For our last college mentor session, Dr. Cx took us to Parkland to meet with a patient and also get practice hearing various diastolic and systolic heart murmurs.
Regarding the latter, I am still extremely bad at detecting the murmurs. I have no idea what I'm looking for and where I am looking for it. But, Dr. Cx said that he was a junior resident before he could hear some of the murmurs. But once you hear it once, you will always be able to hear it. That is reassuring.
The more moving part of the day was our talk with our patient. She is a 25 year old woman battling stage 4 breast cancer that has metastasized all over her body... 25 years old.
She said that she felt a lump on her breast around 18-19 but didn't really do anything about it. However, around 24 years old, she said she couldn't eat anymore because of nausea and pain, lost about 60 lbs. The doctors originally said she had gastroentitis... the horrible thing is, they felt a lump on her breast and took an X-Ray, but she never got the results back. She's currently in a little law suit but that is absolutely terrible. The neglect and mistake of not even looking at an X-Ray result probably cost the patient her life... or severely shortened it. When they finally diagnosed her with cancer, she was already stage 4. The amazing thing is, however, it's been 14 months since her diagnosis. She has gone through bouts of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and though she never feels 100% well or herself, she still is trying to live life normally. That's absolutely amazing..
But god... 25 years old. That is way too young. way way way too young.
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