Island Med Student

So, I am happy to announce that my new website will be called doctorpsychobabble.com. Don’t try to visit it yet, because it’s still in progress. Anyway, it’s going to rock, and I’ve been working on it all day. I hope to publish it in the next few days. The photo above will be the new banner. I’m still working out all the details. Anyway, I was going to keep this a secret until it was all finalized and published, but it turns out that I suck at keeping secrets.

It is finally official! I have fulfilled all of the requirements to be a medical doctor. I won’t receive my diploma for a few weeks, and my graduation ceremony isn’t until June 4th. But for all practical purposes, I AM a doctor!

I’d like to take a moment to thank EVERYONE for all of their support over the past 4 years. I DEFINITELY could not have done it without all of you. I love you all!

Now, to the oyster part. So, I want nothing more right now than to go out and celebrate all my hard work and medical degree. However, I have one teensy weensy little problem. I’m completely broke.

I know this is going to sound totally lame, but it’s the only thing I could think of. I am asking for a donation. If you’ve ever gotten any good advice from this website, if I’ve ever made you smile, if I’ve ever pissed you off: I’m asking you to make a small donation. I feel really stupid asking for this, but hey, you do what you gotta!

So, I know this AWESOME joint just down the road from me that has a happy hour with ONE DOLLAR RAW OYSTERS!! Right now, this sounds like the VERY BEST way to celebrate my medical degree.

So, if you can donate even just one dollar to my pathetic little self, you can buy me a congratulatory oyster!

If you click the link below, you can easily use a credit card (or Paypal account, but don’t worry, you don’t have to have a Paypal account, just a credit card) to donate one dollar to my empty belly. There is also a description field, where you can include your name (if you like) and a short message (if you like).

When I eat each oyster, I will take a photo, and then post the photo, along with your name and message (unless you tell me not to) on my website for the world to see.

I hope no one hates me for this silly idea!

Anyway, here’s to being a doctor! And here’s to so much more learning to come! Thank you, everyone for ALL of your support!!

My sister Briana (we call her Bruce) is in the running for top Captain Morganette. Click here to vote for Bruce! (She’s under the East Category…you can check out her photos and video.)

Go Brucey!! Love you!

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!! TODAY IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE!! I just signed a pre-match contract for residency. I’ll explain what that is later for those of you who don’t know, but the point is, I MATCHED!! No more ERAS, no more NRMP, no more stress!!! I will soon share the details of where I matched and in which speciality, but I’m keeping that a secret right now. I am so happy that I can’t stop smiling and laughing and crying and jumping up and down in the air!!! I am listening to Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling” on repeat and dancing around my apartment. All my hard work, all those interviews, it’s all paid off! I got a job as a DOCTOR! This is the best day of my life. I feel like screaming! “TONIGHT’S GONNA BE A GOOD NIGHT…MAZEL TOV!!!

The last few days have been quite unpleasant, hence the absence of me from my blog. Friday was the last day of my pain management rotation, but I didn’t make it in to the hospital because I was in “pain.” Don’t you just love the irony?! I woke up Thursday night around midnight in horrible pain. My abdomen was gripped with 8/10 cramps, and I felt extremely nauseous. My head was pounding and I felt feverish as well. After about an hour of this torture, the crap really hit the fan! Well, actually, the vomit hit the floor. I began vomiting uncontrollably all over the floor beside my bed. After several rounds of this, my partner Micah carried me into the bathroom, plopped me into a bath, and placed a trashcan by my head to catch the vomit. To make a very long, and unpleasant story short, I didn’t get much sleep Thursday night, and by Friday morning I was in no shape to make it to the hospital, so I had to call in sick, and miss the last day of my rotation. Hopefully my attending will understand when I ask him for my evaluation next week.

I realized last night that I had been vomiting so much and so forcefully that it had caused petechial hemorrhaging around both of my eyes. I guess I’m lucky that it didn’t cause subconjunctival hemorrhaging as well (I’ve had that happen in the past with a bad case of food poisoning). I’m still not sure what exactly caused my ails, but I am starting to feel better today, and have tolerated a solid diet for almost 24 hours, so I think I’m mostly in the clear.

To share some better news, I have (with help from Micah) made some upgrades to my site over the past few weeks. I have added a new Publications tab, which has links to a few journal articles I’ve published and my Medscape articles. I’m not allowed to cross-blog my Medscape articles for the period of one year. So, I’ve gone back and updated all my Medscape posts, which are older than one year, so that they have the original post, and not just a link to the Medscape post.

We also put my site on a new, enterprise-grade server, which makes it load much faster (says Micah!), and we updated my Videos page so that the player is much nicer, and all of my YouTube videos are displayed. I hope you likey!

Back in April, when the rumors of a tablet device from Apple were beginning to surface, Software Advice wondered aloud if a Mac tablet would become the gadget of choice to integrate with electronic medical records.

Apparently, that concept may soon be a reality. In early January, Venture Beat reported a rumor that Apple reps have been spotted at Los Angeles’ Cedar-Sinai hospital, probing physicians about how a tablet (Apple’s iSlate) could be used in a hospital setting. Meanwhile, tablets were all the rage earlier this year at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show with product announcements from Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell.

2010 is shaping up to be the year of the tablet. Software Advice wants to know which device is best positioned to rule the halls of healthcare.

Click the link below to take their short (8 question) survey about a tablet’s potential in the healthcare industry.

Click here to take the survey.

Software Advice: Which Tablet PC Will Rule the Halls of Healthcare?

I need to sublet my apartment for three months this year (May, June, and July). I would love to find a med student in need, but would be willing to consider other folks as well. I’d prefer to sublet all three months to one person, but would be willing to do one or two months as well. Would give a discount to anyone who rents two or three months.

Here are the details:

- Reasonably sized studio apartment. I’m not sure of the square footage, but it’s pretty big as far as NYC studios go.

- Has living area, kitchen (with stove, fridge, sink), and bathroom, with a bathtub.

- Hardwood floors and tile floor in bathroom.

- Relatively new, and the appliances are all nice (although the fridge is small). Apartment is pretty and in good condition.

- Lots of sunlight and two large windows.

- Walking distance to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center (one mile).

- VERY close to JMZ subway line. About a 3 minute walk.

- Walking distance to L train. About a 10-15 minute walk.

- Right across from a 24 hour BP station, and close to many stores on Broadway.

- Washers and dryers in the building (they take quarters).

- Pretty safe building, buzzed entry and locked building.

- Young, cool people in building.

- Animal friendly (dogs and cats).

- Would be unfurnished, but could potentially leave some furniture, if necessary.

- I’m willing to cover all amenities (water, electricity, gas and high-speed Internet).

Send me an email via my website contact form if you’re interested, and I will send you the exact location, and prices!

Gel Health will explore the patient experience – how to improve it, and who’s doing it, in a variety of organizations and companies. Like any Gel conference, we’ll tackle the theme from a broad array of perspectives.

A good primer on patient experience is this video of Bridget Duffy’s talk at Gel 2008

Gel Health will be held on Thursday and Friday, October 22 and 23, 2009 at Scandinavia House, Park Avenue and 38th Street in Manhattan.

Gel Health tickets are available at for $499.

The Gel (Good Experience Live) conference series, a seven-year-old event curated by Mark Hurst, is launching a new healthcare event – Gel Health – a conference focused on the patient experience.

Vote Early, Vote Often!

We’ve been selected as a finalist in the 2008 Weblog Awards, in the category of Best Medical/Health Issues Blog! Every reader who participates in the discussions there, and even those who just follow along, should consider themselves part of this blog. Show your support by voting for Me and the other writers at The Differential here (just click on the button by our name — you can vote once per day until the polls close on Jan. 13). Thanks for your support!

My recent hair change for the new year was so successful that I decided to give my website a facelift as well. Welcome to Island Med Student 2.0. Since I first released my site last August, I knew that I would eventually be making a huge upgrade. I’ve migrated from Moveable Type to Wordpress, which is a much more user-friendly application (if you ask me…which you didn’t.) Hopefully, you’ll find this new site to be prettier, easier to navigate, and more informative. I still have a lot more content that I plan on adding in the next few weeks such as the long-awaited pics of the Ross University campus and some more links to kewl med school course related stuff. Also, I plan on writing a little Med School Survival Guide, which I’m hoping will be useful to some of you out there.

I want to give a huge shoutout to Micah, Circus Boy and Katie, who all contributed manual labor/putting up with me working on this project. I couldn’t have done it without you guyz and galz. I’m really excited about the new year, and all that awaits us. I know that I’ll be working my toosh off, but as with most things in life, a little bit of elbow grease goes a long way.