Fall PY2 - Week 5

Bryant Park, New York City at 11 pm

That was a heck of a week.  I apologize for not posting but everything got a bit hectic.  When things
get crazy, I will probably resort to only posting on Fridays.  The most important thing for me was coming back from New York City!!!  It was my first time in the Big City.  My wife and I went for our 5th wedding anniversary to see the sites and Manhattan and the Broadway play, Book of Mormon. It was a great weekend, with lots of walking.  But I felt a little behind all week, of course so did everyone else who didn't spend a weekend elsewhere.  So let's get to the events of Week 5:

Monday
This Monday started differently with an hour of Med Chem before therapy.  The professor wrapped up Second Generation Antihistamines and Mast Cell Stabilizers for our exam on Thursday.

If you can guess, in therapy we talked about diabetes!  This time we went over some different insulin regimens that people use.  We had a very hard pre-class quiz that took me 9 tries to finally get a 100.

Prelab was also about diabetes - specifically our MTM for a diabetic patient.  We were given prescriptions and we talked about what might be wrong with them and what we should prepare to ask the patient in Lab.

Later that night, I attended the training session for the Recruitment Ambassadors Program.  Now I can give tours to people, talk up the school of pharmacy, talk up pharmacy in general.  I could do that before, but now I get credit that I can put on my CV.

Tuesday
More statistics in Drug Lit.  Probabilities and Power were the main focus.  You show know that studies are powered (by sample size) to find the correct answer, but there is always a possibility of finding an answer that isn't there (Type I Error) or missing the answer that is (Type II Error).  The best part was the quiz halfway through which I passed to give myself a few hour to work on the other things due this week.

Med Chem brought in one of my favorite professors to provide the clinical details of antihistamines.  The main goal of antihistamines is to block H1-receptors which cause inflammation.  But the G1s are non-selective and easily enter the brain that they cause many side effects: sedation, dry mouth, increased appetite, etc.  So clinically, you can use those side effects as a potential treatment.  Colds do not have anything to do with histamine, but cold medicine usually contains an antihistamine.  The small molecules also block ACh receptors which dry out the sinuses to relieve your runny nose.

Therapy finished up the diabetes module.  We finished going over the insulins for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Wednesday
This was going to be the rough day.  Two quizzes, a SOAP note and an MTM all were on the schedule.  So lab begins by going over our SOAP note for a diabetic patient.  My answers were similar to everyone else so I feel okay about it.  I might not get a 100, but I should at least earn an A.  I did the worst I have ever done on a lab quiz - worst of all it was because of the calculations.  I worked everything out to discover my two answers were off by 1000x.  In finding a mass, I messed up the Weight Percent (like 3% NaCl) as mg/mL instead of the correct g/mL.  I got cocky and it cost me 5 points out of 25.  The rest of lab was just talking about insulins.  We took a look at insulin pens and the subcutaneous needles.  Then we actually gave ourselves the shots we will have to teach patients to give, but with saline.  I did not feel a thing.

Kinetics was another quiz about continuous infusions and multiple dosing.  I was worried about this one because I tried to read the chapter on the plane headed to NYC.  That environment and the anticipation meant that I did not really grasp the fine details from the book.  When I got back to it on Monday and Tuesday, it made sense leading to a redemptive 100.

Thursday
Drug Lit was another article class.  The article was about? Diabetes!  Specifically a controlled, phase 3 trial for Canaflagozin, an SGLT2-inhibitor.  We went through the article in tedious detail (professor's words).  The major concern is the first drug lit test next week.

Med Chem was our first big exam of the semester.  GPCRs and Histamine.  I studied off and on all week.  That included taking the practice test on the plane ride home, when I only missed 2.  I was pretty confident.  Comparing answers with other people, there is a high probablity of a perfect score.

Therapy was an Q and A session on diabetes before our Monday exam.  I kind of didn't pay attention but instead focused on making a study guide for me to work on this week.  After the questions, a new professor flew through 90 slides about contraceptives.  It was so fast!  Some of it sunk in, but I will be looking over that again.  Any time she mentioned copper IUDs, all I could think about was the House episode with the nuns.

Thursday night included Diabetes Jeopardy for a CAPS event.  We got some CAPS points, but most importantly was review of diabetes and questions from previous exams.  I missed more questions than I thought I should have, but somehow we ended up tied for first place!!!  We both missed the first tie breaker, and then the other group got the next one right.  So we technically ended in second place without the certificate or mug.  I don't like losing, but we did beat everyone else!  Hopefully that bodes well for the test next week.

Well, that is all for a hectic week.  Next week will probably be the same with two exams on Monday and Tuesday.  I am looking forward to it.