Unified ocean

Picture yourself standing on cliff of an island. Imagine a storm pouring down on the ocean. Now picture yourself being in it and watching the rain pour down on the ocean and creating that blurry haze from seeing that island in the distance but at the same time, feeling completely connected with the ocean in the pouring rain. I was there. I closed my eyes, to make sure it was all real. And it was. After that I jumped into the warm, Caribbean ocean water. The ocean instantly embraced me with all of its glory. What am I compared to it's majestic strength? Just another one of those humans who can be swallowed and washed away....
Usually, I'd want to take as many pictures as I could. But in that moment, it was too powerful and overpowering to witness nature's beauty. There is no way a picture or any number of pictures could have captured the wondrous sensation.

It was definitely a good break from 4 weeks of studying non-stop (almost). I feel more alive. I also cooked some food that can last for the next two days.

And as for what's going on education-wise around here, we just took our first quiz in medical school. It was called the Unified Assessment Quiz, about 5% of our grade (in each class) and it's purpose is to make sure we are keeping up with the material and making sure we're studying the right way to perform well on tests. There were 25 questions for each subject - Anatomy, Biochemistry & Histology and we had an hour and 45 minutes to complete it. It's amazing how much everyone has studied for a 5% quiz. Some people said it was like studying for a final...this, I agree with. I was up till 4:30am this Saturday trying to understand every detail of Biochemistry. Oh yea, and I have been studying every day since the first day of classes. After the quiz, I felt like I should have studied more. I guess we'll never be well-prepared. But studying definitely helped me answer questions and put down correct answer choices, so I have to give it some credit. Understanding and memorization are key to scoring some easy points. In reality, the true test of our knowledge will be our patients. Hopefully when we encounter patients with Sickle Cell Anemia, we remember that there is a point mutation in their genetic code or realize that we need to do a spinal tap in between L4 and L5 to test their cerebrospinal fluid.

To quote my Anatomy professor, all of us feel as though we graduated from medical school. But as the evening approaches, I feel the need to get back to my routine. I value my free time like a delicious piece of Dove milk chocolate (with raspberry filling), and I realize the importance of keeping up with the material. I have a small aspiration though...someday, somehow, I want to be "ahead" of the material.

In our last Bioethics Small Group Discussion (this class will be ending next week...and yes, that means a final exam on Monday), there was a peculiar phrase that the facilitator mentioned that caught my attention immediately. Our topics of discussion included Physician Assisted Suicide and Climate Change and it's effects on health. As we neared the end of a case, the facilitator said, sometimes physicians make decisions for "The Greater Good". I can't imagine making a decision for the "The Greater Good". Isn't that what Batman or Spiderman would do? How does patient-assessment, ordering CAT scans/MRIs or even writing a prescription help the greater good. What is the greater good when it comes to a patient or a family? It is specific to certain medical cases, yes, but it's amazing how much power is being invested in us, future physicians.

My poetic skills came out tonight and I shall share some of my less-than-average creativity with you guys. I didn't know what to title it so I'm calling it:

The Greater Good

a drop of rain descends
stretches and relaxes
and meets my epidermis

part of it squeezes through
and the rest bounces,
surrenders to gravity
and oscillates with
the gentle wave

Sayonara until next time.

Flexor Digitorum Profundus

Hello humans. This is going to be a blog about my experiences in medical school! That's right, I'm a first year medical school. I'm going to St. George's University in Grenada, which is known as the Isle of Spice in the Caribbean. Yes that's correct, it is gorgeous down here. Everywhere you look, it's beautiful. It's helping me tremendously to cope with the stress of being a medical student.

In my opinion, having this blog is one of my greatest privileges. Publishing a post seems worth it. Everything I've read, learned about and looked forward to, has come true. So did the common burdens/extra efforts of being a medical student - eternal studying/learning, adjusting to the least amount of sleep needed to get up tomorrow, always being on time and professional, and a million other things they've been teaching us since the first day. Thankfully, I enjoy all of it. And right now I love reading about ligamentum flavum in my spine and flexor digitorum profundus that's helping me type this.

I'll dedicate a part of this post to describe my typical day. From 1-5pm from Mon-Fri, we have lectures. Four days of the week (our schedule keeps changing every week), we have labs/small group discussions from 10am-12pm. One of the 4 days, we have anatomy lab from 7:45am - 12pm. As for how much material we cover - a week's worth of undergraduate course material is covered in one day. This semester, we're taking Human Gross & Developmental Anatomy, Medical Biochemistry, Histology & Cell Biology and Bioethics.

What do I do the other hours of the day? After lectures, we usually study at a great study space called Taylor Hall or the study rooms in my dorm. I try to move around and study in different places. And during our well-deserved breaks, we usually go to this dock right behind my dorm that overlooks the ocean and if it's at night, we enjoy watching the stars. If you're lucky, you can see some shooting stars. I've seen 5 since I've been here. I also like to cook food as a study break/survival mechanism. But, most of the time is dedicated to studying. Anatomy, Histology and Biochemistry demand a lot of memorization and understanding of the material, and that's basically what takes up my time on a typical week day. I also attend some review sessions held up upperclassmen and go to open wet lab hours to learn the structures on cadavers.

In our Bioethics class, however, I think a lot about the topics we cover in class. One topic really struck me during the last lecture. We learned that morbidity rate is highly correlated to poverty. It's implying that money governs the type of health care a human can receive from physicians (and how much money a person has depends on various factors). A bit irrational? To me, it is. People who cannot afford health care are also the people who tend to develop disorders due to malnutrition, poor living conditions, etc. But a lot of advanced medicine is derived from trying to cure disorders humans have previously had or witnessed. Physicians and researchers don't try to find cures to diseases that don't exist. Take the military for example, physicians learned a lot of the anatomy and how a human body can really be injured through battlefield injuries. But patients who come to the hospital everyday with interesting (?) illnesses are the ones who cannot access proper health care - a lot can be learned from them as well. Somehow, all of this leads to my thoughtful conclusion - people developing disorders/diseases with less access to health care are helping future generations by educating physicians about medical illnesses and regulations of the human body. In my head, I think I just went around in a circle. Moreover, I neglected numerous factors in this analysis...but I think it's a good start to thinking about issues of health care and access to health care in the US and in the world. Bioethics definitely stimulated a nerve-firing thought during my third week of medical school.

Coming back to my current life, I sometimes stop during my long hours of study and be amazed at how much my brain can process all of this information. I might have forgotten most of it. But as I read and learn, I understand. I'm proud to be part of this school and I enjoy my study breaks to look at some breathtaking sights on this rather small campus. After the White Coat Ceremony and a full blast with lectures, labs and discussions, it's starting to sink in that I'm a medical student, a future physician. One last thing before I leave, I want to mention that physicians play a huge rule in the society (yeah, you probably expected this statement from a medical student). They're known as the cure-alls, the smart people, the authority, professionals, the "higher" and magicians who take the pain away. But I don't agree with this idea. I'd like to think of myself as just another human trying to figure out a problem...and it just happens to be about the human body. As a future physician, I hope I'm not considered God, but rather a modulator of this society....like a paintbrush or another color of paint to make this artwork of life look a bit more beautiful, lively and profundus.

Back to the hussle....