Going home tonight, and going to Philly for the Memorial Day weekend. I get back Tuesday. Have a good weekend.

"It was standing room only in Room 3485 the day the committee voted to let Patrick die." After an attention-grabbing opening, the rest of First, do no Harm by Lisa Belkin is a page-turner. Aside from this one, I also ordered House of God online, and they both arrived today. First, do no Harm is a book that examines ethical issues surrounding real life and death decisions in a hospital. Patrick is a 15 year old that has spent more days in the hospital than out of it for his entire life. Finally, the surgeries and infections are affecting his quality of life so much that the hospital has to decide whether or not to continue aggressively treating him or allowing him to die. Armando is a young man brought in with a gunshot wound. The bullet is lodged high in his spinal cord, paralyzing his body below the neck. The doctor wonders if CPR should have been withheld so that he died, rather than keep him alive in his mental prison. I haven't finished the book yet, but so far it's been great.

Lately I've been gradually realizing how imprecise medicine is, but that's not to say it's inaccurate. Given a diagnosis, two doctors might choose to treat the patient completely differently, with neither of them necessarily wrong. Less and less in medicine appears to be completely right or wrong. I think that kind of dilemma is part of what attracts me to medicine (I've been doing a lot of thinking about that, as the question "Why do you want to be a doctor?" will come up during med school applications). Yeah, the position of deciding to take infants off life support might not be an enviable one, but something about taking responsibility and making such an important decision pulls me in. I think everyone wants to be important in some way. No one wants to live a meaningless life.

Regarding ethical dilemmas, I almost never come to a concrete answer, but I like grappling with and discussing controversial issues to find what the best course of action would be. More often than not, reading about them illustrates that every perspective on the issue usually has some valid points. Dealing with real consequences of making decisions like that is another story though. I wonder how doctors are able to deal with their decisions when they aren't certain they did the right thing. A job like that might not always be pleasant, but it wouldn't be boring, either.

Now, how to come off as confident in eventually being able to handle those enormous pressures/consequences, but at the same time showing honest reflection on the issue?

Pics from Myrtle Beach are up in the photos section (obviously). Apparently, I don't have any pics from my 21st birthday except one. The person taking pictures that night is in Europe for 6 weeks. So maybe then I will have pictures of that night.

I started shadowing a family physician today and it was much more pleasant than I thought it would be. I have been pretty sure that a general practitioner was not the type of doctor I wanted to be, mostly because I thought it would be boring and I'd see the same cases day in and day out. Plus, the idea of working in a doctor's office just didn't seem all that appealing, so I didn't expect much when I went into the office today. During the day, I got to follow the doctor around while visiting patients, and discuss a few things with him between patients. It is allergy season, so a few people complained of that, but on the whole there were a variety of complaints. There are a lot of ways the human body can break down.

All the patients seemed nice and not worried about me being there, but I think it must have been a bit strange to expect a doctor, and a random college kid shows up at your visit. Obviously, they had a choice about whether or not to have me in the room, but no one said no. It was interesting to see the doctor's visit from a different perspective. In a certain way, all the patients, even the ones with simple problems, place so much trust in their doctor. The doctor is allowed to examine the body and mind in ways that no one else in society is really allowed to do. It is hard to describe, but it was strange watching the doctor touch the patients on the throat and back, feeling for any swelling and asking about any pain. It was even stranger when he asked me to look through the scope at a little girl's infected ear. I looked, and I almost felt like I shouldn't have been allowed to look. I was looking inside of her head, and that seemed a little too close for comfort for me, just some college kid with no medical training. Imagine asking a stranger if you can look real close into their inner ear. So in a sense these patients have to really trust their doctors to tell them all their secrets and allow them access to their entire body. On the other hand, a lot of patients have come in with information from the internet. I'm not sure if that's just a sign of less trust in their doctors, or better access to information. Maybe it's good, because I think patients with more knowledge can understand their doctors better, possibly leading to more effective treatments. Then again, hopefully patients don't start second-guessing their doctors just because of something they read on the internet.

That leads to another thing about family practice that I never really thought about. As opposed to a surgeon who doesn't have so much patient interaction, the general practitioner has a decent amount. A lot of the times the visits are quick, but the doctor is still able to form a bond with the patients. Entire families might go to the same doctor. It was surprising how many patients the doctor I shadowed actually remembered, without looking at the chart. Although you hear a lot of times that doctors shouldn't be attached to their patients, the familiarity with the patients is one of the things I liked. It seems less like work, that way.

Enough. I should be working on med school applications.

It's been awhile since I have been able to update. I'm going to try and update more regularly, but the last few weeks have been eventful. After my last post, I went on vacation to Myrtle Beach with Jess. In the five days we were there, I think the National Weather Service was wrong about four of them. Instead of rain, we had mostly nice, sunny days. The first day, it was supposed to rain so we explored the area, then stayed in the hotel for the night instead of walking over to the boardwalk-type area called Broadway at the Beach. It didn't rain. But after getting up to catch an early flight, I didn't mind relaxing a little. The area we were in was kind of strange for such a popular resort town. There were the usual high rise hotels and resorts on the beach, but directly across the street from them were low-income housing and shoddy motels. Broadway at the Beach, the main entertainment complex of the area, was a good 20 minute hike from the beach. So much for being "at the Beach." Separating Broadway from the beach were blocks of quiet residential area. It just seemed a little strange. At any rate, we went to Broadway at the Beach the next morning and had a good time. The Ripley's Aquarium wasn't high on Jessica's list of things she wanted to do, but she agreed to go anyway. It was fantastic. They have this huge tank with sharks and fish and turtles and eels and you get to walk through it underwater. Pictures and videos forthcoming. We ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, which has a strange appeal to me. I'm not particularly fond of the food. Not particularly fond of the decor/memorabilia. But for some reason, we had to eat there, and it was a lot of fun. The next two days we went to the beach, which was sunny and nice, but pretty uneventful. The water was freezing, and probably crawling with jellyfish, sharks, stingrays, etc. Man, Ripley's was sweet. And that was it. The next morning we left for Detroit, who's weather was approximately the opposite of Myrtle Beach's.

I didn't update once I got back from Myrtle Beach because I didn't come back to school. I had to stay in town, first for my friend Jason's going-away get-together,and second, for Jeff Golen's 21st birthday. Good luck to Jason in West Palm Beach, and good luck to Jeff being legal. I finally got back to school on Sunday, and our internet's down. It has been going in and out, so I didn't feel like it was worth it to try and resize all the photos and post them yet. So the photos are coming later. On Monday, I started my research position at the Veteran's Hospital, in a pulmonary immunology lab. So far, it's been good. I understand a lot more than I used to (this is my third summer there). Tonight, I go back home to Dearborn because I am shadowing a doctor tomorrow in Dearborn. I'm looking forward to the new experience, but I'm not really sure how long it's supposed to last. Then on to the glorious weekend. I should catch up on some sleep.