Prasugrel vs. clopidogrel

It has been a long time in the works and now it is finally done! I have been working on my poster presentation (the capstone of my program) for the past 6 months. It has been a long, tough road to get to this project done. Yesterday, I had to take it to the school and present it to faculty members who graded me on my research, presentation and ability to answer questions. It was crazy intense and I'm so glad that it's over. (I am most proud of the second slide from the left on the top row cause I created it myself!) Just one more milestone to pass leading up to graduation in only 84 days!! My days at the state psychiatric hospital are over and I'm moving onto another community rotation. Bring it on!

WICKED

Back in New York City and I love it everytime I go! Trisha bought me tickets to see the musical, Wicked, for Christmas and today was the day. We drove down this morning, watched the show, walked around a little bit, ate some food and we were on our way back up to MA again. It was such a fun day trip! Wicked is incredible, it lived up to every expectation I had for it. It made me want to make a trip to New York for a week or so and see a different show every night. Summer is preferable cause it was slightly chilly today but we braved the weather and had a great day. Thanks Trish!!!!

Thoughts on my mind

It is a very unique and thought-provoking opportunity that I have to be on rotation at a state mental hospital. It is has caused me to reflect a lot on the worth of souls. As I research and present patient cases as part of my assignments, I get to know these patients and all of the most personal things there are to know about a person and where they came from. It is eye opening, to say the least. You hope that they are not capable of such things and yet the reality is that they are for many different reasons. There are patients who have been dealing with mental illness for decades, who have been in this and other hospitals for decades. There are even some who will never leave of their own free will because their life is better there than it would be anywhere else. There is an eery stigma that is associated with state mental hospitals and a fascination for what unusual things have occured on their grounds over the years. There is an uneasy feeling as you pass through the halls, locking every door behind you. HOWEVER, what I have come to realize is that each of these patients is a person with inherent good in them. Do they sometimes behave in a way that is less than appropriate and at times even out of control? Yes. Do they have reason to? Maybe. Do they deserve a life locked up with limited freedom? I don't know. Do they deserve to feel like their life is better in a state mental hospital than in the community? No. Along with evaluating each of them and their drug regimens, we also go onto the floors and meet some of them and we attend some medication group sessions to help educate them on their medications. This all in an effort to help them help themselves improve and overcome according to their ability. Are these people dumb? Absolutely not! In fact, one lady was the valedictorian of her high school class and if you ask her what is the side effect of her medication, clozapine, she will respond that it can decrease white blood cells. Another young lady spoke with eloquance and used a larger vocabulary than myself as she talked about some issues with her medications. A gentlemen talked about his success with smoking cessation and looked to the future with hope and gratitude for his progress. Finally the event that has given me the most thought occured a few days ago as I was leaving the building to get in my car and drive home. A middle-aged woman who we had seen, and met for the first time, a week previous in our group session was outside of the building smoking. As I walked by she said, "Hey, are you from the pharmacy?" I replied that yes I was from the pharmacy. She then said to me, "It's Michael, right?" Shocked and somewhat freaked out I confirmed that that was my name. She reminded me of her name as I clearly did not know it. Ever since that event, my view on this experience has completely changed. I have since seen her on multiple occasions and every one she goes out of her way to look at me and greet me by using my name. She has a heart and she has a soul that is worth a lot! Despite her disability and her set-backs she still deserves love, respect, freedom and concern. She is just as important as me and just as important as everyone else no matter the situation. It is so hard for me to sit in a professional setting and give a presentation on how to help these patients when it is okay to make a mockery of their life and the cards that they have been dealt. It is disrespectful and really quite sad that people find the need to joke about abuse, molestation, violence, attempts at suicide, delusions, paranoia, hallucinations and other unfortunate behaviors. What could possibly be funny about these events? Are they funny in your life? NO! So why is it funny when it is someone else's life? Whatever you call them: crazies, psychos, mentally ill, freaks; it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how you classify them or how they are placed according to society. They are still human beings. I feel that there is definately a goodness in each of them. If one of them can touch my life by remembering my name a week after first meeting me then her life is worth a lot to me.

First Day

Welcome to Westborough State Mental Hospital! I had my first day of my rotation at an inpatient psych hospital and here is what I'm going to be dealing with:
My first case involves a woman who has been found incompetant to stand trial for the attempted murder of her 82 year old mother.
It's gonna be a very interesting 6 weeks and I'm so excited!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009

Celebrating Christmas and the end of the year with my family has been awesome. I hope everyone has a great new year filled with happiness and love!!

Ice Storm

Get me out of Massachusetts! I'm sitting here in front of the fire at Trisha's house as I make this blog. My flight will leave at 5:35am and I can't get out of here soon enough. Tomorrow means that we in Princeton, MA have been out of power for an entire week. Here are all the pictures of the crazy storm that rocked my world last friday. Enjoy (there are a lot of them)...

The front yard from my window

Front yard

Front yard

The huge pine trees saggin in the front yard

One side of the house (look at all the trees bent down to the ground)

the backyard from my room

backyard

This is a WILD story. As I was sitting in my dark, cold room on thursday night after the power went on I kept hearing these louds cracks that sounded like gunfire all around me. Every crack was followed by a huge thump on the ground. As the rain kept pouring down and the cracks were getting more and more frequent, I was getting more and more uneasy about my car which is normally parked in the front of the house by the basketball hoop under many trees. It was an eerie feeling and I kept feeling really terrible about the situation. I prayed for my car to be safe and I continued on reading my scriptures trying to put it from my mind. However, after each crack, I awaited the smash of the falling branches hitting my car. Finally, I heard this loud crack and I just had this feeling. I got out of my bed, got all dressed up to go outside and proceeded up to my aunt and uncles bedroom to talk to them. I peeked in their room and right away I could tell my aunt was having the same uneasy feeling I was having. I told them that i couldn't take it anymore, I had to move my car and I was willing to move their suburban while I was out there. My aunt ended up coming out with me to move the cars. As we were getting in the cars, we heard cracks and would have to retreat to the clearing until we knew we were safe from falling limbs. We moved the cars to the end of the drive way out of all reach of any trees that would fall. As we were walking back up to the house, there was another really loud, close crack and then a thump. I looked over as the limb was falling and realized that it was landing in the exact spot that my car was only 2 minutes previous!!!! It was the craziest thing I have ever experienced. Had I not gotten up and moved my car, I really would have heard it being smashed by this limb. What a blessing that it was not harmed in the storm!!! Thank you!

Check out the ice that formed on the basketball hoop in a matter of seven hours in the ice storm

I didn't sleep much thursday night cause the breaking limbs were so loud and I'll be honest, it was a really creepy noise. About 2 or 3 in the morning, the trees on the side of the house by my bedroom started drooping down and I could hear them as the wind blew them against the shingles, only feet from my head. Many times I contemplated moving down to the basement to sleep, but the scraping noise finally stopped and I felt safe again. Nearly every tree in this patch is broken in half.

The side of the house. These trees are bent to the ground when usually they are like twenty or thirty feet tall.

This is a close-up of the limbs that somehow ended up under my uncles truck with no signs of actually hitting the truck

This is a close up to show the amount of ice that was accumulating on the falling limbs

Even individual blades of grass were as big as my fingers with ice encasing them

Another close-up of the limbs covered in ice

This is the patch of trees on the side of the house by my bedroom

Check out how cool this looks?!

Limbs falling all around the treehouse

The other side of the house was hit pretty hard but luckily none of the limbs actually hit the house

Sick of the pics yet? We're half way done....

These were not exactly small limbs either, look how thick they are

The drooping trees around the pond

Limbs around the pond

This tree in the front yard near the end of the driveway snapped right in half. It was pretty close to the suburban

The ice covering the suburban mirror

The circle as I venture further out to see the damage

Looking down the street toward the neighbors

The cars parked at the end of the driveway. You can see the tree that snapped in half on the left and you can also see all of the trees sort of bent over due to the weight of the ice.

Another shot of the ice on the limbs

Keaton and I had to work together to get this huge branch out of the road so that we could get passed

Broken and drooping

Its crazy to look out and see all of the fresh wood and realize how many branches fell

Our street was pretty much blocked getting out to the main road

Check out the nieghbors front yard!!!

This is looking up the main road. You can barely tell it's a road!

This is looking down the main road. Same story. It's like a maze getting down the road

More of the trees that bent all the way to the ground

At the top of the street, looking back towards my house

The antenna on my car looked pretty sweet!

This is a bush on the side of the house, how cool does it look?!

This is on the main road and maybe one of the reasons that we still have no power!

No more pictures, but there are some more stories! I'll just recap some of the awesome things that have happened in the last week:

1. My room has been about thirty degrees all week. I've stayed warm because I have several blankets and I tuck myself in except for my face. It's kind of like camping!

2. I had to deficate in the backyard in an ice cave of sorts and put the toilet paper in a zip lock bag.

3. I have taken a shower every morning at the YMCA

4. I have no more clean clothes. I shoved all my dirty clothes in my suit case (without folding them) and shut the blasted thing.

5. I have eaten at nearly every fastfood joint and restaurant in the area and I am really excited for some home cooked goodness

6. I brushed my teeth using one cup of water. I put my contacts on in the dark using only my cell phone to illuminate my eyeball so that I could see what I was poking

7. I had one candle to light my room. I placed it in my lap the other night and wrote all my christmas cards on my knee. I also used this technique to read.

8. Reading is about the only thing to do when you have no electricity. I don't know how they did it in the old days. It gets dark around four thirty and then you just twittle your thumbs until you decided it's time to read and then you read until you fall asleep

I think that pretty much sums it up! It's been a crazy experience that I will remember forever! Keep MA in your prayers cause they are supposed to get at least 10 inches of snow on friday and another big storm on sunday and that could be a huge road block to getting power back on!