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!).