A war fought with pipettes, stethoscopes and a whole lot of gusto is happening every day here at the Mayo Clinic. We have the chance to watch every battle of the war on cancer converge at one amazing institution. As fresh medical students, we can pick up a journal article, centrifuge tube, or stack of charts and help write the next chapter. A story of hope, love, tragedy, and science is being told every day and there is something for everyone to contribute. There are people like me in my medical class who are in love with bench top science and there are people at the far opposite end of the spectrum who are more interested in the social implications of cancer. When we all interact and work together, I can see a bright future. This past year I remember thinking to myself, ‘Well I never thought of that’ almost every day, and that is exactly how the future will be written.

As an aspiring medical student, I always dreamed of the incredible good I could do for my future patients. I would gain extensive skills that ...

My first memory of vaccines takes me back to when I was about three years old.  Because I was prone to tantrums (and quite good at them, I might add), my mother would bribe me if I promised not to cry during my “shots”. At the time, I valued vaccines because they were a way for me to collect more Barbie dolls or TY Beanie Babies. I decided that the pain they brought was worth the good they also seemed to bring.In sixth grade, I had to do a project in my science class, and I was assigned the topic of Edward Jenner. I learned that Jenner pioneered the first vaccination, which was for smallpox, by studying the cowpox virus. This led me to create a home video in which I was dressed up as Edward Jenner and my friend was dressed as a cow. The video was a hit with my class, and my research on the topic led me to begin viewing vaccines as magical—how else could they prevent people from getting sick? As a first year medical student taking microbiology, I became more aware of the ways in which vaccines truly impact health, both on a personal and global scale. For example, smallpox has been eradicated, saving an estimated 5 million lives annually. An outbreak of polio has not been reported in some time, making it likely that this debilitating disease may also be a matter of history. If children and infants are immunized, many life-threatening illnesses can be avoided and maybe even annihilated. This is a powerful concept.

Welcome back! We are excited to launch Meet Mayo Med for its second year. Our goal has been to share the incredible stories of students at Mayo Medical ...

As I stepped up to the patient on the operating table, side by side with a doctor who had changed my life, I could feel ...

I had never seen someone quite so helpless as Allen*, so away from the grasp of any type of comfort. When I walked into the room, the 20-year-old cancer patient was sitting on the exam table with his legs crossed. He was looking down at his electronic gaming device, pressing buttons randomly, perhaps in an effort to avoid making eye contact with anyone in the room-especially me. The thinning hair on the top of his large round head, his long and scruffy beard covering his chin, and his thin-rimmed glasses seemed odd in juxtaposition to his windbreaker pants, big white sneakers, and toy. It was as if he was both a young child and an aging old man at the same time. I wanted more than anything to speak with Allen, though I’m not sure what I would have said if I had been given the opportunity to make anything more than small talk. I wanted him to know that I understood what it felt like to dry heave for hours during a chemotherapy treatment, how strange it was to have all your friends be afraid to talk to you and to have your mother treat you like a five-year-old again. I wanted him to know that I understood what he was going through far more than most people did. But that wouldn’t have helped Allen, because while I was standing before him, a medical student following my passion, he was dying. I resorted to trying to make him smile. Allen, however, did not even seem annoyed, as if my presence was not even significant enough for such a thing. He seemed angry at himself, his situation, and his tumor. But the worst part about Allen’s situation was not his appearance or his sadness or even the fact that his pelvic sarcoma had relapsed for the third time and was only going to get worse. The worst part about Allen’s situation was his mother.

Just three weeks into my general surgery rotation, I have continually been given the privilege to “close”, or stitch shut, the incision. It sounds like ...

Coming from a public school where nearly a third of my classmates did not graduate, I would not be where I am today if not ...

Art has been one of my passions ever since I could hold a pencil—an important outlet for expression, relaxation, and reflection. However, I never found an intersection between art and medicine until I discovered medical illustration in college. Medical Illustration is a field where artists take medical school classes alongside medical students to become experts in anatomy, histology, and pathology. Medical illustrators are responsible for providing the textbook and anatomy atlas illustrations over which medical students pore daily. It’s a field with a rich history, including the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Andreas Vesalius’s artist partner Jan van Calcar, Max Brödel and Dr. Frank Netter. I ended up choosing medicine because I was interested in the roles and responsibilities in healing patients with which physicians are privileged. But I’ve still had a niggling curiosity about medical illustration. So when I got a chance to spend a week shadowing in the Mayo Clinic Media Support Department, I seized it. I watched in amazement as the illustrators meticulously drew and painted beautiful images of hearts, arteries, bowels and stem cells on their Cintiq tablet screens. I watched the animators make muscles contract and DNA molecules spin in programs like Autodesk 3Ds Max and Adobe After Effects, and then watched their creations at the patient education kiosks in the Mayo Clinic.

It has occurred to me, late in the game, that all of this time I could have been using my bread baking not only as catharsis but also as a study device. Bread can be more than nutrition; it can be education. Let me explain. Because I spent the last week in the ICU and was constantly doing chest X-rays and fussing with tracheostomy collars and ventilators, it got me thinking about the lungs. I considered making a ventilator in a square pan, but that seemed a bit square. Going for the anatomical, I decided instead to make bread lungs. It made the most sense to create a pull-apart bread recipe, to better represent the lobes of the lungs, and, because I am on a surgical rotation week after next, to practice my lobectomy. Kudos to any pathologists out there who can make apt diagnoses as to the health of these lungs. Pull-Apart Wheat Bread Lungs 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (85°F to 95°F) 1 cup sourdough starter 1 cup warm whole milk (105°F to 115°F) 2 tablespoons honey 1 tablespoon salt 1/4 cup olive oil 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder 3 1/2 cups bread flour

The 4th annual zombie apocalypse simulation, Bounce Day, took place this past fall and gave many medical students first-hand experience on handling a community disaster. As an organizer and participant, I saw the event unfold in a perfect combination of organized chaos that gave me a glimpse into what might actually happen in a real-life disaster environment. Our goal was to help prepare medical professionals and the local community to “bounce back” from large-scale disasters and become more comfortable in handling crisis situations. Volunteer actors portrayed local community members infected with the deadly, and thankfully fictitious, HADAD virus (Hemorrhagic Acral Dermatitis with Anesthetic Delirium). Leading up to the event, participants received fake news reports chronicling HADAD’s path of destruction from its point of origin in the Iowa cornfields, ultimately resulting in the virus reaching Rochester, Minnesota and turning much of the local population into zombie-like victims. Bounce Day participants were asked to manage this crisis by helping refugees, securing the area from zombie attack, and helping to treat the infected and injured.

As medical students, we often fall into a routine of learning in a certain way, probably as a result of classroom-based learning during our first two years. It’s not very often that we students have the opportunity to expand our newly attained scientific knowledge into the context of the human experience. However, a group of us in the Mayo Pediatrics Interest Group did so in February and August last year during a Sibshops event, organized by Mayo Clinic Child Life specialists.  The event, held at a local family fun and athletic center, was targeted toward a population that often doesn't receive the spotlight: the brave siblings of kids with special needs. Following an Olympics theme, the February event began with group bonding by decorating a team flag and fleece scarves that corresponded to our team colors.  The exciting and engaging day was filled with activities including mini-golf, jumping on inflatables, Minute-to-Win-It, and completing a capture-the-flag course. All games incorporated teamwork challenges, reflection opportunities, and Q&A sessions related to being a sibling of a child with a disability. Recognizing the challenges that a child with disabilities may bring to a family, we hoped to provide a safe, open environment for the siblings to discuss the challenges they faced and explore potential solutions. Above all, we sought to do this in an empathetic and understanding manner to create an environment that is not always possible—but is very much deserved—in busy households. To the surprise of the volunteers, the children were able to take initiative in brainstorming their own creative solutions related to avoiding bullying, managing conflict, and gaining communication skills with other children who were facing similar challenges. While most of the medical students who participated have an interest in pediatrics, students interested in other specialties were also involved. By serving as team leaders, photographers, and activity station leaders, we were able to engage in almost every aspect of the day’s activities.