Top ten lists

I've been meaning to post this for a while but always got distracted by one thing or another. Top ten lists are sappy-assed staples of graduating people, but I can't resist. Here are the two top ten lists that are probably the most meaningful to me in med school. Maybe I will do one for Durham at a later time (as crazy as it sounds, I heart Durham and North Cackalacky now).

The most mind blowing thing that I learned in med school:
10. You can take 800mg of ibuprofen at a time. That's FOUR pills. AT ONE TIME.
9. PAs can do surgery! I thought they could only do floor/clinic work.
8. It is really weird to pull a uterus and ovaries out of someone's vagina.
7. Plastic surgery is the rotation in which medical students are most often allowed to stitch patients shut.
6. The "hot muscle" on a man is not actually a muscle. It's a ligament!
5. There is a physical exam maneuver where you grab someone's eyeballs with tweezers and forcibly move them around.
4. The Van Nes rotationplasty. Heheheh.
3. When someone receives a donor kidney, it is put in just above their groin.
2. Sepsis does not equal bacteremia. That is, someone can be septic without a blood stream infection!
1. The axes of the vagina and the axis of the cervix are not necessarily in line, or even parallel. When you get to the end of the vagina, the cervix is not always there. Incidentally, it is also really hard to find the urethra in a woman.

This next list will be funny for medical peeps. Non-medical peeps - if you have any of these symptoms YOU MAY HAVE THAT CORRESPONDING DISEASE! Hahaha just kidding. (Seriously, I'm just kidding.)

Diseases I thought I had and presenting symptom:
10. Scabies - recurrent wrist rash
9. Anemia - fatigue
8. Carpal tunnel syndrome - grip weakness, tingling in 1-3rd digits (I think I actually do have this)
7. Deep vein thromboses - calf pain
6. Avascular necrosis of the hip - hip pain
5. Whooping cough - coughing fits x 4 weeks (actually, I really think I had that too)
4. Rib fracture - rib pain during the "whooping cough" episode
3. Diabetes mellitus - thirst
2. Zenker's diverticulum - dysphagia
1. Med student hypochondriasis - being crazy between 2005 and 2009.

Ping

Jeesh, blog is getting dusty. Much bloggable stuff always happens in these transitions, but there's never enough time to blog about it. This one is sadly no different. FL and Belize were fun tho! Orientation tomorrow, and then official start a week from Tuesday. Yeekface.

Checking in

I might have to switch to twitter simply because I don't have the attention span these days to post more than 1 or 2 sentences. Anyways, back in Boston now! (well, Massachusetts anyways).

Feeling sicky

My morning tooth brushing was interrupted by Blackburn's puke prodromes (sounds like someone aggressively plungering a toilet). I immediately ran down the stairs, scooped him up and rushed him outside. We were both covered in toothpaste foam by the time we got out; however, instead of puking, he just stood there and stared at my foamy face. So I let him back in thinking the danger had passed, and he promptly puked all over his bed. That's just spiteful. Perhaps he's getting me back for something earlier this week, but I can't imagine what...

The weekend, part 2

Will's rugby tourney, a.k.a. the 29th Annual MBA Rugby World Championships! Sounds fancy, no? I was actually really impressed. Teams from everywhere were represented - and I mean everywhere: all across the US, Canada, France, England, Ireland. And they all congregated so that they could play rugby...in Durham, NC. The pitches were actually in Danville, VA...which is just a few miles north of where I did my family med rotation. Ah, it brings back memories.

Anyhow, some highlights from the photo reel. This was a FUN event to photograph...and it was a lot easier to get good pictures too. The powwow, though a fun event, was actually difficult (for me) to photograph. If it's possible, I think there was actually too much going on. My pictures ended up looking incredibly chaotic and even garish. I'm not sure how to fix this...even when I opened up the aperture all the way it didn't sufficiently blur out the background. I think it's a composition problem. Perhaps I should do a better job of zooming/cropping/picking the subject? But I digress. Back to rugby:

Sizing up the opposition.


This seems like a fairly bad idea, but these lifts are a regular part of the game.


Will fights off the opposition.


This pyramid looks structurally unsound.


A "ruck"?...


Water break.


...Or maybe this is a ruck?


Tackled!


Pain is temporary...


Glory is forever! Victory for Team Haas!

The weekend, part 1

Haven't been posting in a while because my computer is dying. Friends, if you are ever in the position to acquire an IBM ThinkPad T43, DON'T DO IT. RUN AWAY. RUN FAR AWAY. Note that this does not hold true for all IBM ThinkPads, but specifically the T43s. Though as shitty as this computer has been, I think I still prefer it over Dells, in terms of durability if not price.

But I digress. Happenings over the past week or so:

More quilting! I have a problem, truly I do. This is Ed's quilt. Will start NMK's quilt shortly.


The 44th Annual Haliwa-Saponi Powwow! It was freaking AWESOME. The drumming and singing were so visceral and alive, not to mention the dancers and their costumes. The powwow was over 3 days and it included (as far as I know) dance and drum competitions. I wish I could have stayed for the adult's dance competitions, but as it was, I only had time to see the Grand Entry, drumming, and the kids' dancing competition.


This kid (in the orange pom poms) was an absofreakinadorable dancer. A nice fusion of traditional and Usher moves. Dancing in the style of men's grass. The girl in the purple dress is dressed in the style of women's jingle.


Men's fancy. Kind of reminds me of Chinese Dragon dances, in the make of their costume.


More men's fancy, and a men's traditional in the foreground.


One of the judges for the drumming. I found myself rather in awe of his presence because he looked like he'd been lifted out of a museum or something.


Drumming. If I were a linguist, I would be able to describe what they were doing with their throats to enable them to sing like that. Since I'm not, all I can say is that it sounded awesome, but hard on the throat. Don't know how they kept it up all day.


Don't know what these butt feather things are called but they are freaking AWESOME and I want one.


Men's traditional


More men's (boy's) traditional


Women's fancy. In this dance, the women basically have a blanket on their shoulders that they swing around like a cape or wings as they dance and twirl. It's cool to watch, and the blankets are often works of art in their own right.


Pretty blanket.


There were also 2 other styles of women's dancing: jingle and traditional. In jingle, they wore dresses with lots of bells on the dress part, and it was a very hoppity, Irish step dancing-esque dance. In traditional, they had more long flowing robes, similar to Catholic priest robes, and they walked around looking very stately. No fair that the boys get cooler costumes.

Will post another pictoral highlights in a second-- Will's rugby match, coming soon!

History Repeats

1). The sparrows have built their nest in our house vent again, although I wonder if it's a different pair from last year? Last year I'm pretty sure both parents were brown; this year one is brown and one is brown and reddish...perhaps house finches? In any case, their babies are pretty weird looking right now. Taken at a rare moment when both mom and dad were away and therefore not dive bombing my head:



2). A throwback from the puppy days. Hm. The bed seems to have shrunk.





Ok. Must get away from computer.

What is this, Etsy?!

And because I still have nothing better to do with my time...



...Scrap tote bag!!



But wait, there's more!



Fully reversible for those more Bohemian days!



Meanwhile, my roommate was outside chainsawing the bushes. Pretty much all of my street cred is gone at this point.