Done So Far...

Monday: finished the last test for this term in my 'General Med' class; this means I'm 1/3 of the way through the course (it lasts my whole classroom year). This happens to have been a test on the endocrine system.


[ shamelessly hotlinked image of adrenal glands ]

Tuesday: took a test in Statistics.


[ shamelessly hotlinked image of a scatter-plot graph ]

Given my thoroughly awesome Stats class in post-bac, I was not surprised to do well on this one. We actually got the tests back today, the day following the exam. Shocking!

Today, we took one on our Clinical Lab class. Various questions about blood-bank procedures, certain potential blood test results and what they mean, and poop. More than a couple questions on poop.


[ shamelessly hotlinked image of a Hemocult card ]

Currently, I'm studying up for tomorrow's final final, the test on EKG.


[ shamelessly hotlinked image of an EKG printout ]

Oh my god, I'm almost through this crazy-ass term!

Next up: a couple days of this...

[ shamelessly hotlinked image of the Seattle skyline ]

...and, after we return from the break, we start getting into this...

[ shamelessly hotlinked image of a duder in a white coat doing a physical exam ]

The hatches, they must be battened

Finals Week is coming. Prepare for stressy weirdness.

It was a good term though; I'll do a recap when I have a minute to breathe.

I haz playsholdr text

Check this out: http://www.lipsum.com/

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My Web design (and probably a good chunk of my academic writing, and now this blog) will never be quite the same again!

Weird feeling

I'm probably nuts, but to me, that the voice in the new Chevron commercials, the one talking about the power of geothermal energy and how cool it is that an oil company can be "part of the solution," sounds a lot like the voice of REM frontman Michael Stipe.

I can't find anything on the Web about it, and that makes me feel like the person in the first 15 minutes of an old monster movie. There's info about the campaign, PR releases and whatnot, but nothing mentioning who the spokesman is.

It's probably not Stipe -- in the normal course, they only mention the voice actor if it's somebody really famous... and if it's somebody famous, they mention it. But wow, just listen to 'Belong,' and try not to hear the same voice on the commercial.

Which all begs a few questions, some of which contradict one another: one, how good must this geothermal program be, to get Stipe on board? Two, how Gen-X must the advertising people be, to know that some of us would respond to a voice that sounds like Stipe's? Three, how far have Stipe's prospects fallen, if it turns out he's signed up to shill for an oil company? Four, I wonder if a singer can sue if a commercial entity intentionally imitates his speaking voice?

EDIT to add: I like what Tim is sayin' in the comments, about it being Campbell Scott. And lo and behold, the info becomes available when I search using Scott's name.

Trivia Payoff

I read a really cool blog in which a practicing MD reviews episodes of House and evaluates not only the soap opera aspects but also the medicine, giving letter-grade scores in several categories. It's a ton of fun; Scott (the blogger) and I are both totally over the "no way would these people be doing all these tests themselves" stage, so that pleases me. And since he actually knows what he's talking about, where I tend to have a vague sense of an intuition, I can actually learn something every now and then. Definitely worth a look.

But since baseball was on this week, and there was no new House, Scott is doing the second-annual "guess the disease" game. Commenters to the blog are asked to provide a list of ten things that House and his team will either consider and reject, test for, or eventually wind up diagnosing a patient with. There's a scale of points awarded for canny predictions, depending on which of those categories the malady winds up in. Presumably, somehow someone will be keeping score.

For posterity, and because I like big words, here's my list of conditions I think the writers of House will bring out this season:

1. Blood Transfusion Reaction

2. Arrythmia brought on by energy drink/sports drink

3. Neurogenic Vertigo

4. SLE (Lupus)

5. Teratoma

6. Periodic Paralysis/ “Channelopathy”

7. Polyarteritis Nodosa

8. Polymyalgia Rheumatica

9. Hemolytic Disease of the Newborn

10. Chronic Beryllium Disease

Yes, I had to look a couple of them up. Several came to me from various case studies and other edumacational activities. One or two I found when I searched for obscure, weird stuff.

Medicine is a great field if you like random bits of trivia. For example, I've been hearing all about Virchow's Triad, and I just happened to come across a story about this Virchow character today. He seems to have been a funny guy on top of being a genius; as a liberal member of Germany's Reichstag in the 1880's, he so annoyed Otto Von Bismarck that Bismarck challenged him to a duel once. According to author Sherwin Newland, Virchow subverted the duel entirely by choosing as the weapon... wait for it... scalpels.

Today's theme would be smart-arse doctors, then.

Why I Love Mashups

What happens when a pair of crazy geniuses remix the entirety of Sgt. Pepper's with bits of other Beatles songs, plus Stones, Gary Glitter, Bowie, the Selecter, and god knows what else?

Brilliance, that's what. ccc and Ill Chemist have done this, for some reason. It's called Cracked Pepper. And it's very very cool. I love living in the 21st century.

I'm linking "Hawaii 64," a mix of 'When I'm 64' with Brian Wilson's 'Blue Hawaii' and the Beach Boys' 'Cool, Cool Water,' so Jon hears some of this beautiful insanity.

The complete ingredients list is here, and if you want to listen to more, this would be the link for that.

My favorite track so far? Probably "Struttin' Rita," which combines only three ingredients and freshens them up to the point where things that were always there become new in a whole new way, if you dig.

In a parallel universe, I'm so totally a DJ.

EDIT: Yeah, the links no longer work. Maybe it's a Brigadoon thing, and they only work sometimes.

Current favorite classmate catch-phrase

Someone from my class is fond of saying,

"I know, right?"

I don't know why, exactly, but with the right timing, this just slays me. It's funny, without calling undue attention. It skates over the surface without impeding the rhythm of the humor. It's verbiage that draws the others into the joke, while at the same time reflecting what was just said in a distorted mirror. But aside from MacLuhan-style comedy theory, it's just funny.

In other news, %$#@! the Arizona Diamondbacks.

...not that my fantasies have anything to do with football...

This is fun: I'm kicking ass in my fantasy football league this year.

Well, I'm not winning or anything, but this turns out to be the year my faith in Randy Moss pays off. The points are racking up, I'm presently 4th of 14, and I'm on the way to the top.

In school news, I'm continuing to pass my tests. Later this week, I'll suit up in the little white coat and start talking to real patients for practice, and talking to practice patients for real. We're already getting little clinical-scenario questions that, essentially, end with Dennis Hopper taunting, "...what would you do?"

I've killed only a couple of hypothetical patients. So far.

Today's excuse for not blogging more: pancakes!

Yeah, I'm fine. Sure, school is busy, but I've survived our first couple of "weeks in which you will have several tests, in various classes." I'm falling into something like a groove.

And within a short drive, there are a few places that have really good pancakes. This, above and beyond the most excellent little greasy-spoon diner a couple of blocks away. So really, it's a matter of being busy with school, then busy staying away from school.

I'll try to add to the body of work this week, though. We started our EKG class, I'm already doing well on my research project, and I have a few early responses to "save the date" emails I sent to post-bacc classmates -- which begins to give a window into their med-school experiences so far.

Finally, I'm coming to Minneapolis next weekend, for a whirlwind 36-hour visit.

Do you know Juno?

It's time once again for me to fluff the cushions on which I sit, here in the front section of the Juno bandwagon. (It's not that I'm special, it's that I got on early.)

With the regularity of tornado-siren tests, I've been nattering from time to time about my friend's movie -- about how awesome it is, about how nice it is that someone talented and deserving gets some of that sweet Hollywood money, and about how holy crap it's really being made. And while it was fun, in a vaguely "I told you so" hipsterish way, to talk about this little screenplay written by a member of my Minneapolis drinkin' buddy assemblage, I'm afraid that has to end.

Because this action has gone mainstream, people. Feast your eyeballs on some links as fresh as anything Jimmy Dean has to offer:

The official Fox Searchlight JUNO page

Roger Ebert (yes, THAT Roger Ebert) from Telluride, saying wonderful things (which incidentally jibe very well with my thoughts, and how nice it is to say that).

Juno's Rotten Tomatoes page (100% with 5 reviews, 91 days before the opening).

...and that's that. There's nothing more for me to say, particularly because Fox has a whole publicity machine that reaches, I kid you not, easily twice as many people as read this blog. She belongs to the ages now.

So I'll pretty much just talk about myself all the time, now. You poor suckers.

Thanks to Trash, plus Latest Goofy Blog Meme

Trash was kind enough to point out that grad school grades don't matter. And she's even more right than she knows, since for all intents and purposes, med school is a lot like culinary school. When I'm done, I study for (and take, and pass) a certification exam, and then I'm on a level field with everyone else. Nobody cares what my grades were -- nobody even cares about my GPA, which puts me in even better shape than Trash herself -- they just care how well I can cook.

And apropos of nothing except me being too tired even to waste time properly, here's the latest fun thing I found on the list of blogs I check: courtesy of Shamus from 20-sided (who got it from someone who likely got it from someone, and so on...)

Enter "[your name] needs" into Google, and see what it is you supposedly need. So simple, it's elegant. I see it out there (now that I look) as a list of 10 short bullets, but I'm going to stay in character and make it five things that natter on for longer.

For those of you who were wondering, here's what it is I* seem to be very much in need of:

1. I need aid in regaining my title, lands, and children, stolen from me by my treacherous brother.

2. I need to be seen less on MySpace and more in person, preferably in a bar.

3. I need to jump across the electrical field, and climb up the ladder.

4. As much as we don't want anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan, I need to do my duty.

5. I need to grow up.




* As always, I'm hiding my secret identity, if only because my real name will be linked to my school, my hospital, my practice, etc.

the Patron Saint of my Grade Sheet

I am no champion of mediocrity. As a passionate fan of both the Faust mythos and the Kit Marlowe conspiracy theory, I think there's absolute value in the striving, the tireless windmill-tilting, the reach exceeding the grasp. I try, in as many little ways as possible, to make a habit of excellence.

And yet, if I take pride in anything as I go about this nutty adventure among the academic elite, it's this: That unlike some of my habitually-achieving peers, I have had experience falling short of the loftier kind of grade-related goals. If you have for some weird reason followed this story since I went out east and nervously took up the reins of a university education for the second time, you know I have followed Mark Twain's philosophy, and effectively separated my academic achievement from my learning. More than that, I've detached it from my self-esteem.

It turns out that's really helpful.

The program I'm in requires a minimum score. I need to hit this certain number for each class, in order to pass it. On a more micro level, each component test within each class also has to meet this threshold; getting a 96 on one thing doesn't make it okay to get a 64 on another one, for instance. And I've hit exactly that number twice now; once on the final grade for a course that's finished, and once on a test for a class I'm in now.

I am conflicted about this.

I'm not berating myself, and I refuse to. Shame is a particularly bad motivator for me. For the most part, I'm fine with what I've got here; it means I studied just the perfect amount. And since I dislike studying, that's good. But I really like understanding, is the thing.

And I know that if I really caught on to some of this stuff, I'd be able to show how well and how completely I get it. That's my problem; I take a while to taste every little nugget of info with my whole brain. The end result is good -- the stuff I know, I really know. But until then, this guy will have to be my spirit guide in the world of schoolwork:



And I'll just have to repeat the magic words: "...it's good enough for me."

Less rock, more erythematous, poorly-demarcated lesions

Right now, I'm studying and I'm listening to music. I'm nominating Ryan Adams as my personal soundtrack of the moment...

Everybody's cool, playing rock n' roll
Everybody's cool, playing rock n' roll

I don't feel cool, feel cool at all
I don't feel cool, feel cool at all

It was really fun when I was working the ER Tech job, thinking about how cool the future would be. All I needed to do was to learn... kind of everything... and then I'd be even more at home there, doing even more helpful and cool stuff.

And that's still true. It's only that, wow, doing the schoolwork is so very unlike the experience of doing the work work. I have no doubt it's worth it, or that I can make it through. It's just not fun in the same way. Basically, I'm bad at delayed gratification.

Le sigh...

I love my car, but this is silly. I'm engaged and live with my fiancee now, so Teslagrl's car is an option most of the time. And I commute by train. I literally have started my car twice in the last week, to move it off the "street cleaning today" side of the street... and that's just because it was street-cleaning week.

One sure way to know I don't really need it is that since it went all freaky and broken and refuses to obey simple instructions, I've been able to adjust quite happily to not using it.

So... wanna buy a car? (This used to be a Craigslist link, but the car sold and the listing expired.)

I have some pretty significant ennui about ditching the VW. It's been fussy and expensive, but it was my first "grown up" car. It was my first non-junker car since the divorce, mid-1990s, and the new car we'd bought way back then was a damn Geo Metro, for cryin' out loud. My Passat has twice as many cylinders. It's honestly true to say that

Geo Metro : VW Passat :: VW Passat : Jaguar XJ12

This is the car that gave me independence, symbolically. It gave me power (of the "horse-" variety) I had never had before. It gave me a whole list of things I didn't know I really liked in a car, and won't do without in the future, if I can help it. It took me out east, to school, and helped me start this new chapter of my life. It was the car I always drove, for as long as my future wife has known me. After a string of crappy 'college cars,' this was the one that made me feel legitimate showing up to a business function (or a first date), and it was the most fun to drive. It's just that gradually, it turned into a college car, albeit a nice one.

So that's how I'm billing it on Craigslist.

And whatever I get next, about two years from now, that sucker will have a really $!#@ good warranty.

At least it's organized chaos

Here's what I have going on in the Fall term:

General Medicine & Infectious Disease
-- a huge, year-long course that covers... kind of everything. Right now it's Neurology... plus infectious disease. Ask me about the many different classes of antibiotics! (On second thought, don't. Not yet.)

Pharmacology
-- merely a two-quarter-long course. One more arena in which I can demonstrate a lack of excellence in memorizing enormous quantities of data. (Although, having taken Microbiology, Biochemistry, Cell Bio, and what turns out to have been a very decent Physiology course already, this isn't that bad. Not yet.)

Interviewing and Documentation
-- where we learn to do stuff like write up a clinic note (like the ones I typed as a transcriptionist) and do an interview (like the hundreds I witnessed in the ER). I like this class.

Psychosocial Aspects of Care
-- where we, essentially, learn not to be a-holes whilst speaking with patients and administering care. Fun class.

Research and Statistics
-- where we remember that being in a Masters program entails a special kind of pain. I need to decide whether to a) jump onboard a faculty member's research, b) convince a faculty member to sponsor (read: be the first author of) research I come up with myself, or c) just do a series of smaller papers on anything I want. I am actually struggling with this, because I have areas I'd like to do publishable research in, and my school has really good resources. Plus I wrote a lot of papers in undergrad.

Clinical Laboratory
-- which does not take place in a lab, but a classroom. This one is all about all the tests we might order, and how they work. So far it's been "fun stuff you kind find out from a cup of urine."

Complementary and Alternative Medicine
-- where we, essentially, learn not to be so obnoxiously patriarchal and stick-up-the-bum about the alleged superiority of Western scientific medicine. A nice touchstone and reality check.

Intro to EKG
-- given the size of this list, and the fact that Winter term starts in November(!) with a whole new slate of punishments, I figure I can be really truly good at one course per term. I've decided this one will be my good course for Fall. EKGs rock.

Am I insane? Not yet, but ask me again in a few weeks.

How do I keep it all together? How do I keep from going completely sideways?

Oh, I have my ways.