Just another day

Today was a good day. I woke up early to get some more writing in for my autobiography. After two years, I’ve written over 500 pages and though it will need some serious editing, I’m happy to be nearing the end of it. If anyone out there is an editor and would like to help me out, that would be great! I hope to finish the first draft by May and find an advisor and editor. This book will be for me and will be a testament to the life I’ve lived thus far. It is very important to me that I not continue with the burden of my past into medical school. I want to be able to move beyond my past and enter adulthood to focus on what lays ahead. I want medicine to become my life and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life working for those less fortunate who suffer unjustly from a denial of their most basic human rights. I want to be their voice and will stand up without hesitation to defend those rights.

I pulled out my anatomy and physiology text book and began reviewing the material that I once knew like the back of my hand but now struggle to remember. I’ve been making the time to get in at least an hour of study each day so as to slowly get me back into the academic mode. Though there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t read something from a medical text, those instances are usually because of an immediate and practical need such as what dosage of meds to give, identifying an illness etc. I need to become comfortable immersing myself in the books again because I have two years of it ahead of me.

I spent most of the morning in town buying more supplies for the Houses to Homes project that I took over for Paige when she left five months ago. We’ve just finished painting the remaining 15 houses in the northern village, screened all of the windows, sealed and caulked all cracks and sprayed for bugs. Here are some pics of before and after for one of the houses. Part of the malaria prevention program that I set up includes surrounding the houses with rock “buffers” to eliminate any standing water pools after rain. All in all, the houses are looking great.