This site decribes my adventure as a middle age person trying to navigate their way through the daunting, arduous and somewhat ridiculous path to medical school. This site will either inspire other people who are way too old to apply to medical school or it may just scare the hell out of them. Either way I hope this site will provide some solace and useful info along the way!
Photodynamic therapy is a noninvasive therapy for nonhyperkeratotic actinic keratoses and basal-cell carcinoma. Photodynamic therapy involves the activation of a photosensitizing drug by visible light to produce activated oxygen species within target cells, resulting in their destruction. Commonly used topical photosensitizers are aminolevulinic acid (ALA) and the methyl ester of ALA (MAL), which act as precursors of the endogenous photosensitizer protoporphyrin IX (PpIX). In addition to its therapeutic uses, fluorescence emitted by MAL-induced PpIX may be useful in providing a fluorescence diagnosis of cutaneous lesions. This permits the detection of otherwise occult areas of abnormal skin (Panel A). Tumor margins can also be delineated with the use of...
I found an article here in CNNMoney about a husband and wife who are both residents and looking at a huge amount of debt. I know it's early but it is something to consider later on down the road. I think their case is extraordinary because they are both training to be physicians and are shouldering a huge amount of debt from medical school. I love how all these articles always paint doctors as these hard luck cases..."such are the lives of medical residents: med school graduates getting years of on-the-job training, putting in brutal hours for salaries that, on an hourly basis, work out to a little more than they could earn stocking the shelves at Costco." I actually read that the average resident makes 12/hr given the amount of hours they work relative t...
According to the Texas Medical Association there are three personality traits and disorders common to physicians: narcissitic, obsessive-compulsive and antisocial. I think the main question here is whether these traits are endemic amongst medical pratitioners (i.e. the trait makes the physician who he or she is), or does it manifest itself in the individual as they are preparing to enter the medical profession. I believe the later is true. As a disclaimer I am in no way saying that all physicians exhibit these personality traits. I actually googled "what personality traits make a good physician" and this site came up."Three personality traits and disorders will be discussed in this module: narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive,and antisocial. These three are the most commonly found among p...
"A 14-year-old girl came to the hospital with her mother, stating that a small birthmark on the scalp had recently started growing rather rapidly. It was increasingly pruritic and caused the patient considerable emotional distress. She was otherwise healthy. On examination a large multilobulated, verrucous lesion was seen on the scalp. The findings were consistent with nevus sebaceus. These lesions have a predilection for the scalp and typically appear early in life as a solitary, hairless patch or small plaque. Often they do not cause problems until the patient reaches adolescence, as hormonal factors induce a verrucous or nodular change and the lesion grows in size, occasionally rather dramatically. Given the size and location of the lesion and the risk of malignant transformation, espec...
All of us wonder this one time or another...how smart to you have to be to be a doctor? I actually think about this every hour of every day, but I am a little obsessive compulsive. Well that question came up in YahooAnswers not too long ago and I thought I would share it with everyone. Apparently answerer 2 thinks that you have to be the Gary Kasparov of math to become a doctor. I especially like answerer 1's suggestion that you can't gag when you see blood. And then there is self deprecating answerer 6 who suggests to our young inquisitor that he pursue a Caribbean medical school and even provides a website address...I think he maybe working for them. One person states that their brother was pretty much a complete idiot in high school and now he is a dent...
I started obsessing about how many years it takes to become an MD, so I was comforted by the statistics I found for the mean salary of residencies nationwide. It's not as bad as I thought. Although residencies are the equivalent of hell-week spread out over 3 plus years, at least we are compensated for our work. I found out there are also many perks besides just the salary. I know this is premature, but it is something to look forward to following four or more years of school. The 2007 Mean stipends in United States for a MD Resident (also called house-staff) from any specialty were as follows: 1st Year (PGY1 / Intern ): $44,0002nd Year (PGY2): $46,0003rd Year (PGY3): $48,0004th Year (PGY4): $52,000/-5th Year (PGY5): $54,000/-6th Year (PGY6): $54,000/- Note: These are means based on a nat
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It's really hard to grasp what a doctors life is like day to day. There are people out there that make it sound like your personal life is over once you are a doctor. You will have no time for family, friends, hobbies...nothing. It sounds pretty bleak right? I know that shadowing a doctor is supposed to provide a premed with an honest view of what it is like to be an MD, however, I doubt that any shadowing program allows you to go whom with the doc and see what their life is like outside of the hospital. We are made to believe that their entire life is the hospital when in fact we all know that there are doctors who have happy functional fulfilling lives outside of medicine. I grew up not knowing any doctors. I didn't even have a regular pediatrician because we moved around so much, so my ...
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"A 34-year-old man came to the emergency room with a 3-day history of fevers (peak temperature, 40°C), accompanied by shaking chills. Laboratory tests revealed a hemolytic anemia, with a hemoglobin level of 8.6 g per deciliter. Nodular sclerosing Hodgkin's lymphoma, stage IIIB, had been diagnosed 12 years earlier, in 1994, and the patient underwent splenectomy at that time. He had traveled recently to Massachusetts, Oregon, Hawaii, Florida, and Illinois and to South Africa and Costa Rica. The peripheral-blood smear shows numerous intracellular organisms in red blood cells, with nearly 3% of erythrocytes harboring parasites. Multiple ring forms are seen, as well as rare tetrads (thin arrow). These so-called Maltese cross formations are essentially pathognomonic of babesiosis, since they ar...
An extreme case of nepotism or a gross oversight? A student was admitted to the University of Florida School of Medicine by its Dean, Dr. Bruce Kone, "over the objections of the college's selection committee." Apparently not only did he not take the MCAT, but he "did not apply through AMCAS by the usual deadline - instead, he applied by special permission, given by Dr. Kone, in February." It is not clear what prompted the dean to make this kind of concession for one student, but the article suggests that it may have been political influence by Governor Charlie Grist that expedited the students admission. Governor Grist, who is a friend of the students father, wrote a letter of recommendation for the student when he origin...
I found a great blog that I just had to share with everyone (e.g. the late night post). I am sure some savvy pre-med bloggers out there are all ardent subscribers to the blog Panda Bear, MD, but it is new to me. Every person that has ever made the decision to commit themselves to the pursuit of medicine has inevitably asked themselves whether it is worth it or not. Panda Bear poses this question in such a cogent and eloquent manner that I could never do it justice by paraphrasing it so I recommend that you just read the whole thing for yourself here. I ask myself this question on a daily basis and I still don't know the answer to this and judging by Panda Bear's post I may never will. I constantly second guess myself on whether it was prudent to leave architecture
"Fifty-seven percent of older physicians said they would not recommend medicine as a career to their own children. Similarly, 44 percent said they would not select medicine as career if they were starting out today."This is a quote from an article I found, Many older doctors plan to phase out their practice, while snooping around the Internet and it is really depressing for those of us who want to become doctors. It doesn't really say why more than half of all older doctors polled wouldn't recommend medicine as a career even to their own children. Is it really that bad? Why are they so disgruntled about their jobs? Why are we trying so hard to get to a place that they are trying so hard to get out of? It is really making me...
Well...basically you're screwed. Honestly though we are at a slight disadvantage because we have already taken all the prerequisites, and if your GPA is a little too low for comfort (anything around or below a 3.0) you will have to get a little creative in boosting up your GPA. From what I can tell there are currently 4 programs that are geared toward individuals who come from a science background. These schools include University of Pennsylvania's Special Science Program, Drexel (MSP, IMS & MMS), American University's Premedical Certificate Program and Georgetown's Special Masters Program. I applied to all four and got into Drexel's MSP and UPenn's Special Science. I have only researched Drexel and UPenn in depth so I will describe those two programs...
So there are two types of non-traditional students pursuing medical school, those with a science background and those without. Personally I feel that those individuals who have never taken the med-school prerequisites have a huge advantage over those that have. The prereqs by the way are 2 semesters of Biology with a lab, 2 semesters of inorganic chemistry with a lab, 2 semesters of organic chemistry with a lab and 2 semesters of physics with a lab (there might be additional class requirements for different medschools). There are a number of traditional post-bacs to choose from for the non-science individual which can be found here at Postbaccalaureate Premedical Programs. Many post-bac programs can be found in your area and many offer evening and part ...
What is an optimizer you ask? Well it is what we refer to as any person who goes above and beyond what is needed for the task at hand in order to either elevate their status amongst their peers and or instructor, or to ensure that they maintain their A+ average. Unfortunately for us, re-entry students are often seen as optimizers. You know the type. It's usually the older person in the front row of every lecture, who raises their hand for every question rhetorical or not, and who is without fail always the last one to leave the classroom after class has been dismissed. I used to mock these individuals in undergrad and now I have become one. So please go easy on us because we really don't mean to do it intentionally. It's just that time is so much more precious to us and we must take advant...
"A 62-year-old man reported having had fatigue, fever, and cramping abdominal pain for 7 days. He also reported that he had recently eaten raw pond smelt (Hypomesus olidus). The results of liver-function tests were abnormal, showing elevated levels of aspartate aminotransferase (350 IU per liter), alanine aminotransferase (352 IU per liter), alkaline phosphatase (204 IU per liter), -glutamyltransferase (434 IU per liter), total bilirubin (6.4 mg per deciliter [109 µmol per liter]), and conjugated bilirubin (3.9 mg per deciliter [67 µmol per liter]). The white-cell count was also elevated (13,000 per cubic millimeter), and there was eosinophilia (27%). A computed tomographic scan of the abdomen showed dilatation of the common bile duct without definite filling defects. Given our concern t...
I guess I should preface my first post by stating that I actually applied to medical school once before. I know you are thinking that this would pretty much nullify the whole concept of middle age medical school since I had applied once before at the ripe young age of 25. I like to pretend like that whole event actually never took place. It was one of the more depressing, emotionally and financially draining events of my life. Looking back I now know that I was completely unprepared for the task at hand. Maturity or the lack there of was one factor in my demise. I had a less than stellar GPA coming out of one of the top California universities. This can be contributed to the fact that I was easily distracted (aka partied too much), and I worked like a maniac to pay my way through school (a...
