A Pre-Med Life

I feel a ton of pressure to balance the demands of life and the medical school requirements that we all know that we have to do, shadow doctors, build unique life experiences, build connections with our professors without brown nosing, participating in community service and the list goes on. Add to that the effort of keeping up friendships and spending time with the people that matter the most in our lives and it can be daunting. I think that this is super important to acknowledge. It is absolutely ok to feel overwhelmed in the pursuit of something worth your time and energy and I can't think of anything more fulfilling and worth your time. However, it's not healthy to sit under the burden of stress and let that mountain of work pile up. I've been there. You let stuff pile up, then you get overwhelmed and then it's a huge effort to get it all done. I'm going to share what I do to deal with time management. You can take it or leave it, but I'm going to say t

Last summer I worked as an intern for Massachussetts General Hospital developing a selection protocol for a new home hospital program. The attending physician of the team of Nurse Practitioners and Physicians Assistants is a close mentor and friend of mine, Dr. Ryan Thompson. In a conversation with me on the top floor of the hospital he said, " I need to order some flowers...Today is my anniversary and I can't forget that..." He then looked me in the eyes and said, " Christian, you'll have a lot of balls to balance in the future, you'll have work, a wife, kids and other responsibilities...remember that only a couple are made of glass..." This has had a profound impact on my life decisions especially as I have worked to be a well qualified applicant for medical school. This past year and semester has been absolutely the hardest year of my life. Not only did I have to take classes online with the out break COVID-19 during these past months but I was in the

I recently read a talk on service and how service can break down barriers. The talk is called Turning Enemies into Friends by Sharon Eubank. I’m going to share some of the things that I found especially profound and then I hope that I can connect them to Ghana and how we can make true progress in developing countries. I hope that I can articulate my thoughts and ideas clearly. Sharon Eubank proposes a powerful and thought provoking idea. She states that the true humanitarian aid is the people going, that we are the gift. That the greatest gift that a humanitarian effort can give is the human connection. Someone who cares, who remembers names, birthdays and with compassion listens to the problems facing the people before them. In her own words,   “ What would it look like if each of us were our own well-stocked humanitarian organization? Instead of just giving out tangible goods in foreign locations, what if we had the richness of dispensing healing, friendshi

  The my favorite part of working with the clinics has been surgeries. It has been absolutely amazing to watch these surgeons work in less that favorable conditions and pull off amazing results. Dr. Wanye, Natalie, Mr. L and I after a day of long surgery Cataract surgery is one of the most amazing things that I have watched. The patient lays on a surgical table. The optic nerve is numbed with anesthesia. The eye is made of layers and layers of tissue. To start the operation, the ophthalmic nurse sterile the area around the eye and places a cover over the face with plastic over the eye which is cut to allow access to the eye. This protective cover is used during surgeries done by Dr. Wanye but a fabric cover is used by Dr. Gyasi at St. Thomas which has no plastic. The surgeon then opens the eye with an instrument that keeps the eye open for the surgery. With a cauterizer and a modified scissors an incision is made in the conjunctiva, as the bleeding starts the small vessels

This post has videos and photos from three different days. I hope that its eye opening to what a typical day in the life for a Global impact fellow for Unite for sight is like. If you are having questions about whether you think you can do this or if you want to be a volunteer and want a perspective, I hope that this helps. Breakfast Most mornings you wake up around 6:30 – 7am. When I was in Tamale, the call to pray woke me up around 4:30 and roosters woke me up when the sun came up. One of the hard things for me is that most Ghanaians have heavy breakfast, usually the same food that you will have for lunch or dinner. So sometime you have jollof rice and egg for breakfast with a little fish on the side, other times you have waakye a beans and rice dish, my favorite breakfast is bread and egg. Usually you grab breakfast at the Telecentre if you’re in Accra. If you’re on outreach you will grab breakfast at the nearest town on the side of the road or when the