"Treating yourself"

Yeah, you start trying to diagnose yourself before you even see your doc. And it makes you more paranoid too. Every little stress headache could be an ischemic stroke

 

Sure I treat myself differently - I generally take more drugs - mix and match OTC stuff. I don't have the time to spend several days in bed nursing a sore throat and fever. Robbins isn't going to read itself. (I wonder if you can get it as a book on tape, or 100 tapes?)

 

I think you take your personal illnesses (colds, flus, etc.) a lot less seriously once you're in med school and get a look at what SICK really looks like. You realize that most of your personal health woes are trivial and not worth worrying about.

You also start to think more about the importance of the lifestyle choices you're making NOW (i.e., smoking/drinking/diet/exercise/stress management, etc.) because every single day you are confronted with people who made poor choices when they were your age and are now paying for it.

 

I'm developing my own treatment for the golf ball-sized tumor growing in my head. It seems to be working so far.

 

Yes. Before med school, I used to pay attention to my health. Now as an MS, I generally ignore my bodily functions/demands/limits.

 

Not really, mainly because I know that up until maybe 2nd year of residency I have a very high probability of killing my patient should I try to treat myself for anything.

 

When I went to the nurse practitioner she asked me which abx I would like her to perscribe, like I the MS1 automatically knew more than she did. Then she wanted me to "just try" one that I'm allergic to, so obviously I did.

When I went to the ER and when asked why I was there explained that I was tachy at 158 instead of "my heart is pounding". Definitely have more precise descriptions of my primary complaint.

 

Yeah I noticed that the ORL really has no clue about what has been wrong with my neck for nearly 4 years. After enough shadowing, it is clear that there are plenty of people who the doc just wishes would leave and never come back because he/she has no idea how to figure out what is wrong (or thinks the pt is blowing the symptoms out of proportion). I have been that patient, so I simply don't go back anymore. That's my treatment story.