Dignity

Dignity - from the latin word dignus meaning "worthy."

Is dignity something that people have that we are supposed to recognize in them? Or is it something that we bestow upon one another regardless of their race, age, socioeconomic class, etc?

We talk about dignity as this thing that you are supposed to have for yourself. And sometimes because of the way that you behave and/or the status that you have, people might treat you with it. But essentially this means that you kind-of have to be on the top of your emotional, positively self-visuallizing game to "have" dignity.

Let's say you have had a fever and been vomiting all day, or you have been up for three days with your child, or you are having a tumor removed after a few months of chemotherapy, or a tsunami just destroyed your entire city. Just saying - in the midst of these trying situations we do not exude anything resembling some kind of intrinsic dignity.

This is one of the things I love about being part of the health care world (human race, dare I say?). No matter who you are, or what you have accomplished with your life or how long you have been overlooked on the street corner and no mater what kind of train wreck you are experiencing right now - Sometimes you just can not muster up much dignity for yourself. A comfortable bed, a bite to eat, a new leg, reconstructive surgery, a room where no one can see you falling to pieces over the news you just received.  Regardless of status, rank, salary or just how sure of yourself you are feeling that day, it is our privilege to bestow dignity.

Paleo Breakfast Patties

...Known to others as sausage. 

This Sunday marks the beginning of my second week in joining my wife in her healing diet. Paleo Autoimmune Protocol.  I can not really express how lame of me it was to leave her stranded in this diet up until now while I continued gorging on bread and cookies and all kinds of other foods she could not have. But now that I am in it, I can not say I am disappointed about melting away 3lbs, not being hungry all day and not getting that afternoon lul. Oh did I mention I don't drink coffee anymore?  If it wasn't for my buddy Mike introducing me to my first crossfit workout this weekend, I might have said I was starting to feel like superman. 

14 servings (ie breakst for two for a week)

2lbs ground pork (this is plain) Smithfield has it at Harris Teeter in my area

1lb ground turkey

3/4tsp sea/kosher salt

Fresh ground pepper (Lots, as you like it)

Parsley

Sage

Rosemary

Thyme

Fresh garlic 

1 apple finely diced 

As shown, I cook them on cast iron on the stove top. 

Honduras 2014

This April I will be returning to Tegucigalpa, Honduras for a one month mission. This will count as the final clinical rotation for my third year of medical school. 

Added bonus - there will be a group of first and second year students there for the first week. I am excited to share my passion for serving in developing counties with my junior future doctors. 

Expenses for this trip amount to $1500 above my regular tution. If you feel lead to contibute to my cause please contact me or use the paypal donation button below.

FAWM

Became a member of the Wilderness Medicine Society this month. AND I initiated my candidacy toward becoming a Fellow of the Acadamy of Wilderness Medicine (FAWM). This is a five year term within which to meet the educational requirements for fellowship.

Coming up:

- March 2014 - Southeastern Student Wilderness Medicine Conference at Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, WV

- Feb 2015 - WMS Medical Student Elective at Camp Wesley Woods, TN

I attended the SE SWMC last year at Wake Forest and it was a fantastic and enriching experience. Met several students from Marshall so I am excited to come up to their neck o' the woods. 

Hepatectomy

Today on the last day of my surgery rotation I helped cure an old lady of cancer by taking out the entire right side of her liver. (mostly I watched and held held a retractor sometimes)

I have a strong understanding of the importance of what we did. But there is something about being in the moment of surgery where the gravity of seeing all the arterial and venous architecture of the liver dissected away is lost on me. This is stuff that even most physicians rarely see more than once unless they are surgeon specializing in liver surgeries. And while my instructor is telling me this and having me touch these vessels with my own hands to feel the blood pulsing through them I am just thinking about how sore she's going to be when she wakes up. 

So for a third year rotation I got to be very involved with these surgeries.  But I think I learned that while caring for critically ill surgical patients is interesting - actually standing around an operating table is not my cup of tea. 

The cartoon picture from the San Francisco Center for Liver Disease is about as close as I will get to that again. 

Things Removed

Got to help take this fibroid out of a uterus. For scale. It's sitting on a three inch wide Telfa pad. 

Highway to the Danger Zone

I can't help humming Kenny Loggins unforgettable Top gun theme song to myself. Two rotations down, this third year of medical school is under full steam and it is everything that we hoped it would be. Early mornings, late nights, night call, challenging (if not demanding) attendings. Maybe they are assigned to us or we to them but it seems to take three out of the four weeks in the rotation to figure out if you are pissing them off, holding your own or actually doing well and impressing them.

If you got into medicine for all the right reasons then you love people. The best part of third year is getting to work with real patients. No longer the contrived cases and standardized actors from the first two years. Now we are working with your mother you brother your grandfather, and even your kids.  We get to meet them and learn everything about them (in 15 minutes) and help them to stay aware of their health and take the steps to improve and maintain it.

Gone are the days of memorizing facts in the library, or slugging through hours of daily lectures. We are in new territory now, and with that comes a certain degree of terror.  We work hard but we are still scared that we don't know enough and that we are being entrusted with responsibility that we don't deserve. While we have been put through the ringer by passing the first of three steps in our certification boards which is supposed to mean that we know enough to be safe, and we are being watched like hawks by our attendings and the nurses and medical assistants and your mother, wife or daughter that came with you to your appointment or is sitting by your bed side while you are too out of it to speak for yourself.

You'll never know what you can do
Until you get it up as high as you can go