Contributing Writer Emeritus
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Lindsay Boyers is a medical student at Georgetown University School of Medicine with an interest in dermatology. She graduated magna cum laude from University of California Santa Barbara in 2009 with a degree in Communications and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She enjoys both clinical medicine and research, having taken a year to conduct research at the University of Colorado in the department of dermatology. She enjoys the arts, especially painting and writing, and spending time with her family in Colorado.
She had not been home in at least three days. She sat motionless, shoulders slumped, arms draped limply over her lap. I couldn’t tell if she had nodded off. The wrinkles of her clothes seemed to blend into the lines of her face, stuck in a soft, yet permanent frown. The red of her blouse appeared faint against her pallid skin, as if exhaustion had sapped everything it could from her being, and had moved …
The wonderfully cheery 66-year-old woman sitting in the conference room with her family listened to us explain her diagnosis – ovarian cancer – the first occurrence. We explained that ovarian cancer tends to appear suddenly with non-specific symptoms preceding it. Its prognosis can be quite good if treated aggressively with surgery and chemotherapy, but recurrence rates are very high. We told her to be positive because her 5-year survival looked quite good. “Oh, I’m a …
It’s 4 a.m., and I’m sitting in the student call room eating dinner during a particularly busy night. A burrito has never tasted this good. Here’s the truth: medical school isn’t glamorous. More often than not, it involves long hours and late nights. There will be days where you come home and fall asleep before eating dinner. There will be 10-hour surgical cases with no bathroom breaks and mornings where rounds take five hours. You will …
“Dr. Aggarwal, should we divert the plane towards Salt Lake City? Dr. AGGARWAL, Dr. Aggarwal, do you want to land in Salt Lake City?” Until this point, it was always “Manik,” and it was a basic question. If I was right, my intern or resident would be enthused with my knowledge; if I was wrong, they would teach and likely talk me up to regain my confidence. Well, that was last month. This month, it’s …
Dear freshly-crowned MS3s, Congratulations on making it to the best part of medical school! I hope that it has finally sunk in that classes and labs are over, and most importantly, you are on the other side of Step 1. It is finally time to take all of the facts that you learned from a textbook and apply them to a real-life person. It is the moment we all wait for and the reason we …
Recent fourth-year matcher Ben Monson of University of Nebraska Medical Center graces us with his wise words on finding success and happiness in medical school and beyond. 1. Tell us about yourself: Where are you from? What is your undergraduate degree and where did you receive it? Did you do anything between undergraduate and medical school? Ben Monson: My name is Ben Monson and I’m from Papillion, Nebraska. I completed my undergraduate education at Iowa State …
Medical school has been weird. I learned things about myself that I didn’t like and I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by things that I thought I would never like. As a fourth-year student, your focus and energy are consumed with thoughts revolving around future residency: the labor intensive training that follows four long years of medical school. What no one tells you is that you will question your commitment to medicine on more than one …
Recent fourth-year matcher Margaret Schellen of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, NE tells us what she believes to be crucial to success in medical school and beyond. 1. Tell us about yourself: Where are you from? What is your undergraduate degree and where did you receive it? Did you do anything between undergraduate and medical school? Margaret Schellen: I am from Waterloo, NE. I received my bachelor’s degree from University of Nebraska-Omaha in biotechnology. …
Recent fourth-year matcher Samantha Balass out of McGill University School of Medicine gives us her wise words on succeeding in medical school and beyond. 1. Tell us about yourself: Where are you from? What is your undergraduate degree and where did you receive it? Did you do anything between undergraduate and medical school? Samantha Balass: I was born in Montreal. I did my undergraduate degree in physiology at McGill. I got into medical school right after …
The usual morning solitude of the small rural Kansas hospital was shattered with the overhead announcement no one wants to hear. Code Blue. Stillness turned to ordered chaos. The room was quickly prepared for the impending arrival of the ambulance. We gathered as much information about the patient as possible. Nineteen years old. Overdose. Found unresponsive. Before we had time to assemble these disordered pieces of the puzzle, he had arrived. The entire staff responded …
Kunal Sualy, a recent fourth-year matcher out of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, NE, gives us his expert advice on succeeding in medical school and beyond. 1. Tell us about yourself: Where are you from? What is your undergraduate degree and where did you receive it? Did you do anything between undergraduate and medical school? Kunal Sualy: I am from Omaha, NE. I went to Creighton University, and got an undergraduate degree in …
I witnessed my first code while I was doing my first internal medicine rotation at a hospital in the Twin Cities; it just so happened to be one of my team’s patients. He was a difficult and grumpy guy who regularly swore at his nurses and refused parts of his health care. A couple days prior to the code, my team and I were group rounding when we visited him. He was his usual disgruntled …
Contributing Writer Emeritus
University of Minnesota School of Medicine
Michelle is a Class of 2014 medical student at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.
