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?