Balance

It recently occured to me, that, as is often the case when I leave home, Mom doesn't know how well I'm eating, if at all. I suppose she should be put at ease, because I did tell her that I've sent down peanut butter and honey, and she knows I should be able to find some fruit somewhere, but I figured I'd incorporate into a slide show the reasons she needn't worry about my health. First up on the menu? Oatmeal. When we were running around Costco in Miami, it somehow seemed as a good idea to grab a box of Quaker Oats. the funny thing, is that I'd never been a huge fan of oatmeal before - not the instant, anyway. Nevertheless, it was fitting fuel for the lecture this morning, which was more interesting than most; we got into some chromosomal abnormalities and all of the nondisjunctions and translocations that can result in things like Edward's Syndrome (Trisomy 18 - if occuring in a male, written as 47,XY+18), Klinefelter Syndrome (47,XXY), and Turner's Syndrome (45,X). I've never been big on genetics, but since things like the Genome Wide Analysis Studies are continually finding genetic origins in everything from bipolar disorder to Type 2 Diabetes, it's certainly something that's going to factor very heavily in medicine in the future.



Next up on the menu is seasoned rice, a banana, and passion fruit juice. Other days, I grab some spicy chicken to go along with it, but I figure that this, in addition to my multivitamin, more than fullfilles my fruit needs for the day. Funny story: so our nutritionst, at orientation, told us that when people went to the Shacks (the little local food places near the exit to Ross) and came out with diarrhea and GI distress, it may not be the food - maybe it's just that they've gone for a large passion fruit and mango juice, and some oranges and guava - all very high in fiber. After lunch, we sat and listened to two lecture - one on fetal alcohol syndrome, and one on sickle cell anemia. The FAS lecture was one of those things they ought to show kids in high-school - it's so easily preventable, and offers the 100% guarantee so elusive in medince: don't drink, and your kid won't get FAS.



As soon as that was over, we ran over to James store for some groceries. I'd called Momt to get her recipe for Jamaican Rice and Peas - the delicious dish you see before you now. It's not as good as hers, but I spiced it up a bit by tossing in some cubed turkey ham. Not bad for the first meal I've cooked on the island! (So there you go, Mom -three balanced meals, plus coffee and the obligatory protein shake). After that, it was back to school to go over today's lectures before the first anatomy TA session. Those are going to be incredibly helpful, but I'm really enjoying anatomy - it looks like it'll be something I have an easier time forcing myself to do than, say, enzyme kinetcis. We went over everything we've done so far - bony landmarks and muscles of the back; the spinal cord and dural sack; and the suboccipital triangle. I don't know...maybe there's a surgeon in me somewhere.... Although, if there is, he really has to step up his game; I've decide that I'm going to know every dissection so well, I know it better than the people who actually did the cutting.



After that, I went to the gym. During orientation, they went out of their way to let us know that we ought to keep up with the exercise - some students come and throw themselves into their studies with such manic vigor that sleep and exercise are cast aside like hindrances. That tends to get folks out of whack; balance is necessary in everything. I've known since before MERP that I'd no longer be able to spend two and three hours in the gym like I used to, and so I've had to condense those workouts down to 45 minutes. It's like a reward, now; what do I get for studying hard? I get muscle aches!



All joking aside, this balance has only just begun to show up in my studying. The first week was all anatomy; then there was a stint of biochemistry, then it was cell bio, then back to biochem - I tend to spend the lion share of my study-time going over the topics I feel the shakiest on. However, the fact that we're doing different things in class every day - and getting a new professor about every 3 days - is making me realize that I need to just stay on top of everything, all the time. I have a list of things I need to get through, but I tend to either (1) focus on the things I like and blow off the boring stuff, or (2) focus on (not read too closely) the things I don't like and blow off those with which I feel a bit more comfortable. I've got to get better at scheduling things, managing my time - it's a little difficult since I've had no quizzes or tests, but hopefully I'll be on top of it.