Huntington Beach, CA - Academic Surgical Congress

Yet another tale of my travels.  The late morning of January 31, I got on a flight that went to Huntington Beach, with a layover in Houston.  Early on the afternoon of February 1, I caught another flight back to Louisville, with a layover in Houston.  I was in Cali for 22 hours, and on planes and layovers for 14.5 hours, during my block week, for a 5 minute quick shot at a breast cancer conference!  Ho Ho Ho. lol  $700 later... not really, I get reimbursed (thank the lord).

It was my second trip to present the research I did with Dr Chagpar over last summer (the whole 8 weeks of it).  It's retrospective clinical research that mostly involved reading old reports, compiling a database of variables of interest, and running stats that I don't completely understand.  I learned a lot, it was legitimately interesting, and I had a good time with the people I worked with.  Dr Chagpar is an amazing mentor, and I owe her tons for her extreme generosity in helping her students.  She set the goal higher than me or my classmate Cliff ever would have, and I submitted 4 abstracts, 3 of which were accepted.  We plan on doing another that's due on March 1.

My first trip was a simple poster presentation at ASCO breast in D.C. back in October.  This was the trip we learned that going to doctors conventions costs a fortune.  Regardless, we had a good time.  I got to go to the memorials and white house for the first time (even if it was dark), we went to a trendy sushi place on GW's campus, and we went into a Peeps shop (haha).

 So huntington beach was my second conference, and I got upgraded to a mini presentation.  I apparently talked way too fast though (darn it), and finished in like 3 min.  So so much for going to cali for a 3 minute presentation.  I didn't get any questions, I guess because people assumed I had nerves, unfortunately.  I took this picture briefly after we arrived at the convention center.  I found the conference room Chagpar was in, and looked out the window next to it to see the pacific just at sunset.  This was also when I sadly realized I had brought my nice camera but had left the SD card at home.

 These doctor conventions hotels are ridiculous.  Very fancy.  This is just a hallway for goodness sake.  It was a Hyatt.

 We learned from D.C. in that we did not want to stay at the convention hotel.  We got reservations for another Hyatt 10 minutes away, that was like a younger hipper version of the fancy hyatt.  Like the boots?  I love those boots.

 The only chance we got to check out the city was for dinner after we met with Chagpar for like 5 hours in her hotel room.  It was 1AM in Louisville already and we ate at 10PM Cali time.  Apparently everything closes there early, even in the social areas.  I've always wondered if they go to bed earlier in Cali since prime time there is like 5 PM.  We were in the mood for pizza, and one of the only places open was a hole in the wall pizza place called Perry's, on the pier.  Pizza was fine, and we tried a beer off the tap that isn't served at home.  Called Fire something?  darn I already forgot.  It was good.  There was also a local broadcast of the clippers on the tv.  Don't see that very often!  The place looked like somewhere punk kids and hispanics liked to hang out.  my kinda place.

 The only other thing we got to do other than that was check out the beach.  These fire pits lined the whole thing outside of the fancy Hyatt.  How awesome does that sound?  Fire on the beach at night.  Awh.

 This was the first time I ever touched the Pacific.  It was cold.  :)

 Here is me, Chagpar, and Cliff after our presentations.  We look like serious nerds.  Love her though.  And Cliff is OK. lol

Well, my last trip was to Chattanooga the day after Valentines day.  I planned on driving in and out on the same day, but my presentation was near noon and I needed to meet Chagpar first so I drove in the night before and stayed in a super ghetto hotel not far from the convention center.  It smelled like one of the ghetto apartment complexes I used to deliver newspapers to.  The guy behind the counter might have been a vampire.  My room may have had double sided mirrors.  The room looked very appropriate for teenagers who needed to throw a drinking party/orgy.  I took a shower anyway (that apparently had a water heater with multiple outlets).  It was good enough, it had free internet.  And yes, I made it through the night (Dad).

Chagpar gave me incredible advice for my presentation, which this time around was even longer at 10 minutes plus 10 minutes of question time.  We rehearsed very specifically how I would present, she told me ever possible question I could receive and what the answer was, and we focused very intently on my language speed.  The presentation went very well.  There I was, standing on a podium in front of an large audience of hoity toity older male doctors dressed in their suits.  Two facilitators sat nearby, and my presentation was projected onto two large screens on either side of me.  I went through the presentation, looking out at Chagpar for cues, and talked painfully slow, like she had asked verbatim.  I smiled, had intonation, and looked great in my black striped NY and co suit.  I sat in the question-receiving chair next to the facilitators and waited my questions.  I got three from my reviewer who saw my manuscript beforehand, one from one of the facilitators, and one from an old doc in the audience.  NAILED IT.  Chagpar said she was super proud and important surgeons that I will get to know will remember me from that presentation.

Then she said that some of the questions brought up very good ideas for another abstract topic.  We'll be doing that one for the American college of surgeons in San Francisco next October.  Abstract due march 1.

Update (10:03PM): I just peaked at my email and I got an email forwarded from Chagpar:

"I am pleased to inform you that your work has been accepted for publication in The American Surgeon."

 "WOO HOO!!," I'll quote her on saying!  My first publication guys!  And Yale will be in the institution line, just under my name.  Whats Up? Two more manuscripts we haven't submitted yet.

life to the decemberists

I wanted to hear myself sing. And then I just happened to have a bunch of conversations mid-video. i like the way it turned out to be a nice little clip of my life to the happy theme of the decemberists "the soldiering life."

I'm pretty sure I'm OK with most of the people who read my blog seeing this...

Really? Warning: Gross picture

This is a spontaneous post and may be a little much.  Sorry if I bother anyone...

We have to deal with nasty stuff in med school, and suck it up like its OK.  Pelvic exams, prostate exams, frozen stinky cadavers with liquefying organs, soft wet fresh tissue cadavers, unbled coroner autopsy bodies, dead fetuses in jars, over a hundred pakistani skeletons from the 1950s, 12-year old sex, child abuse, morbid obesity, ascaris parasites, you name it.

Well this not might be quite so bad as a bunch of those things but sometimes teachers seem to go morbid just for fun or something.

There's a giant cell tumor of the distal radius.  Oh yeah, and a hand.  It's just something in a case I'm reading online right now that made me go, "really?"

Dr Laura Cornwell, "specialty here"

We had an "introduction to clinical cases" session a couple weeks ago that wasn't on a case- we were assigned to fill out a Medical Specialty Preference Inventory on the AAMC careers in medicine website.  The inventory doesn't feel very legit while you are taking it, because it asks you to give your opinion of a lot of clinical scenarios that none of us have encountered.  You end up putting a lot of neutrals and slightly agree/disagree.  I got the following results...:

I was a little disappointed.  Lately I've leaned the most towards Surgery and Ob/Gyn, soI would've liked to have seen them closer to a tie... But I guess its still pretty cool they are in the top few.  Ever since I got these results however, Ob/Gyn has sounded more and more realistic to me.  I have never preceptored in it except for a few hour shift on a "catch a baby" option a few days ago.  I didn't get to see anything, but I felt pretty familiar with what I was told about it.  Having gone through pregnancy, read a book about it, and gone through the labor and c section, I feel naturally familiar.


I'd never eliminated Ob/Gyn from my list of maybes, but I had mostly wanted to look past it for the sake of ambition.  With the way this year has gone for me though, my gunner attitude has waned, and settling for something less competitive doesn't bother me at all.  I still want to do my best to get into a top notch program.


Other than that, I've always questioned whether Ob/Gyn fit my attitude.  This can be blamed in part on an old Scrubs episode:

Hilarious.  I don't completely see myself fitting into this genre of personalities, but hey, I do kind of wish I would've gone greek in undergrad.  As for the actual type of work, I consider myself completely comfortable with dealing with womanly issues, I enjoyed female pathology, and the breast and pelvic exam was super awkward, but I think I could get used to it.  And it's always been a plus for me that Ob/Gyn has such a nice combination of clinic and surgery.  I also really enjoyed doing breast cancer research, and don't consider Gyn Onc a far leap away from that.  My research professor said I may even be able to sneak into breast surgery if I only trained in Gyn Onc.

So can you guys see it?  Laura, the gynecologist/obstetrician/gynecological surgeon?

glass surfboards = $250,000

I mentioned that when I was in Aspen, I went into a glass art gallery/shop and saw a $250,000 price tag.

 

The sculpture is maybe 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide.  Whoever was standing with me- I think it might've been Jess said, "You want a house? or glass surfboards?"

Maybe: a nice log house just out of town?   $235,000

a couple of new 2012 BMW M1s for you and your hubby? ~$115,000 each

 

No.  A 1973 roller coaster!  $215,000

Who needs a beamer when you can build your own batmobile?  $250,000

15 catered luxury suite tickets to the next 3 super bowls... $75,000 each year...

You could actually have your own private concert featuring Alicia Keys, B.O.B., Trey Songz, and Kid Cudi... $125,000 ; $35,000 ; $42,000 ; $40,000 ...

Or of course you could just use it to put 1 and a 1/2 of your kids through med school. ~$160,000+ each.

Crispin Sartwell's Extreme Virtue...

Block went OK today.  I miss kicking ass, and hopefully will be able to do that on one of the next two...the averages have just been so dang high this year...

This is a kind of boring post, but if your into politics, history, or philosophy you might be interested in this book.  I mentioned that I'd post the book summary for the leadership book I read for Aspen.  I picked it because it was kind of short (140 pages), seemed fairly general from the description, and because I like history.  I'll go ahead and admit that Jeff helped me make the last three bios of the summary- I was juggling due dates and he read the last few chapters for me.  I want to read the parts I didn't get to, but I had to return the book already so I don't know if it will happen.  I didn't get to read the Malcolm X chapter specifically- I'll probably just wikipedia him.

                Extreme Virtue is a book on that focuses on the author’s philosophy on virtues, vices, and anarchist ideology.  In order to illustrate his five most valued virtues, he wrote the book about his five top “heroes,” and how each of them respectively expressed those virtues.  The values that he admired most were passion, self-reflection, integrity, connectedness, and “truth.”  His heroes were Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Barry Goldwater, Lame Deer, and Malcolm X.

                He introduced his book discussing the virtues individually, and by defining what he considered to be a “hero.”  The introduction enlightened me that the book was going to put political extremists in a positive light.  The author described moderates as “boring” and unmoving.  He idealized that real heroes were those who expressed original ideas, and had passion and extreme commitment.  However, he also valued the ability of his heroes to self-reflect, and look upon their actions and change ideologies as necessary.  He described connectedness as the ability of his leaders to connect to the people and environment around them.  Many of them were able to do so because they were prominent speakers or public figures.  In the introduction, he did not elaborate on his virtue of “truth,” but he occasionally discussed it through the histories.

                Emma Goldman was who Sartwell used to describe passion.  She was an anarchist leader in the late 19^th century into the turn of the 20^th.  She toured the country and others lecturing some of the most sensitive issues of the period.  These issues included anti-capitalism, anti-marriage, homosexuality, abortion, amongst others.  She was often arrested for attempting to incite riots or encouraging disobedience of law.  She was most famous for being involved in an attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, a chairman of Carnegie steel.  Though evidence was never revealed, much of the country thought she was involved in the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.  Sartwell thought her extreme passion very admirable- but also a vice as she did not self-reflect.

                Voltairine de Cleyre was a woman who was closely related to Goldman in time and anarchist ideologies.  However, she was rather opposite regarding her enthusiasm and in ideas of freedom.  Sartwell admired her for her self-reflection.  De Cleyre had a metaphysical belief of the world as all things being connected.  She believed that if oppression and control ceased, people would be able to govern themselves and good and evil intentions would balance.  She was very selfless and ascetic, and thought suffering was the path to transcendence.  De Cleyre had a lifelong illness that was not known, and constantly suffered and eventually died of her disease.  She was also very depressed.  However, her lectures and writings were amongst the most poetic and well-written of the anarchist movement.

                Barry Goldwater was Sartwell’s illustration of integrity.  He was considered an extreme right conservative and libertarian idealist.  His major role was as the senator of Arizona in the 1950s, and later he ran as the republican candidate for President in 1964.  Unsurprisingly, he lost that election in a landslide to Lyndon B Johnson.  His extremism was rooted in his disagreement with any form of social program, including the civil rights act.  Sartwell did not agree with this, as the author disagreed with aspects of all of his favorite leaders.  However, Sartwell appreciated that Goldwater stuck to his beliefs despite the way other perceived him: he was a very appropriate example of integrity.  Unlike most modern politicians, Goldwater did not try to create a media image to gain political power.

                Sartwell chose an interesting figure to represent his idea of connectedness: a Lakota Sioux Indian named Lame Deer.  He was a leader of the Indians who led the opposition against the cultural genocide that white Americans attempted to impose on them.  Sartwell admired Lame Deer because the Indian man had a strong belief in the experiencing of life by all: even sinful indulgences, without regret.  Deer believed that people should allow themselves to fully form themselves through experience and then express their wisdom to others, so that they do not attempt to use wisdom without a true background.  Sartwell thought this made a good argument against American politics:  he perceievd that  politics forced an image in which any prior experiences should be denied and only pure virtuous character should be displayed.  He described that Deer believed in “truth, both internal and external.”

                Finally, Sartwell saved Malcolm X for last, who was intended to describe “truth.”  The black nationalist leader displayed a strong, masculine model for channeling rage in the 1960s.  He had a turbulent early life, which led to imprisonment for 6 years.  While in prison, he joined the nation of Islam and quickly rose to become its prominent speaker.  He had a natural charisma and projection of strength about him.  However, there was corruption within amongst his group, and a trip to Africa contributed to a decision for him to convert to world Islam.  He then created his own black nationalist movement.  Sartwell admired Malcolm X’s ability and willingness to live openly and dynamically.  The leader learned from his mistakes and did not run from them.  Interestingly, even with his strength and image of power, he demanded asceticism from himself and advocated that ascetics were the route to freedom, similar to de Cleyre.  Also like de Cleyre, he believed that people should be encouraged to have complete control over each self.

Go Steelers! BLACK AND YELLOWWWW :)

Go Steelers! Couldn't make it to a super bowl party this year thanks to Pharmacology, so watching it at home with the fam this year. But finally get to use this jersey Jenn and Darren gave me 3 years ago that I still haven't sold on ebay! Tags still in place, so it's alright. See Saia messing with the stuff on the counter in the pic? Hilarious.

Wish me luck on my block tomorrow, I've got something to prove...

Oh yeah and I'm back on FB but still avoiding it like Yersinia pestis for now.

Update (7:50):  The announcer after that long play Roethlisberger just threw: "He got it up."  Jeff and my contributions to other things the announcer can say in the next 30-something minutes:
"Roethlisberger forced it on them!"
"Roethlisberger was relentless!"
"Roethlisberger will not take no for an answer!"

Stop embarassing me Steelers!  I always go for the team everyone else is rooting against and I'm pretty sure my team usually loses too.  Patriots, Colts...



Update (10:05): Damn.