Many awesome things have happened this week.

1) I befriended a 3rd year med student on her Interventional Radiology (for simplicity’s sake, i’ll just refer to it as IR from now on… everyone else does) rotation. She’s been totally helping me around- where to get scrubs, how to put on the lead-lined suit, how to access CT/X-Ray/MRI images. Always, always befriend someone older and wiser than you. Mental note, to myself, for the future. You’d think, by the way, that scrubs would be easy to come by. They aren’t. Hospitals are actually hardcore about who gets access to scrubs, and when- apparently scrub theft is a big problem. Not surprising, since I’ve already stolen 4 pairs :-) . In my defense, I don’t want to have to change once I get to the hospital… it’s a lot easier to have several clean pairs at home that I can just drive to work in. Once they get dirty, into the hospital laundry bin they go!

2) I’ve seen a ton of IR procedures. They are incredibly cool.

This is as far as I got on this post… I found it in my saved drafts a month later.

I followed my doc (who shall further be referred to as O’Malley to protect everyone involved) around for the most part of today- saw his residents (affectionately referred to as “monkeys”) perform a kidney biopsy and attempt a liver biopsy, only to realize that the nodule was gone. Good news for the patient… he was worried he had cancer. They got to tell him it was just a cyst.

The good news? He let me go at 11:30, told me to take a long lunch and not to come back tomorrow until “at least 9″. He also said that me wearing a tie “made him nervous”, which means I get to dress down / wear scrubs all summer.

Sweet.

The bad news is, I felt completely awkward all day, got in a bunch of people’s ways, and don’t know enough to really understand what’s going on around there. It took me the entire morning to figure out that the “angio suite” is, in fact, the interventional radiology room, which is a subset of the entire department. It’s the small things that get you. That, and the fact that every single procedure is acronymmed. Is acronymmed a word? It is now.

TIPS: Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt.
TACE: Trans-Arterial Chemoembolization.

‘course, I didn’t get the day totally off- I’ve got a textbook on CT imaging to read (with LOTS of pretty pictures, which is sweet), about 10 articles, and a nagging feeling that I really need to review my anatomy textbooks. It doesn’t help that all they see is path, which means everything is distorted from normal. At one point, O’Malley pulled up an MRI on a guy with a 6cm colon (affectionately referred to as the “big stinker”… quite the jokester, he) and I couldn’t even see the pancreas. The only landmarks I recognised were the aorta and the kidneys. Yikes.

“Post”-finals! Get it? Get it? Humor!

I have not seen a happier group of people in a very long time. Perhaps ever. Smiling, laughing, joking. And, check it out- I’m now Zac, 1/4 M.D.

SWEET!

Here’s to a great year. ‘09ers… we’ve earned it!

So in 3 days we’re done with year 1 of med school. That means we “know” everything about how the body works normally. Riiiiiiight. Come next year, it’s pathology- taking everything we know about how things work right and learning how they go drastically wrong.

Honestly? I’m tired of working- I know we all are. Then, once next year is done we have the boards: studying 12-14 hours a day for 5 weeks to take a test that will literally determine what specialties we can go into. I’m already not looking forward to it.

I’m just tired of performing right now. Maybe I won’t say that once these tests are over, because the pressure will be off, but currently I’m just exhausted. I’m exhausted from studying material that I had to force myself to look at every time. I’m exhausted from getting too little sleep. I’m exhausted from endless quizzing, and studying, and feeling like I should be studying.

I can tell I’m getting a little melodramatic here, but I woke up at 7 this morning, took my SBS final (relaxing, believe it or not… we get roughly 30% of the class worth in extra credit just for showing up, which takes all the stress off), and have been studying ever since. I’m off to bed now… next post is post-Biochem (ha!). I’ll either be elated or crushed. Either way, I’ll likely be drunk.

Oh… and our SBS exam was all about alcohol and drug abuse. ‘least now I know what to look for.

Quick! Everyone type in “bananas in my pants” on Google! I’m the third hit!!!!

* I paused to think whether or not I should be this excited, and realized: yes, yes I should.

*edit* now #2.

*EDIT* Guess who is now the #1 hit in Google? That’s right. Me. Thanks to all you loyal readers. I’ll post a real entry soon, I promise.

To anybody that’s had to put up with me since midterms, I apologize.

I realized last night that I have totally been “that guy” ever since I didn’t ace the Biochem midterm. Courtney snapped last night when I started picking apart all the practice questions I got wrong, blaming our teacher for writing bad questions. Couldn’t have been my fault for not knowing the answer, clearly his fault for being unclear.

Anyhow, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was doing it and it’s a totally lame thing to do. I’ve been pinning my frustrations and shortcomings on anybody but me (specifically, demonizing our biochem prof to anybody that would listen). So, to everyone who’s had to put up with that, I apologize.

Ok, now that that’s over, it’s back to studying. Y’know, once you get past your complete and utter hatred for all things biochem, this stuff is pretty cool :-).

Topic of the Day: Diarrhea!

So we had this awesome lecture on explosive diarrhea. I know, I know, gross. But honestly, cholera and other 3rd world illnesses are some of the coolest things we’ve learned about so far. It’s extremely dangerous- death by diarrhea is the 2nd most common killer of children worldwide, preceded only by malaria.

Turns out that there are a whole lot of factors influencing poop. It’s fascinating, really. Cholera is particularly nasty because unlike lactose intolerance (where you can’t digest milk, so you get indigestion after drinking it), your body actually vigorously flushes out the bacteria… but in doing so, completely levels the inside of your intestines, like a flood through Mayan ruins. Bad times. The cholera also leaves behind a toxin that forces you to secrete fluid into the gut… and this means that you’ve got 3-6 days of pure fun to look forward to while your intestines furiously regenerate.

So why, you ask, am I telling you about diarrhea? Because of what they treat it with: pedialyte/WHO rehydration therapy. Water (to rehydrate), salt (to replenish lost electrolytes), sugar (required to absorb the salt), and fat (helps the intestine grow back). These are all ingredients in Pedialyte, the World Health Organization rehydrating solution… and in chicken soup.

Turns out, home remedies are way important. In America, we’ve got chicken soup. In Mexico, they have horchata. In Japan, miso. But in Africa, where all these kids are dying of cholera, they don’t have traditional “rehydrating” foods, which is why the WHO rehydrating solution has helped so many people.

Lesson learned: listen to mom, at least when she tells you to eat chicken soup so you feel better. She’s right. Though she wasn’t right about my 9PM curfew in high school. Or about my younger sister’s new boyfriend… I knew that guy was an ass when I first saw him.

Woo! 100 med posts!

In other news, apparently Google has started indexing my blog. You’ll find me with:

distended or bulging jugular veins
neurofibromatosis retarded
lunesta advertising stance
hate triton

I particularly like the last one.

I just finished reading all of the biochem notes. All 47 chapters of them. Finished. Done. Now all I have to do is review them 3 times before the exam.

This, by the way, is a monumental accomplishment. I’m going to go drink a beer to celebrate.

I walked over to Java Shitty (A.K.A. Java City A.K.A. our low-rent Starbucks) just now to grab some coffee with which to fuel my flagging desire to study.

The dude takes one look at me and my battered coffee mug and says “Wow. You must be studying, or somethin’.” I reply in the affirmative, and he fills up the mug, free of charge, and wishes me the best of luck.

Coffee dude, you are my hero.