Wait, it's been how long?

Well, it's been just a few days shy of one year since I got back my Step 1 score and also since I updated. It isn't because I haven't meant to. I'm sure you understand that. But, life intervened. As of now, I'm just a few weeks away from starting my fourth year of medical school. I'm currently on track to be done with my coursework and clinical work well before graduation. The last time I spoke with my advisor, I was on track to be finished the end of October, 2010. Graduation is in June 2011. That's a pretty significant stretch of time that has questionable productivity. Of course, all of this has been a long way of saying that I've tried to keep myself occupied with the past year.

The first major thing that happened after that was I went on to Belize for a clinical rotation in wilderness and expedition medicine. We spent about a month doing village clinics, learning how to be a good member of a wilderness rescue team, and learning how to be a good member of an expedition. We spent a lot of hours in the jungle and going through caves. It was quite an experience. Based on that, I am looking pretty seriously at a Family Practice residency that has a significant wilderness medicine component.

After that, I went to Norfolk, NE to do 2 weeks of Family Medicine/Urgent Care with the doctor that led the Belize rotation. It was quite a change seeing Dr. Brown in his "natural setting" versus in the jungle. He's a character, and if I could be half the doctor he is, I'll be doing well for myself and my education... not to mention my patients.

A couple weeks after that, I started my rotations in Scottsbluff, and I've been doing them here ever since. I did another 6 weeks of Family Medicine, 12 weeks of Internal Medicine/Critical Care, 6 weeks of Psychiatry, and I'm 8 weeks into my Surgery rotation. For the most part, my experience here has been nothing short of amazing. The people I've seen and the physicians I've worked with have treated me very well. I've been able to learn and experience a lot of things that have been pretty impressive. I won't try to bore you with a list or anything. Suffice it to say that I'm pretty happy with things so far.

Becky and I have also had a few unexpected turns in our lives. The biggest one is that we've moved back to Nebraska. We weren't planning on it. We were happy with our place in Torrington. But, we'd made some friends in the area. These friends apparently spend lots of time thinking about how they can help people. So, they bought a house that was a good price in Morrill, NE and are renting it to us for much cheaper than we were renting in Torrington. We moved to Morrill in October, and it worked well for me because it cut my commute in half. Also, Becky has started a new job at Regional West, so now we're both commuting to the same place, even if our hours are different.

Where that leaves things right now is in the next year, I have several very large things on my plate. As well as my clinicals, I have 2 board exams, my application for residency, choosing a specialty, and choosing locations for a residency. Once I do all that, I list my residencies in order of preference to "The Match". The residencies that choose to interview me also list the people they interviewed in order of preference. These lists get chewed up by a Very Well Kept Secret Program, and it spits out a match list of residencies and students. Then, July 1, 2011, I start residency. No big, difficult, life-changing decisions I need to worry about or anything.

To help blow off stress, and find ways to clear our minds, Becky and I have started running seriously again. One of the things we're trying to do is to run marathons in all 50 states by the time each of us is 50. Where that leaves us right now, is 4-5 marathons a year, each year. All in different states, too. So, we're training to run marathons in April, June, August, and October this year. Our locations are Abilene, KS, Des Moines, IA, Deadwood, SD, and Ashton, ID. Currently, one of the best side-effects of running is that Kubby, our Dominican puppy is much more calm after we take him on a run. So, it helps us not have a little chewer destroying things in the house as well as having a good night's sleep. I'm sure you can all understand the benefit of that!.

Beyond that, I've started some work for Medscape's Facebook presence. So, if you are a member of Facebook on the internet, look up Medscape Students, and you can see my work for them. It is nothing too impressive, and I pull down painfully little money. But, something is better than nothing, and they don't expect lots of difficult work. It helps us, and we're happy for the work.

Be well!