blog niblets, historical edition

Okay, because it's been a few days since I've posted, because I want to keep up the flow of ideas, because I'm always talking about how I'm going to get around to telling some cool ER stories, and finally because I'm always obsessing about how to do that while also respecting confidentiality, here's what we're going to do today: I now present to you a list of very short-but-true little factoids. The following things happened to me at some point within the past three years or so, although the non-clinical stuff goes back farther. Note: the few identifiying details that might be present are subject to change, so you'd never figure out who, when, or where, don't even try.

* The first time I set foot in an emergency department as a patient, I very nearly, as my British friends say, pulled. I struck up a pleasant conversation in the waiting room with someone who I think was there with her friend. My swollen glands and constant pain were not enough to keep me from turning on the charm.

This was an early experience that cemented two ideas for me: one, I'm even more charming and attractive when I'm in the healthcare environment (which is weird, because way back then I was only an erstwhile transcriptionist, and was still in deep denial about the idea that I'd ever want to practice medicine myself). Two, upon thinking about it, something about hitting on chicks in a hospital, or having chicks hit on you in a hospital, is just plain weird. The professional detatchment thing would later turn out to be easy for me, and maybe this is part of why.

It would be a cooler story if I got those digits, though... it woulda been nice to have a better self-image back then. And besides, my strep was gone in like a week.

* The first time I set foot in an emergency department as a student, I observed an attempted suicide case. The patient would turn out okay medically. The note was sitting out on the countertop. I don't remember it word-for-word, but I remember how it felt to read, and how clear the writing was. Here's where I learned about the reverent, church-like feeling of being witness to the extremes of human experience; how people's bodies and the artifacts of their lives are laid out for view.

Now that one of my job responsibilities is gathering and packaging trauma patients' clothing and personal belonings, it's hard not to think of this clinical, dispassionate view in chaotic, passionate times. We take care of that stuff, man. We document piles of clothing and the contents of pockets like archival materials, and handle them like just-purchased Christmas presents.

The one time I, in my capacity as a lowly tech, walked upstairs to sit in the surgery waiting room and talk to the family of an accident victim was to explain to them that their family member's clothing had been so thoroughly cut by our shears, and was so saturated with his blood, that I felt they would agree it was better to throw it away. Red-eyed and waiting for news from the OR, they considered what it would have been like to open a brown paper bag and see their loved one's stuff like that, and told me thanks for thinking of it, of them, in that way. I'm glad I was right in this case, because the hospital's rule is right, in general: that decision was just plain not mine. If it had turned out they'd wanted the shredded, soggy stuff, I would have gone searching in medical waste.

* I'm pretty good at reading X-rays, although I need to get over this thing where I spend significant time looking at the wrong part of the picture entirely.

* I've been offered the opportunity to do all manner of things with needles and blades that I probably shouldn't do quite yet. I've turned those down, but I do know how to put a dislocated finger back in place.

* I was an EMT for just shy of three years, and I carry a bag in my car with splints, bandages, scissors, and basic things. I stopped by the side of the road as the first responder to an accident, last winter, while I was out east. I didn't use anything from the bag except a pair of purple gloves, but speaking as a guy with a four-year acting degree behind me, I'll tell you what: those gloves, plus the shoulder strap of the bag slung across your chest? The knowing what to say, and what to do? That shit is theater. Pure and simple. And it helps people. All I had to do was talk, really, until the volunteer rescue squad came. Those guys were basically me, plus of course years of experience, plus a big truck with all the necessariy equipment and cool lights.

But the theater is the most important part of the equation.

I agreed to what, now?

I can't say I've figured out my work schedule, but I did talk through it, and write out a little calendar-slash-chart thing to give myself a visual.

Hunh.

3pm to 11pm tomorrow (well, today I guess), and the same again Thursday. Cool; I can check out a bunch of apartments tomorrow (well, today I guess) before work. Friday I have off; that's sweet. And then Saturday it's 11pm to 7am (wait -- is that Friday night at 11pm to 7am Saturday, or is it the last hour of Saturday into Sunday, and then the last hour of Sunday into Monday?).

Then I start the actual pattern at the beginning, and the first Sunday of the pay period I always have off (except for the 7 hours of Sunday I work because I started a shift at 11pm on Saturday, of course). The middle of the week varies a little, because I'm only guaranteed eight shifts in a two-week period, and they could be evenings (3 to 11) or nights (11 to 7).

Hunh.

I guess it's good that I'm a night owl. Unless it's really, really bad. And also, which box has my scrubs in it? Oh crap. Gotta go find those.

Too Legit to Quit

Happy news today; I'm being upgraded to just lazy and homeless, as opposed to being Teslagrl's lazy, homeless, unemployed boyfriend. I stopped by the hospital on a recent morning, to attend the weekly emergency dept. conference thingy. I drank the coffee, I ate the bagel and cream cheese. I saw some people I hadn't seen in a while.

Something about me (or them, or the spot we presently occupy in the yearly schedule) must have changed, because when I went home over winter break, people were like, "oh. You've been gone?" Whereas today, I got handshakes and friendly greetings from various staff, faculty, RNs, and residents. Maybe it's because during the last year, I may have doubled or tripled my actual knowledge base, and now radiate a sense of reduced dumb-assedness. Maybe.

In any case, I sat through the third-year residents' presentations of their "scholarly" work; some of said work was really good, and either will be or has recently been published in medical journals. Some was... well, let's just say that anyone in my Micro tutorial could have PowerPointed circles around a couple of these folks. Have no fear, sick and injured of the Twin Cities. They're good doctors, and their presenting skills are unimportant; it's just that they happen to be not-so-stellar in this case. My take-home message was, "dang, I guess all that stuff I did at that weirdo college will pay off in more ways than I know about."

And I tracked down my boss, a very busy guy who tends not to return a phone call unless he has an answer to the question being asked. Which is difficult for me, since I spent all that time in the world of "gosh, sir, we still haven't located that document, so if you'd like to send it again, you should feel free, or if you'd prefer I can just check in with you on Friday and let you know where we stand."

In this case at least, the suspenseful way isn't too bad, because we went pretty rapidly from "so hey, what do you have for open patterns?" to "it's about the same pay as part-time, maybe a little more; you'll be earning benefits; and orientation is on Monday." The only potential kink is that I'll be working shifts that are either 3pm -11pm, or else 11pm - 7am.

Still, I can work my other daily activities and socializing around the hours, and indeed I'll need to hone this skill if I'm going to work in Emergency Med the rest of my life. Plus I've learned to live on not very much sleep. Plus my sense of what time of day is appropriate for working has been completely scrambled by Bennington anyhow.

And speaking of 'scrambled,' there will be days when I get off work at 7:30am, and go directly to the little diner a block from the hospital. Sleep til 2pm, study GRE stuff. If it's a work night I take a nap. If not, I go out. Could be worse.

Today's Flash of Brilliance

Not mine, unfortunately. I'm still working on taking a nap. However:

Podbop

...is sorta a podcast and sorta a calendar. You tell Podbop what city you live in, and it spits out a bunch of bands that are coming soon to venues near you. Hey presto, you've got MP3 songs to download and listen to.

Well, you do, if you live someplace cool like Minneapolis, where Podbop can find info listed and people have made music files available. I entered a couple cities where potential med/ grad/ PA schools are, and results are spotty. People in ABQ: get on this!

say shhhh

Hey. Welcome to curious onlookers from Jon's blog. He's a pip, even if he does eff up my (admittedly pretty lackadaisical) campaign in the general direction of anonymity. Still, it's not an uncommon first name, and anyway I've always figured that a med school admissions person who was sufficiently curious (not to mention motivated, tenacious and obviously very intelligent) would find this place. Truth be told, I actually sort of like the idea of letting the stuff I came up with during my regular ol' life speak for me, during the high-stakes period when I'm being evaluated for entry to my career. Naturally, the context is totally different; this is both more and less than some "additional information" page or appendix to my application. And maybe I'm naive or just a gambler, but I gotta believe the people in charge would know and appreciate the difference.

Anyway, if you're new -- what I do here is try to track my progression from the rakish and charming liberal-arts guy I used to be to the steely-eyed, unflappable medical professional I'm turning into. It's a weird process to watch your friends go through, and it's even more bizarre to be in the middle of it. There are plenty of "med-blogs" out there -- I intend to link to more than I already do -- and I like to think that eventually, this will be... one of them.

So, hey, now that my whole post-bacc year is over, I can probably tell some stories. But first, the obligatory statement about how I do this.

I make sure I'm respecting confidentiality in a few different ways at once, because I'm more than a little anal about it. Not only do I alter identifying details when I talk about situations, I also wait until it's no longer possible to figure out who was who by looking at the order or the timing of the events. Maybe that's too much caution, but in the age of Internet vs. HIPAA, I'm not sure there is such a thing.

Right now, I need to take a nap. For like three days. It was an intense year. But I'll write soon enough about the "you should stop smoking" speech and other Urgent Care gems; the time we called 911 from a party at our house; the time I stopped at an accident scene; and various other really nerdy stuff that comes from a Minneapolis kid going to school in small-town Vermont.

hey, well, that was a year right there, that was

Hm. How about that. I survived. The year is done.

I have, right now in front of me, my post-baccalaureate certificate. As promised, it is indeed suitable for framing (although what kind of hippie alterna-college prints diplomas portrait-style?) It looks just like the diplomas the seniors got. I know this, because during my year here I went a little native, and got to be friends with quite a few seniors. I'm also coming home with my worldly belongings in my car, just as I did on the way out, except this time there will be the addition of what I would estimate to be thousands of dollars' worth of art... which cost me $27 total.

It's a sad time, as we look back, as we do various things for "the last time." As we say goodbye to people. But it's also exciting, because having survived this crucible, there's a sense that we can get on with the larger plan, and pretty much rock it like a hurricane. I have a grad school to check out tomorrow, in fact. It's something like four hours away but it'll be a simple little New England day trip. Then I'll go home and pack. Then, I'll start the 22-hour drive back to the Midwest, back to my regular life, already in progress.

So, before we go, here are a few landmarks. Some little episodic things that are worth a nod now, in the post-game wrap-up.

In the Category of Always:

* I learned that I always do better if I take the time to analyze not only the question being asked, but how it's being asked.

A wise man told me, in my very first term here, that the key to academic success is to "fill in the fuckin' blank." Which is to say, be sure you know what "they" are looking for, because "they" may not recognize your possibly-correct-but-differently-slanted answer, and they certainly don't owe you any leeway. Be sure that the things you know come out looking and sounding like things you know. (This has been perhaps the hardest skill for me to develop, but I figure that's fair because it's also the most important.)

* I always think more clearly and do better academically if I specifically take the time to socialize.

Yes, at times that has meant driving home at 5AM. Or passing out in a dorm room. But one of my professors echoed a lesson I learned in the corporate world: if you're a natural procrastinator, or you have a short attention span, scheduling your work is going to be extremely difficult, and you'll wind up with a lot of work yet to do. What you do is to schedule your play; that way, you let the work assume that flexible, shapeless pattern where it falls into the many cracks in between blocks of fun, rather than the reverse. You see?

I have this amazing new ability to go to bed at 2 (or 3, or 5) and then get up a mere 4 to 5 hours later, feeling refreshed. It's a little weird. Also in that vein, on those fun nights, it's not a bad idea to drink half a liter of Gatorade before bed, and down the other half upon getting up.

* I was always grateful for the chance to have this experience. I live in a ridiculously beautiful setting, and although maybe I'm dragging my feet to go home a little, I know teslagrl understands.

Even when it was stressful, or stupidly stressful, or just so absurdly stressful that it had to be some sick existential joke, I was very aware of how lucky I am to be, if not so blessed by natural skill and brains as to say "able," at least sufficiently self-aware and tenacious as to be "willing" to come out here and do this. I'm livin' the dream, for reals.

The only other thing that cost me $40,000 that was this rewarding was my divorce. (Zinnng!)

* I always kept the hot tub clean and the pH balanced. If I learned nothing else about chemistry (and the Prof might very well believe that to be true), I learned how to do that. I even got a special award at our year-end picnic for it. Heh.

In the Category of Never

* The passing out in a dorm room thing only happened once, actually. I was never quite as much fun as I claimed to be. But that's better for all involved, really.

* I never felt old. I was the oldest student in the school not pursuing a "real" master's, I think. And I was older than at least two faculty members.

Oh, sure, once or twice I was mistaken for random campus-crashing outsiders. Or faculty. But on the whole, "the kids" were accepting and very cool. And when I found the black-wearing, #27-smoking arts crowd, I was once more among my true people. It was like undergrad, except now I was working on science, which turns out to be as meaningful and yet impenetrable as my grad student friends thought their radical theater of the 1930's stuff was. Turnabout is pretty sweet.

I just had a birthday, so now I feel old.

* I never once spoke seriously about giving up. I'm not sure if I ever joked about it, except for being mock-excited about podiatry ("the career of the future"). And I still tell the Drummer I'll come visit him when he's in school in the Caymans.

Regrets? I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention. More later, maybe from the road.

Skillz, +/- the "Mad" part

Oh, sure. I've enjoyed the microbiology, the genetics, the neuroscience, even the statistics. But you know what's really fun? Learning actual clinical skill-type stuff. The PA I've been shadowing most recently decided to send me home with some extra supplies from the Urgent Care, and I'm learning to sew. One of my housemates saw the tray full of instruments on the kitchen table, and yet didn't see the grapefruit skin, and got a little... concerned. But it's totally benign. Check it out:

This is a pretty crappy suturing job, to be honest about it. But it's the first time I've ever sewn on a grapefruit skin, and I was primarily happy that I didn't stab myself with the needle.

4-0 nylon is one of your basic all-purpose suture materials. It's a little more bendy than thin fishing line, and way more rigid than the thread I used to fix a pair of jeans earlier today. I guess I'm just in a sewing mood.

I got better with the convex shape of the sections, and learned not to cut through the grapefruit with the suture. And then I did another row...


A better camera (or a better photographer) might make this more obvious, but in general, yes, this is already a superior job.

This is Vicryl, which is an absorbable suture material. It's also way happier to work with, because it's more flexible. But it's more fragile too, and so demands some patience and some style, all at once.

I'm a little geeked out about this. But hey: the next time you accidentally cut a grapefruit and then realize you don't want it yet, you can call me.

bacchanal

I may write more about this later, but before the term ends and all the ducks are safely in a row, I should mention that Saturday night I finally attended the big, Bennington-style rager that had been implicitly promised to me all along.

All is well, and I was entirely well-behaved. Nonetheless, it was glorious excess; if in the future I donate money to the school, it may well be because of the sweaty half-naked people dancing inside and jumping into the kiddie pool outside, as much as it is because of the education. Then again, maybe this is the heart of the real education.

I saw my friends who live in that house for probably a total of ten minutes; they were clearly occupied with their own mini-dramas, but that was fine because it left me to talk with just about anyone and everyone. It warms my grizzled old heart to have such a wide array of people all give me the same comment: "you're the only Post-Bac I see around." Well, yes, I'm afraid that's largely true... but thanks for noticing and thanks for the warm reception, ya crazy kids. And meanwhile, in work-related news:



My experiment went well. What you're looking at is his-auxotrophic e. coli bacteria, growing on a minimal-medium agar that should make their presence impossible. The reason the little guys are so hardy is that the substance being tested, a solution soaking that little round filter paper disc, caused reverse mutations that brought them back to self-sufficiency. They're making their own histidine, just like regular e. coli do, and partying down Bennington-style like everyone else.

I'll say more about the details another time, but the practical upshot is to be careful with some of your "natural" or "herbal" remedies: they can cause some impressive stuff to happen on a cellular level. And just because I didn't go in the kiddie-pool with the naked kids doesn't mean I would want to know what the heck is growing in that thing now.

And also

It's not "Staphlococcus oh-RAY-us," damn it. It's "OH-ree-us."

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Staphylococcus+aureus

This is hardly an important topic, in the scheme of things, but wow. It feels good to get that out in the open.

term-ending madness

Necrotizing fasciitis
Microbes come and try to bite us
Overwhelming our immunity
Getting busy with impunity
Turning tissues black and gangrenous
They go all, like, damn and dang in us
Try the topical negative pressure
Pump the Vanco, up the measure
Cutting-edge docs have been learning some old tricks;
It seems maggots work via proteolytics
Whatever it is that finally works
You'll wish it was what you had thought to do first.

(In my head, there's a jaunty little music-hall sort of a tune under all that. Welcome to the final week of my classes, and t-minus seven and a half hours until the deadline for this paper.)

Blog Niblets

1) The deer story turned out to be a decent way to work through not just the stress of, y'know, hitting a deer with my car and then watching Smokey put it down with a .45, but also the stress of writing my big essay. Huzzah! I have a draft, and it's 2960-some characters. So I'm skating mighty close to the edge of insanity -- but I should point out that I preserved my stylish paragraph breaks.

2) Last week, I wound up staying on campus to listen to live music and drink many $1 beers. Pretty frequently, too; I think it was 4 days out of 5 or something. I'm happy to report I heard an utterly bitchin' pop band; Saturday Looks Good To Me sounds like Husker Du plus Elvis Costello. They brought the rawk to Vermont, and that was special because now they've played in 48 of 50 states. Good luck with Wyoming and SoDak, guys.

(I see they were at the 400 Bar in September last year, so my momentary swagger at hearing a bitchin' band before Jon might be premature. Hmm.)

3) I set up a MySpace, and then I realized that I no-way-no-how want it linked to here. I seem to say this pretty frequently lately, but it's true: although this is not some kind of "deep, deep, deep undercover" thing, and I don't imagine I have true anonymity here, I like that there's a certain obscurity. I'm sure not everyone who would like to know about El Blog are aware of my little growing empire of essays, but people who should know I write here probably do. So, if you read this 'cuz you know me, and you don't get an email invitation to join my posse, it's because MySpace sucks, and I only joined because so many of my friends have pages, and you need to be a member to enjoy the full spectrum of suck.

4) I have ten days to finish everything, here in the last semester of my program. This is, in other words, a fun little slice of what we like to call The Crazy Time. If I put up incoherent rants, or if you see "this post has been deleted by a hallucinatory, orange, twelve-foot-tall pond frog," that would most likely be why.

5) Wet-colloidon photography is just about the coolest thing ever. I learned that recently.

Red In Tooth And Claw

Last Monday night on my way home, I hit a deer. I realize that recent posts have been all about the fun I've been having, and/or the stress of getting the rest of my life in order, but it's not that I'm self-involved.

That is to say, this is a blog, so yes, of course it's self-involved. It's the captured thoughts of a writer doing whatever he feels like, at the moment he feels it. That's the nature of the beast. But the nature of this other beast has been on my mind lately, and it's taken a few days to ponder. So here's the story.

I was coming home, having wrapped up the first part of my first draft of my essay. I worked in the coffee-shop-esque part of the student center for a while after leaving the Hall of Science, because nothing is less productive than three post-baccs with individual laptops and WiFi at 10pm. But by 10:40, with one mocha on-board, I was ready to head.

10 or 15 minutes later, I was tooling along the winding, mountainous road I enjoy so, so very much in my V6, and I noticed: hey look, some deer. I see deer all the friggin' time out here. They were majestic and special at first, and I didn't believe it when native New Englanders said they would soon become a nuisance, like raccoons but with more body mass. Now, I totally get it. But that's skipping ahead.

I saw three of 'em over on the right side, in somebody's yard, and they stayed still as I ripped by. Good deer. And now I was on alert, because apparently it was a good night to be a out and about for our local cervine-American* population.

A few miles later, after slowing to 40 through the little town with the volunteer fire station, I came back up to 55 or so, and as I crested a hill I saw another one, about a hundred yards ahead and down the hill, standing in the other lane, close to the shoulder. Hmmmm. I slowed down. It had tan fur, about the color of my Carhartt jacket.

It was facing the other way, and looked at my car over its shoulder. The long axis of the rectangle formed by the deer's hooves pointed diagonally away from me and across the road. It started out acting more or less intelligently, taking a tentative step straight forward and off the road in the other lane, as I slowed down on my approach. I thought for a moment it was going to be okay.

Then, the dumb beast apparently decided the grade was too steep on that side -- they leap something like 15 feet over, onto, and out of the embankments on either side of my road all the time, up at the farm, so this one was either crazy or just a total wuss -- and decided to dash directly in front of me instead. All I could think was "no no no no no," as my reflexes took over.

If I hadn't slowed down, maybe I would have plowed into it with the kind of force you hear about, Emergency Department-grade force, the kind that brings people into my workplace on a long spine board, escorted by medics bearing Polaroids of starred windshields and indented A-columns**. Its head might have been even with my left headlight, and the speed would have bounced its body right up over the hood and on top of me, the lone occupant of the car, with only a thin film of glass between us. That image, frankly, I don't need -- but the one I got sucked pretty badly, too. In the imaginary scenario, at least the deer's neck might have been broken instantly, painlessly, mercifully.

Instead, what we both got was a textbook-perfect broadside. Obviously, my part of it was scary and depressing, but painless and ultimately harmless. I don't even think my tires squealed, and my airbag didn't deploy. I nailed the deer's right side flatly: its shoulder and hip fit perfectly in the space between my headlights. The plastic front grill shattered, and the hood buckled only slightly; this must have been at about 40 mph. I stopped, hit the blinkers, and turned on my cell phone. The deer had skidded, bounced really, forward and over, finally making it to the ditch on my side of the road, and went about five feet downward and 25 feet away, where it stopped and laid down.

I called 911; I was fine. Controlled stop. No issues among the humans involved. The dispatcher had a category in his computer program for "car/deer accident," and got me through to the New York State Patrol.

It was the saddest thing in the world, hearing the tall grass thrash around and then become quiet, as the deer discovered it couldn't move well. I was afraid it was dying right there and then. I shined my ludicrously-bright tactical light toward the faint orange glow of its eyes, and saw it was breathing, but had a bloody hind leg. Since my white car was a little dented but spotless, I knew this was probably a secondary injury from sharp broken bone cutting the deer's hip from the inside. I switched off the light when the deer seemed to think I was coming down there and started thrashing again, its legs making swimming motions on the grass.

My car was only cosmetically scrunched, and had tufts of hair in a corner of the hood closure. The VW insignia in the center of the grill was gone, never to be seen again. My real damage was hopefully just as minor, but it's psychic, because I stayed with the poor thing until the trooper arrived. I talked to it. I apologized, over and over again. I kept my voice even and tried to calm it, from my place up on the embankment. It was either a female or an adolescent male, with big radio-dish ears, and black markings on its face. Eventually, an SUV with cherry lights came up the hill, passed, and turned around.

The trooper, a smallish, 30-something woman with a remarkably Midwestern demeanor, verified that I was okay, and I told her what had happened. I indicated where the deer was. After a moment, she got out of her car, paused to retrieve and put on her Smokey hat, and we started walking. She told me how she'd seen deer all over the place that night. We talked about how often this kind of thing happens, and I said I'd figured a near-miss would pretty much have to happen eventually, considering the sheer numbers of the things on and near our property. The trooper kept going, down into the ditch, and the back part of my brain sort of gave me a little tap on the shoulder, saying "naah. Stay here." So I stopped at the top of the embankment above the deer, as she continued.

I didn't expect we were going to splint the deer's leg and take it to a petting zoo; there is obviously a reason the State Patrol responds to these calls and the local volley-fire guys don't. And furthermore, I know (and knew) perfectly well what that reason is. But it was still a shock of sorts when the trooper walked calmly down into the ditch, still talking to me, and drew her weapon in mid-sentence.

It would be logical to think the expression "pop a cap" is just the bravado of street thugs and rappers who want to sound worldly and unimpressed by dangerous things. But the weird thing is, it's accurate. If you've heard a .45 caliber handgun fired, and/or fired one yourself, you know. It doesn't boom, it doesn't go "pa-whoomp" like in the movies; it pops. It sounds exactly like one of your more powerful firecrackers, sure, but nothing worse than what you can buy on the roadside in some of our more civilized states.

I last discharged a handgun something like 15 years ago. The first thing that surprised me was the heft of the thing. The second was the sharpness and bite of that unexpected noise, and the kick was close behind that. It's not back, like a hunting rifle; it's straight up, as if the gun is trying to escape you. It feels to me like holding the beginnings of a summer thunderstorm in your two cupped hands. For me, this power-to-size effect comes across as a basic, instinctual, almost preternatural sense of wrongness. The order of things is either altered, or maybe just mocked, by this apparatus of springs and levers that doesn't seem to belong in the world.

The point is, I did know, and I agreed completely and fervently, when after the first shot, the trooper sighed with regret and true sympathy, saying, "man, these .45's just don't have the right kind of power. You really need a magnum."

And so she shot the deer a second time, again in the head, to still its twitching front legs. She kept the gun raised, in case it would need a third before we would be able to say we had been merciful.



* Cervine: adj. Deer-related. Like "porcine" is for pigs, "murine" is for mice, and "bovine" is for cows. I heart the Internet for letting me find that. I used to know an awesome horse-racing guy, and he half-jokingly refused to call the horses "horses." They were always "the equine athletes."

** A-Column: n. The part of the frame of the car that is the front corner between the windshield and the forward part of the driver- and passenger-door windows. The B column is between the front and back windows, and if you don't have a truck you probably have a C column too, where the back window meets the frame.

The Essay (take one)

Hm? Oh no, I'm not posting my essay here. Not yet, anyhow. I've already told you, it'll be put up in this space after I get my acceptance from [name of world-class program here]. Heck, CASPA just opened up a week ago. No, this post is to laugh at myself and how verbose I am. And simultaneously demonstrate.

The instructions at the mack-daddy app site say this:

USING YOUR OWN WORDS, in the space provided (2970 character count, this is about 495 words), write a brief statement expressing your motivation or desire to become a physician assistant. You are encouraged to save your work often in the event that your are timed out of the system.

Okay, well, first off, the all-caps reminding people not to plagiarize doesn't inspire a lot of awe in me, when it comes to who my competitors are going to be. I mean, there's already an anecdotal undercurrent of complaining out on SDN and other sites, because many of today's PA school grads are fresh-faced young kids with no experience to speak of, rather than the hardened vets that began the profession. (Not that I've seen anything like the complaints about Australian 6th-years who can't find the prostate on a diagram, but these things are relative.) If they're at all likely to get all Trace Viswanathan on top of that, then heck, I'm a friggin' paragon of virtue over here! Witness over a year's worth of my unique narrative voice, n' stuff.

Yeah, that's right. The blog might actually be helpful to the app process. Conceivably. Maybe. Crazy like a fox, yo.

Secondly, if you needed any further evidence that this is the 21st century, dig that "2970 characters" thing. I absolutely adore the fact that nobody decided to just bump it to 3000 and call it good. Long about interview season, I imagine many of us will start thinking of that 2970 as some Lost-style clue about what dark forces actually underlie the application process.

Third, a typo? On the instructions for the application? "in the event that your are timed out of the system," huh. Okey-fine, but I get a typo in return, and you can't ding me for it.

Lastly, CASPA earns my respect (and a sweet, chaste kiss on its sharply-designed but user-friendly little cheek) for that reminder to save often. Although, seriously. Everybody knows that if you're actually composing your 400-odd words right there on the spot, rather than just copy-n-pasting it into the text box, then you're either a total schmoe-donkey or you're Chuck Norris.

Anyway, here's the great thing about my first draft: 806 words (non-Asian words, thank you Microsoft Word for that). 3774 characters with no spaces.

And the relevant number? With spaces and punctuation, 4578.

Sigh...

(special thanks to my housemate the Drummer, for the term "schmoe-donkey.")

Like, totally awesome

You know what's fun? Roller skating.

You know what's more fun than merely roller skating? Roller skating after midnight, in the wood-floored auditorium normally used for orchestra concerts (and fashion shows, since I go the school I go to, but still; it's at school, see). And to ramp up the fun to stupid levels, what you do is you rent 300 pairs of skates, you hang a disco ball in the rafters, and you have 80s music blaring.

Then, since I go to the school I go to, what happens is the kids get all dressed up like crazy rolling ravers. Sugary snacks were provided, so at any given time about a quarter of the people on the floor were sporting pacifier-style suckers with big red plastic lips on the outside. We had ice princess skirts, we had roller derby people of many genders, we had one dude dressed like a mountain goat, we had a woman who wore bloomers and a camisole with the face and boobs of an inflatable doll pasted on the appropriate places of the outfit. And we had me, looking completely normal but being one of the few if not the only one who ever went roller skating like that, as a suburban youth, when the music was current.

What's different now, as opposed to when I was 14? Well, for one, I watched the Suns beat the crap out of the Lakers at the campus pub before I went over, and had a nice four-beer buzz on, so I was more fluid and relaxed -- and that turns out to be quite handy when you're negotiating a crowd of skaters that's 30% better than you, 40% as good as you, and 30% much, much worse. Like the man said: you fall three times, you get up four. That was me. But three falls in three hours ain't bad.

Other than that, it was exactly the same as 7th grade: say hi to some friends, but generally keep moving. Get the hell off the floor to show the DJ my disdain for Meat Loaf, and get out there for the Duran Duran and the Van Halen. Totally not get any much attention from the ladies. (Which of course is more than okay these days.)

The college's irony switch was on the fritz that night, so I couldn't tell who was making fun of skating and who was just skating. Several people might have had actual, non-snarky fun. Someone I know was shouting at a friend at intervals, as he came around the oval each time:

"Admit that you're skating!"

Exactly.

Time keeps on slippin', slippin'...

Yeah, no post for a while. Oops. TeslaGrl was here on a visit (aww, the last one of the year! Last meal at the diner; last Dramamine dose on the plane!), plus things are speeding up. I'm done with my A&P class -- well, will be, after Friday's final. And catching up on back homework.

Then I'm done with the whole year as of the end of this new month. Sheeeez.

Today I got a list of questions to answer, for my final advising interview. Questions like, "why do you want to be a PA?" and "why this, as opposed to other health professions?"

Aha. Sweetness. Because this is where I start to feel like a pretty good candidate: you see, I know the answers to these questions.