When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) headed to Havana on a historic trade mission in April, he returned with the promise of an important commodity: a Cuban-developed lung cancer vaccine. The va
Ahhhhh congrats!!!! What were your meat gpa stats? I am about to write my secondary to nymc and I am debating based on my stats since they don't prescient
It was last year so I kind of forgot but I think 3.75 gpa and 32 mcat! Good luck!! Also I love nymc so apply :)
Hi! I am applying to medical school this cycle and also applied to nymc! My question is did you apply through an early decision program?
Sorry I didn't see this until now! But no, I applied in the regular cycle. I submitted my primary in the very beginning of July and the secondary as soon as my application was verified (which took about 8 weeks or so because AMCAS was super backed up). Invited to an interview in Jan, interviewed late February, sent a letter of update mid March, and accepted in the beginning of April. Let me know if you have any more questions!
The first time I held a human brain in Anatomy Lab I was completely speechless. I looked at my classmates expecting a similar reaction and they looked back at me confused like…”dude let’s start identifying the structures.” I had to take a step back and let it process…in my hands was someone’s entire life. From start to finish, every memory, every emotion, every bodily control…was right there in my hands.
Okay so I know I haven’t updated this blog as all because I totally suck at keeping journals/writing things down. Sorry about that, friends.
BUT I have officially gotten my first acceptance at New York Medical College this morning so hell fucking yeah!
It’s been a long waiting process but finally my dreams are coming true. I’m so grateful for all the unwavering support from all my family and friends, I’m glad I finally have something to show for all my hard work. This is going to be a long, hard journey but I’m fucking pumped and can’t wait to start my future.
Despite not updating like ever haha, I’m down to answer any and all of your questions about anything! Feel free to send me an ask, I’d love to help you out 😀 Good luck everyone, you’re going to do great!
Hi friends! So this April, I’ll be alternating between the moods of YAY DANCING and plznoIjustwanttosleep for 32 hours at Rutgers Dance Marathon. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, please help me reach my fundraising goal of $350 for children with cancer and blood diseases. Any amount helps! :)
P.S. Donations will be compensated with love, (virtual) cookies, and as many pictures of cute animals as you request.
P.P.S. I can also provide pictures of not very cute animals if that’s what you prefer, like such:
Are medical professionals biased against the mentally ill?
THE first time it was an ear, nose and throat doctor. I had an emergency visit for an ear infection, which was causing a level of pain I hadn’t experienced since giving birth. He looked at the list of drugs I was taking for my bipolar disorder and closed my chart.
“I don’t feel comfortable prescribing anything,” he said. “Not with everything else you’re on.” He said it was probably safe to take Tylenol and politely but firmly indicated it was time for me to go. The next day my eardrum ruptured and I was left with minor but permanent hearing loss.
Another time I was lying on the examining table when a gastroenterologist I was seeing for the first time looked at my list of drugs and shook her finger in my face. “You better get yourself together psychologically,” she said, “or your stomach is never going to get any better.”
If you met me, you’d never know I was mentally ill. In fact, I’ve gone through most of my adult life without anyone ever knowing — except when I’ve had to reveal it to a doctor. And that revelation changes everything. It wipes clean the rest of my résumé, my education, my accomplishments, reduces me to a diagnosis.
I was surprised when, after one of these run-ins, my psychopharmacologist said this sort of behavior was all too common. At least 14 studies have shown that patients with a serious mental illness receive worse medical care than “normal” people. Last year the World Health Organization called the stigma and discrimination endured by people with mental health conditions “a hidden human rights emergency.”
I never knew it until I started poking around, but this particular kind of discriminatory doctoring has a name. It’s called “diagnostic overshadowing.”
According to a review of studies done by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London, it happens a lot. As a result, people with a serious mental illness — including bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder — end up with wrong diagnoses and are under-treated.
That is a problem, because if you are given one of these diagnoses you probably also suffer from one or more chronic physical conditions: though no one quite knows why, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome and mitral valve prolapse often go hand in hand with bipolar disorder.
Less mysterious is the weight gain associated with most of the drugs used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, which can easily snowball into diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. The drugs can also sedate you into a state of zombiedom, which can make going to the gym — or even getting off your couch — virtually impossible.
It’s little wonder that many people with a serious mental illness don’t seek medical attention when they need it. As a result, many of us end up in emergency rooms — where doctors, confronted with an endless stream of drug addicts who come to their door looking for an easy fix — are often all too willing to equate mental illness with drug-seeking behavior and refuse to prescribe pain medication.
I should know: a few years ago I had a persistent migraine, and after weeks trying to get an appointment with any of the handful of headache specialists in New York City, I broke down and went to the E.R. My husband filled out paperwork and gave the nurse my list of drugs. The doctors finally agreed to give me something stronger than what my psychopharmacologist could prescribe for the pain and hooked me up to an IV.
I lay there for hours wearing sunglasses to block out the fluorescent light, waiting for the pain relievers to kick in. But the headache continued. “They gave you saline and electrolytes,” my psychopharmacologist said later. “Welcome to being bipolar.”
When I finally saw the specialist two weeks later (during which time my symptoms included numbness and muscle weakness), she accused me of being “a serious cocaine user” (I don’t touch the stuff) and of displaying symptoms of “la belle indifference,” a 19th-century term for a kind of hysteria in which the patient converts emotional symptoms into physical ones — i.e., it was all in my head.
Indeed, given my experience over the last two decades, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the statistics I found in the exhaustive report “Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness,” a review of studies published in 2006 that provides an overview of recommendations and general call to arms by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. The take-away: people who suffer from a serious mental illness and use the public health care system die 25 years earlier than those without one.
True, suicide is a big factor, accounting for 30 to 40 percent of early deaths. But 60 percent die of preventable or treatable conditions. First on the list is, unsurprisingly, cardiovascular disease. Two studies showed that patients with both a mental illness and a cardiovascular condition received about half the number of follow-up interventions, like bypass surgery or cardiac catheterization, after having a heart attack than did the “normal” cardiac patients.
The report also contains a list of policy recommendations, including designating patients with serious mental illnesses as a high-priority population; coordinating and integrating mental and physical health care for such people; education for health care workers and patients; and a quality-improvement process that supports increased access to physical health care and ensures appropriate prevention, screening and treatment services.
Such changes, if implemented, might make a real difference. And after seven years of no change, signs of movement are popping up, particularly among academic programs aimed at increasing awareness of mental health issues. Several major medical schools now have programs in the medical humanities, an emerging field that draws on diverse disciplines including the visual arts, humanities, music and science to make medical students think differently about their patients. And Johns Hopkins offers a doctor of public health with a specialization in mental health.
Perhaps the most notable of these efforts — and so far the only one of its kind — is the narrative medicine program at Columbia University Medical Center, which starts with the premise that there is a disconnect between health care and patients and that health care workers need to start listening to what their patients are telling them, and not just looking at what’s written on their charts.
According to the program’s mission statement, “The effective practice of health care requires the ability to recognize, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others. Medicine practiced with narrative competence is a model for humane and effective medical practice.”
We can only hope that humanizing programs like this one become a requirement for all health care workers. Maybe then “first, do no harm” will apply to everyone, even the mentally ill.
By JULIANN GAREY
Published: August 10, 2013
The author of the novel “Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See” and a co-editor of “Voices of Bipolar Disorder: The Healing Companion.”
Reblogging because this is the sort of thing that needs signal boosting the heck out of it. Probably many of the people who see this in my Tumblr are people who already know from first-hand experience as a patient. Probably most of the people who even know my Tumblr exists are not in a position to perpetuate this problem (because they aren’t doctors). But I figure if more people get info like this circulating, maybe eventually someone in a better position to reach more doctors with this kind of information and open serious dialogue about how to address the problem will come across this.
Until then, at least a better informed patient population can, I hope, be in a better position to advocate for themselves—if not always as individuals then perhaps as groups.
UNTREATABLE
Today’s Drug-Resistant Health Threats
[via Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]
[Graphics gallery, available for downloading]
Every year, more than two million people in the United States get infections that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die as a result, according to a new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Download / View the report as a PDF …
The report, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013, presents a first-ever snapshot of the burden and threats posed by the antibiotic-resistant germs that have the most impact on human health. This report is also the first time that CDC has ranked these threats into categories of urgent, serious, and concerning.
In addition to the illness and deaths caused by resistant bacteria, the report found that C. difficile, a serious diarrheal infection usually associated with antibiotic use, causes at least 250,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths every year.
The loss of effective antibiotic treatments will not only cripple the ability to fight routine infectious diseases
but will also undermine treatment of infectious complications in patients with other diseases.
Many advances in medical treatment, such as joint replacements, organ transplants, and cancer therapies, are dependent on the ability to fight infections with antibiotics. If the ability to effectively treat those infections is lost, the ability to safely offer people many of the life-saving and life-improving modern medical advances will be lost with it.
The use of antibiotics is the single most important factor leading to antibiotic resistance around the world. Antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed drugs used in human medicine. However, up to half of antibiotic use in humans and much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary or inappropriate.
It's been a while! Still on the secondaries struggle bus
So far, I've received 20 secondaries and have finished 9. I'm hoping to finish all the ones I've gotten so far, but it's been incredibly difficult to balance school, having a life, extracurricular obligations, sleep, and secondaries with my diminishing motivation :(
The biggest thing stressing me out is that I constantly feel like I'm already so late with these applications; some of my friends have gotten interviews already and one has already gotten into NJMS through early decision. jfadskldssadjkflds!!!!
Back in May, me eagerly awaiting med school applications
Me now... unnngh halp i am smushed
But to try to calm my nerves, I just keep reminding myself that some people haven't even gotten their primaries in or verified or that some people only applied very few schools and still were fine or that I'm not the only one still working on secondaries. To push myself, I just keep telling myself that every one in means I have a better chance of getting in and that I've already gotten 9 in so yay! Also I'm trying to just focus on one school at a time and set little goals for myself.
I've been known to be a perfectionist--both my mom and my dad have told me to just get my secondaries in instead of agonizing over every single word. A perfect but late application <<<< good application that's on time. Good advice, I think.
Since I love lists...
Completed Secondaries (yay!)
Jefferson - 9/12, $80
Robert Wood Johnson - 9/10, $80
Drexel - 9/5, 100
Keck University of Southern California - 9/1, $90
Boston University - 8/25, $110
George Washington - 8/23, $125
Einstein - 8/19, $120
New York Medical College - 7/16, $110
NJ Medical School - 7/4, $85
Secondaries on my To-Do List (le sigh)
Temple
University of Virginia
NYU
Stanford
Duke University
Penn State
Brown
East Virginia Medical School
Virginia Commonwealth University
UC San Diego
Mt. Sinai
Interviews Received
ﾍ(;´Д｀ﾍ)
Also my current updated total costs = $1,900
Feel free to ask me any questions or share your application struggles haha! My inbox is always open and I like friends yay
So I had been dreading this day the entire summer but my AMCAS app finally got verified Thursday 8/15 and I just got a bajillion secondaries/emails from schools. HALP
So to keep organized, I just wanted to write down what schools I've gotten what from so far:
Before Verification (finish ASAP):
Got the NYMC Secondary today, and it was literally the shortest secondary of all time. And I still messed it up haha oops. Basically all they asked was whether I had relatives at NYMC (No, so that was blank), to list the writers of my letters of recommendation (I sent in a letter packet, so that was a one-line response), and payment (which I said was Visa instead of MasterCard ugh).
Sent them an email though letting them know my mistake. Hopefully this doesn't make things complicated.
Also I'm not sure if committee letter = letter packet, so I may have also messed up that part... Oy vey. Probably shouldn't have rushed through the four-click process, damn it.
"It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. "
This article gets you thinking about a topic that no one likes to think about, but that everyone has to face. Honestly, if I had to, I would probably make the same choice.
This article, especially the last paragraphs, struck a chord in me.
"More and more, I feel a close kinship to my colleagues, brothers and sisters in medicine. We’ve been through a LOT together. We’ve cried together … tears of joy and tears of sadness. We’ve sacrificed a lot to be doctors … time (at least 8 years of education after high school), money (I’m exiting with $300,000 of debt), and immeasurable energy, emotion, care, and missed opportunities because we were working hard.
Medical school has changed me a lot, and I hope with all my heart that all my experiences will make me an excellent doctor. We’ve been through a lot, we’ve done it together, and, even if we don’t always do it well, we’ve done it with the one main goal of providing excellent care for you."
And I've seen it personally, too, how hard these physicians work and how much they love their patients. I can only hope to be half of the doctors they are in the future.
After talking to one of my friends from CA, I decided that the answer to GW's "most significant achievement" question was how I flew cross-country for a 30 minute interview to get into the surgical program in the first place, then drove 3000 miles to get to CA, then moved across the country to a place without knowing a single person, and still was able to find a place to live, be truly independent, make a whole bunch of amazing friends, explore an entirely new place, and still keep a strong support system with my friends and family back home. I never thought I'd be able to do that before, you know? I've lived in NJ for my entire life, within 40 minutes of home. And I used to be completely anti-social! (though I'm not saying that on my application lulz, don't want GW to think I'm a total loser) But I'm pretty proud of myself actually.
I guess I didn't want to say that originally since a lot of people go far away for college or whatever, and that it might have seemed almost like I was bragging about my finances and how I was able to travel cross-country without worrying about money. But thinking about it, I'm actually really amazed at how well I've adapted :)
Truthfully, thinking about leaving in less than two months is making me really sad. I'm in love with this state and with my life over here. I'm going to miss everyone so much.
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