March Madness...& not the basketball kind

Happy March!

Service Hours This Post: 8 

The piece of wood that was in my foot

It's wild that we're almost at the end of this year already and this semester has been so busy, filled with classes, presentations, and exams. From my last blog post to now I FINALLY got the splinter out of my foot. Dr. Short and his team were truly a godsend. I was supposed to have surgery to get it out but at my pre-op appointment the day before my surgery Dr. Short looked at it and said that he thought he could get it out right here and right now. They numbed up my foot, made an incision, and were able to pop it out. I was SHOCKED at how huge it was. I knew that it was sizable based on the ultrasound, but when I saw it in person I was truly amazed. All of the nurses in the office came in to take a look at it while I was getting stitched up because it was one of the largest wooden foreign bodies that have been taken out in awhile there. Although I knew I was going to be in pain, I felt a significant amount of relief that it was over. I now only needed to focus on recovering and getting used to walking without the boot again. After a couple weeks of having the stitches, I went back to Dr. Short and got them removed. I could now start to walk without the boot and get used to putting pressure back on my left foot. 

Post-Neuropharm Presentation

Since then, I presented in Neuropharmacology with Kendall Reitz on Parkinson's Disease. Our presentation was about TFEB enhancers of autophagy and the role that it plays in an induced PD lesion model. I had a great time working on this presentation and both Kendall and I tried our best to make it interesting for our class. This was one of the first days I was able to wear regular shoes again and I was impressed that I made it standing up for so long. The rest of this month has been filled with studying for exams and focusing on setting myself up for success for the med pharm NBME final. It's a lot of material, but I am hoping that with all of the resources available and my prior notes/study guides, that I will be able to be successful.

Also, this month I was able to start volunteering again since I had been injured this entire semester. I volunteered at Broadmoor Food Pantry again and it was good to see people that I had volunteered with previously. On Mondays at the food pantry, they receive their Second Harvest order for the week so we volunteers were first tasked with unloading pallets and pre-making hundreds of boxes of food before people began to show up for their food. Since this was the first time I've been able to be completely mobile in months I was extremely exhausted and my feet hurt like they had never hurt before. I didn't realize how much my whole body was affected by my physical disability for the last few weeks. Even with all of that, it feels really good to be back out in the community and to give back.