A great day as a medical student

Today was one of those days that had just about everything I could ask for. I had interesting classes, a nice uplifting lunch break, and interesting clinical experiences in the afternoon that even related to things we recently learned. I’m on the bus now and will get home around 6:20, and then I’ll play with my kids before they go to bed and eat whatever dinner my wife made. What more could a first year medical student ask for? Life is good.

Today’s coursework:

·         From 8:00 to 10:00 this morning, we had two infectious disease lectures. They were both on Staphylococcus, a group of bacteria that are extremely common and that also cause a host of problems. Think MRSA, food poisoning, and toxic shock syndrome.

·         From 10:00 to 12:00 noon I had two nervous system lectures about the different nerve pathways involving pain. The entire concept of pain is a bit mind blowing for me. It makes sense how we feel touch, how we can see and have cells sensitive to light, and how we can smell due to physical interactions of the molecules in our noses. But pain—what is it? There is no pain molecule that interacts with our cells, and the very idea behind how it works is pretty incredible.

Today’s lunch:

·         For lunch, I attended my church institute class on campus and was treated to free pizza and an uplifting lesson about the Old Testament book of Esther.

Today’s clinical experiences:

I went to see my pediatrician preceptor this afternoon and saw lots of interesting things.

·         An 11 year old girl came in with a complaint of a bump on the shoulder.  Another student and I took a look at her and saw what looked like a group of 10 giant white heads, some a bit inflamed, on the back of her shoulder. There was a lump above them. Since Staphylococcus was fresh on my mind from this morning, I thought it might have been S. aurues causing folliculitis. Our preceptor said they were caused by a virus called molluscum, that they were common and harmless, but the red inflammation around the white heads indicates possible infection (likely Staphylococcus). The bump was an enlarged lymph node responding to the infection. It was fun to see an infectious disease directly related to what I learned today.

·         Yesterday we learned about speech development, and today a mom brought in her 4 year old because she was concerned about his speech development. 2 year olds should at least be able to say 2 word sentences understood by parents, 3 year olds 3 word sentences understood by strangers, and 4 year olds should have a pretty commanding vocabulary with 4-5 word sentences. This child was cute as can be but definitely showed pretty severe communication problems and actually showed many signs of autism. Again, it was cool to see something I learned about in class so recently.

·         I saw a 4 month old with an undescended left testicle and a hydrocele in his right testicle. We put a light to it and you could see the hydrocele, which was really neat. It was also interesting because they got an ultrasound a week ago and were referred to urology, but the mother didn’t speak much English and had trouble calling to make an appointment. She tried calling, got disconnected, and assumed it was because her English was so bad they hung up on her. She felt really guilty, embarrassed, and hopeless about it. We called for her and helped her set up the appointment, but maddeningly got disconnected twice before we succeeded. I could tell the mother was extremely grateful for our help. It makes me wonder if she would have ever made that appointment by herself.

·         We saw an 8 year old girl for a checkup that was below the 5^th percentile in height, and we discussed the need to get an x-ray to see what opportunity for growth her bones showed. It was a fun conversation because  her older sister was also there, and she was equally short when she was younger but skyrocketed up during puberty. I could tell the patient was longing to be like her older sister and get that growth spurt.

Anyways, days like today are probably as close to as good as the first year of medical school can get. It even softened me up towards pediatrics, since today I saw a diverse set of patients with interesting problems. The diversity of problems you get to see in primary care is attractive to me, and I can definitely see the appeal in developing a relationship with patients and their families over a long period of time. Today I liked it, last time I thought it was boring, so I guess I will need more exposure to make a good judgement. 



I am a medical student at BCM and all thoughts are my own. I am not a doctor. Please read the disclaimer.
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