Friday, August 04, 2006
If you click on the link in the last entry and scroll down you can see a map of the city. I live on the far left edge of the map, just west of Polanco.
Woot!
Woot!
Today we climbed a pyramid. On top of a mountain.
I am tired. At the top, there were these weird ferret creatures that tried to eat us.
We have two new roommates, one from Columbia and one from nearby in Mexico, bringing us to six: me, Sharla, Kim (Northwestern), Amy (Nova Scotia), Armando y Davíd. It's getting a little crazy. Our rooms are all interconnected and we share a bathroom. Amy (in the little room on the roof) has to leave her room, go OUTSIDE, walk across the room to Sharla's room, climb the iron staircase into our room, and then pass through Armando and Davíd's room to get to the rest of the house.
On Wednesday night we were all at home and there was a huge hailstorm. Hail! So weird. All that day had been unusually hot; I was sweating that morning on the Metro in my lab coat. Then toward evening it started to cool and it was storming by 8:30. By 9, there were huge pellets of hail. Our house has a lot of glass windows and skylights (our host dad owns a mirror and glass business) so we could see, and hear, really well.
Until of course the power went out, after which we complained about how bored we were for approximately ten seconds and then went to bed.
In the morning, the streets looked like the aftermath of a terrible accident at the Frostee Freeze factory. So bizarre, walking through Mexico City and seeing huge piles of ice. The leaves of the trees lay shredded on the ground making the streets smell like fancy tea.
There are currently huge demonstrations going on in the central square of Mexico City right now... the supporters of the candidate that lost are demanding a recount. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5236884.stm
It's like a combination streetfair/campout. I went downtown yesterday and encountered a) free popcorn for Lopez Obrador supporters; b) man in yellow spandex costume yelling "Voto por voto, casillo por casillo" [vote by vote, polling booth by polling booth I think]; c) parade of people holding up ginormous Mexican flag.
While all this goes on... our power is back but now all the water that comes out of the faucets is brown.
Going to go sleep now.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
This entry is long-overdue, everything is long-overdue. I want to come home and I miss my friends a lot. On the other hand, I also want to come back to Mexico and unsuckify my Spanish and work in the hospital where I'm doing my research project.
OK dorky confession: I love my research project. I love the detective work of molecular biology. Right now I'm trying to figure out what caused an outbreak of a certain strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria so I'm comparing the genotypes of patient infections to see if they're related (and thus, passed from patient to patient by a health care worker or unsanitized equipment). Soooo cool.
PREMED SPECIAL
I'm trying to squeeze in as many chances as I can to see patients here because it's so much easier than in the states. Thursday I woke up ridiculously early to go to an infectious disease clinic at my hospital before class. Today I skipped Spanish class to go to an HIV clinic. I got to sit in on three patient consulations. The first didn't actually have HIV, but she was a hospital employee who had specifically asked to see the doctor I was following that day because she had some weird leg infection which could possibly be tuberculosis. Tuberculosis! It's everywhere. Someday I will fill you all with factoids about the imminent danger of TB and how you will surely die! Anyway, the next patient was a 40 year old man with HIV and a history of nonadherence to his antiretrovirals. They made him sick (he got something called Gilbert's disease which turned him yellow - jaundice) so he took it upon himself to take a three month "vacation" from his ARVs.
Unfortunately, antivirals are like antibiotics - if you don't take them super regularly, you risk developing resistant organisms (because you kill off all the weaker organisms and any mutants can fluorish). The patient is now resistant to three major ARVs, and he's starting to develop minor opportunistic infections (he came in today with shingles on his back.) He HAS to take antiretrovirals, but he still doesn't want to. The doctor was trying to convince him - I couldn't understand everything but the general idea was, you don't have any other options.
Then I saw a 25-year-old with HIV and depression... should also be starting antiretrovirals soon but has been nonadherent with his depression treatment, so the doctor didn't think he was prepared to take ARVs faithfully. He came today with pretty clear signs of hypothyroidism (resulting in low energy, weight gain, hair loss, and depression plus lab tests) so he's got to be treated for that too.
The fact is that he is 25, depressed and has a terminal illness. The doctor was doing a great job at counselling him, encouraging him to take his meds and seek help for his depression, but it was a hard sell - you could tell the patient wasn't buying it.
So it was kind of an intense day. It was weird to just be there, observing. I feel so out of place with my broken Spanish and wrinkly lab coat. At the same time, though, the doctors treat us like real medical students - which totally catches me off guard. Today during one of the consulations Dr. Tonio handed me the stethoscope and asked me to listen to the TB patient's lungs. OK, I thought - they frequently let us try out various things. Then he casually asked me if I'd heard anything unusual and I realized that he was actually asking me to listen to the patient's lungs, like for real. Whoaaa.... so I told him what I heard (which just turned out to be noise from the patient's clothing) and he quickly checked again. But people do take us seriously here, which is scary. Not half as scary as it will be when it actually is my responsibility though - no one to check and make sure I didn't screw up.
That's one of the things that has really freaked me out about going into medicine, even though I know that it freaks out every prospective doctor, or should. How would I deal with that responsibility? How would I deal with failing in that responsibility which I imagine all doctors do sometimes? One thing I like about research is that if you make a mistake, you can fix it. Sure, it might be a huge pain, and you might have to redo all your work for the last six months, but that is a lot easier than raising someone from the dead.
It can be argued that research has the potential to do a lot more harm (or a lot more good) than medicine, because it can affect hundreds of thousands of decisions about patient care. BUT... in research you have time to fix your mistakes, you're working with a team. Screwups are still bad but at least you don't have to tell someone that their son or daughter died because you messed up.
Such morbid thoughts! Anyway, actually I am really excited. Being in the hospital has been an incredible experience, that has revised YET AGAIN my future plans, as discussed at nauseous length earlier in this blog.
Signing out!
OK dorky confession: I love my research project. I love the detective work of molecular biology. Right now I'm trying to figure out what caused an outbreak of a certain strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria so I'm comparing the genotypes of patient infections to see if they're related (and thus, passed from patient to patient by a health care worker or unsanitized equipment). Soooo cool.
PREMED SPECIAL
I'm trying to squeeze in as many chances as I can to see patients here because it's so much easier than in the states. Thursday I woke up ridiculously early to go to an infectious disease clinic at my hospital before class. Today I skipped Spanish class to go to an HIV clinic. I got to sit in on three patient consulations. The first didn't actually have HIV, but she was a hospital employee who had specifically asked to see the doctor I was following that day because she had some weird leg infection which could possibly be tuberculosis. Tuberculosis! It's everywhere. Someday I will fill you all with factoids about the imminent danger of TB and how you will surely die! Anyway, the next patient was a 40 year old man with HIV and a history of nonadherence to his antiretrovirals. They made him sick (he got something called Gilbert's disease which turned him yellow - jaundice) so he took it upon himself to take a three month "vacation" from his ARVs.
Unfortunately, antivirals are like antibiotics - if you don't take them super regularly, you risk developing resistant organisms (because you kill off all the weaker organisms and any mutants can fluorish). The patient is now resistant to three major ARVs, and he's starting to develop minor opportunistic infections (he came in today with shingles on his back.) He HAS to take antiretrovirals, but he still doesn't want to. The doctor was trying to convince him - I couldn't understand everything but the general idea was, you don't have any other options.
Then I saw a 25-year-old with HIV and depression... should also be starting antiretrovirals soon but has been nonadherent with his depression treatment, so the doctor didn't think he was prepared to take ARVs faithfully. He came today with pretty clear signs of hypothyroidism (resulting in low energy, weight gain, hair loss, and depression plus lab tests) so he's got to be treated for that too.
The fact is that he is 25, depressed and has a terminal illness. The doctor was doing a great job at counselling him, encouraging him to take his meds and seek help for his depression, but it was a hard sell - you could tell the patient wasn't buying it.
So it was kind of an intense day. It was weird to just be there, observing. I feel so out of place with my broken Spanish and wrinkly lab coat. At the same time, though, the doctors treat us like real medical students - which totally catches me off guard. Today during one of the consulations Dr. Tonio handed me the stethoscope and asked me to listen to the TB patient's lungs. OK, I thought - they frequently let us try out various things. Then he casually asked me if I'd heard anything unusual and I realized that he was actually asking me to listen to the patient's lungs, like for real. Whoaaa.... so I told him what I heard (which just turned out to be noise from the patient's clothing) and he quickly checked again. But people do take us seriously here, which is scary. Not half as scary as it will be when it actually is my responsibility though - no one to check and make sure I didn't screw up.
That's one of the things that has really freaked me out about going into medicine, even though I know that it freaks out every prospective doctor, or should. How would I deal with that responsibility? How would I deal with failing in that responsibility which I imagine all doctors do sometimes? One thing I like about research is that if you make a mistake, you can fix it. Sure, it might be a huge pain, and you might have to redo all your work for the last six months, but that is a lot easier than raising someone from the dead.
It can be argued that research has the potential to do a lot more harm (or a lot more good) than medicine, because it can affect hundreds of thousands of decisions about patient care. BUT... in research you have time to fix your mistakes, you're working with a team. Screwups are still bad but at least you don't have to tell someone that their son or daughter died because you messed up.
Such morbid thoughts! Anyway, actually I am really excited. Being in the hospital has been an incredible experience, that has revised YET AGAIN my future plans, as discussed at nauseous length earlier in this blog.
Signing out!
