Day 2: First Year med student (MS1) @ IUSM

Excited!!! That was the first emotion that I had when I arrived at Indiana University School of Medicine at 9am this morning to attend my first class as a medical student (unofficially). I met my "First Year medical student ambassador" (I'm making up the title)Jasmine Johnson in her Clinical Problem Solving class in the Medical Science building.  Here was this week's case we (really they) were figuring out:

Mr. Smith, a 45 year old male presents with nausea and vomiting after a vacation to south Florida for an Acrhitectural conference. After the conference he boarded the SS Staatenmdam for a cruise to St. Marten, and upon his return to Miami visted a famous seafood restaurant.  Upon landing in Indianapolis, patient felt nauseas and proceeded to vomit twice upon spending the night at home. Patient has a history of peptic ulcers, which have been well controlled by the use of medication and a mild diet. Patient claims to continue the medication and does not recall excessive drinking or eating any spicy foods. After initial meeting, patient returns complaining of muscle weakness, ice feeling hot to the touch, and loss of touch sensation of foot.

It turns out, that this patient had contacted ciguatera, a foodborne illness found in fish common in subtropical and tropical climates (such as Florida and St. Marten). What probably happened is that Mr. Smith ate a fish that had eaten toxic harmful dinoflagella such as Gambierdiscus toxicus which excretes a toxin called ciguatoxin. Below is a flow chart of the process. The caption contains links to give you more information about this disease. Who knows, this may be useful  in med school!



From top to bottom, snapper fish eats dinoflaggella that contains the toxin cinguatoxin. For more on the Ciguatera. On the microbe:Gaambierdiscus toxicus.  Don't eat the fish in Florida! :) I always love playing the detective so I loved this class. How the professor conducted this class is that he would give us one bit of information, such as the fact that Mr. Smith went on a cruise to St. Marten and ate fish at a restaurant in Miami. From this information, it was the class job to figure out as a group based on that information, what could have caused Mr. Smith's illness. Once we got on the right track, the professor gave us another fact until we could put the pieces together and get a good picture of what caused Mr. Smith's illness.  I also liked the class because it reinforces the idea that treating people is a process, not a one-time "miracle worker" thing.Although this a "duh" statement, I like that this class is a weekly reminder of it. It also emphasizes collaboration which is obviously important in the field. Not one student knew the answer and it took bits and pieces of everyone's knowledge to come up with the answer. If I come to IUSM, I know it's going to be one of my favorite classes! After this class was Physiology. In this class we learned about action potential within neurons. The class was interesting not because of the lecture but because it took an hour to understand the professor's thick Russian (or East. European, don't want to stereotype) accent.  I'm a neuro nerd and I couldn't enjoy the lecture much because it was too hard to understand. On a positive note, his notes were easy to understand so for visual learners such as myself, studying what he writes and not what he says would be our mode of survival. For you auditory learners, make friends with a Russian (or citizens from whatever E. European country he is from).  The last class of the day was called Introduction to Clinial Medicine. From what I could get from the class, the idea behind it was to dicuss medicine and a career in medicine in more social atmosphere. This was another small class (Clinical Problem Solving was also small, 8 people) that had two overseers, one was a doctor and the other was a PhD researcher. The class started out nicely. The doctor asked how everyone's break and commented on some of the essays written by the students. One student wrote about doctors being portrayed as "bags of douche" by the movies they watched and another commented on the attractiveness of the actress in the movie.  So as you probably figured, the class was lively until the doctor received a text from the PhD (who wasn't in class at the time) telling the doctor that "he would be late to class and if they had class". If you are confused about that statement, you should be. Anyway, this professor comes into class 30 minutes late asks and makes the same comments the doctor made on the essays then starts the main focus of the class with this statement: " I bet $5 that in 15 year half of you would be married, divorced and remarried." By the way, my ambassador Jasmine is married and the majority of the students in the class were either married, engaged or had girlfriends/boyfriends. Jasmine and another student in the class warned me of their PhD professor but DANG I was not ready for that. Now to his credit he did use statistics back up his claim, but the lack of subtlety that was apparent with everything he said even after this prediction, left me with a lasting impression to say the least. In the end I did enjoy the oddness yet comfortable feel of the class. Quote of the day: You understood the first half of the lecture, and I understood the last half, so let's put our halfs together and pass this class. -- quote from one MS1 after the Physiology lecture to another student