MedEx Day 17 - July 31st, 2018

To start today off, Dr. Byrd came to speak with us about Med-Peds. I had no idea what Med-Peds was, so I was very interested to hear about it. Med-Peds is a specialty of medicine that is board certified to treat both adults and children. With this comes extra CMEs and double board examinations, but it seems very fascinating to be able to treat everyone's primary care needs. Dr. Byrd gave us some case study examples of what he sees. One involved a boy with Leigh's Disease. I learned that Leigh's Disease affects the CNS by interrupting the mitochondria's production of ATP. To conclude his lecture, Dr. Byrd discussed the flexibility of his job, and he spoke about all of the medical mission trips to Brazil, Honduras, and Kenya that he has been able to go on because of that. After Dr. Byrd spoke, Mr. Al Squire came in so that Tier I could do an activity on "Who gets the kidney?" Essentially, 6 patients (shown above) are all on the transplant list, but only one of them can receive a kidney. We broke up into groups of 6-7 people, and we were told to fight for who we thought should get the kidney. The activity was interesting because most of us had no idea what is actually considered when organ donation is at stake. I had some prior knowledge like that the patient must be able to get to the transplant center within a certain amount of time, the organ would have to match the patient's blood type, the patient must have a caregiver with them because they will be out for 2 months, and the patient will have to go on Medicare which pays for 80% of organ related expenses. After researching the topic, I found out that O+ blood has the longest wait time on the transplant list because O+ is the universal donor. Also, patients that are the sickest receive organs before others on the transplant list; living donors also receive preference. Overall, I think the transplant list could be improved in South Carolina if a law was established that gave South Carolina residents precedent for kidneys over residents from other states. Next, was a movie that we watched after lunch. We decided to watch Concussion with Will Smith. The movie details Dr. Omalu and how he discovered CTE/ fought the NFL in order to get Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy recognized. I enjoyed seeing how a pathologist was able to discover a disease that neurologists had never found. Also, I loved seeing the effects that concussions, when untreated, can have.