March Blog

March: 1

Spring Cumulative: 7

March has been the fastest month of all. In just four weeks I feel like our schedules have lightened tremendously preparing for our NBME final, yet the more time we have the faster it seemed like this month went. We concluded the Medical Pharmacology course with the psychiatry module. Treating psychiatric disorders is very complex and filled with lots of trial and error most times, due to the unpredictability of a patient's response to the medications. 

In our environmental signaling course, there has been one common theme I have picked up on, the importance of clean water. What many people who live in New Orleans do not know is that the potable water, treated by the sewage and water board, comes from the Mississippi River. One might initially think that is great because there is an endless supply of it. Although there is an endless supply of it, there is a problem. The EPA regulations for clean potable water are very specific for chemical and microbial contaminants. The difficulty is the enormous amount of unregulated contaminants. The Mississippi River is the second-largest drainage system in North America. 10 states directly border the river, and 16 states are known to drain into it. So for miles from the top of the country, enormous amounts of toxins are draining into the river and don't to the Gulf of Mexico where Louisiana is the last state it runs through, so we are getting water from a river where 16 states have already dumped their toxic contaminants into. I have been working on filing forms with Crystal, my class co-representative, to see if chain grocery stores, like Target and Walmart, can donate water filters to local family homes. Hopefully, we get a number of donations and can buy some as well and the class will join Crystal and me in passing them out around the community.