TONY: Wayne’s World

Okay, so I feel compelled to stray from my usual verbose and introspective blogging style in favor of getting across some information that is really important.  As a disclaimer, I understand that I may get in trouble for what I’m about to say, and I may incur criticism/disgust/anger from my peers and reading public.  None of that matters.  What does matter is that I have finally figured out the one thing that is terrible about living in Atlanta.  You may ask, “Tony, really?  There’s only one thing?”  Yes, only one thing.  And his name is Lil’ Wayne.

For the uninformed: Lil’ Wayne is the self-proclaimed ‘best rapper alive’.  As a lover of both hip-hop and good things in general, I find myself compelled to disagree with him.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard one tries to avoid him, here in Atlanta Lil’ Wayne will ALWAYS find you.  For example, during my drive to school each morning (an indispensable time of reflection and regeneration of my fragile med student psyche), I will need to endure no less than four “hits” from Lil’ Wayne on the radio.  “Hey Tony, why don’t you just change the station?”  Great idea.  I think I’ll try it.  Oh, here’s a great song by another artist.  I think I’ll continue listening to this song because of it’s refreshingly Wayne-Free sound…Oh, wait—I spoke to soon.  It turns out that Lil’ Wayne is the guest star on every song ever made.  And forget about going out to a nightclub—every night is Wayne night.  If you move to Atlanta, he will spiritually and emotionally terrorize you everywhere you go.

How could the burgeoning career of one rap artist have such an effect on my quality of life here at Emory?  Honestly, I could come up with a thousand, nay, A Milli-on reasons why this man’s popularity upsets me.  I’ll give you two of them:

1)  The unfortunate reality that these two individuals must be related:

Lil’ Wayne sounds like a gremlin.  I’ve never heard another human being’s voice sound like his, but I suspect that it has arisen as a result of his oftentimes-glorified years of illicit substance use.  Clearly he is currently a role model to more Americans than any one physician could be.

2)  He is a terrible rapper.  His lyrics are often rambling and nonsensical.  As a medical student, however, I take extra offense to the many lyrics that are both nonsensical and medically inaccurate.  Frankly, it is horrifying to me that there could be thousands of people who believe that a ‘venereal disease’ and a ‘menstrual bleed’ are one and the same, simply because Lil’ Wayne said so in a hit song.  It’s simply irresponsible, Wayne, and I will stand for it no longer.

Now that this rant has come full circle, and I have had time to reflect, I think that there may actually be one benefit to my constant exposure to the ‘best rapper alive’.  His ascendancy in the music industry has shown me that anybody can be famous.  Even me.  If this med school thing does not end up working out, and I retain the ability to speak and put together mildly coherent sentences, I too can be the best rapper alive.  A few classmates and I decided to take a step in this direction with our lauded class video.

So, thank you Lil’ Wayne.
Your terrible example has given me the courage to step forward and turn the hip-hop world on its head with my own brand of witty, coherent, and medically accurate rhymes.

I couldn’t have done it without you.

PEARL: On Science and Medicine

I am a not-so-secret lover of science. I giggle over it (consider this), talk about it at length, think about it even more, and threaten my friends’ patience at social events when I turn the conversation back to my favorite subject. Despite all this, I have never seriously doubted that I will one day practice medicine. In fact, at the end of my undergrad I felt uncertain about a future in bench science, and chose to apply for M.D. programs instead of M.D./Ph.D. programs. Within a month of entering medical school, I realized I couldn’t live a life without science, and applied into our M.D./Ph.D. program here at Emory.

Why pursue both medicine and science? There are obvious talking points, and they are true – physician-scientists have considerable insight into the needs of the medical community and can thus direct resources (both human intellect and money) toward appropriate problems. They also have intimate experience healing those affected by the very diseases they study. But the joint degree program means much more to me personally. Much as I love science, the day-to-day reality is that progress in research moves extremely slowly (as I am sure many of you are acutely aware), and I am far too dependent on instant gratification to live exclusively in the research world. In a sense, I want to be able to make my cake and eat it too, all at the same time. Medicine doubtlessly rests upon the advancements of science, and I do hope to contribute to this body of knowledge. I don’t personally have the patience to see these contributions make a difference in someone’s life, which is what compels me to get out there with our imperfect knowledge and make as much of a difference as I can in the here and now. We’ll see where it takes me!

Update on school life: we second-years are finishing up with three weeks of psychiatry. We have two more weeks of neuroscience and two weeks of “summation” before we are finished with medical school classes(!). I will take a week off for Thanksgiving, one week off to rest my mind and rejuvenate, and then dive into boards studying. After boards on January 16th, I will be moving back into the science world full-time as most of my classmates begin their rotations on the wards. It is hard to believe that we are so close to ending this chapter of our education when it feels as though it has just begun.

Update on life: Atlanta has cooled off after a long summer. The fall weather really hit its stride about a week ago, with nights in the 40s and days in the 70s – it is glorious! I just recently adopted a dog, Lilly, and she has been great company for me and many of my med school friends as we get outside to play in the fantastic weather. I hope, wherever you are, that you are enjoying the weather as much as we are!

JACKIE: The Sweetness of Accomplishment

To follow up on my comrade Tony’s somewhat embarrassing moment in small group, as told below, I will describe my incredibly awesome experience at OPEX. OPEX stands for “Outpatient Experience”, and is the part of our curriculum where we each go to a different outpatient clinic every other week and shadow a primary care physician for the afternoon. This interaction is one-on-one and can often lead to feelings of utter dismay, since one’s preceptor might ask one questions that one never knows the answer to.  However, the other day I had an OPEX moment in which I felt like a complete medical genius (as opposed to feeling like a kid in a dunce cap as per Tony).

We are now studying Psychiatry in class, but we just completed our study of Neurology. Neurology involves numerous questions that require you to “localize the lesion.” This means that you gather a set of symptoms (e.g. numbness on the left side of the face but not the forehead or weakness of the right leg from the knee down) and use them to determine where in the brain, midbrain or spinal cord the lesion has occurred. Lesions range from stroke to infection to transection.

Last Wednesday at OPEX, I fully localized the lesion and made the correct diagnosis all by myself! I was able to recall all of the information I needed to adequately do this, elicit the relevant symptoms and history, and make a proper diagnosis.

I’ll tell you what, folks: medical school can be a discouraging, frustrating experience. There is too much to know and not enough time to learn it. But the fact of the matter is, it just takes awhile to truly gain medical knowledge and be able to apply it. This explains why it takes at least 7 years to become a doctor. But, as overachieving students, it is hard to remind ourselves that in our second year of this 7-year process, we must not expect to know everything yet! I know this may seem obvious, but it’s just not that easy to keep in mind, trust me. And since we can’t always keep this in mind, we endure moments of major frustration. Yet those moments when you DO know the answer, when you are actually able to help someone in real life; ah- it makes it all worth it.

KEVIN: Top Nine Signs of Interview Season

9. Disappointment that nobody from your school is interviewing today (only valid if you graduated from Berkeley)
8. Interviewees asking frantically which AdComm official to send thank you notes to
7. Best study room in building no longer free
6. M1s weary of EBM (Evidence-Based Medicine)
5. M2s still learning EBM
4. Before checking their Facebook in lecture, students quickly check over their shoulders for the prying eyes of interviewees.
3. Free Coke and cookies
2. Erica sends veiled threats to students who steal interviewees’ Coke and cookies
1. Kevin updates his EUSOM blog

ANTOINETTE: Changin’ of Seasons

Why hello there.

Alas, our 3-week summer break came and went. Summer, I hardly knew thee. While it was short, it was definitely sweet. Par for the course, I left the country on the first flight out of Atlanta for 3 glorious weeks in the motherland (‘Nam) and Thailand.

Now, 3 modules and a fall break later, we’re in the midst of delicious autumn. Fall gets me excited for cool nights, all things pumpkin, and the return of the sweater. But it also means our pre-clinical years are coming to an end and studying for the boards looms ahead. We did an exercise last week during small group where we had to write for 10 minutes about a critical experience that affected us during the last 18 months or so. I couldn’t come come up with a negative incident and instead, I just free-wrote.

—-

The patient sat atop the examining table as my preceptor looked into her ear with an otoscope. She’d had a history of otitis media and now presented with some hearing problems. But it wasn’t the patient that had my attention. It was the toddler laying in the stroller aside the table. She had piercing gray-blue eyes and was waking up from a nap. Before she could cry, I asked the patient if I could hold her. I gingerly picked her up and held her tight to my chest, rocking back and forth. Not a peep came out of her mouth and she looked at me with those big ol’ eyes as she clenched and unclenched her fists. I felt a pang in my ovaries and some tears in my eyes, but that’s not news. (My tears are pretty cheap these days). My preceptor looked at me and noted, “You’re good at that.” Somehow, this little child had completely made my day. I forgot I was in clinic for a moment and thought about my little cousins (I have 9 under the age of 7) and my family and how much I missed them. I walked to the Grady shuttle stop that day with a grin on my face and a bounce in my step…for no real reason.

And what struck me was how easy it’s been to retain my “humanity” in medical school. Everyone talks about the inevitability of cynicism and how cases can start becoming about the disease rather than the patient. Maybe it’s preemptive and presumptuous of me to say this, before I start clinical rotations and get worn down by the system and numbed by fatigue, but almost a year and a half into medical school, that’s not how I feel. As we share and confide in each other, I’m often struck by the awesome responsibility that we have ahead of us. And on those really tough days that’ll certainly arise, I have a feeling I’ll be repeating to myself “never stop caring” and “that patient is someone’s son, someone’s daughter.” Call me naïve, but to me, those kinds of lessons are invaluable.

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Nothing profound, slightly melodramatic but regardless, it was cathartic to put it on paper. It made me regret the fact that I haven’t journaled often during medical school: too tired, too busy, too whatever. But sometimes, it’s good to stop, reflect… and then jump into a pile of crunchy, dry leaves.

newly minted M2,
Antoinette