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. 

Doing things I want to do

I did not realize until fairly recently that my last real day off was in September when I went to New York. Sure, there have been days where I have done no work, but I usually spent a good part of that day lying in bed and feeling guilty about not doing anything. After all, part of being a med student is having constant, crushing guilt and self-doubt. Hell, even while I was in New York I had work I should have been doing. However, our administration found some last, tiny ounce of kindness in their hearts to give us Thanksgiving weekend off. Although I had to stay in the hell-hole that is Chicago (why pretend I'll find something I like here anymore?), I did manage to enjoy myself.

I went to Blockbuster on Wednesday afternoon to rent some movies for the weekend. This was pretty tragic because I ended up getting four movies, and as I went to pay for them, I saw two other obviously single women at the register with 4-5 movies each. They might as well have just given me a few cats and made my initiation into spinsterhood official. Anyway, I did not notice until later that I pretty much picked out the cream of the crop of teen angst movies. I got Thirteen, Speak, Rebel Without a Cause and Monty Python and the Holy Grail; and that last one was the only one saving me from slitting my wrists by the end of the weekend. I also downloaded Into the Wild and Trainspotting. It was a happy weekend.

I did like almost all of the movies, though. I thought Thirteen was great. I still cannot pinpoint exactly why it resonated with me, since my teen years were way less rebellious and much more awkward and embarrassing. I liked that there were no pretenses, and it did not feel like they put crazy things into the movie just for shock value or to sell me something. It felt genuine. Rebel Without a Cause was not at all what I expected. It took me at least a quarter of the movie to realize that James Dean was playing a sixteen-year old, and the whole thing was a little over the top. I do, however, see what all the fuss over James Dean is about. He was just captivating, and the camera clearly loved him. It's really too bad he made so few movies.

I went blues dancing on Friday night, which was great. I went a lot with Dina before moving out to Chicago, and I guess I got a little homesick so it was nice doing something familiar. There was a decent group of people there ranging from my age to much older dancers. Everyone was really nice, and surprisingly there were not any creepy people. I also remembered much more than I thought I would after two years of not dancing. I did not trip up any of my partners or just suck, which was nice. Maybe all the yoga helps with movement, because I cannot think of any other reason I would know how to blues dance after so long. I have also been trying to download as much blues music as possible (I just realized how bad that sounds...but I am poor and technologically savvy, so it's ok, right?), although I have no idea what I am doing. I did happen upon John Lee Hooker, who is awesome. He did "Boom Boom Boom Boom," which you might recognize...Also, Ella Fitzgerald is amazing. Her voice is possibly the most beautiful thing I have heard in a long time.

To round out my movies, music and reading weekend, I finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It was epic. It was also strange because I got the distinct feeling that Gaiman, who is British, knew more about America and loved American culture more than most Americans. The book was a little slow starting out, but it was just so ambitious and carefully crafted that I really did not mind the lingering pace. I could go into it more, but you all would probably be just as well off by reading the reviews on Amazon or by actual critics. Needless to say, I thought it was great.

That's all for now. I'll keep my complaints about the weather and school for another post. And that is probably the worst teaser for an upcoming post, ever.

The joys of helping people

I'll probably keep this post short because not much has happened this week. Really, after being at the Obama rally two weeks ago and seeing Rob Pattinson last week, I would have had to fuck Johnny Depp to top all of that. My life is so awesome, I know.

Anyway, I do have stories about this one class I'm taking. We have to take a course on "Vulnerable Groups" because we're obviously all sheltered, rich babies who know nothing about "those less fortunate." My personal opinions on our curriculum aside, they did make this class more interesting. Instead of being talked at for a couple hours a week, the coordinators of the class arranged 20 different sites for us to choose from. We would pick our top five sites and they would assign us to one of them for three weeks. There were some genuinely cool ones. I picked a rehabilitation center for brain injury patients as my top choice, which I had heard great things about. Planned Parenthood was also listed as a site, and we could watch them counsel women on abortions and watch them perform abortions. That was my second pick. Of course, I got my last choice.

I was assigned to a substance abuse group session at a residential facility. I figured I may not be very interested in it, but I would most likely be prescribing people narcotics in a few years. It would probably be handy to recognize signs of substance abuse and maybe learn a little about counseling drug-seeking patients. Two other classmates were part of my group, and we headed up together for our first session.

We got to the residential facility, which, to be honest, I thought it would be a rehab center. I was wrong. Residential facility does not mean rehab. It was a care facility for severely mentally ill people. Surprise! This was not just a substance abuse group. It was a group for psychotic people who abused drugs. Somehow - I really do not know how this happened - but they failed to mention the part where these people were completely disabled, not by their substance abuse problems, but by schizophrenia or severe depression. Now, I know substance abuse and mental illness go hand in hand, but there are varying degrees. I have done a lot of work in psychiatry for a second year, and I wanted to see more substance abuse recovery this time. And I don't know if any of you have tried speaking with schizophrenics, but it is not very fruitful if you have no idea what you are doing and you are creeped out by their blank stares.

Also, the care facility was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Apparently, not much has changed since then, except we no longer lobotomize people for shits and giggles (and yet, ECT lives on...). There was a very distinct smell, which was some combination of shit, cigarette smoke and disinfectant. There was the stale, hospital-like atmosphere trying too hard to be warm despite the fluorescent-lighting and bright white walls and floors. And then there were the mentally ill people. Just very Cuckoo's Nest. I don't know how else to describe it. There were the lower functioning ones who sat away from the group, shaking their heads, laughing and talking to themselves. That was creepy. Most of the group members were nice and seemed to care, but I don't think they realized that we were not actually doctors. We got a lot of questions about how they could get out of the facility. One guy wanted our contact information, including our addresses, which was frightening. I don't know why people think we know things.

Then we got the random comments that left us speechless. One guy talked about how people have receivers in their heads telling them what to do. There were a lot of conspiracy theories about how the staff at the facility were withholding money or trying to kill them. The winner was the story, which one of the patients shared freely, about how she pushed her husband out of a second-story window. He was fine, but died two days later...Yeah. I'm speechless. We also learned that most of the psychiatrists working at the facility were committing fraud by milking Medicaid for care they were not really providing. Good times.

I am just so at a loss as to what to think about this. It's not like I didn't know these things happened or that these sorts of people existed. I worked at a free clinic in Berkeley for a year, and lived there for five years, so I know there are crazy, poor people out there. I just do not know what I am supposed to get out of this. I am not interested in psychiatry, and even if I were I doubt I could help anything. It's clearly not making me more compassionate, which I think was the point of this whole thing. I guess it gave me something to blog about, though. I'll take that.

To be 15 again...

So, the past few days have actually been kinda interesting. I guess I need to preface this whole thing by saying I may have developed a slight obsession with the Twilight Saga over the summer. Yes, the books written for teenagers about a high school girl falling in love with a vampire. I know. I know. I assure you, though, the books are better than they sound. It's hard to explain, so just trust me on this one.

The movie based on the first of the four books comes out next week. There has been massive promotion going on for the whole thing. Part of the promotion is a "tour" involving different cast members doing autograph signings at malls across the country. I found out that the guy who plays the lead vampire role would be coming to a mall in on of the suburbs here. He was in the fourth Harry Potter movie (and was killed off at the end of the movie), but otherwise he hasn't been in much else. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to go meet him for a number of reasons. One, I doubt I would have the chance to do anything like it ever again, so I might as well take advantage of this opportunity... He really is a decent actor (I've seen some work he did for BBC) so I figure he has a good chance of having a successful career and maybe even winning some Oscars or something. That really was incentive enough to meet him, but I had other reasons... Two, I could either go meet him, or be in class. Three, it just seemed like a stupid/fun thing to do, and I haven't done anything stupid/fun in a long time. Also, he's rather beautiful, so that didn't hurt.

Then, the planning started. As I mentioned, I had a class at the same time as the actual signing. So I emailed the coordinator and rescheduled for earlier that week. The mall I needed to get to turned out to be about 30 miles away with no public transportation to get there. I thought of taking a cab, or signing up for one of those car share things, but then I realized that renting a car would probably be the cheapest and easiest way to go. It turns out you only need to be 21 to rent a car here for some reason, so that worked out quite nicely. I also did my research, and realized that I would probably have to camp out to get one of only 500 wristbands from Hot Topic guaranteeing me an autograph (my experiences as a teeny bopper when I was actually 15 helped out with this one...thanks Backstreet Boys). I got all the provisions I would need to survive a Chicago night outside, like a homeless person.

At this point, everything was set. Wristbands would be handed out at 7:30am on Wednesday for a 6pm signing. Monday came around, and the first of these events happened in San Francisco. Apparently, they were not prepared for the 3000 people that showed up for the 500 wristbands and a near riot ensued with people getting trampled and noses being broken. I kinda freaked out at this point because I did not account for possible violence. Silly me. I did a little more research and found someone through a fan site (I know, my dorkiness knows no bounds) and emailed her asking if I could tag along, so at least someone could account for my dead body after being trampled by rabid 12-year olds. She said that was fine and she would get to the mall at 9pm on Tuesday night.

On Tuesday, I go to get the car around 5:30pm so I can make a quick stop at Target and really take advantage of having a car. I reserved the cheapest car possible, an economy-sized Chevy Aveo. I end up with a Chevy Uplander, which is a 7-seater, SUV-minivan hybrid (not like a prius hybrid, just a hybrid of a SUV and minivan...you know what I mean). I looked at the rental car guy as soon as I saw the car, and I was like "Yeah, I'll take the damage and liability insurance, please." I would not be held responsible for the many things I would hit parking that beast.

Anyway, I get on the road...and I miss driving. Gah it was so nice. I drove to the mall, which was really outside of the city. I seriously went through some weird forest-y area to get there, and I realized that I really need to get out of the city more often. Apparently there's other stuff outside of downtown. Who knew?

I got to the mall at 9:30, and met up with the random person I emailed. There were already about 70 people ahead of us in line. At 9:30pm. The person I met was actually really cool. She was 23, and with a friend who was 21, so I didn't feel so bad about being too old for this. We joked and chatted for a while and set up our little area with sleeping bags and provisions. Hot Topic staff were roaming about and keeping people orderly and entertained, so another mess like San Francisco wouldn't happen. The weather wasn't too bad. It's about 35-40 degrees, which was manageable. But then, it started raining. This was not fun at all. We were all bundled up and had umbrellas and whatnot, but everything still got soaked. Not only are we cold now, but wet. People oddly enough, weren't really complaining though. I think we all realized it would be a long night. Here are some pictures of people camping out:

It's a little dark, but I think you get the idea. I wasn't the only crazy person out there.

The mall staff that was there though were smarter about it. Around midnight, they counted that there were already 500 people there. They decided there was no reason to wait until 7:30 am and worked to open up the mall and sell us the wristbands. By the time we got into the mall, it was around 1-1:30am. My toes were frozen. It hurt everytime I took a step. I'm pretty sure I would have lost some toes if we stayed out there the whole night...but whatever, I still have all 10 of them.
This is us, inside the mall at like 1:30am. Malls are kinda weird and creepy at night...But, we kept ourselves occupied with stories and jokes and stuff, it was pretty fun overall. I got a wristband, which made me happy, and I got home around 3:30am.

So the next day, I skipped lecture and classes entirely, showered, got dressed and headed out to the mall again. I got there around 4pm and there's already a giant line for the signing. It was a similar scene to that morning, but we all looked waaaay less war torn and miserable.
So, 6pm rolls around. The actor, Rob Pattinson, shows up and the screaming began. It was incredibly high-pitched, as you can imagine. I refused to take part in that kind of screaming, mostly because large crowds and loud noises kinda freak me out. Also, I'm tired and a little cranky. We started moving up in the line, and, as we got closer, I started to get a little nervous. Once we're in the store, I was really pretty excited/nervous. We moved up in line to the point where I could see him signing autographs, and I realized the guy is just as handsome in real life as he is in pictures. I always sort of imagine that pictures are doctored a lot and the person probably looks normal in real life. I was wrong. Here's a picture that a newspaper took of the signing. (we were warned by the staff that we weren't allowed to take pictures and no touching! hehe)

Anyway, I went up to him, and he had the posters in front of him and would sign them as each person came up. I'm pretty sure I had a very stupid smile on my face. He said, "Hi, how are you?" and I pretty much replied, "Good. Um, how are you?" And that was basically it. I'm really lame, I know, but it was totally worth it. Also, I'm proud for not completely losing my shit and saying something stupid. I call it a win. Here's the autograph:

Oh, and a fun fact. One of the girls I was with brought her brother. We all got his signature with the "X" after it except for him, which I find really funny. In the 5 seconds we had with the guy, he was quick enough to realize if another guy was coming up and not give him a "kiss" or whatever. Pure silliness.

Apparently elections don't have to be depressing

So, Tuesday night was the first good thing to come out of my moving to Chicago. Somehow, I'm ok with that. And as you might guess, I'm going to tell you my election story, but don't worry, there are halfway decent pictures for those of you less inclined toward the whole reading thing.

Anyway, I lucked out on Tuesday because I had class all morning and I had work in the hospital during the afternoon. This kept me from thinking too much about the election. I got home around 5:30pm, ate, bought some champagne and headed back to my computer to obsessively check the polls. I had heard earlier in the day that the mayor of Chicago opened up Grant Park to the general public to watch the election. I had missed the chance to get tickets to see Obama speak, but it did occur to me that this could still be a lot of fun.

I went over to my classmate's place with my champagne around 8:30, and she was a bit hesitant about going to Grant Park even though it's only a 15-20 minute walk. It had something to do with her being foreign and people getting trampled whenever crowds formed. Another one of her friends was there, and the two of us were able to convince her to get moving. We left for the park around 9:15, and before we even got remotely close to where the jumbotrons were set up, we were in the midst of a large crowd, all walking to the rally. Compared to Lollapalooza, which had something like 80,000 people each day, this was waaay more crowded. At this point, we all knew Obama would win; it was just a matter of time. I now realize what people mean when they say you could feel excitement and electricity in the air. There was nothing like it.

We started hearing random cheers in the distance, and we freaked out that we had missed Obama reaching 270 votes. We started running...and I mean running...to the nearest jumbotron. I guess now would be a good time to mention that I was a little stoned/drunk (I found a good classmate), so the whole sprinting thing while my lungs are giving out and my stomach's cramping was a big deal. I think I also may have taken this picture while running, I don't remember.

Yeah, I know. It's grainy and blurry, but you can see the people. So many people.

We reached one of the jumbotrons, and found out Obama was still at 250 votes. This is the crowd at the first jumbotron we went to.

There's another jumbotron further down in the background there and there was another one on the other side of us. All of which had huge crowds around them. I don't even know how many they had set up total. Anyway, the crowd was amazing. Everyone was just so happy and friendly. And I saw something I haven't seen in a long time without getting annoyed.

Yeah, that's right. I'm at a hippie rally for the new Democratic president of the United States, with thousands of other people and "USA" written in giant lights in the background. For the past 7 years, flags and "USA" written everywhere have been symbols of blind patriotism with nothing really to back it up. And as cheesy as this sounds, this was the first time I kinda realized that I am patriotic. It made me so proud to see all these people coming together to celebrate the election of our new president.

We moved to another jumbotron where the crowd wasn't so dense. Everyone was asking each other what the count was, and then everyone started cheering loudly and we heard Obama had hit 297 votes. Dude. The cheers of joy were deafening and everyone was jumping up and down, including me. I was like the energizer bunny (I don't think any of you have seen me that excited, but I couldn't stop jumping up and down). We waited for McCain to concede, and although people booed when he came on the tv, everyone respectfully listened to his speech and were clapping by the end of it (perhaps they were clapping because he lost, but it sounded like polite clapping). Then we waited for Obama to speak. It kinda took a while. But wow, the screaming and general noise-making that took place when he did finally walk out. It was amazing. Simply amazing. Here's my crappy pic I took while he was speaking. You'll have to trust me that it's him.

I loved his speech. People were crying and smiling and laughing. Hell I nearly cried. I don't think I've been moved by anything like that...well, ever. He was very much the president we had all hoped and dreamed for. It was surreal.

Afterward, everyone left in a very orderly and calm manner. There was sporadic cheering and whatnot, but nothing got out of hand. It was really surprising considering the occasion and how many people were gathered in one place. There were so many people, that the police shut down most of the loop, including Michigan Avenue so we could leave quickly and easily.

That's Michigan Avenue. That's a shitload of people on Michigan Avenue...

...So, maybe it's my turn for some blind patriotism. :)

More of Michigan Avenue. There were people as far as we could see down the street. It made me so happy.

My ridiculous subconscious

I've been having a lot of weird dreams lately. It's odd because I almost never remember my dreams, and now I realize that it's with good reason. Each dream has one kinda dark/sinister element, and then something completely ridiculous happens. Let's examine dream number one (I realize most people don't find dreams interesting, but I think these are entertaining, so humor me):

In this first dream, I'm working the graveshift security job at a museum. Oddly enough Chithra was my partner at the job (my subconscious seems to think our grad degrees are useless). Anyway, so we're just hanging out, and it's really dark and creepy in the museum. We hear people breaking in...and instead of being good security guards, we run and try to hide. All of a sudden my dream turns into a scary movie where the bad guys are slowly hunting us in the dark and we're trying to, you know, not die. It was actually really suspenseful in the dream. But then, the head bad guy shows himself, and he promises not to hurt us if we make him pancakes. Saved by pancakes! The dream goes on for a bit, but everything pretty much turns out ok. It was a pretty elaborate dream considering the message in the end was "I'm hungry."

The second dream was pretty short and vague, but it was weird enough to warrant my mentioning it here. The first thing that I remember is a car in a frozen lake with a dead body in the trunk. For some reason, it's my job to get the dead body out of the lake. You'd think with modern technology, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but I have no idea how to get a dead body out of a car in a frozen lake. I spend a large chunk of the dream talking about how to do this with my colleagues - none of which I recognize. I then start freaking out that we need to get a golf cart, because the lake is in the middle of a golf course and it would be poor etiquette to bring heavy machinery there (obviously). The dream ends with me riding to the lake in a golf cart and poking the dead body with a large metal pole. Because I'm just that good.

The final dream is, in my opinion, the weirdest dream. I know what you're thinking. "But Camellia, how much weirder could it get after the whole poking a dead body in a frozen lake thing?" Pretty fucking weird, buddy.

This dream starts out in London and guest stars Dina. Hi, Dina! So, we're in London and crossing Tower Bridge, but instead of it being a normal bridge, it's actually a rollercoaster. This dream was particularly vivid for some reason. When the rollercoaster took a gut-wrenching drop, I could feel the breath being knocked out of me. It was neat. Anyway, the rollercoaster ends up in the Underground, but instead of it being the actual London Underground, it's now the London BART system. We wander through BART for a while and I get lost a couple of times. Of course, if this were realistic, Dina would be the one getting lost, but she knew where she was going for some reason. We ended up at one of the stations watching a street performer with a bunch of other people. One of those people happened to be Bono (since when am I a U2 fan?), who naturally invited us back to his place. Once we're at Bono's place, he gave us ketamine. I actually don't really even know what ketamine is, but my dreams seem to be all for it. Anyway, we then go hot-tubbing and I started freaking out because I brought two bathing suits, and I couldn't seem to match them properly. I kept mismatching the tops with the bottoms, which wasn't as funny then as it is now, but this all took a long time. It literally felt like hours that I was sitting there trying to figure out how to match the bathing suits properly. Dina eventually dragged me out of the dressing room, and that's where the dream ends. I know, it's anti-climactic, but I think the Tower Bridge rollercoaster and Bono are hard to top.

Yeah, so my subconscious is nuts. I challenge people who think dreams mean something to come up with an explanation for those. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure they all mean I'm insane.

Brains!

Due to popular demand, and by popular demand I clearly mean Dina, I have brain stuff to show. For the summer I worked with a funcitonal neurosurgeon. Functional neurosurgery deals more with quality of life issues. While the central nervous system structure is mostly normal, it functions abnormally (like in Parkinson's or people with pain disorders) and people get to neurosurgeons after failing other forms of treatment. My main focus was deep brain stimulation, which places electrodes into the brain to override an abnormal electric signal. It's used mainly in Parkinson's and other diseases that cause tremors, although they're testing it for severe depression. Anyway, this is what the surgical setup looks like:

The thing sticking straight out of the dude's head is essentially a motorized drill. The electrodes are drilled into the brain until they reach the right area, which has its own special electrical signal that the surgeon listens to and recognizes (I've heard it, its like different degrees of audible fuzz, which apparently means something). It turns out to look something like this in the end:

I was too lazy to cut the person out of the picture, but the cool thing is the x-ray. You can see how deep the electrodes go into the brain. The wires under the scalp travel down the neck to a battery pack that lies just over the pec muscles. The battery, mind you, is like $20,000. This stuff is suuuper fancy. Most people don't have a problem with the batteries (they stick out a bit like a pacemaker) but they do get a lifetime of pat-downs at the airport since going through a metal-detector is a bit out of the question.

They do a similar thing for the spinal cord. For people with a lot of nerve pain that can't be treated any other way, they put a similar stimulator over the spinal cord. The current from the stimulator creates a tingling sensation that sort of masks the pain from the messed up nerves. It's a closed surgery - they do everything through needles and tubes - so there are no decent pictures except through x-rays that I can't seem to find. So look! Random brains!


The coverings are still over the actual brain, but those sure are some juicy arteries. :)
And look, brain cancer:

So yeah, that's all i got for now.

So...it's been a while

I have an exam tomorrow, and frankly, I'm bored out of mind. I've read most of the news, chatted online for a bit, watched some tv, did some studying in between, and, out of a lack of anything else to do, I started reading some of my old posts. Yes, I remembered that at one point I used to keep a blog. Shocking, I know. It was fun though. It's like going back through a yearbook, you know, if that yearbook's only about me and not full of crap people.

So as an update, the whole finding friends thing fell through pretty hard. People here suck. I miss my friends, I miss California, I miss eating good food...Chicago blows. On the up-side though, I've been doing a crazy amount of yoga, I'm 99% sure I'm going into neurosurgery (if they'll take me) and I've lost some weight because of the aforementioned unappetizing food in this city.

Where to start? Probably with my test tomorrow. I don't know what it is, but I just don't want to study. This unit is more poorly organized than usual. The random topics they've decided to "introduce" to us include: genetically-acquired diseases, pharmacokinetics, antibiotics, cancer, transplant pathology and autoimmune diseases. I mean, wtf. None of this stuff is interesting when it's taught in such a limited fashion, which makes me just not care. Whatever, it'll be over tomorrow. I just need to pass.

The neurosurgery thing was really neat. I saw a lot of cool surgeries (brains!), learned a lot about different neuro diseases and got to see patients. It was fun running around the hospital in my white coat and scrubs. I imagine it'll be more fun when I know stuff, too, but whatever. It's funny how people get divided up in medicine. The personality types are so strong. People who like knowing everything about everything and talking about it for hours go into medicine. People who like actually doing something go into surgery. Within surgery, you have the general surgeons vs. the specialists. The specialists look down on the general surgeons, because they work in "bile and shit" all day (quote courtesy of one of the neurosurgeons I work with). Even within neurosurgery there are factions. There are the spinal surgeons, vascular neurosurgeons, functional neurosurgeons, etc. The fun part is that they all look down on each other. I love the inflated egos and nonsense hierarchies that make up medicine. It makes me think I picked the right career. :)

Anyway, I'm going to try to update this thing a little more regularly. It'll switch things up in my boring, boring life. But at least I can use stories from the past 6 months to make this sucker entertaining, hopefully...Heh.

Yeah, so not much new has happened lately. I'm really excited about my trip to New Orleans and back home. I fly back to the bay march 31 and i fly back out an april 6. Never fear though, I already booked tickets back home for two weeks in june 4-16. muahahaha.

That's really all there is to report. I've spent the past 4 days in the library studying...literally. Like I've spent all day, generally until around 10pm, studying if I'm not in class. I kinda hate life right now. Just a little bit.

Also, just as a side note, we finished anatomy lab for good today. I must say, it was incredibly interesting and cool that we got to see so much of the body (it really is neat), but man, we did some fucked up stuff to that person. It's really kinda amazing that people donate their bodies for this, because we really do learn a lot, but at the same time it's probably not my ideal way to go. I'm still mixed about how I feel about it, I guess. It's probably better than just putting your body in the ground and having it waste away, or burning it down to ashes. I guess at least this way some people get something out of it.

Yup, that's all for now. I should go study...or sleep. blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg.

Still waiting for spring

So, these past couple of weeks have been completely uneventful. I don't think I'm handling med school very well, but at this point I'm just kind of waiting for the year to be over. I've been studying a lot, at least until I got sick over the weekend, then I just played a lot of video games. Otherwise there's really been no sign of life. I'm forming friendships, which is good. But I find that there are very few people (namely two) I can see every day and in the relatively stressful environment that is school...and not want to cut their throats. I realize I should be humble because people probably feel that way about me, but seeing the same people every day just drives me a little crazy.

Operation: Find Friends Outside of Med School has also been put on hold for a while now, at least until it's warm enough to go outside and do things. It's weird too, like I think I've reached the point where I need attention. I feel like I've been so deprived of any sort of excitement or just anything mildly interesting, that this is leading to increasing pessimism. Because that's how I do things. It's way easier to be pessimistic than proactive. Granted, I don't really think I want to be proactive in this state, because it'll probably lead to me doing something incredibly stupid, but still. I think realizing this much has helped put things into perspective a bit. I need to calm the fuck down.

Anyway, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm going to New Orleans after my exams and it sounds like the brother has quite the weekend lined up, so I'm excited. And then I'm coming home! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I really can't wait to see everyone again. It's been 3 long fucking months since I've even heard anybody's voice (I should probably start using my phone more...). I also just bought my plane tickets for the first part of summer, and I'll be spending just about two weeks in the bay, which should be really nice. I thought about possibly going somewhere else, but I don't really know where I'd go, and I really do miss home, so the bay it is! At least by then Chicago will be nice and sweltering hot, but right now it's still freezing cold, so fuck this place. :D

Well, I guess that was a semi-serious post. I'll try to lighten it up in the future. Maybe when it actually warms up a bit....

Drinking away my lack of a life

I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I probably will fail in my attempt to find a life outside of med school. It's crazy how claustrophobic it gets being around the exact same people every single day. Especially when they're med students, and everything you do revolves around med school. So my solution to this problem is to find a few med students that can hold a conversation about something not med school related, and share my inclination to make fun of everything we do. Phase two of my plan is to then develop an alcohol addiction. I think I've mostly accomplished the first part of the plan, as I've been hanging out with a few of the girls in my class quite a bit. The second part of the plan is coming to fruition quite nicely as well.

We've developed a bit of a ritual to watch Lost together each Thursday night, and I bring along a bottle of wine to share, which makes it pretty fun. On Friday nights, we then go to dinner at one of the pubs and get a few drinks. Nevermind the stash of rum and vodka I have in my freezer. Heh. We even went crazy and went out to a bar last Wednesday night because we had the day off on Thursday. It was a med school thing with med school people, but still, lots of drinking, which makes everything better. Also, I'm still not bad at beer pong. Not great, but I'm not a total chick either. :)

Other than that, things have been pretty tame. I volunteered at a health fair in Chinatown, where about 200 Chinese grandmas and grandpas came in for full physical exams in a roughly 3 hour time span. It was crazy. And it was nice finally getting out and using whatever few skills I have to help people. That was the whole point of med school after all...

I've also been studying quite a bit and just kind of getting into the med school groove. Granted I hate life because it really is what I feared: all med school, all the time, but really what can you do?

Pictures, finally!

So, I finally figured out how to sync up my phone with my computer...and now I can start taking pictures with my phone again.

Here are some winter pics I took early last December, when it just started snowing and it was all novel and pretty.


I was waiting for a bus after working at a clinic here. The snow was coming down pretty gently and I was very much enjoying it.

This isn't the greatest picture, but it's right outside my building. This was also before Christmas, so you can see the tree has lights on it. It was actually really pretty, but they've taken all the lights down, so now everything just looks all bare and dead. There isn't as much snow on the ground anymore either. Most of it has melted away, although some rather cruel ice patches remain. Although it's supposed to snow for the next two days...which just makes me sad.

And here's my obligatory cat picture. Look at that belly! Man, that cheers me up. :)

Jaundiced AND Sensuous

Well, I made it through yet another exam. I actually didn't do as bad as I thought considering I didn't understand the material at all...cardiology is hard. Anyway, I finished my exam early and went straight to this wine store about a mile away. I bought four bottles of wine, 2 red and 2 white. I then carried those bastards all the way home. For some reason I didn't quite think that one through. But it didn't matter because the drinking began right after that.

A few of us went to one of the pubs right next to school for fries and drinks. I had two gimlets (gin with a splash of lime juice) and considering the bastards skimped on the fries, I got a bit drunk. The four of us managed to spend $70 on drinks, so at least I wasn't the only drunk. After that, we all took a break and went home before dinner. I took a much needed nap and then got ready for dinner. We went to California Pizza Kitchen (not my choice), but the food got surprisingly better after we had a bottle of wine. We then went and played Apples to Apples and drank more wine. We finished two more bottles by the end of the night. It was great. It was additionally great because apparently the bar our class chose for our official post-test party sucked horribly. It was so bad our class president wrote an email to everyone apologizing for it. Hahaha...suckers.

On Saturday, I had my last wine class, which focused on champagnes. Yummy, yummy champagnes. I then came home and had more wine with my dinner, and then I passed out on my bed for the rest of the night. Literally. I moved my laptop and everything to my bed, and there really is nothing better than getting under blankets and having your laptop in your lap (as it was meant to be). Then, I basically did nothing on Sunday. Greatest weekend ever.

We got right back to work on Monday though, which sucks. My brain is still drained from all the thinking I did these past couple weeks. Anyway, we're on the musculoskeletal unit, which means LOTS of anatomy lab. During lab this morning, one of the teachers, who is a retired surgeon, caught me as I was cleaning up and asked me if I was Greek. I told him I was middle eastern, so he starts commenting on my features. This included my jaundiced skin (I'm pretty sure he meant olive-y, or else I drank waaay too much wine) and my dark, sensuous eyes. Normally, no one would be able to get away with this, but I was so amused and encouraged by the fact that when I'm an old, retired doctor, I can go around and say whatever the hell I want to people. I'm really quite looking forward to it.

Well, that's all for now. This week should be interesting, as we start our Cultural Dynamics class, which is going to suck so hard, and the St. Vincent concert on Saturday (yay!).

Seasonal depression anyone?

Yay for my first post in February, hehe...whoops. Well, I have a decent excuse: February really sucks for weather. Normally, back home I would associate February with early spring. Cherry blossoms begin to bloom, the hills are still green from the winter rains, the sun is nice and warm. But here, in Chicago, February is fucked. It's the first time that I had to go out in subzero weather, and I don't see how anybody can be happy about life after that. My days basically consist of going to class, running through the awful weather as fast as humanly possible, and then coming home to study, because my life is just that full of joy and happiness.

Anyway, I'm just looking forward to Friday, after which I can breathe a little bit. By 'after' I mean Friday around 12pm, and by 'breathe' I mean drink myself into a coma. Yep, that's how I'm living life now. Mind you, I'll be getting hammered the classy way with lots of wine. I plan on going to wine store immediately after my test and buying a few bottles of wine. Someone else will be getting nice cheeses and breads...and then we will proceed to drink ourselves silly. Mmm, alcohol.

Then, on Saturday, I have my last wine class. It's going to be on champagnes. I'm so fucking excited about that. Usually, we taste about 5-6 wines per class, so there's a small bucket in the middle of the table where we dump the wine after tasting, so we don't get roaring drunk. My plan is basically to drink everything I'm given...because I like champagne and I just don't care any more.

Other than that, I really have nothing else going on. My life is basically nonexistent until after this test. And yes, I realize that the only thing I have planned to do once I get my life back is to drink wine. But it's cold outside, so I'm ok with that. Stupid winter. I probably should be more optimistic about it...but it sucks, so I'm going to stick with pessimism and anger.

Lazy > everything else

I actually had a pretty eventful weekend for once. Friday ended up being a long work day, as I had 6 hours of class. This is incredibly unusual for a Friday, because our school generally has the common sense to ease up on us at the end of the week. I guess since we got Monday off though, they had to make up for it somehow. Bastards. Anyway, I ended up going to the Hot Hot Heat, Louis XIV and The Editors concert that night. It was at the Vic Theater, which was literally a smaller version of the Warfield in SF. It was a pretty great show. Hot Hot Heat kinda phoned in the performance, probably because they were the openers and they haven't done anything great lately. Louis XIV rocked pretty hard. I only knew their one song which Live105 used to play all the time, but their other songs aren't bad either. They also have two violinists who are fun, and the guitarists were both really really good. They were fun to watch.

The Editors were pretty unexpectedly good. I listened to their album before the show, and it pretty much sounded like Interpol, but more upbeat and not all their songs sounded the same. And granted, all their songs did end up sounding the same live, but the fact that the lead singer was insane and the songs were crafted well made the show. The guy literally would jump from playing the piano to playing the guitar and back to playing the piano in a single song. At one point, he grabbed the mike, jumped on the piano and sang his little heart out from there. It was insanity. I haven't seen someone play with that much energy in a long time.

On Saturday, I had my second wine class. This time, it was all about red wines and how to buy one that was ready to drink and one that you could put away for a couple decades. The dude poured us this Spanish tempranillo wine that was just mind-blowingly delicious. Usually we take a couple sips of the wine and pour it out, so we don't end up throwing up in the middle of class, but I drank every little bit of this wine. It was soooo good (and I was kinda tipsy after class). I also realized that I can finally taste the differences between wines. Before, I just knew if a wine was good or bad. Now, I can kinda identify flavors. Oh yes, I'm working my ways up the snob hierarchy here. This is pretty momentous. This one wine is slowly becoming an obsession too. I've been looking online for this wine and for wine stores in my area so I can go buy some. Just the thought of it makes me all warm and happy inside.

January's coming to an end (time to send out the rent check), which actually makes me happy. It means I'm that much closer to spring break and summer vacation. And boy, do I need a decent break, even though I just had winter break, I know. I got a position as a coordinator for the student-run psychiatry clinic, which I kinda happened to fall into. It'll be fun, but also a crapload of more work. I also got a research project to work on, which is mostly for summer, but it's going to get started within the next month. This is all exciting, but we all know how lazy I am. All I really want to do is sleep. Like constantly, for maybe a week or so. That sounds so awesome.