I know, I know. It's been a while. I always do this. It's time I set the bar low, I think, and just do monthly or bi-monthly updates. That may actually be realistic for me. 

It's been a fairly boring past couple of months, which is why I have not written. By boring, I mean very, very normal, and I don't want to bore you all with details of my normalness. Also, I've realized that the interesting things that do happen are immediately shared via Gchat. So don't blame me, blame Gmail (*shakes fist at Gmail). 

As far as school goes, we're finishing up the year. It's a nice feeling to be half way through medical school, although the first of our licensing exams is in June and that is very scary. Just as a heads up, I will be disappearing some time around mid-May and resurfacing about a month later so you all are aware of this ahead of time. 

I took a final exam for my physical exam skills today, which was ridiculous. They had a pelvic exam station where we had to explain the pelvic exam to a standardized patient and then perform the exam on a plastic model. It sounds easy, but examining a plastic model made our brains not take it seriously. I forgot to look at the cervix. Whoops. Another person forgot to put on gloves, which is just dirty. Someone else popped the cervix out of the model when she was retracting the speculum. It was ridiculous. It's really funny listening to med students after these sorts of things because it makes you realize how unprepared we are for working in the hospital. There's so much to remember and so much to do that it is really hard to keep straight. One kid forgot to take the vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, etc), which is so routine it's not even funny. I asked a patient how much they smoke, but not for how long (i'm retarded). Watching us medical students fumble around must be really amusing for our teachers. We do some stupid shit. 

As for our bullshit afternoon class (unfortunately no more Shakespeare), we're doing the ethics of the medical profession itself covering topics like resource allocation, medical mistakes, abortion, physician-assisted suicide, etc. The one saving grace of this class is our small group leader. He tells us funny stories, and if we actually get in a debate about something, he tells a joke and calms us all down. Mostly he tells us funny stories. He told us about how he gets his obese patients who are particularly at risk for heart disease to lose weight. He asks them "If you had a heart attack tomorrow, would anyone be surprised?" You have to realize that this goes against all of the politically correct sensitivity training forced on us for the past 2 years. We all found this amazing and hilarious. 

This past week though, this doctor wasn't in class and my college mentor sat in. It sucked. He's a nice guy, but he had no idea how to ask questions that would stimulate actual discussion, so he just picked on people. The topic was medical mistakes, and it brought out a lot of ridiculous hypothetical questions like: "What if I see my resident make a mistake?" "What if it's the attending that makes the mistake?" "What if I don't like my coworker?" "What if...blah blah blah?"  I hate hypothetical situations. Hate hate hate. Deal with it when/if it happens. And if you are incapable of using common sense...then ask someone else what to do. Shocking! A 2-hour class summed up in 2 sentences. It was one of those classes where I just sat there and stared at people talking, so my mentor had me read off a sheet describing an ethical dilemma. Yup. I'm back in the 4th grade. He actually had me read off a sheet so I would be participating. He also looked at me afterward to indicate that I should answer the first question, so I just stared back and thankfully another student jumped in with the answer. I think my apathy was actually palpable at that point. Good thing I don't need a letter of recommendation from him. :)

Other than that, I've been relatively more social. I went to lunch with a couple people at a vegetarian "diner" which was pretty good. The food itself was average, but it's always nice to be able to order anything on the menu. The desserts, however, were all vegan and fucking amazing. I remember going to another vegetarian restaurant here, and the vegan cake was god awful. We ordered tiramisu and got something that looked like german chocolate cake and tasted like bananas (the waiter also looked highly offended when we said it tasted nothing like tiramisu...the dumbass). At this restaurant, I ordered the turtle cheesecake, which actually tasted like cheesecake. Seriously, writing about it makes me salivate. It was that good.  

So that's all for now. I'm hopefully going to see Wolverine this weekend (dorky goodness), but otherwise I predict much studying and being boring. 

randomness

Yeah, so this isn't a real update, but I figured I'd put something up. I know. I suck. Anyway, this is a random facebook thing that I thought was fun...I'm also putting off doing my work, which is probably a better explanation. Also, as you can probably tell, I changed the format. I like this better. There's way less wasted space. I'm rather pleased with myself for figuring out how to do this (yes, I realize it's really easy to click on a new template, but I'm usually pretty incompetent, so humor me). Anyway, here you go. 

Rules:
a) Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search (http://www.flickr.com/).
b) Using ONLY the first page, pick an image.
c) Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Mosaic Maker. Change rows to 3 and columns to 3 (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php).
d) Save the image and post it on this note!
e) If you're tagged, pass it on. And tag the person who tagged you.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What is your favorite color?
4. Favorite band?
5. Dream vacation?
6. Favorite hobby?
7. What you want to be when you grow up?
8. What do you love?
9. One word to describe you?

"It is a tale told by an idiot..."

I actually have a couple of interesting things to post about this week. The weather was quite nice today (45 degrees!), so there will be no complaining about that. Once a year, our school offers various seminars in place of our normal afternoon curriculum. These seminars are part of the medical humanities curriculum our school boasts of - the sole purpose of which is to ensure that we don't become dicks to our patients. Basically, we get to choose from a variety of arts and humanities courses in some way related to medicine so we can learn to deal with the "human condition." This is a fancy way of making sure we know how to deal with nuances and problems without obvious answers. I loved my seminar last year, and it turned out to be the only class other than neuro that I actually enjoyed. I wrote a paper comparing the portrayal of humanity and its values in the 1950s version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Pan's Labyrinth." Yeah, I love this shit...

On the list of courses this year, I saw one on Medicine and Macbeth. I haven't read Shakespeare in forever and I love his work, so I signed up for this course. For once, it's actually better than I imagined. Our instructor is OBSESSED with blood (you'd like her, Sami), which proves to be handy for this play. She made us go around and introduce ourselves last week, but we also had to give one fact about blood. She then proceeded to educate us on the 16th-17th century theories of how the body created blood - it made the blood directly from the food you ate, so eating a lot meant you had a hell of a lot of blood, thus the keen interest in blood-letting - and the natural state of the body formed from the various humours. This was possibly the most interesting physiology lecture I've ever had. Sigh. 

Anyway, we went to see a live production of Macbeth this afternoon at Navy Pier. All of us were literally blown away by the adaptation. None of us had been to this theater, and we honestly thought it would be a crappy little production for tourists visiting Chicago. Apparently, Chicago Shakespeare Theater is a world-renowned theater group. It really was impressive. The theater was small and built in the model of The Globe, but on a smaller, more comfortable scale. It had similar tiers and the stage jutted out into the audience and was on a similar level as the crowd. There really wasn't a bad seat in the house. 

They created a modern adaptation, so the soldiers wore camouflage fatigues and carried guns. It was super bloody and violent. They show Macbeth literally cutting a dude in half at the very beginning. The witches show up as part of the media following Macbeth, and later on Macbeth finds them in a fetish strip club. Lady Macbeth, who famously prays to be unsexed, was pretty much running around naked the whole time. And she was super crazy, which was fun/disturbing to see live. Everything was just done so well. It was great to be able to sit and watch something so rich with nuance and meaning. Every movement, every direction meant something. I really need to make sure I go again at some point.

I also watched a modern movie adaptation by the BBC. James McAvoy was Macbeth, and it was oddly great. I say 'oddly' because Macbeth is the head chef of a restaurant and Duncan is the restaurant's owner. It works really well though. I think my new favorite line ever is "There are pigs landing on my head!" ... I think you all need to see it to understand (it's on Netflix's instant watch under Shakespeare Retold). 

 

So yeah, that's all. I'm going to NYC next week, which I am super excited about. Dude, look at me being excited about things! Yay!

Eh, it's winter

Ok, so I'm going to suck it up and try to blog regularly. We'll see how this goes. I feel like things right now are in a bit of a lull, but will probably pick up soon. We're going to schedule our third-year rotations in the next month or two. Of course, I'll be trying to work my schedule around going to ComicCon, because comics are more important than learning how to be a doctor. I'm not even kidding. I either go to ComicCon now, or try to squeeze myself into a Phoenix costume when I'm 40 and scar thousands of children for life. I also have to start studying for boards soon, so you know there are going to be some cheeky shenanigans that will ensue. And by "cheeky shenanigans" I mean that I'll probably drop my microbiology flashcards in snow that's covered in dog urine and I'll end up stabbing somebody. Hilarious. 

Speaking of snow, I think it's time for another exciting edition of, "Winter: wtf?" So all the snow we've gotten in the past month never melted away at any point. It was really quite disgusting. I wasn't kidding about all the dog piss covered snow. Since I'm in the ritzy part of town, everyone has little dogs and they have to urinate somewhere, thus we have yellow snow. Also, all of the snow lining streets were covered in black. I'm not entirely sure what the black stuff is - whether it's from the cars or the tar on the streets or what - but I fear for my lungs. I just don't want to see that. Anyway, the disgusting snow finally melted this weekend, and I realized that I kinda forgot what the ground looked like. Winter is a complete mindfuck. We're having a bit of a warm spell, which is nice. It was 60 degrees and sunny yesterday, and again, I forgot what warmth coming from the sun felt like. I stepped outside and was struck by the heat causing me to do a crazy little move where I covered my face with my arms and squinted in pain at the sun. Then, I realized that I should stop looking like an insane, emo vampire child and walk to class. I'm so smooth.

I did have a fun conversation with my college mentor. We have to check in with him every semester, which is fine. He did happen to bring up the Healthy Living class they're currently making us take. Essentially, it's a class where they tell us that we need to eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise, sleep and not smoke. I imagine you know just how much my head is shaking as I'm writing this. Yes, they're lecturing second-year medical students on the very basics of health and nutrition. Becuase apparently none of us had an interest or understanding of the very minimum of healthy behavior before coming to medical school. God, these people make me so mad. I decided to take the honest route with my mentor and tell him how boring the class is, mostly because I've been following health news since high school and took nutrition classes in college. He seemed to understand and take this ok, but still decided to push the topic to find one positive thing about this useless class. 

So he mentioned the Behavior Modification project. Good god. If ever I would have just taken a punch to the face as opposed to this misery, it was at this moment. We have to pick a behavior of our own and modify it over the next 12 weeks. Most people are choosing stuff like sleeping regularly or going to the gym, which I already do. My mentors point was that it was good for physicians to know how hard it is to change a behavior so they can empathize with their patients. I just stared at the poor guy. I had a whole tirade of how I went strictly vegetarian three-and-a-half years ago, only lapsing a handful of times in the first two years. I started doing yoga regularly last year, during med school, and now go three times a week. There are many, many other things I could name, too. I figured I was fighting a losing battle, though, and did what I do best. I just didn't respond and continued to stare at my mentor. That got him to stop talking, which was nice. :)

Well, that's all for now. I swear I will try to update more...

Your turn

Well, I officially fail at this whole blog thing. It's January in Chicago and frankly, I don't want to go outside to get something to blog about...so what should I do? Any ideas, Amanda or Sami (I take it you two are the only ones who read this)? What would you guys like to see up here? I'm officially putting my writing services at your whims. Yes, in essence, I'm your monkey - unless your ideas suck. It turns out that I'm a very critical monkey.

I sure am inconsistent

I knew winter break would cause a large gap in posts. Sorry for the delay. I can't believe it's already mid-January, though. I have to take boards in June, and I just know it's going to sneak up on me way too quickly. Although, I must say, I would give anything for it to be June 12 already. I'll be done with boards, and I'll have two whole weeks of freedom before starting clerkships. Two whole weeks. Crap. I'm such an adult. 

Anyway, winter break was really nice. I hadn't been home in over six months, so I spent a lot of time reacquainting myself with my couch and amazing queen-sized bed. Mmm, queen-sized bed. Also, I spent time with my family and friends. But mostly I just vegged out and did nothing. It was sweet, except for the time my cat decided to shit AND piss in my bed. That was lovely. My cousins had spent the night before at our house, and my cat is insanely afraid of people so she effectively shut herself in my room. I guess this displeased her and she decided I needed punishing for it, because I found cat poop in my bed the next night (at 1:00AM when I was getting into bed, of course) and, as I withdrew the covers to see the full extent of the damage, my hand hit something wet and foul-smelling. I was not pleased. I did the only thing I could do, though. I removed the bedding so the mattress could dry, nearly woke everyone up by laughing to myself about how insane my cat was, and went to sleep in the guest room. It was a fun little surprise. 

The past week in Chicago has been uneventful as usual. This winter does suck a lot harder than last year. There was a blizzard yesterday, which kept me inside all day. A fucking blizzard. I don't think there was a single one of those last year, and already there have been two this year. I used to only associate blizzards with the awesome Dairy Queen ice cream Blizzards from my childhood. Those were fantastic. They were all full of Oreos or M&Ms and ice cream goodness. These blizzards, not so much. No Oreos. No M&Ms. Not even any ice cream. Just complete and total sucking. As much as they salt the roads and sidewalks here, for some ungodly reason they never clear the curbs where we have to cross the street. The mixture of salt and snow makes a disgusting brown puddle with ice mixed in it, which I have to jump over every time I cross a street. Sure enough, my foot eventually lands in one of the icy puddles, causing me to curse and swear like a drunken sailor and walk around with a frozen foot. I hate the Midwest. I hope that somehow the entire Midwest sinks in some giant, unprecedented pit of quicksand, thus bringing the two coasts together and everyone living happily ever after. There just aren't any words to convey my disdain for this place. 

So that's all for now. I'll try to do something interesting at some point so I don't spend the whole post complaining. Hopefully, it's at least some entertaining bitching.