What's in a Doctor's Bag?

It's been a while since I've posted on this blog. I guess you could say that taking 27.5 credits of classes is a little time consuming. That being said, I think that I'm finally getting a handle on this thing known as medical school. I've even figured out how to get a little bit of spare time to do things. Crazy, I know.

Anyway, when I'm at school I get a ton of emails. Most of them are essentially spam sent from the school's clubs trying to get me to buy a sweatshirt or a clipboard or some other unnecessary and expensive item. Sometimes there are a few worthwhile emails with volunteer opportunities. I got such an email probably a month and a half ago for a chance to go show some elementary kids what is in a doctor's bag. I thought that it would be cool to do, and since I felt like I could manage to volunteer for a few hours one day, I signed up.

The day came to visit the elementary school. It was an hour away from school and Google Maps took my friend and me to the wrong location at first, but we found it eventually. We got there and this school had some intense security measures. The first one was pretty normal I guess you could say; you had to call in from the outside and they would unlock the front door. We walked in and some of the school was at lunch. The kids were so excited to see us fancy med students in our spiffy white coats. The next thing that I noticed was that there was an armed police officer walking the perimeter of the lunch room. They must have some serious food fights reminiscent of "Hook". I personally thought it was a little excessive, I mean, kids will be kids. Food fights are a natural part of school.

We signed in at the front desk and got our visitor stickers. There were two activities going on that day: one was a mini-med school activity and the other was the doctor's bag thing, which was what I signed up to do. It was a pretty sweet activity. They took us around to about 4 different classes ranging from preschool to second grade. It seemed to me that some of the kids were very shy either around doctors or they were terrified of my height as is usually the case. The first two groups of kids that I had really weren't that interested in what I was doing. However, they all seemed to enjoy playing with my tools. They especially liked my blood pressure cuff. They thought it was the coolest thing being able to pump that thing up. I would have thought that the otoscope or opthalmoscope would have interested them more. Who hasn't ever wanted to see what's lurking behind your pupil or what kind of crusties your friend has hidden in his ear? Shows you how out of touch I am with the youth of these days.

I had a lot of fun doing that. And now, if any of you want to know what doctors carry with them, I am trained in the art of showing you.