Germy

I'm nearing the end of my vacation period in my third year of medical school. Along with the traveling, sleeping-in and seeing old friends that has filled this month I have also been able to dive into some fiction reading -- reading that has nothing inherently to do with medicine. Even though I have a handful of books waiting for me at home, I had this feeling that I wanted to find something completely new, as if the books that I had been looking forward to reading had already been tainted with the sweet stench of medical education. When I was in Portland earlier this month, I made made my way to Powell's book store and stood in front of the huge selection of 'staff-picks' and without reading the back of the dust jacket picked out a book. I picked out a book based on title alone -- it was this one  'Rivers' by Micheal Farris Smith  which ended up being a satisfying if not an excellent read. So it was when my wife and I were at SFO headed to the plane to br...

I've been having fun planning my vacation month -- so far I've got a week in hometown Portland, including a weekend at the beach and later in the month, my wife and I will spend ten days in Florida. Four or five of them will be on the Gulf Coast just south of Tampa and the other will be in Orlando, where my wife has to attend a conference. I, on the other hand, will be learning how to golf -- a charmed life, to be sure. Thinking about going back to the Tampa Bay area is interesting for me -- I spent over a year there in my early twenties and while I could go on and on, the gist of my experience remains that I followed a girlfriend who probably didn't want me there in the first place to Tampa, all the way from Portland , Oregon and we arrived a few days before 9/11 went down, which was a very different experience on the East Coast compared to the relatively insulated burg of Portlandia. I viewed my surroundings, relationships and experiences while I was in Florida thro...

Eight weeks later and I’m done playing Family Medicine doctor and I’m preparing to pretend to be a surgeon, starting next week. As I’ve previously written about, the patient population in the county clinic has been, at times, challenging to work with – and indeed many days were filled with people so dysfunctional that trying to practice any medicine other than crisis mitigation was laughable. Now, a few days have gone by and the sharp image of those hostile people has blurred a little bit and I find myself reflecting on the less dramatic segment of patient population. These are people who, for whatever reason are without health insurance and income (as to get this insurance, you basically cannot have an income of any kind.) Perhaps they found themselves suddenly without a job or had an acute sickness or trauma rendering them unable to work. It could really be anyone though – I found myself connecting with people I have very little in common with constantly, and really, this is a huge p...

Working in a county health facility that functions as the lowest safety net for organized health care delivery in one of the most economically depressed and violent areas in Northern California has been a study in the human condition. It has been a little over a year since I worked with a doctor designing a study to compare levels of violence induced trauma between people in Israel vs Vallejo. The study never got off the ground, and at the time I didn't have a full understanding of exactly what kind of insights an investigation such as this could provide; now, however -- I can appreciate why the doctor I was working with had this idea in the first place. In my small sample size of over 5 weeks seeing family medicine, women's health and chronic viral (HCV, HBV and HIV) patients, there is one element that has played a part in almost every patient encounter. That element is addiction; whether it be the patient's own current or past addiction to drugs of all kinds or food o...

Word came down at the end of last week that I passed the 1st of many board exams and that I could officially pass go and collect $200, meaning that I could continue playing doctor at the local county health clinic. It has nearly been 3 full weeks since I took that board exam, and in some ways I still feel a little traumatized by the whole thing -- not so much from the actual 8 hours of answering the questions, but more-so the run up; the anticipation, the fear, the adrenalin, the realization that one specific slice of 8 hours sitting in a testing center has significant implications and influence in what the rest of my life will be. Its not the end-all-be-all by any means, but it is a number (meaning the exam score) that will follow my name for the next 20 months, until the day in early 2016 when I find out what kind of medical residency I match into. And, when I say traumatized, I think it really boils down to not getting any time to grieve the process -- and process my body's ...

In general, I've been well spoken throughout my life. And, as time went I found that I loved to write -- and eventually I thought I gained a master's apprentice level of proficiency concerning the English language. Now, however, I don't feel like this at all. There are times I fumble for "ordinary" words while speaking, and recently, my ability to write in a style and manner has devolved to being  barely satisfactory , which is frustrating -- and, indicative of this is the few dozen blog posts I've started in the past year that have gone unfinished and unpublished simply because I can't articulate points or ideas well enough. Of course, I can spew horrible medical terminology rooted in Latin and Greek, words that I would've stumbled over only a couple of years ago. Learning medicine, at its foundation is learning a new language with which to communicate with other doctors and health professionals. Over the Christmas break, I tried with earnes...