The snow gods are good!

Last weekend, Tay and I and a friend from school made a quick trip up to Sugarbush to get in a bit of skiing and relaxation. Although our arrival was delayed until 2:30am due to snowy roads - my car just barely made it up the steep Sugarbush Access Road that leads up to the mountain - the entire mountain was in outstanding condition the following day. Now tonight, after a weekend of studying for a test that was scheduled for tomorrow, I have learned that school is cancelled tomorrow due to the massive snowstorm that is supposed to drop up to 14" on Long Island. As a result, I was able to catch an episode of Platinum Weddings (quality television) tonight and can spend tomorrow catching up on the work that I had put aside in favor of studying (and, if Tay has tomorrow off from work and can play outside with me, build a snowman).

Besides the glorious snow, much has happened in the past two months that bears mentioning. During the first four weeks of the semester, I completed an entire course in neuroscience. It was somewhat less than my favorite experience. I entered the course unready to end vacation, excited about being engaged, and with sort of a bias against the subject as a result of a short-lived experience working in neurology before I got my job at the cancer center at Dartmouth last year. The course was also poorly organized and the lectures were incredible scattered and involved long tangents, although that doesn't excuse my lack of motivation. Also, the second-year students led my class to believe that this course would be much easier than our fall curriculum. (Not true!!) I survived, although my enthusiasm and pride took a bit of a beating.

Now I am studying physiology (how the different body systems work) and histology (the study of different body tissues). The professor is phenomenal, both in terms of organization and teaching ability. I truly wish he could teach every single other course in med school!! I also find these topics much more interesting; in studying, for example, how the heart functions and what goes wrong in congestive heart failure or aortic valve stenosis, I feel like I am truly a medical student! I do have to admit, though, that even with my interest in this class, I have a love/hate relationship with med school. I know/think (it changes with my mood and the day's events) that I want to be a doctor, but this part of the journey is hard and not that much fun. The information actually isn't that difficult to grasp, but there is such a enormous amount that trying to learn and understand it in a meaningful way given the time constraints is a neverending battle. Part of me is very concerned with grades and wants to achieve the highest scores I can in everything, but another part of me doesn't want to give up absolutely everything else in my life in order to do that. So you see, there is an opportunity for frustration and unhappiness regardless of which path I choose. (I vacillate often.) Further, it has been disconcerting to discover that, although it is the path I have chosen, I don't always like med school. I am learning, through my mindful meditation practice, to come to grips with that and accept the situation and do the best I can.

On a lighter note, with the help of Tay and our friend Bill, I presented a poster at an academic conference in New Haven, CT, last month. It was the culmination of a project that we completed while earning our masters degrees, and we submitted it to this year's meeting of the North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology. We developed a decision tool intended to assist women who are pregnant with triplets in deciding whether to carry the full triplet pregnancy to term (which involves health risks to both the mother and fetuses, in addition to heightened risks of handicaps such as cerebral palsy and Down's Syndrome in the children) or to undergo selective reduction (which carries risks of its own, although it lessens the aforementioned risks). Here we are at the poster session:


The poster was well-received, and we spent a fantastic weekend catching up with a variety of friends in New Haven. A definite highlight was the fact that I got to go shopping for a wedding dress with one of my closest friends!

It looks like I have been my verbose self once again. Back to the books for a bit and then off to bed so I can be well-rested to enjoy tomorrow. I think we are never to old to relish a snow day!

Reese Witherspoon is my Fashion Twin

Last Saturday night, Tay and I attended a semi-formal, affectionately known as the Med School Prom. It was held at the Port Jefferson Country Club, which is not far from where we live, and we had a great time. I wore a new dress that my mom had very generously bought for me during our Christmas-sales shopping spree. Just a few days before the event, I was perusing the internet and saw a picture of Reese Witherspoon, one of my favorite actresses, wearing an incredibly similar dress! (Here she is at the People's Choice awards, courtesy of People.com) Clearly she and her stylist must have been monitoring my recent fashion picks!

My First (sort of) Real Patient!

One of the things that I heard about way back when I interviewed at Stony Brook just over a year ago was the Moms Program. Run through the Obstetrics & Gynecology Student Interest Group, it allows each student to be paired with a pregnant woman and to attend all of her prenatal visits and, eventually, the birth. I signed up immediately and was paired with a very nice woman named Lisa. So far, I have attended 3 appointments with her and observed a sonogram. She is about 26 weeks pregnant, so at this point, the baby is fully developed and just growing bigger, and I can actually tell what I'm looking at when I watch the sonogram being done! (I'm pretty sure I also know the gender. Lisa and her husband want to be surprised, although they have mentioned that one or two sonogram pictures made them think they know the answer.)

Lisa, like all of the women involved in the Moms Program, receives her care from the midwife service at Stony Brook. (Certified Nurse Midwives are masters-trained nurses who specialize in women's reproductive care.) Apparently the approach to childbirth is very different when you have a midwife birth as opposed to an MD birth. Hopefully I will be able to attend this birth so I can learn some more. (I also really hope that she doesn't go into labor in the middle of the night. Then again, with her first baby, who is now 17 months old and absolutely adorable, she was in labor for over 50 hours, so that would give me plenty of time to get there!)

The office where Lisa gets her care is right down the highway from school, so it has been very easy for me to attend her appointments and then get back to class. At yesterday's appointment, I got a real treat. The midwife let me use the Doppler heart rate monitor to find the baby's heartbeat! She explained how to feel around to find where the baby feels the most firm (its back) and then slowly search for the heartbeat. I found it pretty quickly, recognizing the fast swish-swish sound. Clinical experiences like this definitely help keep me motivated when I am slogging through courses like neuroscience!

Dr. MacDonell-Yilmaz

That will be the name on my medical license someday, because Tay and I got engaged!

As I mentioned previously, we spent a lovely Christmas at my family's condominium at Sugarbush, VT, with some presents in the morning and an afternoon of skiing, then a great dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. The following day, for the first run, Tay suggested we ski Sleeper, a very pretty trail with several offshoots that meander through the woods. Suspecting nothing, I followed him down one of these small side trails, and when he stopped on the side, I skied right past him. "Becky, wait! Stop!" he called after me. "Come back here!"

"You want me to hike back up there??" I asked, and when he nodded, I decided that he must have a good reason. There wasn't a great distance between us, and when I arrived, he stepped out of his skis, saying nonchalantly, "Let's take a break." And in that moment, I knew. He stepped in close to me, lifted my goggles from my face up onto my helmet, and as he began talking, I burst into tears. He wiped my face, then got down on one knee in the snow on the side of the trail and asked me to marry him.

After hugs and more tears and a resounding Yes!, I asked him if my parents knew about this. Of course, it turns out that they had all been in cahoots for a few weeks, and the day before, my mom had actually helped Tay scope out the perfect spot for the proposal. As we continued down the trail, there were Mom and Dad, standing off to the side smiling and waiting for us to arrive and share the good news.


My engagement ring is extra special to me because it is a unique setting (the jewelry company was nice enough to make a new mold, altering an existing setting to fit our preferences) and the center stone is a diamond that my late grandmother willed to me. I am still getting used to feeling it on my hand and to looking down and seeing it each day, and I love every minute of the excitement! Here are some pictures:

Although we are in no rush to set a date, I will admit to buying a wedding magazine yesterday and reading just about all of it in one sitting. As many of you know, I am a planner, and I relish the process of investigating different options and taking care of all the details. In any case, I feel incredibly lucky to have found Tay and to be able to share this happiness with my wonderful family and friends. Happy New Year and all the best to everyone in 2009!

1/8 MD!

As of last Friday, I have completed 1/8 of medical school! After lots of preparation and a fair bit of worrying, my finals went well. In fact, yesterday I got kind of an early Christmas present in that my biochemistry grade was posted and I was very happy! I'm still waiting on my final anatomy score, but I know approximately what it will be, and I'm totally satisfied.

It's really amazing how much can change in a few short months. I know this from past experience, and had tried to remind myself earlier in the semester, whenever I got worried and agitated, that eventually I would get used to this whole med school thing and it would seem like old hat. I realized I had reached that point about 2 weeks ago. I had the day off from class, but needed to go to my ICM (Intro to Clinical Medicine) site, where I work with an internal medicine doctor about once or twice a month, learning to do basic patient interviews and exams. I stopped by school to pick up my white coat and stethoscope from my locker, and as I hurried through the halls, I realized that the only thing on my mind at the moment was driving carefully through the rain to get to the site on time - a perfectly normal thing to think about. This was in stark contrast to earlier days when, in addition to normal worries, I had to think about finding my way around the halls of the Health Sciences Center where I go to school. (On the first day of class, after I finally figured out how to get from my car to the right entrance of the building, I had to follow other classmates because I didn't know which way to wind through the seemingly-labyrinthine halls to get to class!) School alone provides enough to worry about, so imagine how much was on my mind when I was still adapting to my new setting! It was like a full-bodied sigh of "Aaaaahh, I'm ok now," to realize that, without knowing when exactly, I had passed through that initial phase. Now my full concentration can be given to school rather than being spread thin between school, navigation, meeting new people, etc.

After finals, I slept past noon for the first two days. I'm starting to feel like a normal person again, re-entering the rest of life and taking care of things like laundry and buying stamps. I'm also starting to work out how I will spend next summer - my last free summer! I'm hoping to do some clinical oncology research (surprise, surprise), but I'm not sure where that will happen yet. I have already applied to one program, and will investigate several others as well.

And now the holidays are in full swing. Tay and I spent Sunday evening with his mom and her boyfriend, Monday evening with his father, stepmother, and little brother who just turned 7, and last night with my parents. We actually had my family's "official" Christmas last night, including a scrumptious meal and many thoughtful gifts, because we are heading up to Vermont today for four days of skiing. (We did save some presents to bring up there; I'm still a little kid and insisted we have something to open on the real Christmas Day.)

With that, I will end and continue cleaning the apartment and packing. I wish everyone happy and healthy holidays!!

Cadaver Dreams

Last night, with only six sessions of dissection to go, I had my first dream about anatomy. In it, Harvey was whole again - organs back in place, skin intact, face no longer marred. I was gathering clothing in order to dress him before he was sent away. I remember feeling very sad that it was time for him to go. At the end, I patted him on the chest and said, "Thank you, Harvey. I will be a better doctor because of you."

Just a quick post to celebrate the election outcome and share some pictures from Halloween. Hoping that Sarah Palin would henceforth disappear from the US political arena and such a costume would never again be relevant, I decided to dress up as her for Halloween, complete with folksy accent and incessant winking. (My pin says "I love Real America.") I admit I was probably channeling Tina Fey as much as the real Palin, but it made for a very entertaining evening and "also too" earned a ton of laughs. Maverick!