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I got back late last night from a great weekend in Atlanta with family.  I absolutely love my niece and look forward to seeing her each time I visit.  And today I actually had a good day in my psychiatry rotation. Anyway, I enjoy becoming a doctor and seeing all of medicine’s different branches.  Now I have to go and actually unpack from my travels!

A much awaited respite from the usual nonsense of my medical education is finally upon me this weekend.  I will be flying to Atlanta late tomorrow night to visit my family. A visit that has long been overdue.  This will be a special visit.  I will be seeing my newborn niece for the very first time.  She is one month old.  I am fighting back tears as I am typing this.

Family is the most importing thing.  No matter how cruel and unforgiving my current environment is, no matter how hard I try and how hard I work only to not be thanked and to be criticized constantly and verbally abused, there will always be the loving support of my sister, brother, and father.  I want to be a good uncle to my niece. I will be a very happy person the second I touch down in Atlanta.

Well, that was a lot to get off my chest.  As you can tell, I am slowing starting to wear down during my psychiatry rotation.  I am not going into the boring details, but this is the worst and lowest I have felt ever in my medical education.  However, I am overjoyed with the thought of escaping all of this for only a few days into the warm and loving arms of family and friends.

Nowadays almost all the news coming out of Athens, GA seems to be the worst news.  Earlier this morning the Georgia Theatre burned to the ground for as of now unknown reasons.  Thankfully, no one was injured during the fire.  The Georgia Theatre has a special place in my heart and I have a lot of fond memories of events I attended there as a college student.  I’ll never forget seeing bands such as Mel and the Party Hats (a really cool cover band) and numerous other bands I would see at Athfest festivals.

On Saturdays I would go to the theatre to watch Georgia Bulldogs football games on the big screen and listen to legendary announcer Larry Munson call the game.  I remember one time my two roommates and I got a huge cheeze pizza from nearby Little Italy and watched as Georgia won the SEC championship in 2002.

The Georgia Theatre was also the place where I saw the movie Requiem for a Dream for the first time, and by now everyone knows what kind of impact this film had on me.  I’ll also never forget seeing the Jim Rose Circus here in 1999 and of course my famous “apple in mouth and chainsaw” incident during the performance (you’ll have to ask me about this again some other time.).

I do think that the Georgia Theatre will be rebuilt one day, but the news today is all in all pretty sad.  I’ll always have my memories of the place and remember the good times I had there.

Nine Inch Nails is currently on their farewell tour with Jane’s Addiction, and tonight their tour makes a stop at Jones Beach (a 20 minute drive from my apartment).  For the past 20 years Trent Reznor has reached out to many people and created some rather compelling music, and over the past nine years I have been privileged to attend a number of Nine Inch Nails concerts.  Tonight’s performance will be my twelfth and most likely final Nine Inch Nails concert I will ever attend.

Throughout the ’90s I started listening to music from various musicians, and the one artist who truly made a lasting impression on me was Nine Inch Nails.  I am very grateful for Trent Reznor’s music and, moreover, for his charitable contributions and continual betterment of his art.  Even though Trent Reznor will stop touring as Nine Inch Nails, I am almost certain he will continue to release music through his website and take part in many interesting projects.  I thank Trent Reznor for making music that moved me in a way no other musician could, and I wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors.

With that said, it’s time to run a few errands, enjoy a nice sunny day at Jones Beach, and rock out!

I spent this past weekend with my cousin and his family in New Jersey.  It was refreshing to forget about life in Long Island for a few days and have a wonderful time with relatives I haven’t seen in years.  I also went into Manhattan on Saturday night with my cousin and went to a few bars which is something I really needed for a long time now.

I am pretty tired from the fun weekend I had.  I am probably just going to be lazy for the rest of this Sunday.  Tomorrow I start my Psych rotation.

Something about the long cold winter makes one appreciate the spring and summer that much more.  It’s hot outside, and more people are spending more time outside. Also, the weather is changing people’s attitudes as people are starting to be more polite to one another.

Anyway, it’s a nice change to an otherwise monotonous life here in Long Island.

Eric De La Cruz is a 27 year old who is dying of a heart condition and desperately needs a heart transplant.   Being a medical student reading the following description of his heart problem from his website strikingly alarmed me:

“Eric has Severe Dilated Cardiomyopathy with an EF of 15%. His kidneys are having trouble because of his heart. His creatinine levels are high, his blood pressure is very low and he keeps retaining fluid. The diuretric-type meds the doctors have him on are no longer working: Lasix, Dijoxin, Aldactone, Coreg, etc. He is currently on three different IVs.”

The normal EF (Ejection Fraction (i.e. how much blood is actually pumped out of the heart)) in a healthy human being is approximately 55%.  In short his heart is filling up with blood and is unable to get enough blood out to fully oxygenate and replenish his organs which is leading to kidney failure.

Eric is the brother of former CNN correspondent Victoria De La Cruz. Eric’s Nevada Medicaid currently won’t cover the costs of his heart transplant.  He has to go to California under a Medicare Disability Program to be eligible for a transplant.   He has been rejected twice and his next appeals hearing is in one year which will most likely be far too late.

For the past eight months I have been doing clinical rotations in a county hospital which serves mostly uninsured and under-insured people, and through my interactions with them and the various doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals I have seen how cruel and broken the healthcare system in this country can be.  Eric’s plight is an extreme example of this.

I was made aware of Eric’s situation through my favorite music group, Nine Inch Nails, who is offering fans opportunities to purchase backstage passes, etc. and of course donating all money from this to Eric’s fund.

Eric’s heart transplant would cost over $150,000 plus numerous other expenses due to bureaucratic red tape.  In reality a possible heart transplant would probably only slightly increase Eric’s chances for survival.  However, another thing I have learned in the past eight months of my clinical studies is that medicine is a fickle thing: there are always exceptions to what we may perceive as true regarding health and the human body.

To learn more about Eric De La Cruz and how you can help go here and here.  To find out more about Nine Inch Nails’ involvement in this go here.

This past weekend I went to New Haven, Connecticut and visited some good friends of mine from my Czech Republic days.  I spent the entire day with them touring the Yale campus and hanging out.  It was a great escape from my everyday routine and almost therapeutic.
Three more weeks are left in my surgery rotation.  Let go finish this!

After my last doom and gloom post, I thought I should maybe write something more uplifting.  I’m taking the next few days to settle my upcoming academic schedule for the Fall and Spring of next year.  I’ll also be doing something I haven’t been doing too well as of late– studying.

It’ll be good to have some time for myself.

Today I learned of a shooting that took place yesterday in Athens, Georgia.   Athens is where the University of Georgia is and, moreover, is my second home, where I lived on and off again for over five years.  Three people were killed in the shootings.  More can be read of this tragedy here.  In this present climate of shootings at major universities I never thought but always feared that something like this could happen in a place I love so much.  My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims.

Unrelated to the events of Athens, Georgia there have other pressing issues and sad occurrences that have happened which have affected me.   I am not going into details of these things.  This is a sad time.