Meeting New Patients

After having shadowed Dr. Anwer at his clinic a couple of times, I have come to find that he is an extremely busy doctor. It seems as if the list of patients that he sees in one day is endless and he somehow remembers everything about them, from their treatment regimen to how their family is doing. But I had the privilege to go around and meet a few patients and learn more about different treatment regimens and side effects to Leukemia.

One patient that I met was a female between forty and fifty years old and had been diagnosed with an acute form of Leukemia a couple of years back. She described her pain as being ten out of ten and unbearable, yet she was also suffering from severe depression, so her pain may have seemed worse than it may have been. She also felt extremely nauseous from all of the drugs that she has been taking daily and had poor nutrition. She did not want to eat much, if at all, because she feared she would vomit. Ina addition to seeing the effects that cancer has on someone physically, I also got to see the mental and emotional toll in takes on patients and their families.

Some patients had trouble staying healthy after their bone marrow transplants. Two patients experienced weight gain because the new stem cells had not matured enough causing them to feel weakness. This limited their ability to go out and perform simple exercises such as walking, and caused them to gain weight.

Another patient was a woman between fifty five and six five years old who had a bone marrow transplant five to six years ago. Her blood counts are normal and she experiences no intense pain, yet a side effect of her transplant was scleroderma. Scleroderma is a thickening of the skin that is common in leukemia patients after they have had a bone marrow transplant. It is difficult to try pinch the skin of a patient with scleroderma and the patient can feel stiffness and pain at times.

The main takeaway I received from meeting new patients is the amount of work and commitment necessary to try to fight back against cancer. Each patient had their own schedule in which they write how much of a certain pill they took and during what time of day. The amount of drugs that each of the patients was prescribed to take was really surprising and gave me insight as to how tedious this treatment process is, especially with CLL that can go into remission and return so easily and often.

I look forward to continuing with my project, conducting my own independent research, and shadowing Dr. Anwer. I look forward to meeting new patients and learning about their unique stories, situations, and issues. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read my blog, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. Have a nice day.