CMDA leadership & this week

So I mentioned in my last post that I was gonna go to a CMDA student leader weekend--
we had probably 20? students from all over the west at our conference. I was able to host a pharmacy student from AZ, and I met tons of others--Utah, Colorado, more AZ, California, Nevada, even Hawaii! It was quite a challenging and inspiring weekend, and I enjoyed the speakers and fellowship. We mostly focused on what it's going to mean for us to be leaders next year and trying to balance school and life and such, and we had several reminders to keep on with the BASICS which are so vital to our life in Christ (prayer, Bible reading, church attendance). We also had a chance to meet with the people within our school to discuss some things, and I am very excited about our leadership team! We already have some great ideas. I'm also thankful for great doctor-mentors who are willing to let us use their house and head up a lot of stuff too--the couple is a "paradox" (pair-of-docs) and are such a wonderful encouragement to me. We also enjoyed a yummy dinner at the Spaghetti factory together at the end of the conference. The pic below is of Brian J who's my main co-leader for next year and his wife Julie. They are also the couple I'll be living with next year along with another gal from my class.

So this week we got into full swing on tissue-pathology. We have all these cool pathologists explaining stuff to us, and it's challenging for sure, 1) because i've forgotten a lot of my normal histology and 2) it's pretty new stuff and can be kind of subtle to tell what's normal and what's not. We also started learning about cancer, which is quite interesting as well. It's only a few mutations that keep the normal cells in our bodies from going whack out of control and becoming purposeless masses! Pretty crazy how we're all put together so correctly. It also hits close to home because almost everyone knows someone who has had or died of cancer.


Anything else? Well, not too much besides school, staying healthy, not sleeping enough, and having fun on the side. On Wednesday we had our first meeting for our Indonesia trip which was really exciting--we got to meet each other and hear more about what we'll be doing. What an adventure that lies ahead!

Anyhow, I that's it for now. It was a beautiful day, and I'm thankful.

A word about etOH

It's interesting how hypocritical the medical world can be regarding alcohol use. Doctors have some of the highest rates of drug and alcohol abuse. In class we have learned over and OVER and OVER in multiple body organs and venues how alcohol damages the body's normal processes and can cause great damage over time and even present short-term toxicities. AND YET, there has been a consistent yet subtle pressure to use alcohol as a coping mechanism by both professors and students. For example, when a professor would present a difficult subject, he would several times prefaced the powerpoint slide with "just sit and stare at this a while with a glass of merlot." And it wasn't just 1 prof, it's been several. Another example is that after every test, there is an official class get-together at a bar, where many students drink their stresses away in celebration. The pairing of alcohol and coping, I believe, is setting people up for a crash if the pattern continues.

Thankfully, I don't have to drink and choose not to cope with stress that way, and have other friends in class who don't either. But it does strike me as strange in the juxtaposition of the two sides. I know that alcohol use does not equal alcohol abuse, but in a particularily stressful environment, if one is not careful, I can imagine it being a kind of slippery slope. I also realize that people can be self-controlled with alcohol, and that there may be some health benefits to a small amount of alcohol, but I just choose not to go there I guess and so rather find other ways to have a good time and improve my own health.

Ketch-up: The Other World

So my last post was primarily about school. To catch up on a few other things briefly:

Next year I'll be living with a few other Christians from my class with the vision of our house being a "Lighthouse" for us to encourage each other, other Christians, and classmates--a place of refuge, fun, and learning to live in community. We are very excited, though the whole house-hunt thing (and the fact that I'll be living with 3 other people!) has been a new experience for me but I think it will be really good and since I am friends with these people it's gonna be awesome.

This summer I will be going to Papua Indonesia (also called Irian Jaya) on a medical missions trip with the Summer Medical Institute NW in conjunction with the Luke Society (www.lukesociety.org). In brief, our trip will involve visiting remote villages in the interior and serving them with medical and dental clinics. I will get to practice my skills and learn many new skills. I'll probably explain more later, but you can find out more about SMI from http://www.newheights.org/sminw/ and newheights.org is the free clinic that I work at with my preceptor, who is a Christian and is leading our expedition this summer. God is so awesome to provide me with this opportunity and I am SO excited about what I will learn and how I will get to serve people who are so untouched by the world.

Other news? I was able to go home for Easter with my family which was great because I was in China last year celebrating from afar. I love Easter tremendously because of the great sacrifice of Christ and His VICTORIOUS resurrection which provides for our redemption and hope of eternal life! The music at church was AWESOME, and I also visited my home church, The Apostolic Faith Church in Seattle where it was wonderful to see people. One of my good friends from college also had a bridal shower, and so I was able to see several people from college that I had not seen for almost a year!


What do I do for fun? I've been trying to exercise when I can--there are great trails around here, and we have a super-nice new gym down a short tram ride! away. I also have been playin guitar, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends on a worship night or with one friend who plays violin. My friends and I do all sorts of things I suppose--eating, cooking (my first real Sushi night! and watched the Incredibles!), talking, playing games, movies, and adventures into these cute little neighborhoods in Portland that have good restaurants (i.e. Papa Hadyn's is this AMAZING dessert place on NW 23rd or Mcmenamin's ). Portland is actually a pretty neat city. I don't realize how much bigger Seattle is though until I go home, which is kinda strange. Anyhow, there's not tons of time for play, but we make time because otherwise we go crazy!

Well, I suppose that's all I'll share for now. I am continuing to build friendships and enjoy the fellowship of those around me. Back in February I attended the Western Region CMDA conference in Cannon Beach which was a fabulous and inspiring time of good food, fellowship, the beach, and wonderful Christian docs and dentists speaking on how they have served far away in places like Pakistan and close by in free clinics and serving students. I was even able to help out by singing with the worship team! This weekend I'll be going to a conference for CMDA for student leaders for next year as I will be sharing in leadership for CMDA and am excited to see what God will do through that!

Please continue to pray for me.

Ketch-up: The School Thing

So it has been forever since I've blogged. I think that is the hard thing about blogging--once you get off, it's hard to catch-up. But since I went home recently and a bunch of people said they check this, it's worthwhile to write a bit (or a lot).

Hm. Well, I'll start with an update on school things. We've just finished our physiology and pharmacology course, which was probably our hardest course yet because of the vastness and intricacies of everything, though it still amazes at all of things we've learned this year and that I don't still remember. In physiology we learned many of the major systems of the body--nervous, muskuloskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, GI, and other things like acid-base balance, toxicity, and a WHOLE bunch of drugs (how they work, what they do to the body (pharmacodynamics) and what the body does to the drug (pharmacokinetics...things like dosing, absorption and elimination, how the docs figure out how much drug to give you)). I guess we're really becoming doctors? I still can't put much clinical knowledge to this stuff, but it's interesting for sure. We've done a variety of interesting labs--doing pig surgery, collecting our own urine and doing experiments on that, measuring our lung capacities. By the way, being in pig surgery--we got to see and FEEL a beating, LIVE pig heart after we did our experiments. We also got to see and feel after it went into atrial and ventricular fibrillation which is when the heart's electrical activity goes crazy and from which people can die from. It was such a COOL UNIQUE experience, despite the detriment to the (anethesized) pig. I don't think I'll forget that!
Being in med school, I don't think I've ever quite studied so hard in my life in such a sustained fashion. It's been tough the past 3 months or so--but thankfully we made it in one piece (it seems, barely) to spring break, served as a much needed rest and recoop AND see my family which I hadn't seen for 3 months. Seriously, it was evident we all needed a break because even the professors were starting to feed off the class' stress.
A detour on spring break--I didn't do a ton of adventurous things, but I did see my family, a few friends, and got to sleep lots and read some books. The first Saturday the whole family was home, and so us kids went to the Grossology exhibit at the science center and "messed" around there..haha. It was nice to see the grandparents too, and on Tuesday I went with my mom to the Bodies exhibit which was AMAZING. Boy do I wish I remembered more anatomy for all that time we spent learning it. It was very cool to see the dissections, and it brought me way back to the beginning of med school. Sniff sniff. I was fortunate to spend a few days in "retreat" with myself at the beach house where our family always goes that is graciously loaned out by my Great Aunt. It was lovely--no one on the beach, beautiful weather (the first day), time to read, long walks on the beach, think, and pray. I was able to read some of my journal from 1 year ago when I went to China and remember the things I learned there. I also read a book called "The Anatomy of Hope" for our PCM class and a few other things. I came back wishing that we had 1 more week of break, but also refreshed.

Another huge component of the course has been student group research projects. Our group studied the effects of caffeine and sleep deprivation on muscle pain (we used wall sits to induce pain). Kinda interesting seeing that most med students are large consumers of caffeine and are a lot times sleep deprived. We found a few interesting results, but for the most part the whole project was an exercise in learning how clinical research works. There is a lot that goes into it -- project design, getting IRB approval (they make sure your study is ethical and safe, etc), running experiments, analyzing data, and dealing with logistics besides all the teamwork communication stuff. At times it was stressful and took way to much work, but I was defintely proud of our team how things turned out. Actually, I've been very impressed overall with the student presentations--for not being graded people have produced really interesting and quality work. Below is a funny pic we took to try to lighten things up which people appreciated and which make me crack up! This is one of my classmates demonstrating the wall sit position with another guy making sure his knees are at 90 degree angles.

Well--1 more course to go for this FIRST YEAR. I can't believe it's almost over. We're going to be studying immunology, microbiology, and cancer. I'm also taking medical spanish which I think will be very useful, though it's been quite some time since I've taken it. In our Principles of Clinical Medicine course we've been learning about the infant exam, child abuse, informed consent, public health, and will learn about dealing with death and dying among other things. SO MUCH TO LEARN! The fun never stops! Thankfully we'll be done June 15 :)