Winter Break!!

It's currently the beginning of the second week of the spring semester for my sophomore year. I came up with this idea for a blog during the winter break between the two. So far it's pretty fun! I am pretty sure to anyone other than me it seems like an incoherent mess but it's been a really fun chance to organize my thoughts and get some nice retrospective. The big trouble with hindsight is sometimes it presents this illusion of what you could have done differently if you had just made a tiny change. I think as I learn to disregard my emotions and thoughts as anything other than chaos-incarnate, the opportunity to look back becomes more valuable. I've learned how to implement changes to the problems I identify when being retro-contemplative, and sometimes I can only only notice the problems after thinking them through. A few years ago, if I made a silly mistake like constantly forgetting my badge to work- I would think the answer is "just don't forget your badge, dumby." Now that I am slightly less oblivious than I once was, I know that you can't just ask for humans to change their traits. The solution now is I leave my badge in my locker at work. The only place I need it- is where it remains. ( I call these little solutions- that solve an insane amount of problems- the "plunger" philosophy. The genius in the plunger's placement is it is directly adjacent to the problem its designed to solve!)

    Okay so what did I do other than start this blog? I shadowed a hecking bunch of hospitalists around the hospital I work at- Tidal Health PRMC. I also had an idea for a thesis project involving interviewing some people and got the groundwork laid down for that. I talked with my school lab partner who runs a REAL FREAKING LAB and got an internship for the summer secure.  OH, I also talked to two other docs about shadowing them in the summer- a pulmonologist and a neurologist. Apart from that I was mainly reading and having adventures with my girlfriend. And of course played some fun videogames- been doing one called "warframe" and man it can be addicting. 

SHADOWING

So I think I am going to explain stuff even though this blog ain't meant for others (yes, YOU!). I have learned from my study groups and partners that I actually benefit a lot not from learning with them but from studying the material on my own time then teaching them. It provides a different angle for you to learn your material from, making you way more familiar. Okay so I shadowed a lot of people from Tidal Health's Hospitalist group. Think of hospitalists as in-patient generalists that mainly manage medicine. In fact I think some hospitals refer to hospitalists and Internal Medicine. Anyways when you are a patient in the hospital, if you aren't there for surgery (and maybe oncology? I'm not sure actually) these are your main guys that organize your care. That might be confusing because you might be in patient for a heart attack, isn't your "main guy" organizing your care the cardiologist? Well no actually, they're on board and might be providing the heavy majority of your treatment plan but you are going to have an Internal Medicine person be your organizing provider. They- due to the generalist nature of their field- have a lot of experience organizing different aspects of treatment and figuring out when they need a specialist consulted or on board. So it makes sense to have a person so well versed in coordinating specialists and keeping the "bigger picture" in mind to be in charge for the heavy majority of patients. Most of the time one specialist or another will be put on board which helps reduce noise in judgment of care as well. Cardiology, nephrology, and infectious disease seem the most common in the case of my shadowing. Though pulmonology was actually on board for a massive amount of the COVID-19 patients for evaluation of a special medicine for it called baricitinib. I'm not sure what this is- a google search brings up the WHO article recommending it, saying "It is part of a class of drugs called Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors that suppress the overstimulation of the immune system." It's also used for rheumatoid arthritis. Wait- does that mean RA is an autoimmune disease? Okay google searching that says- yes it is. Huh. Anyways, gotta focus. What I was saying is that pulmonology I think is consulted currently way way more than their usual workload is because of this baricitinib but I am not 100% on that- could be wrong. The pulmonologist at Tidal Health- Dr. Chasse seems wicked-edge smart. I asked about shadowing him this summer and he seemed down with it. 

Okay what was I talking about? Shadowing? Shadowing. It was SO much fun and helped give me a much more macro view of the hospital. Honestly I implemented a few small things I learned in my job as a CNA to help increase the chances of discharge- which mainly has to do with the small things that help with getting them off oxygen (encouraging the shit out  of the incentive spirometer, walks, getting in the chair). Honestly if I can help get the patients strength back enough to walking condition with the 3 or 2 days I have with them and they choose home-rehab instead of facility rehab, I feel like I just personally saved the hospital a room that would've taken 3 days to clear out all told (weekend+insurance+covid problems make it really hard to discharge patients on saturdays and sundays). This fixation on decreasing load has not made a single difference at all in my job work load but hey its made a massive one for the individual patients. I didn't expect to make waves anyways. I could see some ways for increased education on a few things for fellow CNA's to help knock off a couple days on these in-patient timers.

I shadowed 4 doctors, Dr. Ghumman, Dr. Eng, Dr. Masood, and Dr. Hasan. Honestly I was kinda scared of Ghumman and Eng before shadowing but holy moly they're nice people. Like not just saying that for any superficial reasons- I mean genuinely each one made such an effort to be friendly and a great teacher. The actual cases weren't the most complicated stuff in the world but I loved it anyways. The treatment aspect had me hooked. I loved learning why you give x for y. Why you don't give z for w, even though it seems like you would. What this lab can possibly indicate and what other factors present could form a better image of one of those indications. The algorithms, the unknowns, the trendlines, the correlations- all of it- insane fun. I found  the discharge aspect to be frustrating sometimes but I don't think I disliked it either. They present a harder to solve problem less suited for physicians but I could still see myself getting a kick out of solving them. I cannot wait to shadow the hospitalists some more and other specialists this summer. 

MCAT's

So I started my studying for the MCATs aswell this break. A solid start- not massive progress but def solid. I am about halfway through the gen chem Kaplan book and I plan on going through all the Kaplan books- which iirc are gen chem, org chem, bio chem, biology, physics, psych, and critical reading comprehension. So halfway done one out of seven. Thats over 7%!!! Not to mention how many practice tests and this and that, yada yada. I'm gonna do on top of the kaplan books. But hey I think 7% is decent! I filled up almost one whole composition notebook so far. Trying to log in 2 hours of MCAT studying every weekday this semester.

Other fun things

Uhhhh not too much happening here. The rest of the winter break was focused on my reading- which I blog about, and personal life- which I don't. Oh! I know, I found this cool ass app for 4 bucks called "forest" I am using as a focus app/time tracker. Let's me not get distracted by my phone while also keeping great tracking and statistics on my habits. 

After finishing one book I've yet to review but I absolutely loved called "The Spirit Catches You Fall Down." I got an idea. So far it's only an idea but it might turn into something more. I have to do a thesis for the honors college at Salisbury University (the university I am transferring to in the fall). I had an idea to interview two particular families that I have met through my job. I think I am going to reach out to some experts on thesis writing and how to shape the interviews. I'll talk about this more once I got a better picture. However nothing is gonna happen till this summer and even then I'll be writing the thesis over two years. 

Well that about wraps up all I wanted to talk about. I don't know how to end this. TGNHTEDFNRFGDBZFadeewdewqffdqewaedsfedqwad that seems like how one would do it.