October Extra Post

At last I finally was able to do my first mentorship today. I had gotten confirmation of who my mentor was in the summer, but he is such a busy man that it was hard to make a schedule on when I could come to shadow him. I witnessed myself today how busy of a man he is. I went to his clinic, Chaparral Medical Group, which is literally right in front of the Pomona Hospital. I went inside the waiting room where all the nurser and offices of the cardiologists were (my mentor worked in this area). I was talking to the nurses and asked for Michelle, who is the medical assistant of Dr. Muthiah. In the meanwhile while I waited, the nurses were having fun by teasing me and they taught me a new word: "baller". They asked me if I wanted to become a doctor and I said yes smiling and they said I was going to become a baller. I honestly didn't even know what that is, so I asked for the meaning. This one nurse started cracking up and then told me that it is someone that makes a lot of money. The nurses and staff are very friendly and nice, so i'm glad I will be working with them for my future mentorships. I finally got to see my mentor again and almost immediately he took me into his next patient's room. He conducted a Stress Test on the patient. The patient was put on a treadmill and Dr. Muthiah was measuring his heart rate for prognosis. He was using Standard Bruce Protocol. I observed Dr. Muthiah dealing with 6 more patients with the last patient conducting a Standard Bruce Protocol as well. Funny enough, when Dr. Muthiah started doing paperwork, the nurses asked him about "baller" and he didn't know what that was and he found out then. He made a joke immediately out of it by patting his hand on my back and asking me, "So, you're going to become a baller in the future?" It was pretty funny. I tried doing my interview on him as I was finally able to see him. It was hard enough to get 1 question done. He had to leave to the Pomona Hospital then to check on his patient (the 7th patient I saw for the day). I asked him the remaining questions on the way to the hospital. I learned a lot from my observations from my mentor on how he dealt with different kinds of patients. He really does have good character like the nurses at the Pomona Hospital stated before I mentored him. I am truly blessed and lucky to have him as my mentor.