Friday, April 28, 2017

It's not over till it's over

This is my last blog post as a pharm masters student. This year has gone by so quickly and I cannot believe it is over and I really wish thay it would last longer. I have fallen madly in live with New Orleans and want to stay. Right now I'm still waiting for responses from med schools so we shall see where the road takes me, but im looking forward to what the future holds. Ive learned a lot about science, people, medicine, and culture. Jazz fest is this weekend and next so the coming weeks are going to hold a lot of excitement.
This month we didn't have too many formal classes so I had a lot of time to volunteer and shadow. One of the most amazing things I have got to see this month is a live donor transplant. Since I volunteer in TATU, I was able to shadow some of the surgeons and this month they allowed me to shadow a live donor kidney transplant. I was able to watch both the nephrectomy and the transplat and wish I could show you what I saw because it was unbelievable.
Another cool thing I am looking forward to this week is CDG day at Tulane. I will be working with children with rare genetic disorders while their parents come in for information about studies being performed here for their child. I am looking forward to interracting with the patients who will hopefully benefit from the studies that we are working on here at Tulane.
In addition, this month we all had the oppurtunity for soil collection as part of a research prohect that measures lead levels in New Orleans. Putting time towards ongoing research to benefit the people of the city was pretty awesome.
We had some really great seminars this semester and we just had the forty-fifth annual schüeler distinguished lecture in pharmacology where Eric N. Olsen discussed his research on "The Correction of Disease by Genome Editing: The Ultimate Precision Medicine" which was a phenomenal lecture. In addition I was able to sit through a few surgical conferences, so April really was a very informative month. Sad to log in hours for the last time, but I'm excited to see what the future holds.

Hours for April: 19
Hours for the second semester: 52
Hours for the year: 87

Friday, March 31, 2017

Ma ma march

March was pretty busy. Ive been doing a lot of different things outside of school. The way New Orleans has cleaned up post mardi gras is really impressive. I had another interview this month so hopefully I hear some good news soon.
I was able to do some shadowing and volunteering at clinic this month so that was pretty interesting and I feel like I learned a lot. I also took advantage of this great weather and did some park cleanup. The weather has been fantastic, we have had some good pool and beach days.
I inserted some pictures below from the park cleanup.
I honestly cannot remember what else I did this month, it seems like it has been going on forever.


Hours:  10

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

lot to do in february

Blogging live from mardi gras! This city transforms like nothing i have ever seen before !! Its awesome. The people, the culture, the food. Unreal. There is so much to do so many bands to see, shows to watch, beads to catch. I love it!! I also have somehow manged to catch a sunburn in the middle of February

, I can definitely say that is a first. 

This month we had a couple tornadoes hit new orleans pretty hard so most of my volunteering this month is from disaster relief. The resilience that I have seen in the people of new Orleans is unparalleled to anywhere else in the world. So many of these people lost so much during Katrina and barely came back and here they get devastated by tornadoes but still play music in what was their driveways, and come together as a community. I have never seen more of a sense of family in strangers anywhere in the world. 
I have added pictures of the devastation below to give you a sense of how badly things hit. 

Hours served: 18

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Is it really January?

I'm not entirely sure how, but I have made it to January. The new year. So fresh, so full of opportunity. We've started some new classes for this semester, including: cellular control mechanisms, and endocrine pharmacology. I think that cell control is going to be immensely useful for whoever is taking or retaking the MCAT this semester.
Getting back into the swing of things after Christmas break is kind of difficult, it's like going to the gym after sitting around binge watching Netflix and ordering domino's. Maybe that's just me. This month I didn't do as much volunteering as I have other months but I did get to do some pretty cool new things. I am still in the transplant unit, so in addition to volunteering as I usually do I had the opportunity to shadow the clinical pharmacist and one of the transplant surgeons.
Shadowing the transplant unit's clinical pharmacists was awesome because I got to see all the drugs that we've been learning in action. Then following up with sitting in on a surgery was great as well. What was even better about sitting in on the surgery was that we had just finished general anesthetics and surgical adjuncts so I was able to see the anesthesiologist admit and monitor these drugs. I enjoy being able to learn about something and then see it in practice. I look forward to new experiences this semester and definitely want to dabble in a few different things.
P.S. It's the last day of January and it's 70 degrees out. Winter is something invented by the North. I'm never going back.
P.P.S. We have a new president. (Stay tuned)


Hours completed for January: 5