Behavioral Med

Physio ended roughly two weeks ago, U.S. Healthcare ended a week ago, and now we're starting Behavioral Med. So far, it's been a pretty good class. It's not very stressful and they say it's our breather between Physio and Pharm.

Except it also starts at 8am and my body is still in denial about the 6am wake up time. I tend to only get four hours of sleep a night these days for some reason - I don't know what I do, but the next thing I know it's 12am and then insomnia hits. Which means I've been passing out in class a lot.

The professor did a relaxation exercise the other day to show the effects of meditation on the body. Buddhist monks can apparently sit in a freezing room and raise their body temperature through meditation. So he asked us to close our eyes and he took us through this hiking scenario, walking through fields and mountains and all that fun stuff.

I LOVED this exercise.

As soon as my eyes closed, my body wept with joy. And the last thing I remembered was the professor describing the path to the mountains before I passed out completely.

Fifteen minutes later, he woke us up. Half the class blinked blearily in the light and some people pleaded, "Can we do it again?"

"No," the professor said. "Now does anyone feel warmer?"

Silence. "Actually, we're pretty cold."

"You fell asleep, didn't you? I'm going to eat you guys."

Tomorrow, we're doing our first patient-doctor role play session. Very soon, we'll be sent off to our respective sites to do some actual patient interviewing. Exciting! But I wish I could concentrate better on my studies and pick up the slack for once. I feel like I'm always dangling by a thread and all the could've, would've, should'ves get depressing.

Cousin's wedding went well. Us girls did our bridesmaid duties superbly, the groomsmen were under the impression that they were lock-picking, door-busting triad members, and I learned that it is indeed possible to balance an egg with a partner groomsman using only one pair of chopsticks between us. Skills. Oh, and I managed to drop lobster into my lap onto my dress and wound up standing in the bathroom for fifteen minutes with my cousin, scrubbing some of the stains out with the help of some soap, eye make-up remover and a handy hand dryer. Butterfingers, word.

Classy Studying Style

I've been dying in Physiology the last two months and ... that pretty much sums up my life thus far. This past week, I've been running on three hours of sleep per night - I really, really hate waking up at 6 every morning to make my 8am classes - I've officially turned into a caffeine junkie. The lady at the cart - French Vanilla, small, breathes life into me. All in all, I've been slaving for a while and I believe I still pretty much dropped off the cliff on our exam today. Why, brain, why! I know, with all the abuse I give it and the lack of proper rest, it's fortunate enough my body can still make its way to school without keeling over, but ... brain, please, miracles I need.

For my last exam, I spent the night before even more spectacularly. I stayed in a study room with a couple of friends and pulled an all nighter at school, napping for a bit in chairs pulled up together. Yeah, like hobos, no big deal.

Kids, this is not the proper way to study efficiently, but I've been telling myself this for the last four years and somehow, it still always comes down to mindless rushing the eve of an exam.

I went to my neighborhood library last weekend to try to study, but I wasn't in much of a mood to concentrate that day - I didn't have my coffee fix - and ... that particular library branch is apparently not really a library.

It is however ...

A) a playground, a nursery, a place where you can abandon your shrieking kids for a few hours. My brother works there and he says some librarians had actually had to run outside and pull wandering kids out of traffic because they were looking for their mothers.

B) a social area where ladies gather and chat in loud voices. People get the privilege of hearing about so-and-so's handsome son who should have no problem at all getting married 20 years from now when they're all grown up. Cousin got up and went to stare at one particularly vocal woman until she got the hint.

C) a homing site for the not so mentally stable. I'm sorry, but if you're sitting at the computer and talking to it for half an hour ("I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I want my email. Hello! MY email! HELLO! Okay, let's see if this works. Come on! Okay, you want my password. I'll do it again. Here. I don't believe it. What is going on? HELLO!"), you skip from frustrated individual straight to "Kids, please don't go near that lady." And please check personal hygiene before you venture into a local place.

By the end of the session, my cousin and I thought the old man with the phlegm in his throat was the most normal person at our table. Sure beats the father who smelled, the trenchcoat dude who seemed to be unaware of his sporadic humming, or the lady who lambasted her computer. I wanted to turn around and advise her to go to a librarian for help because she was starting to sound deranged, but provoking an unhinged person is never a good idea. I probably wouldn't have made it out of the place alive.

I had dragged my cousin along and we literally circulated the area again and again searching for better seats. We ended up near the bathroom and of course, some guy had to go in and clog the toilet - I felt bad for the little girl who went in right after him and then hurried back out an instant after. The stench was the final clincher in moving us along to the exits.

I'm just glad it's the weekend now and I can finally sleep. Next Sunday is my cousin's wedding banquet though! It's going to be a hectic period because I have exams coming up that week - okay, actually, I've been having weekly exams all this time anyway so who am I kidding? I'm going to be a bridesmaid actually and it should be fun.

Be Still, My Heart

Nothing much has been going on. Met up with some friends. Joined a nearby gym. Went back to school. Actually, I've been in classes for a while now. Physiology's been brutal so far. Wake up 6am everyday for classes which sometimes run super late - I got home around 10:30pm last night after wrapping up a paper. I don't even know how I wake up sometimes. The first exam, I ran on three hours of sleep a day and on the day of, I didn't even have the stamina to cram in the morning break. I just passed out in the study room and told friend to wake me when it was time to go.

We had a lab the other day where we ran EKGs (recordings of the electrical activity of the heart) on each other. It was easy for the guys in our group because all they had to do was strip off their shirt and the girls would label their chest, hook them up. The worst they had to deal with was removing the stickers, maybe taking a few chest hairs in the process.

Us girls though ... we had to head to the bathroom, fumble underneath our shirts to get the leads on (it's slightly more ... complicated for girls. We have to work around certain curves. And wired bras. Plus, I found that I had way less surface area for the six thoracic leads. V6 was supposed to somewhere midaxillary - roughly down the middle of your side. Mine ended up near my back. Friends laughed at my boniness.), then hook up the wires without pulling any of the stickers off, and get back to the lab room. Should the machine beep in error, the girl would have to shoo the guys into turning their backs before rummaging underneath her shirt to fix any wrong leads.

I was in and out of the bathroom, trying to hurry before the class ended, to replace the previous girl after she failed to elicit any signals for some odd reason, but I laid on the cot for five minutes, pressing around my chest to figure out if any leads had fallen off underneath my shirt as the machine kept beeping.

The two professors hovered around and I wondered if I was just a failure at hooking up leads when the guy in our group exclaimed, "Oh! I know why." He held up the plug. They'd forgotten to actually plug the leads into the machine. Geniuses, we all are.

So we ran the EKG - first with me reclining back, then holding a deep breath, and finally, lying on my right side. It went well and all in all, it was an interesting lab. Now we finally know what those lil squiggly lines mean. And I have my very own sheet of signals. I don't think I'll be having a heart attack anytime soon.

Still, physio has not been a favorite class of mine so far and the next test, coming up this Tuesday ... sighs.

On a happier note, another of my cousin is getting/has gotten married! They've registered, but the banquet is set for next month. I was a tad worried about the whirlwind courtship, but he seems happy and as long as he's happy, all is good. With all these preparations going on, I'm getting excited too. My dad just went over the other day to help write out the invitations because his Chinese calligraphy is supposed to be pretty good - or at least, pretty neat - and yay, it's just exciting haha. I love weddings.

Writing status: I'm so sorry, but like my sleep hours, it's been nonexistent. I wish it was otherwise. No time. No mood. No joy. Thank you all for continuing to send your messages and reviews even though my responses are still delayed - everytime I get an email, my day just brightens. You're the best.