Perspective

It's awfully easy to stress out about life. Sometimes it seems like there's an endless parade of obstacles and problems, each attempting to make life as infernally difficult as possible. There are classes to study for, abstracts to write, posters to assemble, FAST gatherings to plan, clinical sessions to attend...and of course, the pink elephant that no medical student wants to talk about -- post-graduation debt. There are millions of things to do and not nearly enough time to do them all. And so we (and by "we" I mean "I") worry about all of these things that seem so important.

And then I see something like this. I found a link to it in a blog written by another medical student, and it puts into shockingly clear perspective just how monumentally unimportant most of my worries are. Perhaps more significantly, it reminds me of just how little I've done, just how little I've sacrificed, to make the world a little better for the rest of God's children. It reminds me of why I've chosen this path, and of why it's important for me to shut up with the complaining and work to learn as much as I can. I've been blessed beyond all belief; thus, my vocation for the rest of my life will be to be a blessing to others by the grace of God. Maybe, just maybe, it's time for me to stop being a wallflower and start making a difference.

On a not-totally-unrelated note, I also found an article that some people might find interesting. Take a second to check it out.

Peace and God bless!

Sing a little song...

PalPITTations is back and (after knocking some of the rust off) better than ever! If there's a better way to improve an already satisfactory day than by spending some time singing with friends, I have yet to discover it. It really is more fun than you might think, given the discipline and practice that are required even for our laid-back little group. Just being able to sing is a release and a joy in itself, and to hear a song coming together, the voices blending in a vibrant harmony...it's really its own reward. It's especially gratifying after a day spent doing virtually nothing but studying cardiology. It's the playtime that helps to refresh the mind after hours of intense work, and while it can seem like it's wasted time ("I NEED TO BE STUDYING!!!"), I know it helps me be better prepared for the tasks that still lay ahead. After all, burning out now sure won't do me any good.

Anyway, life right now is surely good, which is a blessing for which I'm very thankful. It stands to get even better (albeit infinitely crazier) next week when we get to go start playing doctor again. I'm absolutely looking forward to it! In the meantime, could I ask those of you who read this to keep a special intention in your prayers? Thanks, it's always appreciated!

Peace and God bless!

Decisions

It's late and I'm exhausted, so I offer a single thought to ponder for tonight. Which is preferable: to do the right thing for the wrong reasons or to refrain from doing the right thing because you know your motivations are poor? Let me know what you think and why.

Peace and God bless!

Reflections

So the first class of second year is over. In some ways it was a great way to begin: interesting material, short duration, and for all intents and purposes impossible to fail -- low stress = happy students. Next up, starting tomorrow morning, will be cardiology. The syllabus is enormous, easily several hundred pages long, but this will be one of the most interesting and useful courses we've had so far. It'll be a huge volume of material, so some other things may end up sliding a bit.

On another note, since it's Sunday, I just want to take a moment to consider the reading from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians today. It's probably one of the most uncomfortable readings in Scripture from our modern perspective. I'll be honest, I've never understood it particularly well myself, so I'm probably not the best one the explain it, but something struck me while listening to the reading today, so I figured I'd write it down and see if it made sense.

"Wives, be subordinate to your husbands." The statement offends modern sensibilities. It appears to oppose everything that we're supposed to stand for. It's a statement that few homilists will dare to approach in any detail. However, one Dominican priest of my acquaintance bravely attempted to explain once that the husband's relationship with his wife is to mirror that of Christ with the Church. There was a lot more to it than that, but that was the central point. Until now, I haven't really been able to come up with a sufficient explanation of what that meant.

Today, as I was contemplating the reading, I realized that Christ not only gave His life for His Church, but that He has joined Himself to the Church, that He lives for the Church. It is her life for which He is primarily concerned; He cares more for His Church than for His own life. He sacrificed everything that His bride might live. And it is this that a husband must do in his own life. He is to place his wife before himself in all things, to be her shield and her sounding board, her friend, her shoulder to cry on, and her partner. It is his job to care for her when she can't care for herself. I should probably explain this before getting myself yelled at: a wife's first concern is not for herself either, particularly when she becomes a mother. And when you live for another, you tend to neglect yourself, or have unrealistic expectations of yourself. Often, we can push ourselves too far, and even when someone else points this out, we don't want to hear it. And so, it is the part of the husband to look out for his wife's well-being in all things, even if it means sacrificing himself. Thus, if the husband is doing his job, his wife would be smart to pay attention to what he says. Since she isn't concerned with herself, she should be guided by the one who is concerned for her.

Anyway, I don't know if any of that made any sense. Probably not. Either way, those are my thoughts for the evening. More in the near future.

Peace and God bless!

The joys of simulation

I've said it before (although not in this space) and I'll say it again: medical simulation is one of the most powerful teaching techniques I've ever experienced. And it's not just good for manual skills either. Pharmacology overall has not been a poorly taught class (with one or two exceptions), but I learned more about cholinergic and anticholinergic toxicity in two hours today than in all of the lectures on the subject (some 6 or 7 hours) combined. For example, in explaining why it was a horrible idea to give a patient with myasthenia gravis either succinylcholine (it won't work) or pancuronium (the patient will be paralyzed for an extended period of time), the anesthesiologist presenting the case clarified the entire mechanism of activity of both drugs. He also included a bonus lesson in clinical management of patients so affected; while his advice may be of little help on the test, it was of immense practical value.

So why aren't we doing more to employ this particular modality? Even here at Pittsburgh, where we have a massive simulation center and the medical students make regular use of it, we're only experiencing a small fraction of its full potential. In other places, students aren't even permitted to use the mannequins; they're only used to train MDs. It seems to me that we're wasting valuable opportunities by not making the fullest possible use of this technology -- or at least spending some effort on validating it.

Anyhow, those are my thoughts for the night. Tomorrow's a study day; next entry will probably be after the test on Saturday. Till then, take care.

Peace and God bless!

Mad as a hatter...

Those among you who are medical students or physicians may recognize the title as being part of an old mnemonic for an atropine overdose -- i.e. a muscarinic antagonist overload. Color me overloaded. (Well, no, not really, but I am nuts...just ask anyone.) Anyhow, in the last three days we've covered basic pharmacokinetics (including handfuls of equations and instruction on how to design a dosing regimen) and all things (ok, maybe not all per se) cholinergic. Muscarinic, nicotinic, ACh, AChE, succinylcholine, rocuronium, organophosphate toxicity, sugammadex activity, agonists, antagonists, etc. Tomorrow we deal with cholinergic activity in the eye, then we have another conference (this one on, shockingly, cholinergic activity), and we finish off the new material in pharm with a simulation session. It's all very exciting. (I told you already, I'm crazy.) Then, of course, the test is Saturday, and even my nerdy self can't find much enthusiasm about that. Oh well. Anyhow, I should probably cap this here and get going, as there are still muscarinic antagonists to learn, mechanisms of neuromuscular blockading drugs to wrap my mind around, and...oh, yeah, dinners to eat. Hm, should probably get on that.

Oh, and if any of you are just DYING for the rest of the mnemonic:
"Red as a beet, dry as a bone, blind as a bat, mad as a hatter." Ask any med student (who's had pharm) or physician; they can explain it to you...although I can't for the life of me understand why you'd want to know.

Peace and God bless!

First day of MS-2

So it begins. And we're not talking "dip a toe in the water"; this is full-immersion baptism by fire. Today: four pharmacology lectures (moderately interesting, believe it or not), a two and a half hour research meeting (that completely transformed my project -- most productive 2.5 hours of research I've ever experienced), and an advising dinner for the new first years (two points here: a) the class of 2013 is awesome; and b) my FAST group is even awesomer. Yes, that's a word now. Because I said so. No, you can't argue.) This is followed tomorrow by more pharm lectures in the morning, an hour-long orientation to second year from 12-1 (I'm thinking there'll be pizza involved), and then a re-orientation to the IPC (Intro to Patient Care) block that's scheduled for 3 1/2 hours. Yikes. Then, after that, I have to meet with my small group to put together the pharm presentations due Wednesday (Rational Use of Drugs) and Thursday (Cholinergic Medications); that'll keep us busy for a while. Of course, there are more lectures to go along with those presentations on both Wednesday and Thursday, and then Thursday closes with a simulation session run by my research advisor (looking forward to that like you would not believe!). Friday is a review day and then the pharm test is on Saturday morning. Deep breath. *Whew!* So yeah, that's the week. More updates to come as things happen.

Peace and God bless!

Health care rant

All right, all of you lame-brained, lily-livered, greedy, grasping, partisan, worthless politicians, LISTEN UP. I don't know about the rest of the country, but at least one American is SICK and TIRED of your petty partisan bickering, your incessant lying and exaggerations, and most of all your persistent choices to sacrifice the good of the American people for political and / or personal gain. And don't ANY of you try to tell me that you're just the innocent victim here, that those big, bad Republicans or those Lilliputian Democrats are out to get you. This utter FIASCO that is the current "debate" on health care reform has made one thing very clear. Neither of you are the LEAST bit concerned with anything but making the other guys look bad. Republicans, you've made this very clear with your asinine assertions regarding coverage for millions of illegal immigrants and the elderly undergoing what would amount to (by your arguments) mandatory suicide counseling. Your best arguments (you know, the ones about fiscal responsibility and the fact that we have no way to pay for all this as well as the central role of the oh-so-efficient American government in the administration of this new structure) apparently aren't sensational enough; instead, you'd rather stick with the off-the-wall crap ("DEMOCRATS ARE SOCIALISTS!") that you know will get you air time. Despicable. And Democrats, you're no better. You're flat-out LYING about the "saving money" thing ($2500 per family, Mr. Obama? Really?); this bill is going to cost an incredible amount of money that the country just doesn't have. You have no solid plan about how to pay for it. And your rhetoric demonstrates that the biggest reason you're so hot to pass this measure is to stick it to the Republicans. Once again, you're virtually omitting your strongest arguments (that this could potentially provide coverage to millions of additional Americans which, by the way, benefits both patients from a health perspective and health care workers from a fiscal perspective; then of course there's the little tiny fact that THE SYSTEM WE HAVE AIN'T WORKING!) in favor of "The Republicans are trying to screw you over!" and "We're going to save you money!" Which is true if you're...oh wait, no, it's not going to save you money AT ALL because while this may make coverage more available it does NOTHING to combat the underlying issues that have caused the price of health care to balloon *coughdefensivemedicinecough*. So, in summary, despite the glaring need for honest-to-goodness health care reform, all of you in both parties (and the nominal independents) are fighting over half measures to make political gains. Shame on you. The American people deserve better. Get off the donkeys and elephants and start taking your jobs seriously.

*Ahem* sorry about that. Unless you're one of the aforementioned politicians, in which case I'm not sorry at all. I'm just sick of all of the pointless political crap surrounding an issue that so desperately needs to be addressed in a timely and decisive fashion. Anyhow, last day of summer break tomorrow, and then MS-2 year begins in earnest. I'm actually looking forward to it. Yes, I'm a nerd. 'Nuff said.

Peace and God bless!

It's all in the way you look at it...

Traveling back to Pittsburgh from home is, as I believe I've mentioned before, always a struggle. It's always tough to leave Providence again, and to deal with the nagging feeling that I'm journeying in the wrong direction. The hardest part, without fail, is saying goodbye...saying goodbye to my parents, my brothers, my sisters, knowing that I'm not going to see them for months. These were the thoughts running through my head as I brooded on my return to the Steel City.

One of the most depressing thoughts that occurred to me was that every "hello" is merely the prelude to an inevitable "goodbye." No matter the circumstances, every human relationship ends up in parting. As you can imagine, this did little to improve my state of mind.

But as I thought about it a little more, I realized that my original impulse couldn't be more wrong, that in fact I had everything backwards. It is not that goodbyes are the unavoidable product of hellos, but that the partings are preludes to reunion. This is, in my opinion, one of the greatest comforts of the Catholic faith: the realization that even death is merely a temporary separation. So tonight, I won't think of the goodbyes that are behind me, but of the hellos that are yet to come.

"Consequently, friendship is, as it were, concomitant with perfect happiness." --St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia IIae Q4 a8 ad 3

Peace and God bless!

Back from Phoenix

Well, we're back. I would have posted before this, but the internet has been kinda screwy for the last couple of days. Anyway, it's late, so here's a quick summary: Arizona rocked. It was a little hot for me (average high was near 110 while we were in Phoenix), but thanks to the swimming pools and the scenery, that mattered little. I'm not going to go on and on about the trip; for the very few of you who look at this blog, if you want to know more, just ask me. Here are a few pictures from the experience:

Peace and God bless!