Taking on the role...

It has been truly fascinating to me how in the past year - even BEFORE I started medical school, people have begun to consult me about medical information. After I'd finished at MSU and had not started school yet, I still got asked what I thought about "this bump on the head" and "that kind of pain."
The reason this comes to mind is that in the past week I've been around when two people sprained their ankle. People turned to ME and asked ME what to do. Ha. - I'm the first one to admit that I am "just an M1 and not a doctor." Fortunately, I have never sprained an ankle bad enough to have to do anything about it. Unfortunately, I didn't know much about what to do about it. Thankfully, the first lady whose ankle was sprained had experience in wrapping her own ankle, - she was able to instruct me on how to wrap it. -Last night while at a church "lock-out" I was on my own when a student turned her ankle. It is amazing the confidence she and her friends had in me.
This is something I'm going to have to get used to - instilling confidence in my patients. I'm getting small opportunities to get to do this at times. I'm sure this will happen a LOT this summer. It is not that I will always know the answer - but that I am willing to investigate what the answer is. I'm discovering it is not necessarily the good doctors that know everything - they are just willing to find out the best answers.

On another point - Please keep Mississippi in your prayers. It is so sad to think about all that has happened right now. Tornadoes near Yazoo - oil spill on the coast. They've compared this oil spill to Hurricane Katrina in terms of it's impact on the gulf coast. It breaks my heart to see that area have more struggles than they've already had in the past few years. I know the economy has struggled a lot down there and jobs are so dependent on the waters. Pray that the Lord would minimize the damage as the oil slick approaches today.
On a statewide level - this is just one more thing that hurts the MS budget even more when we've already had a terrible budget crisis in this state. I don't know how this is going to be handled.