Milly--Millyfafon--(melefafon is cucumber in hebrew)--fafonski--milita

There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
- Chief Seattle







http://www.vet.cornell.edu/fhc/brochures/fip.html

My excuse for not updating this recently is that my camera (as well as wallet) was stolen about a month ago. But that's not really a good excuse as we still have Alon's camera, and I guess I don't need to add pictures to every entry. I'm just enjoying feeling settled, having our house organized (will add pictures soon), realizing that not going to every class in OK, and finally getting back on my bike for a 40k ride!! I've become a bit of a weekend warrior, I do a short run or two in the week, but on the weekends I need to get work out. Last saturday, we ran for 10k in the desert. Passed a few camels, who looked at me oddly. Yesterday we put the bikes on the car and drove to a beautiful road, with hardly any traffic...biking pass fields and cows and Ariel Sharon's 'ranch. It was soo much fun, and the weather is reasonable now..not sweltering.
Next week we have our third microbiology quiz..and then in December finals start. Each one is seperated from the next by 3-4 days. Just enough time to cram in everything I should know. Can't believe that after that I will be a 1/8 doctor!!!

As a first year med student, there is not really alot you can do to help people. So you do what you can do, which was going to a nursing home to sing one afternnon. We had a quick crash course in a few simple Hebrew songs (of which I knew one) and one Yiddish song (Bei mir bist du schon)..which I actually knew (don't ask me how..i don't even know!) The nursing home was not overly depressing as far as nursing homes go, bright with pictures on the wall, but most of the residents were pretty out of it. They did perk up a bit when we started singing. One man I was standing next to, grabbed my hand and asked if we would sing any songs in Russian or Yiddish, when I said yes, he kissed my hand. Well, it turned out time was running short and we had to move on to the next area of the home before we got to "Bei mir bist du schon"...I felt bad so grabbed a few other students and we sang for him. He even seemed to enjoy my dreadful voice.
On to the next common area, where we repeated our repertoire.

Well with school, moving, and general craziness, some of these managed to enter my body...

or maybe these?...


i think it's the first, flu; not the second which is the rabies virus...unless I was attacked by rabid desert foxes and didn't notice. I love my virology class, but it's never too early to get medical student syndrome!
Just remember no antibiotics for virus. Though flu can make you more susceptible to bacterial infections.

Some of us are obsessed with cats and animals. Hopefully this will appease those who keep demanding photos and news. We moved into our new house the night after the physicians oath ceremony. Carrying boxes and furniture at 4am wasn't so bad...it was a bit cooler and some wine and vodka made it fun! Of course waking up at 8am the next day was not as enjoyable. It's been 2 weeks since then and the house (or cottage i should say) is looking much better. The cats like it too, as the can wander in and out. Milly is still as petite and sleepy as ever, but she is adorable and though I don't think she is the healthiest cat, she seems to enjoy herself.



Kona is still wild, knocking over chairs at night and running madly about chasing feathers.

The last few weeks have been busy but I feel like I'm finally settling in. Our class had our physicians oath ceremony on September 7th. We take the oath at the start of our studies to show that even as students we have an obligation to the people we will be learning from, they are not simply bodies for us to study. We also read our Ethics Code which was put together over the course of the last month by our whole class.



Afterwards we went to Be'er Sheva's only hotel, the Golden Tulip, for a dinner and lots of drinks. Each class put on a skit and I have to say that ours was amazing!

A few weeks ago we had a lecture entitled 'Doctors in the Negev' Very fascinating and inspirational. The first man that spoke was one of the first Bedouin doctors in Israel. He related his life story..the village he came from only had a primary school, but he was selected to go to a catholic high school in Nazareth. He studied there and then applied to study medicine at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Because his high school wasn't very high caliber, he started studying biology instead and was accepted into medical school later on. He was working in the hospital in Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, when many Arab doctors chose to leave, fearing for their own safety. He later moved back south to Soroka hospital in Be'er Sheva, where his family was worried about him during the Yom Kippur War. They weren't so much afraid of him working in the hospital but rather of what might happen to him on the street, so they accompanied him everyday to the hospital entrance to make sure he got in safely. He said he has rarely experienced any rascism in the hospital setting, though when patients ask what his background is, thinking he is a Yemenite or Persian Jew, he tells them he will tell them after the check-up. He also was one of the first Bedouin doctors to work in his own community where there were strict taboos on men interacting with women. They still exist today of course, though maybe not quite as strongly as when he was first practicing. He related how when he would go to a clinic in a Bedouin village, women would come to see him, but would not let him near them. A breakthrough was made when one elderly woman finally let him take her blood pressure. It was great to meet a doctor like this who helps to break the stereotypes of Bedouins that still exist today.

The second doctor who spoke was a young Ethiopian man who had come to Israel when he was 18 years old. During high school he was selected to study medicine in Addis Ababa on the basis of a national exam. He studied there for several years, but when civil broke out in Ethiopia, he chose to leave for Israel where most of his family already was. As he spoke English, he worked as a translator in Jerusalem for Ethiopian patients and their doctors. During this time he studied towards the university entrance exams. He was accepted to medical school in Be'er Sheva (the Israeli program..not the one I'm in!) and after his studies did 5 years of military service as a doctor. Now he is the head of all the military medical service in the south of Israel.

After these two, the typical Israeli doctor who grew up on a kibbutz and fought in the Yom Kippur war didn't seem so exciting! But it is great to see how all these people from such different backgrounds work together towards a common goal of coexistence and community health.

So much has happened in the last month, I don't know where to begin! Emergency medicine course completed, fainted once already, wonderful people, and now 2 days into the real semester which is full of microbiology, immunology, biochem, genetics, Hebrew, biostatistics and an intro to Clinical and global medicine. Lots of science, but it is broken up by ethics lectures, guest speakers, and of course lunch at the local falafel stand.



(view from the 6th floor of the internal medicine building, where most of my classes are held. You can see the helicopter landing area as well as other hospital buildings surrounding the courtyard)


On the second day of orientation, I offered to have blood drawn for a study a 4th year student was doing. I wanted to jump right in and do whatever it is that medical students do. So I sat down in the chair, in the crowded hallway, not the best place and allowed a 3rd year student to begin poking my veins. I'm not sure if I was dehydrated from the Be'er Sheva summer, hadn't eated enough, or just nervous, but I started to feel dizzy, sick, and light-headed (classic signs of simple vasovagal syncope, I was later to learn)...and out I went. Fortunately, I was caught by my wonderful classmate Jamie and was only out for a few seconds. I lay on the ground for a bit, drank a coke, and felt better pretty quickly. Still, it is a little embarassing to faint on your second day of med school. Oh well, I heard that one student passed out the first time he witnessed an IV being inserted and broke his nose. Now they make all the students sit down the first time watch an IV. Well, hopefully it won't happen again!

We found the cutest apartment though we can't move into it until September and we haven't signed the lease yet. Right now I'm staying in a sublet arranged through the school, which is very nice and convenient...2 minutes from a good falafel place and near a bakery full of far too many delicious baked goods.
The place is furnished, with full kitchen supplies. A few pictures of the house above. We're moving out of here this week into another temporary apartment until Sept 1...then I hope no more moving for a while!

Well...I have now officially been in Beer-Sheva for 10 days. Though I've been through this city before this is my first time spending any time here and arriving in the middle of heat wave really drained any energy I had to explore. Temperatures were regularly above 100F. When I go out in the middle of the day, I notice which side of the street is in the shade and where there are trees (which are not that abundant given that Beer-Sheva is in the Negev desert). So I make my way from shady spot to shady spot in order to get to the gym or the store, or the multitude of inept government offices I need to go to in order to deal with signing up for health insurance and so on.
Fortunately, the apartment I'm staying in for now is air-conditioned and there are tons of delicious fresh fruit and veggies in the stores. Alon also wisely froze tons of strawberries when they were in season so we can make smoothies.
I'm so excited to start school in 3.5 weeks. I went to the hospital where MSIH-BGUCU (long name...Medical School for International Health at Ben-Gurion University in collaboration with Columbia University)...MSIH is good enough from now on. I browsed through the books we are using next year and bought some of them. There are no absolutely required texts, you can choose which ones you prefer, which makes it hard...I fear I might end up buying them all. A few pics of the city above.