Muraho, Rwanda!

Muraho!

I’m here. IN RWANDA. I’m completely thrilled! I’ve wanted to go to Africa for as long as I can remember. And I’ve been looking forward to coming specifically to Rwanda since last October. In case you missed it, I’m in Kigali Rwanda for the summer, working on intimate partner violence (aka domestic violence) research. My project is an appendage to Dr. Calland’s (my mentor) NIH-funded Rwanda Research Initiative. When I’m not working on my research, I plan on gallivanting around all of eastern Africa. This summer is going to be a blast!

Due to lack of time, desire, and internet accessibility, I’m not going to writing down all of my experiences in a lot of depth. Mostly just funny stories here and there and LOTS of pictures. If you have any questions about Rwanda, though, feel free to ask me, or, better yet, just google it. Well, I think that covers the basics. Here’s what’s happened since I left the good ole U. S. of A. last Wednesday night:

Around midnight on Wednesday, Ginni, Dahea, (two of my classmates) and I flew from Washington to Kigali. Overall, we spent 17 hours in the air. 17. Hours. That’s a long time to sit still for someone with self-diagnosed ADHD such as myself. Luckily we had a pit stop in Turkey to break things up.

Our layover in Istanbul wasn’t long enough to go out into the city, but it was more than long enough to raid the Turkish delight store in the airport of all of their free samples. I felt sorta bad afterwards, but I think their 3000% margins will see them through to fiscal safety.

After landing in Kigali, we de-boarded the plane, hopped through customs, and the waited in the baggage claim area for our suitcases. And waited. And waited. And waited. Dahea and Ginni both got their bags, but, unfortunately, yours truly did not. That was on Thursday night. It’s Tuesday and I’m still waiting. Hopefully soon. In the meantime, I’ll just have to keep washing my two t-shirts and one pair of jeans in the sink. The joys of traveling.

Other than suitcase-gate, though, the past few days have been INCREDIBLE in so many ways that I could never begin to articulate. I’m guessing that’s how my entire trip here will be.

A few things that have happened the past few days:

• Thursday and Friday we stayed at a motel/hostel thing. It was basic, but fine. Except for the shower. There was only cold water and it came out like dribble. I had to do something akin to an interpretive dance routine to get my body covered in water. Luckily, our new hostel has cold AND hot water AND decent water pressure.

• While we were randomly walking down a street near the center of Kigali a few days ago, I saw a building that said “Hotel De Mille Collines.” Hold up.  I knew that place! Having seen the movie five times (so sad but so good), I knew immediately that Hotel De Mille Collines IS Hotel Rwanda. We stopped and snapped a few pictures. It was a profound experience being in a place where so many miracles happened in the midst of so many terrible things. If you haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda, I highly recommend it.

• There are lots of bugs here. I guess that’s why there are mosquito nets in every hostel room. I’m hoping that between the mosquito nets, daily doxycycline, and millions of gallons of bug spray I apply every time I walk outside, I’m going to stay malaria-free during my time here. After all, I’ve heard malaria isn’t the funnest thing.  

• On Saturday we took a 4-hour bus ride to the town of Gisenyi. We were the only muzungus (foreigners) on the bus, so it felt especially adventurous. Gisenyi is on the western border of Rwanda and sits on the coast of Lake Kivu, the largest body of water in Rwanda. Sean and Lisa, our new friends from Yale Med, decided to come with us. It was gorgeous area. We stopped by Kivu Beach at sunset. We didn’t swim (see “There are a million parasites in African water”), but did dip our toes in the super clear water. It felt great.

 

• On the way from the beach, I saw this baby sucking on a lime. She made the most unbelievably funny faces. I was dying laughing. And then the mom turned around and it got awkward. Luckily, I got a few pictures before that happened:

• After a dinner of goat-kebabs and potatoes, we played scum late into the night. In order to make the king/scum designations more rewarding/punishing, we rearranged the seat cushions. The king chair had four cushions and the scum chair had none. Haha Needless to say, no one wanted to be scum. It was way more fun than I would’ve guessed. There was a lot of trash talking involved. Despite spending like 90% of the game as the “scum,” I finished the game as “king.”

• The next morning we hiked around the lake to some hot springs. Some parts are so hot that people actually boil their potatoes there. The area was beautiful. The kids followed us everywhere we went:

• After the hot springs, we stopped at a restaurant named Paradis Malahide. The food was good and the ambiance was even better:

• This is where we ate lunch. I wish I ate lunch here every day.

• After a quick stop at the DR Congo border (The State Department highly discourages Americans from entering the country due to violence, instability, etc. etc.), we took the bus back to Kigali.

• I’ve eaten lots of goat meat. Rwandans like their goat. A lot. I’ve had it like five or six times in the past four days. It’s a little chewy but has very good flavor. More like beef than chicken. As would be expected, we see goats everywhere. Here’s one:

• So, I accidentally used a bathroom in Nakumat yesterday (the “big” mall in Kigali) and left without paying (In my defense, lots of bathrooms here are free). The bathroom lady chased me halfway across the mall to collect her 100 RWF (like 15 cents). haha Special shout out to the mall guards carrying automatic rifles who opted not to shoot me for my egregious crime.

• Public transport is crazy here. Buses, taxis, and motos (motorcycles that drive around one passenger at a time) weave in and out of each other at will. The main rule of the road is, “If you can get there first, you have right of way.” Needless to say, this makes the roads a little chaotic. My favorite form of transportation is the motos. They are a tidge dangerous (Hopefully you aren’t reading this, mom), but they are super fun and cheap. About 50 cents will get you a ten minute moto ride. Here is a moto looking for a passanger:

• Ok, some guys next to me are speaking Kinyarwanda (the primary language here, along with French and Swahili). They just said, “;asldfjasd ;lfja;sdlkjfa;l kdjfFASTANDFURIOSSIXa;sldkfj as;dlkfja ;ldksjf.” Guess, Americans and Rwandans aren’t that different after all. Well, my times up. I’ve been sitting at Nakumat, typing this post for WAY TOO LONG. See you next post!

The Final Countdown

• Well. Year One is coming to a close. 42 weeks down. 1 to go. It's the final countdown! Sing it with me! (Click on the video below for a little help)

• Hopefully, I cross the finish line with as much panache as this little guy:

 

• For the record, I have no idea what's going on in the clip above, but I just love it. Never seen a cat wearing a race number before. Or a cat in a wheel chair. Or a cat winning a race. Let alone all of those together. A+ for originality.

• The past two weeks, we covered ear and eye stuff (in addition to other topics). In my clinical group, we finally got to dust off our oto-opthalmoscopes and look into each others ears and eyes. Here is a picture of me getting my ears checked out by Andy and Lauren. Good news! They got to practice being doctors. And they didn't even burst my ear drums in the process! Win win. 

• Friday, I went up to Washington, DC to visit Lauren and go to one of our temples. Here's a little background reading on Mormon temples, if you're interested: LDS Temple Info. The DC temple is one of the most incredible buildings I've ever visited. You can actually see it from the beltway. Taking pictures at night isn't my forte, but I gave it a try anyways:

• What else? Oh yeah. My class is in full on party mode. I think most of us were ready for summer break weeks ago. In celebration of our last team-based class this past week, we threw ourselves an indoor breakfast beach party. During class (when the professors weren't lecturing). Don't think that's possible? Think again:

 

 

 

 

Well, that's it for this week! See you next week, same time, same place.

The day I met the Rev. Sir Dr. Stephen T. Mos Def Colbert, D.F.A.

Most of you are probably here to hear about my run-in with Stephen Colbert. I’ll get to that first and then hit a few other things later. For those of you who are over the age of 50, under the age of 10, or who have been living under a rock for the past decade, Stephen Colbert is a political satirist that hosts The Colbert Report, a daily-news comedy show (Here’s a link to his Wikipedia article if you still don’t know what I’m talking about Stephen Colbert Wikipedia). I’ve been watching the Colbert Report regularly for the past four or five years. Even though I often don’t agree (or at least completely agree) with Stephen’s views or consider him a hero or role model or anything like that, he almost always makes me laugh. And he seems like a genuinely nice guy. I consider myself a big fan.

That being said, you’ll understand how completely thrilled I was last November when UVa announced that Mr. Colbert would be the valeciction speaker at UVa’s 2013 graduation. I fully planned on attending the speech.

Ok, fast-forward 6 months….

Friday night I got a text from a friend. This friend’s sister was flying into Charlottesville to visit. As she was boarding her plane in New York, she ran into Stephen Colbert, who, as luck would have it, was headed to speak at graduation and on the same flight to Charlottesville. So of course she texted my friend who then texted me. Next thing I knew, I was driving to the Charlottesville airport to “help” my friend pick-up her sister at the airport. And by “help,” I really mean “attempting to track down Stephen Colbert while pretending to help my friend pick-up her sister at the airport.”

Annnyways, long story short, I saw Stephen standing at baggage claim waiting for his bags. Deciding I had nothing to lose, I went up to him, told him I was a huuuuuuuuuuuugee fan (yeah, I said it just like that), and asked him to take a picture. He laughed (probably because I drug out the word huge for a good three seconds), snapped a picture with me, and told me it was nice to meet me. And that was it. As I walked out of the airport, other people approached him for pictures. He had every reason to say no. I’m sure he was exhausted after a full day of work and a late night flight. But he was extremely kind to every single person. I was impressed. So there ya go. That’s the story of “Nate meets Stephen Colbert.” Here is photographic evidence:

And here is Stephen's valedictory speech:

Other stuff:

• Happy birthday, to my beautiful lil’ sis, Emily! The big 2-0! So proud of you! 

• We had an eye dilation lab this week. At first, I was really excited. I'd never had my eyes dilated before. Plus, it gave me an excuse to wear these bad boys:

• But then, 8 hours of my right eye being dilated (we only did one eye) and a massive headache later, I decided that getting your eyes dilated wasn't as fun as I imagined:

• Moral of the story: Eye dilation is more of business thing and less of a pleasure thing.

• This past week we were assigned a prerecorded audio lecture on anti-emetic drugs (Emesis = throwing up, so anti-emetics are basically anti-nausea drugs.).  As I listened to the lecture, I typed notes at breakneck speed (per usual). After I finished, I glanced back over my notes and noticed that every single time I typed anti-emetic, my computer auto-corrected anti-emetic to anti-Semitic. Apparently, my computer has a beef with Jews. For future reference, I apologize in advance to any of my Jewish friends who my computer inadvertently offends. Mormons love Jews! No seriously we do: Check out this article.

• Lauren moved on Friday. Sad day. We were so consumed by finals and exams the past month, that we barely even saw each other. This is basically what it was like:

•  And then I finished an exam and Lauren finished finals a week ago. The past week was like:

• But then she left on Friday, and now it's like this again:

 

• Oh well, I suppose that's part of being a med student who is dating a law student. Life is busy busy.

• Well, that's not even a tiny bit of my week, but I have to run. See ya next week!

A Hard Day's Night

DINGDINGDING, WE HAVE A WINNER:

 

Big announcement. I’m dropping out of medical school. I got this email a few days ago (click on it to make it bigger):

So that's why I'm dropping out. Who needs a career when you already have money? And who cares that Mr. Bente Lybecker can’t use proper noun verb agreement? Or that he is married to a flower rather than a woman? Not this guy. He’s "donating the sum of 2 million USD" to me. Just gotta cross the t’s and dot the i’s. And drop out of med school. It’s going to be a busy week for me. That being said, I'll keep typing on the off chance that I decide to stay in school and keep this blog going. 

 

I do stuff like this all the time:

On Wednesday, I put my shirt on backwards when I was getting ready in the morning. I know I know. Most of us do this every once in a while. But most of us don’t walk out of their apartment without noticing. Or ride the bus without noticing. Or attend their neurology class without noticing. Luckily, I eventually noticed and ducked in the bathroom between my first and second class and pulled the good ole switcheroo. Up to that point, had I committed a felony and gotten arrested, this definitely would’ve been my mug shot:

Hopefully, that doesn't shake your faith in me as a future health care provider. I'm trying to get my act together, promise.

Yo no espeake Medical:

So, according to my clinical group mentor, you learn 25,000 new words in medical school, approximately doubling your vocabulary. While I think that might be a slight exaggeration, I can attest to learning a ton of new words. I use and abuse the NIH Online Medical Dictionary. It's very useful for giving me the textbook definition of a term. What it's not good at, try as it might, is giving me the pronunciation.

Here's a quick example. I looked up the word telangiectasia a few months ago. According to the dictionary entry, it means little red/purple dots that come up in your skin due to capillary dilation (It happens secondary to various conditions.). Cool. Great. Now I knew what it meant. What I didn't know was how to pronounce it. After consulting the dictionary's pronunciation (To hear the dictionary's pronunciation, click on the speaker icon under the Telangiectasia entry), I quickly determined that was not the correct way to pronounce the word. At least not the correct way for a human to pronounce it. 

So, what's a med student to do? Well, I had a lot of stuff to do, so I moved on. Which worked out just fine, until I ended up needing to use telangiectasia in class in front of all my classmates. At that point you just take your best guess. And unfortunately, this is not an isolated event. It happens ALL THE TIME. I don't know how to pronounce at least 50% of words until I attempt (and often fail) to use them correctly. Part of the learning process I suppose. It's happened so many times that now, whenever a classmate asks me how to pronounce a word, this is basically my response:

Medical lingo. It really is a different language. So do I currently speak medical? No, not yet. Not fluently at least. But I'm working on it. And I've got telangectasia down, so there's one. Only 24,999 to go!

CEEEEEELLLLEEEEBBRRRAAAATIIIOOON.

I didn't post last week. I was bizeee doing stuff, if you to get specific about it. A lot has happened in the last two weeks. I'll do my best to catch you up with as few words as possible (You're just here for the pictures anyways, right? I know it, you know it, we all know it.)


I suddenly came to the realization this week that I live my life in cycles. As in, I live my life based on days until an exam. How am I doing? You might as well just ask me how many days till my next exam. More days till my exam typically correlates to, "I'm great! I love my life and I love med school and I love my friends and I'm getting 8 hours of sleep a night and I love my life." Less days till my exam typically correlates to, "I don't know about this whole doctor thing and I'm exhausted and I'm sick of studying and I may or may not be seriously considering an alternate profession and also I'm sick of studying if I didn't emphasize that enough the first time."


That being said, I finished my first neuro exam two weeks ago (as mentioned in my previous post), so the last two weeks, this has been me:

Having a lot of fun, mixed with a tidge of distracted studying, as depicted below:

Ok, so it hasn't been exactly like that. I still study every day. Thing is, though, I study LESS every day, so it feels like that. Here's a rundown of what's happened since my last exam:

•  I celebrated finishing my exam! After taking my test, I drove straight to the grocery store to grab some celebratory snacks. While I was self-checking out, I ran into a friend/classmate. He had just finished his exam, too. I asked him what he was up to, and he replied that he was just getting ready to celebrate. I know it's rude to look at other peoples' stuff, but I couldn't help myself. I glanced in his cart and saw this:

Ok, yeah, nothing unusual there. Post-exam alcohol is pretty standard in medical school. He asked me what I was up to, and I told him the same thing, that I was getting ready to celebrate. I saw his eyes flick down to my cart. And this is what I had in my cart:

Yeah. If he didn't know then, he definitely knows now. Mormons celebrate a little differently than most people. For the record, the popsicle were delicious. I ate six before I even put the box in the freezer. Oh, and I played this song really loud in my room while I ate them. It's the little things.

 

• What else have I been doing? Hmmmm. Well, for starters, I've studied a lot of brains. Like the one below. I actually know what all that stuff is!:

• I also went up to DC to hang out with my friend, Ben. We had a blast cruisin' around Georgetown and DC on bicycles. He was most excited to stand in the middle of all the bikes, and I was most excited to pop a wheelie in front of the Capitol Building:

 

  

  

On the way home, I stopped in Manassas, Virginia to get a pork burrito at Cafe Rio (one of favorite restaurants form undergrad) and enjoyed the beautiful drive home:

 

• This past weekend, I also hiked Old Rag, the most famous mountain in Shenandoah National Park, with some classmates. It was a good time. Especially the not-walking-up-a-steep-incline parts:

 

Ok, this is getting long. I better wrap this up. Last thing. On Thursday, we had a class session entitled, "Substance Abuse," which was all about, you guessed it!, marijuana and alcohol and PCP and cocaine and all that kind of stuff. Being a lifelong Mormon, all of this was news to me. When I started reading the handout for the class, I'm pretty sure I did this after reading about every single drug:

Seeing as I had zero life experience to draw on (Thanks, mom!), the class was educational to say the least. So...now I know about drugs! I'm sure that'll come in handy at some point. Well, that about does it. Sorry it was so long. I had a lot of stuffs to talk about! Next post will be shorter, promise!

This and That

As per usual, my thoughts are all over the place. Here's some of what's floating around my brain right now:

• I finished my first neuro exam yesterday! I'm really liking it so far. Guess I may become a brain surgeon after all. Wonder if these come in a larger size. If so, I'm totally buying one and wearing it to class...

• While I was studying for my exam this past week, I listened to a lot of music, including Native, OneRepublic's new album that came out two weeks ago. My favorite song on the album is "Preacher." It's about Ryan Tedder's (the band's lead singer) grandpa who was a preacher (the song title is making a lot of sense right now, huh?). Favorite line from the song: "He was a million miles from a million dollars, but you could never spend his wealth." 
•  Good stuff. Life is about so much more than having a prestigious career or buying a big house or going on lots of vacations. It's about treating others with love and respect. It's about realizing our goals. It's about leaving our families and friends and communities and countries better than we found them. It's about finding happiness and helping those around us to find it, too. That's real wealth. Here's the song:

• Apparently, there are a lot of vampires reading my blog. I know, I know. Exciting, right? Sounds crazy, but it's true. I guess I better start off with a little background. When you have a blog, there is a page that show's you all of your "blog stats" (How many people look at your blog, what type of browser they use, where they access your blog from, etc.). And according to my blog stats page, 21 people accessed my blog via vampirestat.com. Yeah, this is for real. Check it:

• So....shoutout to all my blog-lovin' vampire buddies over at vampirestat.com! I don't know you personally, but here's what I imagine you look like while reading my blog:

Photo credit: Googleimage search, Transylvania

• In my clinical group this past week I gave a presentation on medical apps (Apps as in applications. Apps as in apps for a phone or computer). Technology is really amazing. I was particularly excited about this portable ultrasound probe/iPhone app combo. It works well and is about 1/10 the cost of a conventional ultrasound machine. It has some serious potential for use in ER's, rural medicine, and medicine in developing countries. I love that the field of medicine is constantly progressing. Gold star to whomever created this!

 

• Last thing. Life is great! Spring is here. Charlottesville is beautiful. School is interesting. Lauren and I are dating (about time, am I right?). Aaaaaand I bought my plane ticket to Rwanda this week. Like I said, life is great! So great, in fact, that I wrote this entire blog post while doing this:

Brains and Neurons and Personality Disorders, Oh My.

Hello, my people. Good to see all of you again. I must admit I'm a little surprised you keep coming back. Sometimes I feel like I just ramble. Like, I just type and type and write and write and type and type and say a bunch of stuff without really saying anything at all. You know? To warn you, I'm probably going to do a large amount of rambling on today's post, so feel free to check out right now if you don't think you're up to it.

Two weeks ago we started the "Mind, Brain & Behavior" system, which is fancy-talk for the "Neurology & Psychology" system. So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed the system. The human brain is incredible. I remember the first time I held a real brain in my PdBio 220 class way back during the winter of 2010. As odd as it sounds, it was a very spiritual experience for me. I can't help but think that the designer knew what He was doing when He made it.

Ok, enough serious stuff. I've got some funnies for you. You know when people say, "Well, it's not brain surgery?" Well, neurology isn't brain surgery, but it's getting pretty close. As you might imagine, some of the things we've been learning about are incredibly complex. Sometimes (and by sometimes, I mean every time) my professors open their mouths, this is 110% how I feel (skip to 0:40 for "Dr. Cleese's" "explanation" of the brain):

*Video-scavenging credit to a classmate whom I cannot remember. Makes me laugh every time.

Anyways, that's how I feel. But in a good way. Like I said, I'm really enjoying the system. So that's the neurology. As far as the psychology goes, I've enjoyed it, not so much because I like psychology, but because 1. Dr. Cohen (the psych teacher) is hilarious, 2. We get to watch videos of crazy people during every single psych session (see below for my reaction when Dr. Cohen turns on a video),:

 Aaaaaaand 3. Because we get to take personality tests and psychoanalyze ourselves and every person we've ever met. Example. Last Thursday, we had a 2 hour class on personality disorders. As preparation for the class we were assigned some readings (if you're into that sorta thing) AND a personality test. If you've never taken a personality test, you should. They are almost always a good time (assuming that you have a good personality). The most commonly used personality test by psychologists is called the Big Five. It assesses your extroversion, orderliness, emotional stability, accomadation, and inquisitiveness. Here are my numbas (click picture to enlarge):

Apparently, I'm super orderly (Which, I think, is pretty accurate, though the articles of clothing tossed haphazardly on my bedroom floor may disagree) but only moderately emotionally stable (Which, is also probably accurate, seeing as I have never committed a hate crime but I did tear up at the end of Toy Story 3). At the bottom of the page (but cropped out in the picture above), there was a link for a more detailed description of my personality. Here that is:

And here are my thoughts on my the above description of my personality:

The good: "Believes in human goodness (Preach it, Global 5 Type Descriptions!)," "believes children need firm discipline (Hello, of course they do. I don't want my future children to end up on Judge Judy.)," and "physically affectionate (haha. No comment.)"

The bad: "Overly nice (Maybe that's not a bad thing)," "finishes most things they start (Only most?), and "prone to panic (Guess that means you shouldn't yell "Fire!" around me.)

The ugly: "Manipulative (So I'm overly nice AND manipulative? Those seem exclusive to me.)," "swayed by emotions (So you're saying I'm not a robot? This is actually good news)," and "prone to addiction (Well then, good thing I'm too poor at this point in my life to buy 100 kilos of cocaine)."


The personality test also included careers I should and shouldn't go into:

I'm glad they added this to the results. This really cleared things up for me. Number two under favored careers? Medical doctor. Yessssssss. I'm doing what my [likely inaccurate] personality test thinks I should be doing! I feel good about that. Plus, becoming an assassin is listed under my disfavored careers. I also feel good about that. I'm not really into the whole killing people thing, so that works out well. Anyways, I had a good time taking my personality test. If you want to give it a try, here's the link: Big Five Personality Test.

 Last thing. Use your brain! Not everyone does. And be grateful for it! Not everyone has one.