ECT Observation

I had meant to post this a long time ago seeing as I observed on November 26. . .

Hello!

As a part of my financial aid for college, I was given work study money. Since I know I want to become a doctor I hoped that my job would be something research or at least science related. After a lot of disappointing rejections and interview, I finally got a job at a local geriatric hospital/outpatient center/health center. As you can probably tell, this place helps patients with a lot of different ailments but the common factor among all of them is their age. More specifically, I work with the department of psychiatry that addresses depression in the elderly. Since the medical community does not know very much about depression and other mental illness no matter what the age, the place where I work tries to create more awareness for the problems depression patients face. When patients with depression do not respond or cannot tolerate depression medication, ECT or electroconvulsive therapy, is suggested.

Electroconvulsive therapy sounds scary and if you know anything about what ECT is you are probably thinking about extremely dangerous and harmful treatments where the patients are shocked. Yes, an electrical current is sent through there brain, but no, its not in anyway harmful or painful for the patient. The patients are put under general anesthesia and monitored by a doctor, nurse, and anesthesiologist the entire time. When I went in to observe, I was expecting a long treatment time, but the goal is to send as strong of a current a patient can tolerate in about an 8 second period. It seems like it takes longer to get the patients hooked up to the heart monitor and EEG than it is to actually administer the treatment.

Getting to observe ECT was particularly rewarding to me also because I was able to help with the procedure. In no way were they going to let me administer the drugs or hyper/hypoventilate the patients, but I was able to interact with the patients and aid in the process some. There was one patient who was particularly difficult for the nurses to handle. She was trying to pull out her IV, get out of the bed, and kept muttering, "She wants to get out, I have to help her get out!" Turns out this patient has a history of dementia. I ended up holding her hand and trying to calm her down enough for the anesthesiologist to get the medicine into her IV line and eventually put her to sleep. The entire time we were working with this patient I was scared and worried I would screw something up, a feeling I had the entire time I was there, but it ended up working out really well.

I wish I could have stayed and watched more procedures done, but I had to go to class. I also wish I had asked the questions that have been rattling around in my brain ever since that day, but I was just trying to take everything in and not get in their way. Either way, I have no regrets about becoming a doctor because this experience was so invigorating and I left that place with a sense of accomplishment and a smile on my face.

Have you interned anywhere pertaining to the field you want to enter?

Lifescouts: Fishing

Hello!

My story for this badge also doesn't contain any deep sea fishing experiences, but fishing is fishing.

My family owns a lake house. And of course one of the many things you can do on a lake is fish. Now this lake is right next to a nuclear power plant so we are advised to not actually eat any of the fish from the lake. Sadly enough, when the story I'm about to tell you takes place, neither my parents now I knew this and so we might develop cancer later down the road. One summer day we take the boat out onto the lake with a cooler full of soda, a tank full of gas, fishing rods, and swim suits. Before getting in and swimming with the fishes, we tried to see if we could catch a few. I had my trusty fuzzy orange bait that looked really cool to me and tried my luck. Apparently the fish thought my bait was cool too because after maybe an hour I felt a tug on my line. I was so surprised and freaked out I didn't know what to do! I started reeling in the line and there was a catfish flopping on my rod. I was too afraid to touch it, so I had my dad unhook my bait from its mouth. Because we thought we could eat it, we took the sodas out of the cooler, filled the cooler with water from the lake and put the fish in so it would stay alive as we spent the rest of the day on the lake. After no more luck or bites, we went home and my parents proceeded to kill the fish, clean, and cook it. I have to say it was pretty tasty but I was a little weirded out about eating something I had caught earlier that day. Now I love fish, but it seemed a little bizarre to me. Since that day I haven't had any more luck and my family has become wiser about what we eat from the lake.

Have you ever been deep sea fishing?

Badge count: 9

Lifescouts: Swimming

Hi!

This badge doesn't have a long story because it's not like I've made it to the US Olympic Swimming Team.

Really all I can say is that I essentially taught myself how to swim. My mom tells me that we visited a park with a lake and I got in and started doggy paddling. From there when I went to the pool with my friends I tried to copy what they were doing. I also tried to copy my mom. I don't have any endurance but apparently I have a pretty good freestyle because whenever I do laps someone tells me that I have great form. . . whatever that means. All I can say is I'm proud that I can make it from one side of the pool to the other at a pretty moderate pace while still being able to catch some air.

How did you learn to swim?

Badge count: 8

Lifescouts: Tree Planting

Hi!

It's so hard to keep up with the constant flow of badges with school, but I'm trying! However Alex recently posted that Lifescouts will now have a new badge every 10 days and each month will have a theme. So that's exciting! And might give me a chance to catch up or earn more badges! You can read the other stats about most and least popular badges here Now on to the story.

At my university, we have a day where students and alumni from around the world do some type of service for our communities. Falling into the spirit of volunteerism, I signed up to volunteer at Kittredge Park not very far from our campus. There we mulched, pulled weeds, painted, and planted trees! Now I had helped my dad plant the trees in our backyard when we first moved into our house, but I had never planted a tree that people visiting the park would get to enjoy. Naturally I wanted to make sure that what we did wasn't going to kill the tree. These trees were uprooted from their initial home and moved so that they would have a better chance at success. So myself and friend dug a hole, removed the tree from its pot, and placed it in its new home. It now even has a sign designating what type of tree it is. We covered the loose dirt with some mulch and gave it a good watering. I haven't been down to see it since we've planted it but hopefully it's doing ok with all the crazy weather we've been having. Amazingly enough planting that tree gave me a sense of accomplishment because I knew that I was helping add more oxygen to our environment.

Badge count: 7