The most chocolate-y birthday ever

Man, I need to stop slacking off on this blog, especially since I have stuff to report. Yes, there is actually stuff going on that I can talk about AND it doesn't include dead people. This should be a relief for those of you who don't like hearing about how I like to throw around human hearts. Er, well there may be some dead people stuff. . .I won't lie.

Anyway, last week was all kinds of crazy. It was my birthday on Tuesday, and considering I was away from all my family and friends, it actually kinda turned out pretty well. Mostly because everyone remembered my birthday, which made me happy. But also because my mama sent me my favorite chocolate cake, which she made herself. Just the smell of it made me happy. . .but also the eating of it. Lots of eating.

The fact that I had a major exam on Friday kinda sorta dampened the happiness a bit. I hit a wall on Wednesday where my brain and body revolted and refused to study anymore, I had a massive headache, and there was much general frustration. However, I studied all of Thursday and basically took the test all of Friday, which was awful. The test was hard. And I kinda gave up on life, so in between tests I ran errands instead of studying, which actually made me feel better. Buying a bottle of vodka right before a histo exam really kinda makes everything ok.

Yeah, so Friday was on it's way to major sucking, except for the fact that Sami and Amanda flew in Friday night to visit. Yay! And they brought with them copious amounts of dark chocolate from Scharffenberger. Drool. The pile of chocolate sitting on my night stand is basically the sexiest thing ever.

Anyway, I think I actually did a halfway decent job of showing them the city considering I never go out. We went to Grant Park and saw Millenium Park and the bean/Cloud Gate.

The bean is surprisingly awesome considering it's just a giant metal bean. It's soo shiny.

We did some shopping and went to the Signature Lounge in the 96th floor of the Hancock Building on Saturday night, which was neat. The drinks weren't great and the dessert sucked (we actually sent back chocolate cake, it was that bad), but the view was fucking spectacular. And the elevator ride was slightly frightening. It was really fast. Too fast for hurtling up a 1000 foot structure.

On Sunday evening we took the architectural boat tour, which was really pretty at nighttime. It was a pretty enjoyable tour until we got to the lake. It was fucking freezing out on the lake and I kinda wanted to die a little bit. However, we toughed it out in the warm cabin below and made it back to land safe and incredibly hungry. We basically found the nearest pub and ate our little hearts out there.

Monday was less eventful because I had class. But I did show Sami and Amanda my dead body. They seemed to enjoy it.

Over all it was a really really fun weekend. Considering we were all staying in my tiny apartment, and no one got bitch-slapped, I'd say it went well. It was nice to hang out, chat and play some guitar hero. God I love guitar hero. . .and my friends. You guys are cool too. :)

Dinners, parties, tests, wtf?

So, I'm going a little nuts. I have a test next friday, and there's just so much fucking material I want gouge out my eyes. I did manage to have some fun this weekend, which kinda makes up for this stress nonsense, I guess.

I'm doing this Alzheimer's buddy program thing where people working in the neurology department match volunteers with a newly diagnosed Alzheimer's patient. The idea is that the person with Alzheimer's has someone they can go out and do things with (movies, museums, etc.) and the student gets to do something good and gain some new experiences. I was matched with a woman that was described as spunky, sophisticated and fun. I was supposed to meet her on Friday, so I got kinda dolled up (it happens rarely nowadays) to make a good impression. She actually didn't make it out, but apparently my dressing up seemed to make a good impression on people in my class. . .maybe? I ran into a girl I know from one of my classes at the grocery store and she invited me out to dinner at a Thai restaurant that night, which was fun. There was much joking and laughter, and we all know how much I like laughter.

On Saturday night, one of my friends that lives in my building invited me for homecooked Ethiopian food because her husband was in town, so she cooked. Man, that was so good. Like I didn't really realize how deprived my diet has been lately. I just kinda switch off between pasta and vegetarian chili every day. It kinda makes me sad. So you damn well better believe I ate my little heart out.

Then, I was kinda cajoled into going to the big halloween party at one of the penthouses nearby. It's a really cool place that's super gothic looking for some reason, and it's been passed down to Northwestern med students for a whole bunch of years. It started out ok, there was some awkward standing around in corners with the people I went with commenting on how we don't really know anybody. And then everybody proceeded to get plastered. I got drinks spilled on me repeatedly (like at least 4-5 times). Girls were kinda out of control and I somehow was put in charge of making sure they didn't embarrass themselves, or die or something. It was great. And I'm not being sarcastic because I was really hammered. I wasn't stupid drunk, but it was enough that I was having a fine time on my own. Yay alcohol. Except for the hangover, but watching movies all day in bed was great, so there's a silver lining to everything.

That's all. Oh, I have a test next week. . .I'm freaking out. Have I mentioned this before? :)

Indiana Jones lies

Dude, it's only been one week of anatomy, and I've already done some crazy stuff to my dead person. It's nuts. It's also a lot of fun, which is weird. There are definitely times when I just kinda think about how weird it is that I'm cutting up a person in the morning and then doing normal things, like going grocery shopping or doing my laundry later on in the day. Which is why no one outside of med school should ever ask me how my day is going on anatomy lab days. They'll regret it. But I'll share here because I think it's kinda awesome.

We started out studying the back. So we had to open up the back. Which meant taking off the skin and looking at the muscles underneath. We basically skinned the dude. It turns out I have a mild allergic reaction to the solution they fix the cadaver in, so as I'm skinning away, my eyes started burning and watering exactly like they would if I were cutting an onion. Not that I'm comparing my cadaver to an onion. . .but it is kinda funny. . .

Anyway, after that we got to look at the spinal cord. To get to the spinal cord however, we had to hammer and chisel away the spine. . .which is a suprisingly good way to get out aggression. The spinal cord is actually really pretty. And it's very appropriately named because it looks like a thick cord with smaller cords running out of it. That's what controls most movements and sensations. . .a simple looking cord. I thought that was neat.

Yesterday, we took out the heart and dissected it. It was actually a lot of work because we had to take the skin and muscles off, then take out the ribcage, cut out the lungs and then cut out the heart. There's no way in hell the dude from Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom could seduce out the heart, or whatever it was he did. No freaking way. Our guy actually had a really big, muscular heart the size of a small football. . . so we naturally pretended to throw it at, er, to each other. Heh. The heart is also really pretty with all its different chambers and vessels and whatnot. Yeah that's right. I'm talking about a human heart. I have to keep reminding myself that. I know what your heart looks like. . .God that's so cool.

Anyway, not much else is happening outside of school. I'm still trying to find a life of sorts. You know, one that's not too demanding, possibly involves free food and doesn't judge me because I cut up dead people during the day. Anything along those lines would be awesome.

I can make awesome baked potatoes. . .yeah that's right

Man, it's been a hell of a long time since I've posted anything. I used to be so good at writing every three days. . .and then my life got boring/incredibly busy with school.

I went home last weekend, which was super-exciting. I did dinner and costco shopping with my mama (I am a college student after all). We then went home and relaxed. I played with my cat and she apparently had missed me quite a bit because she wouldn't leave me alone. Here's a pic of the little fatfat.

Look at the belly! Sooo cute and furry and bear-like. :) On Friday night, she came and slept with me. She somehow managed to find a nook on my shoulder and slept there, thus pinning me down and making me completely immobile for the rest of the night. But at least she was soft and warm. . .that makes up for anything.

I then spent Saturday running around and hanging out with people. I did dinner in the city and drinks with Dina. I realized how much I miss San Francisco. For some reason, it never seemed overwhelming and crazy to me, although it should have. Chicago on the other hand is pretty overwhelming and crazy. I don't know why. Then we headed over to Berkeley for Sami's party, yay party!

Overall that weekend was really great. I really miss hanging out with all you guys. . .stupid moving. But I also really needed that weekend at home. Being around the people I love even for a few hours was really really refreshing.

So I managed to get back to my place around midnight on Sunday night and do an hour of reading for monday then go to sleep. That basically set the tone for the rest of the week. I was running around all week doing all kinds of nonsense. It was super busy. But I survived and I'm spending the weekend catching up on work. I did make myself the most awesome baked potato ever after watching Tyler Florence make it while I was at home. Behold, the yummiest baked potato ever.


And, I also got another view:

There are actually two baked potatoes because Trader Joe's didn't have normal potatoes for baking. I made a white cheese sauce and added the broccoli in there. It is possibly the most delicious thing I have ever made. Drooool.

Other than that. . .I don't have a whole lot going on. I start anatomy on Monday, and we got to see our dead person on Wednesday. I will be cutting up a rather large, but not particularly fat dude. Should be interesting.

Spiderman - not so yummy

This week was mostly pretty quiet with my being sick and all, but now I'm better and things are getting back to normal. I have my first exam on Friday, and already I'm tired of studying for it. Not that I've been really studying for it. We have had 36 lectures already, so I've spent most of my time catching up on those. And then I'll have to go back and review them all over again. Considering I have a week and it's all material I'm pretty familiar with, I'm not all that worried. . .I'm just annoyed at the amount of material.

Anyway, our college mentor had a party for us on Friday night. I didn't realize it was optional as there were a few people who didn't show up. They made it seem pretty mandatory. The first 20 minutes were pretty excruciatingly painful. Apparently, I'm a grown up now, so all conversations will consist of grown-up things or be about school. I don't think you could have counted the number of ways I imagined hurting people until they stopped talking. On the other hand, I also don't like talking about stupid things I equate with high school. It's kind of a fine line.

Unacceptable topics of conversation include: 1. Grey's Anatomy - just because I'm going to be a doctor doesn't mean I like this show, in fact I find it insufferable. Apparently women are now ok with being stereotyped as illogical, highly emotional twits. Thanks Grey's. 2. School - We're all there together 24/7, seeing and doing the same things, do we really need to keep talking about it? 3. Who's hot - There's a list of the hottest guys and girls in the class made by people who went through facebook and ranked everybody. . .this is fucking worse than high school.

Acceptable topics of conversation: 1. Anything that ends with a joke or set up for a joke. 2. Good TV, like The Office, which generally ends up with trading funny lines from the show. 3. Funny stories. . .Basically anything that's not particularly serious and ends up in much laughter wins with me.

The one cool thing about the party was that our mentor dude stopped an ice cream truck and bought us all ice cream. It was the greatest thing ever. I got the Spiderman ice cream bar. . .which turned out to be the most sugar-y, artificial color filled ice cream bar ever. About half way through the bar I started getting really jittery from all the sugar, so I stopped eating it. It was still pretty awesome though.

I'm literally not believing how soon I'm coming home. Since I'll be flying out right after my exam, I have to get trashed on the plane (life is so hard). My brother already filled me in on the proper way to do so, and one of the rare cool girls in my class is flying out with me. So this should be fun.

My hot pot and me

I'm sick. I blame it on the fact that for the past two nights, my body decided I shouldn't sleep well. I woke up roughly each hour wondering "Why? With the tossing and the turning? Mother of god whyyy??" And then there is the fact that I was eating two meals a day because I've been busy and stuff. I still blame my body. I went to Walgreens and picked up a hot pot, tea and cough drops. For some stupid reason I forgot tylenol. By the time I realized that I'm a giant idiot, I was in bed and not getting up again. So yeah, go me. I'm going to be a doctor.

Anyway, I'm taking my first exam next week (thankfully the material this week's been easy, so I'm not that far behind), and then I'M COMING HOME!! So fucking excited sweet baby jesus i'm coming back to California! I miss California. I sometimes forget I'm not there anymore. Stupid moving.

Yup, that's about all I've got right now. Hopefully this stupid cold goes away soon and I'll be able to take a breath without wanting to rip off my nose.

Monday mornings

I need a life. . .no, really

This blog has turned into a massive med school journal. I wish I could change that, but considering I have no life, there's really nothing else for me to write about. So I'll at least try to keep it interesting for you all. Or else one of you could lend me your life for a bit. I'll return it. . .maybe.

I did shadow a surgeon in the operating room today. It was wicked awesome. First of all, I got to wear full on surgical scrubs. I should have taken a camera because I was so fucking excited about that part. I wore the mouth mask thingy and everything! God, that right there fulfilled so many fantasies.

The patient lady had an electrode inserted along her spine about a month ago with a battery pack implanted down her lower back. She had swelling around both the battery pack and the electrode, so the surgeon went in to determine whether there was some sort of immune fluid build up (think like liquid pus stuff) or a leak of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from a tear in the spinal cord covering (very clear brain bath liquid). It actually took about an hour just to prep the patient by positioning her correctly and getting the anesthesia set up (anesthesiologists have a pretty boring job in my opinion, they just sit there after they get the person down). They then isolated the area that would be worked on by placing a crap load of different towels (not really towels, but I can't think of the word) on the person. Eventually you couldn't even see the person except for the area that was going to be cut.

Anyway, now to the juicy stuff (hehe). So there was a lot of swelling because of the build up of fluid. With swelling like that, there's a lot of pressure built up as well. The surgeon made the incision in the skin and as soon as he got through the muscle layer, a bunch of liquid spurted out of the wound. Now, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle the cutting and spurting and whatnot, but apparently all my years of watching tv have desensitized me completely. Yay for not having feelings! Watching the surgery was pretty neat. It turns out there was a rip in the covering of the spinal cord, so they had to go in and do spine surgery.


The spinal cord is held in that hole/white space, so the surgeon shaved off the spinous process to get to it (yay for drilling bones away). I kinda assume you need an intact spinal bones, but apparently not so much. Learning about all the abuse a human body can take is fun. After 4 hours of standing around on my part, the surgery was done and I got to leave. It was sad because my legs didn't want to walk home. I literally stumbled like 4-5 times. Standing's hard, yo.

Oh and fun surgical stereotype that's true: at the end of the surgery when they were sewing the patient up, the surgeon and staff started talking about nights they've gone out drinking too hard and general debauchery that ensued. It was pretty great.

I'm always sleepy

Nothing's really been going on this week. I had a pretty uneventful weekend where I studied and ran errands. I saw Across the Universe. .. and I don't know how I feel about it. There were some really very pretty and exciting images, and I probably would have appreciated it more if I was more familiar with the Beatles. The story was put together weird but it was still pretty charming. Anyway, Julie Taymor still rocks as far as I'm concerned.

So I'm taking this optional class called Patient Perspectives, specifically the psych one, where we go and talk to patients for an hour each week and listen to their stories. It's supposed to help us learn how to talk to patients and understand what they're going through. I went in on Tuesday, and I was told that it would be a nice environment and there's nothing to worry about. I also like to think I'm pretty tough and can handle most things. But it's pretty One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in there, which is not so ok. I went in with another classmate and asked the psychiatrist there to suggest a patient to talk to (so we don't end up with someone violent). We also asked for an interview room because that's what we were told to do, but he said no. My patient was actually really nice and quiet (which didn't help so much with the conversation part of it) and he had some pretty harmless paranoias. However, we were sitting in a common area, and one of the patients kept walking around our couches in circles muttering about how someone's going to die and then he'll follow. That wasn't cool. Nope, not one bit. The patient I was talking to looked pretty uncomfortable about it, so I basically ended the conversation (about 5-10 minutes after we started) and bolted the hell out of there. In retrospect, I probably should have told a doctor about that. . .but I think they'll figure it out.

Other than that, I'm not really handling the 8am classes all that great. It's helped a little bit since I got a mattress pad and I don't wake up in the middle of the night because my back is hurting. I think the problem, though, is that I can't take naps. I have never been able to take a 15 minute nap. My brain's just buzzing too much to fall asleep during the day. So last week, this constant tiredness just built up until Friday when I passed out hardcore and took a 3 hour nap. And I don't think that even qualifies as a nap at that point. So yeah, my body hates me. It's great.

Mm yeah, that's all for now.

Brains, lovely brains

I totally just woke up from a 3 hour nap, and it was delicious. Three hour naps only happen when I'm exhausted by the way, and considering this week felt like a whole month I'm not really surprised.

Anyway, now that I'm relatively rested I can write about my neurosurg shadowing, which was really really cool. I got there in the middle of clinic hours, so the doctor was with a patient and I waited in the workroom. I never really thought about how these things worked, but the place looked like a normal doctor's office with multiple exam rooms and one of the rooms was a physician workroom. That's where I was. So the doctor walks in after about 10 minutes and immediately goes to one of the computers to look at a CD of scans. There was a 3rd year rotating student following the doctor as well. I kinda stood there awkwardly for a while, which is what I do well. Once the scans were up and working, the doctor told me to come look at the scans, and I seriously didn't stop thinking or learning for the next two hours.

That patient had a recurrent tumor growth right behind his temple. The tumor was a little larger than a quarter and was right next to his optic nerve. Scans from a couple years before showed that the tumor was not growing. We all went and the doctor talked to the patient about his options. The amazing thing for me was that the patient seemed completely normal. You'd think the tumor would affect something, but not so much. He was also incredibly nice and didn't really seem too phased by the whole thing, he just wanted to know what to do. Apparently, the thing to do in this case is not take out the tumor, but get scans done twice a year and only operate if the tumor begins to grow. Which is crazy talk. The man had a giant tumor in his head. I guess operating put his vision at too much risk, but I think it's amazing that someone can live perfectly fine with a brain tumor.

Then we went straight back to the workroom and prepared for the next patient. This patient had some sort of spinal damage with a fancy name I don't remember. The one symptom was a strong, painful spasticity due to a lack of inhibition of a motor reflex arc (simple and cool nerves, wiki it). So they could give the patient a pill that would increase inhibition and decrease the spasticity, but I guess this has a bunch of side effects. Instead they implanted a pump into the person's torso (above the hip, below the rib on the side) that delivered the drug directly to the damaged site, which only required 1/1000 of the original pill dosage. This patient needed to have the pump refilled with the drug. This was my first experience watching someone have something poked into them, in this case the needle that delivered the drug to the pump (the pump pretty obviously sticks out of the stomach, so it's pretty easy to do). Again, this patient was actually joking around and really cool about everything, which is amazing considering how debilitating the condition was.

The third patient was really cool. This one had undergone the Gamma Knife surgery for a tumor in the auditory canal (just inside the brain). Gamma Knife is non-invasive and pinpoints gamma radiation at a tumor and kills it. The tumor then just stays there and is slowly reabsorbed. I don't quite know how this works, because gamma radiation was the really bad one they told us never to mess with, but apparently they use it for surgery now. The check up showed the tumor was still there, but smaller and everything was ok. The patient had this tiny hearing aid because the tumor was in the auditory canal and messed some stuff up. The hearing aid was bluetooth enabled though. It was like the coolest thing ever. . .I'm kinda looking forward to hearing loss now.

Patient 4 was in for a 1-month check up after a major surgery to repair a herniated disc. Fun-new fact: apparently they also don't immediately do surgeries on herniated discs because most of them are treatable with medicine. Only the really bad ones have to have surgery. This patient actually looked really good and didn't really have much pain, along with a goofy sense of humor that I really appreciated.

Patient 5 came to have some modifications done on a drug regimen. My brain had stopped absorbing much information at this point so I'm not sure what was causing the pain, but it was in the patient's legs. The doctor basically upped the dosages of most of the meds because the patient reported an average pain level of 6, which is a completely subjective pain measurement, but it's really the only way to do it. Patients in that much pain are generally pretty accurate about how they feel. Oh and the scale is from 1-10, with 10 being the worst pain you've ever endured, so 6 is pretty high. The drug regimen is pretty crazy too, I think the patient is taking roughly 20 pills throughout the day. The doctor upped the dosages to try to get the pain down even more (3 or less is optimal) and a surgical alternative is available, but that also seemed like a last resort.

Overall I learned a crazy amount of information in a short two hour period. The doctor even threw a couple of questions my way, which I couldn't answer from the sheer shock of being put on the spot by a neurosurgeon. Talk about surreal. I lucked out too and the neurosurgeon was a really good doctor. He was incredibly warm with all the patients and informed them thoroughly about everything he was doing. I want to shadow other doctors, but I think I might tag along with this one a couple more times and learn more from him. Hopefully he doesn't hate me...

Stuff's actually happening, shocking!

You all can rest easy now. The work has picked up, and I finally feel like I'm in med school. . .that's still so weird. Anyway, I'm already kinda behind on my studying, but I'm learning a lot about various diseases and ethical issues in medicine. We have one class where patients come in and talk to us about their conditions and experiences with doctors. It's actually pretty amazing listening to these people. All of them so far have chronic diseases like thalamic pain syndrome (more on that later), severe asthma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (lymph node cancer). It's crazy hearing their stories because their lives completely changed when they got these diseases, and they're so honest and optimistic about it. It's seriously amazing how strong some people are.

Also, I'm more sure than ever that I'm going into neurosurgery, because apparently I totally can. Yeah, you heard that right. It's a hard field to get into because it is super small and everyone kinda knows each other, but I guess this is where going to a private school really helps. Everyone here is incredibly helpful to students. There's a neurosurg interest group that works directly with the neurosurgeons. I'm actually shadowing one tomorrow in the clinic (I can also go into the operating room whenever I want as well, I'm so fucking excited about that). I'll be shadowing a doctor that specializes in treating pain and brain tumors.

I didn't realize, but pain is becoming a huge issue because now we're understanding the biological basis of it more and more. The thalamic pain syndrome patient actually can't have surgery because the thalamus is deep inside the brain. . .and surgeons can get to it, but they have no idea what to cut out. So she can somewhat manage the pain with drugs. Now there's a big debate about painkillers and they might become harder to get, which really sucks for someone like her. Stupid puritanical country.

At the interest group meeting, the faculty adviser gave a short presentation on neurosurgery. Now, I've noticed this a bit, but it became clear after this presentation, doctors like referring to their specialty as something they 'get off on.' Ask a doctor why he likes functional neurosurg versus vascular neurosurg, it's because he didn't 'get off on' the vascular stuff. I think I finally understand this, because neurosurg 'excites' me. I don't exactly get off to. . .er, on it in a literal sense, but it's spec-fucking-tacularly mind-blowing and I like that. And cue Amanda making an incredibly inappropriate yet hilarious masturbatory gesture. . .now. :)

I can see myself doing it for the rest of my life. Even if less than 10% of all neurosurgeons in the country are female. Like in California, out of about 550 neurosurgeons, 40 are female. 40. That's kinda depressing. But the one female neurosurgeon at Northwestern is out on maternity leave, so apparently I don't need to be alone and super macho for the rest of my life. That's a good thing, because I don't think I do macho very well. . .I should stop there.

Anyway, this can all change tomorrow at clinic, but be sure that I'll write about the experience even if you all find this incredibly boring. I'm just that kind of blogger.

I don't feel like writing in sentences

I've basically been a massive sloth/glutton this weekend, which gave me time to think some deep, deep thoughts. So here it goes.

Things I like (in no particular order):
- Mac & cheese, and I will eat the whole box of it in one sitting. Yeah, that's right.
- Gchat, for obvious reasons.
- America's Next Top Model marathons on MTV.
- Cats. If I ever saw a lion, I'm pretty sure I would go up to it and try to pet it. It'd be worth the loss of limbs.
- My playstation
- Stealing music
- Trader Joe's
- Good wine/beer
- Coffee flavored ice cream
- Dancing around, generally in my apartment by myself, pants optional.
- Minesweeper
- Comedy Central
- Good books, even if they're depressing, they're generally pretty fulfilling.
- My funny, clever friends, and their fucked up senses of humor. Greatest thing ever.

Things I don't like:
- Kanye West sampling Daft Punk. I hope he dies a slow painful death for that.
- MTV at all other times. The VMAs also sucked hardcore. MTV actually is dying a slow painful death, which is fortunate.
- People on the street not moving to the side when I'm walking toward them as far to my side as humanly possible. Use those two legs and move to the right, fucker.
- People with lasers. They're just annoying, especially when they point the laser in my apartment. . .way to be creepy.
- The news. Could it be any more depressing?
- People who get easily offended by jokes or who don't like cursing. . .soo serious.
- Mondays. In addition to innately sucking, it's also my busiest day of the week.

So yeah, that's all I've got for now. :)

Bring it

Ok, I don't know why, but I love this image. I think it's that look of "bring it" on the blackberry's face. Or the fact that there are two cell phones that are going to fight to the death with nunchucks and a knife.

Anyway, I got this from a Slate article on the superiority of the Blackberry as a smartphone over the iphone. Clearly the iphone gets knifed in its heart/power button. link: http://www.slate.com/id/2173481/nav/tap1/

Private school is weird, stop 'guiding' me so much people.

Sometimes I forget that I'm going to a private school. I've just always kinda clumped medical schools all in the same category, without differentiating between private and public. If anything, I've just categorized them as California schools and then all the other ones. It's weird. I knew going into this that med school was going to be different from undergrad and a lot harder, so I appreciate a support system and working in small groups. This, however, is overkill.

This is my 3rd week at school. The first week was an 'orientation' week, where people talked at us all day and we were supposed to socialize at night. Apparently, we were supposed to remember all those people that talked at us, because they later sent us an online evaluation form to fill out. Every daytime session was listed with a numeric scale and a comments section. We had to fill out the comments section for every single one. I eventually gave up and started to put 'I don't remember' for most of them. . .because I didn't. They all just kinda blurred into a vast nothingness. That's how useful that was to me.

Last week, we took the course on medical decision making, which actually wasn't that bad. The only annoying thing was that they kept alluding to the second and third part of the course which we take later. . .so it kinda felt useless, but it was new enough that I was ok with it.

This week, we're starting all of our 'real' courses, except for the labs. We have 2 hours of structure-function/basic science lecture every day. We have a patients, physicians and society (PPS) course twice a week and a course where we do case studies twice a week. So today we had the PPS course. They broke us into small groups of 9-10 people, and each group has a doctor that's leading it. We're doing ethics. I have no problem with ethics. But when we take 20 minutes to designate 'rules' of discussing ethics for our own group. . .I get kinda annoyed. And then when we spend another 20 minutes discussing 'What is ethics?' when the instructor told us all what this class was about in the beginning, I get pretty frustrated. And when they assign us a short essay to write about one time I've lied and been lied to and how I felt. . .I want to shove a spoon down someone's throat. Please. . .stop babying me.

Our class of 170 is also broken down into 4 different colleges. Each college is lead by a doctor that is supposed to be our mentor. It's really cool and really weird at the same time. It feels like some weird private school crap. We had a one-on-one session today, and he asked me if I had any questions about the curriculum or exams or anything. I guess I just don't know what to do in that situation. I think I said something like, 'Exams are hard, right?' Seriously, I don't get what I'm supposed to do there. It's the third week of school. They've been telling us over and over that they're taking it slow and easing us into it. What am I supposed to ask here? Perhaps I should be more interested in case I need more recommendations when applying for residencies. . .but I don't wanna.

I guess all the support is a good thing, but I am a little too independent I think to really enjoy some of this. I guess soon enough I'll be too engrossed in my work to really care, but let's get started with some of this work, shall we?

To make up for the massive ranting. . .here's a picture i took of the city while walking along the lake. Sooo calming. . .

Desean Jackson 77 yard punt return for TD vs. Tennessee

Go Bears!

One week down. This week we took a course on medical decision making, which basically taught us that we're all innumerate. Although it wasn't the most exciting course, it was kinda neat because I never really thought about most of the stuff they taught us (using past tense because this was just a one week course). Basically we value literacy, but for some reason not numeracy, which leads to a whole lot of superstitions and gullibility. So yeah, if this hasn't bored you to death, then you should probably read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. It's a quick read and easy to understand (and it'll explain things way better than I can) so do it.

I honestly can't really remember much of this week besides class. It was a bit crazy. I did notice that I was running low on memory for my computer, which is weird because I just go it. Sooo, to cheer myself up I bought an external hard drive online that was on sale. It came with free shipping, so I thought I'd get it sometime next week, but it got to my place less than 24 hours later. Honestly, I don't think I've ever gotten service like that. It was a very pleasant surprise. The hard drive was also made for me. There was nothing to install, I didn't need to read a manual to figure out how to use it, and it took less than a minute to set it up. Needless to say, I am in love with the hard drive. Oh and it has 465 gigs of available free space. :::drool:::



Yeah, that's sexy. :)

For the big surprise of the week, I actually was sociable yesterday. I know. Shocking. One of the girl's that went to Berkeley had her birthday yesterday, so a couple of us took her to Grand Lux (the nicer version of Cheesecake Factory). I apparently found my fellow lushes. We all ordered drinks, a massive individual entree and individual desserts. Seriously, I was so full I nearly threw up. Afterward, we all headed to a social thingy for the entire class that had a keg and pizza. I came the closest to throwing up when I smelled the pizza. You could see that all of us were suffering too as we were standing and talking to people. So much blood had drained from our heads and moved to our stomachs that we couldn't stand straight (I was swaying). Eventually I left so I could lie down and finish digesting. Yeah, it was a lot of food.

Also, Cal beat the crap out of tennessee. This makes me incredibly happy. I want to have Tedford marry Justin Forsett and me. That would be freaking awesome.

And it begins...

School started yesterday. I really miss the whole not having homework thing, but I feel like that learning part of my brain that I suppressed for most of this past year is already back and kicking. Apparently I didn't get a whole lot dumber, which is pretty shocking. We haven't really started intense lectures or labs or anything yet, so perhaps this ego boost is a bit premature. Med school kids are also pretty intimidating with all the stuff they already know for some reason. I think this would be a good time to make friends that aren't in med school. Or you know, friends in general. Either way.

The weekend was really nice. My mama came in for my white coat ceremony, which started out promising enough, but then deteriorated into the painfully boring affair that I expected. Also, the part where we put on the coats was pretty anticlimactic. My brother's ceremony was less so because they individually put on the coats and got to say something short to the whole class and audience. We just kinda put on our white coats all at once. Imagine it. It's not exactly a momentous occasion. I'm sure leaving a room during the winter is a very similar process.

They did have really good food at the reception. There was much cheese and vegetarian stuff and the most amazing miniature desserts ever. So my mama and I basically ran from the ceremony to the reception and took as much free food as we could. It was pretty great. Now that I think of it I should have taken pictures. I swear I'll get better at this.

With my mama came the cushion she made for my bay window. Behold:

You can tell I immediately made use of it. She took the measurements for the space when she helped me move in. Then, she found a place in Fremont that cuts foam to a specific size and she sewed on the fabric herself. She's so giving Martha Stewart a run for her money. Also, matching pillows are in the works. I can't mention it enough, my mom's awesome.

Noam also came into town (Hi Noam. . .er, I don't even know you read this, but hi), which was really quite nice. We went out to brunch in Old Town (clever name) and I had a really good blueberry waffle, with plenty of actual blueberries on it. We chatted and joked and it kinda felt like being back in SF, and that was very much needed. I then took a walk back to my place, which actually wasn't that far considering I paid a cab $7 to get there. The neighborhood I walked through was super cute too, with ivy growing on the houses, pretty little gardens and houses built to look like castles. I like that neighborhood.

So yeah, that's basically all the noteworthy things that have occurred recently. Oh, my video game is starting to scare me slightly less, so you can all rest easy now.

Video games are frightening

Orientation week is over and I finally got a good 11 hours of sleep last night. I feel like such a little kid sometimes though because I get so cranky if I don't get enough sleep. Anyway, I got my white coat yesterday, and even though it's a women's small it is still way too big for me. I think I might just go get it tailored so I don't have to deal with it annoying me for the next two years. You'd think they'd be better about accommodating different sizes by now.

Warning: Lots of nerdiness ahead.

Anyway, the fun news is that I got a new video game (yes, I am a giant nerd, I know). It's probably one of the coolest ideas for a game I've heard of in a while. It's a one-person shooter game, but done with some style. The setting is an underwater haven for the geniuses of the world called Rapture, which is very much based on Atlas Shrugged. Everything is done in an art deco style, and considering the underwater world has gone to hell, it's pretty creepy looking. The reason that the world is now in chaos is that the people discovered some sea slugs that produce plasmids, which could be developed further to modify people's genetic codes (this is a rough explanation). The modifications essentially made the inhabitants into superhumans with various abilities, like sending electric bolts through their hands or having telekinesis. So as you run around this place, you can find these plasmids, inject them into yourself (which is kinda horrifying to see) and then kill people with your new powers. This is a pretty novel concept for a video game.

It doesn't quite end there, though. One of the best ways to be able to use these plasmids is actually through little girls. Let me explain. There are little girls all throughout the city that use large syringes to suck out the blood from dead people. They then drink the blood, and a parasite living in them processes it into something that'll allow you to absorb more plasmids called Eve.


Since little girls are pretty helpless, they have incredibly large men in underwater tank suits with a metal drill for an arm protecting them. They're known as Big Daddies, but the little girls call them Mr. Bubbles (kinda disturbing isn't it?).

So, if you want more superpowers, you either have to get the Eve stuff from the little girls by killing them (which will give you lots of Eve), or by saving them and removing the parasite (which will get you less of the Eve). Either way, you still have to get through the Big Daddy first. Yeah, whoever thought of this is incredibly fucked up in the head.

Really, as scary as this game is, I am kinda determined to beat it just to see what happens in the end. The game emphasizes the fact that as you keep modifying yourself and killing these little girls, you lose more and more of your humanity. I doubt it'll be a happy ending.

Anyway, this is pretty much the big thing going on in my life right now because I'm so cool. I'm just oozing coolness, I know.

Comedy, cruises and general laziness

I'm officially in the middle of orientation week. I'm tired. The first day was ok. I showed up for breakfast and awkwardly looked for people to talk to, which took a while. Most people did the whole "Hi, where are you from?" thing, and when I told them Berkeley they didn't seem exactly interested. The majority of responses have been "Oh yeah, there are a lot of people from Berkeley" followed immediately by the person finding someone else and conversing with them. One person actually turned their back on me and started talking to their friend. That's not exactly the warmth I was expecting from someone thrown into this crazy med school thing like me. Naturally, that person is on my shitlist. I guess I didn't realize half the people already know each other because they did undergrad at Northwestern, so it's kind of a weird dynamic and trying to make new friends is way harder than I thought.

I eventually found some nice people, and we went to a comedy club the first night (Second City). They did mostly sketch comedy and some improv, and they were really really good. We also went for free, so that was nice. I think one of my favorite lines was "Oh honey, did you see this abortion bill? What do you think?" And the husband said, "Pay it." It probably doesn't translate as well on a blog. They also did an army recruitment scene where they ended up calling both Rumsfeld and Bushie 'shitheads,' which made me so amazingly happy. That's my favorite insult ever (hehe).

Yesterday was ok. We have orientation at 8am everyday (except tomorrow it's at 7:30, those bastards), so the fact that I hadn't slept enough Sunday and Monday nights kinda caught up to me. After all the boring info sessions during the day, we went on an architectural boat tour which was actually really chill and nice. I tried to take pictures, but it was kinda hazy, as you can see.

So you can see half of navy pier at the far left and you can make out the Hancock Building on the right. Despite what it looks like, yesterday was actually pretty sunny and crazy hot. I was sweating profusely throughout the entire thing, even though it was about ten degrees cooler on the lake than in the city (I still don't get how that works). As you can see, these random people fell asleep in the heat. I actually don't know who they are, I guess I just didn't lift my camera high enough to get them out of the picture.

Sears Tower is the tallest building that looks ominous and pointy. Apparently Trump is in the process of building a residential tower that's taller than Sears Tower (or almost taller, I forget), but that's only halfway done right now. There's also another residential skyscraper being built that will definitely be taller, standing at 2000 feet. It's this building:

It's disguised as a residential building, but in fact it will be the world's largest vibrator. I've been told twice now that there's a sapphic building, which I have seen, that was built by a woman in response to all the phallic buildings designed by men.

This isn't the greatest picture, but I think you get the idea. I feel like these two buildings should meet or something. :)

Anyway, I've basically given up on social activities for now, because it is way too forced to be enjoyable. Also, did I mention I have to be at CPR training at 7:30am tomorrow? I know my attitude isn't great, but that's because it is a giant 'fuck you, fuckers' to the people giving presentations. The gist of most of the presentations has been proving that not forming meaningful relationships with other people throughout your life will lead to a sad, lonely, young death. My take on it is that now they want us to be good doctors by studying all the time AND by finding, forming and maintaining 'meaningful relationships.' It's like maybe this would be a good idea if my personal life hasn't taken such a horrifying beating by my career. Like at this point it's Career: 5,392,671, Personal life: -3. But now they have proof that I'm more likely to die young because of this, and they decide to share this with me. Fan-fucking-tastic. As if I'm not stressed out about school enough. Fuckshitfuckfuckfuck.

So yeah, instead of dwelling on this I decided to forgo the social activities, take a walk along Michigan Ave and along the lake, and just chill and read. I figure stressing myself in order to make friends, then dealing with the stress of figuring out who's a normal human being and who's crazy, and eventually reaping the benefits of those friendships is asking way too much right now.
Also, I miss you guys.

Don't make me go

I spent most of yesterday in my apartment, because I'm exciting like that. I eventually got bored and decided to go check out the air show because it was free and I just had to put on pants and walk to the end of my block to see it. So that's what I did. It was actually pretty cool. The jets did roll over thingies and then went straight up into the air and then straight back down. I'm pretty sure those pilots are the biggest adrenaline junkies ever. I know if I even got up the courage to get in one of those things, I'd probably just spend the entire ride puking all over the plane and crying for my mom.

I tried to take a picture, but as predicted, my cell phone camera didn't do a great job.

See, I even circled the plane for you, although that could also very well be a seagull. (note: I didn't realize there were seagulls here until yesterday, because there isn't a sea. I think they're confused, or whoever named them was an idiot). I tried to use my nonexistent computer skills to zoom in on the plane, but I don't have Photoshop. This is the result from Paint.

Well, at least you can tell that's definitely not a seagull. The whole airshow thing actually lasted a grand total of five minutes for me. I caught the end of this show, and then it immediately started raining, so I went back home. The weather here has been super crappy, but it's very Bay Area-like so I've been enjoying it. It's like April weather, where it's foggy and raining lightly but not cold anymore. I went running last night after the rain broke for a bit, and it was about 65-70 degrees. For some reason I was the only person in a tank top and shorts. Everybody else had windbreakers or some sort of jacket on but the weather was perfect. Yeah, I felt pretty good.

It doesn't look like the rain is going to stop though, which makes me confused. It's August. It's supposed to be summer's last hurrah with lots of heat and sun. Instead it looks like this:

If you'll recall, this is what the Hancock building looks like from my apartment:

Yeah, that's a hell of a lot of fog and clouds. Oh and rain, lots of stupid, wet rain.

I also start orientation tomorrow at 8am. And just so you know, I'm not that excited. For one thing it's at 8am, which means I won't be getting my 10-11 hours of sleep. That is, unless I go to sleep by 9pm tonight, which seems unlikely. For another thing, it's raining and they're making us do a scavenger hunt tomorrow. In the rain. It also means that my year of fun and freedom is over. I'm going to be tied to my career for the rest of my life. That blows. Quite hard. I've also been having fun with my new imaginary friends, so it's not like I need to make new real friends. I mean the logic's all there. Don't make me goooooooooo

Wind? Trains? No, that's the sound of fighter jets.

So, as promised, I'm going to post pictures of my apartment. My 282 square feet of apartment isn't terribly exciting, especially since I found out that decorating any home is pretty freaking expensive. It's cute though, and I rather like it.

This, clearly, is my sad little bed. I still don't understand why they couldn't move it out so I could get a full bed. Possibly because they want me to fall off my bed periodically and curse the day I was born. More likely though, they're lazy. You can also see my nightstand, and my new giant purse next to the books. I felt that at the sweet age of 22, I should embrace being a full grown woman and thus the giant purse that comes along with that role. So far it's not the giant abyss where cell phones go to die that I thought it would be, so that's good.

This is my desk, my fancy leather chair and part of my kitchen. Oh and that's my blindingly bright window. Nothing very exciting. You can see however that I have two dressers. I nearly had an orgasm when I saw that. I have so much storage space, it makes me want to go shoe shopping.

This is my kitchen. Anyone who's lived in Berkeley/SF can appreciate this. Look at all the counter space! I actually have room for all of my appliances, dish rack, AND I still have room for actual cooking and chopping and whatever else I like :) It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Also please note my one cheap shot at decorating, the pink candle at the front of the picture. It's not much, but it makes me happy.

And this is my bay window. It's called a bay window right? My mama is going to make a cushion to fit that space so I can sit and do reading there. I love my mama. I also love this space. Anything that's cute and nook-like automatically wins points with me.

Also, I've been spending quite a bit of time there trying to figure out what's making these loud jet-like noises. There haven't been any thunderstorms lately, so it wasn't that. Someone (ahem, not bragging or anything here, someone) suggested that it's the elevated trains or wind passing between the high-rises. This noise, however, only started yesterday and I recognized the sound of an engine (thanks older brother) so I insisted that they were jets. I checked and it turns out the Chicago Air and Water Show is this weekend. Apparently, the fighter jets decided to play a prank on everybody by constantly flying around the downtown area to make us think that we're being attacked. Bastards. I finally caught sight of one of them today, and man those suckers go fast. I'll try to get pictures tomorrow, but I don't know how my cell phone camera is going to do with that. Also, I'd like to note that I was right about something. Everyone remember this moment.

I have internet!

Yesterday was fairly entertaining. A massive amount of lightning and thunder woke me up around 6:30, which frightened me. That is not a pleasant way to wake up. I had heard on the news that there were supposed to be thunderstorms in the early morning and scattered thunderstorms for most of the week. Being from the bay where this generally means it’ll actually be rainy I put on my boots and headed out to get my hair cut. About two blocks from my apartment I realized that this was a horrible mistake. Apparently the weatherman meant there would be one thunderstorm during the night and a crapload of humidity and sun for the rest of the day. Walking around in those boots was absolute torture, especially since everybody else was wearing flip flops. I hate that weatherman.

Anyway, the hair place was right next to Wrigley Field (cue obligatory picture of the Wrigley Field sign).

The salon was literally the only shop on the street that wasn’t a bar or bank (well, there was Subway too). My stylist told me stories about how drunk people accidentally wander into the salon looking for a bar on game days and just look confused for a while. This led me to the conclusion that Cubs games aren’t all that different from A’s games. I think I’m going to have to go to a Cubs game. And yes, I realize I'm one of the few people that would go to Wrigelyville not to see the Cubs, but to get a hair cut instead. That's just the way I work.

Oh and I also got my hair cut. It is super short now, which is nice. I didn’t really like that awkward phase it was at, where it wasn’t short nor was it long. I do not have the patience to grow it out again, so I chopped it off. Here’s a picture of the back of my head. I tried to take a picture of what it looks like from the front, but I couldn’t get over how silly I felt taking my own picture like that. Take what you can get :)

Look how silky and straight it is! And the hair person only used one product to get my hair to do that! Well, she also used $100 flat iron that apparently locks in moisture instead of frying your hair. Now I want that flat iron. . .and this is where someone takes my credit card away from me. (Also, I just realized you get a pretty decent of shot of my bathroom there, I'm so classy).

I also finally got my internet today. I'm excited to be back online whenever I want to be.

A fun-filled day of sleeping

My plan was to write something here yesterday since I had nothing else to do, but instead I decided to sleep. Five days worth of walking and carrying things left me pretty exhausted and with a giant blister on the back of my ankle. I slept 15 hours on Saturday night, waking up around 3pm on Sunday. I haven’t slept that much in at least 5 years. The rest of the day went pretty much the same as that, lying around in bed and watching Arrested Development (I’m already on season 2). My one big accomplishment of the day was showering, which I’m sure you’re all glad to hear. I know it’s not very exciting to read about, but it was really very nice.

Today’s been slightly more productive, but much less exciting by my standards because there was less sleeping involved. I continued shopping for more crap for my apartment, and on my way back from that I took more pictures of my neighborhood. I don’t know quite how Chicagoans (is that really a word?) do it, but there are pretty flowers and plants everywhere. Almost every restaurant has outdoor seating surrounded by a lush arrangement of plants and flowers, and the streets are all lined with flowers. Not a single one of them appears to be dying either, which is weird because flowers tend to die pretty quickly. Look at the evidence.

It’s so pretty! It’s almost magical how they manage to plant and grow these things every single year, because I fully realize they do this to make everyone forget the horrible, horrible winters. It’s funny too, because I tried to buy winter clothing while my mom was here, but nobody’s selling winter clothing yet at all. There are a few crappy jackets here and there, but not nearly as much as I expected. People really don’t want to think about winter here at all, and that kinda frightens me.

Anyway, there are also horses everywhere. Yes, horses. Apparently carriage rides are pretty huge here, especially on the weekends. While crossing the street, I had to look out both for cars and horses, which just doesn’t seem right. Also, if I leave my window open, I can sometimes hear neighing. I also don’t really see the point of paying $60 to ride in a horse-drawn carriage in the middle of a busy city for 30 minutes. I guess that’s because I’m poor. If I had more money to throw away, I’m sure it would make perfect sense.

Also, while I was walking around I saw this place. It’s a piano bar, but I thought immediately of Amanda. I’m sure you can see the resemblance.

Hehehe. . .I totally could have put up cornier pictures, just so you know. Also, these pictures are supposed to be side to side, but blogger doesn't want to cooperate. And. . .I'm done.

I'm slightly unsure about this. . .

So, here goes nothing. I have too much time on my hands, and I'm really far away from all my friends (yeah, you guys). I need something to feel like I'm keeping in touch because gchat, surprisingly enough, is not cutting it. I'm not particularly great at writing, thus the title of the blog (also I just watched I Heart Huckabees again and this reminded me of the very beginning, greatest thing ever). I feel like I'm in foreign territory, and yes that sentiment goes for both this writing thing and Chicago. By the way, I'm in Chicago. How fucking weird is that? I still kinda expect to be flying home with my mom tomorrow. But no, she's leaving me here.

The flight in sucked pretty hardcore (see, not good at writing). The flight was delayed for over an hour and it took over half an hour to get my bags. I then went straight to my apartment to sign the lease and check everything over. By this time it was 10:30pm Chicago time, I was tired and hungry, which meant I was also rather cranky. The apartment gave me the first impression of being a shithole. One of the lamps fell off the wall when I went to turn it on (it turned on though), the bathtub had hair in it, the apartment was less furnished than I imagined and the toilet was somewhat broken. This made me more cranky.

Things took a turn for the better though (cliches left and right). After checking in to the hotel, my mom and I went to a 24-hour diner down the street, which sucked, but I saw John Cusack there. Yeah that's right, a real celebrity at a second-rate diner. At that point, though, I was so tired that I just kinda stared and then went to the hotel to sleep. He wears a man-headband (man-band?). It's slightly unexpected because he doesn't seem like the man-band type. Oh well.

The rest of the days were filled with much walking, shopping, being caught in a downpour, more walking, some eating, and very little not walking. I'm basically all settled in now and have discovered that my apartment is in fact rather nice and comfortable. I also thought that I would share some pictures taken with my cell phone, because I don't have a real camera.

This is the view of the Hancock building from my apartment. I live a grand total of 2 blocks from it. Fancy, I know.

This is the view of the building across from my apartment, and the grass belongs to the back of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Yup, fancy.


This is a picture of the new Northwestern women's hospital that opens soonish. I will probably be working there at some point. This was also taken from my apartment.

And this is the incredibly unattractive alley right in the middle of my view. Not so fancy. Not at all. Stupid alley.

Ok, that's all for now. There are more pictures coming soonish. I check out of the hotel tomorrow and don't get my internet service until Wednesday. . .so we'll see how this goes.