TWS - Writing, Heart Attacks, and Oppenheimer
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📝 Rx:
Hi friends,
I wanted to document my time throughout medical school in some way that might be helpful and somewhat entertaining to potential pre-meds (and myself) and decided this was the best way to go about it outside of my YouTube channel. The title for this first newsletter felt appropriate after watching Oppenheimer, hopefully someone finds it funny.
Anyways, right now I'm a few weeks into my second semester of year 2 and the big thing on everyone's mind right now is STEP 1. It's honestly like the background stress that is always present, but thankfully, so far, very much doable. Our entire class had to take an NBME recently to see how we would do in the real deal, and while I did not feel anywhere near as confident as I'd like to be, the results were a lot better than I thought so that's a win (but we can do better 😤). Trying to balance that STEP grind and everything else is definitely a challenge though, exam date is for December 2023 so the hope is that writing these gives me room to vent and gives you an idea of what's in store if you choose to go down this road lol.
Catch you next week!
🩻 Diagnosis of the Week:
Myocardial Infarction
What is it:
Fancy word for heart attack, myocardial meaning heart tissue and infarction meaning loss of blood flow. This happens when arteries in the heart become clogged up with something that stops fresh blood from reaching the heart cells (cardiomyocytes) that are normally hard at work squeezing blood to the rest of your body.
Pumping blood takes A LOT of energy, and the cardiomyocytes basically need a constant supply of oxygen from fresh blood to make ATP which is like their fuel source. If they stop receiving fresh blood (and therefore oxygen) they cannot make enough ATP and start to die, usually after 20 minutes. Depending on the artery that was blocked off, different parts of the heart can be injured. Regardless of the artery though, the dead cells will have to be replaced by scar tissue which starts to happen after around a week and might take a few months to finish, leaving the patient with a permanent change in their heart function.
Key signs:
- Tight chest pain that is felt in the left shoulder + left jaw (especially if lasting for 20+ minutes!)
- Dyspnea (hard time breathing)
- Syncope (fainting) or dizziness
- High anxiety (sometimes described as "feeling of impending doom" which is super eerie)
- Can actually be "silent" in some people, this is scary because you don't get any signs and its only noticed later on when its accidentally picked up on exams
🤓 Doses of the Week:
Anki: 2,144 reviews
Books Read: 2
- Living with a SEAL by Jesse Itzler - man lives with David Goggins for a month, 11/10 hilarious read 🛶
- Overlord Vol 16 by Kugane Maruyama - one of my fav anime light novel series, think volume 17 is gonna take another year to come out 🥲
Concerts Attended: 1
- Got a lucky chance to see Caskets live in Brisbane...100% my fav band of the year 🎸
🎙️ Content for this Week:
