Starting to touch people

So today we started the class that teaches us how to do physical exams. I'm sure you know what that entails: say ahhh, take a deep breath, turn your head and cough, do you prefer the speculum warm or cold? As fate would have it my roommate, Dr. Shock, and I wound up being physical exam partners. So for the next few months we will be poking and prodding each other in all of our most private areas, or basically what we've always called "Thursday night".

In the little book they give us for the class there is a list of 105 skills we have to master in order to pass the course. It covers a physical exam from head to toe and is supposed to take between 15 and 20 min to perform (we have to do it in the order they list too). Some of the more salient skills include taking the blood pressure, checking the ear drum, looking at the retina, listening to the heart and lungs, palpating the liver (which should be a breeze for Dr. Shock and me), and assorted other examinations. I thought it might be a good idea to list those skills that, through no real effort on my part, I have gained up to this point since coming to medical school 14 short months ago. For you kids interested in a career as a physician, if you can acquire some of these skills before applying to med school, it will make your adjustment to the life of a med student much smoother.

I am now able to...

1) ...look at a 500 page text book and predict how long it will take me to read it cover-to-cover, +/- about 90 min.
2) ...toss a ping pong ball approximately 6 feet across a buffet table and land it in a one-third full cup of beer with surprising regularity.
3) ...consume a deli sandwich, a bag of potato chips, an apple and a can of diet soft drink in approximately 2 min, 15 sec.
4) ...look at the 249 pound woman in front of me in the grocery store checkout buying the doughnuts, whole milk, smokes and bourbon and list at least 5 health problems she has.
5) ...tell how long left-over food has been sitting out in a conference room by smell and whether or not it is fit for human consumption.
6) ...call all the security guards at school by their first names and usually talk them into letting me into a building sans ID card.
7) ...stomach kosher food.
8) ...look at pathology images of the most physically devastating and disfiguring human diseases with the same cool distance a prosecutor views a defendant.
9) ...look up any medical condition on Wikipedia so fast that when I start answering an attending's question in case conference I have no idea what the medical condition even is, but by the end of my sentence I sound like a specialist in the field.
10) ...in a 24 hour period, attend 4 hours of lecture, study for 6 hours, hit the gym for 2 hours, play cards for 3 hours, go to the bar for 4 hours, bullshit with Dr. Shock for 1 hour, then sleep for 4 hours before doing it all again tomorrow.