The path to being a physician...
A Ride for Mercy
Today, a little girl in Africa is looking out the door of her one room hut at the sunshine and the other children playing. She is sitting where she has sat many days watching the other 9 year-old girls braiding each other's hair, but she can't join because of severe burns she received last year. But this day is different, because today, for the first time in more than a year she has hope that she may be able to join them soon. You see, Mercy was aptly named because she is depending on the mercy of people, many she has never seen, to provide the money and equipment for her to regain the use of her hands. Those who haven't met her have made $7,000 in cash donations, $1,000 in equipment and $17,000 in discounts on products for her care and the hospital at which she is staying.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation 2002
by
Myra Rufo, PhD
It was to be the best August in years. Three weeks of luxurious idleness, the reward for twenty-six months of non-stop anatomy teaching and course development. A long-overdue break for R&R with my husband Bob, and all the kids home for a family reunion at the end of the month.
Aug 7: Up at dawn, and the day is mine. What shall I do first? Of the infinite possibilities, the one whose voice speaks the most compellingly is the one saying, "you want to go back to bed". Well, ok, just for a few minutes, then, but the next time I look at the clock, it says 2 p.m., and I recognize that slightly tipsy, aimless and not altogether unpleasant sensation that signifies the onset of a fever.
Just a fever, no sore throat, nothing except for maybe a mild headache--must be one of those "24 hour bugs"; I'll sleep it off, and tomorrow I'll be good as new...
Little did I know.
White Coat Confusion
For as long as I can remember, "the white coat" has always been a source of confusion.
I began to experience my first white coat confusion as a child growing
up with a mother and grandfather who were both doctors. Having received
a series of mixed messages, I never quite knew for sure whether the white
coat was the freshly ironed thing that "mommy wore to work",
or the disguise that cold-blooded doctors put on in preparation for torturing
innocent children in sterilized hospital rooms.
Having decided to become a doctor, I thought that I had left this confusion
behind. Little did I know that on my very first day of medical school
I would be faced with white coat confusion number two!
Got Veins, Got Blood: First Years Get Their Hands Dirty at the 2002 Procedural Workshop
Malden,
MA. Down the road from now, our first-year TUSM
class will probably look back to this year's Basic Medical Procedural
Workshop and grin at how green we once were. With questions like "What's
an I.U.D?" and "What's an anatomical snuff box?," you couldn't
help yourself from having a good belly laugh. It would be safe to say
that both the staff and students greatly enjoyed learning and teaching
the basic techniques of splinting, phlebotomy, and suturing.
Seven Lives
Mrs. B. was in love with the telephone operator at her nursing home. She would dial zero every night and tell him about her loneliness, its size and shape, and the poor perplexed man would listen a long time- maybe longer than was appropriate. Then he'd put in a call to her physician. When Mrs. B. was my patient on psychiatry, and she told me about her telephone operator, I wondered who this man was, how he'd felt each time the woman's call turned up on his switchboard. He was like me, I thought, and like my classmates in medicine: surprised and somewhat touched at the wide view we're granted of our patient's lives.