Welcome to Neurosis...

In behavioral health/psych, we learn about obsessive-compulsive disorder which is mainly characterized by intrusive thoughts that cause anxiety and compulsive behaviors that alleviate the anxiety. (DSMIV criteria can be found here.) Whenever OCD comes up, there's always the half-joking/half-serious tag added on that "a little bit of this isn't a bad thing in medical school," and we all nervously chuckle and look around at all of the other medical students sitting around the lecture hall.

Well, my fourth year is begining to feel a little bit like that. My brain is entirely somewhere else during the day and I can't stop thinking about the match, interviewing, my step 2 exams or other asinine med-school related stuff for more than a few minutes to pay attention to the docs patients. One of the caveats is that the worries can't be about real life concerns...so I think I'm pretty safe there, but I'm still absolutely unable to concentrate because of this chronic, baseline anxiety. The only thing that makes it better is checking my email to see if the programs I applied to are offering interviews yet...and I know that there won't be very much movement this week due to the ACEP meeting in Boston, but I keep on checking anyway! It's totally inappropriate, but I'll slink away to a computer between patients and pull up my email to check. Fortunately, I see other fourth years going through the same motions on the wards and pulling out their iPhone's every few minutes to peak at the inbox...

It doesn't help that I'm on my mandatory PM&R rotation this week. The requirements of the rotation are to sit in a little exam room with a PM&R attending (who looks amazingly well rested, in shape, and happy by the way) and struggle with the patients through her Russian accent and brusk mannerisms. Between her and the tales of woeful chronic back back pain it takes me about 2.4 seconds to zone out wondering when I'll finally get home to start mowing down USMLE world questions or get my next interview (up to 3 now!). I can't muster the energy to care. However she does manage to drop some randomly awesome physical diagnosis knowledge from time to time, but I have to cut through the fog of aweful surrounding the rest of the day...

55% of USMLE World questions down and 10 days to go...I figure 3 blocks of questions plus review should get me done by the middle of next week before my exam. Still getting smacked down by the occasional section, but there's a steady average trend...