Today marked the end of my Pathology Review, I must say it has been quite an entertaining and very exciting week! Our Kaplan Professor for USMLE Dr. John Barone, a celebrity in the arena of Step Preparation could be the most amazing and exciting professor of Pathology. Besides his funny acronyms and crazy stories he is a great guy with a lot of passion for people and the profession of medicine! He has been an inspiration to a lot of students here at St. Matthew’s and has inspired me as well! As Pathologist in Hollywood, CA, Dr. John Barone has seen and been apart some amazing things and to learn such an important subject from someone who truly loves what he does was refreshing! If you are a medical student and a little review wouldn’t hurt, definitely look him up as he is constantly traveling and teaching all the time! The reason for my absence from this blog, facebook, twitter, etc.. is because for the first time pathology truly captured my full attention! Thanks Dr. Barone for all you do for every student you come in contact with and I look forward to seeing you in the near future!

The following is a video of his many mannerisms and sayings you would experience during his classes and our attempt at his infamous EKG dance!

This past week, we were scheduled to have a day off of Kaplan on Thursday! (a much needed break to say the least) During our day off, the God of this world decided to bless us with an extension of our break. Due to weather related issues our scheduled Kaplan professor for Physiology (our next subject) was unable to make it down to the island. As a result, Kaplan is being postponed until Monday of next week, which is the earliest classes could resume. The best case scenario for the longest break would be Wed. Why is this so great, well speaking only for my self and virtually the whole class, the pace of the Kaplan program is extremely fast and many of us could use a few days to catch up. So even though we have the weekend off, the majority of our time must be used to catch up and make sure we are on pace with everything we have already covered. Its almost 8pm here and its still 74 deg. sorry for all of you stuck in the cold still, just wanted to keep you update on weather in paradise. Other events that took place this week include me turning my digital camera on, only to find out that the viewing screen no longer works! I guess it just gives me a reason to get another camera. At the moment, its still functional and takes pictures and videos but instead of the convenient screen I have to use the old school lens viewer. If anyone has any recommendations for a new digital camera to purchase, by all means send them my way. I would love to get a SLR but as for brand, I am still unsure. Well, for those who read this blog, I wish you all a great and relaxing weekend!

After a long day of Anatomy, the roommates and I decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner for no particular reason whatsoever. With that said, let me explain how the dinning experience played out. Located in one of the nicer shopping centers on Seven Mile Beach across the street from the beach and St. Matthew’ s Campus. As you walk in, customers are greeted buy a very nice decor and wine cellar. This brazilian steakhouse is set up buffet style but not like the typical buffet most Americans would be accustomed to. You seat yourself and are given a card with a red side and a green side. When you are hungry for meat you place the green side facing up and servers come around and serve you many different types of meat ranging from steak to lamb, chicken, veal, sausage, and pork. All of which are served table side. There is no limit to number of servings and each dinner is awarded a salad, fruit, sushi, and cheese buffet. I must say, I am no food critique but having worked in fine dinning for 4 years, I must say this was a very unique experience. Service was great, didn’t hurt that our server was easy on the eyes! haha but none the less it was another great night out with the roommates. If you are looking for a nice place on Island to take a date or  your family when they visit I would recommend other places first, with PRIME following quickly behind.

One way to de-stress and get my mind off of the books is to play some basketball. Today, on our day off, my roommates Micheal Edralin & Dino Ceckro have formed a 3 on 3 team for the 4th Semester White Coat fundraiser. Should be a very interesting since neither of us has played ball down here since 3rd semester. Our egos have gotten the best of us as we don’t want to leave the Island on loosing note. Mike and I went to shoot around last night just to remind our bodies that at one point in our lives we knew how to play the game. Not sure how many teams there will be, but we hope to be competitive. Dino hurt his ankle last night playing soccer with some of the guys from here and he’s the biggest man we got.

Anyway, It is currently 80 degrees and sunny and the roosters are up and doing what they do best, waking me up. I am still working to make this blog as easy and accessible for everyone as possible. I want to send a special thanks out to Ryan Imel for all his help with this blog and his willingness and patience. I will post the results of our tournament later today hopefully along with some pics. 

Here are so pictures of my teamates: Michael and Dino

Today, I did the unthinkable. I decided to pass on going to class and do self study at home. I know what you must be thinking, how can you skip a kaplan class. My rationalization starts with the mere fact the being behind is no fun, and trying to catch up is even worse. So I took the day off of class to sit home and watch the videos and teach myself and make sure I truly understand all the biochemical pathways and the disease they can cause when certain enzymes are deficient. With that said, I find my self sitting here updating the blog, adding music to my iPod after grabbing some Wendy’s for lunch. On the lunch note, the roommates and I decided to bring back some old school elementary school vibes back by packing our lunch and eating in school. Some fond memories for sure were dug up, such as my old lunch monitor Mrs. Smith who from what I remember was at least 350 lbs with heart issues and my last memory of her was her moving to Texas during my 5th grade year. Talk about reasons why I have probably developed sub-conciously such a high metabolism. Anyway, today is Friday and thank God! We have the day off tomorrow from class meaning Sunday its back to it and we start Anatomy. The positives are that Anatomy comes easy to me, and its a subject I enjoy from top to bottom. A dead science that keeps people alive, quite an ironic way to look at it but none the less. I look forward to reviewing it and using some of the extra time for catching up with Biochem. Well everyone, I am hoping to add a bunch more features to this blog when I find time to figure it out. Stay tuned.