So You Chose to Study Medicine?
What is most likely to turn the person in this photo…
From this…
To this…
I’d have said you should guess but the pictures and the title of this issue have already sold me out… Pffft!
Ladies and Gentlemen…
If this is your first time reading Últimos Días, you’re welcome.
My name is Chimfoun and this is my private newsletter where I am documenting my last days in medical school - the highs, the lows, the in-betweens, etc.
In the last issue, I ranted a lot! Because the pressure was getting wesserrrr!
This time, I want to continue the rant in a very special way. I want to go back in time and reveal what made me choose to study medicine.
Read and be blessed!
Last weekend, I assembled the list of topics that I need to study in preparation for my final exams most likely in September. Guess what it summed up to?
607 TOPICS!!!
No, I’m not shouting. I’m only echoing the reactions of my coursemates when I shared the news with them…
What’s more interesting is that we have to read, understand and recall that amount of topics in the next 118 days (at the moment of writing this).
You can do the math yourself on how many topics I need to read each day and how frequently I need to revise but I’ll give this advice when I graduate.
One thing I love my coursemates for is the memes that always turn up whenever the stress of exam preparation comes.
The craziest meme I saw was this…
It was wild!
In this part of the world, it is believed that Ben Carson, a renowned Paediatric NeuroSurgeon is the weapon fashioned against us.
Growing up, I can remember hearing many stories about him from how he was regarded as the class dummy to becoming the first to successfully separate Siamese twins as documented in his book, Gifted Hands.
Rumour has it that most medical practitioners you see today once read that book as a child/teen and were inspired to chase a medical career… Except me.
I have never read any book by Dr. Ben Carson nor have I gone on the internet to watch a documentary about him. I am not inspired by him.
So what/who inspired me?
There is no direct answer to this question. However, one answer remains consistent over the years - my desire to help as many people as possible live a better life.
As a child, I lost some friends and close relatives to health conditions. A memory that stuck with me was one of my favourite aunts promising to visit and take me and my siblings out when she returned back to Port Harcourt but never did because she died of colon cancer.
I also witnessed many other people die because they presented to the hospital late and had already developed life-threatening conditions. It made me realise that health education is a problem.
This made me more interested in health and made me decide to become a medical doctor.
Till today, health education is still a problem and I am better informed on why it is a problem. I am also armed with the necessary information I need to start solving this problem.
My inspiration to study medicine has always been internal. No matter what this course throws at me, I may rant, I may shout but I will choose this path over again.
In the future, I look forward to becoming a public health advocate. In the present, I'm working on adding health as one of my content pillars on social media.
As promised in the last issue, I am supposed to write what I've resolved to do in order to pass my final exams. Here it is:
I have decided to use my medicine on myself. By this, I mean that I am running a challenge I organise for other people for myself and my colleagues.
It's called the Show Up Keep Up Challenge and it is a 30-day challenge that helps individuals take consistent action on a task of their choice.
However, this is a very special edition because it is not 30 days but till my graduation. And the task is to read and summarise at least one topic every day.
Since this started, it has made me conscious that I should read every day. I will give an update on how this is going in future issues.
That's a wrap for this issue!
See you in the next.