Happy belated Valentine's Day!, by blogger of the month Amanda Norwich

How can you say "no" to that face?

Happy belated Valentine's Day! Although this is not a holiday generally recognized in Israel, being it is devoid of any Hallmark cards, we still find ways to celebrate. Yes, there is love without Hallmark. I know, unbelievable! For instance, while taking a break from Virology lab one of our very best class bakers (ehem Kiki Fabian) handed out an amazing batch of homemade brownies shaped like hearts! Delicious and gluten-free. Not to mention we just learned that chocolate is healthy for your heart, so really what more could you ask for?

Alert! Medical students having fun.

Just to catch everyone up to speed on the rest of the week, we did have a Zumba/dinner party, in that order if anyone was curious. It was really a great time and an awesome workout if anyone gets the chance to shake it like a polaroid anytime soon. After sweating it out we went upstairs to taste the dishes each group had made based on heart-healthy diets like DASH and had a proper feast. The next day we had a poster session in the amazingly warm Beer Sheva sun and completed the week with a wrap up session. All in all the entire week was a great opportunity for me to grow, both as a medical student and a temporary resident of Israel. Things are not so different here, despite the language barriers.

 No matter what diabetes is called it's always high blood sugar and heart disease scares most of us out of our pants. What was really eye-opening was getting to see the emotional pain the patients who were willing to talk to us went through. At the wrap up session the professor in charge of coordinating the week said if all we got out of our activities was the ability to empathize more with patients suffering from heart disease he was happy. If that's the case, he succeeded in my eyes. Even though it seemed like at times my level of emotional involvement with the patients was extreme, perhaps far beyond anything I would allow myself normally, I don't have any regrets. 

During one particularly hard interview one of my classmates from Goldman (BGU's medical school) allowed herself to openly cry, while I found myself tearing up as well. Even though I know it would be impossible to feel this kind of connection with everyone throughout my career, there's no better time to do it than now when we don't have any direct responsibilities or life-changing decisions to make. And now the naive sentence I'm sure every medical student says at some point - I hope I never become jaded. That I let myself feel connected to patients even though it can be hard. If there's anything I've learned this week from the marathon runner who had a heart attack with no apparent cause or the woman who came in for a simple test and was told she had to go into open heart surgery, it's that sometimes medical tools are fallible at best. And often there's little to nothing we can actually "fix." So the best tool we have is to listen and sometimes that's enough.

Shabbat soup.

On a less serious note, we ended the week with possibly my favorite part of being in Israel - Shabbat dinner. It started out as an attempt to host a group of students from both classes, but since they're in finals right now that didn't work out. However, the night was still amazing as we shared soup, pasta, cheese and brownies over candle light. Perhaps not a meal with the healthiest glycemic index, but I've also learned you have to indulge yourself a little every once and a while. Because life is short and really, who doesn't love chocolate? - blogger of the month Amanda Norwich
PS - Happy (belated) Anniversary to Mr. & Mrs. Kalansky from MSIH Class of 2015!

Breaking cultural barriers, by February blogger of the month Amanda Norwich

Shalom haverim! I know, it never gets old... Thank you for tuning into this installment of the MSIH first year blog. You have joined us at a very interesting time. We are in the middle of cardio week where we get to (as our professor so eloquently put it) "break cultural barriers" by spending the entire week with Israeli medical students. We take classes, partake in clinical rounds at exciting locations like the Cardiac surgery department, Cardiac catheterization lab, Internal medicine wards, etc. They have even promised to "make party for us." We are all quite excited. In all seriousness, this has actually been the most interesting and motivating week so far this year. Sometimes when you get lost in the piles of books, mazes of pathways and enough flashcards to build a miniature Levittown it's easy to forget why we're here. As our last blogger Julia put it, whether it's Obama (the cute 2 year old at SACH we visited not the president) or the patients we've seen this week - this is why we're here. I've heard it over and over again from multiple classmates and I couldn't agree more.

Our own personal paparazzi at the Superbowl party!

            Now, getting back to our attempts at cultural assimilation. First to try and describe our situation I'm going to employ a little plagiarism. A friend has started a running list of small daily idiosyncrasies of American-Israeli interaction. Here's an example in the section "Literal translations that just don't play in English" -
“Eh, I was busy busy, I wanted to come but, I was sitting on my homework.  And the test, terrible, all on the face.” While this may seem culturally insensitive to some of you, making fun of Israeli people and culture, please know that we only do it in jest. To be honest, I don't feel too bad because they make fun of just as much and that's only the comments we understand! Mostly it's the mispronunciations or unknown and unfortunate mistakes we make while speaking Hebrew. I'm sure we could start an equally revealing and hysterical list of things Americans say to Israelis. Perhaps next time I'll include some.

            To top off our activities in cardio week, some of us also went out to watch the Superbowl hosted by the International Student Association. Not being a big football fan myself, I went just for the experience and I'm so glad I did. Kick off was at 1:30AM and the game ended around 5:30AM from what I hear. After falling asleep on someone's shoulder I decided it was time to leave. The night was made even more interesting by the camera man walking around taking pictures of real live Israeli-American intermingling (see picture below). I'm sure he felt like a National Geographic photographer, trying his best to capture us in our natural environment. I know I felt like a gazelle in the headlights. No pun intended, his light was literally blinding.

            Unfortunately I must leave you now to rest for another day in the life of a multi-cultural medical student. We need to rest up because tomorrow we will be doing a session of Yoga in the afternoon followed by Zumba in the evening. It's a hard life, I know. While I wish you could all join us, I promise to take photographical proof of medical students doing things not involving chairs, books or laptops. Maybe it'll even make it into National Geographic... 'Til next time! - Amanda Norwich, February blogger of the month

This is why we're here...by December blogger of the month Julia Rubin-Smith

A self-portrait:
Our little friend from Tanzania.

Many of us came to MSIH specifically because of its focus on global health and the opportunities that living in the Negev would afford us to work with underserved populations, especially Bedouins and new immigrants. Many students have been taking advantage of these opportunities, helping to organize events for International AIDS Day, volunteering their time to teach English to Bedouin teenagers, attending lectures on Bedouin history and culture, and getting involved in research with MSIH faculty, among other things. Two organizations that MSIH students have been regularly involved with are Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-IL), both of which I had the good fortune of visiting over the last month. A couple of Fridays ago, I joined three of my classmates on a trip to SACH (www.saveachildsheart.org), an Israeli organization that provides heart surgery for children from developing countries all over the world. SACH has a house just outside Tel Aviv where the children stay while waiting for their surgeries and during their recovery. We spent a couple hours at the SACH house playing with the kids – Obama and Sofia, from Angola, and Stephano and Kulwa from Tanzania – they were so fun and full of energy, and it was great to take a break from studying and just have some kid time.

The following Friday I headed back to Tel Aviv, this time to visit PHR-IL, which has an open clinic in Jaffa that serves mainly migrant workers and refugees; many of these asylum seekers suffered unspeakable human rights violations on their long journeys across the Sinai desert from countries such as Eritrea and Ethiopia. Much of the morning was spent learning about the work that PHR does in Israel, and about the hardships experienced by their beneficiaries. It was an eye-opening experience; I must admit I knew very little about the problem of people smuggling in the Sinai, and especially about the kidnapping, extortion and mistreatment of refugees that goes on (for more information on PHR-Israel’s work, go to http://www.phr.org.il). The room was packed with 1^st and 2^nd year MSIH students and students from another medical school in Tel Aviv, as well as other potential PHR-IL volunteers. It was great to see so much interest in working with this fantastic organization. In the afternoon we went on a tour of Jaffa, led by a young Israeli Arab man who works for PHR-IL and was a very knowledgeable and entertaining tour guide. The weather alternated between pouring, drizzling, and just plain windy, but despite the less than perfect day outside, we all had a great time.

It's true.  We live in food heaven!

By the end of the tour most of us were starving, so our final stop in Jaffa was a small Palestinian restaurant where they graciously seated 14 of us in a back room, even though we gave them no advance warning that we were coming! Instead of ordering from the menu we followed the owner’s suggestion to just let them bring us lots of whatever they wanted – it was a brilliant idea, as the food was truly amazing. Of course, the size of the bill ended up reflecting the high quality of the food, but despite the slight sticker shock it was totally worth it. Overall it was an inspiring day, and a good reminder of the exciting work that lies ahead of us as doctors: during the morning talk at the PHR-IL clinic one of my classmates leaned over to me and whispered excitedly, “THIS is why we’re here!” I couldn’t agree more. - blogger of the month  Julia Rubin-Smith