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.