Saturday, August 25, 2007

Fall 2007!

Well next week I begin classes again for the Fall and this time as I mentioned before, I'm going to be smarter in planning out my schedule so I can take the MCAT in Jan 08. I'll have one class, a seminar and my research and volunteer work to keep me busy so I'm really looking forward to it!

In more personal news, I'm still not 100% health wise and was diagnosed with pneumonia last week. Unfortunately, it's yet a another case where I HAD to be persistent about own health after my now former primary care doc told me that I was OK. Yeah right, when these things happen however intermittently in my life, I immediately ask myself what happens to less educated minority patients and would having a black/minority primary doc would mean anything different in terms of our health care. The irony of me having pneumonia again is that when I had it 10 years ago and almost died, I had to beg the ER to admit me after having coughing spells for 3 straight weeks which prevented me from keeping any food down. I must have went to my Doc 7 times during that time but I kept being sent home and the day I was admitted, I ended up needing respiratory support that night. If I had gone back home, then I imagine I probably wouldn't be here telling you this story.

I'm bringing all this up to make the point that sometimes in the quest for whatever goal we're striving for, we often forget to take care of ourselves. There's no doubt that as an asthmatic, I should have used more discretion in the environments I put myself in, and from the moment I smelled mold in my office, I should have walked away to the other, far more promising research project opportunity I had available. And I'm sure none of this was helped by the fact that I was balancing this fulltime research gig, with a demanding medical school class, study for the MCAT and a family life. But I wanted so much to work with patients in the cancer clinic and get on with this med school process, that I ignored what was best for me. Never again is all I can say about that, NEVER again!

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