post

Classes are starting soon… no!

I’m “back to school” next week after Labor Day. Right now I’m trying to enjoy my last few days of vacation and writing this entry while sitting poolside at a resort on the island of Kauai. Originally I was going to make this trip alone. I just wanted to relax before resuming lectures. But then my sister said she wanted to join me so for the last week its been the two of us.

Coincidentally, I’ve met two of my classmates here on the island. Although, one of them did ask me, “Where do I know you from?” Guess that’s a sign for me to start attending more class functions.

One day I was walking into the local FoodLand to get some bottled water. As I was walking towards the entrance I noticed a woman looking at me. I dismissed it, figuring she was looking at something behind me. She slowed down and as we met at the front door she pointed at my t-shirt and said she knew about Loma Linda (I was wearing my LLU School of Medicine t-shirt). We chatted briefly and she said she had relatives who had graduated from the medical school at Loma Linda.

Later on that day I was at the beach when a man asked me, “Can I ask you something?” Naturally, I said yes. He and his wife had noticed my shirt as well. They asked if I was a doctor. I said no. Apparently they only saw the front because the back of the shirt says “Class of 2011.”

It turns out that the gentleman has a PhD in psychology and he teaches “baby docs” (residents) about bedside manner (talking to patients and family, dealing with death, etc.). He and his wife asked me what I wanted to do and I replied that I was not sure yet.

His wife mentioned something about children. I wasn’t too sure. And I replied that I had enjoyed my two weeks on the pediatrics service and had really enjoyed my time with Child Psychiatry.

She told me that she saw me doing something with children. She said it might be in pediatrics, or maybe delivering babies, but she wasn’t sure. But definitely something with children.

I’m not quite sure what kind of look I had on my face. But she felt the need to qualify what she was telling me by saying that she is a Christian. I told her that I am too.

She continued by sayhing that I shouldn’t worry about money because the money would come. And to top it all of she said she saw me in some sort of medical mission work. Then, she prayed for me before we said our goodbyes.

So even when I’m on vacation, Loma Linda University still has away of doing things for me.

post

For Now, No Autopsy

I was supposed to go in for an autopsy yesterday. As I was instructed, I phoned the Pathology Office between 8:15 and 8:30 AM.

That’s when I got the bad news. There wasn’t going to be any autopsy at the location I had requested. Unfortunately for me, there wouldn’t be any until Thursday at the earliest. But I can’t go because I’ll be headed out of town during the last week of Summer Break.

So instead I drove back home and have been filling my time with the Olympics and cleaning out/packing up my room.

My room (at my parent’s house) has looked horribly messy. I’m sure it’s getting on my mom’s nerves. But its messy because I’m packing things in boxes and throwing out trash. So in the end, it’ll all be worth while.

post

SurgeXperiences 204


Welcome to another edition of surgeXperiences!

SurgeXperiences is a bimonthly blog carnival bringing you stories from the front lines of the operating room. For more information, click here.

This week’s (loose) theme was “My First Time.” So, in order of submission (for the most part), with those closest to the theme first, here are the posts!

Firsts
rlbates, a plastic surgeon from Little Rock, AR, recalls her first surgery rotation during her Junior year that happened to coincide with a record-breaking heatwave in July of 1980.

Captain Atopic writes about his first time being awake in the OR and his first time in a non-English speaking country in a appropriately titled post: My First Surgery.

Jeffrey Leow from Monash Medical Student shares his reactions to the many firsts in surgery in a post with visual aids aplenty and a nifty soundtrack too.

David Gorski over at Science Based Medicine writes about his first encounter with The Orange Man and the lesson that meeting taught him about alternative medicine.

Bongi, over at Other Things Amanzi, writes about his first time performing a splenectomy which, incidentally, was also his first time seeing one: see one, do one, teach one. Bongi also shares a humorous story about teaching a medical student how to do a lymph node biopsy and sending the student in(to) the deep end.

The Scalpel’s Edge features a post about the first time DrCris begins to seriously consider a career as a surgeon.

T vents a bit about the specialty of Anesthesiology after a patient announces to her that she is in a ROAD specialty and that her job is “easy”… which leads her to, in the end, remember the reason she decided on her specialty. The post is titled: Hit the Road, Jack, and Dontcha Come Back No More, No More, No More, No More…” (just kidding, of course).

Over at Nursepractitionerblog’s Weblog is a post titled My most interesting patient that discusses some memorable firsts like changing a bedpan for the first time and the first time giving an IV to a gentleman scheduled to have both legs amputated.

Opinion
Lucia Li, in her first post on The Differential, shares her views on Women in Surgery.

In a post titled Disaster Waiting to Happen, a new blogger from New Delhi writes a short paragraph about his thoughts after surgery at SurgeryLounge. Let’s welcome him to the blogosphere.

Maggie Mahar at HealthBeatBlog.org writes about the Cultural Divide between Surgeons and Physicians.

And related to the last post, rlbates offers her comments on a recent article (A Surgeon’s Outburst) printed in the Boston Globe and the article by Maggie Mahar mentioned above.

DrCris also writes about TURFing and asks, Can’t Surgeons and Physicians Work Together?

Jeffrey Parks offers his take on Diane Suchetka’s Continuing Anti-Doctor Crusade in a post discussing the newly released list of “never events.” MSNBC.com reported on this list last week. Another article at MSNBC.com reported that surgical errors cost $1.5 billion a year.

News
In To Heal the Wounded, Donald McNeil writes about a new textbook for surgeons on the battlefield. An interesting read for those interested in military medicine. The story is found at NYTimes.com.

bookofjoe compares an article from the Scientific American and a study that appeared in the British Medical Joural about what happens when a surgeon sneezes.

Reuters.com carries a story discussing the ethics relating to waiting for death and the quick-harvesting of hearts.

Thanks to everyone who submitted. Thanks for allowing me to host this edition of SurgeXperiences. The next edition of SurgeXperiences will be hosted by DrCris a Scalpel’s Edge.

post

Autopsy

By now my summer is almost over. I begin my second year in September, right after Labor Day. It’s gone rather quickly. I know I’m going to miss it.

Part of me is worried that the summer vacation is going to make me rusty as far as studying goes. But I’ve been reviewing Biochemistry. So hopefully sliding into things in a couple weeks won’t be too terrible.

The other day I was driving home from Target with my mom. I mentioned something about having to go back to Loma Linda for an autopsy. I’m not sure how it came out. But she sounded pretty confused as she said, “What?!?”

I think it sounded like I was going in for my own autopsy — like it was one of those before-the-school-year-begins kind of things. Like a physical. So I think I caused my mom to doubt whether she knew what an autopsy was.

But I assured her she knew what an autopsy was and that I was going to view an autopsy — not have one done on me.

I’ll write about it once I’ve viewed it.. But it’ll probably go up at The Differential. So I’ll put up a link then.

post

SurgeXperiences Blog Carnival Coming Soon


I’d like to thank Jeffrey Leow for giving me the opportunity to host the SurgeXperiences Blog Carnival. Episode 4 of Season 2 will be coming to JeffreyMD.com on August 17, 2008. This will be my first time hosting a blog carnival. To find out more about SurgeXperiences, you can click the banner above.

Deadline for Submissions: August 16
Suggested Theme: My First Time

If you have a post that does not fit with the theme, that’s alright. Just submit it anyways.

Click here to submit your post.

Also, be sure to check out the current edition of SurgeXperiences over at Other Things Amanzi.

post

Summer Update

Well it’s been a while since I’ve written anything. It’s not because I don’t want to. I just haven’t had much to write about lately since I’m on summer vacation. I have had a couple of posts uploaded to The Differential. Those posts will probably eventually end up here on my personal blog. But for now, they are exclusively at Medscape.

About a week and a half ago I received a packet from my school. I eagerly opened it and found a letter officially congratulating me on completing my first year. It also had a tentative schedule and list of required textbooks for my second year.

I had been wondering if I was ever going to get such a letter. There were maybe 3 classes where the teacher sent us a congratulatory note that we passed a certain class. But the other classes offered no such satisfaction. I assumed I passed them. I’d hope that if I failed a class, the school would get to me a lot sooner than the end of July (especially since our finals were done by the beginning of June).

Anyways, I am finally (officially) a second year. And that, in itself, is very exciting. I’m a quarter of the way done. It’s strange to think that this time next year I will be walking around the wards as a third year doing all the things I watched them do during freshman wards experience. They seem so far off.

But I better not get ahead of myself. I still have to take the USMLE Step 1 exam after second year. Well, I actually have to get through second year first.

Hopefully I’ll be able to write with more frequency as the school year approaches. Sophomore orientation is September 2!

post

Science-Based Medicine

This year I had a course called Evidence-Based Medicine. The point of the class was to educate us on how to use the medical literature to determine the best treatments. Medicine has definitely come a long way from bleeding patients as a form of treatment. Now, we have evidence to lead the way.

But I recently overheard my parents talking about drinking EPSOM salt as part of an alternative to surgery for removing gallbladder stones. The treatment involved drinking fresh-squeezed apple juice for a number of days, drinking a 1/2 cup of Virgin Olive Oil, and then drinking an EPSOM salt and water mixture.

The treatment is supposed to flush out your liver/gallbladder and cause gallstones to be excreted with your stool. The site Curezone.com has a page dedicated to this treatment with a list of the various different “recipes” for the treatment. (Click here to see the liver flushing page.) Oh, and for all the skeptics, the pages come complete with pictures of gallstones people removed from their own stool!

Well I was a skeptic. I realize I’m just a medical student. But the idea didn’t sit right with me. Then I found a website called Science-Based Medicine that contained an article titled “Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?

The author, a surgeon, rips apart this treatment. If I were to paraphrase him: The treatment is absolutely ridiculous. You can check out the details at his post.

Even in this day and age, there are still plenty of strange treatments that are blindly followed without any evidence to support it. My parents heard about this treatment from a church member who was told that she had gallstones and needed a surgery to remove them.

I wish we could educate the public. Maybe a course on evidence-based medicine should be taught at the high school level. I mean, reading a site like the one listed above (Curezone) can be very convincing. You see all these testimonials by people who have “flushed” their livers. You see pictures of these supposed gallstones that were fished out of the toilet. And you think, hey, that’s proof it works!

I guess this was one moment where I saw the value of my Evidence-Based Medicine course — a value I failed to appreciate at the time I took it.