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Tuesday, February 21, 2012

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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.