It's been awhile since I last posted anything and I'm seriously sorry about that! This past month or so has been filled with greatness, randomness, and sadness. I can't even say that I've been all that busy since the month of November during my first year will probably be the least involved month in all of my medical school career. Not to worry though, this is New York City - and there's no such thing as free time here.Rewinding back some to late October, I finished my first set of medical school midterms. All went fairly well (remember, P = MD where P means "Pass") and since then its been one big celebration for midterms being over. For some reason I've been feeling like I should get some kind of reward from myself for finishing this milestone and so I've pretty much put my classes on hold temporarily and enjoyed the city life and time here with friends. First stop after midterms though - Jacksonville, Florida for the Florida/Georgia football game, the "Worlds Largest Cocktail Party" over Halloween weekend.
This was my first time back to Gainesville and Jacksonville since I left UF - and it was everything I imagined, except with babies running around. It was the first time I realized that I was getting older and maybe I shouldn't be doing the things I did that weekend all that much anymore. Outside of college, drinking too much is called alcoholism. Not doing your work isn't just "procrastination," it's failure. Nonetheless, drinking and procrastinate I did - and it was well worth it. I was Dexter for Halloween - which rocked - took shots with Riley Cooper, had a heart-to-heart with Jonathan Phillips, and had the time of my life with my friends and girlfriend who I hadn't seen in forever. Until next year.In New York things have been fun as well. Without any exams to worry about in the month of November, I could worry about things that matter most to me - like enjoying my weekends. On one night after the UF/Vandy game I decided to meet up with the rest of the Sinai group at an APAMSA inter-med school mixer at a pretty nice club in NYC. I'm not the clubbing type, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I knew AMSA from undergrad and had assumed "APAMSA" was the version of it once you're already in medical school. Oh was I wrong...
On the way there with my friend we found 4 men in US Navy uniforms that said "USS New York" on the sleeves. This was the ship that was built from the steel found at Ground Zero from the WTC attacks. It had just been dedicated that morning and so they were all out celebrating. I said hi to them and thanked them for doing what they're doing and they asked me what our plans were for the night, since they'd never been to NYC before. I told them I was going to this inter-med school mixer and that they should come along and find themselves a med school girl - a future sugar momma. They agreed and we went inside of the club.
Now, rememeber when I said APAMSA was the "once-in-med-school" AMSA? When I walked into the club I immediately realized what AP stood for:
Then during class one day we had a speaker come in to discuss how to screen for drug abuse in patients while taking a history. The speaker went through each drug one by one and discussed the side effects of each.
Speaker: Marijuana - sleepiness, incessant hunger, feeling less worried about about one's problems, and forgetfulness.
Me: (mumbling) Well that doesn't sound all that bad.
Speaker: Cocaine - Hyperactivity, reduction in hunger, loosening on inhibitions, faster metabolism.
Me: (mumbling) Well that doesn't sound all that bad either...
Speaker: Methamphetamine, or Crystal Meth - Sympathetic nervous response, depression, itchiness, loss of inhibitions, sexual hyperactivity.
Me: (forgetting to mumble and actually quite loud) Sexual hyperactivity!?
-----------
The entire class cracked up, as well as any professors who were there. Now I'm on the list for suspected meth abusers in the class of 2013. Fantastic.
The latest piece of news is of true sadness. Earlier this month we received patients for our projects called "Longitudinal Clinical Experience." The idea behind this is to introduce students to patients who are chronically ill, having ongoing issues that need constant attention. This is supposed to give students an idea of what the patient experience is like, hopefully allowing us to empathize with patients better. We each had an opportunity to choose a specialty of interest from a list, and I chose GI. I was hooked up with a GI doctor who introduced me to a patient who underwent a relatively rare procedure - a small intestine transplant.The patient was still in recovery from the surgery when we were introduced but was set to be released shortly. This man was a really great guy who was extremely optimistic about life and his main goal in life was to just live normally alongside the rest of his family for the rest of his life. After taking a history of his life and medical past and assessing his plans for the future he assured my partner and I that we'd be over for dinner one day since we would be following him for the next two years and were sure to get close to him.
Just yesterday I received an e-mail from the GI doctor saying that he had contracted H1N1 outside of the hospital shortly after being discharged. He couldn't fight it off due to the surgery, and he passed away only a couple days later.
I can't say I was actively invested in his medical care, but something's very off about how I've been feeling about it. I guess it's just the fact that at one point there was this man who was cracking jokes and perfectly fine upon meeting him and now there just isn't. I had never really known anyone that died so abruptly after being so great. It'll definitely be something I'll always remember.
Now that I've depressed you, I have work to get to. November's almost up, and finals are coming closer and closer. Until next time!
