Pavlovian problem

Hard to believe that my second year of med school is a mere two weeks from its conclusion. On Friday I have an exam in Clinical Diagnosis. Then next week I have three more exams on Mon, Wed and Fri in Musculoskeletal Disorders, Hematology, and Virology, respectively. Please note that that class is Virology, not the fantastic Pearl Jam album, Vitology. If that confused you, well, then I would rather starve than eat your bread.

After exams are finished, I head to la casa de mi hermana, la maison de ma soeur, Haus meiner Schwester, het huis van mijn zuster. I spend the next month at my sister's house studying for boards. I am scheduled to take them on June 8th. These are Step 1 of basically 3 exam steps towards a license to practice medicine. I've already been studying piecemeal for this exam. I started during spring break, during which I reviewed kidney pathophysiology and immunology. I'm probably weakest in those two areas. I've also been doing some intermittent light studying, but I've developed a bit of a, how shall I put this, psychological issue. It all started when I purchased my pharmacology flash cards. These are great little learning tools. One side is a clinical scenario like this:

A 76-year-old female presents to the emergency department complaining of the acute onset of severe shortness of breath. Her past medical history is significant for a diagnosis of colon cancer 3 months ago. Further evaluation reveals that she is hypoxic, tachypnic, tachycardic, and has elevated D-dimer levels. You begin to suspect that this patient may need anti-coagulation therapy with a drug that acts to accelerate the action of antithrombin III to treat her condition, and you decide to order a ventilation-perfusion scan on this patient to confirm your suspicion of her diagnosis.

Then on the flip-side of the card is a bunch of info about the drug involved in the case. Here it's heparin of course, the old bat has a Pulmonary Embolism. Now all this is wonderful, great to learn, easy format to absorb the information, and it's terrific that you can do a few of these cards when you have a few free minutes. Like on the subway, or waiting for lecture to start, or in line at the bank, or...and here's where the problem begins...on the toilet.

I've gotten into the habit of grabbing a stack of these things to read over during the 5-10 min I spend performing a certain daily biological activity. (No, not that one you perverts, I need two hands to work the cards.) It's a great feeling to know you've not wasted a minute of time; it's multitasking at it best. At least for the last couple of months. Lately I've been using the cards more frequently, outside the bathroom. Reading them in places like the subway, in the bank line, waiting for lecture. You know what happened when Pavlov rang the bell before feeding the dogs? Eventually the dogs started salivating when they heard the bell, regardless of whether they got the food or not. Guess what? These little cards have become my Pavlov's bell, and I am most definitely NOT salivating when I start to read them. The fucking things are practically Ex-Lax for me now. This sucks, I was planning on studying them on the flight from New York to Milwaukee in two weeks.

Up yours Pavlov: