I'm cleaning out my file cabinet and just reached the naturopathic medicine file.  It is full of philosophy notes from my first couple years of nd school.  I'm going to summarize them here so I can toss the paper.

SIX TENETS as taught by Deborah Frances
1. Primum non nocere - first do no harm (suppression is harmful)
2. Vis Meicatrix naturae - the healing power of nature (elemental)
3. Tolle causum - seek and remove the cause
4. Tolle totum - whole person
5. Docere - doc as teacher
6. Praeventare - prevention

OTHER CONCEPTS
Tonify, balance, bring to the middle
Do not Suppress symptoms, allow them to express, or else you push the illness deeper
Depression = suppressed fire: let it out and you have irritation, anger

HERRING'S LAW
Healing occurs in 3 directions
above downward
within-outward (more severe within, less severe the more peripheral)
in reverse order that it happened

ALIVENESS OF MEDICINE
vitamin C from a factory as vs from rose hips
complexity of plant medicine: many constituents with the wisdom of a living thing

HIERARCHY OF CARE
surgery
drugs
hormone replacement
stimulate the vis
tonify
nourish
foundation -- start here and work upward in the heirarchy

OATH
The Naturopathic Physician's Oath as written in the 2008 NCNM convocation brochure is long and wordy and I do not like it.  I must prefer and do swear by the Classical Chinese Medicine Oath:

I will promise to follow the way of the great physician.
I will strive to live in harmony wiht nature, and teach my patients to do the same.
I will stay calm and completely committed when treating disease.
I will not give way to personal wishes and desires, but above all else hold and nurture a deep feeling of compassion.
I will be devoted to the task fo saving the sacred spark of life in every creature that still carries it.
I will strive to maintain a clear mind and be willing to hold myself to the highest standards.
It will be my duty to diagnose sufferings to treat disease.
I will not be boastful about my skills and not drive by the greed for material things.

Above all, I will keep an open heart.
As I move on the right path I will receive great happiness as a reward wihtout asking for anything in return.

OH I just dug deep enough into the notes to find some gold.  I'm not going to dissolve this file after all.  Going in archive.

I got my grades in the mail yesterday. I passed everything, and was pleased to find that I rated honors in both Immunology and Hydrotherapy. I wasn't even really going for honors, I was just trying to pass. That is a hopeful thing. Having passed all my first year classes, I am now officially an ND2.

Study Questions:
1. Does having an immune response to a colon tumor preclude you from getting lung cancer? Why or why not?
2. What happens if you systemically and non-specifically turn on all of your T cells at once?
3. What are TSAs?
4. How does a DC vaccine for cancer work?
5. Why can people often fight off virally induced tumors but not spontaneous tumors?
6. Name one way that viruses that cause tumors evade the immune system.
7. Which cells of the immune system have receptors for neurotransmitters?
8. What effect do glucocorticoids have on the immune system?
9. Name 3 problems that make it difficult to do PNI studies.
( answers and some info about unconventional cancer research and treatmentsCollapse )

The woman who cheated on her biochem exam in first quarter, the woman I turned in for cheating, she is still in my program. She knows that I reported her, and since then we have not had honest words. She has avoided me, or been syrupy fake. I have waited for a chance to begin to speak openly with her again, because I like her, because I respect what she has done in life. I even tried to call her but her cell phone number has changed. So I have waited for my chance. Today she gave a presentation on alternative cancer cures that I was particularly interested in, and I asked her if I could get a copy of her powerpoint. She said yes and took my email. I said thankyou. She said "You're welcome bitch" as she turned away. I did not react. We continued to interact inside the same group of people for the next 10 minutes or so and she would not meet my eye or speak to me. I would like to be open with her. I understand that she is holding a grudge, that she thinks I was wrong to turn her in. I do not know if she understands that it was not personal. I like her. I would have done the same if ANY other classmate of mine had been cheating. I'm sure she had reasons that she was not prepared for the exam. My choice to report her was about the principle, and I stand behind that principle. I wonder how long it will take for her to cease being so angry and be willing to speak with me again. I am grateful that I am able to understand her grudge and not take it personally. For the most part. A part of it still stings, and that is my work to do.

Today was the last exam....and it was pretty easy. In fact, all the finals seemed easy to me this time. Last quarter I was worrying about merely passing, and this time I'm thinking I should have fought for a few more points in a few more classes and maybe got some H's (for honors, instead of P for pass) on my transcript. But it is not the time to worry about such things. I have let go of my old habit of going for the A+ (since there isn't one to get...). I'm going for comprehension.

I made it through most of my notes and index cards from this quarter, integrating them into my ever-evolving filing system. I want to be able to lay my hands on any piece of information that I need. Some my files are destined to become chapters in books. All of them will help me as I dig deeper into each aspect of medicine. The beautiful thing about medicine is that each layer builds on the last. It's like learning a language, and we need a certain fluency to pass the boards, and another kind of fluency for each possible specialty we might take on. And then there is the language of human compassion, which is the core of the practice of medicine.

So much has been happening lately that I can't even come close to keeping up with my journal. This weekend I'm attending a conference at NCNM on "Transforming the Mind" and the presentations today were fascinating. I think the most interesting one for me was this wild mathematician guy who has decided to represent aspects of dynamic living systems in three dimensional moving lines as drawn by his computer. But I don't want to write about this too much now. There will be more of this conference, and I'll have more insight after I finish the whole thing.
( long and rambling, about movies, studying, Governor Kitzhauber's talk on the future of healthcare and the Archimides Movement, and a couple of vocabulary words (grok and transmogrify)Collapse )

I just finished taking the 4th exam in organ systems, on the digestive system. I thoroughly enjoyed studying the GI, and look forward to the next round! Gut health is a modifiable key to overall health. I did OK on the exam, there were a few questions (as usual) that I answered by deductive reasoning, and because my knowledge base is spotty, my deductions can lead me to quite wrong answers. No worries. It is all beginning to plug into the big picture.
( random notesCollapse )

Homework for week 8
Doctor-Patient Communication
Liz Sutherland, ND, teaching
( here's my homework for tomorrow morningCollapse )

GENERAL
--affects the skin and joints
--we have 25 square feet of skin, weighing approximately 9 pounds, with 32 million bacteria per square inch on it, 20 feet of blood vessels and 72 feet of nerves (per square inch, still)
--red scaly patches on skin = psoriatic plaques = inflammation and excessive skin production --> silvery-white appearance
--common locations: skin of elbows and knees, palms of hands and soles of feet, on the scalp, inside ears, butt crack, etc.
--not contagious
--can be INSANELY ITCHY!!!
--chronic recurring condition
--fingernails and toenails frequently affected
--10-15% of people with psoriasis have psoriatic arthritis
--often associated with food intolerances and multiple chemical sensitivities that are often the result of dysbiosis or an imbalance of intestinal flora that causes yeast overgrowth --> systemic effects
--clinically associated with a deficiency of zinc, magnesium, essential fatty acids
--indicates a high degree of toxicity in the body
--associated with cardiovascular disease
--Annual treatment cost exceeds $3 billion, in 1993 was btw 2-3 billion
( longCollapse )