Inept

It's about time to sleep. My eyes are so tired now. I've taken a couple of hours reading about lymphoma. Just yesterday, one of my good friends I knew since pre-U sent me a text to ask for my expert opinion (a medical student point of view of course!). His younger sister had been diagnosed with mediastinal non-Hodgkin lymphoma a month back and according to the doc, it's already gone into stage II with spread to the lungs. Last CT scan was dated a month ago showing no other organ involvement and she's currently undergoing chemotherapy. Now and then, she feels localized pain at her spine. Question was, is this back pain a side effect of chemotherapy or a sign of spread or a complication of the disease itself.

Well, as a medical student, my first concern would be either it's a spread or a complication like osteoporosis. No doubt, spread and osteoporosis are the two courses of presentation I'm very well-versed of in lymphoma, but what I actually do not know is whether the bone pain is a side effect of chemotherapy? I couldn't at all give him a definite answer when he kept asking if there's a possibility that it's due to the side effect of drugs. On one hand, I empathize this girl who's suffering from such crucial pain when lymphoma is not exactly common at her age group and the fact that her family members are all worried about her. It's sad to read statuses posted by this friend about his sister on Fb. On the other hand, I feel really helpless with my limited knowledge that seems to have no room left for expansion yet I really want to help. I was actually looking through emedicine while answering some of his questions, which is what any layman could have done as well. I suppose I ain't any better even at the verge of finishing med school.

When it comes to expert opinions which I do encounter frequently, most of the time I just failed to give a confident answer simply because I'm not confident over things that I do not know. It's about questioning myself if there's something about it that I do not know, or if it's something that I know but am doubtful about my own judgment. The only positive annotation for being inept in knowledge is that it forces me to read more about that disease, which explains why I'm still awake at this hour.