The First Cut

Today I preformed my first surgery, I made my first cut through skin, isolated my first structure and sutured my first wound. It was amazing, and I thought my hands would begin to shake, or that I would falter or feel faint, but I didn't. Probably because this surgery was on a rat, but on Monday when I watched the demo of the surgery, I felt pretty sick. But there is definitely a big difference between watching somebody cut the skin and actually putting the scalpel blade through the skin your self. Even though his heart was beating and he was breathing (and anesthetized), it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be when I made that first cut. 

I completed my animal surgery certificate course today, I assisted my partner with a surgery on Monday, we did post-op together on Tuesday and today was my time to be in the spot light. All I had to do was isolate the jugular vein, which really wasn't that difficult. And those veins are surprisingly stretchy and resilient. The hard part was the suturing, doing the inner layer of tissue was just fine as it was a discontinuous stitch, but doing a continuous buried stitch on the outer layer of skin was really tricky. I kinda suck at it...but it was my first attempt at ever stitching anything ever!!! I'm pretty stoked on life right now though, mostly because I didn't know if  could ever handle doing surgery. I like it, I'm not good at it right now, but I like it.

After my rat was euthanized (I'm not totally okay with shoving a needle full of anesthetic into a rat's heart yet...) I got to isolate the sciatic nerve. Honestly, it was the first nerve that I have ever really seen. Maybe on day I will get to repair one.

I'm pumped to keep studying, get on with my research project (mice officially ordered) and become a doctor! Surgery might still be in my cards, but I need to practice suturing, so, I bought this:

My first suture kit

 The only problem is that I only have 2 packs of sutures, one for fascia and one for skin. So if you know anywhere I can buy sutures, let me know!!

Never the answer?

I always here people say to or about a friend, a loved one or somebody that they don't even know that "Suicide is never the answer." (Before you get your spandex shorts in a knot, this post isn't going to be about me contemplating suicide...in fact it is not about me at all.) When people say things like this I find that it makes me almost irate, not because I think suicide is a good option, but because people who say that is not an answer to your problem clearly have no idea what that person is going through.

Today's post is about how a boy, living in my city, thought it was the only option. This boy's story can be read here and his name is Dom. Dom had chronic pain that started when he was 14, and it progressed to the point where it was so badly controlled, that by the time he was 18 he decided that his only option to end the pain was suicide. And now I bet you are thinking that: "No, there must have been a better option, there must have been treatments....there must have been something other than suicide that would ease his pain!" Well, my friends, as somebody who has chronic pain, you are eventually told that there is nothing more that can be done to help you, other than physical and emotional therapy. See, Dom was a teenager, and chronic pain is something that people, let alone other teenagers, can rarely comprehend. They don't understand why you can't just get out of bed and go to that party on Friday night or why you can't go shopping after school. Unless you have chronic pain, you cannot understand what it is like (even if you are a doctor, or a medical student or a personally know somebody with the disease).

Dom made the decision to end the pain because our medical and social system failed him. The only thing that kept me out of the depths of isolation and depression when it all first started for me was that I had teachers who had chronic pain, the fact I was at a boarding school where I was constantly surrounded by people making isolation impossible, I had a doctor who tried absolutely everything to help me and I had my bike. I was lucky to be where I was at the time...luck, pure luck, and without it, I don't know where I would be. Dom was completely imprisoned by pain, without doctors to fight for him or friends to pull him out of the depths of blinding pain. If you where him, would you be okay with having your mom spoon feed you for the rest of your life? Would you be okay with asking you sister to help you put on your socks at 18 years old? I wouldn't.

So don't judge somebody when they decide that taking their own life is the only solution, because for them it just might be. For me, I had decided to find my own solution, to spend my life in the lab trying to fix this problem. I still have hope, Dom didn't. I can tell you that even if you believe people who commit suicide go to hell (which I absolutely don't), hell might just be better than having every inch of your body be on fire all the time.

Just think about it for a moment, what would you honestly do in Dom's situation?

Laughter

The best thing about volunteering at a Children's Hospital is laughter. Its my job, to make the kids, nurses, parents and doctors laugh. When you are volunteering in a respite/palliative setting and with children, the best thing that  I can do for them is to make them laugh. Today I played Uno Jenga with a patient, a nurse, a nursing aid and a doctor. We were having so much fun that we even drew a couple of parents and other patients out of their rooms to see what was going on. I left my shift today and walked out of the door with everybody laughing and smiling. I can only hope that when I am a doctor, I will be able to do the same, to go home everyday knowing that the last person I talked to was either laughing or smiling when I walk out the door. 

Medical Monday 1

Hey everybody! So this my first Medical Monday, and it is also my first Monday not being a teenager! Yup, I turned 20 yesterday, so I am officially old. I know a lot of people reading this are probably older than me, but I just joined the club.

Today's Medical Monday is going to be about hands. We can do a lot with our hands, we can make things, we can use them as a musical instrument and among other things, we can use them to comfort somebody. I will never forget the moment when my GP put his hand on my back to help me sit up after an exam a few years ago when I was dealing with a pretty severe illness. It was a simple gesture, but that moment he went from being a doctor to being a friend, from being the person with the prescription pad to being a comforting presence. Its a pretty incredible thing that we can do with our hands.

On Friday, I went to my volunteer shift at the Children's Hospital. For about an hour, I just held this four year old boy (he was about the size of a two year old, and developmentally a year). We read stories, but mostly we just cuddled, and he would smile and giggle. There was an other girl, B, and she has her good days and her bad days. Friday was a bad day and on bad days, B doesn't stop yelling, screaming and crying (she is a non-verbal communicator). The morning was actually going pretty good until music therapy...then it all went down hill. So I took her to the sun-room, where she continued to scream until I started to gently rub her back, and then she stopped. As soon as I removed my had, she would start crying again, so I kept rubbing her back until she fell asleep, and then once she was asleep I wheeled her back to her room as quiet as humanly possible.

People seem to have this notion that medicine is about learning about diseases and treatments, and that patients are their disease. I am even guilty of this thinking and I'm not even in medical school yet, but there is something more to medicine than just that. People say that their doctor is amazing because they not only make correct diagnosis but they actually listen, and don't get me wrong, that definitely adds up to some respect points in my book. I think though, that we easily forget that sometimes all people really need from medicine is a comforting hand.

I encourage you, if you are a doctor, want to be a doctor or have anything remotely do with the lives of people who are ill, terminal or are just having a crappy day to extend your hand to them and bring them a sense of comfort that drugs and other treatments cannot. That is real medicine.

Life of a Kid

I had to attend a palliative care training course today, it was depressing, but also opened my eyes to how important the role of a volunteer can be for an individual at the end of life and for my volunteer situation, a family. I volunteer at a pediatric hospice, but its 80% respite care and 20% end of life. I haven't actually been there yet when there was a kid and family there for end of life care, I have just played games and done fun things with kids who have pretty severe and disabling conditions. Every kid that comes through the door (unless they are a sibling) are technically considered to be palliative meaning that they have shortened life spans, but are not necessarily actively dying.

Today also happens to be the anniversary of a pretty tragic death in my own hometown. On this day, 8 years ago, a boy named Chris, who was a year older than me, passed away from a quading accident. We used to play on the same soccer team every year and went to the same school. He was an amazing athlete and would have gone far in life. He was airlifted to Calgary, and stayed overnight in the ICU, and I can remember our principal the next morning going around to each classroom telling us what had happened. It was hard, at 11 years old, to wrap my head around somebody my own age dying from something that kids do everyday in my town, from something so simple as quading at the ski hill with some friends after school. Its hard not to think of who he would have become if the accident didn't happen.

I wish that these kids I play with on Friday mornings could have the chance to grow up to be something amazing, that they would be able to fulfill their dreams.Today was the kind of day that really makes you think about life, and instead of thinking about why bad things happen to people, I am thinking about why they didn't happen to me. Why am I so lucky to be celebrating my 20th birthday in a week when some kids don't even make it to their 5th, 10th, or 16th birthday?

I just need to focus on giving it 110% everyday on behalf of those who cannot.

Peace Like a River.

We Day Alberta 2012

Yesterday was a pretty amazing, fun, inspiring and exhausting day, and I didn't even skip a class. You might be wondering what I was doing on a school day that was so totally awesome...so I will just tell you.

Yesterday, Oct.24/12 was the first ever We Day Alberta!! What is why day you ask? We Day is a huge event put on for youth across Canada and is Me to We's signature event. Me to We is a branch of Free the Children, which is a non-profit organization started in Canada when Craig Keilburger was just 12 years old. It has grown into this massive organization with the motto of "kids helping kids." Its all about bringing food security, education, clean water and health care to children across the world, with a large portion of its funds being raised and donated by youth across Canada. We Day is all about the youth of the world, and inspiring them to "Be the change." You can't buy a ticket to We Day, you have to earn it through service.

Because I am no longer a youth, I couldn't attend We Day. So, instead, I decided to  volunteer, and even better, I signed up to be a Crowd Pumper. On Saturday we had our first training session where we learned the We Day Dance, and our flash mob routine. During our 4 hour Saturday session, we were unknowingly showing the head Crowd Pumpers April and Gabby that we could strut our stuff. So when we had our final training session on Tuesday night, I found out that I had been selected to be on the FLOOR!!!!! Apparently I have dance skills (lolz), but I think it was more like I had a lot of energy and that I dance like nobody is watching me. Non the less, I was given a floor section to pump up right in the first section in front of the stage!!! My job was to make sure everybody was up and dancing, having a good time and getting them to break out of their shell. So basically I had an all day dance party.

It was exhausting with all the cheering and dancing, but also crazy fun and inspiring. Seeing 18,000 youth come together to celebrate each other and be inspired to change the world was simply breath taking. Not to mention seeing Hedley, Shawn Desmen, Lights, Marianis Trench rock it on stage, all the while being inspired by Martin Sheen, Larry King (yes, that is right, the King himself), Marc and Craig Keilburger (Founders of Me to We and Free the Children), Liz Murray (homeless to Harvard) and SPENCER WEST! I even got to high five Marc Keilburger. The day was actually too awesome to really describe, and I am so thankful that I got to be a part of it.

Me to We has just recently added a new volunteer trip to Ghana, and when I saw the video and listened to the talk about I started to cry. I miss Ghana so much, and I think about going back at least six times a day. My mom is lucky enough to be leading a group of high school students there this spring (and gets to go for free!) with EF Tours and Me to We. I am super jealous.

Being a crowd pumper and having chronic pain was a bit of a challenge, every time I jumped and landed it was horrible, but there was so much energy in the room that it didn't even matter. I had a job to do, GET THE CROWD PUMPED UP! So I did it with every ounce of enthusiasm that I had, I even managed to have enough energy left over for class...and by that I mean I only fell a sleep for a few seconds during pharmacology....

Stoked to be part of We Day next year, and maybe sometime in the future figure out a way to get myself back to Ghana.

Floor Crowd Pumper Crew, Power of We

My New Besty Amanda

Much Music Booth with some fellow Crowd Pumpers (I'm the one wearing the tie)

From Two to Zero

My Grandpa from my Mom's side of the family passed away on Tuesday night. My brother and I jumped in the car on Monday night and drove 3 hours through the night to see him before he died. Unfortunately, when we saw him on Tuesday morning he was completely sedated. The man I saw lying in that bed struggling to breathe was not my my Grandpa.

He was the most incredible man I have ever met. He grew up in a National Park, and lived and worked in the same valley his whole life. He cut trails up to mountain lakes on horse back, gave valley kids their first plane ride, flew hunters into remote areas, rescued people on the ski hill, was a Mason, he built houses and cabins by hand, owned a Chrysler dealership and was known by all of his famous stories.  I am grateful for all of our rides on horse back, and for all of the stories he told around the dinner table.

He is the kind of man who's stories will stick around forever, he is the kind of man who is thought of as a legend. His life seemed almost like a fairytale from some children's book. He was the perfect mountain man, he knew how to survive off the land but also how to lend a hand.

In the span of four months, I went from having two Grandpa's to none.

I am pretty bitter that I can not attend his memorial service because they put it on a Tuesday. WHO PUTS A FUNERAL ON A TUESDAY???? They are expecting over 300 people to be in attendance, which is pretty much the entire valley.