It’s 3 AM, and I have a presentation due tomorrow. I’ll be wasting 10 minutes of my classmates’ time with BS about my work. I suppose that’s unfair of me. I’m giving a solid 8 minutes of background information, followed by 30 seconds of “and-I-have-no-data-whatsoever”. Still, this presentation will be a masterpiece in the art of bullshitting.

Anyhow, this blog Waiterrant has been keeping me entertained all night. Wish I could write like that.

EDIT: Agraphia.net is back up! Hopefully this time for good.

Apparently I spoke too soon. Frank had a liver transplant… he wasn’t cured by the chemoembolization. Bleh.

So I’ve been going through CT and MRI images, figuring out the tumor sizes for my patients. Tumors keep getting bigger, they keep dying. It sucks, and it’s sad, and I hate it. Then I get to Frank. Frank has a 2 cm tumor in the top of his liver before he sees my doc. Then he gets the chemoembolization treatment I’ve been working on this summer. 6 months later, the tumor is GONE! This never happens- he’s one in a million.

Frank’s been alive for a year and a half since his initial diagnosis, and he’s living cancer-free. He was one of the lucky 6 from my SSDI post. I’m so happy for him.

Wow. I just spent the morning going through the social security death index (casually referred to as the SSDI on their website) trying to find out whether or not my patients were alive.

I mentioned earlier that this was a palliative treatment only. Palliative means that these people are going to die, because we aren’t treating their cancers, just the symptoms.

So, I just found out that only 6 of my 15 patients are still alive. And the really sad thing is, I’ve spent a lot of time with these people. I’ve read up on all of the procedures that they’ve had. I know who had a bum kidney and who didn’t. For that matter, I’ve been rooting for my favorite patient, Ray-ray (affectionately named by the department because he repeats his name over and over on the operating table). He’s one of the lucky ones.

I’m a little surprised that I’m saddened. Well… maybe not surprised, because I spent 2 months of my life with those people, even though they were just words on a screen. I guess I feel like I know them.

I’m not a fan of the SSDI.

OK, I was verbally berated by the Peasinator about how I haven’t kept up on the blog. I haven’t, in fact, kept up on the blog, as is evidenced by the fact that there have been no posts.

Ready for the summar summary?

1) I didn’t have any data. The sum* total of patients that I had was (drumroll please) 15. Of those 15 patients, none had any data that could be standardized.

2) Its funny… I could have done a lot more. I could have been scrubbing in on surgery by the end of this whole thing, probably for every procedure. I’ve been around the department longer than most rotations even last. Amazingly, I felt ZERO motivation to do so. Surprised? I’m not either. Its my last summer, ever, and I could either have busted my ass for absolutely nothing, or worked 10 hours a week, like I did. Both ways, I come out at the end of my summer with the same thing, except that one involves me being exhausted and one involves me being relaxed, sunburnt (San Diego beaches woohoo!), and ready to do something again.

3) By far and away the best part about this summer has been TotShots. We give vaccinations to screaming kids. They hate us. I love them. It works.

So, I apologize for not posting. I also miss my old blog (back up when colleges start again!) so part of this is me pouting.

*how many times in this entry can I say sum, summer, summar, summery, or summary? YOU be the judge!**

**little starry postscripts stolen SHAMELESSLY from Montgomery.