So there are a gaggle of literary magazines at UIC, and I'm certainly interested in submitting something to them, but have no idea what to submit. Really my drive is the tattered pieces of my humanities degree screaming for reaffirmation. And I don't blame that part of my brain, since medical school has a way about quashing creativity in its more basic forms. If medical school was a tv commercial, it would certainly be the mac and PC commercials with medical school being the PC, trying to make a pie chart to represent fun.

In all honesty, though, there has been a lot of debate about medical school's shift to requiring some sort of humanities or social sciences in their entry requirements. And lots of students have objected to this for whatever reasons. What has stood out to me is the argument that the humanities aren't an indicator of a well rounded person, or that the humanities can't offer any discernible tools to a doctor's milieu.

Well, for starters, if you don't understand why learning about humanities makes you a more well rounded person, you probably aren't very well rounded in the first place. Not to sound like a jackass, but life wasn't meant to be observed though a single logical scientific lens; not all truth is found on the stage of a microscope, or in statistically significant data. You cannot run a student's T test to understand the significance of a Pollack, or the beauty of Giotto's scrovegni chapel. Nor can you gain an appreciation of racial tensions without a few social science classes.

So how is it applicable to medicine? Why would it be necessary to have these requirements? Well, when's the last time you had a riveting discussion about mitochondria at a party outside of medical school? Now think about the last time you talked music with someone casually. Now recall that part of being a doctor is being able to relate to thousands of people over the course of your career, many of whom have never taken a science class. Not good enough? Have you ever tried to explain color, light, mood, tone or emotion of a painting or song before? It presents wholly unique challenges that force the brain to look beyond numbers and facts. Abstract thought is essential in medicine, but isn't taught at the bench. But I digress.

Point being life without depth is boring, and I might claw my eyes out unless I let my brain chew on something that doesn't involve alphabet soup of scientific acronyms. Wanna fight about it?

Zezima, K.(2007, October 21) Even Families Are Split Over Oral Contraceptives at a Maine Middle School. The New York Times

Link here

The gist: Middle Schooler's in Portland, ME can get birth control at school.

We live in a confused country. You can't have a drink until You're 21, watch an R rated movie until Your 17, but you can die in war at 18. You can't rent or buy explicit material until You're 18, but you can get birth control at 13. Forget sneaking downstairs to catch Cinemax's late night softcore, forget conning a convenient store guy into selling you a Playboy, just go to school and talk to the nurse.

It's hard to know exactly what to think when you head into such morally compromising waters; but I know that my visceral reaction to this is negative. Now I'm not naive to the ages that people become sexually active, nor do I believe (though I do wish) that all parents talk to their kids about sex. But is this the best we can do? I try to think about middle school when I was 13, and it was pretty much terrible for a lot of reasons. Now add to that not only sexual curiosity but information overload regarding sex? Damn son.

I know that middle schoolers can seem mature, but let's be honest, they're still 13. Did you know how to read warning labels on prescription drugs when you were 13? Because I'm pretty sure I never paid attention to that. Not to mention how to handle the attention to details involved with taking a daily prescription medicine. To get to the point, giving out birth control in a middle school smacks of irresponsibility because it makes the assumption that because middle schoolers are engaging in sex, they are mature enough to handle everything that goes along with it. You don't have to be mature or smart to do mature things.

So what to do. Well at least now the issue is out there, and those 16 or so sexually active kids can practice safe sex if they actually use birth control properly. But that's not good enough; medicating people and sending them on their way isn't the solution to any problem. Parents who approve of this program need to talk to their kids about sex and their morals and thoughts regarding sex. They also need to get outraged at the parents that don't. And if parent's can't talk to their kids, then find someone either trusted enough or educated enough to do it for them. Kids who engage in risky behavior usually have more going on in their lives than sexual curiosity, so that needs to be explored too. If there are 16 kids who are sexually active, we need to know why, and make sure that larger problems aren't being ignored.

I guess for those reading this who are outraged and want to jump across your screen and strangle me I'll say this in closing. I don't want to live in a society where we hand out drugs and remain deaf to the root of a problem. I know its the easy thing to do, and I know it offers a temporary solution that lets some people rest easy at night, but nothing has been solved. I don't have the answer, and I'm sorry I wish I did, but let's not let a school board make decisions regarding our nation's kids for us.

It was my first time actually interacting with patients today, and surprisingly it went alright. The school arranged us into small groups and had us do team interviews with real, rather than standardized, patients. It was a little hectic at first, I mean, lets face it, a great deal of us have never taken a history from a patient before. But even just by winging it everything went well. We got to see two patients and both were extremely friendly and wanted to get to know us too. The first "patient" actually preformed standup (he was 68) and served as an excellent model for laid back conversation.

Sitting down with patients may not be what the school wants us to be doing with our time judging from the course load, but really it's what being a doctor is about and why I wanted to go into medicine. Science isn't nearly as important as a good listener; someone that can respond to non verbal cues as well as show compassion for someone. I'm often surprised at how difficult it is for people to empathize with another human, I mean, just call any customer service line and you will learn how rude people can get. Anyhow, before I start rambling, I guess I just wanted to note that I'm glad that in through these small experiences I know that I made the right decisions about my career.


Picture found here

Home 11:26 PM

So really the only purpose of this post is to see if I can actually embed a picasa album in my blog. Too bad I don't have anything exciting to say, I bet you all (the one person that reads this on accident) would like that.