July 13th

Today was relatively uneventful. This morning we had lecture on how to use the information collected from a patient's history and present it to an attending physician. We learned how to highlight important information and use what the patient says as clues to figuring out what's wrong. It was pretty interesting and I'm glad we're getting the chance to actually see what it's like to train a doctor. Afternoon classes were less exciting, but still informative. The first lecture was about hematology and covered a lot about hemoglobin, macrophages, blood antigens, and autoimmunity. Following hemotology, we had lunch and then a lecture about managing heart failure. We went over the Starling mechanism as well as effects of certain changes to the cardiac cycle. It was fairly easy to follow along with the lecture because I have learned a lot about the cardiac cycle from both my physiology course as well as my MCAT studying. The next lecture we had was about geriatric frailty, falls, instability, and mobility. Geriatrics is not my ideal specialty, but I'm still glad I was able to have some exposure because knowing about frailty and falls is good information to have and it's never known when that knowledge may come in handy. The last lecture of the day focused on myleoperiferative neoplasm, which is a disease of the bone marrow. We talked about what it does, how it operates, and how to treat it. We also learned about chronic myeloid leukemia, which is a cancer of the white blood cells. We went over the mechanism and how treatment requires a competitive inhibitor that prevents cell signaling, which is a concept with which I am quite familiar, having taken several courses in cellular biology. I'm actually fairly impressed with the amount of material that we cover here that I have heard before. I was anticipating not knowing much of anything, but the courses I've taken so far have actually been very beneficial to my understanding and I'm glad that my biology degree and pre-med years haven't all been for naught!