Already Gone

The title pretty much sums up the UVA football season. Done before it even started. As a long-time Wahoo fan and avid football fan, I can't even begin to explain how disappointed I am. Every year we have high hopes for the team, and everyone involved talks up the team and how strong it will be, but starting off losing to a Division I-AA school in William and Mary (and not a top D I-AA school either!) really doesn't bode well for the season. 7 turnovers - are you kidding me? It was unbelievable. I can't believe that was many of my classmates' first glimpse into UVA athletics - who will want to go to games now? On the bright side, I had a great turnout for the tailgate I ran before the game and it was awesome to see some of my undergraduate friends as well! In other football news, we learned this week about separated shoulders in anatomy, which is exactly what happened to OU's Sam Bradford on Saturday night. It was cool to see a real-life example of something we learned!

Last Wednesday I started my Social Issues in Medicine (SIM) community service at a center for at-risk teens. We spent about an hour total playing basketball - my total ineptness at least kept the teens pretty entertained. All in all, I had fun and it was nice to have a break from the wire-to-wire studying.

On Thursday we were "thrown into the fire" so to speak as we had our first hospital interviews with real patients. We were paired off and each of us talked to a patient and gathered their history for about 30 minutes. A few of my classmates reported some difficulty establishing a good relationship with the patient - it made me think back to how I had the same issues starting off as a fresh EMT 4 years ago. We do not spend 30 minutes talking to patients in EMS though, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much my patient opened up about his past and his feelings about his illness. It was definitely a powerful experience. I'm looking forward to helping some of my classmates interview people - it's definitely something you have to do often to become comfortable with.

Spent pretty much all day today reviewing anatomy, and went into the lab this evening to review some of the structures. I was surprised at how many of the parts I could identify correctly! We move to the hand and the legs this week - I'll definitely need to do my best to keep up!