"Breath In and Breath Out..."

This past month has been all about the pulmonary system. I had never studied it extensively, but I found myself enjoying it quite a lot! Growing up, I knew a lot of children with asthma, and I recognized the limitations some of them faced on a day to day basis. But learning about asthma from a pharmacology standpoint was truly fascinating. There is no cure for asthma, but there are definitely drug regimens that can help patients manage their symptoms and episodes. In addition to asthma, we learned about drugs used for tuberculosis and pneumonia. These are all definitely diseases that come up in our everyday lives, and so it was interesting to see how physicians approach different cases based on different factors. More so, it was curious to understand and see first hand the differences in outcomes for patients with either disease. When I shadowed a neurologist at UW-Madison, I was able to follow her around on her consults. One of the patients she visited I will never forget; he was a prisoner with disseminated tuberculous and was found to be brain dead. At that point, I didn't understand why there was no treatment for him- surely medicine could find a way to treat something like tuberculosis. But after understanding how drug regimens are picked and administered for different stages of tuberculosis, I can now see how serious his case was. He had HIV. His tuberculosis was beyond any traditional drug regimen. He was at a point where medicine could do little. Although reflecting on my experiences with these different diseases may have been more challenging than in other units, I definitely value the knowledge I now have.

On a more positive note, in my last post about the curriculum I mentioned that I am trying out a new studying technique. I've found it to be quite effective as my exam scores from this past block have demonstrated. In addition to my new approach, I have also found a few people that I can comfortably study with in a group. It seemed at the beginning of the semester that finding a consistent group would be a challenge, and indeed it was. I tried to study with various people in a multitude of ways, but everything sort of fell into place these last two block exams. This method was especially effective for the material from our Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology class. Thankfully my experience in a laboratory setting has put many of our lectures into perspective for myself, but I find that explaining it to others helps both me (in reviewing), and helps others get a more tangible grasp on the material. Onto GI then!