Rural Rounds

Lexington Square Originally uploaded by Dr Peppers . Here's a shot of the courtyard inside my townhouse complex. Just one of a few of the photos I made with my new camera . Check out my photo feed here The rest of this weekend, however, will most likely be devoted to studying and taking practice quizzes. Hopefully, at least.

Today I had the good fortune of skipping the only two lectures of the morning and sleeping until 10 am, and getting some much needed rest (I've been sick lately, so it was worth it). A little after getting up and getting dressed, I heard the door knock, and to my delight it was the FedEx man. In his hands, for me, was my new digital camera! Tonight, after reading through a case, some lecture notes, and watching a histology DVD, I decided to pursue something more exciting. Namely, taking pictures with my new toy. I bought it in hopes that when I go on some major trips (which I seem to do every year), I could take more artistic, photographer style shots, and maybe print some for hanging. To get there though, I need practice. And that's exactly what I did. Here's some of my better shots from tonight's practice run. Let me know what you think.

I think that it's time for an evaluation of my blogging. New idea, stop trying to be a novelist writing a book, and just put junk up that faraway friends can read in a minute or so. Less length, more frequent updates, better blogging. Yesterday I had a great final ACE experience at the family practice clinic I was at this block. I got to do a couple of patient interviews on my own, sans doctor, and did just great. Of particular note was a guy in for a diabetes followup, and I got to talk to him about how his medication was working, his diet, blood sugar control, and asked all the right questions according to my preceptor. In the end, we told the guy that his diabetes was under control without medication, and that he was doing just great. That's what makes me look forward to medicine, the victories.

I have a habit of not updating this thing often enough. I need to work on that whole consistency thing in the midst of the rest of life’s distractions. Class has just resumed. I’ve been back in town about a week now after driving back and forth across the state for almost a week. Being back at school is almost a relief to the constant driving. This block our focus is on neurology. From the first day it is pretty apparent that it will be a challenge; just the terminology alone makes neurology seem its own language apart from medicine as a whole. On the other hand, learning about the brain is paired with learning about behavioral sciences. Currently, we’ve been having lectures on substance abuse and sexual behavior. I was talking to a fellow classmate today about why we’re both interested in the potential medical fields we are. He plans to specialize in one of the most intensive medical fields there is, if not the most intensive field there is. I don’t doubt for one minute he will fail t...

So where have I been for the past month? I've been finishing my second block of medical school, that's where. I'm still pretty new to this medical school thing, and not always the greatest time manager, so I had to put blogging on the back burner. Alright, so time management may have less to do with it than does obsessive-compulsive studying so I can be absolutely sure I won't fail the tests I take. Looking back on tests, I'm pretty certain that I am still going to be in medical school, and may have done better than last block. I definately feel like I knew more this block than I did last block. Now hopefully I don't become too obsessed with doing better every time tests roll around, or I will kill myself when a really hard block comes around. I have managed to find time for other activities besides studying however. My roommates and I, and our neighbors three doors down all celebrated Festivus . For those of you unfamiliar with this holiday, it has its origins ...

Tonight I went to an independent film theater here in my town called Ragtag Cinema-Cafe. Me and my roommates and two other friends watched George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck It was quite entertaining, and a good break from studying (which I have done plenty of lately and is cause for the lack of updates; tests are now only two weeks away). It is about CBS reporter Edward Murrow's criticism of Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950's for his methods of hunting communists. The result of the historical confrontation was Senator McCarthy being investigated by the Senate. I think the film is great and I highly recommend it. I think oftentimes people in power can go on such "witch-hunts", looking for opposition or attempting to find opposition in order to create a scare, and help to keep themselves in power. Sometimes it's manipulative, but what if it wasn't? What if the person in power themselves were convinced there was a danger? What if evidence did point t...

It’s been more than a week, and I think an update is due. Plus, I can give updates on my own status with my heart murmur, having seen the doctor this past Friday. The only thing that has kept me from updating until now is simply laziness (in other words, I was far too busy studying/eating/cleaning/sleeping to actually relax and write). This past Friday I went to the Student Health Center to see my doctor about the previously mentioned murmur recently discovered. My doctor presumed it was most likely an innocent flow murmur, which occurs if a heart valve doesn’t close all the way or in time when the heart beats, allowing blood to flow back the opposite way, and the blood causes turbulence heard as noise. If you’ve ever heard turbulent water flowing over and through rocks and back upstream in eddies in a river, you should get the idea of what a murmur is. It was recommended that I have an echocardiography done, or an ultrasound picture of my heart. This would allow us to see exactly how ...

It seems that no one ever stops to think about doctors actually being patients themselves. The patient is the one who needs to see a doctor, who is healthy and will make you healthy. But doctors are also human, just like their patients, and just as vulnerable to ill health. In fact, most aging doctors are already patients themselves to another doctor, who in the midst of treating their patients may be seeing their own doctor on the side for anything from diabetes to high cholesterol to hypertension. How does it feel to be on the other side of the system? For most of us, we probably know what it feels like to be on the patient side, since most of us aren't doctors. As a medical student, I know that I as well as many of my class have had those "hypochondriac moments", where we suddenly believe we've discovered signs of terrible illness in our own bodies. We know just enough to be dangerous. Luckily it is just our own wild imaginations taking one minor symptom of a disea...

In my junior year of college, I had the opportunity to shadow a family doctor for half a week. Sitting in his office one day, looking at his medical school degree, I noticed the degree read “Doctor of the healing arts”, or something similar. At the very least, I remember clearly that it read healing arts – and not medicine. When people go to the doctor, they generally expect that the doctor will have the answer for their problem. The doctor is the expert, and is the person to go to when you have a medically related problem you need taken care of. For many people, health care is a lot like any other service industry: consumer driven. The fact that the service is on me, rather than on my car, my house, my back deck, computer, etc., only makes it more personal. In the end, I have a problem, I go to the expert, I get it fixed, and I pay the expert. However, just like the service industry, if the service rendered is insufficient, doesn’t fix the problem, or worse still, damage or destroy th...

Sometimes you find that you're right where you're supposed to be. That might be the right city or town to live in, or it might be in the right kind of relationship with the right person. Maybe it's as simple as the right place at the right time, and events around you seem to be working solely for your favor. For me recently, it is finding that I am heading in the right direction on that oh-so difficult path known as a career. Wait, I'm going to have to admit something here first. I just spent about 15 minutes coming up with that catchy opening. Don't worry though, at least a third of that time was in retyping it after it suddenly disappeared for reasons known only to...well, no one really. Alright, now back to telling you just where I'm going with this new blog of mine. My name is James, and I'm a first year medical student at the University of Missouri - Columbia. I just graduated college this past May. It was in college, between my first and second years, ...