The Shadow in White

These past few days I've been doing some doctor shadowing - an infectious disease (ID) specialist on Wednesday and Thursday, and my mentor (a pediatrician) on Friday. It might not have been the wisest timing to do my shadowing, what with my first block of exams this coming week (then again, I shouldn't be blogging right now for that same reason . . . oh well).

Anyway, I was a bit hesitant to blog about this in some detail, as I had to look up the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that would put me in deep trouble if I disclosed certain info. So I looked up the 18 personal identifiers that I'm supposed to avoid. Ironically, we as M1's haven't had HIPAA training yet. Fortuitously, I don't know any of the 18 personal identifiers for any of the patients that I saw, so there's nothing I could really disclose anyway. So without further ado . . . (this post is long).
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Wednesday - ID Inpatient

I spent almost 4 hours of my afternoon shadowing an ID attending, I'll call him Dr. P. I met Dr. P at the LGBT meetings, as he's the faculty adviser for the group. I'm pretty sure he's gay and super nice and kind of funny (I guess I may have a tiny crush on him) . . . beside the point! Once I discovered he was ID, I kind of stalked him at these meetings so I could get his contact info to shadow him. Don't look at me weird, a lot of med students do this.

After wandering around the hospital for a while looking for his office/clinic area, I finally found it and waited several minutes for him to arrive from . . . probably seeing a patient. He came in with another doctor, a nephrologist (who I guess was doing a rotation through the department or something, idk). Anyway, the nephrologist has pretty long hair and amusingly, some of the patients we saw that day referred to him as "Dr. Long-haired." I sat and listened to the nephrologist present a case to Dr. P.

After the nephrologist finished presenting the case, Dr. P turns to me and asks, "So, did that all make sense? Do you have any questions?" After saying no, he quickly responded with "Psh, come on, of course you do. Don't be shy." At this point, my mind was racing to come up with some question to ask. So I asked, "Well, this patient is anemic. Is there a family history of anemia?" Apparently, that wasn't something either of them had thought to ask the patient. WIN. (Ron, if you read this, for the love of God come up with questions to ask - they're hard to think up on the fly.)

The nephrologist leaves and Dr. P and I go to see a patient. I had never been in the areas of the hospital where patients were, so I was instantly lost. The first patient we saw was a middle-aged guy who got an infection in his leg, and they had no idea where it came from or how it got under his skin. So they wanted to take some of his white blood cells, tag them with some kind of radioactive tag, inject his white blood cells back into his body, and see where they go (and hopefully they'll go to where the entry of the infection is).

After that we went to one of the doctor's stations where he typed up a note on the EMR (electronic medical record). He kept all these sheets of papers on his patients folded lengthwise in one of his pockets, which I found amusing. He showed me this one patient of his, who they called "The Train Wreck" because he had been in the hospital for months and kept getting different infections (somehow). They don't know what to do with him. He showed me this guy's labs and he had 3-4 simultaneous bacterial infections. I didn't know a person could be infected with so many bacteria at once, and all resistant to most of the meds they had!

He finished the note and declared that he was hungry, so we were off to have lunch. I just got a sandwich, which he paid for, and we sat and ate together. Being this close, I saw that his left ear was pierced (no idea why I noticed that). We chatted for a bit before heading up to meet with his fellow and M4 for afternoon rounds. On the way he asked me why I joined the LGBT group. I was caught off-guard and gave some lame (but true) answer about how I was interested in LGBT health issues and thought the group would be helpful. Alas, the group isn't (helpful, that is). Dr. P was really concerned about the future of the group because so few students in my class show up to the meetings.

We went up and met with the rest of his team. The fellow presented a case of this elderly woman with an echinococcus infection that they don't know what to do with (echinococcus, a kind of tapeworm parasite, is rarely seen in the US and is considered a "3rd world disease"). The case was frustratingly complicated though I'm not sure I can say more on it. We finally went down to see her in the SICU (surgical ICU). It was so sad looking at this patient and being unable to really do much for her, due to the complicated nature of her illness. You could see the doctors' frustration.

Then we went to the MICU (medicine ICU) to check in on another patient, who was comatose and undergoing a lumbar puncture when we arrived. We didn't even enter the room and I forgot what kind of complicated infection she had; all I remember was that she has liver cirrhosis. After a few minutes of just standing in the hallway, with the fellow explaining her case to me (which, again, I sadly forgot), we went to see the woman whom the nephrologist had presented on earlier.

She was in her 20s, was admitted with pretty serious anemia, and had an ELISA test indicating she was HIV+. When the 4 of us entered her room and closed the door, the tension became palpable - you could almost cut it with a knife (I was never really in a situation where that applied, until now). Dr. P asked about family history of anemia and then began the quiet conversation with her that she might be HIV+. The ELISA test is great for telling someone they're HIV-, but if a person tests HIV+ it may be a false positive. So a Western blot is done to confirm the diagnosis. Dr. P ordered a viral load instead as the Western blot is done elsewhere outside the hospital and takes 3 days to get the results, whereas the viral load test is done in-house and takes a day (but is more expensive).

When we were done talking with her, we stood in the hallway for a few minutes. Dr. P was complaining about how one of the other departments (I think it was pathology) blamed her anemia on the HIV even though it hadn't been confirmed yet. We all agreed it was lame, as HIV can't cause anemia. Dr. P kind of mocked pathology sarcastically, like "Oh look at that anemia, it's HIV's fault. No it's not, that's just lame."

With that, it pretty much concluded my time on rounds with them. They were surprised to get done at around 4pm, as it usually goes for much longer. On the other hand, I couldn't believe how long rounding took on so few patients! Dr. P apologized that I happened to shadow on a day with very complex cases, and kept reassuring me that there are days where the cases are straightforward and you can go home knowing you've solved a case and have definitively helped someone. Not so today, and it was rather House-like.
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Thursday - ID Outpatient

The following morning, I returned to the Dr.P's office/clinic area. On Thursday mornings he does outpatient HIV clinic in the hospital. So we saw several HIV patients. It was much more chill than ID inpatient.

For some of them, he was basically managing their care and serving as their primary care doctor. The patients I saw were really nice and overall pretty upbeat. Several of them were teasing and harassing Dr. P playfully, probably because I happened to be there. More than one was like, "I take my meds because if I don't, this guy here [points to Dr. P] gives me a look that slits my throat with his eyes." At which point, he does. It's pretty funny actually.

One patient was like, "I was in the hospital a few weeks ago and you didn't come to see me! I kept looking and looking for you." Dr. P was like, "Well I didn't know! Do you know how many doctors there are in this hospital? Over 800, and I don't know them all. You should've called me." Dr. P then asked if he had made an appointment with his nephrologist. The patient says, "No, because he's not you." At this, Dr. P wonders if there's something about the nephrologist he doesn't like so he could refer him to another one. The patient reassures him that the nephrologist was a fine doctor, he just wasn't Dr. P. I thought that was rather touching. :-)

According to Dr. P, these patients were the super compliant ones. They keep their appointments, the maintain their drug regimen more or less on schedule, they have a social support to help them, and they're not confrontational. All of them were on a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs. But man, are those drugs expensive! A supply of 3 pills costs about $2000 (I don't know if that's per month or per year) and this one patient was waiting for his tax return or something until he was able to pay for the next prescription refill.

It just makes me wonder how horrible it would be if these patients didn't have at least one other person - like a family member - to help take care of them, or if they weren't able to pay for their meds, or if they're unable to take their meds regularly at the specific times. That must be a nightmare. These are life-sustaining pills and if you forget to take them precisely, it could make things messy as HIV quickly develops resistance - leading to more complicated drug regimens.

Also surprising was what Dr. P told me the ages with the fastest growing incidence of HIV cases were: between 15 and 25, and older than 50. Dr. P had one 19-year-old patient who missed his appointment. That's some scary stuff, so people remember to use condoms every time!!

Oh, and the woman's test came back confirming HIV+ status. Dr. P paged every person on his team, as well as the nephrologist and a social worker. I didn't stick around to see what was going to happen, but as it is, there would be 5 people entering her room at the same time to talk with her. I hope everything went okay.
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Friday - Peds Outpatient

Okay, by now this post is long enough. This visit wasn't dramatically different than the last 2 times I shadowed my mentor so I'll keep this short.

Notably, I heard rales (crackling sound in the lungs) in one kid, and my mentor ordered a chest x-ray on her to rule out pneumonia. I was so proud of myself for actually hearing it. And I saw scarlet fever on another girl. It was pretty classic textbook scarlet fever.

There were many kids with strep infections, and I kept hoping that I don't catch it as it'd be really bad for me to get sick during exam week. Though . . . if I end up getting strep, everyone in the room with me would get infected by the end of the first exam . . . Anyway, thank God for hand sanitizers in every room.
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So that's it. I had to read through this a couple times and edit out details (so just know that it was longer still, lol). I actually really enjoyed ID, I thought it was fascinating. I still like peds though, so we'll see what happens from here.

Now to study more for my neuroscience exam on Monday . . . *Sighs*

At the Coffeehouse

We finally met! ^_^

So here's how it went down . . .

We agreed to meet at 2pm for coffee instead of a late lunch. He was coming from an appointment at the optometrist's. I finished shadowing early (I'll blog about that later), so I just lazed around in my apartment for a few hours before I left . . . time that I should've used to study (like now).

At about 1:35pm or so, I decided to leave. It only takes about 20 minutes to get there, but I had never been there and I was afraid that the monstrous highway overpass/exchange/junction would confuse my GPS. You see, just prior to entering the city from the west, there's this area where several highways join together and there are a ton of overpass bridges and exits and such (to me, it's a little more confusing than the Chicago loop - and that's saying something).

So anyway, my GPS was fine but I took wrong exits. Twice. *Sighs* That place really IS confusing. :-/ I thought I would be late, so I was kind of nervous about that. But I got there a little after 2pm. Balls it was cold outside today! It was definitely below zero (Fahrenheit) with windchill.

I enter the coffeehouse and I don't see him anywhere. The coffeehouse had this distinctly . . . hippie feel to it. Which is fine, it was rather nice. I figure I'll get my coffee first and sit down and wait for him. At this point it was already 5 minutes past 2pm. I sit down for a while, still don't see him. Then I noticed there was an upstairs area, so I go there. And I still don't see him. I go back down and sit at a table very visible from the entrance (because it was almost right by the entrance). 10 minutes later I get a call from him apologizing about how he was so late because he had lost track of time. About 5 minutes later he walks in the door, drops his stuff at my table while apologizing, and goes to buy coffee. By this time I had almost finished my coffee, lol.

This was our first time seeing each other in person. He was just as cute in person as in his Facebook pictures, lol. He had this hippie-ish look about him as well. From the way he talked and moved, I could definitely tell he's gay (and remember, my gaydar sucks). But he's not really fem . . . kind of like in between(?). After only a few minutes of chatting he remarked how I remind him of one of his friends - like a doppelganger - except that I'm Asian and his friend is Mexican. That amused me (I hope that's a good thing?).

We talked about (in no particular order): school, career ambitions, religion, medical ethics, stem cells, abortion, genetics, prostitution (commercial sex work), regenerative medicine (his interest and ultimate goal), evolution, research, treatment of lab animals, circumcision (he totally brought that up out of nowhere, o_O), TV shows, and other such things. He admitted that he smokes pot occasionally and drinks (which I'm fine with as long as he's not an alcoholic - he's not), and did drugs a couple times. But he reassured me that he wasn't a druggie or a whore or anything. I'm believe him, because it seemed like he had a rough couple years and is now working hard to turn his life around and really do something with his life. And I can totally respect that. However, I did nothing to hide my disapproval for smoking pot and drugs (though I verbally withheld my tongue). He remarked that I seemed really well-behaved and he might be a bit too much of a wild-child for me, lol. We'll see I guess . . .

He's currently working towards his Associates (I think) in nursing and has a contract to transfer to a great 4-year university for 2 more years to then complete his Bachelor's. Then he's going to apply to med school with the ultimate goal of going into regenerative medicine (not even a medical field yet really) and help people regrow tissues, limbs, and/or organs. His road is MUCH longer than mine, his ambitions higher, but I think he can make it.

Anyway, if you've gathered from some of the topics above, we had a mostly intellectual chat. I think that was mostly his doing, as he was more talkative and constantly said something like, "You don't know how great it is to have an intellectual conversation with someone - the people around me are usually stupid and I feel like I have to constantly dumb down my language." Well, he certainly doesn't have to do that with me. ;-)

He's definitely a straight-forward, in your face to-the-point kind of person; whereas I'm a more cautious and moderating person, at least in what I say out loud (or write). We talked for a good 2.5 hours or so with no awkward silences. At around 4pm I had wanted to go and at least move my car, because I parked on a side street that had a sign saying 2-hour parking limit between 7am and 7pm. Yeah, I'm a goodie goodie. Even so, we just kept talking for another hour or so, haha. It was past 5pm when we both decided to leave, mostly because we were both getting hungry (hey, I only had a banana for "lunch").

We happened to park very close to each other, so we walked into the sub-zero cold together. Once we got to our cars, we chatted for another couple minutes in the flesh-penetratingly chilly weather. Then we hugged and said our goodbyes. I must say, it felt really good to hug him for some reason.

On my way back, I got lost on the ridiculous monstrous highway overpass bridge/exchange/junction thing. Twice. This time it was my GPS's fault. And then I hit rush hour traffic. *Sighs* Fuck that, next time I'm taking local roads into the city, as it's only 3-5 minutes longer than by highway.

I realized that I had this slight smile when I got back to my apartment. Maybe that was why when I was chopping an onion, I accidentally sliced off a couple layers of epidermis on my right ring finger with the cleaver. No worries though, it wasn't a deep cut at all and there was no blood. But it's still annoying and now that finger's pretty sensitive. :-/
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So I guess I'll share my impressions of our "date."

I thought that our conversation flowed pretty well. We didn't get into any arguments, heated debates, or anything like that, but we seemed really interested in what the other person was talking about (him almost passionately so a few times). So I think we had a great chat, as evidenced by how long it actually took us to leave, lol. I think we felt pretty comfortable with each other.

I thought he's super-cute, physically. He also has a pretty cute personality in a carefree youthful way. While I obviously disapprove of the pot and drugs (which I don't think he does anymore - not that he did a lot of it in the first place), he'd have to be clueless to not be aware of it. And I think that as his education goes on, he'll be less and less likely to do such things anyway.

I don't know if I really felt a spark, but I would definitely like to get to know him more (Idk, that might be my sex drive talking - did I mention how cute he was?). He seemed like a pretty cool guy overall. Intelligent yet still "green" in many ways. Whereas his roommates are a bad influence on him, maybe I can be a good one, lol. When we parted ways, he expressed interest in getting together again later, as did I.

So yeah, this was a pretty long and detailed post. But I wanted all that in there so I can ask: what do you all think - worth pursuing further?

Due to Scheduling Difficulties . . .

Argh, why's it so hard to coordinate schedules between even just 2 people?!

I chatted with Jay for a bit last night, causing me to go to bed about 45 minutes later than I had intended. But it was worth it. :-) Here's a small snippet of our convo:

Jay: I can't wait to meet you in person
Me: oh?
Jay: our conversations online have been great
Jay: I'll bet they'll be even better in person
Me: hehe, thanks
Me: I hope so
Jay: From what I've gathered from talking with you, you're an intellectual
Me: aww, thanks
Jay: intellectual company is always favorable, lol
Me: lol
Me: there's such a thing as too intellectual
Me: just hit me if that happens
Jay: oh no
Jay: it'll probably turn me on
Jay: my 2 heads are very connected
Me: hahaha
Me: that's good to know
Jay: The brain is the sexiest organ a man can have :P
Jay: everything else is just second
Me: hehe, intelligence is certainly a good thing to have in another person
Jay: it has made finding a suitable mate very difficult

We had made tentative plans to meet this Thursday afternoon. But now he's unsure because he may/may not have some appointment. :-/ Sigh, I guess this is what happens when trying to schedule between 2 people with busy lives. I really really hope we can work something out this Thursday afternoon, as otherwise I'll be consumed with studying for my exams all next week.

Even if things don't pull through for this Thursday, I'm confident that we'll keep trying until we finally meet. The above convo has only encouraged me to keep trying. *crosses fingers*

Postponed Yet Again

I just can't seem to catch a break!! :-(

I sent Jay a Facebook message yesterday morning, just to confirm that we were indeed meeting today at noon for lunch. I figure, it's probably best to double-check just to make sure that nothing changed last minute.

Well, at around 9:30pm last night, Jay replied saying that he forgot that he had to work this morning, and so lunch would have to be canceled. I'm glad I sent that message, because otherwise he might've forgotten to tell me until this morning . . . or worse, forgot to tell me at all and leaving me there to wait for him at noon. Though he did seem sorry and did mention that he would never have stood me up, so I assume he would've let me know beforehand at some point.

I guess last night this upset me more than I thought it would. Silly me getting my hopes up. In the meantime, the clock ticks and my curse can work its magic at any moment. I hope we're able to reschedule for the near future, as we both have pretty busy schedules.

Well, if this somehow works out, Biki pointed out something quite amusing: we would have an atypical cliche doctor-nurse dating relationship, lol (but only until he gets into med school and gets his MD as well).
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On a completely unrelated note, the other night I was playing poker with some friends (and lost, as usual - I mean, I lost with 3 Kings, how does that happen?!) and we got talking about the nature of our med school class.

It seems that the "gunners" in our class don't operate in the open. The classical gunner studies at the library all the time, checks out all the books before anyone else can, finds and hoards info for him/herself, and aims to get one of the highest scores in the class. Not so in my class. The gunners in my class say they're going to go home to take a nap and unwind or something, but in reality they go home and study as the following day they know most of the material for that day already. Their secret to let no one know when they're studying, and so cast a false sense of security that doesn't cause others to go into a study frenzy.

We've aptly named these gunners "snipers." Our class is full of snipers.

I was pretty pleased when I got a 90% or so in anatomy overall last semester. However, the average was about 93%. And I was a good 5-10% below average in the other two classes (but still well above passing). FML.

Lunch Date? o_O

To those who commented on my last post, thanks for your responses.

So Jay IM'd me last night and we chatted for a bit. :-) It's interesting chatting with him. We have these moments where we seem to connect, and the convo flows freely and easily for a bit. Then suddenly it's like one of us is busy, and there are long periods of silence punctuated by short replies.

Anyway, after a while, I asked him if he was still free this weekend (and interested) for meeting up. He was. So we settled on Sunday at noon for lunch at this deli cafe place he suggested. Omg this is really happening! I don't have his number (yet), so I hope I can either get it soon or just have to count on both of us not being late or too early.

There are all these questions running through my head, pretty standard questions I'd imagine. What do I wear (as I mentally rummage through my very limited wardrobe)? How do I greet him - handshake vs. hug? Are we splitting the bill? How will the convo go? Will there be that spark, or will it be awkward/mindless small talk? What'll he think of me? What'll I think of him? Will I stutter (it happens occasionally when I'm nervous/shy)? Is this a lunch date, or is this just getting together to grab lunch and chat? Will there be more?

I hope all goes well. I feel like this is a kind of turning point - either things go forward to something more, stop at acquaintance-friendship, or sizzle to nothingness. Any thoughts/advice for me? I'm too new to this . . . *Sighs*

Thanks. ^_^

Caliber

Caliber. It's a word I've been wondering about in the last few days.

First, I'm taking this course this semester called "evidence-based medicine," or EBM for short. It's basically a crash-course on epidemiology (so right up my creek). We mostly learn about the different study designs and their inherent strengths and flaws. The idea is to make us better "consumers" of medical literature, because God knows there's a ton of bad literature that's published, even in reputable medical journals (e.g. MMR vaccine causes autism).

Anyway, my friend Aiden says things that really bugs me. He's against abortion (okay, fine, whatever), he's against embryonic stem cell research (okay . . . still fine I guess), he's against the current health care reform (he's entitled to his opinions), and he's skeptical of evolution and global warming (alas, these I can't accept). But the two statements that really make me bristle are the following:

"I'm just aiming for the lowest tier of primary care: family medicine. I don't want to compete against people for top specialties. P = MD!!"

---and---

"You know, I don't like statistics and I don't get it. So after I'm done with [EBM], I'm just going to skip all the statistical and data stuff and jump right to the conclusions and discussion sections of papers, because that's all that matters."

With respect to both, all I can ask is: Is this the true extent of your caliber as a future physician? In response to the first quote, the fact you're calling family medicine the "lowest tier of primary care" only serves to reinforce the notion of family medicine as being somehow inferior to other branches of medicine (it's not). Using that as your excuse to not try your hardest, or using that as your excuse to "only" pass, I wonder . . .

The second quote I actually alluded to briefly in an earlier post. Of the two statements, this one makes me bristle the most. Several of us looked at him when he said this and were like, "We do NOT want to ever be future patients of yours." There are so many bad papers out there that still somehow get published! The only way to really understand which are actually good is to look at the study design, methods, data collection and analysis (statistics). I mean, I seriously do fear for his future patients if all he reads of a paper are the abstract, conclusion, and discussion sections. I mean, what kind of patient care will he give if he doesn't read the medical literature fully, and ends up going along with the conclusions of a really bad study (again, e.g. MMR vaccine causes autism)? I mean, really? Seriously?

On a related note on caliber, I was talking to a friend about the kind of education we're getting here at med school as we walked to the parking lot earlier today. We both went to the same university for undergrad, and we both appreciated the kind of education we received there. Like any school, there are good and bad professors. But back in undergrad (and definitely in grad school) there were plenty of great, even amazing, professors. Many of our undergrad professors challenged us to think, not to just memorize facts or apply facts to a more difficult situation.

Here in med school there are also good and bad professors, but most are just "okay." Many of the faculty are rather old and seem pretty "stuck in their ways" insofar as how they teach and what they teach. Few present new advances in the fields they're teaching, or even attempt to make lecture interesting (and it's sooo easy to make cardiology interesting, but instead they've somehow turned me off to it). And many, being PhD's (nothing against PhD's), don't try too hard on making the material relevant to clinical care. Oftentimes they fail to answer our singular question as med students: Why should we care and how do we utilize this to help patients?

Fortunately, my EBM small-group facilitator is a doctor who makes us think about precisely that question. While reading the rather dry medical literature, she challenges us to think: "Why're we reading this? Will this help our patient? If so, how? And then what? What're the next steps for treatment?" She treats us almost as if we're on a team discussing the papers and then how to best care for a hypothetical patient. And we all really appreciate that. She does what lectures too often don't: challenge us to think critically about the material and then apply it to a patient scenario. We need more people like her teaching our courses, but alas that's probably a personality bonus more than anything else. (I still believe that all professors have to take a mandatory annual teaching workshop, because so many - wherever you are - ARE bad.)

Lastly, my roommate was shadowing his mentor the other day, a family physician. A patient came in complaining about shoulder pain. The doctor did a physical, examined heart and lung sounds, asked about family history, etc. What he forgot to do was address the shoulder pain. Just as he finished up after about 20 minutes, he asked if the patient had any questions, at which point she mentioned the shoulder pain again. Only then did he remember to examine her shoulder. Seriously?

So yeah, caliber. A word I've been musing over for the last few days - what it means, how it applies to us, and to what caliber we must hold ourselves to as future physicians and educators, as well as the caliber we hold others at. Because down the line, someone is definitely going to be depending on us or what we say, and if we're wrong . . . well, let's hope we at least did no harm.
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On a completely different note, I chatted with Jay (Online Guy) briefly yesterday. He seems so busy as he's kind of hard to get a hold of to chat online. He started classes today, so he's likely to only get busier. And we still haven't talked about the possibility of meeting this weekend for a drink/coffee. :-/

So I sent him a message on OkCupid asking about his first day of classes, and whether they're everything he hoped for. Then I asked him if he was still interested in meeting up this weekend. Lastly I gave him my cell number. Omg was that too forward?! I don't know what "protocol" is for this!! This is too new to me . . . *freaks out*

On a related note (as I've so many of these in this post, lol), a guy messaged me on OkCupid recently. He's 34, in the health care field, and hoping to finish up his R.N. degree (nursing) soon. I messaged back a couple times, out of politeness. Then today he messages me asking me if I'm free to meet up this weekend for coffee or lunch, and he gave me his number. o_O! Is he being forward? I don't know how I feel about this, but I haven't responded yet. He is 34 (a good decade older than me) . . . oh, and he doesn't have a picture on OkCupid . . . *freaks out*

Okay. *breathes*

At Your Service

This morning (Saturday) I was scheduled to volunteer at the free clinic for the uninsured run by the med students here. I was to do patient education on how to best manage chronic conditions (such as high blood pressure, diabetes, etc). Well, that wasn't what I ended up spending the vast majority of my morning doing.

Instead, I spent the vast majority of my morning translating Mandarin Chinese into English and back for this Chinese woman who spoke very little English. You know, I never fully appreciated how difficult it is to translate until now. Even though I feel I did a fairly good job translating, there were random words and phrases that eluded me - words and phrases that I know I know. Like "cancer," I know how to say "cancer" in Chinese, but it's still eluding me! Argh.

She came in with her husband who would've served as her translator, except he was called back to a different room than she was. So basically, without me it would've been near-impossible to do anything for this woman. So it felt great that I was able to help out in such a capacity. Things go really slowly when translations are necessary.

Afterwards, and after her very emphatic "thank yous" to the other med students, the doctor, and me, she asked me when I moved here from China. -_- They always ask me that, without fail. Imagine her surprise when I told her I was born in Chicago. "But your Chinese is so good! Where did you learn to speak it?" My parents speak it at home . . . so we speak it at home (is that so unusual?). Sigh, such is the curse of being an ABC.

Anywho, while I was actually doing my real role at the free clinic, I had the opportunity to talk to this diabetic woman waiting for labs to be done. She used to work at the hospital that our med school's affiliated with, until she was laid off and currently has no insurance. And here she is going to a free clinic run by med students from the med school affiliated with the hospital she was laid off from. That's some twisted irony there. But she was great about it, took it all in stride.

On a completely different note, I finally finished watching the anime Death Note today. It's sooo good!! I love the detective and scheming of it all. It's almost like a twisted kind of Sherlock Holmes (great movie, btw, if you haven't seen it yet). Now I can (hopefully) study for real . . . tomorrow that is.