My classmate and fellow nerd from Kansas Chris Adams has created a short little blog to detail a walk-thru of the loan deferment process . He sent it out originally as an email, and I just completed it and got confirmation I’m in deferment!

(And if you’re reading this… a plea to contact your Congresspeople, as they’re trying to make it harder for residents to qualify for economic hardship. Please pass on to your own medical schools, as this will affect younger med students even more than it does us!)

The current rule by the Dept of Ed that allows residents to defer their loan payments until after residency is in danger of being removed because it’s too “cost-prohibitive.” For those graduating this year, this means you’d only get to do 2 years of deferment (with later years being a much less favorable type of deferment); if you’re graduating next year, only 1 year of normal deferment, and if you’re graduating after that, you’ll be SOL.

PLEASE contact your Congress people, tell them you’re a doctor or future doctor and it will greatly affect your ability to afford residency!

More info on it here (the AAMC and AMA are both lobbying hard to get this rule change reversed):
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/18024.html

This is a script you can use when you call them:
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/16/script.pdf (pdf)

And please also make your voice heard electronically thru this script:
http://capwiz.com/ama/issues/alert/?alertid=11184256&type=co

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So I had a wonderful trip to Guatemala overall. I learned a ton of Spanish, saw some great sights, and all.

But then the very last 5 days of my trip, spent in Antigua, Guatemala, were terrible.

(Warning, graphic description ahead.)

After eating a salad (I know, I know, I should have known better) in Antigua (very touristy, and I assumed that meant safe), I was puking. The next day I spent in bed rehydrating. The next day I felt a bit better. The next day I had overwhelming nausea, only controlled by around-the-clock dramamine (an antihistamine). Then finally the next day I went home.

I continued to feel sick for the next 5 or so days after I was home. About two days ago I got an appetite back and finally feel better.

I finished a 3-day course of Cipro, took an albendazole to de-worm, and a 4-dose course of tinidazole (anti-microbe, anti-amoeba). Apparently tinidazole isn’t approved in the US, as a compound similar to it causes cancer in rats. Whoops.

But I feel better. Finally. After 10 days of hell. And I’m 13 pounds lighter, down to 139, the lightest I’ve weighed since I was 19. (Eternal optimist that I am, I now get to eat whatever the hell I want to try to gain weight. Yum.)

Also: take any American who thinks this country is a terrible place (I was not one of them, I’m just sayin’), send them to a developing country for a month, and they will come back the biggest Patriot.

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Val on Foreign Policy (my friend Yana’s adorable 2 year-old, email me for child modeling offers!) (‘da’ means yes in Russian, which Val speaketh):

Gas Prices in SF:

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Videos spliced together from my trip to Guatemala.

And me feeling like crap, utter crap:

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Tosferina is “whooping cough.” This was an educational poster I found at our clinic, featuring scary zombie girl:



In the US, simethicone is Gas-X. In Guatemala, it’s called “LabORGASIM”:



Yes, sure, he’s both a doctor AND a surgeon, but Dr. Byron Recino’s REAL specialty and passion is psychiatry.



Random funny magazine vendor selling Cosmo magazines from the 80s. Love that hair.



Ate at a Korean restaurant, please read the translation for the first meal choice. Love it.



And one sad one, at a classroom-turned-clinic: “I need light, I need a kitchen, I need books,” with the happy little white kids on the crayon box.

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