As I finished eating my garlicky pasta while gulping down coffee, I realized something. I’m screwed for the wards next year.

You see, I don’t have a sense of smell. Or at least, not one that is particularly well-developed. This means that I’ve gone through life without smelling other people’s farts, or their stinky feet, or their bad breath. Of course, the reverse is also true- I don’t smell my own. It’s a blessing and a curse.

Anyhow, I’ve managed to make it so far without too much close talking. Next year, that’s ALL I’ll be doing. And unless people are really honest about whether or not my breath smells, I’m not going to have any idea. Maybe I need to take up gum-chewing.

Now, I do have impeccable dental hygiene, which should help. I brush twice a day (though I rarely floss… sorry Dr. Robb! I know, I know, I’ll do better). But for those occasional days when the lunch lady puts too much garlic in the cafeteria food… god help us all.

Knowing full well that this post may put me on a governmental watchlist†, here I go.

There are times when med school is really, really cool. Today we learned about anthrax bioterrorism: why it’s unstoppable, how easy it is to pull off, and why it’s so awesome†† that we’re spreading the warm, gooey butter of freedom all over the barbaric Iraqi people.

Here’s the deal. “Anthrax” is a bacteria that normally infects our lovely bovine, equine, and ovine friends. Where it becomes problematic is that if humans breathe it in, we die. There is, however, a 5 day window – and being a bacteria, anthrax responds very well to antibiotics (the very same that women use for UTI’s, in fact). Not only that, immunizations prevent infection by all the common Bacillus anthracis strains. Where does it all go horribly, horribly wrong?

This gets back to the question of the gooey freedom butter†††. Apparently Saddam was importing trainloads of culture medium before we invaded. There are very few microorganisms out there well-suited to bioterrorism (the other is smallpox, but as a virus it doesn’t grow on culture medium), so unless he was trying to establish a new type of Iraqi cheese, it seems rather obvious what ol’ meanie-head was up to.

This is scary because if Saddam’s researchers had even the faintest idea what they were doing, they could easily grow an uncommon strain of B. anthracis that was antibiotic resistant. This a) negates our ability to immunize ourselves and b) ruins any hope of treatment. Combined with the ability to easily aerosolize the spores, this makes anthrax the ultimate bioweapon.

If you need me, I’ll be in my bunker.

†dear sirs, kindly consider the fact that I am a white, protestant male with a masonic grandfather, no history of violence, who has only ever visited western europe.
††chuckle.
†††goes well on freedom fries and freedom toast.

It’s scary spending money on financial aid. It’s even scarier buying a laptop on financial aid.

Unfortunately my trusty old presario x1000* is about to bite the dust. Strange grinding noises keep me awake at night… even when it’s turned off. I have lost my left control key. The power cord is missing large chunks of insulation (to be fair, it may be the packrats that live in my laundry pile). Wireless refuses to work. The fan blows harder than… well, that’s just not polite to say. Once the computer thinks that the battery is “low” – highly subjective, in my opinion – it shuts off and decides not to turn back on. The right mouse button doesn’t work, so I’m stuck control+clicking like all you silly mac users. The power key doesn’t turn the computer on any more (you gotta finesse it, my friends). I will say, though, this old thing has served me extremely well. She’ll sit around in a corner somewhere until I get around to building my own arcade machine. Which I very well may do.

And so, I introduce you to… the new hottness!

*I like to pretend that it’s a terminator and will kick your ass if you look at it the wrong way.

Jack Bauer is going to have to wait.

Please don’t tell me what happens. I’m catching up during spring break.

So I performed my first pelvic exam today. It was… interesting.

Top 3 things I have learned.

1) Don’t say “I’m going screw you now” to a female patient while performing her pelvic. I didn’t actually say this to our PI, but I asked if it was “ok to unscrew the speculum now” and she misheard me. Mental note.

2) If you are going to perform a rectal exam on a patient, DON’T ask them to “try to poop*” to loosen up the anal sphincter. I know that was our PI’s preferred method of loosening her sphincter, but I can now say from experience that it gets lots of crap on your hand. ’nuff said.

3) Never tell your doctor to “stroke the inside of your vagina so he can feel your ovaries”. Stroke is not the appropriate word in this context. I don’t know what the appropriate word might have been**, but it’s not stroke.

*Hey, I made absolutely sure that she meant exactly that… I didn’t trust it then and I certainly don’t trust it now.
** There are no words.

This may be callous of me, but sometimes I feel like our SBS class is one giant therapist couch for whoever is speaking. Today was one of those days.

Our speaker was the head of the hospice program, and started off telling his story. Overworked, underpaid, 2 kids and a wife he never saw. I got the impression that he no longer has either the wife or the kids (see above). Anyhow, alone and unhappy, he went to a grief workshop run by some woman named Elizabeth. She taught him the meaning of life through death. Or something like that.

30 minutes later as he’s reclining on our spacious leather couch (please, tell me more about your feelings), it turns out that he has found beauty in his life through the death of others. Now, I’ll say this carefully, because I do admit that a lot of what he said was poignant and touching. But, for most of his talk, I felt like I was watching a crappy romantic comedy.

Blargh. My heart is 2 sizes too small.

*If you haven’t seen Arrested Development, you are both depressed and emotionally impoverished without even knowing it! Remedy this immediately!

6 hours of class, day one.

We’re back.

OK, I’m going to make it official.

Where the hell are our SBS grades? It’s been over 3 weeks. It is graded by scantron. There is absolutely no way on God’s Green Earth that it should have taken them longer than, say, 2 hours to get our scores up.

C’mon. I don’t really care that much (as we do, in fact, get so much extra credit that our actual grades are inconsequential), but it’s the PRINCIPLE of the matter.

I think they lost the tests and are too afraid to tell us.