Symptoms Gone

Depressive symptoms were gone when I awoke on Tuesday (the day after that textual conversation with girly). That day was easy at clinic, largely owing to the doctor being out for surgery for much of the day. The following day, however, was awful. There is another student who has been favored far more than I, largely because he knows how to take and present a good history. I have hardly improved in that area due to the depressive issues. Inability to concentrate is a symptom that I dealt with to a significant degree, and it kept me from studying or improving much. So there were more new patients that day, with more complicated histories, and I did a poor job in my presentations. I also began performing Pap smears that day under the doctor's close supervision, and she became angry with me after we saw one of the patients. Having never previously encountered a vagina, it seems that I am not adequately familiar with the sensitivities of one, and I did a poor job in my approach. In my defense, every procedure in which I have been trained, I have been told step by step how to perform them. In this, I have only watched it done. Until that day, I was actually unsure of whether we would be performing Pap smears at all.

My mom and grandma were in town that day, so I visited them as soon as clinic ended. Then I went back to my apartment to try to calm myself with a beer. As a chaser for the whiskey. I also texted my friend who is a resident, and he gave me some tips on improving my presentation. Specifically, he gave me a template. That is what I needed, but in my depressed state, it had been difficult to do much.

The next day, we had mostly pregnant follow-up patients, which are the easy ones. I did pretty well with history and the doctor was easier on me, and told me "good job" for what I think may have been the first time. Bear in mind that I had heard her say "good job" many times to the other medical student in this rotation. I know that I have been doing poorly, but it is not as if there is a time to say "doctor, the reason I've sucked so bad is because I was having depressive symptoms from some psychological trauma a year and a half ago, but hopefully I'll improve after I deal with it".

Anyway, with those depressive symptoms gone, I was able to do most of my homework for this rotation (patient logs) today, along with watching all of the lectures for both obstetrics and gynecology. Yes, that is correct; this rotation has two separate sets of lectures. Boy howdy.