by Douglas | Nov 17, 2013
To all my countless fans,
After a long delay, I’m back again! I’ll keep this post short and sweet and make it more of a picture blog. But first I’ll update you on what I’ve been up to. Since my last post, I finished my emergency medicine rotation. Having had all my third year rotations and my sub-internships under my belt, it made it a really enjoyable and fulfilling experience. Never knowing what’s coming in on a shift and always doing the initial work-up, it helped me improve my physical exam skills and hone my skills as a diagnostician. You can pretty much just call me Dr. House now 😉 (by the way, House was a graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School #ftw). If I wasn’t doing internal medicine, I think I’d probably pursue emergency medicine!
The big thing that all fourth years are up to right now is interviewing for residency. I’m currently taking the Advanced Medical Therapeutics online course, which is very useful and will help once residency actually starts. It also allows me to have my own schedule! Currently, I’ve interviewed at 3 places and have liked them all. For medicine, the day consists of a program overview, sitting in on morning report where the chief residents present a patient case, a hospital tour, and interviews by usually two physicians, one of which seems to be in your personal career interest. Oh yea, and a free dinner and drinks the night before! Yummy! 😛
Enough of this jibber-jabber, let’s get on with the picture show!
Totally immobilized with Dan "Felt Hair" Veldheer in casting class in preparation for our emergency medicine rotation!
At the end of September I flew down to Arizona to hang out some undergrad buddies from Michigan State in Scottsdale. Here's Joe, LJ and lil' Nicker! We climbed Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. #hammerandanail #stackingthembails
Scholarship dinner with Dr. Anne and John Roberts. In memory of Dr. Roberts (the father of the Dr. Roberts pictured here), two students per class are awarded the scholarship. A truly amazing and still unbelievable honor, I couldn't be more thankful. I hope one day I can do the same.
Traveled down to Philly to take Step 2 CS and spent and extra day checking out the city. #classictourist #rocky
Our annual halloween party, here's a pic of me with fellow Michigan Med Student, Larry Briski! #Idkwhatmycostumeis
To continue the halloween pics, Danny V and I traveled to Pontiac, Michigan to get spooked at the biggest haunted house ever! Boy, were we spooked!! #boo! #spooky #puremichigan
Who said you don't have time for video games in med school?! ;o) Way too good! #callofdutyghosts #28and1 #instaduty
This is one of the many things that makes Ann Arbor a great town. Tons of shows and events to go all year around. About a week ago Brett Dennen came to the local bar, Blind Pig!
Checked out some Michigan Basketball. As I'm sure you can tell, fourth year looks pretty tough now… ;oP
Well that’s it for it now. I’ll take some pix from the interview trail and post again soon!
by Douglas | Sep 17, 2013
Wazzzzupp?!! 😛
It’s been quite awhile since my last blog, so I apologize to all my countless fans. When I last wrote I was on my preventive cardiology outpatient rotation, which turned out to be one of my favorite rotations. I learned tons and even helped write a review on physical inactivity and heart disease with one of the cardiologists in the clinic after the rotation ended. I just finished a month of pathology and Step 2 studying. It feels great to have Step 2 finally off my mind, although still waiting for my score :/ …
As some of you may know, you create your own schedule for fourth year. I chose to front load my schedule and still have a vacation month saved up. Also, you can propose your own independent electives. I took advantage of that and scheduled an interventional cardiology rotation with one of the cardiologists I worked with in the Cardiac Care Unit. I’m on my third week of it and have seen many diagnostic caths (looking at the coronary arteries of patients with unstable angina to see if they need bypass surgery or stents placed), transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVR) (where the cardiac surgeons and interventional cardiologists work together to replace the aortic valve without open heart surgery), and a few other interventions such as peripheral artery stents. I’m really glad I took this opportunity to get experience in this field since we get no exposure during med school or internal medicine residency.
Speaking of residency, I just submitted my application for internal medicine on Sunday. Another big step done. But now I’m broke!
I got a few trips planned for in the upcoming weeks and I’ll post some awesome pics! Other than that I’ve just been trying to enjoy the few remaining warm days and hanging out with some friends.
Watching the Umich vs Notre Game with Dr. Daniel Drungus and Tourgus Brengerson! That's pretty neat!
I had a few people contact me, so if any of you readers have specific questions feel free to shoot me an email – dardendo@umich.edu.
by Douglas | Jul 15, 2013
Hello! As I’m sure you can tell, this is my first blog and I plan to blog the heck out of this blog. I’ll tell you a little about me first. I’m more of a traditional medical student, in that I graduated from Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University and went straight through to medical school. I’m planning on going into internal medicine with an interest in cardiology. I have a younger bro who is teaching biology in Mississippi through the Mississippi Teacher Corps. Fitness is a huge priority in my life and I still like to think I play basketball competively.
Everyone looks forward to M4 year pretty much since the first day of medical school. Thinking you finally have some free time, get to sit around all day and play video games and sleep in until noon. So is there really light at the end of the tunnel? So far, NO! Let me explain…
I chose to front load my schedule, meaning that I did my two sub-internships during the first two periods — cardiac ICU and inpatient gastroenterology. The first week of my cardiac ICU month solidified my choice to enter internal medicine. Patients presented with crushing substernal chest pain from a myocardial infarction were immediately relieved of the pain through cardiac catheterization and stenting, patients coming in with cardiogenic shock and heart failure and seeing the effects of all the pharmacologic pressors and diuretics we studied over the years have an immediate effect, and integrating just about every organ system into one patient’s care convinced there is nothing more interesting than medicine. As I mentioned, my second sub-internship was in gastroenterology, which was quite frustrating and discouraging at times, but still, very rewarding. Patients with end-stage liver disease waiting for their only cure, a liver transplant, made it hard to sit back and just manage. But when it finally comes, like during my last week on the service with a patient who spent over 40 days in the hospital, makes the long hours and hard work definitely worth it.
Also, during my GI sub-internship, we had to prep a lot of patients with GoLytely — a notorious horrible tasting laxative that cleans out the bowel for colonoscopies. A patient of mine had a lower GI bleed and we needed to prep him for an colonoscopy. We tried to put an NG tube in, but he refused and was quite bitter at us afterwards. He grabbed the GoLytely and started chugging it. I came back 10 minutes later to see a look of disgust on his face. He explained that it’s just the nastiest thing you can possibly imagine. I smelled it and, honestly, I thought it smelled quite tasty — like pineapples :oP He dared me to drink a cup of it. I poured some in a little styrofoam cup, and my goodness, was he right.
For those who learn more visually, this is the effect of GoLytely ;o)
Now I am doing a preventive cardiology rotation, which I’ll write about soon. And in the meantime, just trying to enjoy the summer. I played in a couple basketball tournaments, caught up with friends, and recently went to a Dave Matthews Band concert!
Few other UMMS students, Trevor Smith '14, John Donkersloot '15, and Camille Riddering '14 and some friends from MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, including Lil Nicker!
So is there light at the end of tunnel? Although I’m working harder than I did during any year of medical school right now, I couldn’t imagine anything else I’d rather be doing. Eventually, I’ll have so much free time I’ll probably wish I was back in the hospital. So stay tuned for the best blog ever!
