Monday last week was orientation for clinical rotation on the psychiatry ward. It was exciting and intimidating all at the same time, especially the part about getting security keys, fingerprinted, and having to provide a urine sample for drug screening. It was a calm day regardless though, and there was no work with actual patients until Tuesday.
Tuesday morning I made my way through the string of locked doors at Mid-Missouri Mental Health Center (hereout referred to as Mid-MO), the mental health hospital. I am assigned to the ward on 2 south. I met the psych resident assigned to the floor, Dr. Johnson (not his real name of course), and discovered I and the other two medical students assigned to the floor would accompany him to the county courthouse to start the day. Dr. Johnson had to take the stand to testify to the need for inpatient treatment for a number of mentally ill individuals who were picked up by the law. It was an interesting start to the day.
After court hearings we hurried back to the ward on 2 south to attend rounds at 9 am. Rounds are a meeting with all the members of the ward's care team, and are lead by the attending physician. The other individuals include several social workers, the chief nurse, the medical students, and the resident Dr. Johnson. At rounds every day each patient on the ward is briefly discussed and the plan of care is modified based on the most recent assessment of the individual. Those who interact with the patient discuss their impression of the patient's situation and their thoughts on treatment.
After rounds we have staffing. Staffing is when a new patient gets to meet with the care team and have a conference on the care plan, with all members of the team able to ask questions of the patient, and the patient has the opportunity to ask any questions they want about their care as well. These have been emotionally charged so far.
When those meetings are finished, I take time to round about the ward seeking out the patients I follow, and sit down to discuss how they are doing with them. The first time I went around to meet the patients I am following, I was threatened by one man, eyed suspiciously and avoided by another, treated ambivalently by a third and fourth, and sort of welcomed by another. Some of the patients have sort of warmed up to me, and I'm glad for that.
One thing that wasn't expected was the emotional burden of caring for the people on the psych ward. Not everyone is completely out of touch with reality. Those that are still able to know what is going on are the ones who are most heartbreaking. I've met individuals with hardcore substance abuse on multiple street drugs who have depression, sit and contemplate suicide, get so emotionally overwhelmed with stress and anger that they slam their head into the table during their staffing meeting, patients who's arms have more scarring than normal skin, patients who emotionlessly describe how they took a kitchen knife to their arms to see them bleed, and later break down over the misery of the emptiness they feel. Even harder than all of that is knowing that I cannot simply break out and share the gospel with them, being in the position of a health care provider. At least, it is rather taboo and would likely result in me running into some sort of trouble. There may be some point when I do at least mention it, simply because I can't not want to, but I have to be careful. I am praying for them nontheless. It is perhaps harder having had a friend who was in an inpatient mental health setting and eventually committed suicide, and seeing several people who are experiencing similar problems. The worst is just not knowing what you are supposed to say.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
My first place, technology and humanity
This past Friday I signed the lease on my own apartment. No roommates, just myself. It is both exciting and scary at the same time. It feels grown up to do the signing myself, and being the one person responsible for everything. In any case, it is a milestone in my life to have my first place.
Being a type of person that enjoys having a peaceful repose to retreat to when I need recharging, it was overwhelmingly calming to wake up this morning to the sound of rain and rolling thunder, and to sit on the couch with a bowl of cereal after a time of quiet devotion and journaling. It is highly rewarding to now be sitting here publicly journaling while some relaxing music plays from my office. I look forward to slowly building a home out of my apartment, through decorating and spreading out of my belongings, and that will be a great feeling of comfort to come to after a hard day's work or to end a good evening.
If there's any one thing I am nervous about in my own place, it is dealing with the inevitable sense of loneliness that will hit at times. So far I have been fine with that, as I have seen people each day in the past couple of days. Since I will be less busy during the first rotation of the year I will have many opportunities to spend time with people, and hope plenty of people will drop by to see the new place and also just to check it out. I think however, that having a private retreat to return to when I want will in some ways make me more purposeful about reaching out to other people.
Some time last week the History Channel was running a program on the future of technology. Several examples had to deal with the merger of technology with the human body. One example was the potential to place a piece of technology into the retina of someone's eye, enabling them to perhaps watch television without having to have an outside box. They showed a 'simulation' of a man seemingly listening to a woman talking and then from his eye view having a video screen partially obscuring her face. Oh, and in order to exaggerate the annoyance of her talking, she was being played in something of a fast-forward, high-pitched voice. In reality, the use of optics in the eye is more for the purpose of finding a potential cure for blindness, which is a far more worthwhile cause if you ask me.
Another example of technology was the program that could interpret brain waves as someone thought them and be programmed to perform certain computer functions based off of what the person 'thought'. Some of the actions however were also programmed via an eyebrow raise, a jaw clench, and so forth. The purpose was to provide quadriplegics who were paralyzed with a more sophisticated means of communicating beyond the current technology in place, which utilizes eye-blinking alone.
As a future doctor, I am more than excited to see technological advances that can restore any measure of function to the disabled. It does however make me thankful for my own feelings of wholeness. I have two arms and two legs that function, I have a heart with natural valves and no need for stents to hold open my arteries. I have hearing that does not require a hearing aid. I do require glasses for seeing things sharply at a distance, and it is at times a frustration to have to acknowledge that there is something about my body that does not work perfectly. As each day goes by however, I know that I only get older, and progress more towards the end result of the Curse: death. Thank God that someday an imperishable body awaits me.
I am disturbed by some showcased technology that this show had on. One example was the insertion of video/television media wherever you would like it, even rolling it up and taking it with you. It may only have made up a small amount of the whole hour, but to me it seemed to take up quite a bit of the programming. There were examples of fabric-thickness televisions hanging on a wall, in massive size using up the sides of skyscrapers, digital screens built into the counter and tabletops of living spaces. Eugene Peterson, the author of the Bible paraphrase The Message, mentions in an interview I read recently that he feels television has done more than anything else to degrade society. John Patrick, an English physician I heard speak at a medical missions conference in November, spoke about the lack of true learning that occurs via visual media, and that the deepest knowledge and learning comes through reading and the written word.
I enjoy some television, and I enjoy going to a movie as well. Those things are good, and it is beautiful a lot of times to see a story depicted through the eyes of someone's imagination. The Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Rudy, Finding Neverland most especially, are great stories that lose nothing by being put to film. I think what I really dislike is when television or movies become an escape from being able to interact with others, or tell the stories to others, or if there is a lack of imagination involved in the telling of any story in what is being watched. "Couch Potato" evokes a rather undesireable state of being in my mind, and I would much rather be engaged with people than be a numb consumer of visual imagery.
Right now, I do not own a television in my new apartment, and I have considered what it would be like to simply not own a television at all. Of course, that would mean being unable to watch my favorite show Scrubs, or watch what I consider good programming like HGTV or the History Channel or Discovery, but it would challenge me to do more engaging activities with my time. If it came to watching movies, I could easily watch them on my computer's DVD system. I have a couple seasons of Scrubs on DVD, and then there's always the opportunity to reach out and spend time with people in order to watch a movie with them. I could also simply catch up on all the reading I say I intend to do. I could write far more as I say I will. I could start that book I have always told myself I want to write. Or, if I end up with a TV, lose sight of those interests.
Being a type of person that enjoys having a peaceful repose to retreat to when I need recharging, it was overwhelmingly calming to wake up this morning to the sound of rain and rolling thunder, and to sit on the couch with a bowl of cereal after a time of quiet devotion and journaling. It is highly rewarding to now be sitting here publicly journaling while some relaxing music plays from my office. I look forward to slowly building a home out of my apartment, through decorating and spreading out of my belongings, and that will be a great feeling of comfort to come to after a hard day's work or to end a good evening.
If there's any one thing I am nervous about in my own place, it is dealing with the inevitable sense of loneliness that will hit at times. So far I have been fine with that, as I have seen people each day in the past couple of days. Since I will be less busy during the first rotation of the year I will have many opportunities to spend time with people, and hope plenty of people will drop by to see the new place and also just to check it out. I think however, that having a private retreat to return to when I want will in some ways make me more purposeful about reaching out to other people.
Some time last week the History Channel was running a program on the future of technology. Several examples had to deal with the merger of technology with the human body. One example was the potential to place a piece of technology into the retina of someone's eye, enabling them to perhaps watch television without having to have an outside box. They showed a 'simulation' of a man seemingly listening to a woman talking and then from his eye view having a video screen partially obscuring her face. Oh, and in order to exaggerate the annoyance of her talking, she was being played in something of a fast-forward, high-pitched voice. In reality, the use of optics in the eye is more for the purpose of finding a potential cure for blindness, which is a far more worthwhile cause if you ask me.
Another example of technology was the program that could interpret brain waves as someone thought them and be programmed to perform certain computer functions based off of what the person 'thought'. Some of the actions however were also programmed via an eyebrow raise, a jaw clench, and so forth. The purpose was to provide quadriplegics who were paralyzed with a more sophisticated means of communicating beyond the current technology in place, which utilizes eye-blinking alone.
As a future doctor, I am more than excited to see technological advances that can restore any measure of function to the disabled. It does however make me thankful for my own feelings of wholeness. I have two arms and two legs that function, I have a heart with natural valves and no need for stents to hold open my arteries. I have hearing that does not require a hearing aid. I do require glasses for seeing things sharply at a distance, and it is at times a frustration to have to acknowledge that there is something about my body that does not work perfectly. As each day goes by however, I know that I only get older, and progress more towards the end result of the Curse: death. Thank God that someday an imperishable body awaits me.
I am disturbed by some showcased technology that this show had on. One example was the insertion of video/television media wherever you would like it, even rolling it up and taking it with you. It may only have made up a small amount of the whole hour, but to me it seemed to take up quite a bit of the programming. There were examples of fabric-thickness televisions hanging on a wall, in massive size using up the sides of skyscrapers, digital screens built into the counter and tabletops of living spaces. Eugene Peterson, the author of the Bible paraphrase The Message, mentions in an interview I read recently that he feels television has done more than anything else to degrade society. John Patrick, an English physician I heard speak at a medical missions conference in November, spoke about the lack of true learning that occurs via visual media, and that the deepest knowledge and learning comes through reading and the written word.
I enjoy some television, and I enjoy going to a movie as well. Those things are good, and it is beautiful a lot of times to see a story depicted through the eyes of someone's imagination. The Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Rudy, Finding Neverland most especially, are great stories that lose nothing by being put to film. I think what I really dislike is when television or movies become an escape from being able to interact with others, or tell the stories to others, or if there is a lack of imagination involved in the telling of any story in what is being watched. "Couch Potato" evokes a rather undesireable state of being in my mind, and I would much rather be engaged with people than be a numb consumer of visual imagery.
Right now, I do not own a television in my new apartment, and I have considered what it would be like to simply not own a television at all. Of course, that would mean being unable to watch my favorite show Scrubs, or watch what I consider good programming like HGTV or the History Channel or Discovery, but it would challenge me to do more engaging activities with my time. If it came to watching movies, I could easily watch them on my computer's DVD system. I have a couple seasons of Scrubs on DVD, and then there's always the opportunity to reach out and spend time with people in order to watch a movie with them. I could also simply catch up on all the reading I say I intend to do. I could write far more as I say I will. I could start that book I have always told myself I want to write. Or, if I end up with a TV, lose sight of those interests.
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