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Notes -
I went blind again. Before anyone panics, it was for less than an hour, and I'm fine now.
I was previously diagnosed with a condition known as central serous chorio-retinopathy, where fluid leaks out of the vessels below the retina and makes it bulge out. It is usually due to corticosteroid consumption, which I've never done, but also due to prolonged and severe stress. Guess what I'm experiencing?
This isn't the first time. In keeping with a now-obvious pattern, it happened to me before a high-stakes exam. Once before the PLAB 1, again before the MSRA. And now, the MRCPsych Paper A looms ahead of me.
My stimulants might contribute (they're stimulating the sympathetic nervous system too), even if I take very reasonable doses. Unfortunately, my ADHD is not an affectation, I can't study without my meds, let alone pass exams. Especially exams that require months on end of grinding and memorization, when is rather be doing anything else.
So yeah, same choice as usual: lie flat, or keep fighting. I'm inclined to do the latter unless the attacks become so severe that I'm at great risk of permanent visual damage. I did see a doctor once, and it was decided that a waitful watching system was appropriate, instead of jumping to options like intravitreal injections or lasers. It's been a year and a half since then, and this attack was mild, so I suppose it wasn't the worst advice.
Anyone else have a few dangling Damocletian swords above them? Aimed at their eyeballs? Alternatively, what's the best way for me to manage my stress, when giving up or foregoing my meds isn't an option I'm willing to consider?
(I'm going to order myself some green tea. It helped in the past.)
First of all, sorry to hear that and all the best with the tests.
Secondly, about:
I’m curious about these medical exams and studying. Are there some candidates you’ve met that can just ace them without studying, based solely on general medical knowledge and above average recollection from both medical school and hands-on training in the years before their specialist qualification? Or is it like some legal qualifications, where even a towering intellect needs to rote memorize that the answer is a section 37 part 3 form and not a part 4 and that a certain period is 13 working days and not 12?
My recollection of medical school was that almost all of the stellar students and smartest students were the same people. You did have a pot of smart bad students but usually they had something like ADHD and couldn't keep up with the study demand. Although I find that the smart people who didn't do well were better at retaining information years later than the not as smart but better students (this retention being in reference to things like other people's specialties).
However, "bad student" for medical school in the U.S. is a god outside of it - things like pre-exam crams and all nighters are flat out impossible. It isn't uncommon at the start of first year to be basically learning multiple undergrad classes worth of material in a week, every week. Almost all exams are incredibly high stakes and some are full days in length or more etc.
The material usually doesn't require much beyond an above average IQ to learn but the amount of it is vicious - the classic statement is "like drinking from a firehose" and then you do that for years.
No amount of pure horsepower can do it - you also need the effort.
That said an interesting part of how this has gone in the US is that the rote memorization component of medical education has become more or less solved, and since they need to do some candidate discrimination..... they've worked very hard to dial in on the "thinking" parts instead of pure memorization.
A question might be - patient with x disease has y side effect, which of the following medications most likely caused the side effect? And then all 6 meds cause that side effect - they want you to know that one of the medications is overwhelmingly likely to be prescribed because of a practice guideline, causes the side effect at a much higher rate, or something else like that.
15-20 years ago the standardized tests were hard because the way medical knowledge has exploded in recent years. Now they are actually fucking hard and require much more in depth understanding.
This may be a bit US specific though, as the population of students here is generally neurotic passionate about care people or money seekers looking for the best gig (which also requires high performance).
EDIT: An added layer of problem is that the exams have no constrained syllabus, the best you have is weights. The contents is usually "everything." Nephrology in Ortho boards? Sure. A modality that hasn't been used outside of Eastern Europe for 30 years? Sure. A drug that just cleared clinical trials five minutes ago? Yeah.
The secret is that all of the questions are fair or at least important (ex: new drug is actually the first in a new class of medications that they've been trying to get off the ground for decades), but as a student you don't know that until years later, so if you want to do well (and people do) you have to know absolutely EVERYTHING.
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