We had a lecture in pathology today, where we saw the following picture of a colon with familial polyposis.

I wish I could tell you what familial polyposis is, but I unfortunately couldn’t pay attention. Why not, you ask?

Because, much like many of you, I was immediately struck by how much the colon looked like TROGDOR!!! (By the way… if you don’t know who or what Trogdor is, please visit that link first. The following post won’t make sense otherwise).

Here we go! Lets see my skills of a med student!

To begin, lets get a nice sheet of paper.

Close it up real good at the top for his head, and then using consummate v’s give him teeth, spinities, and angry eyebrows.

then you can add smoke, some fire,

and maybe some wings… now he’s a wing-a-ling dragon…

lets put one of those beefy arms back on him.

yeah, that looks real good… coming out of the back of his neck there…

And now he needs a name. How about…. TROGDOR… the BURNINATOR!

So I was in the computer lounge during the break just now, and a chair was open next to a computer. Naturally, I sat down.

After a few seconds I noticed that I was sitting on a warm, wet spot on the chair. As I got up, my hand brushed the spot, only to realize that it was noticeably damp. Then I smelled my hand.

Pee. Someone peed on the chair, left the room, and I just sat on it.

I’d like to point out that we’re in medical school, ostensibly learning things like “sterility” and “washing your hands when you walk into a patient’s room”. Apparently we’re also taking “Public Urination 101: How To Pee On Chairs” . I must have forgotten to go to that class. We may be dealing with a serial pee-er, folks.

I am so wierded out right now I can’t even begin to describe how wierded out I am. What is with my bizarre luck with chairs lately? My life has gotten so surreal…

Word on the street is that one of the first years has had the license plate “Doc2B” ever since college premed.

Dude… not cool.

I saw a really, morbidly obese woman in the grocery store today buying whole milk for her extremely fat teenaged son and her soon-to-be-extremely-fat young daughter.

I almost told her that her kids should be drinking skim, not whole milk. Then she started to scream at her kids like a harpy and I figured it was best to stay out of it. I can just imagine the conversation…

Me: Ma’am, your children don’t need to be drinking whole milk. In fact, they should cut all liquid calories out of their diets, as they may soon be mistaken for land-faring manatees.
Her: BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! (I die a violent death as she rips off my head)

We had our Psych visit today. A group of 10 medical students watched a psych resident interview a woman who slit her wrists and popped several Xanax last night. Some thoughts:

• A psychiatric interview is much different from psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is what you always see on TV with the goofy knitted sweaters and the comfy couch. An interview is much more directed and is aimed at pinpointing exactly what psychiatric disorders may be present. It’s also much more interesting than what you see on TV.

• In our case, the woman was very cookie cutter. Strong family history of manic/depression with her own episodes of mania and depression. The depression was comorbid with mild anorexia to help regain her sense of self control. There was an episode of sexual abuse in her past to which she attributed a lot of her anxiety and depression. Pretty cut-and-dried, which is nice. I thought shrinks usually dealt in grey, murky areas.

• Nobody should ever walk into a patient room in the middle of an interview, especially when the patient has just admitted that she was abused. It really screws with the flow. Jeez.

I think what struck me the most, though, was the fact that she started going to counseling last week, because she was worried she would try to hurt herself. Which she then did. Unfortunately, the psychiatrist only saw her for 15 minutes, put her on a couple of pills (that she then OD’ed on) and shoved her out of his office. He didn’t even bother to schedule a followup.

The medical students were all up in arms about this terrible psychiatrist. But, what the resident then said really struck me. Managed care is hitting all areas of medicine, even psychiatry. It’s hard to do proper psychotherapy when HMOs only pay for 15 minutes worth of counseling time. The sessions go something like this…

Doc: “How are you doing?”
Patient: “I’m a little depressed.”
Doc: “Fine, then, we’ll up your dose.”

It’s hard to do anything more than simple pill pushing when you can’t spend the time to really talk to your patients.

Well, I give up. Mary beat me. She actually went to the trouble of

a) finding out that the microscope I was using was registered to another person (lets call her Fran for now),
b) realizing that Fran didn’t use her microscope,
c) crying foul about Fran registering the wrong microscope in the wrong room,
d) having the woman in charge of microscope registrations invalidate Fran’s registration,
e) registering Fran’s (i.e. my) microscope in her own name,
f) informing me that it’s now officially her microscope.

Impressive, yes? I doubt I would have gone to all that trouble to steal a seat.

Oh, by the way, to all the people who have offered me spots at their tables, thanks! I really appreciate it.

Let me start with a bit of background.

Pathology labs this year take place in two rooms, so naturally they had to split the class in two. Half the class goes to one room, half to another. This is more a matter of convenience than anything else, so people have gravitated to a room depending on which of the two teachers they like better. I just so happen to have moved to the other room- the one I am not “technically” assigned to. I found a table with a free microscope and I’ve been sitting in the same seat for 4 weeks now. I like the people at my table. I’ve even moved my pathology slides into my new room and switched my crappy path lab chair for a more comfortable one. In short, I have a “seat”. One could even theoretically call it “my seat”.

Here’s where it gets bizarre.

I walk into lab this morning and one of my classmates is sitting in my chair. We’ll call her Mary Lawful for now. At first I think she’s joking around with me.

Mary: I’m taking your seat, Zac.
Me: Ha, funny.
Mary: No, I’m serious. I’m tired of being a social outcast in the corner, so I’m taking your seat.
Me: Wait… what?

At this point I start to realize that she’s not joking. Utter confusion starts to kick in.

Mary: You can go sit at my seat by yourself in the corner if you want. I want to sit here.
Me: What are we, in kindergarden? You’re actually taking my seat away?
Mary: Yep. I don’t want to be a bitch about it, but I want this seat.
Me: So you’re going to make me go sit by myself? In the corner? Because you don’t want to any more?
Mary: Yes. I get priority seating in this room because I’m actually assigned to it, so I’m taking your seat from you and there’s nothing you can do to get it back.
Me: …

So there you have it. I mean, really? Who does that? I’ve now lost a seat that I’ve been sitting in for about a month! Now I have to go find a new table… or get relegated to sit by myself at the empty table that she was at before. By myself. For the rest of the year. Lonely and bored. Crying softly so nobody can hear me.

WTF? Of all the childish bullshit!

Apparently this year is very up and down for me.

I brew beer. Brewing makes me happy. I think it’s probably one of the greatest hobbies ever… when you are done, you get good beer! Unfortunately, the brewing store sold me bad yeast. I just went outside and checked to find my beer totally infected and foul-smelling. Upsetting, to say the least. Also, $30 down the drain. Literally. Poured down the drain.

Also, I just found out that my preceptor may not be as awesome as I thought. He’s super-nice and really good with kids, but he might not push me as hard as I want him to. The woman who had him last year said that he’s too easy-going and laid back, and that she’s not as prepared for 3rd year as her classmates… not something you necessarily want to hear about someone who needs to whip you into shape. I mean, I need to be able to go see a patient entirely by myself, know what I’m looking at, and then present all the findings in under 3 minutes to a doctor in less than a year. Right now I’m nowhere close*.

Sooooo we’ll see. I have my 4th session with him on Tuesday, so I’ll ask him to start pimping me (for non-med students out there, that’s where the doctor asks you ridiculously hard questions that you may or may not know, in front of patients/nurses/other doctors) and maybe sending me into patient’s rooms by myself. Scary, but I won’t learn otherwise.

Year’s off to a mixed start. Here’s to hoping it gets better.

*Now, it should be said that I am very impatient. I know this about myself. So, it’s entirely possible that I want too much, too fast.

Our Pathology lectures are already being recorded and put online. This is high technology for us. This is stone-age for every other med school in the entire world.

So, I had the brilliant idea of asking our Microbiology teacher if we could tape Micro as well. The camera is already in place. With the right wording (“it’s a fantastic review tool”, and “preserve these lectures for posterity”) I convinced a) the dean, and b) the Micro course director to go along with it. Woohoo! Now Micro lectures are taped too! And now to convince Pharmacology…

The (new!) first-years had their first day of class today. Court and I went into pathology lab to examine specimens, and as we did, I noticed that several of the first years were already hard at work in the library. Since they only had orientation today, I can only assume that they were pre-reading for lecture tomorrow.

I kind of chuckled to myself… I remember being all gung-ho about getting started. I was most definitely among the crowd of people who slogged through 6-7 hours of incredibly inefficient group study sessions the first day of school. I mean, I was so excited! I’ll give you a hint. The word rhymes with “more funner”, but without the more.

Anyhow, I thought it was cute. It almost made up for the fact that they took away our lab space. Almost, but not quite. They still have to win my trust.