Last Week

The program has officially come to an end! I honestly cannot believe how much more I know about the medical system now than before the program started.

Update:
Here are some random assorted pictures from the summer!

Fleet Week in NYC when I moved into my apartment in the beginning of the summer


NewYork Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center Main Entrance


Olin Hall (Where our lectures were)


Wednesday seminar in North Brooklyn with guest speaker Rob Solano (right)

Seventh Week

This is perhaps my last week of full rotations. Beginning next week, I'm cutting down some rotations because I need to finish my final paper by the end of next weekend.

Other than that, week highlights:
Monday-I was shadowing a heptalogist in a Hepatitis clinic because my HIV rotation had ended. Very similar to the HIV clinic except patients are coinfected with Hepatitis and HIV. I heard an interesting statistic that African Americans have a lower recovery rate compared to Caucasians when using interferons (what is used to treat hepatitis), which suggests that genetics may also account for medical disparities. At night, I was volunteering in NYP and I observed an orthopedic surgeon putting casts on 3 patients. Very cool site because there were about 4 different types of doctors in the room doing their own thing to help the patient.

Tuesday-During my neurology rotation in NYP, a patient came in that is a doctor at Mt. Sinai and a Cornell alum. She was sharing stories with the neurologist on how the doctors would torture her during interviews. In the afternoon, I was at Woodhull shadowing a physiatrist in a prosthetic clinic. I never realized how deadly diabetes was until that day because 3 patients came in with amputated legs and we were trying to help them walk again with a prosthetic.

Wednesday-We had a lecture by Dr. Storey-Johnson who is the Sr. Associate Dean of Education at Weill Cornell. She was telling us about the 3 components of medical training: formal, informal, and hidden. I think the most interesting of all of them is the hidden aspect, which is the hidden meaning hospitals relay such as signs posted in only certain languages and the individuals that are selected for rounds.

Thursday-Saw another mouse perfusion for the 4th week in a row in my neurobiology research rotation. I'm starting to get used to the idea of headless mice..After we were done, I was taking pictures of stained brain sections using a camera-microscope for densitometry. The density is measured using a program called ImageJ, which the numbers are then put into a statistical software to determine if it is significant.

Friday-I was shadowing a rheumatologist at Woodhull and we encountered a patient who couldn't move his head at all after falling from a tree several years ago. The doctor had a medication to treat him that's about $1,000/month, but the patient is uninsured and he's planning to move back to Panama in several weeks. He was given the choice to stay and treat his condition if he's eligible for free medications from the hospital or go to Panama and hope that they have the medications he needs.

This week I also completed some of my NYC goals such as running across the Brooklyn Bridge and back. It's a lot shorter than I remembered, I think it took about 10 minutes just to go one-way. Also, I saw a movie being filmed yesterday called "arthur". Check it out whenever it comes out, the scene I saw was between City Hall and NYPD.

Sixth Week

Not much action this week due to 4th of July. Here's a recap though:

Monday-All clinics were canceled due to observance of July 4th. When I was volunteering at the Pediatric ER at night, it was SO QUIET! No one was in the waiting room and patients were discharged a few minutes after they arrived.

Tuesday-Quiet morning as well, the neurologist I was shadowing was teaching medical students and we only saw 1 patient. Surprisingly, I knew the patient's husband Yugo, who was on the panel last year when the Biology Scholars Program went to Weill Cornell for an Open House. Small world...

Wednesday-Guest speaker was Prof. Fein, who is the Professor of Clinical Medicine and Public Medicine at Weill Cornell. He had a very informative presentation on health care, which I really needed because I haven't been following the whole health care reform debate. As many of you are probably aware of already, PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was enacted several months ago. I don't think he agrees with what is going on because he actually supports a single-payer health care system which is very much like Medicare, except Medicare is restricted to mostly the elderly.

Thursday-Very weird day, the doctor I was supposed to shadow was MIA. So I shadowed his colleague in the clinic. For the first time, I noticed today that the patients were really unaware of what their condition was and what medications they were taking, but I guess their excuse could be that they speak another language. Nonetheless, one patient that spoke English didn't know he was admitted to the ICU a week ago for a heart attack and any of the 7 medications he was taking. This certainly indicates that education may be a source of the disparities in medicine.

Friday-I was shadowing a rheumatologist in Brooklyn and coincidentally, his colleague returned today after recovering for more than a month from surgery (they never met). It was interesting to see 2 attendings go back and forth about their ways to treat people and new drugs they considered using. I also just learned that all the residents working in the clinic are from foreign countries. The two residents I shadowed today were from Bama (near Thailand) and Pakistan. They were telling me that they're lucky because they don't have to pay the ridiculous costs for US medical schools, but they have trouble getting used to the system in US such as all the technology which are rare in underdeveloped countries.

Hope everyone had a good July 4th, I spent my day in Coney Island. In case no one heard, Kobayashi jumped onto the stage at the Annual July 4th Nathan's Hotdog Contest. Check it out on youtube, its hilarious :)

Fifth Week

Kinda in a rush this weekend because of the holiday. Here are my week highlights though:

Monday- Last day of my HIV research rotation because my supervisor is going on vacation. For the rest of the program, I will be working in a Hepatitis C clinic and a HPV clinic in Chelsea rather than Upper East Side.

Tuesday- An elderly couple came in with a history of migraines. They just started botox injections several months ago to treat their headaches. The injections looked terrible because he stuck the needle around various parts of the head about 20 times. I'm pretty sure this would be a nightmare for people that hate needles, but I think the treatment is well worth it if the regular medications don't work.

Wednesday- Went to the United Nations for our lecture. The guest lecturer was from Uganda and he has some high position on the board. He was mostly talking about the Millennium Development Goals, which is a set of 8 goals all member nations hope to accomplish by 2015. So far, some of the goals have succeeded such as reducing extreme poverty.

Thursday- During my neurobiology research rotation, I saw another perfusion on 2 mice. (SKIP THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SOMETHING GROSS) The PI first anesthetized the mice to a point they counldn't respond to simple reflexes. Then, he opened the chest with some scissors and inserted a needle sending paraformaldeyhe into the head while the heart was still beating. After the blood came out and the head stiffened, they cut off the head and removed the brain using scalpels. These brains would be kept for histology to be sectioned later.

Friday- I followed the rheumatologist I was shadowing to the detox unit for a medical consult. The area looked really secure because you needed a key to get in and get out. The patient we saw in the unit had purple fingers and the doctor told her that if she doesn't stop smoking cocaine, she will lose it.

And Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Fourth Week

It's the fourth week and I'm halfway done with the program! As most of you already know, this has been a blistering, hot week in New York. Luckily I have been in the hospital for most of the mornings. My evening runs, however, have not been very fun...

There weren't too many exciting things this past week, but here are the highlights:
Monday- I was working in a Hepatitis Clinic instead of HIV because the entire department went to Washington DC for a conference. It was a lot of the same things I normally see in the HIV Clinic, except the patients also have Hepatitis as well.
Tuesday- During my neurology rotation at NYP, one of the patients had a tumor in the frontal lobe of her brain. The doctor told her she would need to get surgery to have the tumor removed, but her response was strange because she was somewhat happy to get a Mohawk. It made sense afterwards when the doctor reminded me the frontal lobe is responsible for decision-making and she wasn't able to grasp the reality of the situation.
Wednesday- Lecture in the morning by a doctor. Then we went to Brooklyn to make T-shirts that read, "Don't 4Get Haiti" and to tutor kids in biology.
Thursday- Started my rotation at Downtown Hospital in Lower East Side. I came in thinking I would be translating most the time because there is a huge Asian population b/c Chinatown is right next door, but the majority of the patients spoke a dialect I couldn't speak. Although, I was taught "I do not understand" in that language. :)
Friday- Pretty normal Friday, I did get to see some people with Tennis Elbow (syndrome). The weird thing is, most people that get Tennis Elbow have never played tennis...

In terms of surviving in NYC, I finally made a chicken dish successfully last week. Also, I had a New Yorker ask me for directions and I actually knew how to get there!. Does that make me a city-person now? Hmm...probably not, but I got until the end of this summer.

Third Week

Yikes! Sorry for the delay in this post. Went home this weekend to celebrate my sister's graduation from college!
This week has been insane yet I've gotten so much experience.

While I was volunteering in the Pediatric ER at NYP-Weill Cornell Monday night, I encountered a Chinese woman who had a baby that recently came out of surgery from spina bifida (deformity in the spinal cord). I never learned medical Chinese, but I was able to act as a translator for a while and saw the interaction between the medical students and residents.

Tuesday, I began a rotation with a Physiatrist at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn. I've never heard of Physiatry before, but apparently its one of the most recent board-certified fields that is similar to PT/OT. Except, physiatrists have to go to medical school and they can prescribe medications and diagnose conditions compared to physical therapists that simply try to alleviate pain.

My Wednesday class was canceled due to rain, but I went to the Met and it was super cool!

During the afternoon on Thursday, we were working for an organization called Churches United for Fair Housing (check it out: http://www.churchesunitedforfairhousing.com/). Our class separated into different groups to pass around flyers supporting the reconstruction of the old Domino factory in North Brooklyn. Its an amazing project because it would preserve the old factory to make a museum, create more than 600 affordable housing units, and form a park.

Another thing I forgot to mention last time was the differences between all the hospitals I work in. New York Presbyterian Hospital is a private hospital and by far the largest I've ever worked in. The majority of the patients I have seen are Caucasian and fairly wealthy as it is located in the Upper East Side. Woodhull Hospital is a public hospital that is located in North Brooklyn, serving residents of Bed-Stuy, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and Williamsburg. Many of the patients I have seen are Hispanic and African Americans that are fairly poor. Downtown Hospital is affiliated with NYP, but it is also a non-for-profit hospital located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Most of the patients I have seen there are mostly Asians because Chinatown is nearby. As you can see, they're all very different and I've noticed the treatments and the types of doctors the patients see are not equal. This brings up the point of the program, which is to introduce us to disparities in medicine.

Second Week

So I officially don't have a way of putting in pictures, but I'll make sure to post them all whenever I come home. :)

This week has been my first full week of rotations. Right now, my schedule looks like this:
Monday: Morning-HIV Research (NYP-Weill Cornell), Evening-Pediatric ER (NYP-Cornell)
Tuesday: Morning-Neurology (NYP-Weill Cornell), Late Afternoon-Rehab Medicine (Brooklyn @ Woodhull Hospital)
Wednesday: Classes
Thursday: Morning- Cardiology (Lower East Side-Downtown Hospital), Afternoon-Neurobiology Research (NYP-Cornell)
Friday: Morning-Internal Medicine, Rheumatology and Arthritis (Brooklyn @ Woodhull Hospital)

As you can see, it's a bit intense. Not to worry if you're interested in this program because the requirement is only 1 rotation per day. I overloaded it because I want to get the most out of the experience. I made a lot of additions and I decided to take out a rotation I had with a Psychiatrist. I found out she took in Urban Semester students because she needed help in writing articles for a paper. The worst part was, she wouldn't even let me see the patients because "they pay hundreds of dollars and they don't want to see you in there."

Other than that, my rotations have been super awesome and I cannot believe how much I can learn in one day from shadowing a doctor. I can't really talk about everything that happened in my rotations because there are too many, but I think the toughest I've had is working in the neurology department. There are many medical terms/conditions and drugs that I could not follow. I thought that if I kept hearing it over and over, I would get a clue, but that didn't work too well. I also found out that the chief resident is an Urban Semester Alum, which means this program really helps! On the other hand, my HIV rotation has been the best so far as my supervisor is extremely outgoing and makes all the experiments seem enjoyable.

That's it for now. I need to finish a 10-page paper due tomorrow about medical disparities I've seen this week. Leave comments if you have questions!