Separated at Birth?

So, the other day, one of my classmates pointed out the striking resemblance of our neuroscience course director, Dr. Dafny, to Dr. Derek Sheperd on the show Grey's Anatomy. Now Dr. Dafny is most likely 30 or more years older than the now famous Dr. McDreamy, but he looks just like him, or like he could be his father, rather. I bet he got all the chicks back in his day--ha! The weird thing is they are both billed as brilliant neuroscientists. I think Dr. Dafny is the only real neuro person though. I'm going to put up pictures of both of them and let anyone who reads this decide if my classmate and I are crazy or not.

Dr. Dafny

Dr. McDreamy

Pee Wee's Playhouse

I went to Mona's blog today and got a blast from the past with the Care Bears. The same site she referenced, retrojunk.com, had the intro to Pee Wee's Playhouse too! Oh the memories! That was one of my favorite shows back in the day! I remember playing Pee Wee with Sara out on the playground everyday. We'd either act out scenes from Pee Wee's playhouse, or do the "Tequila" dance that he did in His Great Adventure on the balance beam thing on the perimeter of the sandbox. Oh good times. The song in the intro made me almost cry tears of joy and happiness for the past! Good times! Go watch it and enjoy, and if Pee Wee wasn't your thing, then check the site out for whatever was. You'll be amazed! you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll definitely do something!

Come on in, and pull yourself up a chair (like Chairry!) Let the fun begin, it's time to let down your hair! Pee-Wee's SO excited, 'cause all his friends have been invited (that's you!) To go wacky, at Pee-Wee's Playhouse! There's a crazy rhythm, comin' from Puppetland (what that?) Dirty Dog, Cool Cat, and Chicky Baby are the Puppet Band (yeah!) He's got a couple of talkin' fish, and a genie who'll grant a wish - Golly, it's cuckoo at Pee-Wee's Playhouse! Globey's spinnin', Mr. Window's grinnin', 'cause Pterri's flyin' by (hello!) The Flowers are singin', the Picture Phone is ringin', and the Dinosaur family goes, "Hi!" Mr. Kite's soarin', Conky's still a snorin', there's the flashing Magic Screen, The Cowntess is so classy, Randy's kinda sassy - A nuttier establishment you've never seen! Spend the day with Pee-Wee and you'll see what we mean! (Come on!) Get outta bed, there'll be no more nappin'! (Wake up!) 'Cause you've landed in a place where anything can happen - Now we've given you fair warnin'! It's gonna be that kind of mornin' - For bein' wacky! For getting nutty! Golly, it's cuckoo! At Pee-Wee's Playhouse!

Retreat

The members of the UT Houston class of 2010 have been selected as of February 1, 2006. We are already planning their welcome weekend retreat. It should be awesome. I loved retreat when I went, and while I was there I made some of the best friends that I have at school right now. We picked the theme for the retreat the other day. MdTV. Welcome class of 2010!

Randomness

It seems like every day when I'm walking home from school I think of all kinds of fun things to write about here in my blog. I start telling myself stories the way I would write them down in here and think of the fun I will have actually recording and posting my thoughts. I typically don't stop to write them down right when I get home, so I lose them all. Like today I distinctly remember thinking "Wow, I've should make two posts because I've got two good stories to tell." Of course now that I'm at home and I have the time I can't remember for the life of me what I wanted to write about. I just pulled up the new post screen and and we stared at each other blankly for ten minutes. I decided to give up and write about never being able to remember what I wanted to write about instead. Perhaps later at least one of the seemingly great ideas I had for an entry will come back to me and I can update again. Right now I just have random thoughts, but none of them actually constitute a story or a full blog post. I guess I'll start listing them off, but they won't really tell a story or seem all that interesting in the disjointed way I'm going to present them.

1. I'm VERY excited about the new club that's getting started up at school, medical students for choice. It's not an official club yet, so we can't meet on campus. This Thursday we are meeting for the first time at the Starbucks in the med center (Yeah, there are tons of those. I'm hoping by not revealing the exact location we won't get any crazy protesters or anything showing up--at least not because of me). I'm a member of all kinds of clubs, but I don't really care about the missions of those clubs like I care about this one. We'll see if I actually become an active member of something.
2. Kind of on the same line, I'm excited about an upcoming lecture in the geriatrics interest group. It's a group of mostly Baylor med students who "graciously" invite the "UT rifraff" to their school once a month for lunchtime lectures on geriatrics topics. One of the next ones is called, "Sexuality in Aging: Does it Exist?" I can't wait to hear what they have to say. It's combining 2 of my favorite topics, ha! Yeah, in one of the previous lectures they shared with us that the geriatric population is the age group that is currently experiencing the fastest spread of HIV. The sexuality lecture should be informative, yet slightly silly.
3. I think I might need to give Elwood up to a better home. I don't think I could seriously follow through with it because I'm too attached to him, but he needs to be some place where he has more room to run and more people to play with him. He'd do well in a home with small children, or with a housewife who is fairly athletic and active. He needs constant attention and rough play to be happy. My long days at school and at home sitting on my butt studying don't agree with him. He gets mad and disruptive while he begs for attention. Then I get mad at him and try to get him to stop his annoying behaviors. I'm really just enforcing them because he's crying for attention, and the only way I'll stop studying to give it to him is to get him to stop doing something bad, or to reprimand him. It's really kind of sad. He deserves better than me, but right now I'm what he's got. Poor kitty cat. At least he has Jake to play with.
4. I'm pretty freaked out about my physical exam test on Friday. I'm practicing on friends right now, but I still feel like I'm unprepared. How am I ever going to make it as a doctor? How will anybody ever take me seriously? I just talked to my cousin Joseph tonight, and he's almost done with his residency. He's passed all his licensure exams, but he still needs to be boarded, but he'll do that in a month or so. He says when people call him doctor he still doesn't realize they are talking to him, and that he still feels like a fraud. It's good to know that feeling never goes away. I've heard people who have been practicing for years say that too. I guess confidence is something you fake for your patients' benefits. I noticed that tonight when practicing on a friend. I made a face when listening to his heart sounds. Not because something was weird with him, but because I couldn't hear distinctly and I was straining to figure it out. He saw the momentary lapse in confidence and interpreted it as something being wrong with him. I think I scared him. What was really going on was that I was scared. Oh well. Fake it until you get it, right? Damn my overly expressive facial movements!
5. Tonight is the night the Texas med schools post the match. I can't believe it's been a year since I found out I got into school. I'm so scared for everybody who is finding out, right now actually. It's 12:00 am right now. We sat around at lunch today at school and talked about it and got ourselves all worked up again. We shared interview stories and stories about what we did when we found out we got in. People asked me what happens when you don't match and when you get on a waiting list, because I was the only person in our lunch group who had that experience. I also found out that the reason I got a call from UTMB the day before we had to submit our rankings for the match last year was because I was accepted. I asked around and only a few people got called and they were the ones who ranked it lower than UT-H. The ones who ranked UTMB higher than UT-H didn't get the call. It makes me happy to know that at least 2 of the schools I applied to wanted me the second time around, esp since nobody wanted me the first time. Well, UT-H kinda wanted me. They waitlisted me, but that's not the same. Anyways, I'm feeling the stress for everybody who is going through the process tonight.

Yeah, I guess I had more to say than I originally thought. However, I'm fairly certain none of those topics are what I had wanted to write about earlier today. If it was important enough, it will come back to me.

X-ray obsession

So I came home after doing poorly on my physiology test and turned on an episode of Scrubs. I had to take a break between the physio test and starting to study for my micro test or I knew I wouldn't be very productive. Of course, if I wanted a real break, why did I turn on Scrubs? Hmm...anyways, the last few episodes I saw I thought I caught something weird in the intro, but I wasn't sure. Today I paused it and I found out I was right. At the end of the intro Zach Braff's character puts an AP chest film up with the show's name inscribed on it. It's backwards. The normal convention is to have the film placed so it's as if you are looking at a patient from the front. This puts the left side structures (apex of heart and gastric bubbles) on the right side of the film and right side structures (bulge of liver under diaphram) on the left side of the film.

Backwards

Apex of heart and gastric bubbles on left of film (right of patient)

Liver on right of film (left of patient)

Normal
Apex of heart and gastric bubbles on right of film (left of patient)
Liver on left of film (right of patient)

Now the show either got the convention wrong, or they decided to be very tricky and show the film of a patient with situs inversus in the opening credits, which is hard to believe.

Situs Inversus
Apex of heart and gastric bubbles on left of film (right of patient)
Liver on right of film (left of patient)

Why does it bother me that Scrubs made a mistake in the common way to view an x-ray? They don't even claim to be one of the medically correct or even realistic shows. Oh well, it's not like it matters or that it changes any of the story lines or anything. I guess I'll let it go, but only after pointing out the glaring error here in my blog!

Belle and Sebastian = Tightness in Chest and Knots in Stomach

This is awful. Belle and Sebastian (happy upbeat music) gives me knots in my stomach and makes me want to cry. It's closely tied to the stress that landed me in the hospital almost 2 years ago. I can feel my heart rate rising and my pooper becoming immotile the longer I listen to it. It's almost Feb 1 again, perhaps that has something to do with my reaction. The music reminds me of the disappointment and embarrassment linked to not getting into school the first time. I listened to them almost nonstop during that time in my life. They were my "get ready in the morning" band. When I hear them I get really upset. Flashes of the night I found out I didn't get in, when I had 20 or so well wishing friends in my living room, come rushing back. I remember hiding in my room for like 30 minutes and signing up to take the MCAT again before I surfaced to tell them what happened. Of course I didn't walk out of the door of my room. I climbed out the window onto the balcony where only a few people were sitting. I had to ease my way into making the disappointment a reality. They also make me think of all the stress I was under when I was going to work every day, and then leaving and going straight to wind ensemble rehearsal, and then leaving wind ensemble rehearsal without even time to eat dinner and heading to my MCAT prep class every day. Once that was over I ate (or just didn't eat--either way it was in the car), and then went straight to the Trinity library to study until it closed. Then I would go home, cry myself to sleep, and start all over the next day. It didn't help that I had all kinds of stress at home and thought my roommates at the time hated me. Then there was the boy who I met during all that crap too. Of course that screwed with my mind, made it more difficult for me to study, and gave me even less sleep because every break I took to see him wound up getting me drunk and having me stay out too late. Luckily I was crazy enough at that point to screw things up rather quickly. Then there was the pressure of having to rehearse with the sax quartet because we were opening up for the wind ensemble concert. We had a whole half of a concert to prep for, and you can't hide in a quartet. I felt like I had to be really good because I wasn't even a student at that point. It would have been pathetic for me to come back and totally suck up the group. I still don't have the CD of that concert. I should call Dr. Worman. Then there was the whole thing where I was the only lab tech who was asked to present research for our grant defense. I had to give a 45 min presentation on the project I was working on to the guy who was thinking of cutting our funding. It was awful. I know it was a honor that my group trusted me enough to ask me to do it, but it was a huge stress. Then Scooby, my cat of 18 years died, and I wasn't there to say goodbye. I went home the weekend after finding out I didn't get in. I was having massive abdominal pains that were intermittent so I didn't want to say anything about them to my family. Unfortunately, they witnessed one first had at dinner one day. I was standing up to clear the dishes and I basically just doubled over in pain. It was something that was happening to me 2 or 3 times a day at that point. It would last about 10 minutes and hurt so bad I couldn't stand up or see straight. They almost took me to the hospital, but the pain went away. They called our family doctor and he told me to drink malox (WTF?). I wound up going home to San Antonio with no resolution. The pain kept coming and going. Then one day, the last Wednesday in February, I was sitting in my MCAT class and the pain came again. I excused myself to the restroom and collapsed on the floor for about 45 minutes. When I could finally get up again, I went back to class, grabbed my things, and went to the Texas Med Clinic next door. They took an x-ray and you could trace my whole colon and part of my small intestine because of the feces that was backed up in there. I hadn't realized it, but I hadn't pooped in weeks. Stress does funny things to people. They told me to go home and drink a bottle of magnesium citrate and I would be fine. Well, I was so stressed at work (my presentation to keep the grant was on March 1) I didn't drink the magnesium citrate that night. I had to present my presentation to my boss the next day, so I held off one day, went to work, and dealt with the pain. When I came home I drank the bottle and went to bed expecting to be awakened in a few hours and relieved. When that didn't happen and I woke up to my alarm for work the next day, I called in sick. I was expecting the stuff to work at any minute. I waited until 5pm before I drove myself to the emergency room. I wound up alienating my roommates even more because I called them and left them a message saying I was going to the emergency room and not to worry if I didn't come home that night. Apparently they were pissed they didn't get any further updates, but I was somewhat busy being a patient at that point. Long story short, I got admitted to the hospital. I had a ileus, my small intestine had just shut down. The only explanation I got was the stress. I had a rather humiliating night ranging from having to ask Vanessa to leave the room so I could be analy probed (she was awesome and came to the hospital to sit with me) to begging a nurse who had just given me an enema for tampons. I remember how alone I felt. It was terrifying. Anyway, the stress eased after the next week when my presentation went well (so well I was asked to take it to DC for a conference to present it), and I didn't totally screw up the quartet performance. Then all I had to concentrate on was taking the MCAT again and getting into med school. Belle and Sebastian still reminds me of all of that stuff. That had to be the worst month or two of my entire life. Every time something even remotely upsetting happens now I think back to that time and it doesn't seem so bad. I've been able to let go of a lot of different things that would have stressed me out pre-pooper problem. But whenever I hear Belle and Sebastian those feelings come rushing back. I can't believe there was a time in my life when I thought it was normal to feel that bad all day long. I think I better stop this entry and stop listening to Belle and Sebastian right now. I don't like feeling like this. Hopefully it's just the music and not the fact that Feb 1 is rolling around again. Why does the thought of that make me nervous. I've already matched. I'm in school. Geeze.

Texas Summer Family Medicine Preceptorship Program

I guess it's time to start planning for summer. There are lunch meetings all week at school for different preceptorships that we can do this summer. I just got back from the family practice summer preceptorship program meeting. Apparently we should start getting our applications in by next Tuesday! Crap! I still have to go hear from the internal medicine people on Thursday. I know for sure that I want to do a preceptorship (I'd rather die than have to go back into a research lab--ick!) I just don't know which kind of preceptorship would be best. I was captivated by the two family practicioners who came to speak to us today. I might want to see if I can work with the second one. He was old, his practice is in Alvin, and he starts his days with rounds at a Clear Lake hospital at 5am and the day doesn't end until he finished seeing patients at his private practice at 5pm, but what he had to say today fascinated me. He talked about how he sees very sick patients in the hospital every day, how he has 200 or so patients currently in nursing homes, how 80% of his practice deals with psychology, how he feels he can treat patients better than other specialists because he knows everything about them and their family members, and how much he loves teaching and giving his students first crack at most of the patients who come in. If he is what family practice and family practice preceptorships are all about, I want in on that. Of course, I don't really know a doctor I for sure want to pair up with, and practices vary a lot. At least family practicioners get to see a little bit of everything. That might be the best bet for a person who just finished up her first year of med school. I'd get exposed to more things than I might get to see in any other sort of preceptorship program. It's exciting really. The second speaker talked about how his summer students help take histories, do physical exams, suture, etc. I don't know how to do any of that yet, but I would love to learn, esp when I'm still "young" and not expected to really know any of it yet. I'm kinda shy in those areas, and the more experience I have before it really counts the better.

Another thing that really jumped out at me from the second doctor who spoke was that he mentioned how we were all slightly type A or we wouldn't be in medical school. Dead on. Well, of course then he followed it up by saying he didn't really believe in the whole type A personality thing. He thinks it's really a bipolar (type 2) characteristic in most of us. Dead on again. We get severely depressed, but when we aren't depressed we have excess amounts of energy and optimism and think we can do anything if we work hard enough. And we typically can do anything we desire to do during those time periods. Hmm...substitute me/I for the we, and it sounds like he could have been talking directly to me! Ha! Of course I haven't had a severe depressive episode in almost 4 years now...hmm. Anyway, the more I hear about family practice the more intrigued I get by it all, and by the astute and people-smart physicians who go into it. Unless the internal medicine summer program people totally blow me away, I think I'm going to try and do a family medicine preceptorship this summer. Then the only question would be urban or rural. I know I'd prefer urban (small towns frighten me), but they pay you twice as much to go to a rural setting. Hmm...there are some things to figure out, but right now I'm VERY excited about the opportunities ahead of me this summer and for the rest of my life!