Behind the White Coat

Headin to Hawaii

I barely got a ride to the airport this morning. We went out to party at Canal Room last night for our friend Aly's birthday, and to celebrate the end of my boards. Place is nice, good sound and great setup for the DJs. It wasn't super crowded though. Probably because most New Yorkers were wiser and stayed in during the frigid subzero temperatures. But cold wasn't going to stop us from downing many So-Co and lime shots washed down with some Goose. Good thing for me managed to pack within the 1 hour window of free time I had last night. My always overpacked suitcase, half of which is taken up by a couple of pairs of size 13 shoes. You would think for Hawaii I could pack light, but somehow that never happens. Nik the Greek Gera was supposed to take my ass to JFK, to return the favor of my reluctant JFK journeys to pick up his ass. With a 9:30am wake up time, I referred to rule #3: Always have a backup. Good thing for TVT at the last minute he didn't have to take "sick call" and drive my ass. Nik eventually sucked it up and took me anyway, feeling bad when I revealed to him "Don't worry, I scheduled a back-up in case you didn't make it." Such lack of faith you say? Or perhaps I know him too well.

I was originally placed in a window seat--27A. I thought maybe I'll get stuck next to a cute girl this time--like that EVER happens to me, I'll probably get another giant pre-subway Jarred fatman who's hotdog arms will drip over to my side of the armrest. I was like screw this, give me an aisle, any aisle. I am now sitting here, row 32 seat G. An aisle seat. Not the aisles next to the window seat, but the aisle in the middle row. Lucky for me the seat next to me on the left is empty. I looked to my right to the seat across the aisle to see if I got lucky, but of course it is this 77 year old molvi-sahib with his long white beard and shalvar-kurta next to his seemingly even older wife. Great. I stick my head up to look at row 27 to the seat where I was going to be, and next to the empty seat is this fit 28 year old girl who I noticed while getting my latte at the terminal Starbucks. Just my luck. She even chose to take the window seat.

Now I'm here at LAX... Gotta love wireless at the airports... Now another long ass leg across the pacific to Oahu.

Goodbye USMLE Boards, Hello Surfboards

Done. Finished. Out of the way.  Step 2, also known as the second part of "the boards" is now behind me.  Assuming I did indeed pass I am almost done with med school.  Just as I typed that I rememberd the Step 2 Clinical Skills exam which I have yet to take.  But I'll worry about that later... like after I come back from sunny Hawaii!!

I have 2 days to get my shit together and head out for a month.  I have found a place to stay with some girl who sounds pretty cool, in a good location outside of Waikiki, so things are falling into place.  Of course I am going to be kicked out for 5 or 6 of the days while her boyfriend is going to be there, but I'll cross that path when I come to it.  At least I can say good bye to the -2 wind chill, and hello to lows of 68 degrees baby.

So assuming I find some sort of internet access (which Im sure I will, but I won't have it at home), I will make sure to keep the blog updated on my adventures, full with photos of the lovely sunny weather down in the pacific ocean.  Try not to be too jealous.

So may things have happened during my board studying sabbatical.  I hit my 100th post!  So many months and rambles later, the century mark is attained.  Around the ssame time, I also got my blog's hit total to 10,000.  !0K times viewed.  I'd say that is an impressive landmark.  Perhaps it pales in comparison to my fellow med school blogger TTA, but perhaps too much publicity is bad.  Dr. Ta himself had to enter the blogger relocation program.  That's right, his mom google him, and found his blog.  So he had to change his entire website domain name to avoid further damage, and to continue on his pointless and useless musings. Good to see the typepad family looks after it's patrons.  I have been informed I cannot disclose his current location at the present time since google searches for "tuan ta typepad" have pointed towards me.  Until the security is tightened, we'll keep the it on the D.L.

So one more night of partying it up in nyc before the sunny seas of hawaii welcome me.  More later...

2 till death, 4 till joy

In 2 days, Thursday, I'll take the boards.  Lord help me I pass the fuckin test.  I have taken studying so un seriously.  I really gotta review intensely for the next 2 days--I am shit scared!!  But there is light at the end of the tunnel.  That light is the sun in Hawaii... So close. I'll have 2 days to pack, and I'll probably be partying it up and forget half my shit here, but it's all good.  Not to mention I STILL do not have a place to stay!! I am frantically messaging people on craigslist... If anyone has a place in the Waikiki area for rent, please do tell!!!

Back to the grind.....

The Day Approaches

I have been MIA for about a week now, but with due cause.  As my prior post said, Step 2 approaches.  The 'boards' if you will, which must be passed to graduate medical school.  Now the problem is, since I am taking it now, it won't really matter what I get, so long as I pass.  This is part of the reason I took it so unseriously until it was 7 days before the exam and I hit the panic button and realized I gotta get my ass moving!  Of course that didn't stop me from going out this weekend, but what the hell you gonna do right?

So the snow has almost ceased, or coming to a slow end rather.  The first blizzard of '05.  They claimed we were going to get 20 inches, but by glancing outside, I can barely see a foot.  Though I'll have to go see it for myself at some point (unlikely given the wind chill is like -6).  To think I was in LA for 2 days this past week and the weather was 84 degrees and sunny.  That is almost disturbing.  84 degrees in the middle of January.  Can you really survive year round without seasons?  Perhaps its resentment speaking, but come on, us east coasters learn to love the winter, snow, and the cold.  If I ever moved out there, Id have to discard half my wardrobe.  Aint nobody takin my cashmere son.  Well anyhow, maybe this cold will force me to stay indoors and get shit done, but it will be hard with the championship playoff games on TV.  Damn. 

Well I have all these great stories to tell, even my own experience on the patient's side of the hospital setting.  But they will have to wait, just got no time right now.  But stay tuned till the 29th, because the month of February I will be broadcasting live from sunny Hawaii on the island of Oahu.  Ahhhh yes... There is light at the end of the tunnel...  Back to studying..  Go Falcons and Go Steelers!

Step 2 Approaches

It's been a while since my last post.  The week has been hectic, the time short, and the tasks endless.  The Step 2 board exam is comin up on the 27th.  That leaves me only 2 weeks left, which means it's time to get serious.  I was supposed to start after New Year's, but clearly the real studying began only days ago.  On top of that I am still concluding up interviews.  I had an interview at Mount Sinai the other day, and man did Iove it there.  The day was great, one out of two interivews went well for sure, and I got some face time with the program director.  However it'll take a prayer for me to get in there.  Im utilizing every possible resource available to me.  More on that later...

I finally booked my ticket to Hawaii.  Departing Jan 29th, returning Feb 3rd.  I got it for 584$ on studentuniverse.com.  But I have to fax them a copy of my school ID and a transcript to prove I'm a student to get the student rate.  They have pretty good deals, so I do recommend checking it out.  I have yet to find a place to live though.  This could be problematic.  Especially given the lack of time I have to hunt!  So if anyone knows of a room for sublet in the waikiki Ala-Moana area, do let me know.

So my priorities should be #1: Study for the goddamn boards.  I have done 26% of kaplan's online qbank question database.  Only 1000 or so questions to go.   2 weeks minus about 3 days for more interview stuff... It can be done.  #2: Find a place to live in Hawaii.  I dont want my ass stuck in a hostel for a month, so Im moving this task to Defcon 3.  #3: I also gotta get my ass into the hospital one day to pull some charts to get some data for my research thas has yet to completed, which I need to graduate.  (Damn almost forgot about that one).

Now if I can get rid of distractions such as Xbox live, IMing, checking fantasy stats, watching TV, watching DVDs, and going out.... Maybe I can get shit done.  Maybe tomorrow I'll go old school and hit up the ole starbucks.

Flight to St. Louis

In continuing my forced yet necessary ventures into the midwest in pursuit of an academic medicine program that will take me as their own, I headed out to Washington University Medical Center in St. Louis this week for my next interview.  I am actually surprised they even offered me an interview, but given my lack of substantial interviews elsewhere, I had to suck it up, take one for the team, and hop on a plane to Nellyville.

My recent air travels have not been without incident, and this trip was no different.  I arrived at La Guardia, this time headed out on United airlines.  I head to my favorite e-check in counter and go through the quick and efficient process of checking in.  So on the United screen, I get an additional option to upgrade my ticket.  They ask me if I want to upgrade to economy "plus" for an extra 25$ per flight, providing me with extra leg room, and a few useless things.  I mean, the flight is pretty short, but 50$ for both flights would be like 4 drinks out in New York (this is how I validate my unnecessary purchases these days).  Part of it may have been the fact that I was kind of faded from my pre-departure 'chilling', so I said why the hell not.  I then realize that the flight to Chicago is delayed, leaving me 24 min to make my connection, meaning I couldn't check in my baggage!  No big deal, I just had a bag and a garment bag with me.  However, if I missed my Chicago connection, I'd miss the dinner the night before the interview!  So I could only hope. 

I lug my bags to the security check.  I hate these things now because they make you take your shoes off.  Such a silly thing.  If you beep in the metal detector, then take the damn shoes off, it is so inconvenient for people, especially poor old women (or tall hot women with knee high boots) to do this.  To top it off, they leave the floor uncarpeted, bare, cold, and nasty.  Lord knows the nasty bacteria and fungus slewing around the floor from all the dirty ass socks and feet that have walked over it.  Thousands of nasty feet a day, and you are picking up the leftovers. Lovely isn't it?  I reluctantly comply, walk through the metal detector, and as my bag comes through the x-ray, the fat security man tells me, :"I need to check your bag." 

What the hell did I leave in there?  But then I knew.  Since I couldn't check my bag in, I had brought my scissors, which was in my shaving stuff, onto the flight.  Great, Paki guy tries to board plane with scissors. I new I shoudla shaved, or worn my "I am not a terrorist" T-shirt.  But he was cool.  He even said I could mail it to myself, I was like screw it man, and just parted with my scissors and went on my way.  When I got to the gate, it seemed the flight was further delayed!  So I'll probably won't make it to St. Louis till like 10pm now.  But then I hear my name called on the overhead, and there was some earlier flight that got delayed and they bumped me onto it.  Good show baby.  I got to the airport at around 5:15, made it to the hotel by 6:30, and barely made it to the dinner at 7pm. 

On the way back, my delayed flight would force me to miss my connection from Chicago, and leaving me overnight in Chicago till the early morning flight.  I was like hell no man, I need to get back!  He said I could get on a direct flight arriving at 930 instead of 1150, but it would be on American.  I'm like, let me think about that for a second umm yes please.  Plus I got American flyer miles, so it worked out.  I was pretty impressed with United I gotta say, I may have to start using them now.

As for St. Louis, didn't really see the city much.  But there seems to be stuff to do, restaurants to eat at, culture to absorb, but of course it aint no NYC.  The Wash U program was good though.  More on that later....

My Trip to Cleveland

Earlier in the week was my venture into the midwest to expand the match list to include Case Western in Cleveland, OH. That's right folks, I went to Cleveland--a bold voyage for such a hardcore New Yorker. Case was actually a great program. The residents were among the coolest people I've met, and the facilities and program are quite top notch. Though the major setback clearly is the location in Cleveland. More on the program later, but for now.... (Click on the linked text for pics)

I arrive at La Guardia airport and head to the American Airlines self e-checkin stall that never has anyone waiting. How convenient are these things? You don't have to wait on that long winding line drudging your bags until you finally get to a booth where someone types seemingly hundreds of letters to finally print out the boarding pass which has nothing more than your name. At the electronic check-in, you just get to a station, swipe your card, hit a few buttons, and then boom--out comes your boarding card. you can even choose your own site from a diagram or upgrade your seat. I get my boarding pass printed out, the seat I chose online while buying the ticket--Seat 13B. Aisle seat. That doesn't sound bad does it? Row 13, must be in the middle somewhere. But it's strange they would use a number "13" row, isn't that bad luck? Well who knows, maybe I'll get lucky for once and be seated next to some cute girl who will give me her number and show me around Cleveland!

I kill some time, check my email, and down a bloody mary as I wait. As we board, I walk through the skyway, it seems like we are going down closer to the ground as we walk to the plane. Then I see the plane, as you see here For God's sake. To give you an idea, the tires of the plane were no bigger than those of my honda coupe. I had to duck into the plane and stay hunced over as I inched through the View this photo There was one seat to the left, and 2 seats to the right. Then I take a glance downstream, and realize.... Shit. That's right, lucky row 13 was the last row in the plane. I squeezed into my seat , barely fitting my knees into the damn thing. My goddamn seat didn't even recline! And of course, maybe 5 inches from my head, was the single bathroom in the back of the plane, and coming down the aisle towards it I see some cringing sweaty white boy walking with a stagger. And to top it all off, my worst fears come to realization: There was no cute girl next to me, only this giant fat white guy . Man, it just gets better and better.

Just as we were getting ready to depart, I spotted an empty seat or two a few rows up--anything is better than here! As i was going to make a move as the door was shut, the single air hostess in the plane takes her authoritative position and says, "We need a couple of people in the front to move to the empty seats in the back in order to properly balance the weight of the aircraft for take-off." Are you kidding me? I'm in a freakin flyin soap-box racer over here. I just tried to close my eyes and get some rest until the two hour flight concluded.

Happy New Years

Happy New Years to all of you... Hopefully everyone had a good time bringing in 2005, be it getting hammered at the clubs, or sitting home watching the ball drop on TV... My night was quite crazy and didn't end till about 7am on Jan 1st... I'll try to post pictures soon... Now I am sitting in a terminal at the Embassy Suites in Cleveland Ohio to interview at Case Western University for Internal Medicine... Cleveland. Yay. More on that later... For now, take some advil and alka seltzer, and continue the recovery from New Year's Eve.