Showing posts with label Medical School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medical School. Show all posts
As happy as we'll be to get back to America, we're really going to miss this place! I've been feeling nostalgic all term, but it didn't hit Jared until this last week that he might be a little sad to say goodbye to our island home. It happened when he looked up our flight itinerary for the end of the term. When he told me we'd be going home on May 14, I gasped. That's only a day after his finals! That means no last-minute island explorations or beach days together free of school stress before we go home.
When I explained this to him, he thought about if for a bit and then worry lines started to creep across his forehead. "Oh no! It's going to be kind of sad when we leave, huh?" He said, with something between worry, panic, and regret in his voice. Without me even prompting him, he suggested that I write down all the highlights of Grenada—all the things we can't miss doing together before we leave. Then he told me to pick a Saturday for us to do all those things together, and he'd make sure during the week to get ahead on his studies so we can give Grenada a proper farewell.
I knew that the girls in Grenada would relate to and enjoy the video, but for whatever reason (sheer embarrassment) I held off sharing it until last week. I posted it to a Facebook group of some close church friends here with a disclaimer that I had sung the whole thing a capella and didn't add the music in until later, so please just tune out the out-of-tuneness. I had to, since one of the girls in the group is a legit professional singer who spent several months on one of those TV singing shows. #famous.
Anyway, long story short, they loved it and demanded I share it to the SGU SOO page (a Facebook page for the hundreds of SGU student "significant others"). I did, and they all laughed and cried and shared it to their own Facebook walls and it went Grenada viral. Jared started having people stop him on campus to ask him if he was the guy in the the wanna-get-a-suntan video. It was one of those 5-minutes-of-fame things that only lasted a day or two, but it was a good catalyst to get me sharing some of my video work. Also, a girl from my major at BYU found it when she typed in "med student wife" to youtube and it was the top hit. We bonded in the comments section.
The subsequent iMessage I sent to my brothers: "Brosephs. Over a thousand people have watched me sing my embarrassing 'want to get a suntan' video on youtube. WHAT HAVE YOU EVEN DONE WITH YOUR LIVES?"
As I mentioned yesterday, Jared recently had his first day of visiting Grenada's public hospital to follow a doctor around with his cute little med student group. He's been looking forward to this day since first term, and it was monumental. The first of many many many MANY days spent learning in a hospital, which is what Jared's dreams are made of. He came home wearing his white jacket, which is major attractiveness points in my opinion. I didn't get a picture, buuut I'm sure there will be dozens of white coat pictures in the future.
The trip left him exhausted. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that the public hospital here is not air conditioned, and they cram as many patients as possible into each room. #thirdworldproblems. Apparently the patient that Jared's group was working with was a nice Grenadian woman who lived in England for several years. When they asked her if they could check her heartbeat and some other things she was like, "Ya sure!" And then she unexpectedly tore open her blouse. The doctor came back after that and was like, "Maybe next time let's close the curtains off to give her some privacy when you listen to her heart sounds." No one was phased though. I think it's kind of cool that Jared gets to experience a whole different hospital culture. I asked Jared if he had anything to say about the day that he'd like me to write. This is what he said:
"The nicest person I've met in Grenada is a woman with sickle cell anemia, one lung, and a diaphragmatic hernia. She was the first patient I observed in the St. George's general hospital, and she's the most positive person I've met here. Clinicals can't come soon enough! Sitting down with books all day is taking its toll on me. I want to interact with doctors and patients."
There you have it. The picture at the top of this post is of the hospital. It's on some prime real estate and has a gorgeous view of the ocean and some pretty beaches. Maybe the patients don't get to appreciate the view as much as others might, but the constant breeze there probably makes a world of difference.
Jared and I don't get as much pillow talk in as I'd like. He studies and studies so hard that by the time he's done at night he is flat-out exhausted. When his head hits that pillow, the lights had better be out because he needs darkness to sleep and he's tired enough to be out in 15 seconds flat.
We're in the blessed, reasonable fifth term now though. And classes just started on Monday, so there's a feeling of "we can do this" in the air. An aura of lightness that hasn't been around since, well, before this whole med school biz. It's wonderful. The other night when the lights went out (all except the string of Christmas lights still above our bed, because we're those people), we had a nice chat about silly things--I don't remember what about exactly, but there was lots of giggling. And then as Jared adjusted the temperature down a degree Celsius, he remarked on how our AC remote looks like Bert, as in Bert and Ernie. See!
We laughed about that for forever and then I poured myself half a gulp of NyQuil, because I brought a nasty sleep-ruining cold with me from the States (the stuff also conveniently helped me adjust four hours ahead to the Grenada time zone). It was in this moment that I learned that I can thank NyQuil for our marriage. See, Jared always told me that he knew I was the girl for him because he never felt nervous or anxious around me--everything just came naturally. Come to find out, he actually threw down a swig of NyQuil each morning before our German class in the weeks just before and after we started dating to fend off the nerves (he now knows that that is not a sound medical practice)! That's why you never felt anxious around me, bubs! So I guess I'll be adding NyQuil to my gratitude turkey every Thanksgiving from now on.
We're in the blessed, reasonable fifth term now though. And classes just started on Monday, so there's a feeling of "we can do this" in the air. An aura of lightness that hasn't been around since, well, before this whole med school biz. It's wonderful. The other night when the lights went out (all except the string of Christmas lights still above our bed, because we're those people), we had a nice chat about silly things--I don't remember what about exactly, but there was lots of giggling. And then as Jared adjusted the temperature down a degree Celsius, he remarked on how our AC remote looks like Bert, as in Bert and Ernie. See!
We are looooving our Christmas break over here with Jared's family. Last night we hung ornaments on the tree, this morning Jared and I went for a gorgeous hour-long walk through a quiet preserve filled with hundreds of moss-covered trees, and tonight we'll all be decorating gingerbread houses together. Throw in our adorable 19-month-old niece, and we're in heaven.
These pictures are from the middle of Jared's most stressful finals week yet. We took a break one day to drive to Egmont (a really nice neighborhood in Grenada that's kind of a long drive from our house, but is fun to explore). We walked along the beach and ate peanut butter sandwiches and picked out the cutest conch shells from a giant pile of 'em. Those study breaks are life in med school. You can only do so much of this before your eyeballs fall out of their sockets and your brain 'splodes:
Yesterday, Jared had a group quiz for CPD. A patient comes in, and the students question the patient, take his or her history, and perform a basic medical examination. It was one of a handful of days each term in which Jared dresses up in nice clothes and his lab coat and hops on the SGU bus to go about his official med school business. I just love my guy in that white coat--and in his prescriptionless glasses that he never wears to school but are severely awesome.
Sorry I promised a post yesterday and then didn't deliver. I was up until 2:00 a.m. trying to meet a deadline for a huge family project I've been editing and formatting for the past year. Good news though--I'm done with it! So here is the post I promised, with few words and many pictures. These pictures were taken on Monday, after Jared finished his pathology midterm and we took a hike up to Mt. Qua Qua. We got a late start, which made things kind of dark going down, but we got to watch the sunset from up above the clouds. It was awesome.
Oh, and for those who wanted to know, Jared did awesome on both of his midterms! This is a relief, since 4th term is known to be the most difficult, and so now there's basically no chance of him having to retake a semester. We can confidently say that we will be done with this Grenada stage of med school in May. Three cheers for smart husbands.
I made a video. It contains all of the random little clips I took during our first year in Grenada (which technically spanned from August 2014 to May 2015, but I think I only started pulling out my camera for film in November).
I know it looks like it's 8 minutes long, but the entire first minute is just Jared's white coat ceremony and the last three minutes are clips from Jared's birthday and Thanksgiving. I had to put them somewhere, but you can pretty much skip those unless you want to see how weird we are/how unconventional and awesome our Thanksgiving was. Also, I just noticed that if you turn the volume up during those last Thanksgiving clips and listen in-between our talking, you can hear all the chirping tree frogs and insects that come out at night here and are super loud. I would recommend that.
I know it looks like it's 8 minutes long, but the entire first minute is just Jared's white coat ceremony and the last three minutes are clips from Jared's birthday and Thanksgiving. I had to put them somewhere, but you can pretty much skip those unless you want to see how weird we are/how unconventional and awesome our Thanksgiving was. Also, I just noticed that if you turn the volume up during those last Thanksgiving clips and listen in-between our talking, you can hear all the chirping tree frogs and insects that come out at night here and are super loud. I would recommend that.
Jared is currently in his toughest term of med school. This is less because of the content he is learning, and more because of his schedule. Here is what an average day in the life of Jared looks like this term (each day varies a bit, but this is an example of the particularly busy days):
6:30 Wake up and get ready for school. Eat breakfast and wake Laura up.
7:15 Ask Laura if she could maybe pack you a lunch before the school bus arrives in 1.5 minutes. Half-listen while Laura waddles around with zombie bedhead, carrying a jar of peanut butter, and tells you about the dream she had last night in which you were part of a British boy band and had killer dance moves.
7:20 Grab yo' lunch, smooch yo' wife, then sit on the front porch and wait to catch the bus up to campus.
8:00-12:00 Sit in the same lecture hall for 4 hours and try to understand as professors with thick foreign accents teach about the human body.
12:00-12:45 Devour lunch while preparing for labs.
1:00-5:00 Labs and clinical stuffs. Group work, group work, group work.
5:00-6:00 Rush home, eat dinner, review class notes, rush back to campus. Alternatively, wait for Laura to come to campus and eat dinner there with you.
6:00-8:00 Truly pointless clicker quizzes.
8:00 Back home, make a valient effort to study for a few hours, even though your brain has had more than enough.
10:00 Unwind with a much-needed episode of Parks & Rec.
10:30 Sleep.
So you see, there's not a whole lot of room for being a normally functioning human in there. Lots of days aren't quite so bad, and sometimes he's even home for good by 3:30 in the afternoon. Jared uses those days to play catch up on his studying and USMLE prep.
Weekends are our saving grace. This last Saturday, I woke up to the sound of Jared's deafening electric hair clippers (the electricity here turns hair clippers into lawn mowers). Jared's buddy Joe was over and Jared was giving him a haircut. This is a normal Saturday occurrence--Jared's building up quite the clientele (although he refuses to charge). Joe is an excellent human, so I joined them on the veranda and we talked about hiking and clinical rotations.
6:30 Wake up and get ready for school. Eat breakfast and wake Laura up.
7:15 Ask Laura if she could maybe pack you a lunch before the school bus arrives in 1.5 minutes. Half-listen while Laura waddles around with zombie bedhead, carrying a jar of peanut butter, and tells you about the dream she had last night in which you were part of a British boy band and had killer dance moves.
7:20 Grab yo' lunch, smooch yo' wife, then sit on the front porch and wait to catch the bus up to campus.
8:00-12:00 Sit in the same lecture hall for 4 hours and try to understand as professors with thick foreign accents teach about the human body.
12:00-12:45 Devour lunch while preparing for labs.
1:00-5:00 Labs and clinical stuffs. Group work, group work, group work.
5:00-6:00 Rush home, eat dinner, review class notes, rush back to campus. Alternatively, wait for Laura to come to campus and eat dinner there with you.
6:00-8:00 Truly pointless clicker quizzes.
8:00 Back home, make a valient effort to study for a few hours, even though your brain has had more than enough.
10:00 Unwind with a much-needed episode of Parks & Rec.
10:30 Sleep.
So you see, there's not a whole lot of room for being a normally functioning human in there. Lots of days aren't quite so bad, and sometimes he's even home for good by 3:30 in the afternoon. Jared uses those days to play catch up on his studying and USMLE prep.
Weekends are our saving grace. This last Saturday, I woke up to the sound of Jared's deafening electric hair clippers (the electricity here turns hair clippers into lawn mowers). Jared's buddy Joe was over and Jared was giving him a haircut. This is a normal Saturday occurrence--Jared's building up quite the clientele (although he refuses to charge). Joe is an excellent human, so I joined them on the veranda and we talked about hiking and clinical rotations.
After Joe left we went inside and stayed there for the next 9 hours, studying and working. At some point we turned into cave people and could communicate only by grunting and throwing tongue compressors at each other. We were saved by a Facebook message from our friend Alex, inviting us over for pizza and a swim in her apartment pool (this is a different girl and a different pool from the last post). We accepted without hesitation and were soon trying to explain to the pizza guy where to meet us (a difficult feat, since American English is very different from Grenadian English and also because there are no home addresses in Grenada). The girls (Alex, Michelle, and I) hovered in the pool and philosophically discussed our opinions on "beach vs. mountains" while the guys (Mark, Jason, and Jared) swam around and talked about investment opportunities. It was the perfect break from school and life, and this is the only picture I took. Just imagine good friends and pizza, an infinity pool, and a sky full of stars. Sometimes Grenada isn't the worst.
Water lemons are so yum. When Jared's family came to visit last month, we went for a tour around the island, and our taxi driver bought us a bag of them. The inside texture is like passion fruit--seedy and slimy. But instead of the sour taste of passion fruit, it's extremely sweet. I like to tear off a chunk of the thick outer layer and just suck out everything from the inside. There' nothing better.
Now that Jared's term is officially over, we've had lots of time to play. This morning we went on a hike to Concord Falls with a bunch of friends, this afternoon I played with some new hairstyles while Jared vegged out with a well-deserved computer game sesh, and this evening we ate authentic German food at the Schnitzel Haus with friends and watched hilarious YouTube vids that probably aren't at all funny unless it's late at night and you're hyped up on fro-yo. Ah, life with my husband back is prettttty great.
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