Settled in!

Finally settling in! Just got internet after a two week ordeal wrangling with the building management and Verizon about getting connected (Apparently Verizon knows how to connect phones from their CO to buildings but not buildings to rooms). Anyway, I am finally using my own secure internet connection whew!!!

Deo my roommate is also settling in. He is finally getting over his malaria which he got in Rwanda (It was crazy, chills, fever, loss of appetite, terrible side effects of treatment). Anyway, I think he’s okay and will probably live . . . I guess there’s no understanding diseases until you actually get them eh Deo?

Here’s a picture of Deo and his adopted parents who just came up from New York to see him:

In other news, I finally found a decent Korean/Japanese restaurant yesterday called YAMA (means simply Mountain in Japanese – yea, I know).

Got a study group that I am comfortable with coming over to study tonight. Studying and pizza, one of the highlights of my life . . .

So in a word, I am feeling settled. Now if I can only catch up on studying in time for my quizzes on Monday . . . shit, time to cram!

My new car!

I got me a brand new Acura TSX, meteor silver! YAY!

Front view of car

Back view of car

Side view of car

View of one happy driver! :)

Turning into a real med student??

Wow, I am tired.
Med school is definitely mentally and physically draining. I think between trying to adjust to the heavy study schedule, settling into the Upper Valley New Hampshire and trying to build a social network around myself, I am really taxing myself a little. Still, I can’t complain. Things haven’t really bogged down as much as they probably will in a few weeks when Anatomy starts up and I am really enjoying living with Deo and some of the new friends I’ve met. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet that I am calling this new place home, I keep thinking I will be leaving in a week or two . . . then again maybe it never will be quite home. We shall see, everything in good time I suppose.

time to study some Histology.

Deo (my roommate) thinks being tired is good because it means I am finally turning into a real med student . . . great!

My first cadaver

We had a “sneak peek” in the Anatomy lab today hosted by the 2nd year students. I had pretty high expectations of myself going into lab. I had seen and touched several dead bodies in South Africa and seen the Body Worlds exhibit in LA so what could be so bad about a few embalmed cadavers?

And yet, as the 2nd year students calmly unzipped the blue plastic bags holding them, I felt my stomach turn a little. The formalin stung in my nose and I felt a mild tingling sensation in my hands and feet as they peeled back the shroud to reveal the grey, rubbery skin. One of the cadavers, an old man still had all of his chest and back hair which stuck out all over the place. He was barrel chested and had a protruded belly which looked like it may have once been soft and plump but was now hard, rubbery and unyielding. Luckily for me, the hands, feet and head were bound up in gauze (we won’t unwrap those until we study the head and neck).

A few presses, pulls, rubs later, I felt more comfortable around the bodies and ready for labs to start next week.

All in all, it wasn’t mind-blowing but it was a significant experience in my second week of med school nonetheless.

I guess, in a way, this is a microcosm of the whole process of starting med school. No major epiphanies, just a few tiny revelations here and there. Maybe in another couple of weeks, I will finally feel like I’m a med student?

First week of med school

So I’ve gotten through the first week of med school and so far, I am still alive. I think they are easing us into it right now, no cadavers and long Anatomy labs just yet. Its interesting because I am already seeing some aspects of medical education that is indicative of the problems of health care in this country and the assumptions of scientific cultural hegemony in western medicine. So do we have a monopoly on the CORRECT way to treat patients? Is evidence-based medicine the only way to understand and measure life and well-being?

The studies that are being done in medicine are increasingly specific to treating certain diseases and understanding the pathways for those diseases that are affecting mainly the rich in this country (heart disease, cancer). The goal is to get patients to the point where they can live with the disease, not cure it completely. As Chris Rock says “they don’t cure shit! Cuz there ain’t no money in the cure, its the medicine”. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is suffering from completely curable illnesses that get little or no attention in the “first world”. Take TB for example, tuberculosis is a disease that is 95% curable with a triple drug therapy yet there are over 1.5 billion
people with the bacterium in the world. The allocation of resources to managing this epidemic have declined both in dollars contributed to research and perceived importance of the disease in popular media largely in step with the decline in prevalence of TB among rich white people in this country. In South Africa, patients with CLEAR signs of active TB, coughing, bloody sputum, night sweats, loss of weight cannot be put on treatment until they are “properly diagnosed”. Even when there IS an X-ray machine at the clinic, sputum samples must be taken and cultured (a 3-5 day process) before a positive diagnosis can be registered. This means 3-5 days where the patient can spread the disease, often it is longer because the patients must come back to the clinic (some never do in fact come back).

As Paul Farmer puts it “We live in a world where infections pass easily across borders – social and geographic – while resources, including cumulative scientific knowledge, are blocked at customs”

While we learn important aspects about the molecular basis of medicine, physiology, histology, anatomy in our curriculum, little or no attention will be given to studying the institution of medicine itself. Meanwhile, the health care system in America is perhaps the most inefficient yet institutionalized system around. We as a nation put the most $$$ into health care and yet rank embarrassingly low in terms of primary health indicators like infant mortality. It is increasingly clear even in popular media these days that the health care system in this country is broken yet as physicians-to-be we learn nothing about how to fix it, or even how to understand the problem.

Anyway, I guess I meant to describe my first week of med school, but somehow I stumbled onto this tirade against my chosen profession. But I suppose that is why I am here, as a physician, it will be my responsibility to understand the problems in my profession and try to change it for the better.

Pictures from Orientation

The traffic circle, I wonder if you can use it when it snows?

The entrance to DMS, nice eh?

We went on an overnight retreat as part of orientation. Took a nice hike with some of my new classmates, then climbed this aluminum weather tower thing to get to the view . . . stay tuned to see if we made it.

Made it! Now where the heck is the ocean?

New classmates Jared, Ako and Michelle hanging on for dear life!

Gonna try to make it back to civilization now . . .

Sword, Khue and Vasi in front of the Moosilauke Lodge(MORE NEW CLASSMATES!!!!)

“THIS IS HOW YOU EAT WATERMELON . . . ”

My On Doctoring group doing some team building . . .

From left to right (Rachel, Katie, Mike, Brittany, Narath, Jane)

My new room and my most important piece of equipment, my bed

‘Twas the night before med school . . .

After an action packed week of moving to the other corner of the country, meeting my 80 classmates, and trying to psyche myself up for med school, its finally going to happen . . . med school and the much anticipated new chapter in my life starts in T-minus . . . 10 hours!

I can’t say I am excited so much as anxious . . . kind of like walking up the platform at the Dartmouth Rope Swing and looking down (the DRS is a 40 foot long rope which hangs over the river that you can use to swing you over the river at which point you are supposed to let go and do a swan dive into the river). I feel like I am getting ready to take that first step off the platform, feel the drop, the exhiliration and excitement. The important thing here, just like in the rope swing is conquering that first step and getting into the water, not to be pretty but to JUST DO IT.

Its weird, so much is different yet a few things remain the same. As with any cultural adaptation process, I have felt several emotional states during orientation. I went from excited and energized the first few days (to the extent that I was able to survive 4 hrs of sleep over two days, jet lag, coming to the first day of orientation without a car, place to live, furniture or any clue about living in the Upper Valley and still have the energy to meet and laugh with my classmates and spend a little QT with my family) to somber, thoughtful and a bit aloof in the final days of orientation as if taking a deep breathe before the plunge. Its funny but although I try to be the former personality (laughing, smiling, friendly), I find I am almost more comfortable these days as the latter, more thoughtful and withdrawn, independent and doing my own thing. So far, my classmates have been extremely supportive and adaptive to both Eugenes . . . Well, we shall see, classes start tomorrow.

Back home . . . for now

Finally back in good ole San Francisco after 27 hours or so of flying. Highlights yesterday: enjoying the crisp bay area breeze after stepping off the plane, taking the first sip of tonkotsu soup at Santa Ramen with Ariel and her bro and cleansing myself with a nice hot shower.

Can’t say I am all here yet though, my mind is in a thousand places right now. Saying goodbye to San Francisco, saying hello to my new life and new friends at DMS (I just got my new address today), preparing myself for the challenges ahead.