Streets Broad and Narrow

First Shifts

2010-07-04T15:54:00.003-05:00

The beginning of July marks a special event in the genesis of the doctor: spanking new interns work their first shifts as actual physicians.

As one of those interns, it's terrifying. And exhilarating. And exhausting. Once a lowly medical student, you've gone into the chrysalis of fourth year and emerged on the other side a butterfly who doesn't really know how to fly. Fragile. Awkward.

But very very pretty. (Just kidding.)

Some things I saw in my first two shifts as an emergency medicine intern:

thrown from horse, landed on head
psychotic patient becoming violent with family members (chief complaint was decreased urination)
vaginal bleeding x 1.5 months
abdominal pain in 18 year old female
drunk, demented old man fell down stairs, cut open forehead
neck laceration from broken beer bottle
firework exploded into eye - globe rupture
drug rash
accidental finger amputation
blurry vision x 1 week
generalized itching with a "rash" that was invisible to my eyes
out of percocet (x2)
facial abscess
urosepsis
dog bite

Could there be a better field than this??? (I will give you a hint. The answer is no.) OK, so it takes me a ridiculously long time to sew up a small lac (I had to put in some deeps, though). And to write a basic prescription. And to dictate anything. I'll get better with time. And those crazy, funny, heart-warming, smelly, sweet, fantastic patients will still be there.

DT: David Tennant's first acting job

2010-03-04T22:37:00.002-06:00

Oh, this is so eighties that it almost hurts to watch. Appears to be an anti-smoking teen sort of thing. A small part, but at least it was a speaking role. :-)

DW: why you should watch Doctor Who -- a brief introduction

2010-03-02T23:45:00.004-06:00

Doctor Who is a cult phenomenon here in the US. If you've heard of it at all, it's likely in relation to crazy convention-going sci-fi fanatics who flinch at the sun and smell of elderberries. And yet it's one of the most popular television programs in Britain, where watching it is as much a part of pop culture as something like "Lost" or "The West Wing" is here and it is considered a show for the whole family to enjoy together.

The years and years and years of history can be intimidating to the new viewer -- it started in 1965 and has been going strong ever since. Even in the 15 year hiatus without new TV episodes, the story lived on in books and audio dramas (audio dramas! Radio plays! I love Britain!) and a TV movie. But don't despair -- the 2005 revival was conceived to be accessible to new audiences and it seems likely that the new season beginning in April 2010 under the new direction of showrunner Steven Moffat will be similarly kind to newbies.

So without further ado, a brief introduction to the Doctor.

The Doctor is 900-odd years old (he lies about his age) and is an alien. He comes from the planet Gallifrey and is a Time Lord. This means that he is wicked clever, has some special senses that allow him to perceive things about the fabric of space-time, has two hearts and some other physiologic oddities, and can regenerate every cell in his body when his death is imminent (this process has some side effects including the fact that he then looks completely different).

The Doctor's people, the Time Lords, were one of the most powerful races in the universe for years beyond counting thanks to their special abilities. With great power failed to come great responsibility, however, and they became out of touch, hidebound, and generally were massive tools. The Doctor is a rebel of sorts who cannot maintain the distance and the impartiality demanded by his society, and he keeps "interfering" in events, changing timelines in order to right random wrongs and save random helpless people. The Time Lord powers-that-be aren't big fans of this meddling, and he earns no little trouble for his efforts.

The Doctor has a special love/frustration relationship with humankind, who he regards as both marvelous and maddening. He spends a lot of time on Earth and often takes a human companion or two with him on his adventures. He knocks about the universe in a stolen time-traveling spaceship called the TARDIS, which stands for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space." Due to a fault in her chameleon circuit, the TARDIS is stuck in the appearance of a blue 1950s police box. Fortunately, her perception filters are still working, and anyone who doesn't know what she is usually won't notice her.

The Time Lords fought for years with another race called the Daleks, who are genocidal maniacs who desire nothing more than the obliteration of all other species. This conflict eventually escalated into the great Time War, which threatened to destroy not only the Daleks and the Time Lords, but also the universe itself. In order to stop the universe from going bye-bye, the Doctor had to do something (it's not really been revealed exactly what) which resulted in the whole war being timelocked and, effectively, lead to the destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords. The Daleks were supposed to be destroyed too, but that didn't work out so well.

Since the end of the Time War, he has wandered alone -- the last of his kind.

Those bare words don't do much to describe the magic of Doctor Who. The Doctor is that primeval, archetypal character -- the wizard, the magician, the stranger -- who extends his hand and lifts you from the world of the mundane to the realms of the extraordinary. He's wonderful and terrible and critically flawed yet utterly brilliant. The whole regeneration business means that the character can be reinvented over and over again much in the same way that this archetype is, but it all happens in the context of the same story. And it's fantastic.

Why the Doctor is called the Doctor is one of the show's enduring mysteries. One rather meta reason that's been alluded to is that he's called the Doctor because he makes people better. And it's true, he does. But he also makes people worse. He takes us to our fullest capacities in both good and bad ways -- he basically turns the volume up to eleven just by his very nature. And in such a way, he shows us all of what it means to be human.

The show itself is amazing. It's funny and witty and scary and madcap zany, and it still manages to have a deep, powerful core made of morality and philosophy and tragedy.

But don't take my word for it. Watch it yourself. The new series (2005 and beyond) is available on Netflix streaming. (Many of the old episodes are available, too, but if you haven't seen the show before, I wouldn't start with any of the older stuff.)

Here are two excellent YouTube introductions to the Doctor, both by the incredibly talented Seduff. The first is an amazing introduction to the character of the Doctor in the words of those who have met him and had their lives changed by him. The second is just an awesome look at how funny the show can be, since the first video doesn't really emphasize that part.

Medicine: Dr. James Barry

2010-02-26T14:49:00.009-06:00

Had to write a paper for my medical history class; this is the result. Interesting to speculate about, to say the least:

The Curious Story of Dr. James Barry
(Who May or May Not Have Been England’s First Female Physician)

In 1809, a young man named James Barry enrolled at the University of Edinburgh as a medical student. He graduated in 1812 and went on to a distinguished yet controversial career as a military surgeon and Inspector-General of Hospitals in the British army. On July 25, 1865, the lifelong bachelor Dr. Barry died, alone and penniless, of dysentery in a rented room. In August, 1865, the servant who had dressed his corpse for burial reported to Army agents and to Barry’s physician, Dr. William McKinnon, that the body she had dressed was a “perfect female.” And thereby hangs a tale.

As far as can be determined, James Barry did not officially exist prior to signing the register at Edinburgh. No prior records have even been found, although many have searched for them. He is known to have arrived in Edinburgh in the company of a Mrs. Mary Ann Bulkley, whom he described in one of his few surviving personal letters as “my Aunt.” Mary Ann Bulkley was the estranged sister of the famous painter James Barry. She had suffered financial ruin at the hands of her husband and her eldest son, and was ultimately turned out of their home in Cork, Ireland. She and her daughters went to London, where she sent a letter to her famous brother asking for his assistance. In the postscript of the letter, it is revealed that the hand that wrote it belonged to her daughter Margaret, as Mrs. Bulkley was too upset to write it herself. Handwriting comparisons between that letter and examples of the writing of Dr. James Barry support the conclusion that Margaret Bulkley and James Barry were the same person.

Further evidence supporting this theory was found in documents belonging to Daniel Reardon, Mrs. Bulkley’s solicitor. A Statement of Account from November 28, 1809 describes the disbursal of £10 to “Mrs. Bulkley and Miss Bulkley” and states, “To cash to you on going to Scotland by my Brother.” A letter written to Reardon on December 14th, shortly after their arrival in Edinburgh, states that “Mr. Barry’s Nephew is well received by the Professors,” and is signed by James Barry. On the envelope, however, the solicitor had recorded the name of the sender and the date: “Miss Bulkley, 14 Dec.”

While some historians consider the above to be conclusive proof of James Barry’s real identity being that of Margaret Bulkley, it seems clear that doubt is still possible. The solicitor could have erred and written the cousin’s name on Barry’s letter. Mrs. Bulkley and her daughter could have met Barry in Scotland or on the way there. Mrs. Bulkley and her famous brother James Barry had other siblings; it is possible that Dr. Barry was the offspring of one of them, although there is no evidence to suggest that. The servant, Sophia Bishop, could have been mistaken about the sex of the body she dressed, or she could have created the story out of whole cloth for some reason – perhaps to gain some posthumous revenge against a lodger who could be, by all accounts, a difficult fellow. After all, it is hard to imagine someone being able to sustain a disguise of this nature through an army induction, with its attendant physical examinations, and through a forty-odd year military career.

Hard physical evidence is completely lacking. Barry’s body was buried quickly, owing to the epidemic of dysentery that was rampant at the time of his death. No autopsy was performed, and the death certificate signed by Barry’s physician, Dr. McKinnon, listed his sex as male. The certificate also bears the “X” of Sophia Bishop as a witness, although it is possible and, indeed, probable that she was not able to read the document. Dr. McKinnon, despite having recorded the sex as male at the time of death, later wrote of the allegations:

I had been intimately acquainted with [Barry] for a good many years, both in the West Indies and in England, and I had never had any suspicion that Dr Barry was a female. I attended him during his last illness… I informed [Bishop] that it was none of my business whether Dr Barry was a male or a female, and that I thought he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man.

Disinterment of the body to confirm or refute Bishop’s story was never performed. (Every medical story, it seems, must have a connection to Sir William Osler, and the connection here is this: Osler performed an investigation to discover if an autopsy or a disinterment had ever been done.) It is interesting that nowhere in his writings about the incident does Dr. McKinnon ever state that his assertion that Barry might have been intersex was based on a physical assessment of the patient.

The story of the controversy over Dr. Barry’s sex somehow got out and, unsurprisingly, made sensational headlines. Accounts poured in from scores of people who claimed to have suspected or known in certainty that Barry was a woman. There is only one recorded instance of someone suspecting this prior to Barry’s death, however. Emmanuel de Las Casas, chamberlain to Napoleon, was a prisoner at Cape Town, South Africa, when he met Barry. He described him in his journal, which was published in 1823, as, “a boy of 18 – with the form – the manners and the voice of a woman.”

In addition to asserting that Dr. Barry was a woman, Sophia Bishop made the further claim that the body she dressed had stretch marks on its abdomen consistent with a history of pregnancy. McKinnon recollects Bishop as defending this claim by saying, “I am a married woman, and the mother of nine children, and I ought to know.” No evidence of a child exists, although there is one possibly mysterious gap in Barry’s career that might be explained by hiding to conceal a pregnancy, or Margaret Bulkley could have borne a child prior to becoming James Barry.

It will likely never be established with certainty whether the physician known as James Barry was male, female, or intersex. In many ways, it is sad that the controversy over his sex has come to overshadow what would have been, for anyone, a remarkable medical career. Barry performed one of the first recorded successful Cesarean sections in 1826, and was known throughout the Army as a brilliant and gifted surgeon. He was a tireless advocate for public health and worked diligently to improve the lives of the unfortunate souls living in the South African leper colony that was part of his bailiwick. He challenged the authority of his military superiors in the Army and his civilian superiors at every posting in order to ensure the provision of clean water and a balanced diet to soldiers under his care, and faced repeated reprimands and punishments for his efforts. He worked to regulate the sale of patent nostrums that were at best harmless and at worst poison in order to safeguard both the health and the pocketbooks of the people he served.
Two lessons can be learned from the story of James Barry. The first is that one should always actually examine one’s patients. The second is that, in the long run, it doesn’t matter what James Barry’s sex actually was. His career stands for itself as a testament to a skilled and dedicated physician.

References:
Holmes, Rachel. Scanty Particulars: The Scandalous Life and Astonishing Secret of James Barry, Queen Victoria's Most Eminent Military Doctor. Random House, New York. 2002.
du Preez, Hercules Michael. Dr James Barry: the early years revealed. South African Medical Journal, 2008;98:52-62.

DW: everywhere and anywhere

2010-02-20T19:49:00.005-06:00

New trailer up!

"All of time and space. Everywhere and anywhere. Every star that ever was. Where do you want to start?"

This is why I watch Doctor Who.

(On the off chance that you actually watched it, the effects look a bit dodgy because this was actually shown in 3D in British theaters.)

gleeeeeeeeee!: new preview

2010-02-17T15:30:00.001-06:00

So excited!!

Shopping: Chocolat Blu

2010-02-15T12:08:00.003-06:00

So excited, darlings!!!

After months and months of looking at Rue La La and finding things I liked that were always either a) sold out or b) not available in my preferred size and/or color or c) way too frakking expensive, I finally managed to make a purchase!

I adore them. I hope they fit. Bring on summer!!!

Book reviews: The Secret Country and The Parable of the Sower

2010-02-14T17:55:00.004-06:00

Sometimes I just need to disengage. To retreat from the-world-as-it-is into a world of another's dreaming. This weekend was one of those times.

I read The Secret Country trilogy by Pamela Dean. She is the author of one of my very favorite coming-of-age books, Tam Lin, and so I was excited to dive in. The basic premise is that a family of children (brother, sister, and cousins) have a game they play every summer in which they vividly imagine life in their "Secret Country," and act out all the different parts. They create tales of magic and intrigue, assassination and war, in which they are princes and princesses at court. Of course they are then somehow transported into a real live version of their game, but not everything looks as they had imagined it. Some things are just perfect, but there's a character that they didn't write, others won't stay on script, and while they've somehow managed to gain access to some of their character's abilities (magic, sword-fighting, musicianship), they don't have them all. Their attention is divided between trying to play their parts well enough that no one notices, trying to discover how they were able to get there in the first place, and trying to thwart the dramatic and disastrous plot that they themselves created.

On the whole, it was good but not great. (I don't mean to damn it with faint praise; I really did enjoy it.) I think it could have benefited a great deal from a little more aggressive editing. The pace is at times very slow and the story drags, but then all of a sudden things happen in the blink of an eye without a whole lot of explanation. It's a young adult series, really, and I think younger readers might have had trouble following a few of the story's twists and turns. It is my understanding that she has returned to this world and written some adult work, and I am interested in reading it.

The other book I read was Octavia E. Butler's The Parable of the Sower. This is a book (and an author) I've been meaning to read for ages so I'm delighted that I loved it every bit as much as I hoped I would. The setting is a near-future Southern California, which has become (along with the rest of the US) a dystopia in which law and order as we know it have essentially ceased to exist. Guns and drugs are everywhere, the police are expensive, ineffectual, and almost as likely to rob you as the roving bands of homeless people, drug addicts, and gangs. Water is more expensive than gasoline. Gasoline is no longer used to fuel vehicles, but instead to start arson fires that drive people out of their settlements so that the scavengers and squatters can move in. What few paying jobs still exist are largely in the hands of huge multinational corporations, and the recently elected President has created laws that essentially allow a return to the days of the "company town" and debt slavery.

Growing up in a small walled enclave, the main character, Lauren, struggles with normal late adolescence issues, with her strict Baptist minister father and her step-mother and step-brothers, with the immanent threat of the destruction of what remains of her community, and with an inherited condition passed to her by her dead, drug-addicted mother: hyperempathy syndrome. Lauren feels the pain (and, rarely, the pleasure) of those around her.

She also struggles with finding her own faith, her own reason for being, and her own God. She discovers/creates a religion she calls Earthseed, based on her own keen observances of life and her study of other religions. The basis of Earthseed, in her words, is:

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

As Lauren and her discovered companions make their way north, fleeing the tragedies in their wake, these words take on enormous power. I absolutely loved this book. The writing is simply beautiful -- spare, haunting, and brilliant. The main character is a triumph. The religion piece is organic and thoughtful. There is a sequel -- The Parable of the Talents -- that I intend to read at my earliest opportunity. And I will be reading Butler's other works, as well, I can promise you that.

Lists: snow-things I would build if I had a yard

2010-02-10T14:25:00.004-06:00

(image source)

And a modicum of artistic ability, too.

1. snow TARDIS
2. snow Alien (the one, the only)
3. snow Cylon
4. snow hand (Manos, baby, Manos)
5. snow Darth Vader
6. snow ROUS
7. snow Zoidberg
8. snow Ood
9. snow Weeping Angel
10. snow Godzilla

(h/t io9 for the idea)

I'm not sure I'm ready for all of this...

2010-02-10T14:02:00.004-06:00

Just joined Twitter, and now there is the Google Buzz thing going on.

I'd just sort of gotten Google Reader figured out.

What on earth am I getting myself into???

A world of no: Tennant tattoo

2010-02-09T20:56:00.003-06:00

As anyone who knows me could tell you, I'm more than a bit of a David Tennant fangirl.

My fannishness, however, positively pales in comparison to this person's:

For a tattoo, it's actually quite good. But, still... no. Just... no.

Window shopping: the art of medicine

2010-02-09T20:11:00.002-06:00

For ages now I have wanted to decorate my dining room with vintage public health posters (mostly VD but with TB and other stuff thrown in, too). Thus far the primary limiting factor has been that I don't have a dining room. Why do this in a dining room? I don't know, exactly. Your average person probably does not find venereal disease an appetizing topic. It pretty much comes down to process of elimination. The bedroom? Even more inappropriate. The kitchen? Usually not enough wall space to do what I'd really like to do. The bathroom? Ditto. The living room? Perhaps, but I've got a bit of a different idea for that. And so on.

The secondary limiting factor has been finding high-quality, large reproductions of them. I've had seriously varying degrees of success buying prints online, so I'm a bit hesitant. I don't have the funds right now to frame them anyway, so I'm going to hold off for a bit. But that doesn't mean I can't look and imagine!!!

Take a tour through the wonderful world of public health after the jump.

Here we go:

Rambles: Poetry

2010-02-08T11:03:00.004-06:00

(photo: my crappy iPhone camera)

A little patch of sun before the clouds and snow and gloom threaten again. Loved the twisted shapes of the dried vegetation on the iron gate.
__________________________________________

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

--T.S. Eliot, Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Window shopping: Hispanitas

2010-02-06T21:48:00.006-06:00

So as I was walking past the shoe store, I noticed that they were having a weekend sale. I stopped in to see if the pair of Hispanitas shoes I'd been lusting after for the last few months were on sale. (The image above is sadly not of the ones I wanted, but I couldn't find a pic of them online after ages and ages of searching. They're fabulous, though, and I want them, too!)

The good news is that they were. The bad news is that they were still too expensive for me to buy.

More pics of gorgeous shoes that I want very badly, after the cut.

The combination of the amazing colors plus the retro-yet-modern styling is what gets me, I think. Plus the craftsmanship is simply outstanding.

Check them out at www.hispanitas.com (site is in Spanish).

Feeding the YouTube addiction: bittersweet

2010-02-06T14:43:00.004-06:00

The best Doctor Who vidder in the biz, Seduff, has posted a farewell to David Tennant. It's brilliant.

I recommend viewing full screen in HD (the picture quality is outstanding).

a friendly push + procrastination = me blogging again

2010-02-06T13:50:00.001-06:00

Been quite a while, but I'm back. Thanks, t, for the provocation. :)

November surprise! WIth bonus parentheses!

2006-11-04T00:13:00.000-06:00

It was damn cold this morning (well, 21 F, which is damn cold for the first week in November, anyways) and so I got out my winter coat. And lo and behold, there was a November surprise in it! Twenty bucks in the pocket! YES!!!! Finding money in my winter coat is the highlight of fall for me. I never intentionally leave any there, but almost every year I find some. Usually it's not quite twenty dollars, but I do remember one happy year that it was forty.

I needed the little lift because I was pretty tired. I must admit that by Friday of every week, I am more than ready for the weekend. One positive of the weekend is obvious -- I don't have to get up at 6:30 am. This is a big plus. The other positive is that I can get so much more work done! Looking back over that sentence I realize that it might sound a bit pathetic but it's true. By the time I get home from school most days it's almost 6 pm. Usually I take a shower because after gross lab, I stink. Make and eat dinner, and it's already 7. For my own sanity, I try to take a half-hour to an hour break at some point during the evening. I might watch a TV show, read a some of a non-med school book, talk to friends, or go online (or even blog!). That leaves maybe three-ish hours to get actual studying done if I want to get to bed "on time" (around 11 is my goal) (this almost never happens).

One thing I study every school night (even if I'm taking it "off") is the dissector for gross lab. It's rather sad how inadequate that always seems to be once I'm in lab, but it is infinitely better than not looking at it. In order to do this well (at least for the way my mind works), this involves reading the pages in the dissector and then matching them up with pictures from Rohen's (a photographic anatomy atlas that shows actual cadaver dissections), Netter's (idealized but wonderfully clear drawings), and information from Gray's (our required textbook). (I like Moore's a lot better but it's just easier to stick with Gray's since I don't have to go hunting down the requisite page numbers.) For a relatively straightforward lab, this takes roughly half an hour. There don't seem to be a whole lot of those, so mostly it's around an hour spent on that.

In an ideal world, I would then proceed to review the information from the day's lectures and read ahead for the next day. Please pardon me while I cackle rather maniacally at the notion of actually having the time and/or energy to do that every day for every subject. Basically I triage -- what concepts did I have the hardest time with during the day, what subjects did the lecturer gloss over and then say, "You'll have to read about that in your free time"? That's what gets my attention. I do almost always at least preview/skim the next day's lecture notes or PowerPoint slides so I have an idea of what to expect. Occasionally I have been rewarded for doing so by realizing that it's something I already know well, which gives me a nice warm happy glow (this has happened a few times in physio). When I preview biochem it's usually followed by some creative cursing. (Have I talked yet about how my anatomy lab partners know what time it is based on how much cussing I am doing in lab?) So really, on weeknights, I am just keeping my head above water.

It's on the weekends that I actually get the bulk of my effective studying in. A nice long stretch of uninterrupted time for me to get my study on is really what works best for me. I'm a slow starter, but once I get in the zone I am good for hours. Taking that day off last weekend really did set me behind for the week, I think. Unfortunately, next weekend I am going to be busy (but fortunately it will be with fun things!), and I've got two exams this week, so I foresee sacrificing sleep time on weeknights in order to make sure that I can stay close enough on top of things that the lost time won't be too detrimental. After that weekend, I have an anatomy exam on Tuesday, and then no more exams until finals, though, so I should have some catch up time in there. OMG, two and a half whole weeks without a test! It's going to seem like heaven. Of course, then there will be three in three days. But, bah, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

One random observation before I head off to bed:

The Law of Lab: my partners and I have established that there is definitely a Law of Lab, which states that you will have alternatingly horrific and great days in gross lab. This phenomenon is totally independent of the intrinsic difficulty or lack thereof in any particular day's assigned dissection. Instead it is a function of TA/instructor availability. We do have a ridiculous amount of help available to us. Unfortunately the distribution of that help is very uneven. They, understandably, try to help out the people who seem to be having the most difficulty. These are usually the people who had a horrific day during the last lab and are hence behind. The instructor will then come over, wave their hands, and the anatomy of the requisite portion of the body will magically be made so apparent that even the most blithering idiot could clearly see order in what had previously been chaos. That instructor, having gotten into your group and your cadaver, will tend to remain highly involved for the remainder of the period and as such the day's dissection will proceed swimmingly. Meanwhile, of course, the group whose last lab session went great is now mired in horrificness and they are waving their hands futilely in an attempt to attract the attention of the engrossed instructor, and the minutes tick by. This group then does not finish their lab, which results in them getting all the instructor attention the next day. And so the vicious cycle continues. And such is the Law of Lab. The only thing that can modify the Law of Lab even slightly is the Interesting Finding. This results in everyone coming over to your table, which is great, since you get all sorts of instructor attention and learn a lot, but bad, because you lose valuable time while trying to explain the Interesting Finding to everyone else. So, in the end, it's usually pretty much a wash.

It's all good.

2006-11-02T00:19:00.000-06:00

Had an anatomy exam today on the abdomen. It went pretty well, I thought. I felt good coming out of it primarily because I feel like I've gotten the hang on the way the course director writes the questions for the written portion of the exam. Seriously, while I'm not 100% sure I answered everything correctly, at least I felt like... yup, I knew the boundaries of the omental foramen were going to be on there, etc., etc. Nothing felt like a surprise, which was a pleasant contrast to the last exam. And he's already posted that we all passed the practical, so good on us. :) I do wish we'd had more time to spend on the material, but... bygones.

Took the night off, watched some old Buffy episodes and drank some wine. Felt rather rebellious. :) Two exams next week (physiology and biochemistry), so will be hitting the books hardcore starting tomorrow, though. My "pseudo" boyfriend is coming into town not this weekend, but the next, so I'm really looking forward to that. We will be attending a medical ethics conference, but at least we'll be together. :) :)

I've recently read a few blogs of some rather disaffected post-med school people. I had all sorts of thoughts about them, but I've thought better about posting them here. Suffice it to say that it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round. There are some people who are very dissatisfied with the fact that modern medicine, in large part, treats diseases that have a self-inflicted component to them. Why these physicians choose to blame their unhappiness about that on their patients or on the medical system in general rather than on their own choices in how they react to that fact will always be a little bit of a mystery to me. Then again, I knew what I was in for when I chose this path, so I suppose it is easy for me to be a little prejudicial.

Thank you!!

2006-10-29T23:33:00.000-06:00

Thanks for the comments, people! It is kinda nice to know that someone is reading. :)

What a lovely weekend this was. On Saturday I decided that, abdomen exam on Wednesday or not, I needed a day off. In the morning I ran some errands and cleaned up my increasingly disgusting apartment to a level that, while hardly white-glove-worthy, is somewhat less biohazard-worthy. It was a lovely day so it was nice to walk around to the bank, the office supply store, the wine store, the bakery... it was almost idyllic. There's not going to be too many more weekends of pleasant weather so every one counts!

One of the nice things about living here (I can't remember if I've said this before) is that it feels like a small town in the big city. I almost always see someone I know when I'm walking around and, since I do like my classmates, that's very nice!

And then I took a decadent nap. Ahh, it was wonderful.

In the evening, I went out with some friends from class. We walked along the Magnificent Mile, window-shopping and enjoying the beautiful evening. We got some popcorn from Garrett's (they're a Chicago institution, and their reputation, I must say, is well deserved), walked around some more, went to dinner, and then had drinks up in the Signature Lounge in the John Hancock building. It was kind of a touristy evening but we all still feel a little like tourists so, hey, I guess that's appropriate. :) We talked a bit about school but mostly we talked about other things. It was really nice to have an interesting political conversation with someone I can respectfully disagree with. It stood in stark contrast to the vituperative discourse that has become the norm with the talking heads these days, that's for sure.

Today I luxuriated in the extra hour of sleep, which I needed after staying out until 2 am, and then went hard to work on anatomy. I've got a ways to go yet but the exam isn't until Wednesday and I'm pretty sure I'll be good to go by then. It's basically just a matter of continuing to review the blood supply and innervation... I have a good general understanding but sometimes I'm off by a vertebral level or two. :)

As of now, I'm officially halfway done with the first quarter of med school! In that strange way that time often has of flowing, it feels simultaneously like I just started and like I've been doing this forever.

Long time, no blog

2006-10-26T23:39:00.000-05:00

Doesn't seem like it's been eleven days since I blogged, but I'm guessing Blogger is more reliable on this determination than I am.

Time flies when you're having fun. Time flies even faster when you're having fun at the pace of one or two weekly exams plus volunteering plus getting your ass kicked by a rhinovirus or some such infectious baddie. :)

I am hanging in there, though the last two weeks have probably been the most study-filled of my life. I'll admit that isn't saying a whole helluva lot... I have been gifted with the ability to cram and I utilized that ability way too often in undergrad. Marathon 16-hour study session before exams I am used to. Keeping up something like that kind of intensity (if in slightly shorter individual bursts) over the long haul is a novelty.

In this last while, I have (roughly in chronological order):

discovered that I passed my first round of exams (though the physio was far dicier than I thought it would be... seems as though they got tired of keeping the exam the same)
celebrated the above not by going out, but instead by collapsing in bed and sleeping for an amazingly luxurious twelve full hours
sawed through the ribcage of my cadaver
held a (dead) human heart and lungs in my hands
been fairly certain that I failed my first gross anatomy written (No muscles? Anywhere?? WTF? Weird, I thought this was the back and thorax exam, not the PNS-and-embryo-to-the-exclusion-of-everything-else exam)
performed my first standardized patient interview (complete with mildly humiliating DVD recording of same)
performed my first interview on a patient in the ED
volunteered at the free clinic
dissected a six-pack (of muscle)
performed a colectomy (on my cadaver, of course)
relearned basic sugar chemistry, glycolysis, the TCA cycle, ETC/ox phos, gluconeogenesis, the pentose phosphate shunt, and glycogen metabolism
located the ampulla of Vater, which for some reason always makes me think of Darth Vader's helmet
discovered that I passed my first gross anatomy practical and written
been very happy that this physiology module is cardiac and hence about 70% review
(except for the thirty-seven brazillion different ion channels we are required to memorize)

And so that's what's new and exciting in Molly's world for the time being. I'll try to post more often, if only for my own sanity. No guarantees, though. :)

A Calculated Risk

2006-10-15T23:45:00.000-05:00

There are only 24 hours in a day. While it would be nice to be able to spend all of them studying, it's simply not possible. I do need to sleep. And eat. And preserve some faint semblance of a life.

And so I made a decision this weekend. I studied for my Monday physiology exam on Saturday. Saturday evening I took last year's exam and did fairly well on it. (Well above passing.) And so I decided to devote all of Sunday to anatomy, which, due to the biochem exam on Friday, I'm a little behind in. Word has it that the physio exams change essentially not at all from year to year, so I'm pretty confident that my performance on the old exam will translate well to my performance on Monday. And if it doesn't, then... oops! Oh, well. :)

I'm not going to host this video directly on my blog, but you really do need to see the "PaxilBack" parody of "SexyBack" if you haven't already. I laughed my ass off.

I can't believe I'm starting week four. That's almost halfway through the first quarter. Scary!!! I've got to say that I am loving the quarter system so far, though. Semesters just could get to be tooooo long.

At any rate, boa noite to anyone reading this. And leave a comment if you are!!! I would love to see if anyone is paying attention. :) :) :)

2006-10-15T19:54:00.000-05:00

Worm!

One of the worms that was in my plum this afternoon. GROSS!!!!

2006-10-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

WVWV - My First Time 60 sec. PSA

I love this PSA. I think it does a great job of getting the message out. :)

Ahhh... so glad this week is over!

2006-10-14T00:26:00.000-05:00

Wow, this was an intense week. Stressful, busy, long... and wonderful. All through the application process, I had what I think are probably pretty normal fears for anyone, but especially for a nontrad, about whether or not I would like medical school and if uprooting my whole life would be worth it. The answer is indubitably yes. It was worth it and then some. I am loving this experience even more than I ever thought possible. It is sooooo amazingly, incredibly, awesomely cool that I can't even begin to describe how much I'm enjoying myself.

Case in point: in anatomy lab today, we were looking at the deep muscles of the back, the vertebral column, and the spinal cord. We had an anesthesiologist come in to do a "clinical correlates" presentation on lumbar puncture and epidural and spinal anesthesia. He had a really cool powerpoint presentation about the relevant anatomy and general principles of the procedures, and then he showed a video of a resident placing an epidural catheter in a woman. Afterwards he and three gas residents circled around the lab for quite a while (maybe an hour?) to answer any questions we might have. I jumped on my poor resident! (I don't think he minded, though.) I asked him all the questions I've ever thought of about epidural anesthesia but never asked because they were irrelevant to nursing practice or because I didn't want to look like a moron or because I or the CRNA or anesthesiologist didn't have time. He seemed really excited to teach about it and we talked about the procedure, indications and contraindications, complications, etc. We didn't get to see a whole lot of epidural stuff on my floor (this started changing as I was leaving, but since I worked so little then I really never got too familiar with it), so I learned a lot and it was just so cool to have such a great resource there just to teach me! (Well, to teach other people too, I suppose, but I'm greedy.)

It also was just about the neatest thing ever to see a spinal cord. How many people get to do that? It was larger than I expected it to be (I don't know what I was thinking, really, but my first response was, "Ooh, that's thick!") and the dura mater was tougher than I had envisioned. The cauda equina did not look quite so much like a horse's tail as advertised but I can see where they got the idea. My dissection techniques still leave a lot to be desired but I did improve, I think. I'm also still not quite sure that I'm seeing everything I'm supposed to be seeing, but these first two sessions have been pretty rushed, apparently, in comparison to what comes next, so I'm hoping that the next labs will be a little less frenetic. I think I'm going to like spending extra time in lab. I also really like looking at other people's cadavers to see the differences. I think I'm going to try to pay special attention to other people's backs, because I'm kinda doubting that they're going to flip my guy over for the practical... it just took too many of us and was really, really difficult.

In other news, I had my first biochem test today. It was OK... I feel relatively good about it. I know I missed up one question for certain, but I'm OK with that. (Apparently this prof includes a question on every test that you can only answer correctly if you remember a certain obscure detail from the notes... it's not something you can really reason your way through.)

We finally got our anatomy exam grades today. My whole class passed both the practical and the written, which was cause for much rejoicing!!! I did much, much better on the written than I thought I'd done, which of course makes me very happy. I couldn't possibly be more pleased with my score on the practical, too, so I'm just one bundle of joy right now.

After lab I went to social rounds (best idea EVER) and from there I went out to dinner with three of my classmates -- wonderful people. So, all in all, it was really an amazing day. I know this is going to sound incredibly cheesy, but I am inexpressibly grateful to have the opportunity to do this. It's even better than a dream come true, because it's even better than I dreamed it would be. I really feel, more than I've ever felt before, that I am in exactly the right place and doing what I was, for want of a better word, made to do. This fits me like a glove.

I'm going to stink for a very long time

2006-10-11T19:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry so long since the last post. I don't really have time for this post, but I'm going to write anyway because I really need to do something pseudo-creative for a little while. :)

It's been an interesting week thus far. Lots of firsts.

On Monday I had my first "patient encounter" as a med student. Since I've worked in patient care for 10 years, this was perhaps not quite as profound of an experience for me as it was for others, but I was actually more emotional about it than I thought I would be. My clinical skills small group (3 people) and I walked together from the med school building to the hospital all dressed up and wearing our brand new crisp white coats, and it was kind of a cool feeling. Then I had a moment of weird disorientation because I was back in a hospital (yay, home!) but had no idea where anything was (oooh, scary!). Eventually we found the intern who was precepting us -- what a great guy. We chatted for a while and then he assigned us each a patient. These first interviews weren't really histories... instead we had a short list of questions to ask about the patient's perception of illness and health care experiences. I was assigned to a very nice lady who had just returned from something (a chest x-ray, I believe, but I'm not sure). They were just shifting her back into bed before I came in. I was a little disturbed to see that the transporter left her without a call light, with her Foley bag in the bed with her, and with her bedside table out of reach, but I got that stuff sorted and we chatted for a bit. The primary goal of this exercise was to get us to be able to achieve some sort of rapport with our patient. Goal achieved.

On Tuesday I had my first medical school examination in human morphology, both practical and written. Our first unit was on embryology and histology of tissues. The practical portion was thirty slides -- ten chick embryo slides and twenty cells/tissues. The written was a 12 page mix of short answer, matching, and multiple choice, and was worth 160 points. The practical went very well, I thought, and I've heard a rumor that everyone passed, though we haven't received our scores. I thought the written was rather challenging, although that could just be because, in my opinion, anyway, it didn't play to my strengths. Too much cartilage/bone/CT, not enough muscles, nerves, epithelia, and blood (and embryo, really -- I wound up being pretty good at the embryo stuff to my supreme amazement).

Today was my first cadaver lab. We had a meeting during lunch where a speaker came and gave a talk on the history of dissection, death and how different religious/social traditions deal with it, and how this is the experience that really sort of marks the transition from being laypersons to becoming physicians. Honestly, I think people were more freaked out after the talk than they were before. But it was quite interesting -- I find medical history fascinating.

Then we went inside, got changed into scrubs (sadly not provided by the school), and had to wrap our cadavers in cloth (for preservation), flip them prone, and change them into different bags. I really like my group but we were behind from the get go because our cadaver is very large -- not horribly obese or anything, but just very tall, broad, and solidly built. We had to recruit some assistance to get everything positioned and it took quite a while.

We are beginning with the muscles of the back. Our cadaver's back is probably twice the size of some of the others (ok, this may be a slight exaggeration -- very slight). And, of course, we were all very new so everything took a long, long time. I have a feeling that we are always going to be the last group done in lab. Which is fine -- I think it's an incredible opportunity and I am all about spending as much time as we need in order to make the most of the amazing generosity of this person's gift to us.

The infamous smell is both better and worse than I thought it would be. The odor is not horrifically unpleasant, I think -- I've smelled much worse coming from live people -- but it is insidiously, horribly, and unmeasurably pervasive. Hopefully my skin will forgive me for the long hot showers I'm going to be taking every night when I come home.

After lab the Humanism in Medicine group had cookies and milk (and leftover pizza from the lunch meeting) for us and were available if anyone wanted to discuss their experiences. Apparently in last year's class there were several people who were quite upset and crying the first day. They remarked that we seemed very laid back and calm, which I suppose we really were, in retrospect. We all just walked in, took a moment to appreciate the gift we had been given, and got to work.

So, I hope I'm done with firsts for a while, now. I really would like to be able to get settled into some sort of routine! I suppose there are two more firsts coming up -- the first biochem exam on Friday and the first physio exam on Monday... oh, yeah, and my first standardized patient interview next Friday -- but I don't think they'll be quite as dramatic as these ones were.

I like my biochem teacher a lot but he is not the sort of fellow who likes to simplify or demistify or, I don't know, make things terribly clear. Apparently his exams are all about application, but we don't discuss, really, anything related to application in class, so the exam will be interesting, to say the least. I went through Lippincott last night and thought it was very helpful, despite the fact that he wants to burn every extant copy. Yes, perhaps they oversimplify, but there is something to be said for working your way UP from the basics.

Well, that's what's new in my world, and if you've not heard from me lately, that's why. Hopefully I will be able to take some time this weekend to reconnect with people!!

Breaking for the night

2006-10-07T23:44:00.000-05:00

OK, I'm calling it good for tonight. I still need to review the developmental timeline and the derivations some more, but I'm feeling in a better place now. The exam isn't until Tuesday, so I think I'll be OK.

Random musings (shout-out to the Random thread!):

I love Project Runway. I adore Tim Gunn. And I love this PR blog, Project Rungay. Funny guys!
Liquor laws must be different down here in Illinois-land. I got offered wine samples at the grocery store today. That doesn't happen in WI -- I think you have to have a liquor license to do tastings of alcohol.
The word liquor is seeming awfully strange to me tonight. I actually looked it up on dictionary.com to make sure I was spelling it correctly. Every so often a word will just jump out at me and look wrong. Egg is especially prone to this phenomenon, I've noticed. Which is just bizarre, because, I mean, really, how the hell could you misspell egg? Egge? Eg?
During my study breaks today, I watched the WoW episode of South Park on YouTube. OMG, I was cracking up. It was awesome!!!
It figures that it's possibly the most beautiful weekend of the entire year, and I'm stuck inside. Sigh. (I can't study outside, I get too distracted.)
En route to the grocery store, I passed this huge used book sale. I promised myself I would look only at one table. It happened to have a hardcover set of Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need books, and since my paperbacks of them are falling apart, I picked them up. Three bucks, can't complain. Still need another bookshelf, though. At this rate, I'm going to need two!
Hooray for printers. I've gone without one for the last 5 years or so (I printed anything I needed to at school or on my boyfriend's printer), but that has proven to be an untenable strategy for med school so I broke down and bought one this morning. IT IS SO COOL! It's an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier. I got it for under $100, and it does a great job. I've noticed in the past that I don't necessarily need to scan or copy things often, but when I do, I really really really do. And in fact, one of my classmates coincidentally (she had no idea of any of this) called me tonight to ask if I had a scanner and could I scan something for her. It turned out that I had a digital copy of the document she needed so I could just email it to her, but I thought it was kinda serendipitous that it even came up.
Serendipitous is one of my all-time favorite words. I don't use it enough. I should work it in more.
I think the highlight of the PR reunion show was the clip they did of Tim Gunn's vocabulary. While I think the attention lavished on it was more a function of the other people's inadequacy than it was of any ultra-amazing properties of Tim's, let's face it, the man is admirably well-spoken and he chooses his words with precision and care. Anyone who makes the phrase "Sturm und Drang" sound natural and totally unpretentious wins my fanhood for life.
My boyfriend and I are in a better place, so yay for that. We really reconnected over the phone this week and I'm very happy about it.

Random picture: There was a really bad storm earlier this week here and trees were blown down and uprooted all over the place. This is just one of many that I passed by on my way to class, and I happened to snap a cellphone pic of it, so here it is.

I suppose I should go to bed. I have an early morning grocery trip which will get me out of bed in a timely fashion so that I can be effective the rest of the day, but none of that will matter if I don't manage to get some decent sleep! G'night!

2006-10-07T19:57:00.000-05:00

I have come to the rather scary conclusion that I have overstudied for the practical part of my embryo/histo exam and understudied for the written. I think there were a few factors that contributed to this:

I was worried about being bad with visual information and overcompensated
There were much more abundant practice materials for the practical
There is only one good old exam for the written because of a change in the course directorship and a major shift in the content, structure, and focus of the written section
The expectations for the practical were much more clearly delineated, allowing for a more accurate self-assessment
Looking at pretty pictures is more fun than, say, memorizing tissue derivations

So time to get my butt in gear!!!

(P.S. - I've had some good pizza since coming to Chicago but I ate from Medici tonight and it was just truly unbelieveable.)

Busy days!

2006-10-03T22:38:00.000-05:00

Whew, long day today.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays our luxurious lunch break is cut short by half due to our Clinical Skills class. We are starting to learn the basics of taking a history. We begin practicing with standardized patients soon, and I think that might be fun. We will be videotaped and we have to watch and critique ourselves, which is the only part I'm not looking forward to. I recognize that there is a lot to learn from that exercise, but I *hate* watching myself on camera.

After anatomy lab, we had an "all-school" meeting in which our dean updated us on what's been going on administration-wise and alerted us to upcoming events that we can attend. I expected it to be really boring but it was actually quite OK. When that was done we scooted in small groups to the various Book Club meetings. My group was hosted by a wonderfully nice faculty couple at their condo, which was conveniently located only a block from my apartment, so I was happy about that. :) We had an excellent discussion about the book (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time) and I got to talk with some of my classmates that I haven't really gotten to know yet, so I thought it was a very worthwhile use of my time. The club will meet once a quarter, and I think that's just about right. No word yet on what we'll be reading next or if we're going to stay in the same groups.

Anatomy continues well, physio is fine -- I just need to put in a little more time in making sure that I have the few equations and transporters that we need to memorize down cold -- and that leaves biochem as the course to watch. Even after looking at old exams I find myself struggling to identify what we are actually supposed to know and exactly how we are going to be asked to apply it, so I'm looking forward to going to the review session on Thursday evening and talking with the TA's.

Quiet weekend

2006-10-01T20:40:00.000-05:00

Not much going on this weekend. Yesterday I went grocery shopping with one of my friends from the class who was kind enough to take me to a grocery store outside of Hyde Park so that I could escape the hellacious prices here. The store we went to is in the South Loop, and has what is, I think, a pretty nice view. :) Ten minutes before I took this picture (with my cell phone) it was the brightest, sunniest day you could imagine. Shortly after I took this picture it began absolutely pouring. Fortunately, today was gorgeous.

Other than that, I cleaned up my place, did laundry, and studied a bit. This afternoon I had to go recert for BLS, which was of course no problem. This upcoming week is looking pretty busy, and is our last exam-free week until after Thanksgiving, so I think that the honeymoon (as far as the workload) is going to be over pretty soon. But I'm still enjoying what we are covering, for the most part -- biochemistry is a bit of a snooze but I hope it will get more interesting as we move past the basics -- and I'm loving the anatomy stuff (we're still in embryo/histo), so all is good. :)

Whew!

2006-09-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

Almost done with the first week of medical school. Here are a few of my thoughts concerning this epic event:

1. I am really, really glad that I took some advanced science classes in undergrad (I was an English major, so I wasn't required to take anything above the prereqs). While I do feel that I could have gotten away with just taking the standard prerequisites (biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics), I feel that my stress level right now would be much higher had I not gone the extra mile. The additional classes that I elected to take were biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics. Biochem and cell bio have already come in handy -- and this is four days into med school. Looking at the syllabus, I can see that genetics will be useful before the quarter is out. While I don't think it would have been the kiss of death to come in without them, it is nice that some of the stuff I am seeing this week is review for me... I would feel a whole lot more lost if I hadn't seen any of the material previously. As it stands, I've seen some of this protein stuff twice before, which gives me a feeling of confidence that I appreciate having.

2. I am finding embryology challenging but fun. I am not a very visual person and so I was apprehensive about histo/embryo stuff. Yesterday I was really frustrated because I could not make heads or tails out of my chick slides (a chicken embryo at 24 and 36 hours of development, both in whole mount and in sequential cross-sections). There is a website that the school gave to us to view but since I don't have a laptop yet I felt rather at a disadvantage compared to the students who were able to pull up the website while they were at their scopes. (Our lab manual has been relatively useless in this endeavor.) But I put in an hour or so on the site last night and over lunch today and lab went better this afternoon, so I am hopeful again. We are only spending 3 days on embryo stuff, but it's apparently about 40% of our first anatomy exam, so I really want to make sure I have it down.

3. I am stoked about physiology -- or, at least, I will be once we get through this initial membrane transport stuff. Yes, it is important but I have seen it before (thanks, cell bio!) and I am eager to get on to the cardiovascular system. I have discovered that I live for the clinical correlates, which is not exactly a surprise to me, but is something to keep in mind. Sodium transport? Zzzzzz. Why digoxin works for CHF?? Give me more!!!

4. The person who scheduled biochem after lunch should really be shot or otherwise disciplined. OMG. I never fall asleep in class but this has been dire. I catch myself falling into these weird half-asleep states in which Josh and Donna (my favorite West Wing 'ship) are interacting peptide domains... hopefully I will be better able to pay attention once we get to the hard parts!

5. I am a sucker for good salesmanship. We have our medical equipment sale tomorrow. The director of our Clinical Skills course is trying to talk us into buying really expensive diagnostic sets that I *know* we are not going to use that much. So spending $700 on a panoptic opthalmoscope and otoscope set doesn't really seem like something I want to do. Especially since I already have a diagnostic set. OK, so it's a hand-me-down from my boyfriend and it's from, like, 1972, but it still works! But then Dr. Harper starts going on about how our motto is that we are at "the forefront of medicine" and we should really equip ourselves with the best technology available, and I find myself ready to write the check. It *was* written into our financial aid budget, I must admit. I'd rather get a laptop for the money, but... I'm going to see if I can try one out tomorrow at the sale and make my decision then.

6. Speaking (tangentially) of my boyfriend, things are a little weird. I got a strange email from him this morning and I don't quite know what to make of where we are going. I know that part of our problem is that neither one of us likes to be the "vulnerable" one in relationships, having both been burned by that in the past. So we tend to try to one-up each other in the "I don't really need you" game. I thought I'd been doing pretty well at handling that part of us, but perhaps not so much. It would be a lot easier if there weren't so many solid, objective reasons as to why we as a couple are not a good idea. But there are, and sometimes just wanting to be with a person isn't good enough. I think we are both struggling with the decision of whether or not the cons outweigh the pros.

7. I have been working my ass off this week. I know that for me, beginning as you mean to go on is desperately important and as such I have been trying to err on the side of studying more rather than less. And so I have studied more this first not-even-over week of school than I studied pretty much all of last semester put together. :) Our first exams are about a week and a half away. After them, I will have a much better idea of what I do and don't need to do, I hope. The fire-hydrant meme is startlingly accurate -- I have been putting in a lot of hours and already I know that I could be putting in so many more, even now when most of the stuff is review.

8. I do think that I made the right decision in coming to this school. Med schools have a really vast range of curricula. I chose to go to a school that is really intense as far as classtime goes -- we are at school from 8:30 am to 5 pm, with a variable lunch break in the middle -- and I think that's good. I'm an excellent traditional learner and I *like* lecture, so it's working for me so far.

9. Now that I've made it all the way up to nine, I feel pressured to go all the way to ten. I have a thing about nice, round numbers that borders on the obsessive/compulsive -- I can't stop what I'm doing and go to sleep unless it's on a :00 or a :30 of the clock, for example -- and so I think I need to come up with a thought for number ten.

10. I am loving living in Hyde Park. I have a beautiful 15 minute walk to school, which is just about ideal in my book. Everything I need (groceries, office supplies, hardware store, wine shop, drugstore, take-out food, bank) is within a 3 block radius of my apartment (although it's more expensive than it would be if I had a car and could go elsewhere). I feel perfectly safe during daylight hours, and there are copious transportation options for the evening if I should ever need to avail myself of them. The residents of my building are friendly. My apartment, while small, is suitable to my needs and I can see myself staying here for another year or three (I just need *one* more bookcase for the scary amount of medical texts I have already and will need to purchase). It's really a good thing.

So, anyway, those are my thoughts for this first week. I really couldn't ask for it to be going any better than it is. I'm quite content. :)

Officially MS1 :)

2006-09-25T12:13:00.000-05:00

So, it's now official. I have started medical school.

I don't think there's anything I could type that could possibly express how happy I am about this.

Of course, that might be because I'm really tired. My insomnia kicked in last night and I spent an ungodly amount of time re-reading excellent West Wing fanfic (you can find it here, at the wonderful Jo and Ryo Collective, if you are so inclined). So I was yawning a bit in lecture this morning, but it was all good.

We start our days with physiology. The first topic in that class is going to be membrane transport, so we reviewed some basics in that area. Then, in our human morphology (to be called anatomy from here on out, because it's shorter and I'm lazy) lecture, we started out with basic development. After this luxuriously long lunch break, we will have biochemistry and anatomy lab. In lab, we'll be beginning with histology and so I think today we're just basically orienting to our scopes and covering the basics of staining.

My only exposure to anything histo-related previously was a horrific experience with cryosectioning and staining in my undergrad lab that I would just as soon forget ever happened, so we'll see how this goes. I'm awfully glad that I know a pathology HO. ;)

Weekend Update

2006-09-24T22:56:00.000-05:00

I'm Tina Fey... well, not anymore!

Very nice weekend, which is fabulous because I needed the break. I cleaned my apartment, got stuff at Office Depot to organize with, read some books, watched a little TV, previewed the material for my first lectures on Monday, and found the pilot for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on the NBC website so I got to watch it after all. Yay! I *heart* Bradley Whitford almost as much as I *heart* Aaron Sorkin. It was pretty good and I think the show has a lot of promise. Perhaps it was my bias showing, but I thought it was pretty easy to tell who had worked with Sorkin before and who hadn't, or at least not as much. That style of speaking is hard for a lot of actors. Hopefully it will only get better. :) It bothered me a little that the font used for the credits and the title cards was the same as on the West Wing. It made me want my Josh'n'Donna, Jed'n'Abbey, Sam'n'Ainsley, and CJ'n'Danny (or Toby, I liked both pairings), dammit. Oh, well. At least I got Josh and Danny. Must be grateful for what I can get.

O-week, postscript

2006-09-22T22:13:00.000-05:00

Friday of O-week there were no classwide event scheduled, but the Been Around the Block Society (aka BABS, the nontrad group) had a BBQ. Because of the weather the BBQ turned into a pizza and pasta party, but that was fine with me -- the pasta they got was fantastic. I got to meet a lot of other nontrads and we shared stories, etc. It was a lot of fun. Apparently last year this was the only thing that the BABS did, but this year the leaders plan on being more active and doing other stuff, which I would really enjoy.

And then I went home and took a five hour nap that was desperately needed. Sooooo sooooo short on sleep all week long!!

O-week, day four

2006-09-22T00:57:00.000-05:00

Our last day of O-week was called "How to Be an Effective Medical Student," but everyone referred to it as academic day. It was on this day that we finally received our actual schedules, for which we had been begging for a while. There were two optional workshops in the morning -- one on finding your own learning style, and one on dual degree options. I went to both and quite enjoyed them. I sorta doubt I'm going to do a dual degree since I'm all old and stuff (kidding! but not really) but it is nice to know the many options that are there in case I change my mind. Next we had a curriculum overview. After lunch we got to break up into small groups and ask questions of second year students. They gave us great tips on book buying, how to study, what the different professors are like, and such things.

I am going to try to not be a crazy textbook buyer this year. I love books, and I always buy every book, required and recommended, for every class. Of course, I wind up not using half or more of them, and then I feel bad about wasting the money. So I really am going to try to reform my ways, especially as it seems to be very possible to do here with the voluminious and extensive class notes and slides we are given. Besides, multiple copies of all the books are on reserve at the library, so if there's one I didn't get that I need, it's not the end of the world. I have several texts already, and I do think there are two or three more I would like to get, but I'm going to try to pick them up used at the AMSA book sale this week.

The second to last thing we did was to have anatomy lab group icebreakers. I was so happy to learn that not only did I already know the three other people in my lab group, but I already liked them a lot. I think we are going to kick ass and take names... I couldn't have picked a better group if I'd tried. So that was happy.

After that, we had a sort of capstone/keynote/whatever bogus name you want to give it speech by a really phenomenal speaker... an invasive cardiologist (alumnus, of course) who basically did the abbreviated history of cardiac medicine and talked about all the changes we are going to see in our careers and stuff. He ended with tips and advice which included things like be nice to the ancillary staff and that nurses will save your ass, so of course I liked him a lot.

Everything he talked about really made me miss working in cards, though, and sort of brought to life the idea of going into cards as a specialty again for me. I just keep telling myself that I have a lot of time to sort it out. :)

Then we all had to race home and change into nice (and hopefully warm) clothes for our grand finale event, which was a boat cruise on Lake Michigan and the Chicago river. It was really, really neat -- much cooler than I had even anticipated. Nice appetizers and an open bar with beer or wine. I think we may have continued what is apparently a tradition of being banned from ever returning to the venue at which the O-week finale is held due to an unfortunate excretory incident on the part of one of my classmates, but, hey, we had fun.

Afterwards most of us went over to this really chi-chi club. Apparently the cover is usually $25, but our social chair talked them into letting us in with no cover and free Ketel One drinks for the first twenty minutes. I was exhausted but I figured this was probably my only opportunity for a long while to check out a bar with a $25 cover so I went for a little while. It was very nice and all, and the DJ was great, but damn. :O I only stayed for about an hour and caught a taxi home with the first group I saw leaving.

It was a fun night, though, and a great way to end O-week. Except it really wasn't the last thing for me. :)

O-week, day three

2006-09-20T22:42:00.000-05:00

The third day of o-week was officially called "Introduction to Medicine as a Career." We started with an introduction to our society system, which is new to the school (only in its second year) and is sort of a Harry Potter-esque vertical integration of the school. The societies are social but have as their main goal career advising, which hopefully will be nice. I think I'm in Slytherin. ;)

We heard from a panel of alumni physicians about their experiences in choosing their career paths, and had lunch with a member of the faculty. I ate with Dr. Fromme, who is a pediatric hospitalist and apparently head of the pediatric residency program. Very cool lady... I was happy to find out that she was also going to be hosting the faculty dinner that evening.

After lunch we learned about some of the community service opportunities that we can participate in. Unfortunately the clinic I want to volunteer at is on Monday evenings, which is not so good for my Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip viewing. I hope they have episodes on ITunes or something... I'm going to have to check that out. (I don't think wanting to watch one TV show, written by the best writer of dialogue since, well, possibly ever, is asking too too much from life, do you?)

To close out the day, we had a financial aid presentation and found out we can pick up our checks on Monday. Whoopee!!! While the presentation was going on, I had this sudden cold chilly panic feeling that I had not made the first payment on my consolidation loan, which hasn't been deferred yet because we weren't officially registered yet because we start school later than anywhere else on earth. I leapt out of my chair at the end of the talk and powerwalked all the way home only to discover that I'm more on the ball than I thought and had actually made the payment three weeks ago, since I had been foresighted enough to determine that I would probably be too busy to remember it this week.

If only I could have remembered my brilliance.

After that adrenaline rush, I was kinda tired for the faculty dinner. It was still fun though... we went to Dr. Fromme's very nice condo, and she and her wonderful husband had deep dish from three different pizza joints (one meaty & one veggie from each) for us to try out. There was salad to go with, and a choice of Chicago cheesecake or brownies and ice cream for dessert. I learned that brownies originated in Chicago, which I did not previously know. Unfortunately, I've forgotten exactly where. However, I'm sure that information is available somewhere on the internet if you are really that curious.

And then we went home, and I was exhausted. As such, this entry is actually being posted on the weekend. :)

O-week, day two

2006-09-19T23:38:00.000-05:00

Today's theme was logistics. All morning (and morning started at 7:30 am) we ran around campus taking care of various tasks... getting our pictures taken for our hospital ID cards, taking a quick tour of buildings that will be important to us, paying our various fees for things like microscope rental, having the second step of our TB skin tests, being fit-tested for respirators for airborne isolation, being fingerprinted for our criminal background checks, getting our locker and mailbox assignments, etc. Over lunch we had a HIPAA training session (and wow, that timing was not well thought out... I'd say at least a third of the class fell asleep, although we did ask some good questions). Then we did our basic life support (CPR) training session -- we'll take the test next weekend. In the evening we had the option of going to a pub crawl, a GLBT event, or a game night (you could just go home and crash if you wanted, and I think a few people did). I was a little bar-ed out, so I elected to go to game night. We played a rousing game of Taboo with a pretty big crowd of people and it was a lot of fun. Our medical student-ness was painfully apparent with our explanations of some words... "media" being something you can grow bacteria or cells on, for example. My team won (yay!).

Aside from a poor footwear choice for the running around this morning (something that is sadly chronic in my life), it was a great day. Tomorrow I don't have to be there until 9:15!!! Acclimation must be proceeding pretty quickly since I'm already thinking of that as decadently late instead of painfully early.

O-week, day one

2006-09-19T00:39:00.000-05:00

First day of O-week! And man, was it long!!

We started with a nive breakfast with our small "Transition Teams," or T-teams, as we call them. There are twelve of them, with about 9 students each. Each T-team has three or four MS2's to guide us, answer our questions, etc.

After breakfast we were rather mysteriously told to line up single file and we then entered the main lecture hall. As we started to move inside, we were greeted by a thunderous standing ovation from the staff, deans, department chairs, and as many MS2-4's as could make it today. It sounds rather corny, but our "clap-in" was actually really, really cool and a totally moving experience. Apparently when the MS2's finish their classroom work this spring, we will clap them out. It's a fun tradition -- I like it!

We were welcomed to the school by what seemed like God and everybody (today's theme was welcome) and we talked a lot about professionalism, which sounds dry but was livened up by a funny little skit-type thing and some great speakers.

At the end of the long day, we got our O-week T-shirts, a gift bag from the alumni association, and our facebooks. I appreciate corny humor, and so I thought the T-shirts were great. Our unofficial school motto (though usually applied to the undergrad portion) is "where fun goes to die." Our med school motto is apparently now "where fun comes to be resuscitated." There's even a fabulous little logo underneath that is a VF/VT rhythm that feeds into the words "class of 2010" and comes out in NSR. I thought that was an especially nice touch even if I'm probably one of the only ones in the class who can really appreciate it at the moment.

We got an hour to run home and change (since it was professionalism day we had to dress professionally) and then we went to a BBQ with our T-teams that was hosted at a MS2's house (there were several different ones, of course). Afterwards we met back up at the school and took buses to an excellent bar called North Beach. There was indoor sand volleyball, basketball, pool, air hockey, foosball, darts, an ice cream sundae bar, and it was really a blast. I taught some of my new friends how to play cricket. I lost. But it was still a most excellent time.

We've got to be back to school in less than seven hours, so it's probably time to call it a night. :)

Proud new owner of a white coat

2006-09-18T00:05:00.000-05:00

Lots of stuff going on this weekend.

Yesterday I did the 5K AIDS Run/Walk with some of my classmates. It was a gorgeous day for it, the setting was beautiful with the downtown skyline and the lake, and we had a great time. Afterwards, we went out for pizza. And then I came home and totally crashed... it's been a busy week and I was just done.

I managed to get up early this morning though, since I had stuff to do. I did some laundry and went grocery shopping. I wanted to get a new pair of shoes to go with the outfit I was planning on wearing to the ceremony but I decided that would be too extravagant. Unfortunately the shoes I had were really uncomfortable and I wound up standing and walking for far longer than I had anticipated and by the end of the night my feet were burning with pain. But I saved money. :)

I was rather ambivalent about the white coat ceremony to begin with, not for reasons intrinsic to the ceremony itself but because of my family circumstances surrounding it. My parents went through a bitter and nasty divorce a few years ago and things are still really rough. My mom told me that I had to choose... I could invite her or my dad but not both. Although she definitely has her reasons for being very angry with my dad, I thought (and still think) that this was entirely inappropriate. So basically I told her that I wasn't going to play that game. I sent an invitation to each of them and I said that if she didn't want to come then that was fine with me, but that I wasn't about to take sides. She elected not to come, and therefore none of that side of my family came (I don't blame them for not wanting to get in the middle of this). She did call me this afternoon and told me that she wished she could have been there and that she hoped I could understand why she wasn't. I don't, really, but I just let it go. I wish I could make her see that this sort of behavior only hurts herself and hurts me, but I can't.

So, anyway, my father came down from Milwaukee and my boyfriend came down from Madison and I was very happy to have them there, especially since they both just had to turn right around and drive back to Wisconsin, so it was pretty much a giant pain in the ass for each of them. Sunday evening seems like a pretty silly time to hold this sort of event to me but, whatever. It was very well done and I'm glad I went.

Afterwards, I went out and met a bunch of second and fourth years, along with a smattering of my first year classmates. It was a great time and I met some people from my class that I hadn't really had a chance to talk with before, so that was good.

O-Week, here I come!

Yawn.

2006-09-14T23:50:00.000-05:00

I suppose I should write something but I'm pretty beat.

I had caffeine in the evening yesterday (never a good thing for me) and as a result slept for crap and have been tired all day. Fortunately we got out a little early today. I took care of some more things around the apartment, worked a little bit on my portion of the poster presentation my group is giving tomorrow on Medicare and Medicaid, had a lovely virtual dinner with a friend (mwah!) , and spent the rest of the evening relaxing, listening to music, and dicking around on the Internet.

The presentations today were very good, as usual. One on LGBT disparities, one on translators and limited English proficiency, one on race and ED care, and one on Type 2 DM.

I can't believe the first week is almost over already. =O

Whetting my appetite

2006-09-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

We had lots of excellent lectures today. A little more break time in between them would have been appreciated, but it was really mostly fantastic quality so I can't complain. An MD/JD came to speak with us about public insurance (Medicare/Medicaid) and the uninsured, and I enjoyed that presentation a lot. I learned so much stuff that I didn't know... did you realize that states spend, on average, 20% of their budgets on Medicaid? And that of that 20%, fully half of it goes to only 5% of the Medicaid population? The amazing upshot of this is that basically what this works out to is that less than 1% of each state's population consumes 10% of the entire state budget. I was aware that a vast amount of money goes to a very small amount of truly sick people, but I had no idea it was this ginormous.

We also had a presentation by two social workers who explained a little bit about what they do as far as addressing disparities, and we heard from a researcher who is studying free clinics in the US. We also had a lecture from the ACCESS group that runs the clinic that I visited yesterday... the more I hear about their organization, the more impressed I am. Rounding out the morning were lectures on breast cancer and hypertension in the African-American population, both of which were excellent. Dr. McDade told us about a current theory (as yet unproven, though there is some evidence in support) that one of the reasons that African-Americans are disproportionately affected by hypertension is that the ability to concentrate and hold on to sodium may have had a protective effect during the slave trade which caused a differential survival across the Middle Passage, thus concentrating those genes in this population (people of African descent from other areas are not nearly as affected by hypertension). Really interesting to think about.

In the afternoon we visited the emergency department. Except for when my mother had her thyroid surgery in January, it's the first time I've been in a hospital for a year. It completely felt like going home. The smells of the cleaning solutions mingled with the smells of the patients, the sounds of the pages and the tele monitors and the shift report going on, the cadence of the movement of the staff around the station and in and out of the rooms and the curtains... it was all so comfortingly familiar. Of course, in keeping with the course, our tour was focused primarily on policy and public health sorts of things -- nothing clinical at all, really -- but I'm afraid to say that I pretty much tuned that all out and let my attention wander to the rest of the environment. I absolutely did not want to leave. In a week that's been full of new things and new people and new places and new stresses, it was sort of jolting and strange to feel like I belonged there. While it wasn't my home exactly, still, I understood it.

Gah, I'm doing a bad job of describing what it was like. All I can say is that it was really powerful for me and I really cannot wait to get back into some sort of clinical environment, and preferably a hospital. Cannot possibly come soon enough.

Blind as a bat.

2006-09-12T21:45:00.000-05:00

Today was OK, I suppose. I went to the bathroom during our morning break and as I was taking off my glasses to fix my hair, one of the temples snapped right off. :( I've got fairly bad myopia and astigmatism and, without my glasses, I'm one of those people who can just sort of vaguely see something where the eye chart is supposed to be, so needless to say, this made for an interesting remainder of the day. I'd be lying if I said it didn't put me in a bit of a bad mood -- it's really hard to talk to people, especially people you don't know well, when you can't see their faces -- but I tried my hardest not to let it get to me.

The content of today was really very good. We had great speakers who talked about:

the Tuskegee experiment and its implications on health care for African-Americans, especially in research
Health care issues of Latino populations, especially the Hispanic or Latino paradox
Health care issues of Asian-American/Pacific Islander populations (with an emphasis on Hep B)
The obesity epidemic, especially as related to African-Americans

Many of the speakers shared their families' experiences with health care disparities and how they influenced their careers as physicians and it really was very moving. In the afternoon we visited a community clinic (which was a FQHC, or federally qualified health center). This clinic is part of an association that operates more than 40 community clinics in the Chicagoland area and is the largest such provider in the US. They provide care to anyone who walks in the door, regardless of their insurance status. For uninsured patients, they charge a sliding scale fee, which at the bottom is $15 per visit and includes anything that can be done at the clinic, including lab work. Approximately 25% of the patients this organization serves are uninsured, which works out to about 70,000 people per year (There are about 46 million uninsured people nationwide, of which about 1.2 million are in Illinois -- 860,000 of those are in the Chicago area.) They are able to fund this care because of a special arrangement (due to their FQHC status) with the government in which they are reimbursed extra money for every Medicaid patient that they see. They also receive grants and donations. None of my practice experience has been in underserved areas and so I had never heard of this program before, and the learning was time very well spent.

Semi-officially no longer a MS0

2006-09-11T20:35:00.000-05:00

First day today. But not really. But really. :p

For the first time, my school is offering an optional class on disparities in health care during the week before orientation. Since it's a subject I'm interested in, I signed up. So did two-thirds of my classmates. :) So, while orientation doesn't begin for another week and actual official classes for another two weeks, I consider myself to have started medical school today with the first day of this class.

The course, which is the first of its kind, is intended to teach us about health care disparities, the reasons behind them, and potential solutions to them that we can incorporate into our own learning and eventual practice. It also gives us an opportunity to go into our community and to observe the facilities in which care is being delivered to a variety of populations that may be experiencing disparities in their health care.

So far I've enjoyed it quite a bit (though, again, it is totally up my alley). We had four lecturers today. Dr. Kim talked to us about cultural competency and how it affects quality of care and clinical outcomes. Dr. Chin gave us an overview of health care disparities with an emphasis on learning about the ways in which the problem is being examined, defined, and solutions formulated. Dr. Whitaker, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, talked about his path towards becoming involved in public health and the project he worked on in our community to address health care disparities for African-American males. Dr. Harper discussed health literacy and the effects it can have on health care quality and outcomes.

In the coming days we will be touring some community facilities and working in groups on a poster presentation about one of the facets of the disparity issue. My group is looking at Medicare and Medicaid, and the strengths and disadvantages of them as options for providing health care to Americans. We will also be having more didactic lectures, many of which will be presented by notable figures from around the area.

Of course, a good bit of the day was involved with meeting and talking with our new classmates. Of course, there were the standard "where did you go to undergrad" and "where are you living" questions, and some awkward silences, but I had fun. I met some really nice people and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better.

All in all, I have to call it a success. :)

Relaxation

2006-09-10T23:06:00.000-05:00

I have a hard time going to sleep on ordinary nights. The night before something big it's truly problematic for me. And so I've got some lovely scented candles burning, some relaxing music on, a nice drink, and I'm just going to breathe deeply in and out.

2006-09-10T11:34:00.000-05:00

As promised, a photo of my new place. This photo is significant for two reasons -- the art and the bookcase.

The bookcase is one of two that I stuffed to the gills and am very happy about (see previous post). The art has a lot of backstory.

In March 2001 as a birthday present to myself I bought this print of The Wassail, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect and artist whose work I am inordinately fond of. I of course meant to have it framed immediately. Life, however, intervened and it wasn't until almost a year later that I managed to have the time and the money simultaneously to get it done. But I finally did.

Shortly thereafter my relationship with P. became rather more serious and we began to talk about me moving to Madison and moving in with him. I decided to hold off on hanging the print until I knew for sure if I was staying or going (why make holes I'd just need to clean up in a few months?).

I did wind up moving in with P., and I toted my little print with me to Madison. When I moved in, P's apartment was completely bachelor paddish and had a sort of black leather and chrome thing going on that I think he meant to be sleek and modern but wound up being rather frighteningly S&M-y. My picture didn't really fit in. I wanted to hang it up anyway, but I ran into some fierce opposition both on stylistic grounds and because P. has some weird OCD thing against making holes in the walls, especially of rented places. And so my picture stayed in its box.

When P. bought his condo last year and we moved into it, I was so excited that finally I would be able to hang up my picture. Unfortunately we could not agree on where or when and as the application season progressed I began to sense that I probably would not be staying in Madison and so I put my poor little print away again.

Five and a half years later and I finally have the damn thing up on a wall. It looks great.

While there are things about living alone again that I may not like so much, there are some things that I have definitely missed. :)

I really like this for some reason...

2006-09-08T22:07:00.000-05:00

This video is fascinating, hypnotically beautiful, and I love the music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo

The Opener

2006-09-08T14:01:00.000-05:00

I love beginnings.

If I played baseball, I'd be a starting pitcher. I am sooooo good in the early phases of things. I have boundless energy and ideas and enthusiasm and I dig in with a will. The world is my oyster when I'm starting something. I become an awesome vortex of productivity and passion.

I hate endings.

Somewhere around the 7th inning, instead of stretching, I just want to take my ball and go home. This is where the Procrastinatrix comes in. I am horrible at finishing things. Projects, classes, hobbies, relationships... it's all the same. All my motivation seems to get sucked dry about three-quarters of the way through anything. I really don't have any insight into why I am this way, I just know that it's the way I am and have always been. I will put off finishing anything until the last possible moment. Packing for a trip, writing the conclusion for a paper... only the imminent threat of the deadline can get my ass into gear.

I think one of the reasons I'm feeling so ambivalent at the moment is that I'm experiencing a beginning and an ending all at the same time. Everything is changing all at once. I'm eager to get started on my new life, but I'm dragging my feet about saying goodbye to my old one.

Fortunately time has a way of moving on, with or without my input on the matter. :)

My personal seal

2006-09-08T09:06:00.000-05:00

At a fun website, the Official Seal Generator, which I found on Ben's blog, I made my own official seal. I like it -- check it out!

Funny!

2006-09-07T09:48:00.000-05:00

The Fake Doctor has a hilarious post up. Check it out!

Reuniting with some old friends

2006-09-06T23:36:00.000-05:00

Another round trip today. Many of my goals were accomplished but I was not able to set up a savings/checking account at any of the three banks I visited today for a variety of stupid reasons and that made me grumpy.

On the brighter side, though, not only did I take down more stuff and shop at IKEA (I could spend a whole day there, but I didn't), I started unpacking. And glory be, I managed to unpack all twelve boxes of my books AND fit them all into the two bookshelves that came with the apartment. It ain't pretty, but I did it. (I'll post a pic sometime this weekend.) A good 75% of these books have been in boxes for the past year, since when P. and I moved in 8/2005 I knew that there was a decent chance that I'd be moving again and hence I didn't unpack them (having nowhere to put them was also a factor). Of the remaining 25%, probably 20% had been in storage for the last 4 years, ever since I moved in with P. to begin with. I was just so delighted to pull out all my old friends. I was finally able to verify for myself that my autographed copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet indeed did not burn up in the fire at my parents' house. I was pretty certain that I'd taken it with me and stored it but I wasn't 100% sure that it hadn't been in one of the four or five boxes I lost. So happy day all around. :)

I still want more bookshelves, though -- with the paperbacks stacked three rows deep, they're hardly more accessible than they were in the boxes. But it's not a STAT priority anymore.

P. says that medical school permanently caused him to have an aversion to reading for pleasure (he claims he read widely before that). I'm not too worried about that, though. I don't think the experience that could turn me off of reading has been invented yet.

I also picked up the self-installation kit for my cable internet (it only took an hour and a half). Hopefully I'll be able to get up and running quickly on Saturday.

The original plan had been for P. to take me down for my permanent residence on Friday, but his work schedule has become incompatible with that so it'll be Saturday morning instead.

So much to do between now and then!!!

A laborious weekend

2006-09-04T19:36:00.000-05:00

While driving from Chicago to Milwaukee yesterday, I composed a great blog post in my head. Sadly, I didn't have any connectivity until today and at some point in the intervening hours I completely lost it.

Trust me, you're missing out. ;)

Long weekend. Lots of driving. Many boxes. And of course, my family.

I love my family to bits. That said, we are some of the craziest mo-fos ever. I think at some point over this weekend I wanted to throttle every last one of them. And I'm sure they felt the same about me. :) Every once in a while I realize that I have indeed become my mother in far too many ways to count. While in some respects this is good, in others it basically makes me want to claw my skin off.

But it's done. S. is settled in at college and her roommate, if not perhaps entirely compatible, seems at least relatively normal and is IMHO going to be good for S. by hopefully encouraging her to be a little less Daria-esque (not that there's anything wrong with that :p) and a little more willing to try new things. Most of my stuff is moved and the rest will be done this week. Mom was frequently tearful over her baby going off to college and about me going to school (I'm not really going to be much further away so I don't really get that but OK, whatever), but I think she's going to pull through.

I'm going down once more on Wednesday I think, to set up a bank account, get some shelves at IKEA, and perhaps start to unpack a little. Then on Friday I'm going down permanently. :O

New Digs

2006-09-01T22:05:00.000-05:00

Picked up the keys (four, plus one of those RF doohickeys -- my poor keychain!) to my apartment today. It's teesy tiny but I think it will be sufficient unto my needs and it's a nice building in a convenient location and it doesn't break my budget so on the whole I am pleased.

Getting there was a breeze this morning... traffic into town was very light and even with the complications of getting off on the wrong exit because I was in the wrong lane and this jerkwad wouldn't let me over, randomly steering my way through Chicago in a vaguely south-easterly direction, and finding a parallel parking spot I could actually park in (I'm legendarily bad at that), I made the trip in 3 hours and 5 minutes, which is most excellent. (I owe it all to open-road tolling, I swear. Now if they would just finish!!)

In many trips, I wrestled the boxes from my car through the four doors, into the elevator, and down the long hallway into my place and eventually I did win. My stupid metal CD racks only crashed down onto my feet three or four times. I was pleasantly surprised to find more "furnishings" than I'd been lead to expect from my landlord, including a microwave, a coffeepot, and a giant fan. I'm a total convert to the whole furnished apartment thing. Especially since life seems to have been telling me for years to be less materialistic. My possessions tend to suffer from dire catastrophes like fires and floods. :( (None of which were my fault, even!!)

The fact that none of the shades roll up is relatively minor, I suppose. I'm fairly photophobic anyway. :)

I wasn't expecting much from the trip back, this being the start of Labor Day weekend and all. I didn't manage to clear out until 2 pm and that proved to be a bad thing. It took me 5 butt-numbing hours to get to Madison.

Please please please let the traffic be better on Sunday!!!

Yet another reason to love my school

2006-08-31T14:11:00.000-05:00

I already received an email invitation to the school's book club! Faculty and students get together to discuss "real" books (not medical texts!) at faculty members' houses. The first book this year is going to be The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is by Mark Haddon and is an unusual mystery in which the main character is an autistic teenager. I read it a few years ago and I thought it was excellent. I'm going to have to recover it from my mom (I lent it to her and never got it back, story of my life) and read it again.

AIDS Run/Walk

2006-08-31T11:50:00.000-05:00

I like my class already. We haven't even met yet and people have already organized a team for the AIDS Run/Walk that's happening on 9/16 (the Saturday after we begin classes). I signed up and I think it sounds like a lot of fun!

If anyone out there would want to make a sponsorship donation, you can do it at this web page.

Just a Wednesday.

2006-08-30T21:50:00.000-05:00

I spent most of the day getting my things together in preparation for the beginning of my move on Friday. I've been packing intermittently for a while, so it was pretty much just bringing things together from the different rooms they were in and stacking them all up in the living room. I was very disappointed to discover that our basement storage room has become quite moldy over the course of the summer. I wound up tossing a fair amount of things... though I admit that most of them were things I probably should have tossed regardless. (I'm a bit of a pack rat, you see.) I did tell P. (my bf) that he should really put anything he wants to keep down there in those Tupperware containers. Regular cardboard didn't quite cut it.

The current plan is that I'm going to take one carload down on Friday, get the keys, unload that stuff, drive back home. On Saturday morning I'm driving out to my mom's to help my little sister S. move into her dorm at college -- she's going to be a freshman. Then Sunday morning, my mom and I will drive her minivan, + or - my middle sister J., back here, load it up with some of the bulkier things I'm moving, and take that back down again. Then we'll drive back to Mom's house, I'll pick up my car, and drive back here. Depending on how much stuff I can fit, I may or may not make one more trip down during next week. P. will drive me down for my permanent residency :) probably on 9/9. Somewhere in there I'm going to stop at IKEA and buy anything I decide that I'm lacking.

In an unrelated but kinda cool bit of news, I got an email from a lady on ancestry.com. I'm very confused as to exactly how we are related but apparently we are. So that will be fun to sort out. :)

Introductory material and such things

2006-08-29T15:43:00.000-05:00

Chances are, if you're reading this, you know who I am and what I'm up to. However, just in case you don't, I suppose I should provide a few biographical details.

Age: 32
Sex: F
Marital status: Divorced, currently attached (sort of -- this is a long story that I'm sure will be discussed in more detail at some point)
Education: BA in English, AS in Nursing
Occupation: medical student (well, I haven't officially started yet, but I'm trying to get used to the sound of it)
Former occupations: RN, CNA, unit secretary, optometric assistant, waitress, record store clerk
Hobbies: games of all sorts, reading, writing, singing (mostly in the shower), cooking, wine and spirit drinking, the Student Doctor Network.

The purpose of the blog is primarily to record my thoughts and experiences during medical school. If someone finds reading it helpful, interesting, funny, or simply a way to pass a few moments, then that's fantastic. But really, I'm writing it more for me.

OK, a little bitty real one.

2006-08-28T23:06:00.000-05:00

I've managed to tweak the template into something resembling what I want, though it's taken me all night. (My HTML-fu is weak, sadly.)

I'm starting medical school two weeks from today. I'm starting my move on Friday. After the seemingly endless hurry-up-and-wait of the application process, things are finally beginning.

It's a good feeling. Scary, but good.

I know I'm going to be experiencing some stress in the upcoming months (and this may be a massive understatement). The picture above is from my recent and very relaxing Door County vacation that I want to make into my own personal zen magnet, bringing me peace and calm whenever I need it.

But for now, vacation's over. Time to sink my teeth in. I've been waiting a long time for this, and I'm hungry.

Test post

2006-08-28T21:42:00.000-05:00

Test!