Family & Friends,
In anticipation of Thanksgiving on Thursday, I send my love and wishes that I could make it home to see people…but alas, I am scheduled to be on call Thursday (more on this in a minute) and will be in Wisconsin until Christmas time. Hopefully I can see a lot of you during the week I have in Utah between Christmas and New Years.
It seems to me that there are a few topics that I write about that get a lot of response from people. One of those topics is Chopper the mutant man-eating Godzilla dog who lives upstairs. The other is anything regarding me and OB/GYN – I guess the image of awkward ridiculous single me trying to deal with female-issues gives people a big kick (frankly it is funny in retrospect, though usually mortifying at the time!) Having said this, I guess I’ll be batting 50% in this letter. I really don’t have much to say about Chopper – he’s as big and dumb as ever – but I am 2 weeks into my OB/GYN rotation and I’m collecting embarrassing moments at an alarming rate!
Let me attempt to set the scene a little bit and describe what rotating through OB/GYN is like. First let me state that I respect most OB/GYN doctors I’ve met. Most are nice and reasonable people. They do good things and help with issues that need to be handled. I even find that I quite enjoy most of the work that they do (delivering babies is neat, surgery is neat, the medical chart notes they are required to write are short – a BIG plus in my mind) however, they have the WORST lifestyle! Seriously, you will never meet a bigger group of work-a-holic insomniacs in your life (outside of neurosurgery, that is). Every few days they have to be “on call” which means they work a ~30 hour shift (from 5:30am to about noon the next day) and of course as students we have to pull similar hours. I’m actually post-call today, which means I haven’t slept since 5am yesterday (it is currently about 4:30pm today). I will sleep tonight, work a 12ish hour shift tomorrow, sleep again and then begin another 48 hours of wakefulness. I’m only on this rotation for 6 weeks…I can’t imagine how people do this year in and year out! They are stronger than me I guess!
Anyway, most of the time I’m on the Labor and Delivery floor working with women who are actively in labor. What I do is meet the women when they first get there. I ask a whole bunch of questions, do a brief physical exam and then leave for several hours to write up all the information I gathered from the interview and exam. Several hours later I pop my head back in and make sure everything is going okay. This continues until the woman’s cervix is dilated to somewhere around 8cm. Once this happens the doctor and I rush in, throw on sterile gown/gloves/mask and join the nurse in helping the lady have her baby. I find it funny (maybe that is not a good word-choice) that really it is the nurse who spends all the time with the woman. The doctor and I just sort of show up for the exciting part and then leave again…strange, but oh well!
I have observed that there are several types of laboring women. There are those who have been down this road before. In fact in some cases the babies practically tap-dance their way out because mom’s pelvis just doesn’t offer much resistance any more. These women have sage-like knowledge and do not get ruffled when a stuttering medical student is catching their baby because they simply know that things usually go just fine. In many ways working with these ladies is nice.
On the other hand, there are ladies who would like to kill anything with a Y chromosome – or at very least hit us in a body part of their choice with a ball-pein hammer every time they have a contraction. Not that I can really blame them…I’m not quite sure how much I’d love some stranger sitting down observing me from, shall we say, an unflattering angle while my feet are in stirrups all the while I’m trying to defy the laws of physics by squeezing a cantaloupe through a drinking straw. Frankly, I might get a little grumpy myself!
My first day of work was something of a “baptism by fire” experience. Not only was I clueless about what I was supposed to be doing, I was on call, exhausted, and not yet emotionally calibrated to the birthing process (a feeling that comes surprisingly quickly once you have delivered 7 or 8 babies at 3am). That first night we had 8 or 9 births, 2 of which were emergency C-sections. I decided after that night that there are some fundamental laws of the obstetrical universe:
1) No babies will be born during normal daytime hours
2) All babies will be born between the hours of 11pm and 5am
3) All emergency C-sections will need to happen at exactly the same time even though there is only one team to perform the operations
That first birth really was quite the experience for me. In some ways it was one of the most disconcerting things I’d ever seen. A part of me felt like I was in a real life “Aliens” movie. The other part of me was in awe of the miracle of birth. I will say that despite all the blood and gore of birth, once that wriggling little baby was out and letting the world know he was UNHAPPY my heart sort of melted and it was easy to forget that I had just seen every law of physics shatter.
Well, I’m exhausted and need to cook dinner, so I’ll finish up. Love you all!
-Eric
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
10/19/2008
Family & Friends-
I believe last time I got a letter written, I was on Family Medicine and thinking strongly that it was going to be my future career. I guess I must be fickle or something because that is not really the plan anymore. Sadly, I left family medicine with a bitter taste in my mouth that I think I’m going to have a hard time getting over – this was largely due to one of the professors that I really didn’t have good rapport with (more on this in a minute). My current thought is a lesser-known branch of medicine called Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R). Obviously I’m going to need to take an elective in this before I commit myself, but it really seems to be a nice synthesis of the best parts of several other fields, including primary care, neurology, physical therapy and sports medicine. Because I know that at least my grandma’s will want to know more, and because I don’t want to take too much space writing about it, anyone who is interested in what PM&R doctors do can get an idea by taking a look at this website: http://www.aapmr.org/medstu.htm
Overall I really did like family medicine and I haven’t completely excluded it from my list of possible careers, but like I said, there was one doctor who I worked with who had the uncanny Hoover-like ability to suck all the joy of medicine out of each day I worked with her leaving me feeling like I had the intelligence of table salt and wondering if the day could get much worse. She was somebody who always seemed flabbergasted that a 3rd year student – someone with a total of a few weeks clinical experience – had failed to follow a particular line of obscure questioning or who had written a progress note in a format preferred by a doctor other than herself. Essentially she was one of those narcissistic Napoleon-esque doctors who thought everybody besides herself was wrong and who was totally intolerant of a student who was still in the steep part of the learning curve (but who deluded herself into believing she was absolutely open-minded and blessed with Job-like patience).
One particularly memorable day I was working with Dr. Hoover (not her real name), and we had a patient cancel, leaving us with about 30 minutes before our next patient arrived. My plan was to use the time to do some much-needed study about some of the conditions we had seen several times about which my fund of knowledge was lacking. Just as I was sitting down with my textbook, Dr. Hoover announced that we had an add-on patient. I stated I would be happy to visit this patient like normal and report back to her with what I found. However, Dr. Hoover said she would like to accompany me into this particular exam. I figured she must want to observe me doing the history and physical so that she could evaluate me and offer some constructive feed-back. Of course I was fine with this and so we set out down the hall toward the exam room.
When we arrived in the room I looked around perplexed because there was no patient in the room – just me and Dr. Hoover. She closed the door, sat down on the exam table and announced, “I’m your patient”. Fear stuck into my heart and I knew this was not going to end well for me. The story she gave me at that point was that I needed to do a fundoscopic exam (looking at the back of her eyes through the pupil using a tool called an opthalmoscope). She stated quite matter-of-factly that if I had the IQ of soup, I would find an abnormality with her retina. Let me pause here and take a small tangent that will help clarify why this was such a dastardly thing for her to do.
In medicine we use 2 major criteria, sensitivity and specificity, to determine if a test is useful. A perfect test would be both highly sensitive and highly specific. A test that has high sensitivity but poor specificity has its uses however, as do tests that are highly specific but poorly sensitive. A test that has both poor sensitivity and poor specificity is essentially worthless. The fundoscopic exam, as preformed in a primary care setting has low sensitivity and specificity, and thus it is not emphasized heavily in medical school training. Fundoscopic exams only become really useful when using the equipment in an ophthalmologist’s office. My training in fundoscopic exam was brief, as it most people’s. Almost all medical students and plenty of residents and doctors are not comfortable with this exam because it yields such poor results. If a person has vision problems or something suspicious about their eye they get referred to an opthomologist who can do a proper exam.
To do a fundoscopic exam, the examiner must get within a few inches of the patient’s face (essentially kissing distance) and shine a light into their eye while trying not to breathe directly into the patient’s nose or mouth. This wouldn’t be a hard thing to do…if your mouth were somehow situated on the back of your head – but as this is not the case, fundoscopic exams are invariably uncomfortable for both doctor and patient. In a perfect world, you are supposed to see a the optic nerve as it exits the back of the eyeball and spreads out into the retina as well as an assortment of vessels. The optic nerve (called the optic disc) is supposed to be a shade of yellow and have crisp defined edges. Part of the reason it is hard to perform this exam in the primary care setting is because you never dilate the patient’s pupil and so you are trying to see this anatomy through a tiny pin-hole pupil.
Okay, back to my story! There I was, my stomach somewhere down near my ankles cursing Dr. Hoover in my head for choosing the fundoscopic exam, of all the possible parts of the physical exam she could have chosen, to evaluate my prowess and progress as a student! For 20 minutes…let me say that again: for 20 minutes I was inches from this lady’s face (who has halitosis by the way) trying to see what was abnormal about her eye. It was so awkward and uncomfortable in that room that I was convinced that random objects were in danger of bursting into flames. To cut the pain short I started trying to ferret clues out of her, hoping I would stumble upon something that could help me identify her retinal abnormality, but to no avail. When she had tortured me long enough, Dr. Hoover demanded I tell her what I know and she would fill in the rest. I said that the optic nerve in her left eye had looked whiter than normal (more of a guess than a confident declaration, but a good guess I was to find out later). Then in a tone that let me know in no uncertain terms that my brain must operate via parcel post instead of express overnight mail, Dr. Hoover said that what I “should have seen” if I was not such a moron, was that the optic nerve in her left eye was whiter than normal and that the edges were less distinct – more fuzzy – than normal. All this put together should have let me know that she had an extremely rare anatomical variant where the optic nerve stayed mylenated after it exited into the eyeball (myelin is a coating that surrounds some nerves and which normally stops at the point the optic nerve exits into the eyeball). This is such a rare condition that I was forced to look through 5 books before I found a picture and description that I could read about. Overall it was not an experience that endeared me to Dr. Hoover, nor was it the only craziness she put me through. However, she was only one doctor and the other doctors were much more personable and so overall I enjoyed family medicine…though I’m not so sure I want it for my career anymore.
**Next Day**
Okay, I got distracted yesterday and will try and finish the letter today.
After family medicine I spent 2 weeks on Neurology. I really hadn’t expected to like Neuro because I hadn’t liked our neuroscience class, but I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy clinical neurology. We spent our time working with stroke patients, brain trauma patients, or patients with neuro-degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.
Last Thursday I started my Psychiatry rotation. I was placed at PCS (Psychiatric Crisis Service) – basically the Emergency Room for psychiatric patients. Most of our patients are brought in by the police because they are suicidal, homicidal, or in the midst of a psychotic or perhaps manic episode. In the 3 days I’ve worked there so far I have seen the craziest of the crazy (Scott, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about). One guy came in because he was picked up while running down the street naked. Another guy set his couch on fire in some ceremony because the voices had told him to do it. Most of our patients are depressed and dangerous to themselves or dealing with drug addiction problems. One lady was antisocial to the point she had to be subdued by several branches of the armed forces. Again, I didn’t think I would like psych because it was never a class I enjoyed attending lecture for, but I find myself excited to go to work everyday. Admittedly, we see a lot of the bleakest society has to offer and in order to cope we maintain a dark humor but even then it is fulfilling to be able to intervene in a person’s life when they are at their lowest. Yes, many of these people will deal with relapses for the rest of their lives. Yes, many of these people are addicted to substances with little hope of recovery, but already there have been several people who probably wouldn’t have survived themselves for more than a few more hours if we hadn’t seen them on the service. Suffice to say, I’m really looking forward to the next 4 weeks!
On a different note, my roommate got married on Saturday. He was one of the 3 or 4 guys who really took me under their wing when I first moved out here and has helped make my time here in Milwaukee such a good experience. He has been dating this girl for the last year or so and I’m really excited for him and his new wife! They are both fantastic people and I will enjoy keeping in touch as time progresses. Without a doubt, the sealing ceremony on Saturday was 15 of the most amazing minutes I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been to many sealings at this point and they are all incredible, but the teaching and council this particular sealer spent his time on really hit home with me. I curse my feeble memory and wish I had perfect recall because I couldn’t absorb all of the doctrines covered as fast as they were coming. I only hope I can remember and apply some of what I learned in my life now and in the future whenever I find that certain someone.
I find it interesting to be living in a “swing state” during a presidential election. For all the elections since I reached voting age, I have either been in Utah (not exactly a swing state!) or I’ve been overseas and thus separated from the political Gettysburg that I had only heard rumors of. I will leave my own thoughts on politics and the candidates out of my letter but I will say it has been eye-opening to witness first-hand the political WWF Monday Night Raw that exists out here.
Well, I’d best call it a night! Love you all!
-Eric
I believe last time I got a letter written, I was on Family Medicine and thinking strongly that it was going to be my future career. I guess I must be fickle or something because that is not really the plan anymore. Sadly, I left family medicine with a bitter taste in my mouth that I think I’m going to have a hard time getting over – this was largely due to one of the professors that I really didn’t have good rapport with (more on this in a minute). My current thought is a lesser-known branch of medicine called Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R). Obviously I’m going to need to take an elective in this before I commit myself, but it really seems to be a nice synthesis of the best parts of several other fields, including primary care, neurology, physical therapy and sports medicine. Because I know that at least my grandma’s will want to know more, and because I don’t want to take too much space writing about it, anyone who is interested in what PM&R doctors do can get an idea by taking a look at this website: http://www.aapmr.org/medstu.htm
Overall I really did like family medicine and I haven’t completely excluded it from my list of possible careers, but like I said, there was one doctor who I worked with who had the uncanny Hoover-like ability to suck all the joy of medicine out of each day I worked with her leaving me feeling like I had the intelligence of table salt and wondering if the day could get much worse. She was somebody who always seemed flabbergasted that a 3rd year student – someone with a total of a few weeks clinical experience – had failed to follow a particular line of obscure questioning or who had written a progress note in a format preferred by a doctor other than herself. Essentially she was one of those narcissistic Napoleon-esque doctors who thought everybody besides herself was wrong and who was totally intolerant of a student who was still in the steep part of the learning curve (but who deluded herself into believing she was absolutely open-minded and blessed with Job-like patience).
One particularly memorable day I was working with Dr. Hoover (not her real name), and we had a patient cancel, leaving us with about 30 minutes before our next patient arrived. My plan was to use the time to do some much-needed study about some of the conditions we had seen several times about which my fund of knowledge was lacking. Just as I was sitting down with my textbook, Dr. Hoover announced that we had an add-on patient. I stated I would be happy to visit this patient like normal and report back to her with what I found. However, Dr. Hoover said she would like to accompany me into this particular exam. I figured she must want to observe me doing the history and physical so that she could evaluate me and offer some constructive feed-back. Of course I was fine with this and so we set out down the hall toward the exam room.
When we arrived in the room I looked around perplexed because there was no patient in the room – just me and Dr. Hoover. She closed the door, sat down on the exam table and announced, “I’m your patient”. Fear stuck into my heart and I knew this was not going to end well for me. The story she gave me at that point was that I needed to do a fundoscopic exam (looking at the back of her eyes through the pupil using a tool called an opthalmoscope). She stated quite matter-of-factly that if I had the IQ of soup, I would find an abnormality with her retina. Let me pause here and take a small tangent that will help clarify why this was such a dastardly thing for her to do.
In medicine we use 2 major criteria, sensitivity and specificity, to determine if a test is useful. A perfect test would be both highly sensitive and highly specific. A test that has high sensitivity but poor specificity has its uses however, as do tests that are highly specific but poorly sensitive. A test that has both poor sensitivity and poor specificity is essentially worthless. The fundoscopic exam, as preformed in a primary care setting has low sensitivity and specificity, and thus it is not emphasized heavily in medical school training. Fundoscopic exams only become really useful when using the equipment in an ophthalmologist’s office. My training in fundoscopic exam was brief, as it most people’s. Almost all medical students and plenty of residents and doctors are not comfortable with this exam because it yields such poor results. If a person has vision problems or something suspicious about their eye they get referred to an opthomologist who can do a proper exam.
To do a fundoscopic exam, the examiner must get within a few inches of the patient’s face (essentially kissing distance) and shine a light into their eye while trying not to breathe directly into the patient’s nose or mouth. This wouldn’t be a hard thing to do…if your mouth were somehow situated on the back of your head – but as this is not the case, fundoscopic exams are invariably uncomfortable for both doctor and patient. In a perfect world, you are supposed to see a the optic nerve as it exits the back of the eyeball and spreads out into the retina as well as an assortment of vessels. The optic nerve (called the optic disc) is supposed to be a shade of yellow and have crisp defined edges. Part of the reason it is hard to perform this exam in the primary care setting is because you never dilate the patient’s pupil and so you are trying to see this anatomy through a tiny pin-hole pupil.
Okay, back to my story! There I was, my stomach somewhere down near my ankles cursing Dr. Hoover in my head for choosing the fundoscopic exam, of all the possible parts of the physical exam she could have chosen, to evaluate my prowess and progress as a student! For 20 minutes…let me say that again: for 20 minutes I was inches from this lady’s face (who has halitosis by the way) trying to see what was abnormal about her eye. It was so awkward and uncomfortable in that room that I was convinced that random objects were in danger of bursting into flames. To cut the pain short I started trying to ferret clues out of her, hoping I would stumble upon something that could help me identify her retinal abnormality, but to no avail. When she had tortured me long enough, Dr. Hoover demanded I tell her what I know and she would fill in the rest. I said that the optic nerve in her left eye had looked whiter than normal (more of a guess than a confident declaration, but a good guess I was to find out later). Then in a tone that let me know in no uncertain terms that my brain must operate via parcel post instead of express overnight mail, Dr. Hoover said that what I “should have seen” if I was not such a moron, was that the optic nerve in her left eye was whiter than normal and that the edges were less distinct – more fuzzy – than normal. All this put together should have let me know that she had an extremely rare anatomical variant where the optic nerve stayed mylenated after it exited into the eyeball (myelin is a coating that surrounds some nerves and which normally stops at the point the optic nerve exits into the eyeball). This is such a rare condition that I was forced to look through 5 books before I found a picture and description that I could read about. Overall it was not an experience that endeared me to Dr. Hoover, nor was it the only craziness she put me through. However, she was only one doctor and the other doctors were much more personable and so overall I enjoyed family medicine…though I’m not so sure I want it for my career anymore.
**Next Day**
Okay, I got distracted yesterday and will try and finish the letter today.
After family medicine I spent 2 weeks on Neurology. I really hadn’t expected to like Neuro because I hadn’t liked our neuroscience class, but I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy clinical neurology. We spent our time working with stroke patients, brain trauma patients, or patients with neuro-degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, etc.
Last Thursday I started my Psychiatry rotation. I was placed at PCS (Psychiatric Crisis Service) – basically the Emergency Room for psychiatric patients. Most of our patients are brought in by the police because they are suicidal, homicidal, or in the midst of a psychotic or perhaps manic episode. In the 3 days I’ve worked there so far I have seen the craziest of the crazy (Scott, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about). One guy came in because he was picked up while running down the street naked. Another guy set his couch on fire in some ceremony because the voices had told him to do it. Most of our patients are depressed and dangerous to themselves or dealing with drug addiction problems. One lady was antisocial to the point she had to be subdued by several branches of the armed forces. Again, I didn’t think I would like psych because it was never a class I enjoyed attending lecture for, but I find myself excited to go to work everyday. Admittedly, we see a lot of the bleakest society has to offer and in order to cope we maintain a dark humor but even then it is fulfilling to be able to intervene in a person’s life when they are at their lowest. Yes, many of these people will deal with relapses for the rest of their lives. Yes, many of these people are addicted to substances with little hope of recovery, but already there have been several people who probably wouldn’t have survived themselves for more than a few more hours if we hadn’t seen them on the service. Suffice to say, I’m really looking forward to the next 4 weeks!
On a different note, my roommate got married on Saturday. He was one of the 3 or 4 guys who really took me under their wing when I first moved out here and has helped make my time here in Milwaukee such a good experience. He has been dating this girl for the last year or so and I’m really excited for him and his new wife! They are both fantastic people and I will enjoy keeping in touch as time progresses. Without a doubt, the sealing ceremony on Saturday was 15 of the most amazing minutes I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been to many sealings at this point and they are all incredible, but the teaching and council this particular sealer spent his time on really hit home with me. I curse my feeble memory and wish I had perfect recall because I couldn’t absorb all of the doctrines covered as fast as they were coming. I only hope I can remember and apply some of what I learned in my life now and in the future whenever I find that certain someone.
I find it interesting to be living in a “swing state” during a presidential election. For all the elections since I reached voting age, I have either been in Utah (not exactly a swing state!) or I’ve been overseas and thus separated from the political Gettysburg that I had only heard rumors of. I will leave my own thoughts on politics and the candidates out of my letter but I will say it has been eye-opening to witness first-hand the political WWF Monday Night Raw that exists out here.
Well, I’d best call it a night! Love you all!
-Eric
Saturday, September 13, 2008
9/13/2008
Family & Friends-
I find myself with a few minutes this morning and figured it would be an ideal time to try and catch up on my letter/journal. I think last time I wrote anything I was on my Anesthesiology rotation. This month I’m on Family Medicine and it is 180° change from anesthesia (a good thing in my opinion – sorry Jared!) In fact, I’m enjoying myself on Family Med so much that barring a big surprise on my remaining rotations, I think Family Med is what I’ll end up going into. I guess what remains to be seen is how I feel about the idea of going into surgery when I’m on that rotation – but for now I think Family Med is the ticket!
Part of what I’ve enjoyed this month is the increased interaction I’ve had with people and patients compared to my time in anesthesia. I find that anytime you interact regularly with people, especially as it relates to their health, you get a lot of unique and memorable experiences. Add to that, the fact that I’m still in the VERY steep part of the learning curve and there are some downright humorous moments (in retrospect of course…they didn’t feel all that funny at the time!)
Okay, before I relate any of the actual stories, let me paint a picture of what Eric Brimhall, student doctor, must look like to patients:
First, because I’ve discovered through painful experience that I can only wear my current brand of contacts for a few consecutive hours before my eyeballs want to explode, I’ve been forced to wear my glasses to work every day. Many of you know how much I loathe having to wear my glasses, because when I got them a few years ago, I made the worst purchasing decision of my life and I got transition lenses (the kind that get dark in the sun). Let me stand as a cautionary tale to anyone considering transition lenses! Personally, I would like the opportunity to meet the guy who invented transition lenses (and the lady who sold them to me) in town square at high noon for a duel! Why are they so bad? #1, They get ¾ dark – but not all the way dark – under pretty much any light source. This takes about 0.00001 nanoseconds. However (and this leads me to reason #2) they take a good 20 minutes to get back to mostly clear (notice the word “mostly” – they don’t actually ever get completely clear!). What this means is that I walk around virtually all day with partially dark glasses, and all I would need to round out the nerd outfit would be a pair of chums to keep them firmly attached to my head!
Now that you can picture my glasses, imagine them on a lanky guy with dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep and a white coat with pockets bulging from an assortment of student-related items. At any given time (any med student/residents/doctors out there will know what I’m talking about!) I have a stethoscope, a penlight, a reflex hammer, a PDA, 3 pocket-sized reference guides, a stack of printed journal articles, some flashcards, a Powerbar, 6 pens, something like $1.28 in loose change, a Ziploc baggie with a few emergency Excedrine pills, a pocket calculator, and approximately 1 million 3x5 index cards with scribbled reminders…okay more like 20 or 30 index cards…but you get the picture! Underneath all of that is a pretty normal assortment of shoes, socks, Dockers, ID Badges, pager, shirt and tie.
Now that you have an idea of what I must look like to a patient when I walk into a room for the first time, let me share some of my more memorable moments from the month.
Due to HIPAA regulations, I have to be careful about telling this story. I’ll have to leave some details out, but I’ll do my best to convey the spirit of the moment.
The regular procedure we follow when a patient comes in is that I will go into the room, and get a History & Physical (H&P) and then come back out, present my findings to the attending, tell him what I think is going on, tell him/her what I think we should do and then we visit the patient together. The attending does his/her own H&P, makes his/her own assessment and plan and then we talk over the points on which I was right and those on which I was wrong and then I make a list of things I need to look up on my own time. Then I write a progress note on the encounter, detailing what happened and summarizing what the doctor thinks is going on with the patient and what we plan to do to help.
On my second day of the rotation I was asked by my attending to go talk to a family and get an H&P. We had just left a different room and I didn’t have time to read the patient’s chart before I walked in. Also, because it was only my second day I was still trying to get a sense of how to smoothly get the information I needed (let’s just say I hadn’t figured it out yet and I wasn’t smooth at all). Upon walking into the room I was confronted by (here is where I need to be careful about HIPAA) a particular person I recognized and that person’s spouse and daughter. They were there because the daughter had an injury that was healing very strangely. The reason this was a little disconcerting for me was because one of the parents has a lot of influence over how my dean’s letter eventually turns out (several people are involved in the dean’s letter process, and they all have considerable say over how the letter eventually turns out). Anyway, the point is that this was one of those rare moments where you NEED to shine!
After getting over my initial shock I did my best to put together a decent H&P. I asked every question I could think of…and probably asked a few of them twice in my nervousness! Then I did a focused physical exam and had to admit that I had absolutely no clue what was going on with this little girl. Like a shamed puppy with its tail between its legs, I went out and had to tell the attending that I had no idea what was going on with this girl. We went back in together and I had one of those mixed bitter-sweet moments when the doctor said he had never seen something like this before. Bitter because it meant the girl and her family didn’t get the answer they were hoping for, but sweet because even this doctor with 25 years of experience had no idea what was going on – making me look less stupid.
Anyway, we referred the girl to the plastic surgery folks, and I’m confident they’ll know what to do.
A few days later, I was with a different attending and we were running pretty far behind schedule. In order to try and catch up a bit the two of us went into a room together instead of having me go in alone first.
The lady we were there to see is in her 80’s and showing signs of advancing Alzheimer’s disease. She was there with her daughter who did most of the coherent talking. The old lady, I’ll call her Mrs. Johnson (bless her heart), took one look at skinny little me and decided that I was to be the target of her affections for the remainder of the appointment. She began by telling me what a “handsome young man” I was (which would have been slightly flattering if she had been 60 years younger and not a patient). I did my best to laugh it off, (“Oh, Mrs. Johnson, you are just trying to get me in trouble!”) but she was relentless! In the presence of her daughter and the attending physician she proceeded to tell me that we should leave right then, get in the car, go for a drive and then “park”. Not only was I a little flabbergasted and embarrassed, I was shocked that an octogenarian with advancing Alzheimer’s disease would know how to use innuendo like that! (perhaps that one has been around longer than I suspect…who knows!?!)
Anyway, for the remainder of the appointment I had to balance attempting to learn and be attentive to what the doctor was saying and appropriately deal with the flirtations of this lady! When all was said and done I think everyone except Mrs. Johnson walked out of that room feeling a little awkward and embarrassed.
My next story happened yesterday and I’m still blushing a little bit as I think back on my mortification at the time, but I think this story needs a little bit of a preface.
Let me state right now that all things OB or GYN (obstetrics or gynecology) I am stupid at! Being a single mormon male has not given me much experience in these areas, and all I can do when I encounter OB/GYN stuff at this point is to furrow my eyebrows, nod sagely and try and keep my jaw from dropping or my face from flushing! I can hardly imagine the kind of stories I’ll be able to relate come December when I’m on my OB/GYN rotation…
Anyway, yesterday my attending told me to go in and do a prenatal exam on a lady in her 3rd trimester. I have never done one of these – in fact I’ve never seen someone do one of these! My entire experience on what I’m supposed to do is based on a 1 page sheet I glance at as I walk down the hall toward the fateful exam room. I preemptively furrow my eyebrows and begin my sage-like nodding even as I walk in the room and introduce myself. I then go through a list of very personal questions and just pray that I’m not visibly blushing. My flow of speech is interrupted every 2 nanoseconds with an “umm” and it is painfully obvious that I’m green and very nervous about all of this. I get through all of the questions and now it is time for the exam. (“umm…just take a seat up here and I’ll, umm, do a quick exam”).
Fortunately for me (and the patient), my sheet doesn’t say that I need to perform a pelvic exam, and right now this sheet is scripture to me, but it does say I need to use the dopler machine to get the fetal heart rate. The device is simple enough but in my near catatonic nervousness it might as well be mission control. I put that part of the exam off until last, but it looms over me like a Sword of Damocles. Finally after stumbling through the rest of the exam I can no longer put off the dreaded dopler. Asking the patient to lie down on the exam table and expose her swollen abdomen, I grab the bottle of ultrasound gel off the counter. This bottle resembles the ketchup or mustard bottles that you would see at any roadside café. All I need to do is turn the bottle upside down, shake the gel to where the spout is and squeeze the gel out. Unfortunately, the type of plastic the bottle is made of is the kind that gets brittle with age and apparently this bottle has been sitting on the counter for a long time because as I shake the bottle and begin to squeeze the bottle explodes sending gel-shrapnel flying in all directions! I’m completely mortified! (“umm…sorry…let me get you a tissue and we can wipe up some of this gel!”)
I guess the bottle exploding did get the gel I needed onto the lady’s abdomen and I quickly get the fetal heart rate and scamper out of the room as quickly as possible to inform the nurses that we’ll be needing a new bottle of ultrasound gel in that room (they all have a good laugh when I tell them the story).
Okay, enough embarrassing stories from work! The only other news I can think of was from Labor Day. I went with a group of ward members to an old rock quarry that has filled with water to do some cliff jumping. It was fun and relatively safe! One of the coolest things we did was lunch! The quarry we went to was right next to a very small little town – kind of a quintessential small American place. They had a rag-tag parade down Main Street that was absolutely charming despite its obvious make-shift nature. My favorite “float” (actually a trailer being pulled behind a Ford F-150) had several WWII vets in uniform doing nothing but wave to the crowd (very appropriate in my opinion even though it was Labor Day and not Veteran’s Day). To me no amount of ostentatious decoration or fanfare could have better captured what I love and admire about this country and the people who have sacrificed to make it what it is. A while ago I went on a WWII reading spurt that included Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation”, James Bradley’s “Flags of Our Fathers”, and Jeff Shaara’s “The Rising Tide”…My admiration and gratitude only continues to grow.
Lunch itself was memorable in the sense that it captured small town America so well for me! The small park right off Main Street where the Rotary Club set up their grills had several rows of picnic tables crammed with locals in their cotton dresses and overalls. The biggest entertainment was a lady dressed up as a clown who was tying long skinny balloons into different animal shapes for a crowd of kids. I ate a fantastically unhealthy meal of fried chicken and $.25 chocolate ice-cream cones – and loved every bite! We all got sunburned and had to keep swiping away the ants and hornets intent on stealing as much of our meal as they could carry. As common place as this scene is, it was a charming and memorable holiday!
Love you all and hope you are doing well!
-Eric
I find myself with a few minutes this morning and figured it would be an ideal time to try and catch up on my letter/journal. I think last time I wrote anything I was on my Anesthesiology rotation. This month I’m on Family Medicine and it is 180° change from anesthesia (a good thing in my opinion – sorry Jared!) In fact, I’m enjoying myself on Family Med so much that barring a big surprise on my remaining rotations, I think Family Med is what I’ll end up going into. I guess what remains to be seen is how I feel about the idea of going into surgery when I’m on that rotation – but for now I think Family Med is the ticket!
Part of what I’ve enjoyed this month is the increased interaction I’ve had with people and patients compared to my time in anesthesia. I find that anytime you interact regularly with people, especially as it relates to their health, you get a lot of unique and memorable experiences. Add to that, the fact that I’m still in the VERY steep part of the learning curve and there are some downright humorous moments (in retrospect of course…they didn’t feel all that funny at the time!)
Okay, before I relate any of the actual stories, let me paint a picture of what Eric Brimhall, student doctor, must look like to patients:
First, because I’ve discovered through painful experience that I can only wear my current brand of contacts for a few consecutive hours before my eyeballs want to explode, I’ve been forced to wear my glasses to work every day. Many of you know how much I loathe having to wear my glasses, because when I got them a few years ago, I made the worst purchasing decision of my life and I got transition lenses (the kind that get dark in the sun). Let me stand as a cautionary tale to anyone considering transition lenses! Personally, I would like the opportunity to meet the guy who invented transition lenses (and the lady who sold them to me) in town square at high noon for a duel! Why are they so bad? #1, They get ¾ dark – but not all the way dark – under pretty much any light source. This takes about 0.00001 nanoseconds. However (and this leads me to reason #2) they take a good 20 minutes to get back to mostly clear (notice the word “mostly” – they don’t actually ever get completely clear!). What this means is that I walk around virtually all day with partially dark glasses, and all I would need to round out the nerd outfit would be a pair of chums to keep them firmly attached to my head!
Now that you can picture my glasses, imagine them on a lanky guy with dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep and a white coat with pockets bulging from an assortment of student-related items. At any given time (any med student/residents/doctors out there will know what I’m talking about!) I have a stethoscope, a penlight, a reflex hammer, a PDA, 3 pocket-sized reference guides, a stack of printed journal articles, some flashcards, a Powerbar, 6 pens, something like $1.28 in loose change, a Ziploc baggie with a few emergency Excedrine pills, a pocket calculator, and approximately 1 million 3x5 index cards with scribbled reminders…okay more like 20 or 30 index cards…but you get the picture! Underneath all of that is a pretty normal assortment of shoes, socks, Dockers, ID Badges, pager, shirt and tie.
Now that you have an idea of what I must look like to a patient when I walk into a room for the first time, let me share some of my more memorable moments from the month.
Due to HIPAA regulations, I have to be careful about telling this story. I’ll have to leave some details out, but I’ll do my best to convey the spirit of the moment.
The regular procedure we follow when a patient comes in is that I will go into the room, and get a History & Physical (H&P) and then come back out, present my findings to the attending, tell him what I think is going on, tell him/her what I think we should do and then we visit the patient together. The attending does his/her own H&P, makes his/her own assessment and plan and then we talk over the points on which I was right and those on which I was wrong and then I make a list of things I need to look up on my own time. Then I write a progress note on the encounter, detailing what happened and summarizing what the doctor thinks is going on with the patient and what we plan to do to help.
On my second day of the rotation I was asked by my attending to go talk to a family and get an H&P. We had just left a different room and I didn’t have time to read the patient’s chart before I walked in. Also, because it was only my second day I was still trying to get a sense of how to smoothly get the information I needed (let’s just say I hadn’t figured it out yet and I wasn’t smooth at all). Upon walking into the room I was confronted by (here is where I need to be careful about HIPAA) a particular person I recognized and that person’s spouse and daughter. They were there because the daughter had an injury that was healing very strangely. The reason this was a little disconcerting for me was because one of the parents has a lot of influence over how my dean’s letter eventually turns out (several people are involved in the dean’s letter process, and they all have considerable say over how the letter eventually turns out). Anyway, the point is that this was one of those rare moments where you NEED to shine!
After getting over my initial shock I did my best to put together a decent H&P. I asked every question I could think of…and probably asked a few of them twice in my nervousness! Then I did a focused physical exam and had to admit that I had absolutely no clue what was going on with this little girl. Like a shamed puppy with its tail between its legs, I went out and had to tell the attending that I had no idea what was going on with this girl. We went back in together and I had one of those mixed bitter-sweet moments when the doctor said he had never seen something like this before. Bitter because it meant the girl and her family didn’t get the answer they were hoping for, but sweet because even this doctor with 25 years of experience had no idea what was going on – making me look less stupid.
Anyway, we referred the girl to the plastic surgery folks, and I’m confident they’ll know what to do.
A few days later, I was with a different attending and we were running pretty far behind schedule. In order to try and catch up a bit the two of us went into a room together instead of having me go in alone first.
The lady we were there to see is in her 80’s and showing signs of advancing Alzheimer’s disease. She was there with her daughter who did most of the coherent talking. The old lady, I’ll call her Mrs. Johnson (bless her heart), took one look at skinny little me and decided that I was to be the target of her affections for the remainder of the appointment. She began by telling me what a “handsome young man” I was (which would have been slightly flattering if she had been 60 years younger and not a patient). I did my best to laugh it off, (“Oh, Mrs. Johnson, you are just trying to get me in trouble!”) but she was relentless! In the presence of her daughter and the attending physician she proceeded to tell me that we should leave right then, get in the car, go for a drive and then “park”. Not only was I a little flabbergasted and embarrassed, I was shocked that an octogenarian with advancing Alzheimer’s disease would know how to use innuendo like that! (perhaps that one has been around longer than I suspect…who knows!?!)
Anyway, for the remainder of the appointment I had to balance attempting to learn and be attentive to what the doctor was saying and appropriately deal with the flirtations of this lady! When all was said and done I think everyone except Mrs. Johnson walked out of that room feeling a little awkward and embarrassed.
My next story happened yesterday and I’m still blushing a little bit as I think back on my mortification at the time, but I think this story needs a little bit of a preface.
Let me state right now that all things OB or GYN (obstetrics or gynecology) I am stupid at! Being a single mormon male has not given me much experience in these areas, and all I can do when I encounter OB/GYN stuff at this point is to furrow my eyebrows, nod sagely and try and keep my jaw from dropping or my face from flushing! I can hardly imagine the kind of stories I’ll be able to relate come December when I’m on my OB/GYN rotation…
Anyway, yesterday my attending told me to go in and do a prenatal exam on a lady in her 3rd trimester. I have never done one of these – in fact I’ve never seen someone do one of these! My entire experience on what I’m supposed to do is based on a 1 page sheet I glance at as I walk down the hall toward the fateful exam room. I preemptively furrow my eyebrows and begin my sage-like nodding even as I walk in the room and introduce myself. I then go through a list of very personal questions and just pray that I’m not visibly blushing. My flow of speech is interrupted every 2 nanoseconds with an “umm” and it is painfully obvious that I’m green and very nervous about all of this. I get through all of the questions and now it is time for the exam. (“umm…just take a seat up here and I’ll, umm, do a quick exam”).
Fortunately for me (and the patient), my sheet doesn’t say that I need to perform a pelvic exam, and right now this sheet is scripture to me, but it does say I need to use the dopler machine to get the fetal heart rate. The device is simple enough but in my near catatonic nervousness it might as well be mission control. I put that part of the exam off until last, but it looms over me like a Sword of Damocles. Finally after stumbling through the rest of the exam I can no longer put off the dreaded dopler. Asking the patient to lie down on the exam table and expose her swollen abdomen, I grab the bottle of ultrasound gel off the counter. This bottle resembles the ketchup or mustard bottles that you would see at any roadside café. All I need to do is turn the bottle upside down, shake the gel to where the spout is and squeeze the gel out. Unfortunately, the type of plastic the bottle is made of is the kind that gets brittle with age and apparently this bottle has been sitting on the counter for a long time because as I shake the bottle and begin to squeeze the bottle explodes sending gel-shrapnel flying in all directions! I’m completely mortified! (“umm…sorry…let me get you a tissue and we can wipe up some of this gel!”)
I guess the bottle exploding did get the gel I needed onto the lady’s abdomen and I quickly get the fetal heart rate and scamper out of the room as quickly as possible to inform the nurses that we’ll be needing a new bottle of ultrasound gel in that room (they all have a good laugh when I tell them the story).
Okay, enough embarrassing stories from work! The only other news I can think of was from Labor Day. I went with a group of ward members to an old rock quarry that has filled with water to do some cliff jumping. It was fun and relatively safe! One of the coolest things we did was lunch! The quarry we went to was right next to a very small little town – kind of a quintessential small American place. They had a rag-tag parade down Main Street that was absolutely charming despite its obvious make-shift nature. My favorite “float” (actually a trailer being pulled behind a Ford F-150) had several WWII vets in uniform doing nothing but wave to the crowd (very appropriate in my opinion even though it was Labor Day and not Veteran’s Day). To me no amount of ostentatious decoration or fanfare could have better captured what I love and admire about this country and the people who have sacrificed to make it what it is. A while ago I went on a WWII reading spurt that included Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation”, James Bradley’s “Flags of Our Fathers”, and Jeff Shaara’s “The Rising Tide”…My admiration and gratitude only continues to grow.
Lunch itself was memorable in the sense that it captured small town America so well for me! The small park right off Main Street where the Rotary Club set up their grills had several rows of picnic tables crammed with locals in their cotton dresses and overalls. The biggest entertainment was a lady dressed up as a clown who was tying long skinny balloons into different animal shapes for a crowd of kids. I ate a fantastically unhealthy meal of fried chicken and $.25 chocolate ice-cream cones – and loved every bite! We all got sunburned and had to keep swiping away the ants and hornets intent on stealing as much of our meal as they could carry. As common place as this scene is, it was a charming and memorable holiday!
Love you all and hope you are doing well!
-Eric
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Blogger Moron
I've switched the background to this totally lame thing because I'm trying to figure out how to make my blog look as cool as all my fellow bloggers. Until I can unravel the mysteries of the blogger universe or gain the mysterious jedi blogger powers, I guess I'll just have to leave things looking like this...
If you know how to succesfully load cool looking templates, let me know!
If you know how to succesfully load cool looking templates, let me know!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
8/17/2008
Family & Friends-
Because it has been a while since I last wrote, this letter may jump around a bit as I remember what has been going on.
To begin, I took a girl from the ward out on a first date this week and had a really really good time, but the whole asking a girl on a date thing got me thinking about the dating scene in which I have become something of a permanent fixture – a kind of Rock of Gibralter, not to be moved or swayed from my station.
I am daily grateful that, as a guy, I don’t have to endure some of the things that are uniquely female (such as long lines waiting to use the restroom and a very participatory role in the miracle of birth). BUT, least anyone think that guys are completely off the hook, let me state that Fate pointed its ugly finger in the direction of guys when choosing which sex had to make the first move and be the ones who did the asking out.
Ever since the tender age of 16 years and 10 month when I finally mustered the courage to ask out a girl for the first time (she said her “dad wouldn’t let her go”), I have gone through the anxiety attack…errr…I mean process of asking a girl out time and time again. Let me illustrate how this usually goes:
Let’s say that I want to ask a girl named Sarah if she will go to dinner with me. Even getting to this point usually involves several weeks of convincing myself that this is a good idea. I usually require a minimum of 3 or 4 decent conversations in a platonic setting before I’m persuaded that asking her out will not result in undue embarrassment and deep emotional scars. Once I’ve finally made the decision to ask a girl out, I begin the process of mustering the courage – or perhaps it is stupidity – required to call her up (this usually involves several quarts of vodka…just kidding…but sometimes I wonder if that wouldn’t help a bit!) Once the courage is in place I make the call.
**ring, ring**
(Eric secretly hoping that I will get her voicemail)
Sarah (in an unsuspecting tone): “Hello”
Eric (with all the subtly and smoothness of, say, Hurricane Katrina): “uhhh… hello dinner, this is Sarah. Would you like to go to Eric with me?”
Usually when this happens the girl is bright enough to figure out what I meant to say and if she has the common sense that God gave to gravel she will hang up and move to another country…Just kidding! If I’m lucky she will realize that my awkwardness at asking her out is actually the highest form of compliment, and if I’m REALLY lucky she will realize that if I freeze mid-sentence with a panicked “deer in the headlights” expression on my face during the actual date that just means that I’m really enjoying myself and find myself facing the terrifying prospect of asking her out for a second time!!!
Oh, those fond old memories! I have them often, although I can usually control them with medication.
This leads me to another line of thought completely different from dating. The girl I went out with is a little more established than me, in the sense that she lives in a real person house with curtains on the windows and pictures on the walls. I have lived in “college houses” for so long now that it is always fun and a bit shocking for me to realize that I have friends who live in real houses, pay mortgages, paint walls and install sprinkling systems. For the last decade I have lived in a string of apartments that have no discernable yard, have Goodwill furniture the color of an improperly treated wound and are painstakingly decorated with: nothing. I do put a lot of work into stacking the empty pizza boxes nicely in the corner and for good measure I keep a sizable pile of laundry on my bedroom floor right next to an empty dresser. I realize that these are the kind of admissions that make mothers and grandmothers worry (it might also have a bit to do with why I’m still single), but don’t fret! If the aroma begins to get too pungent, I have a can of aerosol deodorant that I can spray around as a kind of poor-man’s air freshener! If anyone comes to visit, you can rest assured that you are sleeping on the finest couch Goodwill has to offer for less than $35 and that the beach towel you are using as a blanket has been washed some time in the last presidential administration.
Okay, it actually isn’t that bad (I’m exaggerating a bit for humor’s sake…but only a bit). I’m simply trying to make the point that I get a total kick out of seeing my friends living in places that I associate with “grown ups” while I am still living in the Never-Never Land of higher education.
As far as school goes, I’m halfway through my combined anesthesiology/ emergency/trauma rotation. Every time I begin a new rotation it is my goal to try and rule out or rule in if it is something I could see myself doing as a career. Sometimes it is just as helpful to rule something out as something I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do as a career as it is to rule something in as a possibility to look into further. This month has taught me that anesthesiology and emergency are probably not what I want to do with the rest of my life. These are careers for some people…just not me.
As part of the emergency portion of the rotation, we had to become ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) certified. This basically means I had to memorize a big old algorithm of what to do when a person’s heart stops beating or goes into a dangerous and irregular rhythm. Then I had to take an oral exam and explain how I would try and keep someone alive under whatever conditions the doctor threw at me. Fortunately in the oral exam you can get a couple of things wrong and still pass (in the real world, you can’t mess this stuff up) because if I had been working on a real patient I might have killed them. In one portion of the test I needed to administer a pain killer and all I could think of to give was fentanyl (a narcotic approximately 100 times stronger than morphine). Because of its potency, fentanyl is usually given in doses of micrograms. My mistake was to get all nervous and give the dose in milligrams (a much larger unit). The doctor was nice but had to inform me that if I’d given that big of a dose to a real patient they would probably stop breathing…but hey! Now I’ll remember that for the rest of my life!
Anyway, that is about it for me! Love you all and hope you are doing well!
-Eric
Because it has been a while since I last wrote, this letter may jump around a bit as I remember what has been going on.
To begin, I took a girl from the ward out on a first date this week and had a really really good time, but the whole asking a girl on a date thing got me thinking about the dating scene in which I have become something of a permanent fixture – a kind of Rock of Gibralter, not to be moved or swayed from my station.
I am daily grateful that, as a guy, I don’t have to endure some of the things that are uniquely female (such as long lines waiting to use the restroom and a very participatory role in the miracle of birth). BUT, least anyone think that guys are completely off the hook, let me state that Fate pointed its ugly finger in the direction of guys when choosing which sex had to make the first move and be the ones who did the asking out.
Ever since the tender age of 16 years and 10 month when I finally mustered the courage to ask out a girl for the first time (she said her “dad wouldn’t let her go”), I have gone through the anxiety attack…errr…I mean process of asking a girl out time and time again. Let me illustrate how this usually goes:
Let’s say that I want to ask a girl named Sarah if she will go to dinner with me. Even getting to this point usually involves several weeks of convincing myself that this is a good idea. I usually require a minimum of 3 or 4 decent conversations in a platonic setting before I’m persuaded that asking her out will not result in undue embarrassment and deep emotional scars. Once I’ve finally made the decision to ask a girl out, I begin the process of mustering the courage – or perhaps it is stupidity – required to call her up (this usually involves several quarts of vodka…just kidding…but sometimes I wonder if that wouldn’t help a bit!) Once the courage is in place I make the call.
**ring, ring**
(Eric secretly hoping that I will get her voicemail)
Sarah (in an unsuspecting tone): “Hello”
Eric (with all the subtly and smoothness of, say, Hurricane Katrina): “uhhh… hello dinner, this is Sarah. Would you like to go to Eric with me?”
Usually when this happens the girl is bright enough to figure out what I meant to say and if she has the common sense that God gave to gravel she will hang up and move to another country…Just kidding! If I’m lucky she will realize that my awkwardness at asking her out is actually the highest form of compliment, and if I’m REALLY lucky she will realize that if I freeze mid-sentence with a panicked “deer in the headlights” expression on my face during the actual date that just means that I’m really enjoying myself and find myself facing the terrifying prospect of asking her out for a second time!!!
Oh, those fond old memories! I have them often, although I can usually control them with medication.
This leads me to another line of thought completely different from dating. The girl I went out with is a little more established than me, in the sense that she lives in a real person house with curtains on the windows and pictures on the walls. I have lived in “college houses” for so long now that it is always fun and a bit shocking for me to realize that I have friends who live in real houses, pay mortgages, paint walls and install sprinkling systems. For the last decade I have lived in a string of apartments that have no discernable yard, have Goodwill furniture the color of an improperly treated wound and are painstakingly decorated with: nothing. I do put a lot of work into stacking the empty pizza boxes nicely in the corner and for good measure I keep a sizable pile of laundry on my bedroom floor right next to an empty dresser. I realize that these are the kind of admissions that make mothers and grandmothers worry (it might also have a bit to do with why I’m still single), but don’t fret! If the aroma begins to get too pungent, I have a can of aerosol deodorant that I can spray around as a kind of poor-man’s air freshener! If anyone comes to visit, you can rest assured that you are sleeping on the finest couch Goodwill has to offer for less than $35 and that the beach towel you are using as a blanket has been washed some time in the last presidential administration.
Okay, it actually isn’t that bad (I’m exaggerating a bit for humor’s sake…but only a bit). I’m simply trying to make the point that I get a total kick out of seeing my friends living in places that I associate with “grown ups” while I am still living in the Never-Never Land of higher education.
As far as school goes, I’m halfway through my combined anesthesiology/ emergency/trauma rotation. Every time I begin a new rotation it is my goal to try and rule out or rule in if it is something I could see myself doing as a career. Sometimes it is just as helpful to rule something out as something I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do as a career as it is to rule something in as a possibility to look into further. This month has taught me that anesthesiology and emergency are probably not what I want to do with the rest of my life. These are careers for some people…just not me.
As part of the emergency portion of the rotation, we had to become ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) certified. This basically means I had to memorize a big old algorithm of what to do when a person’s heart stops beating or goes into a dangerous and irregular rhythm. Then I had to take an oral exam and explain how I would try and keep someone alive under whatever conditions the doctor threw at me. Fortunately in the oral exam you can get a couple of things wrong and still pass (in the real world, you can’t mess this stuff up) because if I had been working on a real patient I might have killed them. In one portion of the test I needed to administer a pain killer and all I could think of to give was fentanyl (a narcotic approximately 100 times stronger than morphine). Because of its potency, fentanyl is usually given in doses of micrograms. My mistake was to get all nervous and give the dose in milligrams (a much larger unit). The doctor was nice but had to inform me that if I’d given that big of a dose to a real patient they would probably stop breathing…but hey! Now I’ll remember that for the rest of my life!
Anyway, that is about it for me! Love you all and hope you are doing well!
-Eric
Saturday, July 26, 2008
7/26/2008
Family & Friends-
I’m amazed that July is almost behind us and August is so quickly approaching! This has been quite a month with its fair share of peaks and valleys. Here in Milwaukee I’m approaching the end of my first clinical rotation. I’ve really enjoyed my month in Urology and I’ve been able to see a lot of fascinating cases (more on this later). I hope I am able to enjoy all my rotations as much as I’ve enjoyed this one, despite the long hours I’ve had to pull. The first two weeks of the month I spent at the VA hospital, the last two weeks I’ve been at the school’s major teaching hospital and next week I’ll be at a children’s hospital. Switching between hospitals like this has its challenges. Each hospital has a different culture, a different way it runs, a new system to learn. The residents and attendings at each hospital also require some adaptation on the student’s part. I eventually learned (though I wish I’d figured it out quicker) that what worked well at the VA in terms of getting along with the residents isn’t necessarily the approach that I have needed to use at my current hospital – a good lesson to know, but kind of tough in the learning.
One of the more interesting cases I’ve been able to participate in was an all day surgery for a guy with muscle invasive bladder cancer. We first removed his bladder, prostate and some of his lymph nodes. Then we removed a section of small intestines, rejoined the ends of the remaining intestines, and then spent several hours cleaning and reshaping the piece of intestine we removed so that it became a sphere. We then attached the ureters and urethra to this spherical structure so that in essence we made a new bladder for this guy out of his intestines. It was a neat case to be in on and the guy (though in a bit of pain) is doing well.
On Wednesday and Thursday I got to spend the days with one of the urologists who specializes in male fertility. I went into this a little skeptical about how interested I would be but was pleasantly surprised to find myself fascinated by everything. On Wednesday we spent the day in clinic meeting with couples who want to have children but need some help. Thursday was spent in the operating room doing several vasectomy reversal surgeries. This is a cool procedure to watch because it has to be done under a microscope with needles so small they look like eyelashes to the naked eye. Things seemed to go smoothly though and there is a good chance these guys will be able to have kids again.
The other night I caught a few minutes of the TV show “Hopkins” while I brushed my teeth. I can’t vouch for the entire series because I’ve only seen a few minutes, but the part I saw was a very accurate portrayal of what things are like day-to-day for medical students. My roommate (also a medical student) made the comment that “it’s my life…on TV!” and I would have to agree. If I can find the time I would like to get on abc.com and watch the whole series, but for anyone curious about what life in medical school is like (Mima, I know you are always asking me), it looks like this show might give a pretty accurate portrayal.
Well, I have a lot to get done today and not a lot of other news, so I’ll quit now. Love you all and wish you the best!
-Eric
I’m amazed that July is almost behind us and August is so quickly approaching! This has been quite a month with its fair share of peaks and valleys. Here in Milwaukee I’m approaching the end of my first clinical rotation. I’ve really enjoyed my month in Urology and I’ve been able to see a lot of fascinating cases (more on this later). I hope I am able to enjoy all my rotations as much as I’ve enjoyed this one, despite the long hours I’ve had to pull. The first two weeks of the month I spent at the VA hospital, the last two weeks I’ve been at the school’s major teaching hospital and next week I’ll be at a children’s hospital. Switching between hospitals like this has its challenges. Each hospital has a different culture, a different way it runs, a new system to learn. The residents and attendings at each hospital also require some adaptation on the student’s part. I eventually learned (though I wish I’d figured it out quicker) that what worked well at the VA in terms of getting along with the residents isn’t necessarily the approach that I have needed to use at my current hospital – a good lesson to know, but kind of tough in the learning.
One of the more interesting cases I’ve been able to participate in was an all day surgery for a guy with muscle invasive bladder cancer. We first removed his bladder, prostate and some of his lymph nodes. Then we removed a section of small intestines, rejoined the ends of the remaining intestines, and then spent several hours cleaning and reshaping the piece of intestine we removed so that it became a sphere. We then attached the ureters and urethra to this spherical structure so that in essence we made a new bladder for this guy out of his intestines. It was a neat case to be in on and the guy (though in a bit of pain) is doing well.
On Wednesday and Thursday I got to spend the days with one of the urologists who specializes in male fertility. I went into this a little skeptical about how interested I would be but was pleasantly surprised to find myself fascinated by everything. On Wednesday we spent the day in clinic meeting with couples who want to have children but need some help. Thursday was spent in the operating room doing several vasectomy reversal surgeries. This is a cool procedure to watch because it has to be done under a microscope with needles so small they look like eyelashes to the naked eye. Things seemed to go smoothly though and there is a good chance these guys will be able to have kids again.
The other night I caught a few minutes of the TV show “Hopkins” while I brushed my teeth. I can’t vouch for the entire series because I’ve only seen a few minutes, but the part I saw was a very accurate portrayal of what things are like day-to-day for medical students. My roommate (also a medical student) made the comment that “it’s my life…on TV!” and I would have to agree. If I can find the time I would like to get on abc.com and watch the whole series, but for anyone curious about what life in medical school is like (Mima, I know you are always asking me), it looks like this show might give a pretty accurate portrayal.
Well, I have a lot to get done today and not a lot of other news, so I’ll quit now. Love you all and wish you the best!
-Eric
Friday, July 11, 2008
7/11/2008
Family & Friends –
It has been a long time since my last letter, lots has happened and I can’t possibly remember everything to catch up on all of it. However, I have finally started clinical rotations (so much better than the book-work of 1st and 2nd year!) so I think my approach for this letter will be to recount a few choice experiences in as much detail as I can and then just give a brief overview of what the rest of my time is usually spent doing.
First, my disclaimer: I have given similar disclaimers before, but I’m about to do it again! I’ll try and euphemize things and keep terms as medical as possible, but I have spent up to 14 hours a day in a urology rotation for the last 2 weeks…I can’t exactly chronicle how I have spent my time without using some “grown up” words. Be warned!
Well, having said all that, I’m proud to announce that I am the best third year medical student rotating in urology right now in the same way Ring Starr was the best drummer on the Beatles…namely he was the only drummer on the Beatles! J
Because of a crazy lottery system used to determine which order we do our rotations in, I was one of only 3 students in my class to start the year with my elective. Among those 3 students I was the only student to choose urology as my elective, thus I am by far the best third year medical student in urology at the moment! Actually, things are going really well and I’m really enjoying the rotation! Urology is considered a surgical sub-specialty, so of the 5 days a week I’m expected to show up, 3 of those days are spent in the operating room (OR) and 2 are spent in clinic seeing patient who are awake and who can talk back! Because it is a surgical field, urology has pretty harsh hours (I wake up at 4:30am and go to bed at 11pm and usually work 12 to 14 hour shifts with no lunch breaks except to eat a PowerBar while typing my progress notes at a computer). Despite these forsaken hours, I’m learning a lot about myself which is kind of scary…I REALLY REALLY like surgery and the OR! Yikes! Clinic is fine. I think I’ll like it even better once I know more, but I can’t get enough of the OR! I’ve scrubbed in on lots of surgeries in the last two weeks including several really long cases (including a 6 hour job) and I just wish every day was an OR day!
My residents are great also…but I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me start at my first day and try and be at least a little chronological.
I thought my first day was going to be just an orientation day, and that is all I had mentally prepared for. I hadn’t expected to mingle among real doctors, let alone real patients who have real medical issues! I was right about one thing, there was an orientation. However, it lasted for 10 minutes! At the end of that time, I was given a pager number and the name of a resident and told to present myself at the Milwaukee VA hospital and page the resident ASAP!
What Eric says: ”okay, no problem!”
What Eric thinks in his head: “uhh…how do I drive to the VA? Where do I park? Once I’m there, how do I page someone? Are they expecting me, because I sure wasn’t expecting to be sent to them today!”
Anyway, I drove in the general direction I knew the VA to be, found it, ambled around until I found what looked like a somewhat legal parking spot, walked in the first door I found and stood there…let me try and paint this scene a little better…
The Milwaukee VA hospital is a multi-building 10 story hospital with hundreds of workers and hundreds of patients all going different directions. Everyone else seems to know where they should be and what they should be doing. Also, it is a major teaching center for MCW and so there are lots of medical students that flux through, so one new medical student is not a site that will stop anyone in their tracks and cause them to ask me if they can help. So there I am, feeling like I’ve got an IQ just north of a bedroom slipper, wondering how to page this mystery doctor. I finally resolved on a fool-proof, tried and tested method that has served bewildered medical students for decades: I blindly followed the first person wearing a white coat I could see through winding hallways until I lost site of them, but by that point I had been deposited at a nurse’s station and I once again demonstrated my keen mental prowess (“uhh…how do I page somebody?”)
This began a series of “go to this place and ask for so and so” followed by “now go to this place and ask for so and so”. This human pinball game culminated in me wearing scrubs and being dressed in a full-body lead apron just before being escorted into an operating room. The last thing, almost as an afterthought, as I walked through the OR door was that a person handed me a pair of dark radiation-resistant glasses to put on. This did nothing to ease my disquiet, but I went in anyway and stood in a corner until the procedure was over and the surgeon could pay attention to stuff other than the kidney stones he was trying to break apart and remove though the patient’s urethra (the lead apron and glasses were because X-rays were being used to visualize the kidney stones and instruments during the operation).
Anyway, at this point I met the two residents I’ve been working with for the last 2 weeks. Both are super cool guys and I feel spoiled because I know that all residents aren’t this cool, and I’m just glad I got the cool guys on my first rotation while I’m still fragile. I think a few months from now I’ll be much better prepared to face less ideal residents that I may need to work with.
Back to the story however, the day’s excitement didn’t end there! With my residents I spent the day in the OR and got to see several neat operations. To add to the adrenaline of things, two of the patients tried to have bad reactions to the anesthesia and there were a few tense moments when we could easily have lost them. They were convulsing and I was trying to help hold them down so they didn’t fall off the operating table. Even the anesthesiologist attending was shocked to have 2 of these cases in the same day when usually things like this only happen once every few months (I must have bad mojo or something!). Anyway, I went from helping hold down the second convulsing guy who was turning blue and trying to die to a computer training with several of my classmates. Most of them had spent the day in dull orientations and then I run in 5 minutes late dressed in scrubs, surgical mask and cap, sweating and flushed from the adrenaline and they could immediately tell that my day had been a little bit different than theirs had been!
When I finally got home I was exhausted and didn’t really do much besides just brush my teeth and go to bed!
The days since that first one have been filled with the exciting, the mundane, the weary, the tense, the exasperating, the bewildering, the overwhelming, the thrilling! I feel I have learned a lot and yet still have so far to go just to know the rock bottom basics! I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from people so far though, so that is encouraging because I’m working my butt off! Here is a run-down of an average day in the life of Eric during a urology clerkship:
I usually have to be at the hospital by 6am, which means I have to wake up by 4:30 or 5am
I have to pre-round which means see all the patients on our service who spent the night in the hospital and see how their night went, then I have to write a progress note on how they are doing (I still suck at these notes and they are my least favorite part of what I have to do in a day)
Then I round with the resident and see all the same patients again while he teaches me about all the things I did wrong when I pre-rounded (hey, I'm still learning…everyone is expected to have no clue at my stage!)
Then I usually spend most of the day in the Operating Room. After that first day, the residents have been getting me to scrub in, which means I actually get to assist in surgery. Tuesday, for example, I got to remove a softball-sized fluid filled-sack (a hydrocele) from a guy's scrotom and then sew him back together. My resident let me do a lot of the actual sewing and cutting! He just supervised to make sure I didn't mess up! It was pretty neat. I've also helped on several other surgeries. We do a lot of prostate removal surgeries (usually a 3 or 4 hour surgery), so I spend a lot of time on my feet for these!
Like I said, lunch is usually just a quick power-bar and then back to the operating room or clinic to round again. When all is said and done I've been spending 12 -14 hours per day at the hospital only to come home and have 1-2 hours of elders quorum stuff to do and several hours of study I need to get done also! I'm not sleeping nearly enough, but oh well! It is amazing how well adrenaline keeps you going throughout the day!
Yesterday morning I had a big presentation which I had to give to the entire Urology department. A pretty intimidating thing considering most of the people there have been urologists for a minimum of 10 years, and some for much longer than that! I did my presentation on a disease called Tuberous Sclerosis and one of the tumors that is common to this disease which are called Angiomyolipomas. I got a really good response from people, so I guess that means it went good!
Today I helped surgically treat a guy with phimosis. I’m not going to describe what this condition is because that is probably a little too graphic despite my disclaimer (if you really want to know, look it up on Wikipedia). Lets just say that the treatment for the condition is circumcision, which is a whole lot more unpleasant for a 65 year old man than it is for a little baby boy…enough said! I’ve also been assisting in a lot of cystoscopies and prostate biopsies looking for bladder cancer and prostate cancer, respectively.
Well, I’m not helping my sleep right now and I need to get to bed! Love you all!
-Eric
It has been a long time since my last letter, lots has happened and I can’t possibly remember everything to catch up on all of it. However, I have finally started clinical rotations (so much better than the book-work of 1st and 2nd year!) so I think my approach for this letter will be to recount a few choice experiences in as much detail as I can and then just give a brief overview of what the rest of my time is usually spent doing.
First, my disclaimer: I have given similar disclaimers before, but I’m about to do it again! I’ll try and euphemize things and keep terms as medical as possible, but I have spent up to 14 hours a day in a urology rotation for the last 2 weeks…I can’t exactly chronicle how I have spent my time without using some “grown up” words. Be warned!
Well, having said all that, I’m proud to announce that I am the best third year medical student rotating in urology right now in the same way Ring Starr was the best drummer on the Beatles…namely he was the only drummer on the Beatles! J
Because of a crazy lottery system used to determine which order we do our rotations in, I was one of only 3 students in my class to start the year with my elective. Among those 3 students I was the only student to choose urology as my elective, thus I am by far the best third year medical student in urology at the moment! Actually, things are going really well and I’m really enjoying the rotation! Urology is considered a surgical sub-specialty, so of the 5 days a week I’m expected to show up, 3 of those days are spent in the operating room (OR) and 2 are spent in clinic seeing patient who are awake and who can talk back! Because it is a surgical field, urology has pretty harsh hours (I wake up at 4:30am and go to bed at 11pm and usually work 12 to 14 hour shifts with no lunch breaks except to eat a PowerBar while typing my progress notes at a computer). Despite these forsaken hours, I’m learning a lot about myself which is kind of scary…I REALLY REALLY like surgery and the OR! Yikes! Clinic is fine. I think I’ll like it even better once I know more, but I can’t get enough of the OR! I’ve scrubbed in on lots of surgeries in the last two weeks including several really long cases (including a 6 hour job) and I just wish every day was an OR day!
My residents are great also…but I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me start at my first day and try and be at least a little chronological.
I thought my first day was going to be just an orientation day, and that is all I had mentally prepared for. I hadn’t expected to mingle among real doctors, let alone real patients who have real medical issues! I was right about one thing, there was an orientation. However, it lasted for 10 minutes! At the end of that time, I was given a pager number and the name of a resident and told to present myself at the Milwaukee VA hospital and page the resident ASAP!
What Eric says: ”okay, no problem!”
What Eric thinks in his head: “uhh…how do I drive to the VA? Where do I park? Once I’m there, how do I page someone? Are they expecting me, because I sure wasn’t expecting to be sent to them today!”
Anyway, I drove in the general direction I knew the VA to be, found it, ambled around until I found what looked like a somewhat legal parking spot, walked in the first door I found and stood there…let me try and paint this scene a little better…
The Milwaukee VA hospital is a multi-building 10 story hospital with hundreds of workers and hundreds of patients all going different directions. Everyone else seems to know where they should be and what they should be doing. Also, it is a major teaching center for MCW and so there are lots of medical students that flux through, so one new medical student is not a site that will stop anyone in their tracks and cause them to ask me if they can help. So there I am, feeling like I’ve got an IQ just north of a bedroom slipper, wondering how to page this mystery doctor. I finally resolved on a fool-proof, tried and tested method that has served bewildered medical students for decades: I blindly followed the first person wearing a white coat I could see through winding hallways until I lost site of them, but by that point I had been deposited at a nurse’s station and I once again demonstrated my keen mental prowess (“uhh…how do I page somebody?”)
This began a series of “go to this place and ask for so and so” followed by “now go to this place and ask for so and so”. This human pinball game culminated in me wearing scrubs and being dressed in a full-body lead apron just before being escorted into an operating room. The last thing, almost as an afterthought, as I walked through the OR door was that a person handed me a pair of dark radiation-resistant glasses to put on. This did nothing to ease my disquiet, but I went in anyway and stood in a corner until the procedure was over and the surgeon could pay attention to stuff other than the kidney stones he was trying to break apart and remove though the patient’s urethra (the lead apron and glasses were because X-rays were being used to visualize the kidney stones and instruments during the operation).
Anyway, at this point I met the two residents I’ve been working with for the last 2 weeks. Both are super cool guys and I feel spoiled because I know that all residents aren’t this cool, and I’m just glad I got the cool guys on my first rotation while I’m still fragile. I think a few months from now I’ll be much better prepared to face less ideal residents that I may need to work with.
Back to the story however, the day’s excitement didn’t end there! With my residents I spent the day in the OR and got to see several neat operations. To add to the adrenaline of things, two of the patients tried to have bad reactions to the anesthesia and there were a few tense moments when we could easily have lost them. They were convulsing and I was trying to help hold them down so they didn’t fall off the operating table. Even the anesthesiologist attending was shocked to have 2 of these cases in the same day when usually things like this only happen once every few months (I must have bad mojo or something!). Anyway, I went from helping hold down the second convulsing guy who was turning blue and trying to die to a computer training with several of my classmates. Most of them had spent the day in dull orientations and then I run in 5 minutes late dressed in scrubs, surgical mask and cap, sweating and flushed from the adrenaline and they could immediately tell that my day had been a little bit different than theirs had been!
When I finally got home I was exhausted and didn’t really do much besides just brush my teeth and go to bed!
The days since that first one have been filled with the exciting, the mundane, the weary, the tense, the exasperating, the bewildering, the overwhelming, the thrilling! I feel I have learned a lot and yet still have so far to go just to know the rock bottom basics! I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from people so far though, so that is encouraging because I’m working my butt off! Here is a run-down of an average day in the life of Eric during a urology clerkship:
I usually have to be at the hospital by 6am, which means I have to wake up by 4:30 or 5am
I have to pre-round which means see all the patients on our service who spent the night in the hospital and see how their night went, then I have to write a progress note on how they are doing (I still suck at these notes and they are my least favorite part of what I have to do in a day)
Then I round with the resident and see all the same patients again while he teaches me about all the things I did wrong when I pre-rounded (hey, I'm still learning…everyone is expected to have no clue at my stage!)
Then I usually spend most of the day in the Operating Room. After that first day, the residents have been getting me to scrub in, which means I actually get to assist in surgery. Tuesday, for example, I got to remove a softball-sized fluid filled-sack (a hydrocele) from a guy's scrotom and then sew him back together. My resident let me do a lot of the actual sewing and cutting! He just supervised to make sure I didn't mess up! It was pretty neat. I've also helped on several other surgeries. We do a lot of prostate removal surgeries (usually a 3 or 4 hour surgery), so I spend a lot of time on my feet for these!
Like I said, lunch is usually just a quick power-bar and then back to the operating room or clinic to round again. When all is said and done I've been spending 12 -14 hours per day at the hospital only to come home and have 1-2 hours of elders quorum stuff to do and several hours of study I need to get done also! I'm not sleeping nearly enough, but oh well! It is amazing how well adrenaline keeps you going throughout the day!
Yesterday morning I had a big presentation which I had to give to the entire Urology department. A pretty intimidating thing considering most of the people there have been urologists for a minimum of 10 years, and some for much longer than that! I did my presentation on a disease called Tuberous Sclerosis and one of the tumors that is common to this disease which are called Angiomyolipomas. I got a really good response from people, so I guess that means it went good!
Today I helped surgically treat a guy with phimosis. I’m not going to describe what this condition is because that is probably a little too graphic despite my disclaimer (if you really want to know, look it up on Wikipedia). Lets just say that the treatment for the condition is circumcision, which is a whole lot more unpleasant for a 65 year old man than it is for a little baby boy…enough said! I’ve also been assisting in a lot of cystoscopies and prostate biopsies looking for bladder cancer and prostate cancer, respectively.
Well, I’m not helping my sleep right now and I need to get to bed! Love you all!
-Eric
Sunday, May 25, 2008
05/25/2008
Family & Friends-
I’m not sure whether to describe my mood right now as a generalized “funk” or simply contemplative. Regardless, I’ve got a lot on my mind…but those are things I don’t want to write about, so I’ll focus on the other things that are going on right now.
First things first: I PASSED MY 2ND YEAR!!! There was blood, sweat, tears and sleepless nights (okay, maybe not blood, but everything else!) involved in this. There were moments that I wasn’t sure I was actually going to advance into my 3rd year, but with nothing short of what had to be divine help I passed all my classes! Yes!!! Pharmacology was the big worry there for a while. I had to get a certain percentage on the final exam in order to pass, and practice tests weren’t doing much to boost my confidence. The morning of the final was something of a personalized hell and the test itself was what I affectionately like to call “academic Armageddon” (4.5 hours of trying to remember every side-effect/half-life/drug-interaction/metabolism/and contraindication of Chloramphenicol, Phenylzine, Carmustine and about 1000 others) but I got the mandatory score and passed! I’m glad that is done!
Unfortunately passing my classes hasn’t exactly freed me from study. I’ve got my first board exam in 2.5 weeks and in terms of tests this is not what I would call a normal test (normal in the sense that Einstein could understand it). It is a standardized 8 hour test that quizzes, in detail, everything I’ve supposedly learned over the last 2 years! Yikes! I’ve been spending somewhere between 8-14 hours a day studying and will continue to do so until June 12th, the day of my test. Let’s just say June 13th will probably be one of the best days of my life!
Along with the end of a school year comes the expected flux of people into and out of the ward. This means a lot of work trying to make sure everyone has home teachers, that new people are situated and those moving out have the help they need. On a personal note however, this has been a tough one for me. I had a roommate graduate and move as well as one of my best friends who helped take me in and who was been a big part of what has made the last 2 years out here in Milwaukee such a great experience! I’m ever grateful for the gospel ties that bind, even across distances.
As a stress reliever and a way to break up the monotony, I have been experimenting with cooking and trying several new dishes. This came about mostly because I was driving down the road the other day and on an impulse went into a small Indian supermarket. I had just left a mid-week church function (this was not on a Sunday) but I was dressed in shirt/tie/slacks/etc. I had to be the strangest customer the shop has ever seen. When I entered I was the only customer in the place and an old Indian man sat behind the counter. As I browsed over the rice section (who knew there was so much variety!) the old man came up to me and started using his Jedi mind tricks on me. Before I knew what was happening, I was picking up several bottles of paste that I assumed would taste good with rice and chicken, but that had names written in a language I couldn’t read! (I’m assuming they were variations of the word “curry”). Fortunately I kept my wits about me enough to demand “mild” and not “spicy” pastes. I left with WAY too many of these products, which I am now endeavoring to sample one-by-one.
The first such product I decided to try my hand at was some sort of cumin/cilantro curry (this one did have some English on the label) which was distinctly labeled as “mild”. I followed the directions on the bottle (clearly written in another language and then translated into English by someone who lacked a complete grasp of grammar and syntax) and procured an extremely aromatic dish. With real anticipation I sat down and sampled my “mild” curry. Now, I don’t want to come across as too wimpy, but after taking a single bite of this “mild” creation, I began to wonder if centuries of munching on red pepper plants hasn’t given the people in India a different definition of what “mild” means. This stuff was positively nuclear. I’m convinced that if I had turned off the lights, this curry would have glowed like and Exit sign! Undaunted, and with the aid of approximately 2 liters of water, I finished my meal. After being released from the hospital’s burn unit (not really) I threw out the remainder of that curry and moved onto the other bottles, which fortunately haven’t been quite as, shall we say, toxic!
Other news includes the fact that I’ve been plagued with ever increasing migraines. Fortunately Imitrex seems to do the trick. The only down side is that my insurance doesn’t cover very many pills. I’m going to need to get back into the doctor’s office and see what I can do about this.
Since it is on my mind, and since I got a really good response from people the last time I wrote on this topic, I would like to share another funny story about the monster dog who lives upstairs (his name is Chopper, by the way). For those who didn’t get these letters last time I wrote about Chopper, or by way of a general reminder, the people who live upstairs own a dog that, in terms of size, is more like a horse than a dog. Add to this the fact that on the intelligence scale, I would rank Chopper in the “mineral” category, and you have a perfect recipe for some funny stories. The most recent Chopper story I can think of happened on Friday when I was at home in the afternoon trying to study cancer pathology, or something like that. The couple who lives upstairs both work during the day and leave Chopper alone in the house in the afternoons. Chopper, using his extensive experience as a dog, keeps vigil at the front window – scanning the street like some demented sentinel. Every time a person passes on the street, Chopper reacts like the Manson gang is trying to break in. This compulsion that everything needs to be violently barked at does not stop with just people! No! Chopper’s finely tuned instincts extend to other dogs, squirrels, cars, and even litter! All of these apparently pose a serious threat to his turf and must be dealt with accordingly (namely by trying to pulverize them with bark waves). Let’s just say that there is a reason I usually don’t study at home!
A few thoughts I had the other morning while studying (which I wrote down at the time but figured I might as well copy down here):
Alma chapter 17 vs. 9 is often quoted, but for good reason. Ammon and the sons of Mosiah desire to be “instrument(s) in the hands of the Lord” so they “fasted much” and “prayed much” in order to have the spirit that they might be effective instruments. In response to this effort, the Lord “did visit them with his Spirit” (vs. 10). I find it interesting what verse 10 says this spirit did for them – the spirit “comforted them”. Now, why is this interesting to me? The spirit is the comforter, why is it significant that it comforted Ammon and the sons of Mosiah? When viewed through the lens of “how to fulfill and magnify a calling” or in other words, “how to be an effective instrument in the hands of the Lord” it gains new meaning. All of us have our own individual trials (I do at least – if you don’t then let me know what your secret is because I want it!) I think it is easy to let our own trials get in the way of our service (it is for me anyway). I tend to get bogged down in things I feel are less than perfect in my life and because I’m so focused on myself I am blind to the needs of those around me. I think that if we will work to invite the spirit into our lives (the “fasting” and “praying” part of verse 9) and then allow him to comfort us we will be better able to see the needs of others and act to help them
I also find it interesting how verse 10 phrases things, it says “the Lord did visit them with his Spirit, and said unto them: Be comforted. And they were comforted.” It almost seems to me like the Lord is commanding them to be comforted and then of course provides the way to accomplish that commandment through his comforting spirit. If that is true, it would seem to support the idea that we need comfort in our trials before we can be effective at helping others in their trials. That is part of the reason why seeking the spirit in “fasting”, “prayer”, scripture study, selfless service (and other ways we already know about) is so essential. An additional benefit of seeking the comfort of the spirit is that it brings with it “perfect love” which “casteth out all fear” (Moroni 8:17). Sometimes I know I’m a little scared or apprehensive about what my calling requires me to do. Sometimes it seems like what is required does nothing but play on my weaknesses, and I’m scared about what the Lord expects me to do. But I find that when I feel at least a little of the love God feels for his children, the fear leaves and I’m able to do the things required of me, even if they would have scared me before.
Alma 17 goes on to talk about patience, being a good example (v. 11), taking courage (v. 12), administering to and blessing people (v. 18), among other things. Chapters 18 & 19 also had many pearls that I’ll spare you having to hear from me. All of it reminded me of Jacob chapter 2 which, in my mind, is another mecca of wisdom about magnifying priesthood duties.
Okay, those are just a few thoughts I wanted to jot down. I hope they made sense. Best wishes to all of you!
-Eric
I’m not sure whether to describe my mood right now as a generalized “funk” or simply contemplative. Regardless, I’ve got a lot on my mind…but those are things I don’t want to write about, so I’ll focus on the other things that are going on right now.
First things first: I PASSED MY 2ND YEAR!!! There was blood, sweat, tears and sleepless nights (okay, maybe not blood, but everything else!) involved in this. There were moments that I wasn’t sure I was actually going to advance into my 3rd year, but with nothing short of what had to be divine help I passed all my classes! Yes!!! Pharmacology was the big worry there for a while. I had to get a certain percentage on the final exam in order to pass, and practice tests weren’t doing much to boost my confidence. The morning of the final was something of a personalized hell and the test itself was what I affectionately like to call “academic Armageddon” (4.5 hours of trying to remember every side-effect/half-life/drug-interaction/metabolism/and contraindication of Chloramphenicol, Phenylzine, Carmustine and about 1000 others) but I got the mandatory score and passed! I’m glad that is done!
Unfortunately passing my classes hasn’t exactly freed me from study. I’ve got my first board exam in 2.5 weeks and in terms of tests this is not what I would call a normal test (normal in the sense that Einstein could understand it). It is a standardized 8 hour test that quizzes, in detail, everything I’ve supposedly learned over the last 2 years! Yikes! I’ve been spending somewhere between 8-14 hours a day studying and will continue to do so until June 12th, the day of my test. Let’s just say June 13th will probably be one of the best days of my life!
Along with the end of a school year comes the expected flux of people into and out of the ward. This means a lot of work trying to make sure everyone has home teachers, that new people are situated and those moving out have the help they need. On a personal note however, this has been a tough one for me. I had a roommate graduate and move as well as one of my best friends who helped take me in and who was been a big part of what has made the last 2 years out here in Milwaukee such a great experience! I’m ever grateful for the gospel ties that bind, even across distances.
As a stress reliever and a way to break up the monotony, I have been experimenting with cooking and trying several new dishes. This came about mostly because I was driving down the road the other day and on an impulse went into a small Indian supermarket. I had just left a mid-week church function (this was not on a Sunday) but I was dressed in shirt/tie/slacks/etc. I had to be the strangest customer the shop has ever seen. When I entered I was the only customer in the place and an old Indian man sat behind the counter. As I browsed over the rice section (who knew there was so much variety!) the old man came up to me and started using his Jedi mind tricks on me. Before I knew what was happening, I was picking up several bottles of paste that I assumed would taste good with rice and chicken, but that had names written in a language I couldn’t read! (I’m assuming they were variations of the word “curry”). Fortunately I kept my wits about me enough to demand “mild” and not “spicy” pastes. I left with WAY too many of these products, which I am now endeavoring to sample one-by-one.
The first such product I decided to try my hand at was some sort of cumin/cilantro curry (this one did have some English on the label) which was distinctly labeled as “mild”. I followed the directions on the bottle (clearly written in another language and then translated into English by someone who lacked a complete grasp of grammar and syntax) and procured an extremely aromatic dish. With real anticipation I sat down and sampled my “mild” curry. Now, I don’t want to come across as too wimpy, but after taking a single bite of this “mild” creation, I began to wonder if centuries of munching on red pepper plants hasn’t given the people in India a different definition of what “mild” means. This stuff was positively nuclear. I’m convinced that if I had turned off the lights, this curry would have glowed like and Exit sign! Undaunted, and with the aid of approximately 2 liters of water, I finished my meal. After being released from the hospital’s burn unit (not really) I threw out the remainder of that curry and moved onto the other bottles, which fortunately haven’t been quite as, shall we say, toxic!
Other news includes the fact that I’ve been plagued with ever increasing migraines. Fortunately Imitrex seems to do the trick. The only down side is that my insurance doesn’t cover very many pills. I’m going to need to get back into the doctor’s office and see what I can do about this.
Since it is on my mind, and since I got a really good response from people the last time I wrote on this topic, I would like to share another funny story about the monster dog who lives upstairs (his name is Chopper, by the way). For those who didn’t get these letters last time I wrote about Chopper, or by way of a general reminder, the people who live upstairs own a dog that, in terms of size, is more like a horse than a dog. Add to this the fact that on the intelligence scale, I would rank Chopper in the “mineral” category, and you have a perfect recipe for some funny stories. The most recent Chopper story I can think of happened on Friday when I was at home in the afternoon trying to study cancer pathology, or something like that. The couple who lives upstairs both work during the day and leave Chopper alone in the house in the afternoons. Chopper, using his extensive experience as a dog, keeps vigil at the front window – scanning the street like some demented sentinel. Every time a person passes on the street, Chopper reacts like the Manson gang is trying to break in. This compulsion that everything needs to be violently barked at does not stop with just people! No! Chopper’s finely tuned instincts extend to other dogs, squirrels, cars, and even litter! All of these apparently pose a serious threat to his turf and must be dealt with accordingly (namely by trying to pulverize them with bark waves). Let’s just say that there is a reason I usually don’t study at home!
A few thoughts I had the other morning while studying (which I wrote down at the time but figured I might as well copy down here):
Alma chapter 17 vs. 9 is often quoted, but for good reason. Ammon and the sons of Mosiah desire to be “instrument(s) in the hands of the Lord” so they “fasted much” and “prayed much” in order to have the spirit that they might be effective instruments. In response to this effort, the Lord “did visit them with his Spirit” (vs. 10). I find it interesting what verse 10 says this spirit did for them – the spirit “comforted them”. Now, why is this interesting to me? The spirit is the comforter, why is it significant that it comforted Ammon and the sons of Mosiah? When viewed through the lens of “how to fulfill and magnify a calling” or in other words, “how to be an effective instrument in the hands of the Lord” it gains new meaning. All of us have our own individual trials (I do at least – if you don’t then let me know what your secret is because I want it!) I think it is easy to let our own trials get in the way of our service (it is for me anyway). I tend to get bogged down in things I feel are less than perfect in my life and because I’m so focused on myself I am blind to the needs of those around me. I think that if we will work to invite the spirit into our lives (the “fasting” and “praying” part of verse 9) and then allow him to comfort us we will be better able to see the needs of others and act to help them
I also find it interesting how verse 10 phrases things, it says “the Lord did visit them with his Spirit, and said unto them: Be comforted. And they were comforted.” It almost seems to me like the Lord is commanding them to be comforted and then of course provides the way to accomplish that commandment through his comforting spirit. If that is true, it would seem to support the idea that we need comfort in our trials before we can be effective at helping others in their trials. That is part of the reason why seeking the spirit in “fasting”, “prayer”, scripture study, selfless service (and other ways we already know about) is so essential. An additional benefit of seeking the comfort of the spirit is that it brings with it “perfect love” which “casteth out all fear” (Moroni 8:17). Sometimes I know I’m a little scared or apprehensive about what my calling requires me to do. Sometimes it seems like what is required does nothing but play on my weaknesses, and I’m scared about what the Lord expects me to do. But I find that when I feel at least a little of the love God feels for his children, the fear leaves and I’m able to do the things required of me, even if they would have scared me before.
Alma 17 goes on to talk about patience, being a good example (v. 11), taking courage (v. 12), administering to and blessing people (v. 18), among other things. Chapters 18 & 19 also had many pearls that I’ll spare you having to hear from me. All of it reminded me of Jacob chapter 2 which, in my mind, is another mecca of wisdom about magnifying priesthood duties.
Okay, those are just a few thoughts I wanted to jot down. I hope they made sense. Best wishes to all of you!
-Eric
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
04/30/2008
Family & Friends,
Looks like I’m going to have to adopt the same strategy I did last time I wrote and just piece this letter together one paragraph at a time. I really should be studying but I have a meeting (more on this in the next paragraph) in about 20 minutes so I figured I’d write until then.
I guess the big news to report in my life is that about 2 weeks ago I got called as the elder’s quorum president in my ward. Yikes! Really, I’m very excited, I just hope I figure out what I’m doing sooner than later! We are having a mid-week presidency meeting (mentioned above) to continue working on home teaching. This meeting began Sunday afternoon, but after 4 hours we still have a lot of work to do, and we figured we’d better meet to get some more done. I already love the calling, but keenly feel the responsibility of it at the same time. It’s interesting to me that church callings have a way of juxtaposing those emotions. My love for the people out here is growing in ways I never knew it could, which is neat. I love how active service in the church provides opportunities to serve and grow in love for people.
A few days after I’d been issued the call but before the ward knew about it, I had a chance to spend an evening in the Chicago temple. Descriptions of the feelings, emotions and insight gained during such times never translates well into written word (at least not for me), but it was an evening I’m very grateful for, where I learned a lot and received a lot of insight, especially into the matter of who should be called as councilors. I felt I received as clear a direction in councilor selection as I have ever received about anything in my life and the few hours we spent together on Sunday only confirmed to me that the Lord really prepared these people for their callings. All I can say is I’m glad the Lord is in charge on this whole thing because I’d never be able to pull it off alone.
Next Day…
So, the weather in Milwaukee has been steadily improving over the last few weeks until it finally now resembles habitable! There were weeks this winter when I wondered how the first person ever saw Wisconsin and said to himself, “Self, I think I’ll build a house here on the frozen tundra amidst the drifts of snow that just buried my horse, and call this place home”. But, as always happens, the weather has improved to the point where I completely understand how a person could happily live their entire lives in this state! The snow-mountains have melted, things are green, and we get an occasional rain shower (which I love!) It really is beautiful out here.
Later in the day…
I’ve got a couple of funny stories I want to share. These strike me as funny. Hopefully a few others may see some humor in them.
First, “The Story of the Fulminate Kitchenware”
For breakfast the other morning I decided I wanted to get a batch of Pillsbury caramel stick rolls cooking in the oven. I turned the oven to the prescribed temperature (375 degrees), prepared the rolls in a small Pyrex dish, put them into the oven to cook and started doing some of my other pre-lecture morning routines.
Perhaps 3 or 4 minutes before the rolls were ready to be pulled out of the oven, I was mixing up some grape juice to supplement my morning fare and my roommate was sitting at the kitchen table contentedly reading the Ensign. In the midst of these peaceful endeavors, a somewhat startling sound emanated from the oven. It sounded a little like small arms fire followed by the disheartening sound of broken glass falling onto a hard surface. My roommate, who had been absorbed in his Ensign article, assumed I had tried to pull the pan from the oven, burned myself and dropped the Pyrex, casing it to shatter. In truth I was 10 feet from the oven, and to my advantage had not burned myself at all. My first thought was, “that can’t be what I think it is”…but sure enough it was! The Pyrex pan, of its own volition, had exploded! And I mean that in all seriousness – It exploded! This pan did not crack, or delicately split down the middle, it blew up into lots and lots of tiny little pieces, spilling caramel and glass shards onto the heating element of the oven. This of course resulted in a fumigation of our apartment with carbonized caramel smoke. As this occurred minutes before I had to rush off to lecture, I had no choice but to quickly scrape the glass shards out of the oven, and turn the oven to “self clean” before running over to the school.
Approximately 9 hours later I returned to our apartment for dinner. I had kind of forgotten the incident in the rush of daily activities and only remembered upon seeing the oven still set to “self clean”. Not knowing how these things work, I assumed the self clean cycle must be done by then turned it off, then turned the oven to 400 degrees in order to do a little cooking of my dinner. While the oven heated I called someone and we started talking. Just at that moment my roommate came home and upon entering the kitchen noted a faint aroma and a small whiff of smoke rising out of the oven. He opened to oven, determined to investigate the matter for himself. Once again, we fumigated the apartment as billows of choking smoke poured from the oven. Apparently the “self clean” cycle on our oven does not work and the heating element was still covered with caramel!
Lets just say I ended up eating out that night, and had to spend over an hour the next day cleaning the oven with oven cleaner and paper towels!
Even later (I’m clearly taking too many study breaks)…
Second story: “The Story of the Rogue Elders Quorum President”
(Tell me if this doesn’t sound like just what you would expect to have happen the week you are sustained as elder’s quorum president…)
I don’t know how many of you have ever eaten at Noodles and Co. but if you haven’t, let me recommend that you do. In fact, don’t wait. Go right now. Drive to a neighboring state if you must…I love that place! They have a dish called Pesto Cavatappi that I would rank on the list of Ideals in Humanity somewhere between a cheap, inexhaustible, clean energy source and world peace.
Last week a friend and I (this friend shares my feelings about Pesto Cavatappi) decided we needed to try and duplicate this recipe. In fact, this friend is who I felt needed to be called as elder’s quorum 1st councilor. We were meeting to discuss elders quorum business and decided we wanted a meal to go along with our meeting. We did a google search and came up with a recipe that claims to be the same as what Noodles and Co. uses. This recipe, among other things, calls for the noodles to be pan fried in white wine (thus burning off the alcohol but leaving behind the taste). Anyway, it was my job to get the groceries necessary for this culinary endeavor.
I must have been the strangest customer the alcohol department at Pick n’ Save has ever seen. I was almost blushing from embarrassment at even being in the alcohol section, and I walked around reading labels just hoping to find a bottle labeled “white wine”, but apparently that is not French enough. Everything was labeled in mystic wine code (pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, etc). Eventually I had to approach the lady behind the counter and have the following dialog:
Eric: “umm…I need help. See, I don’t drink but I need a bottle of white wine for a recipe I’m making”
Lady: “that is what all of our alcoholics say. What is it you need?”
Eric: “I just need the cheapest white wine you’ve got”
Lady: “sounds like you actually need a Sherry”
Eric: “No, I need a wine”
Lady: “A Sherry is a type of cooking wine”
Eric: “ohh…I guess I need that”
After proving that I’m a total alcohol moron (a title I’ll gladly claim) I approached the counter and asked about the procedure of buying the wine. I had it in my head that I would have to prove my age, status as an American citizen, and possibly have a criminal background check before the Sherry would be issued. In fact, the lady didn’t even ask for my driver’s license until I asked her directly if she needed to see it!
And for bonus laughs, wouldn’t you know that in the Pick n’ Save at the exact moment I was exiting the liquor section with my purchase I ran into a lady I recognize as a member of one of the married wards in the stake! I’m hoping she didn’t recognize me as a Mormon because I’m pretty sure she’d think I was AWOL in a word of wisdom sense!
By the way, the recipe turned out really quite good and if anyone is interested I’ll gladly send it along!
Okay, those are all my stories, and I’d better finish up here. The only other thing I want to leave with is an excerpt from Dave Berry that really rings true to me right now because I just bought my plane ticket home for the summer (ouch!). This excerpt is from a section titled “Answers to Common Air-Travel Questions”
Q: Airline fares are very confusing. How, exactly, does the airline determine the price of my ticket?
A: Many cost factors are involved in flying an airplane from point A to point B, including distance, passenger load, whether each pilot will get his own pilot hat or they’re going to share, and whether point B has a runway.
Q: So the airline uses these cost factors to calculate a rational price for my ticket?
A: No. That is determined by Rudy the Fare Chicken, who decides the price of each ticket individually by pecking on a computer keyboard sprinkled with corn. If an airline agent tells you that they’re having “computer problems” this means that Rudy is sick, and technicians are trying to activate the backup system, Conrad the Fare Hamster.
(I wonder if the price of medical school is determined in a similar manner???)
Love you all!
-Eric
Looks like I’m going to have to adopt the same strategy I did last time I wrote and just piece this letter together one paragraph at a time. I really should be studying but I have a meeting (more on this in the next paragraph) in about 20 minutes so I figured I’d write until then.
I guess the big news to report in my life is that about 2 weeks ago I got called as the elder’s quorum president in my ward. Yikes! Really, I’m very excited, I just hope I figure out what I’m doing sooner than later! We are having a mid-week presidency meeting (mentioned above) to continue working on home teaching. This meeting began Sunday afternoon, but after 4 hours we still have a lot of work to do, and we figured we’d better meet to get some more done. I already love the calling, but keenly feel the responsibility of it at the same time. It’s interesting to me that church callings have a way of juxtaposing those emotions. My love for the people out here is growing in ways I never knew it could, which is neat. I love how active service in the church provides opportunities to serve and grow in love for people.
A few days after I’d been issued the call but before the ward knew about it, I had a chance to spend an evening in the Chicago temple. Descriptions of the feelings, emotions and insight gained during such times never translates well into written word (at least not for me), but it was an evening I’m very grateful for, where I learned a lot and received a lot of insight, especially into the matter of who should be called as councilors. I felt I received as clear a direction in councilor selection as I have ever received about anything in my life and the few hours we spent together on Sunday only confirmed to me that the Lord really prepared these people for their callings. All I can say is I’m glad the Lord is in charge on this whole thing because I’d never be able to pull it off alone.
Next Day…
So, the weather in Milwaukee has been steadily improving over the last few weeks until it finally now resembles habitable! There were weeks this winter when I wondered how the first person ever saw Wisconsin and said to himself, “Self, I think I’ll build a house here on the frozen tundra amidst the drifts of snow that just buried my horse, and call this place home”. But, as always happens, the weather has improved to the point where I completely understand how a person could happily live their entire lives in this state! The snow-mountains have melted, things are green, and we get an occasional rain shower (which I love!) It really is beautiful out here.
Later in the day…
I’ve got a couple of funny stories I want to share. These strike me as funny. Hopefully a few others may see some humor in them.
First, “The Story of the Fulminate Kitchenware”
For breakfast the other morning I decided I wanted to get a batch of Pillsbury caramel stick rolls cooking in the oven. I turned the oven to the prescribed temperature (375 degrees), prepared the rolls in a small Pyrex dish, put them into the oven to cook and started doing some of my other pre-lecture morning routines.
Perhaps 3 or 4 minutes before the rolls were ready to be pulled out of the oven, I was mixing up some grape juice to supplement my morning fare and my roommate was sitting at the kitchen table contentedly reading the Ensign. In the midst of these peaceful endeavors, a somewhat startling sound emanated from the oven. It sounded a little like small arms fire followed by the disheartening sound of broken glass falling onto a hard surface. My roommate, who had been absorbed in his Ensign article, assumed I had tried to pull the pan from the oven, burned myself and dropped the Pyrex, casing it to shatter. In truth I was 10 feet from the oven, and to my advantage had not burned myself at all. My first thought was, “that can’t be what I think it is”…but sure enough it was! The Pyrex pan, of its own volition, had exploded! And I mean that in all seriousness – It exploded! This pan did not crack, or delicately split down the middle, it blew up into lots and lots of tiny little pieces, spilling caramel and glass shards onto the heating element of the oven. This of course resulted in a fumigation of our apartment with carbonized caramel smoke. As this occurred minutes before I had to rush off to lecture, I had no choice but to quickly scrape the glass shards out of the oven, and turn the oven to “self clean” before running over to the school.
Approximately 9 hours later I returned to our apartment for dinner. I had kind of forgotten the incident in the rush of daily activities and only remembered upon seeing the oven still set to “self clean”. Not knowing how these things work, I assumed the self clean cycle must be done by then turned it off, then turned the oven to 400 degrees in order to do a little cooking of my dinner. While the oven heated I called someone and we started talking. Just at that moment my roommate came home and upon entering the kitchen noted a faint aroma and a small whiff of smoke rising out of the oven. He opened to oven, determined to investigate the matter for himself. Once again, we fumigated the apartment as billows of choking smoke poured from the oven. Apparently the “self clean” cycle on our oven does not work and the heating element was still covered with caramel!
Lets just say I ended up eating out that night, and had to spend over an hour the next day cleaning the oven with oven cleaner and paper towels!
Even later (I’m clearly taking too many study breaks)…
Second story: “The Story of the Rogue Elders Quorum President”
(Tell me if this doesn’t sound like just what you would expect to have happen the week you are sustained as elder’s quorum president…)
I don’t know how many of you have ever eaten at Noodles and Co. but if you haven’t, let me recommend that you do. In fact, don’t wait. Go right now. Drive to a neighboring state if you must…I love that place! They have a dish called Pesto Cavatappi that I would rank on the list of Ideals in Humanity somewhere between a cheap, inexhaustible, clean energy source and world peace.
Last week a friend and I (this friend shares my feelings about Pesto Cavatappi) decided we needed to try and duplicate this recipe. In fact, this friend is who I felt needed to be called as elder’s quorum 1st councilor. We were meeting to discuss elders quorum business and decided we wanted a meal to go along with our meeting. We did a google search and came up with a recipe that claims to be the same as what Noodles and Co. uses. This recipe, among other things, calls for the noodles to be pan fried in white wine (thus burning off the alcohol but leaving behind the taste). Anyway, it was my job to get the groceries necessary for this culinary endeavor.
I must have been the strangest customer the alcohol department at Pick n’ Save has ever seen. I was almost blushing from embarrassment at even being in the alcohol section, and I walked around reading labels just hoping to find a bottle labeled “white wine”, but apparently that is not French enough. Everything was labeled in mystic wine code (pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, etc). Eventually I had to approach the lady behind the counter and have the following dialog:
Eric: “umm…I need help. See, I don’t drink but I need a bottle of white wine for a recipe I’m making”
Lady: “that is what all of our alcoholics say. What is it you need?”
Eric: “I just need the cheapest white wine you’ve got”
Lady: “sounds like you actually need a Sherry”
Eric: “No, I need a wine”
Lady: “A Sherry is a type of cooking wine”
Eric: “ohh…I guess I need that”
After proving that I’m a total alcohol moron (a title I’ll gladly claim) I approached the counter and asked about the procedure of buying the wine. I had it in my head that I would have to prove my age, status as an American citizen, and possibly have a criminal background check before the Sherry would be issued. In fact, the lady didn’t even ask for my driver’s license until I asked her directly if she needed to see it!
And for bonus laughs, wouldn’t you know that in the Pick n’ Save at the exact moment I was exiting the liquor section with my purchase I ran into a lady I recognize as a member of one of the married wards in the stake! I’m hoping she didn’t recognize me as a Mormon because I’m pretty sure she’d think I was AWOL in a word of wisdom sense!
By the way, the recipe turned out really quite good and if anyone is interested I’ll gladly send it along!
Okay, those are all my stories, and I’d better finish up here. The only other thing I want to leave with is an excerpt from Dave Berry that really rings true to me right now because I just bought my plane ticket home for the summer (ouch!). This excerpt is from a section titled “Answers to Common Air-Travel Questions”
Q: Airline fares are very confusing. How, exactly, does the airline determine the price of my ticket?
A: Many cost factors are involved in flying an airplane from point A to point B, including distance, passenger load, whether each pilot will get his own pilot hat or they’re going to share, and whether point B has a runway.
Q: So the airline uses these cost factors to calculate a rational price for my ticket?
A: No. That is determined by Rudy the Fare Chicken, who decides the price of each ticket individually by pecking on a computer keyboard sprinkled with corn. If an airline agent tells you that they’re having “computer problems” this means that Rudy is sick, and technicians are trying to activate the backup system, Conrad the Fare Hamster.
(I wonder if the price of medical school is determined in a similar manner???)
Love you all!
-Eric
Friday, April 18, 2008
04/18/2008-ish
Family & Friends,
I’m beginning this letter with the intention of having to spend several days plugging away at it. It is a few short weeks until cumulative finals start up and then immediately following that I begin my intensive study for my Step 1 board exam. All things considered, I should probably lock myself in a study room, do nothing but read my notes and consume caffeinated beverages through an IV in order to save time, but I can’t bring myself to do that, so I’ll be using this letter as a periodic sanity break, allowing myself a paragraph or so at a time.
(Several hours after writing the above paragraph)…
I guess one of the first things I can think to write about is a cool program being offered at the school that I have applied for and hope to hear back on soon. The program is being offered through the anesthesiology department and is essentially a resident assistant program where the recipient would follow an anesthesia resident and help out, learning how to do the things they do. I hope to get this position, not necessarily because I know I want to be an anesthesiologist, but because it is probably as high on the list as anything else.
One of my only major gripes with MCW is that they do not offer enough elective credits in the 3rd year for students to explore what kind of medicine they might like. Add this to the fact that in a normal 3rd year, you only spend a couple weeks in anesthesia and you can start to see why I thought it might be a good idea to grab any opportunity available to spend some time in the anesthesiology department.
(Next day)…
I don’t know yet if I will get accepted into this anesthesia program, but I have a funny story about my application.
When the big tamale of the anesthesia department sent around the email telling students about this program, he stated that "to apply, submit a CV and a cover letter to the anesthesiology department". Now, in 7 years of higher education, I have learned what a cover letter is, but exactly what a CV might be eluded me. I thought it might mean "cardiovascular" (though I wasn’t quite sure how to submit one of those). I also considered "critical value", "capitol vote" and "crunchy vacuum" as possible candidates…though none seemed to fit the context very well. Eventually I decided I’d have to do a very un-manly thing and ask what CV might mean (in retrospect, I should have just Googled it).
Knowing that first impressions are often the most important, I thought long and hard about how to ask the head of the anesthesiology department what a CV was while still sounding intelligent. After going through several options in my mind, I finally decided upon a sure-fire, no-nonsense, to-the-point approach that would let him know that he was dealing with a first rate intellectual while still gaining me the valuable information I needed ("Uhh…what’s a CV?")
Fortunately the head of anisthesia is a nice man and let me know that CV is the top secret medical ninja code name (really, it is Latin) for "Curriculum Vitae" or in other
words, a fancy type of resume that only people in academia use. And with that vital piece of information, I was able to pull together my CV without further embarrassment! (all of you who have known what a CV is since before you were potty-trained do not get to tease me about this!)
(later)…
Another topic which comes to mind as reportable is that I have joined the ranks of family members and fellow Americans with diagnosed migraine headaches
These headaches are not new to me, I just never thought they were migraines. For the last several years I will occasionally (perhaps once a month or so) come down with a real thumper that can make me a little sick to my stomach. These headaches can last for 2 or 3 days and really put a damper on things. I never thought they were migraines because I don’t get any sort of aura with them, but it turns out migraines don’t necessarily have to start with an aura (the things you learn in medical school!)
Anyway, 2 days before my last pharmacology test I came down with a really nasty headache. 45 Excedrin and 2 peptic ulcers later I decided to go in and see my doctor. Normally I would have just gone to bed until it went away, but that was not an option 2 days before a killer exam. My doctor heard my story and without breaking a sweat, diagnosed me and gave me a shot of something, which did the job. I was able to keep studying and I even passed my exam (not always as easy as you would hope in pharmacology)! Looks like I’ll be getting a prescription of Imitrex to have on hand when the next thumper starts!
(Next day)…
It’s hard to adequately convey exactly how much time I spend in one little study room doing nothing but reading notes and books. (Well, in all fairness sometimes I make lists on the blackboard erase them and write them again, so as to memorize the list). I can say that I spend all day every day in these activities but I think it comes across as a hyperbole more than the truth…how much I wish that was true. Really, I spend all day every day in this room engaged in these mundane activities, to the exclusion of all but the most basic bodily needs (and sometimes even those go neglected). If I’m feeling particularly crazy and reckless I might venture 2 miles down the road to the public library, spend 15 minutes browsing a book selection I’ll never have time to get to and then swing by the Walgreens on North Ave for a candy bar fix before returning to my dungeon…errr…study room!
Having said that, however, I did escape my routine one night last week and had dinner with a girl from the ward. She is from the area and has family out here. We actually went to her sister/brother-in-law’s place, had dinner and played games. Most of the games we played were board games, but we did spend a little time playing a Wii. Let the record show that for the first time since the Super Nintendo came out in 1990 I want a video game system! The Wii is AWESOME! I’d never played one before and it was a riot!
Well, this letter has spanned enough days and I should finish it up and get back to my study! I think I’ll have some fairly major news to report next time I write, but for now that is all I had better say.
Hope life is treating you all well!
-Eric
I’m beginning this letter with the intention of having to spend several days plugging away at it. It is a few short weeks until cumulative finals start up and then immediately following that I begin my intensive study for my Step 1 board exam. All things considered, I should probably lock myself in a study room, do nothing but read my notes and consume caffeinated beverages through an IV in order to save time, but I can’t bring myself to do that, so I’ll be using this letter as a periodic sanity break, allowing myself a paragraph or so at a time.
(Several hours after writing the above paragraph)…
I guess one of the first things I can think to write about is a cool program being offered at the school that I have applied for and hope to hear back on soon. The program is being offered through the anesthesiology department and is essentially a resident assistant program where the recipient would follow an anesthesia resident and help out, learning how to do the things they do. I hope to get this position, not necessarily because I know I want to be an anesthesiologist, but because it is probably as high on the list as anything else.
One of my only major gripes with MCW is that they do not offer enough elective credits in the 3rd year for students to explore what kind of medicine they might like. Add this to the fact that in a normal 3rd year, you only spend a couple weeks in anesthesia and you can start to see why I thought it might be a good idea to grab any opportunity available to spend some time in the anesthesiology department.
(Next day)…
I don’t know yet if I will get accepted into this anesthesia program, but I have a funny story about my application.
When the big tamale of the anesthesia department sent around the email telling students about this program, he stated that "to apply, submit a CV and a cover letter to the anesthesiology department". Now, in 7 years of higher education, I have learned what a cover letter is, but exactly what a CV might be eluded me. I thought it might mean "cardiovascular" (though I wasn’t quite sure how to submit one of those). I also considered "critical value", "capitol vote" and "crunchy vacuum" as possible candidates…though none seemed to fit the context very well. Eventually I decided I’d have to do a very un-manly thing and ask what CV might mean (in retrospect, I should have just Googled it).
Knowing that first impressions are often the most important, I thought long and hard about how to ask the head of the anesthesiology department what a CV was while still sounding intelligent. After going through several options in my mind, I finally decided upon a sure-fire, no-nonsense, to-the-point approach that would let him know that he was dealing with a first rate intellectual while still gaining me the valuable information I needed ("Uhh…what’s a CV?")
Fortunately the head of anisthesia is a nice man and let me know that CV is the top secret medical ninja code name (really, it is Latin) for "Curriculum Vitae" or in other
words, a fancy type of resume that only people in academia use. And with that vital piece of information, I was able to pull together my CV without further embarrassment! (all of you who have known what a CV is since before you were potty-trained do not get to tease me about this!)
(later)…
Another topic which comes to mind as reportable is that I have joined the ranks of family members and fellow Americans with diagnosed migraine headaches
These headaches are not new to me, I just never thought they were migraines. For the last several years I will occasionally (perhaps once a month or so) come down with a real thumper that can make me a little sick to my stomach. These headaches can last for 2 or 3 days and really put a damper on things. I never thought they were migraines because I don’t get any sort of aura with them, but it turns out migraines don’t necessarily have to start with an aura (the things you learn in medical school!)
Anyway, 2 days before my last pharmacology test I came down with a really nasty headache. 45 Excedrin and 2 peptic ulcers later I decided to go in and see my doctor. Normally I would have just gone to bed until it went away, but that was not an option 2 days before a killer exam. My doctor heard my story and without breaking a sweat, diagnosed me and gave me a shot of something, which did the job. I was able to keep studying and I even passed my exam (not always as easy as you would hope in pharmacology)! Looks like I’ll be getting a prescription of Imitrex to have on hand when the next thumper starts!
(Next day)…
It’s hard to adequately convey exactly how much time I spend in one little study room doing nothing but reading notes and books. (Well, in all fairness sometimes I make lists on the blackboard erase them and write them again, so as to memorize the list). I can say that I spend all day every day in these activities but I think it comes across as a hyperbole more than the truth…how much I wish that was true. Really, I spend all day every day in this room engaged in these mundane activities, to the exclusion of all but the most basic bodily needs (and sometimes even those go neglected). If I’m feeling particularly crazy and reckless I might venture 2 miles down the road to the public library, spend 15 minutes browsing a book selection I’ll never have time to get to and then swing by the Walgreens on North Ave for a candy bar fix before returning to my dungeon…errr…study room!
Having said that, however, I did escape my routine one night last week and had dinner with a girl from the ward. She is from the area and has family out here. We actually went to her sister/brother-in-law’s place, had dinner and played games. Most of the games we played were board games, but we did spend a little time playing a Wii. Let the record show that for the first time since the Super Nintendo came out in 1990 I want a video game system! The Wii is AWESOME! I’d never played one before and it was a riot!
Well, this letter has spanned enough days and I should finish it up and get back to my study! I think I’ll have some fairly major news to report next time I write, but for now that is all I had better say.
Hope life is treating you all well!
-Eric
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)