Columnist
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Hello! I'm Valerie. I'm from the suburbs of Detroit and graduated from Michigan State University in 2009 with my BA in Psychology. I'm currently living in Grand Rapids Michigan with my fiance Adam, where I'm now in my second year of medical school at MSUCHM. I'm the aunt of two little kiddies that I love to death (Asher 3.5 and Shana 1.5) and the proud mama of a silly red-brown dog named Bo. Before starting medical school, I sang in an a cappella group for 3 years, traveled to India, volunteered at a Navajo hospital in New Mexico and many other uninteresting things I won't mention. I still sing as much as I can, love hot vinyasa yoga, hiking, camping and spending time with my family. If I'm not studying, you can probably find me on my couch in sweat pants eating frozen yogurt, watching Modern Family, The Mindy Project or The Goldberg's.
Therapeutic Misadventures
Therapeutic Misadventures catalogs the unanticipated effects of medical school and is meant to provide a sense of the emotional roller coaster that is medical education. It is a peek into what it really feels like to be a medical student and the perpetual challenges that come with that life. Spoiler alert: it's hard.
It was not at a specific moment in time nor the result of an inciting event, but soon after medical school began, I started to forget who I was. I don’t mean early-onset Alzheimer’s or a drug-induced psychosis type of forgetting; I mean lost all sight of what made me me type of forgetting.
After a nearly 40-year moratorium, a controlled study of the therapeutic use of LSD in humans has been published in The Journal of Neural and Mental Disease after the pioneering work of Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser. Sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and approved by the BAG (the Swiss Drug Enforcement Agency), the study has completed treatment of all subjects after having enrolled its first patient in April of 2008. Many hallucinogens, such as psilocybin and MDMA, are being investigated today for their clinical benefits as a result of a gradual effort to reexamine the pharmacologic and psychiatric interests in hallucinogens.
Kaitlyn Elkins was a medical student at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina and a member of the Class of 2015. She excelled academically, named the valedictorian of her high school class and graduating summa cum laude from Campbell University. She wrote poetry in her free time. She had a cat, lovingly named Gatito. On April 11, 2013, just weeks before beginning her clinical rotations, Kaitlyn Elkins took her own life. She left …
As second year winds down and I approach the ultimate exam of medical school, Step 1 of the USMLE, I have spent a lot of time in reflection, and on one stark dichotomy in particular. The vast majority of medicine that we studied has been physical; we study the art of physical diagnosis in order to best assess our patients’ pains and murmurs and abrasions, leading to verifiable diagnoses. In addition, we have objective blood work showing …
A frail man leaned against the wall, Gasping for breath, afraid to fall. The rest of him shivered in panic at the thought A heart attack, perhaps or a stroke, blood clot? “I must be going crazy,” repeated his heartbeat. “I must try to calm down and take a seat.” The doctors marched in with the test results and all, They lined up against the opposite wall. Explained to the patient the source of …
Location: Surgery inpatient floor Time: 6:00 a.m. Surgery morning rounds began: “Ms. A, your MRI shows you have colorectal cancer, so we plan to take you to the OR for surgery tomorrow. Alright, see you later,” said my surgery attending, who rushed out of Ms. A’s room right after he abruptly dropped this shocking news. Inside the room, Ms. A, a fragile, bony 75-year-old lady, was laying on her bed with her eyes full of …
It was a sunny and cloudless September day, the weather still warm enough for T-shirts and shorts. Sitting by a round table decorated with poster board and flyers, I was providing mental health awareness and education at a health fair. The site was sandwiched between the bustling highways south of downtown Chicago and the Chicago River — the outskirts of Chinatown. All around me crowded small storefronts and narrow roads, a sharp contrast to the …
Sometimes, I wonder why I am here. Walking this path of medicine, to be specific. It always fascinated me what drove people in life. For some, the joy of spinning creative fabrics of fictional words satisfied; for some, raising and guiding children through the thorns of life serves as the pinnacle of existence; for others, the simple necessities of life and health are solely sufficient. For medical students, I feel like this can be a …
“How do we [become a society that produces people] that are young and beautiful and hate themselves?” – Dr. John Green “Well, I always say, it would be good to go away. But if things don’t work out like we think And there’s nothing here to ease the ache But it there’s nothing there to make things change If it’s the same for you I’ll just hang.” – Matchbox Twenty I finished reading “Night Falls …
You know you have a problem when you can’t fall asleep at night. That’s where I was nearing at the end of anatomy in my first year of medical school. I couldn’t sleep because I was terrified of what the next day held. My sympathetic nervous system was on full alert, ready to handle the next day. The only thing between the next day and me was a night of sleep that seemed harder and …
Addiction is a chronic illness characterized by the use of a psychogenic substance despite negative consequences associated with its use. Biological dependence is marked by cravings, increased dose and/or frequency of use due to tolerance, and withdrawal symptoms upon cessation of substance abuse. Addicts gain pleasure via the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is released from the ventral tegmental area of the brain and into the nucleus accumbens. This reward encourages and solidifies the addictive behavior and …
Here was a 45-year-old Type 1 diabetic who presented to the emergency department in a near coma with diabetic ketoacidosis. The diagnosis seemed clear as day, with some of the classic presenting signs: polyuria, polydipsia, hyperglycemia, high anion gap, low serum bicarbonate and presence of ketones in the urine. She was admitted and treated appropriately. Once she was stabilized, the human interaction and history-taking began, which proved to be far more convoluted. She thoroughly explained …
Columnist Emeritus
Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine
Hi! I am an Internal Medicine resident at Georgetown University Hospitals. I graduated medical school from Texas A&M Medical School and Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, TX. I went to Case Western Reserve University where I did my bachelor's in medical anthropology and a masters in public health. Life is good. I am an inherent optimist who simply enjoys life. Avid Dallas Cowboys fan! In all my free time (ha ha), I enjoy traveling and spending time with friends and family.
Storytellers
Patients are the true storytellers. They come in with pathology, we interpret physiology and prescribe pharmacology, but their stories are what we remember. They shape our experiences and how we practice medicine.
