This post is to pat myself on my own back.
I am covering the annual meeting for the American Heart Association this week. You may have seen some news coverage on the research presented here in the past few days because it is one of the biggest conferences around.
Anyways, it was, indeed, my very first conference coverage back in 2002. Imagine this. Sent to Chicago to cover the conference. Not only my first business travel trip (first time taking a taxi!), but new city for me at that time. The conference itself was just huge and overwhelming (and still is. Today, there were about 5,000 people in one of my sessions). Just 2 months into the job, I was still unfamiliar with any medical terms, let along the 100s of acronyms used in cardiology and the 100s of complicated drug names. Couple that with the fact that being this is one of the largest conferences around, people from all around the world come to it. This means lots of speakers with foreign accents. Not good for the lil girl who doesn’t even understand the basic terms in plain English. Big gulp.
So here I am 6 years later and I see how far I’ve come as a medical writer. I am still frantically writing notes when attending sessions, but I don’t have to hyperventilate (as much) when the speakers start spewing off acronyms like STEMI, TVR (not to be confused with DVR) or CABG. In case you’re interested, these stand for ST segment elevation myocardial infarction, target-vessel revascularization, and coronary artery bypass graft, respectively. Oh, and when the speakers pronounce myocardial infarction without the “r,” I just smile and know what they are trying to say.
You go girl!