Storm

Last night weatherbug had an alert about a severe thunderstorm until 9pm. Strangest storm you'd ever see, on the radar it was just a narrow strip of red surrounded by a little green stretching north to south and moving to the east. When I heard the wind announce it's arrival, I looked out the window and watched the wind grow stronger. I went to the back door and couldn't see well out the window, apparently all of the I-65 lights had gone out along with all of the buildings across the interstate, including UofL, Harley Davidson, Manual, etc. All I saw was some white flashing thing in the distance. The wind was nuts, then all of a sudden an even stronger gust came and it was like I saw all of the trees in the backyard lean themselves to the ground, then I saw a flash of light as a tree landed in the back of our yard. At this point, I could've swore I was going to see a tornado emerge from the direction of the wind, so I went to wake up Jeff. There must of been a lot of noise all at once but I was a little preoccupied with freaking out. What made it a freak storm is that we went outside less than 5 minutes later and it was hardly raining and the wind had died down back to how it had been before the weather came.


Our neighbors had an even bigger tree fall, they lost half of a garage, a boat, and an entire shed. The tree landed on half of our cars. Denise's old cavalier is crushed, my back window got smashed (funny how I've gotten two windows replaced in a month), and the tree is still resting on the hood of Jeff's for-sale uninsured Focus. It's very disappointing for him.

past due IM experience summary

long title: but before I find it months behind me I'm going to summarize some of the more prevalent things I learned the seven days I shadowed Dr. H at University. Her specialty was Internal Medicine (IM).

1. Women are better doctors than men. Dr. H was a very compassionate and sympathetic doctor. It's all about the bedside manner and daily attitude. Meeting someone like her reinforces my intentions for going into IM. I have to say it is still probably my favorite, making it my favorite specialty for 7 months now. I think its a record.

2. I'm just going to have to get used to meeting pre-meds, med students, and doctors who are there for the buck. Every time I have shadowed, I almost always spend most of my conversation time talking to the lower level residents or the medical students (simply, the people who are at least a little closer to my level). I talked to an intern at University named Zach, and he was a really nice guy, but he complained about the IM busy work a lot always seemed ready to leave the hospital. He wants to work in private practice with Anesthesiology.

3. It seems likely that it's true that there is an influx of suicide attempts around the holidays , I only saw a couple of people who came in for it though. Both were just people who had taken drug overdoses. The residents were joking about how if there going to do it they gotta do it the right way (slit their throat artery). Sounds insensitive but I mean they were kidding of course, even if it's true.

4. Pretty much the only people who go to University are patients with no insurance. They all still get treated, though there are limits to what can be done... In the seven days I was there, one of Dr. H's patients was put into Hospice and passed away a couple days later, and I stood there and watched her tell a man he had a 15% chance of being alive in 3 months. Yes, it's all very dramatic, and I might not be putting enough sympathy into telling the story of it. But the point I was working on was that the lady who died in Hospice was in her 40s and had sudden liver problems over the few weeks before she died. A liver transplant costs $300,000, but other than for not having insurance, she would not have been a candidate for 6 months, anyway... The man was also dieing of liver problems, but they were related to alcoholism.

5. Which brings me to my next point. Sure, you hear of alcoholism, but of course nobody seems to take anything seriously until they see it. I wish there was a way I could exemplify how serious it is to those who need to hear it. The man I mentioned was in his 40s and was in extreme denial all of the days I saw him, saying things like "15%, I can make that, then 6 months without alcohol? I can do that, too." He seemed like a good, just lonely, guy. But the thing is, even if he lived 3 months, he still couldn't have long to live. Sad times, which brings me to another point.

6. There are a lot of lonely patients in University hospital. Not to mention young, all of them were under 60, many in their 40s. So few of the patients I saw had guests coming in to see them. At least a few of the people I saw there were homeless, and they also seemed to be enjoying there stay, even if they were sick. The people who had the most companion support were those who had came in on overdose. Isn't that something, yeah? Relationships are important in health though, everyone can understand that connection.

7. Jeez HIV is sad. That doesn't need any explanation. My favorite patient was the youngest (27) and one of the sickest. He also probably had some of the best companionship in the hospital.

Well, I think that was a lot of it. I guess I remember most of what I had wanted say after all. I'd end on a more lighthearted note but I'm not sure what to say to do that.......lol

And Jenn, your poll's options are too extreme! Plus, I need to see more photos =)

Soul Calibur with Darth Vader and Yoda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeV30-ri-yY

Jeff wants me to show this to you Jenn, you can just skip to 3:30 to get to the part he wants you to see.

I still plan on writing about some stuff but I'll get to it later

my neurology shadowing

So now I've got a story to tell, something unfit to go in the school post.

I drove to Lexington Thursday night to go to UK with JEb to work on Friday. She's been doing Neurology Pharm service for a few weeks and she was able to set me up because the attending was younger and probably more approachable. She almost recommended me not coming because the patient load was very low; her attending that she did rounds with only had 3 patients(though 3 or 4 consults in addition to that). But of course for me, something is better than nothing, plus JEb seems to like talking about what she does at work so I knew she liked the company.

So, Neurology works mostly with stroke patients and seizure patients. Two of the three the attending was covering were stroke patients and the other was still unknown. After the chart briefing (or whatever you would call it), the rounds started. I made it to the second patient, which was the one with an unknown condition. I won't talk about it a lot but it was a younger woman who was having tremors and 'opsculopsy?' or something that made her eyes jerk around too. This is where my rounding ended.

I'm pretty sure I know what the stimulus was, the nurse came in and took tape off her arm where an IV had been and the patient, unaware of the nurse's quick action, annoyingly grunted. I may have a vivid imagination, because if I'm not careful, I find myself unintentionally imagining someone's expressed pain. I was fine, and we left the room ready to move on to the next patient, then when I was out in the hallway I felt it coming. My vision started blurring, I was thinking oh Crap... and tried to breathe deeper. When I was failing to come up with a way to cease the problem and my ears had started ringing, I went ahead and said something to JEb to the side that I needed to sit down. She took me into a little nurse station off the hallway and sat me down, and I told her my vision was going out. She was already startled because I had started sweating and going pale. She gave me a Sprite, a straw and started trying to put graham crackers in my mouth.

The black out probably took a couple minutes to happen. Apparently, I blacked out right after I took the first bite of cracker. What I remember is having a fast-paced, flashing lights type of dream. I think I was actually dreaming about something specific too but I can't remember what it was, though I tried to remember when I woke up. Over on JEb's side of the situation, she apparently yelled for help when I blacked out, and the first resident who came in the room along with JEb saw me flinch my arms out. So I woke up from my dream and confusedly saw white coats standing all around me. I realized everyone from the rounds was focused on me. How embarrassing. They were discussing what they thought happened to me, apparently because the resident and JEb seemed to think I had seized. JEb seemed to think it could've been a seizure just because J-Bergomatica had had seizures in the past. The attending suggested it was just syncope. The seizure-suggesting resident seemed to excitedly ask me, "Do you want us to check you out? We should get an EEG.(!)" JEb and him were asking plenty of questions, and I was thinking of answers but couldn't make my words come out just yet.

I was pretty ready to shake out of it, and made sure to mention for a second time that I just have problems with vasovagal... (Which actually now that I look up 'syncope' and 'vasovagal' I just feel more like a wimp cause crap, there just technical terms for fainting! dangit.) But I did recover, and once my vision was mostly back, a nurse came to take my blood pressure and everyone oohed and aahed over a bp of 82/42 or something like that. I realized around then my heart was pounding, which of course would go along with that... I got up and made sure to say that I came to shadow, not to become a patient, so I got up and tried to walk strongly. JEb kept insisting she was sorry she hadn't fed me better that morning, because I was probably 'hypoglycemic' or whatever. The Sprite did help a lot, though.

I followed the doctors to the next patient, and while we waited at a nurse station, JEb asked me one more time if I wanted to sit down in a wheel chair. I went ahead and sat down, really with just the intention of sitting for a moment. To my dismay, the resident still wanted to take an EEG, so they took me away from my shadowing for that day. The EEG was interesting, I got a nap out of it, and after it was over I discovered that they had totally killed my hair for the rest of the day with this bees wax like material that held the detectors on. I would've taken a picture but I thought I might as well relax and pretend like I was taking this seriously. I also was confirmed that I had not, or at least was not, seizing. I was pretty tired the rest of the day, and I just sat around with JEb in her office again while she confirmed Pharm orders. I'm hoping thats not the last I see of those doctors, it would really suck to be remembered that way, but I don't know if its likely I'll see them again.

So that story could have been made short and sweet, but sometimes details make things a little more interesting, I think. Gosh, how many characters was that? That could've probably passed for a damn memoir in high school.

Anyways, I'm shadowing at University hospital now with a really great Internist. I suppose I'll save all my stories about that for my next blog. It looks like I'll have 7 days worth, so perhaps I will have lots of short and sweet stories for that one. I'll tell you now that I'm looking away whenever I see a nurse messing with an IV. Screw letting that happen again.

semester over

So I'm looking at my blog wondering if I've had any comments which of course I don't because everyone forgets about me and I noticed how I made all of those last posts during finals week when I had plenty of important things to do. It's just funny reflecting on how horribly I procrastinated this semester. I hope it doesn't happen again but I will once again be very busy next semester, so its to be seen.

The horrible thing about procrastinating is that I didn't even get negative feedback for doing it. I studied for Genetics maybe 8 hrs the entire semester and I got the (by far the) top score in the class, not to mention my first real 100% ever. I think I'm pretty good at Bio, after the MCAT and the past couple semesters. The curve for P.chem was huge, so that A was no problem. I probably worked the hardest in Calc III, that A was earned. My Inorganic final was pretty easy, so that A ended up being cake... that professor totally decided to loosen up at the end of the semester or something. Oh, then that other 'class' took the least effort at all, I worked on a presentation, a paper, and some homework for maybe 10 hrs the whole semester, and learned how to canoe and the history of beargrass creek in the meantime. That was just a fun A!

But yeah, this is just me announcing I still have a perfect GPA. Only one semester to go before I get the GPA the med schools will see, how exciting!

something kind of interesting

It's not easy making blog entries like J's and D's, mostly because I don't have a lot to say about many things and even if I do my thoughts are always all over the place. I've always been a very average writer, and I mean I am naturally average because I can try for hours to make a paper decent but even when I read one of my own papers I get bored. That is when I'm trying to write something interesting... Anyways, I'll move on to my interesting topic, haha.

So some time back me and my roommates were talking about how retirees/senior citizens/whatever they are can take college classes at no cost. Of course that sounds good to anybody, doesn't it? To take a college class, just for fun. So this got me thinking, what would I take if I was only taking a class for the experience, the fun of it? No caring about how I actually do in the class, just for the sake of enjoying learning something, with no pressure. These are what I came up with:

1. Photography: this one is more obvious, who doesn't have fun thinking up a theme, thinking up a place to venture to fulfill that idea, and waiting to see how the photos come out? Plus working in a dark room was always exciting.

2. 3-D studio: I've never cared for drawing much because I don't have enough of an eye for detail, but I've always liked sculpting little things. I made a mouse out of a candle for Christine once, every time I play with putty I make dramatic head sculptures, and I made a little elf out of clay that was in my senior photography art fair exhibit. It's fun.

3. Literature: this is the one that I really thought "wow," when I realized it was true. Sure, I'm probably no good at critiquing writing or determining the deep meanings behind the best literature out there but one thing I know is that there has never been a book I didn't enjoy. I like the idea of having a novel to read for my homework. I remember in high school, everyone would complain about the English teachers having us read the classics like Of Mice and Men, The Red Badge of Courage, The Scarlet Letter. I always enjoyed them. I find myself easily influenced by the books I read: when I read Harry Potter I often found myself talking in third person in my head(pretty dang weird, huh), in a style similar to the way Rowling writes. Another example is that when I read and finished Jane Eyre, I felt like I would never be the same person again, and I very seriously felt that way, and still feel pretty influenced by the values set forth in that book.

4. Political Science: OK, so I really would just take this class mostly because I am curious about what exactly Poli Sci is, and since pre-law and pre-med seem almost opposite, I wonder if I would even be remotely compatible with it. Actually, just earlier today when I was preparing for my final review SI session, there was a tutor working with a student behind me and they were either talking business or poli sci but whatever it was it sounded really boring. So I don't know, I've heard that law was pretty boring from Mo once, and I've kind of taken his word for it but I really don't have any idea.

So yeah, that's my list. I felt really baffled that those ended up being the classes I came up with. It made me wonder: what if I hadn't decided my major because I called up J and said, What major should I pick to be pre-med? and she said Do Chemistry, Biology is for wimps. ? But who knows, maybe if I hadn't taken any Chemistry or Biology in college I would've said I would've liked to have taken those. Maybe. Oh well, at least I'm doing something I'm good at [and sure, I enjoy it plenty].

Sheesh, I still managed to make that blog about school. sigh. Trust me, I am going to be thinking up a good blog, promise!

yay!

So there are times when I have things to say about some specific topic thats relevant to an event, social issue, new product, music, whatever it may be. But until I am thinking about something deeply and decide to write a blog about it I will write about what I am most psyched about at the moment- SCHOOL! w00t!



Ahhh I am good at Chemistry. =D This last test was a lot like Organic though so I kizilled it! 94! 55 average and thats with only 9 people taking the test...! happy days, especially since based off the answer key he gave us right after I was expecting an 85, horray for partial credit hoorah hoorah =D So To get my 94 I actually still did most of the reading at the last minute(over Sat/Sun), but to make sure the reading was at least effective I took notes as I read. To assure a high grade, I made sure to do all the work I needed to and even made sure to get the homework problems done even if I didn't actually write them down once I was running out of time- thank god for solutions manuals! So to get all that done though, I went to bed at 1:45AM and woke up at 3:45AM, then finished just in time to get ready for the last Calc lecture this morning at 9:3oPM. Just now I actually stumbled to the computer cause my head's been starting to spin a bit from fatigue. How will I ever be able to handle 24 hour shifts? psh, I guess I can stay consistent with the caffeine pills I usually take...

I just found out I got an A in p. chem too!! Had to get my second 100% in college to get that too. oh golly, 1 out of those three plausible Bs down, two to go. The calc and inorganic finals should be great to study for too...=D

I had my first final review SI session today which went well, ended up making 100 copies of 3 different handouts, and I think I gave out just over 50 of them today, I expect to give the rest out on Wednesday for the 'official' review session. I feel pretty good about those helping the Bio 240 kids out. I've got a week from today until my two finals, so I'm relaxing today and tomorrow. A random note regarding SI, I think it would be great to teach Chem 201 sometime just so I can say:

All around the world today,
a kilo is a measure
[whoever got the kilo's got the candy man...]
A kilo is a thousand grams
Thats easy to remember

giggles.