Quick Update

So normally I don't like to brag about grades, especially when it is a B, but I think I am going to just this one time. Between this last weekend and most of last week, I studied over 45 hours for a Pharmaology exam. The amount of material on that thing was insane. I don't know the exact number of drugs that I had to memorize, but there were 10 lectures and one of them had 50 drugs on its own. I'll give you an example of what all we had to know:

Aspirin (Acetyl Salicylic Acid): NSAID. antipyretic, analgesic at low doses. Anti-inflammatory at high doses. Inhibits platelet aggregation. At low doses decreases risk of recurrence of myocardial infarction. At high doses has protective effect against myocardial infarction, decreases risk of stroke and colon cancer. Irreversibly inhibits TxA2. Prevents synthesis of PGE2 and PGI2 responsible for maintaining renal flow. May cause sodium retention, edema and hyperkalemia. Only NSAID to not cause interstitial nephritis. Adverse effects: epigastric distress, nausea, vomit, microscopic bleeding. Prolongs bleeding time due to anti-coagulant characteristics. Should be discontinued one week prior to surgery. In toxic does causes respiratory depression and both respiratory and metabolic acidosis. 15% of patients will have an adverse reaction to ASA, but anaphylactic shock is uncommon. Associated with Reye Syndrome which is fatal fulminating hepatitis with cerebral edema. Is specially encountered in children.


And that was just one of a couple hundred. Anyway I studied like a madman and didn't go into that exam with a whole lot of confidence. I really just wanted to minimize the damage that I though that exam was going to do to my grade. I was hoping to fix it with the next exam with a more manageable amount of material. My brain was on crazy overload and I kept getting things switched in my head. But when I actually took the test, I just recognized what I needed to. I was the first one done and it only took me about 20 mins to take the 50 question exam. Normally I go back through a second time and check my answers, but I just went with my gut and didn't change anything.

When grades went up about an hour later, I was scared to check because I felt good about it and didn't want to ruin that feeling. I ended up with a B. The class average was a 61% D. And as of right now we think it is the second highest grade in the class. My friend Krista got the only A. She always does. She works for it, but she has a crazy memory too. We call her Kristapedia. Anyway, enough bragging. Lets see if I can pull off another one with Pathology on Monday.