Personify.

11:06 PM me: umm hi

Rebecca: hiiii

me: how do you feel about the kidney?

Rebecca: ummm not that great.

11:07 PM me: i know...i'm kinda mad at her

it has to be a her

Rebecca: its a her

me: b/c it is so smart

Rebecca: yeah

me: and adjusts

Rebecca: "if you were an organ, you'd be the kidney"

i actually love that analogy!

so true!

11:08 PMRebecca: and you have to be really careful

i mean, she's really strong but also really sensitive!

me: yea

she is

Rebecca: and she's ALWAYS taking care of EVERY OTHER ORGAN, making sure they have osmolites

me: and she is better as a pair but does just fine on her own

11:09 PM Rebecca: if it weren't for her, none of the other organs would even be there. but do they EVER thank her? no

me: of course not, but she keeps on trucking

and saves the day every time

Educate.

Today I, along with a group of first and second year medical students, set up a free diabetes screening booth at a nearby Wal-Mart. The constant stream of people coming to us, willingly getting themselves pricked on a leisurely Sunday afternoon shopping trip, was heartwarming. I realized that these individuals are curious about health and truly want to maintain their own and their family’s as they listened intently to advice on healthy lifestyle changes and took information on diabetes and regular doctor’s visits seriously.

While uplifting, their receptiveness was saddening. It demonstrated that their lack of education about a disease so prevalent and destructive, especially in the Hispanic population, was not their fault. It was because nobody had taught them.

Ignorance is not a choice for most. Our privileged lives with education at our fingertips (literally, how hard is it to type “diabetes” into Wikipedia?), oftentimes makes us forget that our world is not the whole world. This discrepancy can lead us to blame others for their plight instead of understanding the disparities in healthcare and education.

As we grow and excel in our careers we should never take our abilities and facilities for granted. They are not deserved. Instead they are opportunities to make a difference in the lives of others by being the bridge between our worlds.

Battle burnout.

With a dozen medical school exams under my belt barely three months into school, I suffered the same fate as many of my classmates who have been treading hard to stay afloat - BURNOUT.

After exams I took a week off from school. And myself.

Relaxing getaway? Not so much.

A few days into my “vacation,” I noticed I was neither acting nor feeling like myself. I was cranky, lazy and my normal enthusiasm for life was dampened. I was accomplishing nothing.

I realized that I thrive on personal and academic discipline, organization and routine. Doing, excelling, working – these are the things that make me feel good about myself and excited about what each day may bring.

Clearly, I needed to find an alternate therapy for academic burnout.

I re-read my personal statement where I say, “Healing as a physician is a threefold process involving knowledge, medical care and emotional support.…and I’m inspired to pursue this process further with a career in medicine.”

My own words motivated me to get out from under biochemistry and to reconnect with why I am here.

Today I met with a professor of anesthesiology to discuss my career aspirations, and he gave me advice, told me I could shadow in the OR and set me up with a mentor. I also attended a workshop where I learned suturing techniques and methods to obtain samples for biopsy. On Thursday, I get to see the heart. Next week I’m going to an intubation workshop.

I’m not seeing patients yet, but now I remember that I will.

I’m re-inspired to prepare myself.

Trust yourself.

My life, blessed with a myriad of opportunities and an incredible support system, devoid of failure and hardship, has delayed my introspection on personal limitations until, well, now. I’m just learning the fact that I will not be good at everything, or even be interested in everything. I cannot help everyone. My greatest effort may not always be enough. And, even I (gasp!) can be wrong.

Alas, I’m a member of this human race.

With an increasingly demanding academic world and exposure to more and more individuals with varied perspectives, I have learned that accepting myself - strengths, weaknesses, preferences, values and all - will be and should be important to each of my decisions, personal and professional. More than anyone else, I must believe that the choices I make are the right ones, because my conscience is the greatest bearer of their consequences.

Self-acceptance does not mean giving in to failure. In fact, to me, it means just the opposite – it means playing up your strengths. Contradictory to what I’ve believed for so long, letting go does not equal giving up. It means moving forward with a new approach and perspective. It means trusting yourself.

The human body is complex.

And, as I found today, the body can invoke complex emotions. Today was my second anatomy lab, and surprisingly it went much less smoothly than the first. I suppose I was feeling especially human, or maybe my cadaver was, because today we were connected. This connection forced my mind to scream with every contact of the scalpel and each hammering of the chisel.

I have no doubt that in future labs I will be able to disconnect myself and keep my emotional response at bay, but I hope that I will never completely lose this sensitivity that comes with the naivety of being a beginner medical student. Remembering that “our cadavers” belonged to individuals brave enough and selfless enough to concretely teach us about the human body should teach us a lesson about respect not only for the dead, but also for the living.

If we can connect with a nonliving human, making a connection to a living patient should be easy. I think this human connection with our patients will make us more compassionate, caring, sensitive, thorough doctors who can keep from viewing common ailments as monotonous and who remember that each patient is a whole human being more than merely a disease.

In the words of Dr. Francis W. Peabody in his lecture, The Care of the Patient, “The secret of the care of the patient is caring for the patient.” Let’s practice on our cadavers.

Happiness is a choice.

I admit, this is not something I learned today, or even in one, single day, but I happened upon the following passage while finishing Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert in the wee hours of this morning. Although the book stirs my own mixed emotions, I think this passage describes choosing happiness beautifully. And, the understanding that I have this choice is the most empowering lesson I have ever learned.

"People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment" (Gilbert 260).

Being happy, choosing happiness, is important for everyone's personal success in this world, but as physicians, I believe it is just as vital to our careers. We are healers. Others look to us for guidance as they grapple with illness, death, fear and pain, both physical and emotional. Our only hope to help our patients is to exude positivity while utilizing our medical tools, knowledge and experience. And, the only way for us to emanate this positivity is by freeing ourselves from negative thoughts, emotions and actions. This freedom enables us to serve.

As Gilbert says, "The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world" (Gilbert 260). We have been given such a tremendous opportunity to give while gaining so much. Let's run with it!

One month 'til white coat!

I embark upon my journey toward physician-hood with excitement and enthusiasm. This has been my dream as long as I can remember, and it is finally (FINALLY!) coming true. I can see myself now - shining in my white coat, smelling like embalming fluid after anatomy lab, passing the boards (God willing) and eventually finding a specialty that stirs my passion to which I will devote my life.

But mere weeks from beginning medical school, another set of emotions has set in, and I have begun to wonder about this path I have chosen. What am I doing really? Anxiety about the unknown has not caused my eagerness to wane, but it is certainly playing its part in my smorgasbord of thoughts as my dream career rapidly transforms into reality.

This blog hopes to chronicle my adventures and evolving perspectives as I attempt to discover what being a doctor really means. It also hopes to introduce issues and dilemmas faced by medical students and the medical field as a whole (please comment on future posts!). And, as the title implies, this blog celebrates daily learning, which we inevitably do and which is our very hope for progress - in medicine and beyond.