Is med school bad for your mental health?

      Hello folks. It's me. A lot of big things have been going on lately and I haven't really had the energy to document them, which is really such a shame. I have a personal bias towards recording memories when they're fresh in your mind. But anyway, guess this will have to do.

      Some things to get out of the way first: 

      Two weeks ago, I concluded the first project I've ever organized in my life: Know Your Status Week. It's a week-long campaign to get medical students tested for HIV. I was lucky enough to have my batchmate Dex as my co-head, since he was able to invite this wonderful organization called the HIV/AIDS Support House, or HASH for short. They were able to provide free on-site screening in ASMPH. We also partnered with LoveYourself, my personal favorite HIV advocacy org. The amazing thing is, a total of 193 people on campus got themselves tested - and that includes not only students but also clerks, faculty members, and even staff! 

      The happiest moments in the week, for me, were seeing and hearing all sorts of discussions cropping up about HIV. One of the school guards was actually very invested in the advocacy, and he had a very long chat with HASH about sexual health. Grabe! I never dreamed that Know Your Status Week could spark the kind of discourse that it did. 

      And when it was over, I was just SO relieved. Honestly, that project just gave me SO much anxiety in the months leading up to it. I think I actually felt more relieved by the fact that it concluded rather than because of the actual success of the project. (I don't think that last sentence was constructed very well. Darn it, I haven't written a blog in so long. I feel so awkward and clumsy as I type, erase, and re-type these words.)

      Anyway, so that's it for the need-to-knows. I wanted this blog to be about something else. Today I read this article about the effects of med school on mental health (which you can read here since I'm too lazy to summarize it). 

    I'll be honest with you - I think med school is very bad for one's mental health. Yeah, I'm not even going to sugarcoat it. In the last three years, my mental health has suffered drastically. Of course, everyone experiences medical school differently. I think some people, like Kankan maybe, truly enjoy the mental rigor (or trauma) that comes with having to cram infinite bodies of knowledge into your brain. But from my own experience, med school is a real struggle for sanity. 

    All those endless hours spent sitting down, staring at handouts, cramming information - those are paradoxically mind-numbing. Soul-numbing, I'd even say. I hate sitting in lectures, listening to lecturers who just read from the slides anyway, for 8 hours a day. I hate the pressure that comes with seeing everyone else around me studying so hard. Even though I want to sleep, chill, watch a movie, read a book, med school demands that I defer (or more appropriately, ignore) my personal desires in order to survive. 

   Needless to say, it's all very taxing and overwhelming. For me, I was at my most mentally-unhealthy in my second year of med school. Exams were held consistently every Monday, which meant that all weekends of the year were taken up studying for exams. Or if I wasn't studying, I was feeling terrible about not studying. Like I've said before, there were only two states of existence back then: study mode, and feeling-bad-about-not-studying mode. In short, life was really hell. Well, mentally, at least. 

    I was tired all the time, I wasn't excited about anything anymore, and I just wasn't as happy as I used to be. I felt burned out in the first month of the school year alone, and that feeling just carried over through the rest of the year. It sucked really bad.

    Mentally speaking, I know I'm doing a lot better now than last year. In third year, you get to actually see real patients. Each one has a unique narrative, a unique way of looking at the world. These are the moments I really like: seeing a human being, getting to understand them better, and trying to weave a story out of mere fragments from their very intricate lives. 

    Also, exams usually happen on Thursday, so weekends are a thing again! So far, I've gone on one out-of-town outing with my batchmates to Batangas. We climbed Mt. Gulugud-Baboy (my second time on that mountain) and then went snorkeling at Planet Dive. Bel and her family kindly fed us dinner and let us stay over at their house in Batangas City, so we were able to cut down on expenses and see more of Batangas as well. It was one of the nicest, if not THE nicest, weekends I've had since med school started. (And I regret not blogging about it as soon as I got home!)

    An extra challenge for me this year is taking care of two guinea pigs (yet another significant event I've neglected to blog about) while still taking care of myself. I've had them for about a month already, and they initially caused me tremendous stress. Guinea pigs are actually way harder to care for than some would think. You have to ensure a constant supply of hay, pellets, veggies (but only certain kinds of veggies). For their bedding, I use a cut-up fleece blanket (that I got for cheap at the Surplus Shop in SM) with some cheap towels, so I have to sweep those out twice a day. The initial adjustment period was really painful, because it happened at the same time with my preparations for Know Your Status Week. So all the weeks leading up to my project were very stressful for me. It really showed on my face - I broke out so hard! Until now my face is still messed up from all the zits I sprouted during that time. My recovery is slow but steady.

   Okay, I'm pretty sure I've derailed quite significantly from the whole mental health topic. About physical health: Today I consulted my rheumatologist, Dr. Milicent Ong, after many months of not seeing her. She told me I can now lower my dose of Methotrexate from 10 tablets per week to just 3 tablets! That's pretty amazing news.

  

   Last agenda before I end this blog: I've been thinking for a long time now about changing my blog URL. In fact I actually did change it. It was actually "brain-sand.blogspot.com" for a couple of weeks before I changed it back to "beainmanila." The reason for wanting to change it is I just don't feel like "Bea in Manila" accurately captures my current struggle anymore. I came up with that name back in 2010 (a whopping SIX years ago), when my biggest challenge was moving away from home and adapting to my new life in Manila. I used to get Marikina and Makati mixed up all the time (incurring the ire of a taxi driver once), and I used to gape at every building that was more than 9 storeys high. Now, I'm pretty sure I know Manila more than some actual Manilenyos do. Hence the desire for a name change. What do you think? Should I go for it? And what should my new URL be?

   Anyway, that's about it for now. I'll try my best to return to my regular updates, especially since my weekends are back. Byyyye!