Poked and prodded

On Monday afternoon I allowed a very nice, competent, and tiny medical assistant to stab me in both arms, inject something into my forearm, prick my index finger, and suck blood out of my elbow. I took all of this lying down. Literally.

I'm a bit of a fainter.

Why all the torture, you ask? Apparently, working in the medical profession requires quite a few immunizations. Luckily, I got the complete MMR series as a child and I've had the chicken pox so that's two I don't need to get. But the right arm was a tetanus booster (DTaP, actually), the left arm was Hepatits B (I need two more of those - grrr). The injection in my forearm is a TB test. I really hope I pass that one! The finger prick and the blood draw aren't related to pharmacy school; that was just for blood work as part of my physical. We'll come back to that.

This felt like a big step to me. A week before I mailed off my deposit and various acceptance- and residency-related forms, but certainly all these needles mark the most painful part of the pre-pharmacy process for me. That tetanus injection site is still sore. It's completely sunk in for me now - I am going to pharmacy school in less than three months. In fact, I have a lot of work left to do to get all those ducks in a row.

Anyway, welcome to my new blog. I'm going to try to keep posting throughout the school year for all four years of the process. Maybe that can offer a bit of a unique perspective for incoming pharmacy students in the future. And maybe I'll continue it after graduation. We'll see. Whatever the case, I hope you enjoy listening to me. It's not always going to be about pharmacy school, but I'll try to keep that as the major thread that sort of drives the blog.

Oh, and the blood work came back with some disturbing results. I have really high cholesterol. So high they want to put me on a statin drug. I'm only 26. I sort of guessed this would happen, because my dad suffered a mild heart attack earlier in the year and has dealt with high cholesterol for the past decade, but it still sucks. I'm 6 feet tall (with shoes on - apparently I'm only 5'11", officially) and weight only 165 pounds (naked out of the shower - apparently I'm 170 in the doctor's office). You wouldn't look at me and think anything was wrong. In fact, my medical history is spotless. No surgeries, no chronic conditions, no medications, no allergies... well, now I have a history of high cholesterol and will be taking Lipitor or something like that. My hope is that a few months on the drugs with some drastic diet changes and an increase in exercise will bring those numbers into check and I'll be able to drop the drugs. I don't really want to start taking pills for the rest of my life starting this early in the game.