Med student dress up

Me and some of the other first year med students dressed up. Can you find: a bumble bee, Abraham Lincoln, Mini Mouse, and someone wearing East African clothing not dressed up as anyone in particular?

Some entering medical school class statistics about family size

I thought this was pretty funny and decided to share it with you'll.

We got some statistics about the UW 2007 entering medical school class. Below are some of the statistics on family size ("number of siblings in your family including yourself"):

hmmmmm... I wonder who the bottom person is with 13 siblings? Looking back over the statistics from past years, I think they might have had to expand the number of siblings possible from 11 to 13 just for me (I will have to check up on that).

Jus' fer fun

The social construct of acceptable behavior...

If only I were a zebra....

Check out this article:
"Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers"
by David Ruenzel
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/zebras

Apparently, the constant stress of medical school is killing my brain cells. Yikes! As if I didn't have enough problems already. Now I can be stressed about my stress killing my brain cells in addition to being stressed about med school stuff.

There must be something good about not being a zebra. Hmmmm.... I will get back to you on that one.

Don't look at this picture before/during/after eating

A friend from the Kenya class just sent this picture to me. I thought I would share it with you all. It is a picture of me helping skin a very recently killed goat in Kenya. OK, so I know this picture is really disgusting. However, killing animals and dealing with disgusting things is part of everyday life for most East Africans so it was a very interesting experience to get to assist in this process. If the picture grosses out too many of you I am happy to take it off the blog site.

Welcome to med school, thanks for the money, here, have a checkmark

Do you know the really irritating old guy that does the last 3 minutes of the 60 Minutes show? He goes on these crazy rants that nobody really cares about, but people listen to him anyway because he is talking and they are really just waiting to watch their show that comes on after 60 Minutes. I decided, for no particular reason, to pick a random aspect of medical school and do a 60 Minutes type rant on my blog. It is only good if you imagine the voice of the grumpy/irritating 60 Minutes guy reading the entry.

Last week I did a really nice job on my histology lab. I spent several hours drawing pictures and looking up every detail I wasn't sure about in my textbook, atlas and Wikipedia. I was sure that the professor was going to be impressed of my work. However, today we got our lab homework back, there was only a little checkmark in the upper right hand corner. A quick discussion after class showed that this is the feedback everyone had received.

A visual illustration of the checkmark at the top of my Histology homework. The penny is a size reference for the checkmark. There wasn't a 'good job' or 'nice work' or 'good coloring' or even a 'try to do better next time,' 'needs improvement' or a 'you don't deserve to be in medical school' comment. Just a checkmark.

I realized that the checkmark had become the new standard grading protocol since anatomy finished - not just in histology. In biochem we have weekly small group sections where we read 3 scientific journal articles and then answer questions about them. In this section we also receive just a single checkmark without any comments. In my AIDS: A multidisciplinary approach class we read a scientific journal article (or two) for every class and write a one page paper answering questions about it. For this class we also receive a simple checkmark with no comments.

Here is a paper from my AIDS class with the checkmark. Again, the penny is used to indicate scale. In this paper I developed some very interesting theories about the possible reasons for the trends of HIV and AIDS prevalence rates in King county. What did the teacher think about them? I have no idea. However, I have decided I like the checkmarks from the AIDS class best because they are bigger. If a checkmark is the only feedback we are going to get, it might as well be a big one.

Just to be fair, although I am (jokingly) complaining about it, I don't blame the professors for the checkmark-only grading style. With over 100 students in the class it would be very hard to give personalized feedback to everyone. Likewise, personalized feedback ("Great Job!" on one paper and, "I guess I will you credit for this substandard work" on another) might encourage competition among the students which is the absolute last thing in the world this medical school class needs.

I will also say that in our ICM (Introduction to Clinical Medicine) course we get thoughtful, thorough and personalized feedback on our write ups about patient interviews. Also, in anatomy, we got a lot of personal attention and feedback during class on our presentations. In addition, during histology lab sessions our professors and TAs are very good at answering our questions and giving us immediate feedback.

Agoro Camp Slide Show

This is the slide show that I find to be the most powerful. Once again, it was one that I made for the presentation, but couldn't show. I was going to read 'The First Time (you see someone mutilated by the LRA)" blog post while the slide show played. Oh well. At least you all can enjoy it.

Tanzania Slideshow

Here is another slide show video that I tried to show during the presentation. Once again, I couldn't stand to let all my moviemaker efforts go to waste.

Potika camp slideshow

On the Sunday the 14th of October, I presented about my trip at church. Unfortunately, the picture slideshow video things wouldn't play at that time. Now I am trying to put them up on the blog for your viewing pleasure. (Most of the pictures have been posted on the blog before, but it took me a really long time to figure out how to work windows moviemaker so I wanted to make sure somebody saw them).

A Lunch Story: Lentil and Sardine Soup at the Bottom of My Backpack

I started getting worried the other day that all of you might start thinking I was some sort of profound person who only writes about deep philosophical issues. So, I decided to share an example of how medical school has made my life plummet into chaos. I no longer seem to be able to concentrate on simple tasks such as grocery shopping and fitting into normal society.

A (True) Lunch Story: Lentil and sardine soup at the bottom of my backpack

This weekend I was stressed out trying to study for classes. Saturday night I stopped studying to make dinner, but looking over the contents of the refrigerator (half a bag of very slimy carrots, a spoonful of month-old yogurt, some mashed potatoes growing a scary layer of green something, an egg, and some broccoli turning a beautiful shade of yellow)I realized that I had very few groceries left. Med school had kept me so busy I hadn't been shopping for several weeks. Through a careful analysis of the situation, my medical student problem-solving brain reached the conclusion that it was time to make a trip to the grocery store.

I briefly considered making a list, but decided I was too busy. (BTW this is never a good sign). I decided if I just bought stuff to make sandwiches and the ingredients for soup that would be good. I disembarked from the 48 bus with my empty backpack only to find that this Safeway had been remodeled! I wandered the aisles of the 'new and improved' Safeway in a disorganized daze. My chain of thought bounced between being worried and stressed about med school, to which items I should be purchasing, to trying to review the amino acids in my mind, to trying to figure out where things were in the new Safeway, to thinking about which subject I should study next when I arrived back home, to trying to keep track of how much money I was spending. I arrived home and put away the groceries. I figured out I had forgotten a few things:

For sandwiches:
I successfully purchased:
- pickles
- tomatoes
- cheese
But had somehow had forgotten to buy:
- bread
- lunch meat

hmmm....Oh, I also managed to buy another container of relish. I guess I really had pickles on the mind between thinking about med school stuff.

While in the store I made another freakish/impulsive purchase - a tin of sardines. While we were working in the Potika IDP camp and eating mostly beans and rice (and small animal that was essentially cat) someone got out a tin of sardines. We split the tin equally and I remember that spoonful of sardines being so wonderfully good. While in the grocery store I remembered this experience and decided to buy a tin of sardines.

After discovering that sandwiches were off the menu due to forgetting the 2 most important ingredients, I decided to make lentil soup. I started by adding some lentils and a small piece of steak to a pot of water. I added the slimy carrot and the yellowing broccoli (I hate wasting food ever since returning from my trip). I added some seasoning and tomato sauce and it was turning out to be quite the special dish. While expressing my amazing culinary expertise, I decided to open my tin of sardines and try a bite. It wasn't quite the pleasurable experience I remembered sitting on a dirt floor of a mud hut in Northern Uganda. I decided the sardines would probably be easier to consume if they were diluted by the soup, so I added them to my boiling lentil soup concoction. However, instead of the soup diluting the sardines, the sardines seemed to have taken over the soup. The finished lentil soup emitted a very sardine-ish odor and had an intense taste of sardines as well.

I have a lingering problem of not being able to cook a small amount of food. (I am not sure of its true origin, but I think it might have something to do with being raised in a family with 15 people). So therefore, I did not have enough sardine lentil soup for one person for one meal, but I had enough to feed a medium sized family for a number of days.

On Monday morning I decided that my only option for lunch was to take a portion of my lentil and sardine soup store into school. I picked a trustworthy looking container and tossed it in my backpack. At lunch break I pulled out my container of soup to find it very much less full than when I had packed it that morning. A quick glance in the bottom of my backpack confirmed the location of the missing soup. I tried to clean some of it up, but quickly ran out of time and had to return to class. At the beginning of class a student in front of me said, "What is that smell!? Is that someone's lunch?" I realized that he was smelling my backpack. Before running to choir practice I left my contaminated backpack in my locker on the 5th floor of the health sciences building. When I returned, a very familiar sardine-ish smell was emitting from the locker area. I guess my soup was pungent enough to fill an entire section of a floor in the health sciences building with its lovely fragrance. I wonder what people were thinking when they walked by the lockers that evening.



The remaining lentil and sardine soup goodness in the guilty leaking container. The soup doesn't taste too bad, it just smells a little bit.

I SURVIVED ANATOMY

I just wanted to let you all know that I survived anatomy. I didn't think that it was going to happen for a while there, but it did. Whew. I took the final last Thursday and ended up doing quite well in the course. Now all I have to worry about are my other courses: Histology, Biochemistry, Systems of Human Behavior, Introduction to Clinical Medicine and AIDS: a multidisciplinary approach.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. I still need them. :)

Between Two Worlds

When I go home, the house is always noisy
When I go home, I cook chicken soup and apple crisp
When I go home, I take my little sister in a wheelchair for a walk
When I go home, I help my brothers with their math homework
When I go home, my 12 siblings ask me why I have to leave
When I go home, I read a bed-time story to my little sisters
When I go home, my mom tells me the family has run out of money again
When I go home, my mom asks me when I am going to get married
When I go home, my siblings ask what it is like to live in the city
When I go home, I feel, well, at home

When I go to church, I greet my friends
When I go to church, I pray and sing with my family
When I go to church, I spend time with God
When I go to church, I hear a sermon about women staying home
When I go to church, I hold my friend’s baby and wish that I was married
Now when I go to church, I feel just a little out of place

When I go to class, I get to study with my classmates and friends
When I go to class, I get to learn fascinating things about humanity
When I go to class, I learn more about the human body
When I go to class, I realize how behind I am and worry that I will fail
When I go to class, I think everyone is smarter than me
When I go to class, my friends invite me to a bar, but I don't drink
When I go to class, the girls talk about what kind of birth control they are using
When I go to class, the other students tell stories about their parents who are physicians
When I go to class, the other students talk about how much money their parents can give them
When I go to class, I feel a little out of place

When I see a patient, I love to hear her story
When I see a patient, I realize her story is not so different from mine
When I see a patient, she tells me about how her family is poor
When I see a patient, she tells me how she worries about her family
When I see a patient, she explains how much her church means to her
When I see a patient, I think that I just might be able to make a difference in someone’s life
When I see a patient, it reminds me why I struggle to balance these different worlds
When I see a patient, I don’t feel so out of place

I am going to get to sing at Benaroya Hall....

Even though I am insanely busy and overwhelmed, I decided to continue singing in the University of Washington Gospel Choir (I sang in it during undergrad and found it to be very relaxing and fun). We always have a performance at the end of each quarter which is usually on the UW campus. (Sometimes in a big lecture hall or sometimes in the UW performing arts center - Mean Hall). This year, in addition to our UW campus performance, we will be performing at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. We will be performing with another Gospel Choir (that is WAY better than us).

A picture of the UW choir performing several years ago. I think I am actually in this picture somewhere. Registration is limited to 100 people, but usually 120 people come to practice and sing in the final concert.


(from UW school of music website) This is a picture of Phyllis Byrdwell, the director of the UW gospel choir and another (better) Gospel choir based out of her church. She is amazing and amazing director. She also has a Gospel choir at a local high school.


(from google image search). This is a picture of Benaroya Hall from the outside. Unfortunately, the tickets are probably going to be too expensive for my family to come, but I think it will be a fun experience anyway. Anyway, the concert is on December 16th at 8:00pm. The cheapest tickets (where you probably can't see anything) are $20. There is also going to be a concert on the UW campus which will probably be cheaper.

Did you know that...

Did you know that: The inferior rectal arteries are branches of the internal pudendal artery which is a brach of the anterior trunk of the internal iliac artery which is a branch of the common iliac artery which is a terminal branch of the abdominal aorta?

Unfortunately, the middle rectal arteries are not a branch of the internal pudendal artery. The middle rectal arteries are a branch of the internal iliac artery.

Likewise, the superior rectal arteries is not a branch of the peudendal artery or the internal iliac artery, instead the superior rectal artery is a branch of the inferior mesenteric artery which is one of the 3 unpaird branches of the abdominal aorta.

If any of you have the ability to remember this, please contact me so we can discuss options concerning swaping identities before my Anatomy final exam this Thursday at 12:30. Just kidding. sort-of.

Would you like some tea? Still readjusting...

I still have these random flashes of really wanting to do something the way it was done in Tanzania, Kenya or Uganda.

A few weeks ago I went to UPC (an extra extra white church right next to the University of Washington) and they tried to sing a song in Swahili. The pronounced the words correctly, had perfect timing and sang in perfect harmony, but they didn't sing the song right. If they were in Kenya or Tanzania they would be clapping and moving back and forth. They would be singing with more spirit and energy. They definitely wouldn't have been reading from sheets of paper. The song would have gone on for longer with the best parts being repeated several times. And lastly, the audience would have participated. The people sitting in the rows would have been singing along or at least clapping if they didn't know the words. I thought about trying to get everyone to clap, but I figured that one person clapping wouldn't be enough to overcome a lifetime of white-church tradition. *sigh* I guess it is hard to completely readjust.

Here are some things that were part of everyday life in Kenya, Uganda or Tanzania that I now do or have seriously considered doing:

1) tea - offer it to everybody who comes to visit. People actually say 'no' here!

2) shaking hands - left hand supporting the right

3) Greet everyone in the room before sitting down.

4) wanting to bring a live animal to church to give as an offering instead of money.

5) wanting to put Kenyan/Tanzanian money in the offering plate

6) wanting to put a soda in the offering plate instead of money

7) wanting to wear an extra piece of fabric on Sunday and dramatically take it off and put in the offering plate

8) wanting to respond in Swahili when someone greets me

9) trying to get people to clap during the songs in church

10) wanting to extend church from 1 hour to 3

11) wanting to argue with the grocery store clerk to give me a lower price for the produce

12) holding hands for a really long time (several minutes) with someone of the same gender

13) What? This bus/car/van isn't full! People are barely touching each other. We could fit twice as many people in here!

Global Health Pathway

Yesterday I signed up for the Global Health Pathway through the UW medical school. There are 3 "Pathway Options" available at the school:

1) The Indian Health Pathway - preparing physicians to meet the health care needs to Native American Communities.

2) The Underserved Pathway - preparing physicians to best meet the needs to underserved populations in the US and abroad.

3) The Global Health Pathway - preparing physician to work internationally, particularly in developing countries.

Signing up for a Pathway is not required and it is just a way to help focus your medical education on what you would like to end up doing. Since I want to end up working internationally, I decided the Global Health Pathway might work out well for me. The Global Health Pathway is part of the new Department of Global Health which just formed in January 2007 at the University of Washington (they got big $$$ from Bill Gates to start up).

They have this really cool program called IHOP (not the pancake place) which stands for International Health Opportunities Program. This program allows students to go overseas for an international experience in the summer between their first and second year of medical school. The program pays for your airline ticket and sets you up an activity at one of the international clinic sites. Unfortunately it is really competitive (the endless story of everything about medical school) so lots of people apply who don't get to go.

I was talking with the Global Health Pathway Coordinator and she said that there are 8 other students in our first year medical class that speak (or at least know a little) Swahili! Crazy. I think we might try to get a Swahili conversation group going so we don't forget everything.

"A Short History of Medicine"

Today we had an awesome lecture in our "Systems of Human Behavior Class." In addition to a very interesting discussion of alternative and traditional medicines, we got to review, "A Short History of Medicine." It is:


Patient: "I have an earache:"

Physician:
2000 B.C. -"Here, eat this root."
1000 A.D. -"That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. -"That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion."
1920 A.D. -"That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill."
1965 A.D. -"That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic."
2000 A.D. -"That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root."

(From: Nutrition News Focus, October 29, 1999.)

Buccinator + gubernaculum = 'Gubernator'

When loosing your sanity trying to memorize the names for every part of the body, it is essential to make fun of and share the funny-sounding anatomy words. I decided to through caution to the wind and publicly exhibit my nerdiness by sharing some of the coolest anatomy words with you all on my blog:

Second coolest anatomy word: Buccinator (pronounced bussinator) it is best if you say it with an Arnold Swarchenegger type accent.

(Image from wikipedia)
The buccinator is a muscle that forms the walls of your checks. It helps you position your food in your mouth while you eat. Although it helps in mastication (aka 'chewing food'), it is not considered a muscle of mastication, but instead it is considered to be a muscle of facial expression. It is innervated by cranial nerve VII, the facial nerve, which innervates all the other muscles of facial expression. A visual representation of the buccinator muscle is provided above.


The #1 coolest word in anatomy: Gubernaculum

(from a Google image search) The gubernaculum is important embryologically. It helps in the descent of the gonads. Here is a picture of the gubernaculum on the adult testes.

After I decided that the buccinator and the gubernaculum were the two coolest words in anatomy, I started saying them together quickly and came up with a new word: The gubernator. This is a completely made-up word, but I thought it was pretty fun sounding too. Ahhhhhh the things you do to entertain yourself while studying anatomy.

:)

My Denali College Mentoring Group

In the medical school we are 'sorted' (by the random number generator) into smaller 'colleges' which act as our sort-of family within the medical school. There are 5 colleges named for each of the WWAMI states: Rainer = Washington, Big Sky = Montana, Wind River = Wyoming, Snake River = Idaho, and Denali = Alaska. Within each college you get a 'mentoring group' which consists of a medical school faculty member and 6 first year medical school students.

I was sorted into Denali College which is, of course, the coolest and best college! (My third year roommates are also in Denali College). My faculty mentor is named Sam and he is a pediatric anesthesiologist at Harborview Medical Center (sometimes he works at Children's Hospital when they need him). Sam is really busy right now because his wife (who is also a physician) is working in a clinic in Zambia for the month.

Back row, from left to right: Sam (our mentor), Avi, Tara, me. Sarah is sitting in front. I am really lucky because everyone in my mentoring group is super nice. We had our first 'meet your mentor' meeting yesterday morning at Burgermaster in University Village. It was really fun to meet everyone hear everyone's dreams and plans.

Tara is really nice and has travelled all over the world. She is married to a 'starving artist' who designs furniture and Tara wants to do some work internationally.

Sarah is engaged and her wedding is scheduled for this November. She is an MD/PhD student which means she will be in medical school and graduate school for 8 years, but will have both an MD degree and a PhD when she graduates. It also means that she is brilliant (because only amazingly smart people get accepted to the MD/PhD program) and that her schooling is completely free and she gets a living stipend.

Avi is also really nice. He likes to do sporty type stuff and he has a long-term girl friend.

There are also 2 other first year students in our mentor group that we haven't met yet. They are WWAMI students who are doing their 1st year in Alaska.

During second year, the 6 of us will spend one morning per week following around Sam in a hospital. This is part of the UW's emphasis on bedside teaching thing.

My Totally Awesome Lab Partners

I decided to spice up my med school blog entries with some pictures. I don't know if it helped make the blog more interesting or not, but I enjoyed bothering everybody asking them if I could take pictures during anatomy small group today.


Here is our awesome lab group! From left to right: Ana, Laura, me and Aya. Like I mentioned before, there were more girls than guys so there a number of all-female lab groups. We took this picture after drawing all the abdominal organs on each other during living anatomy. All of the girls are completely awesome and crazy smart. (I am by far the dumbest person in the lab group).


This is Ana holding the really confusing 'gut tube model' during the discussion portion of living anatomy. I guess the clear plastic tube was supposed to be the small and large intestines and we were supposed to figure out how it folds between the embryo and the adult. We couldn't figure it out so we Googled the gut-tube folding and watched an internet video about it instead.

This is Teri, our group leader/teacher for anatomy. Every 5 tables (so 20 students) has their own professor who helps with dissection questions and things like that. She is totally awesome! (By far the best small group leader!) She is also really encouraging.