What is that big bright thing in the sky?

Oh right, it's the sun! I haven't seen it in a few weeks. We had our last exam for cellular biology and our final biochemistry exam before the NBME this afternoon. Final word count on my notes: 130,000.

It's nice to just be able to take a few hours without thinking about what causes homocysteinuria or Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. Yes, you heard that right. We are, in fact, learning pertinent medicine!

Our last few lectures seemed to flash by. We covered purine and pyrimidine (read as DNA) molecules and the deficiencies associated with them. We learned about cancers and some of the more basic causes. We learned what medicines can treat those cancers and why they can treat them. We learned why acetaminophen and alcohol don't mix in a lecture on xenobiotic metabolism. We covered cellular movement and cytoskeleton formation. We also went over most of the vitamins and minerals, their function, as well as what happens if you don't have enough or too much (things I had no base knowledge in at all).

What else...oh yeah! We got to take a sexual history this last section of class. While it was fun to do in general, it was even more fun when we realized our standardized patient had prepared a list of jokes to make us feel really awkward. It was weird, however, to ask someone as old as your grandparents how their sex life was doing...
Guess it's just part of being a doctor eh?

So we got through our latest and final class exams for this block. No more biochemistry lectures. No more medical cell biology lectures. Does this mean we're done? Not by a long shot my reader(s?)! The shelf exam, the NBME, the National Board of Medical Examiners final for biochemistry is Tuesday. This means that tomorrow morning I dive back into my biochemistry text book. The goal: read it cover to cover in 3 days. Daunting, I know, but I can hopefully get through with 2/3 of it by then.

The exam actually isn't that bad. Its grading scale is based on the national average. Scoring in the 50th percentile on the test nets you an 85% for the exam grade. You quite literally have to score in the bottom 5th percentile in the country to fail the final (not that I hope I get that low).

Do we get a break after the NBME? Not really. We start gross anatomy on Wednesday. That means we start gross lab, the cadaver lab, that evening. I feel like I'll finally be taking a class I have a strong base in. Then again, I thought that about biochemistry, so we'll see about that.

What was my favorite part about this last block of classes? I'd imagine it was the cancer sections. It amazes me the sheer improbability for a single cell to gain/lose all of the functions necessary to make it into the malignant mass that it eventually becomes. The breakthroughs that scientists make every day to combat cancer are also very cool. Maybe I'll be practicing when they come out with the sure fire cure. Wouldn't that be fantastic.

I wouldn't say that it sparked my interest in oncology, but it definitely got me thinking about it. It might be something worth looking into more, but we'll see. Until next time folks, I'm sure I'll have some interesting things to write about this week after cadaver lab.

Good Break Men! Onward!

For the last few weeks, I've been studying the following:

• Glycolysis, glycogenesis, gluconeogenesis, and all of the fun syntheses of sugars (along with around 50 enzymes to memorize using dirty pneumonics)
• The electron transport chain and how the body gets its energy (and why dinitrophenol was bad for everyone!), the pentose phosphate pathway, and beta-oxidation
• Structures and syntheses of lipids, cholesterol, steroids, and hormones
• Membrane receptor pathways for G-proteins, Serine and Tyrosine Kinase receptors, and JAK/STAT receptors (and all of the less famous receptors - my favorite being the Hedgehog receptor)
• Population genetics (which turns out to be quite similar to racial profiling...go figure), genetic screenings, and pedigree analysis
• Somewhere between thirty and fifty diseases and disorders that are associated with defective enzymes in any of the above subjects. This part was particularly cool, since it actually felt clinically relevant; we felt like we were in medical school rather than in some PhD class.

I spent the entire last two weeks studying for the exam that we had on Friday. I imagine that the exam went fairly well, but I won't know officially if my zealous study habits payed off until sometime today or Tuesday. One thing that did come of the Friday exam was...free time!

For the first time in some five weeks I actually had a full two days off with no obligations, no attachments, and nothing at all to study! Good times were had.

Everything important that needed to be done got finished. Grocery shopping? Check! Laundry done...almost! Cleaned my kitchen? Maybe next free weekend... And cleaning up my room? Eh, it's not too dirty for now.

So what did I do? My long time girlfriend came up for the weekend to spend some quality time. We climbed the highest mountain within fifteen miles of here (gas is expensive), ate at some local restaurants, and genuinely enjoyed the free time we had together.

Tomorrow I go back to the grind. We start on microtubules and actin/myosin filament structures and I know that'll have me on the edge of my seat. With a whole weekend of rest and relaxation, I feel like I can take on medical school once again. Bring it on!