Oh man, I'm tired.
I'm doing an elective right now that is called "musculoskeletal boot camp," and until today, I thought it was pretty posh for boot camp. Don't get me wrong, I'm learning a TON - it's kind of a mix of clinical work and teaching sessions - but the hours have been pretty sweet and I've had a lot of time to read and consolidate what I'm learning. (A nice change.)
Today was soooo long, though. Pretty much all-day teaching, and although it was all wonderful, my brain is mush. MUSH. The curriculum at my school is problem-based (meaning we don't have many lectures at all - instead we use patient cases as springboards for our learning) and self-directed (meaning we meet in small groups with a tutor - a practicing physician - to decide what we need to learn to understand the problem we're working on, and then we go off and learn it on our own, in whatever way suits us best -- books, talking to experts, whatever) -- so all-day lectures are something I haven't done since undergrad. On top of that, there are only 11 other students doing this elective, and most of them are in my class - and we're used to being active participants in our learning, so it's not just a matter of sitting in a lecture, but instead actively participating. For the entire day, 7 to 4. Madness. I don't even have the brainpower to knit tonight. I've been playing stupid games on MSN for the past hour and a half and I'm going to bed as soon as I'm done writing this (at 9:30 p.m.)!
I really like rheumatology. Rural Family Medicine has been a focus for me since the end of first year (and it was high on the list before that), but it's nice to be exposed to other specialties that I also really enjoy. If only rheumatology didn't require an internal medicine residency. I'm not sure I'm willing to take that on. In fact, I'm pretty darn sure I'm NOT. The say that 20% of what family docs see is musculoskeletal, though, so I suppose this is all good experience.
I've also been taking the "patient experience" in rheumatology to the next level lately. I finally got an answer about my sore hands - I was diagnosed with "early seronegative rheumatoid arthritis" yesterday. Blech. I don't have much to say about it yet, but it certainly wasn't the best news I've ever had.
