Stress

We're just going to pretend that it hasn't been six months since I've updated.

Yes, yes we are.

To very briefly sum up: it was a busy summer, it's been a busy semester. Story of my life. I'm now proficient at performing brain surgery on rats, and have been touched by the gods of IV surgeries. Seriously, I have magic hands. I can cut open a rat, find the main artery, tie it off, insert a needle and then catheter into the heart, and then tie it up. And the rat survives.

I'm not so great at putting the rats under anesthetic, however. (Tip: when you hit the liver, the rat dies instantly. And the lab's 'No Rat Left Behind' surgery day fails.)

That was most of my summer - working in the lab of one of the pharmacy professors, while still working at Shaver's. I worked 13 days in a row all summer and generally had no time off.

This semester has been insane. Modules are always fast paced, but this seems more intense than last year. We're finishing up the second infectious disease module right now. I have been devouring these topics, and feel even more confident that infectious disease is what I want to do. It's absolutely fascinating. I've also been shadowing an expert pharmacist in a local HIV clinic, and have discovered some interesting things about how I view patients.

What can be one of the most frustrating parts of working with the general public is patients with progressive, preventable diseases. It's hard to see patients who are at the tail end of a condition when at literally *every step* along the progression of this disease, patients have been told what they can do to improve and/or reverse part of their condition. Invariably, they chose not to act on this information. These are diseases that need patient involvement and commitment to see any real improvement and more often than not it just isn't there. Things like cholesterol, hypertension, or type II diabetes - in a majority of cases, when caught early, lifestyle changes are enough. If patients don't put forth the effort, nothing I can do will help them. It's hard to watch that and not be able to do anything and it gets frustrating.

However, I have nothing but empathy for the HIV patients I see. It probably helps that a majority of the ones I've spoken with are very proactive when it comes to their health and have done the legwork on their part to understand the disease.

I think it comes down to having more empathy with anyone who takes the time to understand their disease and at least makes an effort to help themselves. Lifestyle changes aren't always enough, and that's when I'm supposed to be there.

This is something I need to work on.

Another reason this semester has been insane is because I'm the chair of the pharmacy fair. I've worked with a wonderful committee for a year to convince companies to come and interview students, hopefully for positions. It was already stressful with the tanking economy and resulting reluctance to attend in companies, but then a selection of students decided my efforts were all in vain and it wasn't worth their time to attend. Enter a month long battle with scheduling, angry e-mails, and general excessive drama. What happened to professionalism? What happened to enjoying an opportunity to bond with your fellow students? To practice interviewing with companies you will be dealing with at some point in your career?

This is a very contained version of the frustration I've had over the last months, but thankfully it's over now and the fair went well. And I only came close to slaughtering my fellow students a few times (blood is so hard to get out of suit fabric). The worst was when a student was verbally attacking a recruiter in front of approximately 150 people - had I not been in another room watching with utter horror on camera, there would have been blood. Someone actually yelled "Go get her, Kirstin!"

Unfortunately, I have four days to study for the final of the second infectious disease module. Such is life.

I promise I'll be updating more though.