This is getting real!!!!

I mentioned in the previous post that 3 years ago I decided to bite the bullet and go for medicine. I haven't been just sitting around doing nothing in that time. I have actually worked in a hospital and learned everything I could learn, basically doing the work of a nurse, and asking to see surgeries, following doctors around during rounds, and reading everything I could get my hands on.

I will do a few blog posts in the future with some of the things I got to do while working at a hospital in Berlin, Germany.

But now I have big news:

I just got my letter of invitation and bought my plane tickets to go volunteer in a Surgical Clinic in Moundou, Chad. It's the middle of nowhere in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, Chad has the worst health system in the world. In 2006 they had 0.4 physicians for every 10,000 people. That's INSANE!

Take a look here for more details: http://www.who.int/gho/countries/tcd.pdf?ua=1

Anyway... I will be going in TWO WEEKS to spend 7 weeks there. I will be doing everything from providing basic sanitation talks to assisting in surgeries. No joke! (I guess all those years of living in France and speaking fluent French finally come in handy. :) )

The doctor I will be working with is Dr. Scott Gardner, a doctor born, raised and trained in the US. He has moved to Chad just 7 months ago, so he's relatively new at this post. The doctor who was there before him, was there for almost 10 years...

I am **very** excited.... but I would be lying if I said I wasn't also terrified. There's so much death, so much misery, so much suffering, and so little that we (or anyone) can do. The resources are non-existent. There's a very urgent need for everything, from basic meds like Ibuprofen all the way to chemotherapy drugs to treat Burkitt's Lymphoma at $100 dollars per gram!

If you read this and Dr. Gardner's blog, and your heart is touched and you would like to donate anything at all, money, time, resources, drugs, please let us know. You can contact Dr. Gardner directly through the blog posted above (the entry about Burkitt's Lymphoma).

And if you're the praying kind, please pray for them and all the work they're doing, and for me, as I embark in this incredible adventure. I'm not ready. But then again, I don't think you can be ready for this...

Why medical school?

I guess this is the first question you might ask of someone when you hear they want to go to medical school. It's definitely on a lot of med school interviews (probably all!).

So here's the thing: I have always wanted to be a doctor. Since I was 3 years old and could barely formulate a full sentence, I already knew I wanted to be a doctor, and incredibly, that has never changed. I tried to put it aside, I pursued other interests, other careers, graduated from college, learned a few languages, lived all over Europe and the US, traveled all over the world. Nothing was good enough.

About 3 years ago I realized that nothing I did was going to be good enough, if it wasn't medicine. I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. Of course, then came the questions:
Do I have what it takes? Am I good enough? Am I too old?

However, I am  going for it, and will be officially starting Medical School in March 2015, in Uruguay (my home country). I was supposed to start March 2014, but bureaucracy got in the way again.


So what are my reasons? Why do I want to go to med school? Why become a doctor and not anything else?

The normal answer is "because I want to help people". Yes,  I do want to help people. But that's not nearly all. I’m fascinated by it all. By the human body. By the fact that the large majority of people, if they take the slightest amount of care (i.e. don’t eat lard everyday and move around a bit instead of being a couch potato), don’t have many problems and live a reasonably healthy 60 or 70 years. Our bodies are incredibly good at keeping themselves healthy and regenerating.

Beyond that, I’m bored with most everything else. I’m not a math person… it’s not that I mind it particularly, but it’s not my thing. I want to do something meaningful, I don’t want to work just to get money, or fill the pockets of someone else. I want to do something that makes a real difference in the world TODAY. I like reading and writing and researching. I enjoy it for a time. Then I get bored. Does this make any real difference in anybody’s life? If I wasn’t sitting here correcting research papers, would it make a difference? would somebody live or die based on me going to work today? no. Nobody cares. There’s no purpose.

I guess what I want is for my life to count for something. I want to use whatever talents or knowledge I have to make a real difference in someone’s life *today.* Not tomorrow. Not in a general “I managed to pass a law that makes people pay less taxes.” No, I want something that I can see. That I can measure. Something concrete: they were in pain, now they’re not. They almost died, now they’re doing well. I need to know that I’m not just taking up space and oxygen in this world, but that my existence benefited humanity.

I guess that’s why I want to be a doctor.


This chart over at A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor hits it squarely on the head:

I cannot imagine doing anything else...