Lesson From A Kid

A 32 y/o lady was brought in to our ER via advanced life support ambulance. She had a blood glucose level of 51. It was a really crazy night- all our nurses were busy and the priority at the moment was not this patient. I helped the medics unload her into the gurney and I started taking her vitals and started the history for the nurses. She was not that sick sick but boy, she really was in bad shape. 203/105. 102bpm. 96% sat. 96F. She was diaphoretic and very cool to touch. I had everything ready when the nurse came in and I then stepped out to get her warm blankets.

"Who called the ambulance?" I thought to myself. Obviously there might be family members around. Such a dumb question to myself. Why that question popped up- I had no clue.

"Hey Jasmine thank you for calling the ambulance, okay?" The patient uttered with a heavily-detectable hispanic accent. Who is Jasmine?

I turned to her bedside. Jasmine is her 10-year-old daughter.

Tonight, my greatest mentor and teacher wasn't Dr. Shapiro, MD, nor the ER Nurses, nor my MCAT textbook and flashcards. It was a ten-year-old girl. She taught me presence of mind- the ability to act deliberately and correctly given the circumstance, however pressing it may be. How amazing is it that a child like her can be taken for granted and blatantly overlooked, yet the same child could teach you a very important lesson that you'd only expect from seasoned adults.

"Good job!" I told her. She had the biggest smile I've ever seen in such a long time. And I know that it stems beyond my adulation to her. It saved her mom...The only one she's got.

Blog Hiatus

Looooooooooooong time!

Finals are over, but the actual work has just begun. So I started studying for my MCAT and it's been frustrating. The material is okay, obviously, but what is killing me is the verbal section...I just couldn't make the connections between the passage and the questions...the process of elimination is very helpful, but I can't solely rely on that.

Ugh.

At this point, I'm really burnt out. Not just from MCAT stuff, but also from the recent semester. Everything's taxing heavily on me, at the most inappropriate of times.