I'm related to a surgeon! Oh, wait...

Found a CT surgeon that I'm related to in Tennessee. Never heard of him before, but there are only a dozen people with my dad's name in the whole country.

He went to med school in the Caribbean! That's so my dad's side of the family (laughing).

http://www.utmedicalgroup.com/pages/docprofile/doc_Ellichman.html

Why didn't I think of this before?

Mmmmmm, Seattle in late December through February: so dark, so dank, it hardens the heart. My school grades go straight into the toilet, and my attitude comes straight out of my ass. Got yer gratitude right here.

So Florida, coupla interviews, mid-January, this could work out okay, ya think? I've got Nova in Ft. Lauderdale on a Friday, and then LECOM in Bradenton the following Wednesday. Four days to blow, what to do, what to do?

I'm thinking this:










No amount of creative effort has resulted in academic success for me during past winters at UW. It's all Bergman, no Disney. In reality, skipping class to go study biochemistry in a hammock on Key West is as likely to get me A's as anything else. It behooves me to try. Plus I get to be only 60 miles from Cuba. That's progress.

Meanwhile, it seems that my subconscious is responsible for my applying to Bradenton in the first place. Yes, they have all planned awful plastic suburban cookie-cutter horrid Bradyesque dwellings, but I totally forgot about the tennis! Agassi trained with Bolletieri in Bradenton back when he was a mean punk with hair. Now it all makes sense. (Yeah, sure, Sharapova and Kournikova and Courier too, whatever.) Now I'm mad crushing on Bradenton.

More love from Florida

Hmm, so let's review. Since I was a little kid I've been a nutcase for charming old houses. Ever since I had a choice, I've sought out old, charming neighborhoods to live in, where I have cared with affection for 60-70 year old oil furnaces, lath/plaster walls, double hung wooden windows with leaded glass, floors made from long-extinct oak species, etc. It's a passion. This was the house I gave up to go to med school:

















So this morning I got invited to interview at a med school in a planned community in Florida. Oh, boy. Bradenton is sort of a Tampa suburb, and the Lakewood Ranch neighborhood is about 5 minutes old. Every building style that I've ever mocked or scoffed at is going to be, um, all there is there.

But I like the school, and it's strictly PBL. PBL is "problem-based learning," where instead of receiving information passively in lecture and then taking regular multiple-choice exams, students are given problems to solve. So you'd be given a patient history and some symptoms, for example, and scurry off to learn about the descending colon and what can go wrong there, and what patients complain of, and what kind of surgical and medicinal treatments are used, and then you're on the hook to orally, interactively, present and discuss your diagnosis and plan with the faculty mentor.

If you know me at all, you know this would be ideal for me. It could suck for my classmates, though, if they're interested in being in charge or getting to do anything without my permission or getting a word in edgewise. I kid, I kid.

Bradenton is the only school, of the 45 I've applied to, that asked about addiction or alcoholism history. It's been tremendously discouraging to keep my 9 years of sobriety under wraps in this process, because it's arguably the most interesting thing I bring to the table, and it's inarguably the foundation of compassion and reality that could make me a good doctor. But it's a really, really stupid thing to mention unless asked - these are doctors I'm trying to impress, doctors who consistently fail at attempts to treat alcoholics, and have no reason to like us very much. But on Bradenton's secondary app, I was fairly relieved to get to answer the question honestly, and it'll be interesting to see if it comes up in the interview. The downside would be if it's the ONLY thing that gets talked about...

Here's a new status map, with Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, Bradenton Campus added. I'll be in Florida January 10 - 17, something like that. Des Moines rejected me right off the bat - at least they're quick. Their minimum science GPA is 3.0, and mine's 2.974, and they're drowning in apps, so that's fair.


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PNWU-hooo

I've got interview #3: Pacific Northwest U. in Yakima, some time in January. Brand new DO school: first class starts next fall. As in, it may not have chairs yet, much less cadavers. But I'll go see whassup.


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Swimming in UW's Consideration Pool

UW just sent post-interview follow up email saying I haven't been rejected. This was what I was hoping for.

UW is seeing over 5000 applicants this year, which is a substantial increase. The number of MD school applicants has been increasing by a few thousand a year since House went on the air. Correct, that "House" is the drug-addicted, walks-with-a-cane, sociopathic TV doctor who only has to solve fun diagnostic puzzles, gets to belittle and yell at his patients, pops Vicodin like candy and sleeps with his students. Gray's Anatomy is also a likely cause, since it demonstrates that all surgical residents are fabulously good looking and regularly sleep with their stunningly good looking teacher-doctors. I can't speak for Nip/Tuck but I'm sure it's also a factor.

You know, when ER came on the air in 1994, I couldn't wait for Thursday night. My sister bought me scrubs for Christmas and I wore them while I watched the show. I was a fanatic. I started using words like "intubate," "pre-eclamptic" and "CBC, Chem 7, type and cross" in regular conversation. The actor who played Mark Green went to my high school (this is not to imply I had needs that Clooney couldn't meet). But watching that show never triggered a desire to practice medicine. I didn't know, and didn't care, what was involved in medical education. My interest in ER faded and I moved onto Will & Grace and then any show that has competitive dancing on it. It's just TV.

Fast forward 13 years and "just TV" is making it extra difficult for non-stellar medical school applicants like myself to get accepted. Such is life. UW accepts some stellar applicants right after their interview; these acceptees will have multiple acceptances to choose from, and some will reject UW. As these seats are freed up, applicants on the waiting list are offered acceptances. Some of these waitee-acceptees will have multiple acceptances and reject UW. Then these freed seats draw from the "still under consideration" pool, which is where I swim. I should know how it turns out by April.

Meanwhile, Vermont rejected me, and I added Des Moines. Here's the map (you can zoom this etc.):

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UW interview, and making friends with DO

On Thursday I spent what felt like a million-dollar half hour being interviewed by three physicians on UW's medical faculty. I thought I did pretty well, and I came out feeling great. (That's weird! Name somebody more neurotic than me. It's a bit of work, huh?) While I don't have an abiding passion for UW as a school, given that it's largely been a soul-crushing isolating impersonal void of despair where I learned how it feels to be ordinary (except when I'm in lab: blessed, grace-saving lab), I am excited to have UW as one of the two smiley faces on my map of med schools:











Today's med school application status roundup:

• 2 lovely smile-inducing interviews (UW, Nova)
• 25 secondary-application-receiving money-grubbing hostage-taking semi-communicative passive-aggressive pending possible-interview-granters for whom I bled my special diversity into essay form (green question marks)
• 5 ghostlike mysterious secondary-eschewing shy quiet amnesiacs (also green question marks)
• 12 rejections (The red X's. Dead to me. Yes, I'm talking to YOU, Appalachian region.)

So let's talk about D.O. D.O. stands for Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. (I do not know where the M went.) M.D. is abbreviated Latin for Teacher of Medicine. When you get an M.D., that means you went to a US school of allopathic medicine. When you get a D.O., that means you went to a US school of osteopathic medicine. If you went to med school elsewhere, you might have a MBBS, MBChB, DM, MS, MDCM or MAO. If you're in any of these categories, and you do a US residency and pass the US boards, you can be pretty much any kind of doctor you want to be.

Which brings me to the orthopedic surgeon I shadowed for three days last month. I have a new hero. Dr. P's dad started the first sports medicine clinic in the world, back in the 60's, and was the team physician for the Mariners. Dr. P saw maybe 60 patients in clinic during the two days I followed him around the office, and gave the most professional, supportive, consistent personal care I believe I've ever seen a doctor give (and I've been paying close attention for some time). He had patients travel to see him from all over the Pacific Northwest. In the OR, Dr. P did a bunch of arthroscopic knee procedures and then put a pin in an elderly lady's broken hip. Every bit as sexy as the ileostomy and discectomy I watched earlier this year. This guy's the doctor I want to be.

Yep. He's a D.O., and so was his dad. Any questions?

In addition to 34 MD schools, I've applied to 10 DO schools, and I already have an interview at Nova in Fort Lauderdale. In January. Sucks to not be me.

So today, I'm watching the "snow" come down*, and feeling pretty darned good about this whole med school deal.

Thank you for your continuing support.
- Cy

*by "snow" I mean the brief dusting that will shut down Seattle for a week, I'm sure.