4/25/04
Well its time for another update from nick on life in med
school in the Caribbean. Sorry its taken me so long to email, but I have been
extraordinarily busy. For all of those who sent me emails, I assure you will
write back sometime before I start residency. So hang in there, I haven’t
forgotten about you.
I just finished our first round of finals for the term and
can now officially say I am done with neuroscience, immunology, and
physiology. Physio was my favorite. It
actually made sense. But don’t get the idea that the final was anywhere near
easy. I am very happy do be done with immuno and neuro. They were great
learning experiences, but their practical use (and my enthusiasm for them) doesn’t
compare to physio. Once again my med tech training came in handy (atleast for
physio and immuno.) Its actually
exciting to be learning about a disease or a concept I covered just a year ago.
It allows me to have a perspective as well. For instance they stressed a little
too much the “universal donor/recipient” concept when discussion blood
transfusions in immuno. But I guess that just means there will be another batch
of doctors who don’t understand why a type A- patient doesn’t match with all A-
blood. Oh well, at least there will be one who does.
Living off campus this semester has in itself been an “interesting” experience. Its neat to say I actually lived in a foreign country, but living on campus takes away many of the hassles of living off – like dealing with landlords, catching the bus, stray dogs, etc. Luckily I can say that for next year I will be back on campus in the dorms, for my final term here in grenada, before we head to St. Vincent for the last ½ of our 2nd year of med school. I actually will be back on campus earlier than that. I start 2 weeks of parasitology and genetics tomorrow, take the finals and a 1st year comprehensive exam (getting us ready for boards), and then the following week start a new “term” and spend another 7 weeks in grenada taking non-science classes - Behavioral Science, Jurisprudence & Medical Ethics, Biostatistics & Public Health. And for that 3rd term I will be moving on to campus and out of my apartment. Finally I can go back to drinking the water out of the faucet (campus has its own water treatment plant.)
Many of you may remember me telling you that I was applying for transfer to IU med school. Well I got all of that sent in and will know a decision by june 1st. Either way will be OK with me. Going to school near home makes things a lot easier and cheaper, but there are things I am learning here that I probably would not encountered at IU. For one, the mere number of cultures and nationalities represented in my class has me learning more about the world we live in. Turns out there is another guy in my class who is also applying for transfer to IU. I think he has me beat in the grade department, though.
Well other than going to lectures and taking tests, let me tell you about some of the other stuff I’ve been doing. I already talked in my previous email about playing with orphans at the beach on Saturday mornings (super fun). I’ve also taken part in 3 health fairs put on by our chapter of the American Medical Student Association. Typically we go into a local community and set up in a church or community center and do health screenings on people. Its open to the community and absolutely free. We take a medical history, blood pressure, glucose, check eyesight and hearing, and then let one of our doctors check them out.(I want to add hemoglobin testing to our panel, and all of you who are medtechs etc. will be getting a separate email about that.) Its great training for us since we’ll be doing this stuff in our sleep (literally in our sleep) when we finally have a couple more letters after our names in a few years. I went on one this weekend and it was a little different. We set up in a nursing home (home for the aged to be politically correct.) What made the such a wonderful experience was that we each took a resident (patient) through all of the stations and spent quite a lot of time with them, getting to know them and doing a lot of listening. For one man with Parkinson’s, 3 of us went to his room and went through the steps with him. (So how many med students does it take to do a H&P?) I still can’t find words suitable to describe that experience, but it was something you don’t get by sitting in lecture all day, trying to guess the location of a neurological lesion. I was very comfortable since I practically grew up in nursing homes since my mother is a physical therapist (Thanks Mom!). Many students haven’t been that close or have gotten to know patients like that, so for them it was an even more amazing and beneficial experience.
I finished our clinical skills course a couple of weeks ago, which spanned from last term to this one. This allowed us to practice our history-taking skills with mock-patients. Their “illnesses” ranged from muscle strain, dementia, hyperthyroidism, and gall bladder disease to GERD and urinary tract infection. Next year we will start Physical Diagnosis and will improve on our history-taking skills even more. Our final patient had Alzheimer’s and it was a big change from the other sessions when we were aimed at getting a full history and narrowing down a diagnosis. For this one it was a “patient” and his “wife” and we got the probable diagnosis off the bat. The rest of the session was focused on getting more information from the wife and letting her talk and comforting her. Its hard to know what to say when there is no easy fix or when the condition is terminal. The “patients” were very convincing.
The best news I have to tell you all is that I’ll be going to Honduras for part of my 6 week summer vacation. I will start by attending a Spanish language school (to improve on what I already know) and staying with a host family for a week. Then the actual medical part begins. The 10 of us will be traveling around looking at clinics and the status of healthcare in the country. I already know they face medicine shortages as well as lack of access to medical facilities. Much of the time is going to be spent on observing health education at work. Last year’s group, for instance, observed a prenatal nutrition workshop, where 7-months-pregnant women walked for hours in the sun to attend. We will finish by observing (and apparently having free reign over) a hospital. You might remember this will not be my first trip “south of the boarder.” After being to Chile and twice to Ecuador, I will now be able to add Honduras to my list of Spanish-speaking countries I have visited, woohoo! This is particularly important to me because I want to be a bilingual doctor and take part in medical missions. I have always had an interest in public health, so this will educate me even more, without having to add time on for an MPH. I can’t wait to go!
With the Honduras trip, I won’t be home for very long - June 27-3rd and then july 25-aug 6. I’m sure I’ll be busy getting all the things done you have to do when you live most of the year out of the country, but I’ll do my best to drop in a see as many people as I can during that time. That’s all from grenada this time. Let me know what’s going on with you all back in the US.
I welcome all the new people added to my mailing list. I will try to put up my pervious “mass-emails” on my website at http://www.geocities.com/firecrafter93 in case you missed any.
-Nick Peters