Again, it's been a long time...

Or maybe it hasn't been that long, but it sure feels like it has. I'm now 5 weeks into my third year of medical school, another beginning in my super-long journey toward being a doctor. I had my first rotation at Jefferson, in internal medicine, on the Blue team, which meant I took care of patients with cancer and lung disease. Wow. Talk about a crash course in what it is to be a doctor. In the first week, we lost three patients. Granted, we thankfully didn't lose any more after that (that we know of, lots of them went home to hospice), but it was a tough first week.

There were two patients that really stood out. One was an elderly woman who had contracted hepatitis years ago and had required a liver transplant. Seven year slater, she was diagnosed with liver cancer, whic his now metastatic everywhere. The poor woman is in horrible pain all the time, has fistulas all throughout her digestive tract and a chronic abscess in her pelvis, which is colonized with a very resistant form of bacteria. She was in the hospital almost the whole time I was there, sometimes mentally with it, sometimes not...but so, so sick. Once, when the intern asked her where she said "I'm in Hell." She was suffering so much,a nd there was practically nothing to be done for her, but her daughters were terrified to lose her and wanted EVERYTHING done to keep her alive. Seeing how much she suffered, how much pain she was in, shaking there in the bed. It was just awful.

The other patient was a middle-aged woman who came in coughing, with what she thought was an exacerbation of asthma or allergies, or maybe just a reaction to the heat. She really had small-cell lung cancer. She was a heavy smoker, but had never been sick a day in her life, and now in her early 50's, she was sick with one of the worst cancers a person could get. We had to put a stent in her airway to keep the tumor from closing off her breathing before the chemo and radiation could shrink the tumor. We had to get her a stent placed, chemotherapy, and radiation al lin one day. She was very spiritual, and at one point, before her bronchoscopy, I offered to pray with her. It was amazing how much reaching out to her in that way helped her...when I left at the end of my 4 weeks, she gave me a huge hug and called me an angel; said that she knew God would be with her because he sent me to her. It was so, so touching.

Now I'm at a new hospital and will meet new patients, but I wanted to do a little update. Life is really changing, isn't it? It's just so strange how quickly I can go from being a student with my face in a book to being someone who can help people in the hospital. I don't pretend that I know enough medicine to help people in that way yet, but what I can do now feels very, very good :)

On the baby front, well, not really any progress at this time. We've had a HUGE adjustment to make with Megan's new job, the new puppy, my new school environment, the new apartment (and a bunch of landlord issues I don't even want to discuss right now), and even more that I'm sure I'm not even touching on yet...it's just been insane. So all baby plans are on temporary hold, but as soon as I have something to say, I'll say it :)