass, makes me a Doctor)
After all of that, I re-condensed myself from the melted, liquid, form of me and went home knowing that the real deal started on Monday.,
The first week of Psych proved to be very enlightening. I saw things in real life that I had been studying for a few years, only to see real cases right before my eyes. Mania, depression, schizophrenia and paranoia, I saw vast variety of mental illness. My job each day has been to interview the patients on the psych ward each morning. Interviewing I have always felt was a weaker skill of mine, until now. Oftentimes interviewing a mentally ill patient can prove difficult, but for whatever reason, they liked to talk with me. I took a particular liking the manic patients. To paint a picture, I like to think of Robin Williams. When he was living, he was one of the best comedians to ever walk the earth. He was able to rattle off voices, speak rapidly and change thoughts and subjects in his head without batting an eye and all with a comical tone and manner unmatched by anyone. It's like his brain was on triple speed and his tongue was even faster. Think of his role as the genie in the movie Aladdin. These patients were happy, excited, energetic, and just plain fascinating.
The doctors have lectured us on various topics, and challenged us to learn both the pharmacological name and the trade name of the common drugs used in psychiatry. With regular use though has become second nature.
Today my group of med students went to visit a higher functioning set of patients in the IOP (Intense Outpatient Program). Let me tell you, it was intense. These people travel to the hospital from a local nursing facility and take part in 3, 1 hour programs during a day and they do this 3-5 times a week. I was lucky enough to be able to learn a great deal from these people about their problems and ways to cope with them. One client in particular singled me out. This person I would describe as having Narcissistic personality disorder. (A state of mind where you have a great sense of self-worth, better than those around you, and demand the respect of others). This person and I talked for a few hours about his life and history. In our conversation he presented an interesting metaphor to describe his problems. With a past of working in electronics for many years, he described people as being in one of two categories: the color TV or the black and white TV. Let me elaborate. He explained that in the old days that the B&W TV's were equipped with a gizmo that could only understand a B&W TV signal. With the invention of the Color TV, additional equipment within the TV was needed to interpret the color signal. Now think of this color TV signal as what our human experience is on earth could be. He described people as either being a "color" TV or the "B&W" TV, you are either equipped to see the world as it was meant to be seen (in color), or you lacked the equipment and your experience on earth was dulled (B&W). He described himself as having this special equipment to extract details from the world that others neglect or aren't equipped to see. I'm quite certain that he had this gift too, for he was very intelligent. His problems however stemmed from this thinking that he was enlightened far beyond his peers and that they could not understand him because he was so vastly intelligent. He spent his time trying to develop inventions to help the world. He is so preoccupied with his intelligence that he believes cancer researchers have taken his ideas on how to battle cancer using radiation (he has zero medical background whatsoever). I have no doubt he would succeed given the right resources, however. I found this individual fascinating, and I hope I described my experience well enough for you to feel it too.
I hope to continue having a positive experience throughout my rotations and I hope to share them with you.
Thanks for reading!
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