Once school starts, no doubt my schedule will get busier, participating in student research, serving as president of our chapter of the American Medical Students Association, and as a Teachers’ Assistant are all time-consuming activities. My course load for this next semester is also the hardest I’ve had so far in my career (I’ll put it at the bottom of this post). I’m also planning on taking my MCAT this January, after I returned yesterday, I thought carefully, and I’ve decided to heavily tone down my internet and social media presence. After I finish my appearance on the Dr.A show, and these last few guest posts, I will not be doing anymore live UStream shows or guest posts until February at the earliest. I will also heavily cut down my twitter usage, I may only tweet a couple of times a week, and you may have to wait a couple of days to hear a response. It hurts me to have to do this and cut out one of the things I love to do, but at the end of the day one must have proper priorities, and unfortunately my priorities do not involve me being on twitter and facebook as often as I have been in the past.

I will continue to write regular posts for Pre-Med Hell which is the reason I will not be accepting requests for guest posts; as writing those posts takes a decent amount of time, and I’m not willing to devote more time than that for writing at this point.

Fall 2010 Schedule
BIOL-340 : Cell Biology
BCHM-361 : Big Boy Biochem
BCHM-362 : Protein Lab
BIOL-258 : Human Physio
HUMN-230 : Baptism of Europe

Extracurriculars
Biophysics Research
President- American Medical Students Association (Benedictine Chapter)
Member- American Chemical Society/Society of Physics Students
Teachers’ Assistant – Organic Chemistry I Lab for Chemistry and Biochemistry Majors
Teachers’ Assistant – General Chemistry I Lab

I was able to watch “Inception” at midnight, nay, I had the privilege of being able to see it at midnight, it is honestly one of the best movies I’ve seen since “The Dark Knight”, I enjoyed it so much that I’m actually willing to put it a notch above it.  From the director that brought us “Memento,” “Inception” is another great masterpiece, which plays with your mind, your concept of reality, and your basic principles.

This film challenges you to keep up with it; you sit in your seat, worrying that if you blink you might miss something. “Inception” tries to understand what it means to dream, and the ability of one to manipulate and accept that reality. This movie was completely groundbreaking, and I highly doubt anyone will try to recreate this movie for a very long time, only because there are very few directors with the ability to recreate such a phenomenal movie. Nolan directs movies within movies within movies, It has such intricate subplots that each subplot feels like another movie. This was an extremely well executed movie, even with so many plot lines and subplots, I didn’t notice any major plot holes.

The soundtrack was great, as were the special effects. I can’t say much about them, because they were exactly what they should have been secondary. It wasn’t a movie where it was all about special effects *cough*Avatar*cough*, this was a movie that stood on its acting, directing, and well written story line. People say this took Nolan 10 years to write and I believe them, I couldn’t write a story like this in 30 years. The ending of the movie was phenomenal the whole theater simultaneously let out a scream of frustration, but even if I told you the ending, it wouldn’t help you at all. This movie surpasses the ordinary film, it’s not about the ending; it’s about the journey and the story line.

If you haven’t already seen this movie do yourself a favor and watch it, it’s an instant classic and in my top 5 movie list. This movie filled me with sheer awe; I couldn’t be more pleased with it. I’ve already paid $7 to see it once, and I’ll be paying to see it again more than once, and I have every intention of purchasing it on Blu-Ray when it is released.

10/10, this movie was nothing short of phenomenal and breath taking.

Directions are simple, navigate to the sprout social dashboard, click the page icon in the top right, and then click create application shortcut.

EDIT

Here are the directions for doing the same in firefox. Install the prism addon from firefox labs <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6665/>, follow the directions and restart. Navigate to the sprout social dashboard, and click tools>convert website to application, boom 2 clicks and you have a sprout social desktop application (sorta)

I hope that helps people a little bit.

-Mohammad

Jack Harkness: “Why did you become a doctor?”

Owen: “I thought if I could save one life, mine would be worthwhile but you save one, theres another, and another, imploring you, demanding to be saved, and even if you do succeed, you can never save enough.”

Food for thought.

The Back Story

I chose my major in biochemistry and molecular biology because I loved the interdisciplinary nature of it; I love triathlons because of that same feeling of mastering multiple areas. I can’t like others say that medicine has been my calling since I was 2 years old, I was a rebellious child, I didn’t want anything to do with medicine as both my parents are physicians (father: pediatrician and mother: anesthesiologist). As a child I was obsessed with computers and till late middle school, I couldn’t think of doing anything other than going into computers, as I aged and gained very little wisdom, I thought law would be a better field. That really didn’t last very long; the field just disgusted me for the most part.

I entered high school not exactly sure of what I wanted to do, except it better not be medicine; I had a vague interest in engineering and took a couple entry level engineering and drafting courses offered through my high school. I was determined to become an architect. Time came to apply to college, I applied broadly to school strong in the sciences, and a few architecture programs. I got accepted to a couple of both programs. At this time I was in an AP Biology class as well as an AP Psychology class and both of them together helped me to realize that there was no greater feat of engineering than the human body; it was one of the most beautiful things on earth. Still determined to avoid medicine I declared as a biochemistry and molecular biology major, little did I know the amount of science I would absorb in that first semester would drive me into choosing medicine as my future pathway.

I am going to add a point here for clarification, while my parents are pretty pleased and supportive of me choosing medicine as my pathway, they didn’t push me into it. My dad suggested that I go into business, since I have a little bit of an instinct in the area, and they both mentioned that there are much easier and faster ways to make money.

The Question

The question still remains, why do I want to become a doctor, why not a PhD and do research? I thought and thought, and I came to the realization that I want to be a doctor because I can’t imagine myself sitting in a lab all day, I love my research, but I can’t imagine doing nothing else for the rest of my life. I crave for the opportunity to work with people, make the feel better or at minimum being able to provide an explanation. I don’t want to just look at the science, I want to take the science and apply it to real life, combine the science with actual cases. The quest to become a doctor gives me infinite intellectual stimulus, and the fact that it seems to be a fairly stable field helps slightly.

I want to be a doctor, because I want the chance to lead and innovate, I want to help people understand things that scare them; I want to comfort the family that doesn’t understand what’s happening. I want to be the person looking for the greatest reason for why doctors do what they do. I want to be able to apply all the science and provide relief and benefits for those that are suffering.

The End

One thing that I must mention is that I’ve seen my parents go through residency, and I’ve seen them on call on weekend, I’ve seen the sacrifices that must be made. I have tons of friends in medical school and residency and I see them fighting their way through and I know the hardships that I will have to face to become a physician, and I still want to do it. Call me a masochist but I’m willing to torture myself for a great amount of years to become a doctor. I’m going to understand and repair the greatest feat of engineering, programming, and architecture ever created. The Sears Tower or the Empire State Building has nothing on the human body. If you want to impress yourself look at the abuse we put ourselves through on a daily basis, look at professional endurance athletes, and average people who do ironman triathlons. We can push ourselves to amazing feats. Humans can’t fly, they don’t run that fast, we’re not naturally amazing swimmers, but we’ve reached the highest points on earth, we’ve left the atmosphere, we’ve created machines to accelerate us past speeds know to any living creature, and dive deep that most creatures. I don’t know about you but I think the human body is pretty damn impressive and I’m willing to dedicate my life to learning more about it and healing it.

Signing Off,

Mohammad

8:57 AM- 06/20/2009

Volunteering in the ER approximately 1 hour into my shift, going to return some IV fluids back to the pharmacy, return to the ER at approximately 8:30 AM, call comes in patient in full arrest, 8:40 paramedics bring patient in on cart doing chest compressions, hospital staff takes over, no pulse, no respiration, 8:57 AM patient pronounced dead. 8:58 AM another patient brought in, life goes on.

This was the first death I witnessed in person, the patient was fairly young less than 50 years of age. It goes to show how short life is, there is no time to waste. In the 20 minutes that I had contact with them I learned more about life than I have in my 18 years. 

Life is short.
Life brings the unexpected.
Life goes on.
Health professionals have the right view on life and death, people die, that's the end of the story.
Make the most of life while you still can.

I guess standing inches away from a person, and seeing them pass away, can teach you more about life than this note may, or that anyone or anything else possibly can. Circulation stops, the body starts going pale, the eyes didn't close, there was an eerie sense of calm on the deceased face, they looked like they were just laying there, as if sleeping, but one felt something was wrong.

My whole shift I kept looking at the room, another patient was eventually moved in there, and the body was moved to the trauma bay, but when I saw the new patient, I could see the deceased laying there. The way the ER handled itself was calm and peaceful, yet one could tell there was something on everyone's mind. The calmness, and almost passiveness over the passing of this patient, seemed like the ER staff's way of mourning the loss, by continuing their jobs and their day and saving lives.

Talking to the staff they all said, it doesn't get any easier, but over time one learns that you can't do anything about it, it is best to move on quickly, because life will go on, there will be other patients, and for every patient you lose remember how many lives you've saved.

I remember the exact conversation leading to the patient being pronounced dead;

Doctor: How long have we been doing compressions?
Nurse: About 15 minutes, and the paramedics were for about 30.
Doctor: So about 45 minutes?
Nurse: That's right should I administer the 5th dose of EPI?
Doctor: I think we have to call it, what time is it, 8:57 AM. There's nothing we can do.

The greatest lesson that I have taken from this experience is that life will continue to go on, and if you hold back you will realize how short life is, so don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Signing off,

Mohammad

Posted via email from Mohammad Arfeen

Recently I became the newest president of our local AMSA chapter, I'm hoping for a good year.

My main focus for this summer will be to increasing both my speed reading and concentration skills in distracting environments. I will also be preparing for my 300 level biochemistry class this fall, also my first 300 level class. For now I'm just glad that summer has begun!

Signing Off,
Mohammad

Posted via email from Mohammad Arfeen

Signing off,

Mohammad Arfeen

Posted via email from Mohammad Arfeen

Signing Off,

Mohammad Arfeen

Posted via email from Mohammad Arfeen

I'll leave you with this quote from Buddha:

“Words having these five characteristics are words well-spoken. What are these five characteristics? The five are:

    * spoken at the proper time
    * spoken in line with the truth
    * spoken gently
    * spoken beneficially
    * spoken with a friendly heart

Speech having these five characteristics are words well-spoken."

Buddha

Signing off,
Mohammad Arfeen

Posted via email from Mohammad Arfeen