VIRTUAL MEDICAL SCHOOL I: So I Got Accepted into Medical School!

Thursday, January 12, 2012

So I Got Accepted into Medical School!

As Match Day approaches and all your invested time, blood, sweat, and tears have 'paid off' so that you are now going to be going to Medical School, what advice can we best give?

Respect.

Respect your teachers, your studies, the wonders of learning about the Anatomy and the Physiology of the human body. Respect your class mates, your peers who you may know for the rest of your life. Some will drop out of medical school, some will drop out of Internship, some will drop out of Residency...some will not live long enough to finish Fellowship.

You are about to embark on a fantastic and unique journey that needs to be taken seriously. If you were lucky enough to cram for tests in college and then get an 'A', guess what? You may have been one of the smartest students in your class for your whole life.

But on the first day of Medical School, we would like for you to look around your Class. Pause a bit and realize that from now on, things are going to be different. It is not just about getting an 'A'...it is about dedication, running the distance, and keeping your soul free.

The true grit of Medical School may leave you standing in line getting groceries, while you memorize a list of facts for Microbiology or Neuroanatomy Class. The time you spend eating an apple and the time that you spend swimming laps will go a long way in forming the basis for what kind of a doctor you will be, no matter your Specialty.

We believe that you can have it all. A successful marriage, a beautiful family, a mind that is free of adversity, a body that works well, and a soul with integrity and perseverance. For it is these things that you will carry throughout your professional career. And no matter if you 'make it' into the 'best' Surgical Program that your father and your grandfather went to...no matter if you started out by picking garlic in the fields of Gilroy, California...no matter what your background, you must remember one thing.

There is only one of YOU. Take the best of you and put it forward every day. Smile when you ask a nurse to help you put in an intravenous line. Say, 'please' and 'thank you' a lot. Realize that you can not get along with every body. There are always people out there that don't get along with you or any one else, anyway. So do not be on a roller coaster. No ups and downs.

Instead, keep up the good fight. Stay steady in good times and in bad times. Keep your cool. Know that you are making a difference every single day, with every single word that you say. And take this wonderful, select opportunity to find yourself.

For you are now a Physician, a Healer, a promoter of hope. You join history and you are the future of medicine. Don't forget to look back and help the medical students 10 and 20 years from now. You are the future, and later, you will continue to shape the future of Medicine.

So study hard to benefit your patients. Keep yourself fit emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

And sit back once in a while and just be grateful to be in. Now go out, go on and be the best person that you can be. Sleep at night knowing that you did your best.

Remember that you may not remember every patient that you see, but every patient that you see will remember you. Keep on smiling.

1 comment:

Margaret A. Ferrante, M.D.January 12, 2012 at 9:08 PM
Hey!....and if you do not get accepted into Medical School the first time around?

1. If it is in your soul, plan to reapply.
2. Get guidance so you can maximize your re-application.
3. Refocus on your Personal Statement.
4. MCAT's not so good? Retake only if you can do better.
5. Take off 1 year to do research.
6. Seek professional guidance for your unique situation.
7. Individual Consultations available.
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The First Virtual Medical School Online

On January 1, 2012, Dr. Margaret Aranda was the first to develop the concept of a virtual medical school (VMS). Since 2006, she was in a horrific car accident that left her bed-bound with a traumatic brain injury and DI. She became a "professional patient" and saw a myraid of doctors for a variety of brainstem and brain dysfunctions. She knew all too well what it felt like to be a patient, trapped in a body that felt like it didn't belong to her. Eventually, the DI resolved.

She knows common troubles with the medical system: patients not feeling like they are listened to, patients, especially women, being treated as if they have a psychiatric or hormonal problems ("It's all in your head"), patients given topical lipservice when the doctor missed a vertebral artery dissection, and living with dysautonomia. Dr. Aranda kept a Memoir while hospitalized, in Neurorehabilitation, learning how to walk and talk again, and learning how to do simple things like bake cupcakes. The Memoir, No More Tears, A Physician Turned Patient Inspires Recovery is so named because no one thought she would survive, especially with 3 years on a PICC line for fluids. Ah. But no one really knew her, did they?

Then she got better. It took 7 years, but she was better.

She went back to work in a clinic for ?a few days. The next thing she knew, she was back to having a huge migraine that left her incapacitated, but this time was accompanied by ataxia so that she was bumping into the walls. Off to the ER, hypoperfusion to the brainstem #2, and a doctor told her he would catch her if she fell...and had her close her eyes and do finger-to-nose simultaneously and well, she...she shook....and she wobbled.......then she really wobbled some more..........then she completely lost her balance and fell to the hard wood floor. All in one full swoop; no one caught her. The doctor may have his side of the story, but the fact is that she developed another TBI with DI, gave up a position at Stanford, had difficulty titrating the dysautonomia with the DI (sometimes being hyponatremic to 121, other times having acute kidney injury with a GFR of 25%).

She lives quietly at home with her daughter and dogs, taking up her love of writing as a chance that she may never have had. So far, she has written 5 books. Her latest, Archives of the Vagina: A Journey through Time, is part Memoir, part History, part Women's Culture, part Medicine, and wholly Health & Wellness. Meant to take a girl from puberty through menopause and be helpful for Long-Term Care, Nursing Homes, Living Wills, and future planning, all her books can be found at: http://www.drmargaretaranda.tateauthor.com/other-works/

Dr. Aranda would rather speak to children than half the adults she knows, lol, so she wrote two books for her daughter. Little Missy Two-Shoes is always transformed from disliking something (ladybugs, going to school) to learning how to embrace them. Her last book is Stepping from the Edge, the Sequel to No More Tears, and a Workbook with room for write-in answers after virtually every chapter.

Dr. Aranda's Virtual Medical School edifies the transformation from sickness to health as being part of the entire entity of a person: mind, body, and soul. Just as she was taught at Oral Roberts' School of Medicine. She learned to pray with her patients, and still hears that still, small whisper of the Holy Spirit that guides her in prophesying, confirming, and serving as edification for the sick, that Our Lord is alive and well, and He is still in the business of doing miracles. Period.