Pancakes.

Pancakes. What kind of image does that word inspire? What other words come to mind to describe them? I imagine for most people such things as salivation, anticipation, excitement, and if you’re an adult, a sense of childhood. For us, here, at Ross; however, that word has forever been tainted by a speech delivered during orientation. In fact, it made such an impact that using a graphic of pancakes was an option we voted on for our class shirts. Context: imagine each day is a pancake. Each day you receive at least four hours of more information. Each day you are expected to understand and master that day’s material before moving onto tomorrow. If you fall behind, the next day you now have not only that day’s pancake, but also the pancake from the day before. Now, you get two days behind and you have three pancakes. You get the idea, I’m sure. Let’s just say I have about five pancakes sitting on my plate right now, and feel a bit overwhelmed. Do we have an exam coming up? Nope, not for four weeks, so I’ve got time, right? Well, technically, yes, but within those four weeks lies both the majority of my grade for the semester, as well as the busiest days we've had thus far. Additionally, every upper semester student I have spoken with has one piece of advice for the fourth mini exam of the semester: “Don’t get behind.” Let’s just say I’m keeping the faith, but at times, barely hanging on. Then again, what would medical school be without that feeling of constantly being on the brink of losing your mind, at least to a certain extent? It’s a feeling I’ve quickly grown accustomed to, and now embrace, especially knowing I'm not completely alone.

This topic of pancakes; however, leads me to a conversation I had with a friend of mine earlier this week. She and I have established a weekly “lunch date” during which we meet, if even for 15 minutes, to get out of our respective study spaces and have a human conversation. One thing that came up in our discussion this week was what to tell our friends and family regarding what the day to day activities consist of. I mean, here I am in Dominica, 3000 miles away from the place I’ve called home for 25 years, so my life must be pretty exotic- I must be going on great adventures to see the island and meeting local community members, right? Actually, not at all. Outside of my walk to and from campus each day, and the regular stop at the shacks for food and local juice, I don't have a whole lot of time to get out. Now, in my mind, writing about this and telling you all that I sit in a classroom all day staring at a computer screen is completely boring. Where’s the excitement and imagination in that? She; however, had a different take on it. That IS exciting. The whole reason I started this blog was to keep you up to date with the goings on in my life, so laying out my day to day is something that I should include, right? I think so. Thus far, you’ve gotten a pretty good insight into how I’ve been feeling and what various experiences have taught me, but I haven’t said much about what I actually DO. So, with my cup of Yogi tea and Billy Joel Spotify playlist, here I am.

First of all, days of the week? They don’t exist. There are now either “days that we have class” or “days that we don’t.” I can’t count on one hand the number of times I have been completely unaware of which day of the week it is, and have answered people’s questions with the incorrect day. Luckily, most of us are in the same boat, and we all find it incredibly funny. Humerus, if you will. Secondly, weekends simply serve as days to catch up on everything we didn’t get through during the week, review material from the previous week, and begin to answer some of the many practice questions in attempts to drill the content further into our brains for recall throughout our future careers. For me thus far in the semester, Saturdays have been defined by my getting up in the morning, packing my backpack for the day, grabbing a quick breakfast on the way to campus, staking out a table in the LLL, pulling up GopherSports.com on my computer, and simultaneously tracking whatever Gopher Football game is going on and checking items off my to- do list. Granted, it’s not ideal, but it’s my new normal. My beers and La Loma chicken burrito have since been replaced by water, coffee and an abundance of citrus fruits, and the immediate company of fellow Gopher fans has been replaced by text message conversations, twitter exchanges, and sometimes brief FaceTime meetings with the best Gopher fans I could ever ask for- former college roommates and family. 

Typically during the week, lectures are delivered from 8am to Noon, and the remainder of the day is made up of preparing “study products,” reviewing whatever material we received, and going into the anatomy lab for dissection or simply to study. Studying is my job. “How do you stay sane?” you may ask. Well, that depends. Depends on what exactly is driving me insane, how far behind I am in subject matter, and what I feel is needed to decompress. In many cases, due to time constraints and other responsibilities, a fifteen- minute break to take a walk down to the ocean or watch the sunset does the trick. On Thursday and Friday afternoons, there is often an intramural football game played just outside of my “home” at which you will most likely find myself and a close friend. We chit- chat about things not related to school, and at the applicable games, support our “firstie” colleagues as they face their opponents. Other times, a social life is necessitated, and a few of us head to one of the four bars near campus, grab a couple beers, and just decompress. And, on those days that it all seems completely insane and I begin to believe it may be impossible, taking a personal day to stay home, paint my fingernails, watch a movie or read a book, momentarily forgetting the main responsibilities awaiting is exactly what I need to recharge and begin to put one foot in front of the other again.

Of course, me being myself, simply being a student without being involved in organizations and campus life is nearly impossible. Therefore, at the beginning of the semester, I decided to become a member of the Pediatrics Student Association and the Ross Emergency Medicine Association (REMA), two of the specialties I am most interested in entering once I graduate from medical school. Despite my apprehensions of being “too busy,” I applied to an open executive position within the Pediatrics Association to serve as an Assistant Clinic Coordinator. This basically means I help sort out all of the details for one of two clinics run throughout the semester at an elementary school in the community. My clinic is in a week, and yesterday morning I got a taste of what to expect next Saturday. Myself and about twenty- five other Ross students traveled 45 minutes south of campus to the capital city of Roseau to an elementary school where roughly 500 students arrived with their parents. They were mandated by their principle to go through a fundamental health screening and receive a basic lesson in public health with topics such as the importance of brushing one's teeth and staying active. We, as medical students, were responsible for collecting such information as their height, weight, visual acuity, blood pressure, pulse, hearing, and an overall general survey of their health. It was amazing. I spent three hours taking blood pressure with what we began to fondly refer to as our “arm hugger,” and taking pulses of kids anywhere from one year old to sixteen years old. It was better than any “practice session” I could have done on campus, and I can’t wait to do it again. There are honestly so many things about this clinic that I would love to talk about, and yet neither know exactly where to start, nor have the time right now to lay it all out. Maybe after my clinic next Saturday. Aside from that, though, despite it being school related, this clinic was my break. I returned to campus and hit the ground running to try to tackle the endless mound of pancakes awaiting my return with a newfound sense of enthusiasm and level of energy.

Now, despite me feeling like I have an incredibly long list of topics in addition to the clinic that I want to talk about, and again, not knowing exactly where to start, I must leave you with a “to be continued…”

In the meantime, I have some pictures to share of the school where we held our clinic, as well as an example of signs made by students at the prep school on campus (children of students attending Ross) that were placed throughout campus and have been incredibly inspiring for me over the last week.

As always, with love.

One of several signs made by the students at the prep school

Classroom where we held our BP/ Pulse/ Cardio/ Respiratory station
for the clinic.

3/4 of your BP and Pulse team! 

Music and Medicine

It’s been longer than I would like it to have been since I was last able to sit down and just write, but as is expected, school has come first over the last few weeks. Now; however, I’m allowing myself a few free moments to touch base with reality, remind myself why I decided to start this blog, and move 3000 miles away from home to start this crazy adventure. So, welcome back. :)

Over the weekend, I was studying for our most recent anatomy practical exam, and started thinking about how music influences our lives. As I looked over the anatomy of the abdomen, Spotify began playing “Everything I Want” by Matthew Puckett. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to know anything about this song or its existence. If you were to sit down and just listen to the song, the lyrics are clearly directed from the singer to another person regarding their presence and the fact that having him or her in their life is worth fighting for. At one point, the lyrics state, “You’re everything that I want I’ll never give up, been through this before, and it can get rough, you can push me away, I can deal with the pain, I need you to know, you’re everything that I want… Friday nights, Sunday mornings, simple days, funny stories.” Clearly, this is about a relationship. The relationship I’m speaking about; however, is with medicine. You see, for me, anytime I hear this song, I am immediately taken to the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college living in Minneapolis with three of my best friends. That summer, abc released a show called “Boston Med,” for which “Everything I Want” was the theme song. Throughout the summer, 8 episodes aired every Thursday, and by God I didn’t miss an episode. Just ask my roommates. That entire summer, I would sit down on my couch and for an hour was transported into the future to see where I wanted to be. To know that Friday nights and Sunday mornings would likely be spent at the hospital or on call. That there would be painful times, and that I would probably want to quit at least once, but in spite of that, a passion for all of it still existed in my soul. It drove me every day to keep going, to work through the frustrations, the awkward phases of growing into an adult, the friendships and relationships that would come and go, and continue moving forward. At that time, not only did I want to spend my life practicing medicine, I also desperately wanted to move to Boston. To this day, I hear that song, and imagine several very specific late nights studying Organic Chemistry, Anatomy, and Physiology in the Bio-medical Library in the basement of the Philips-Wangensteen building at the University of Minnesota. As I listened to the song on my walk home, the air was perfectly crisp and Fall-like, the lights on the Wells Fargo building downtown Minneapolis still hadn’t been extinguished for the night, and it was just my music and me. It still keeps me going.

This whole recollection occurred over the course of about three minutes, and after a conversation soon thereafter with a very dear friend of mine over Skype, started me thinking about the greater significance of music in our lives. How many times are you walking down the street (or driving in your car at home), a song plays on the radio, and suddenly it’s like you’re in a completely different place. Whether that place is literal or figurative, music has that transformative power. It can take you over 4000 miles away, or it can take you mere centimeters simply into your own thoughts and motivations. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without music. Whether I just need to unwind a bit and listen to a little One Direction, or I need to focus on studying and listen to jazz, it never ceases to accomplish exactly what it needs to. It can turn an overall great experience into an outstanding, unforgettable memory. It unites people from all different backgrounds in a common space with a common agenda. Although, I understand that my perspective may be a bit skewed because I come from a family in which emphasis was always placed on music, not in the sense of being the best performer, but on appreciating it for what it is- art and a universal language that everybody can understand, but I also think on some level, everybody can relate to the power of music. In one of our lectures a couple weeks ago, we discussed the importance of recognizing and appropriately handling patients who may come into our offices suffering from depression and suicidal tendencies. While we won’t all be in a position where we are responsible for explicitly handling their mental health, one of the coping strategies brought up was listening to music. Now, I don’t know all the science (yet) behind the way your brain reacts the way it does when you listen to music, but the fact is that it does. Whether you cognizantly appreciate it or not, it is nearly impossible to deny that music of any kind has that trans-formative power.

I know my writings have a tendency to shift more toward the philosophical than the concrete goings on of my life, but I have to say, much of my experience in Dominica so far has been philosophical and extremely insightful in terms of who I am and what kind of physician I want to be. Although I already knew most of the things I am learning I value (as one of my best friends pointed out to me a few days ago), moving in and out of situations and experiences over the last 11 weeks in Dominica have brought me face to face with them. They’ve shown me that I can try to minimize these ideas and values, making them seem less important, but at the end of day, it won’t take them away. Those values and priorities are still just as important as they were before. That although I will always look for the best in the people, and will continue to work toward treating everybody with respect, I never have to compromise what I hold valuable.

On one last note, I will leave you with something I wrote in a notebook about a month ago while I was in sequestration following my first anatomy practical exam. Mind you, we had also had our second written exam the day before, so I had spent an abnormally large amount of time to this point studying, and wanted to get a few ideas out on paper with regard to what I was going to write about here. “… as much as I was ready to pull my hair out and reached a point that my brain physically hurt, [studying] continued to show me how incredibly amazing the human body is. I was looking for a blank piece of paper in an old undergraduate Biochemistry notebook and realized that most of the notes I had taken were exactly the same as ones I’ve reviewed since last Wednesday. I felt like I had jumped into a time machine as I glanced at them and knew exactly where I had been when I took them. It makes me wonder what I’ll think or how I’ll feel in a few years when I look back on this blog and remember where I was and what life has taught me to this point. At one page in the notebook I digressed (as I often seem to do), and took what I estimate to be about one minute to comment on the amazing being and structure that is the human body. ‘Does something ever happen to you that makes you think it’s amazing to be alive? I’m sitting here studying Biochem, and I felt my heartbeat. It’s something so routine and mundane and yet so amazing. The processes that have to go 100% correctly in order for your heart to beat are incredible, and yet so easy to take for granted.’” As I read this, it makes me think of a verse in one of my favorite songs these days, "and the gift of my heartbeat sounds like a symphony," and how even without trying, music always finds a way into my life. 

And now, despite having said I would be done after that last "note," I have thought of one more thing. This past week, while hunkered down in a study space three of us have lovingly begun to refer to as “our home,” there was an ultrasound clinic for both the OB-GYN and Cardiology Clubs on campus to learn how to perform various types of ultrasound procedures. One of the volunteers for the demonstration happened to be pregnant, so we were able to observe as the physician explained how to perform an ultrasound. Let me just say, between all three of us at the table, we were absolutely speechless. I mean I’ve seen pictures of ultrasounds, and have even watched videos of them, but to be in the same room with a person who is only 12 weeks along in her pregnancy, and watch as a being just slightly larger than the size of a circus peanut moves around safely inside the walls of her abdomen is incredibly humbling. Each and everyday, we are all given incredible amounts of information, and more often than not feel extremely overwhelmed by what is being given to us, but when you have moments like this, the scope and significance of it all is brought completely back into perspective. So, today, do me a favor, and take some time to appreciate the juxtaposed simplicity and complexity of your heartbeat. It’s worth it, I promise.

Until next time, and for all my friends and family currently in Minnesota, I leave you with this and a lot of love.