Saturday, March 08, 2003

Look! I found a new way to waste my time. Yep, I changed the look of my blog. Why, you may ask, would I do such a thing? Well, because I really wasn't a fan of the animal motif but I didn't see another one that I cared for at blogskins.com until this one. In fact, since I only know of one other person who has a blog (my cousin chris), I decided to list the blog of the person who created this one (May). I don't know who she is and she isn't my real friend but it looked lame to only have 1 name listed. I also noticed that someone from canada signed my guestmap...very cool. back to the bugs...my tummy still hurts.
~me~ at 8:42 PM

My body seems to be punishing me for some cruel reason. Yes, I'm talking about potentially gross stuff so if you don't wish to know, stop reading now. Anyway, I believe that I am having what is called a Dairy Binge (laugh...I did when I first read it in a clinical vignette last year). In the last 4 days I've had more dairy than I do in a normal week and now a simple glass of milk instantly gives me stomach cramps and gas. Lactaid appears to be useless and yet I can't control my urge to continue to consume dairy in large portions. I even tried taking more than 1 lactaid ultra vanilla flavored tab (those are yummy). Ugh! great, here comes another wave of discomfort. I know it's not an ulcer because milk is supposed to make it feel better...or at least sometimes. But my head hurts a bit too. Better get out my new book...Degowin's diagnostic text. Hmmm...says I could have anything from acute appendicitis to diverticulitis. I'm going with lactase deficiency.
Oh and apparently my cousin Erinn had her baby and it was a boy. No name because my dad didn't know it and I couldn't get in touch with the Portland fam. They're probably all at the hospital admiring the kid.
~me~ at 6:15 PM

Thursday, March 06, 2003

So today I had my CPS session. It's our chance to see just how much we know...or in my case, don't know about the human body and the myriad of diseases that plague it. My patient presented with abdominal pain and after exhausting the history of present illness questions, I asked social history questions but forgot to ask about sexual history. After I couldn't think of any more questions, I proceeded to do a physical exam. Here's the fun part about standardized patients, if you don't hear anything, it doesn't matter since it's all about going through the motions since they can't exactly give the SPs horrible diseases. damn those medical ethics. Anyway, if you do a procedure correctly, you get a clue card where they say, "assume you hear a 1/6 murmur over the apex with s2 obscurred." What? Not sure what to do with that bit of info? yeah, I don't know either since that's the only cardiac problem that was revealed. The best is that since it was abdominal pain, it is required to do a rectal and pelvic exam and all I had to say was, "in order to eliminate a reproductive problem as the cause of your abdominal pain, I'll have to do a rectal and gynecologic (pelvic) exam." And whala! clue card! Yep, we didn't have to do the exam but were instantly told that she had perirectal fistula. Yes, again, I had no idea what that meant in terms of forming a differential since it was way back in october that I read GI pathology. And besides, this was a former heroin addict with an enlarged liver and spleen and a potential intestinal obstruction. Basically, I just kept asking questions and doing physical exams until I ran out of ideas and went out to select a differential from the list on the computer. I was ready for a cardiovascular problem and a neuro problem. Hell, I could have even handled a crazy patient with an eye problem but no, the stinking abdomen! There's so much crap in there that can go bad. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my feeling on abdominal pain. Tomorrow I have to do an oral presentation to a 4th year med student to practice for next year. Basically I read my written admit note. Henry, whom (or is it who?) I met at the endymion ball, said he was going to try and do it then when I told him I had to do this but I doubt he's actually going to be there.
And now onto my own abdominal pain...yeah, so either I'm eating tainted enchiladas that I made last night or the lactaid isn't working right. I ate the enchiladas again tonight because they were yummy and I hoped that it was a fluke that I had abdominal pain but it looks like something's up since my tummy hurts again. Great. I guess I could try to eat some other source of dairy to see if it's just dairy overload or tainted enchiladas. The bad thing is that I'm willing to suffer the abdominal pain and subsequent slight diarrhea because it tastes that good! Hey, it's an osmotic diarrhea because the lactose isn't being broken down and absorbed as galactose and glucose and so water follows the lactose out my bum. Sorry you had to endure that graphic description but that's my life.
And finally, the scary thought of the day (if the diarrhea didn't freak you out enough)
Liverpool, England, has been plagued by exploding manhole covers since a new sewer ventilation system was installed in 1994. But manhole covers have been exploding for years. In august 1989, gas trapped inside a New York sewer exploded, sending a manhole cover 30 feet into the air and killing two pedestrians. In 1992, a Washington DC man riding his bicycle was lifted high in the air when the manhole he was riding over exploded. In October 1990, an entire People Mover train in detroit was derailed by an explosion that blew up a number of manhole covers in the area. What is happening down there?!?
Today's thought is brought to you by the letter D and the words diarrhea, dysentery, deadly, deranged and the number 9999999999999999999909
~me~ at 11:56 PM

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

congratulations. you are the kiss my ass happy
bunny. You don't care about anyone or anything.
You must be so proud


which happy bunny are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
~me~ at 5:31 PM

Happy Ash Wednesday! Wait, is ash wednesday a happy day or one of those solemn days that the only emotion allowed is sadness. It basically is Sober Up day. I actually didn't get very drunk yesterday afterall (though the people around me seem to disagree with me on that one). I was sober by 5 pm yesterday only because my feet and body were tired from all the festivities this past weekend. We got to the Zulu parade and managed to get onto one of those platforms that are sponsored by local businesses but didn't get anything cool once up there since we could only go up there if we agreed to stay in the back. It's funny how catty people get about catching beads...even the crappy ones. We were in the back and were getting said crappy beads and the women up there (who belonged there) kept eyeing us and asking each other loud enough for us to hear when we were leaving. They're such freaks! We weren't even getting anything back there and they were still getting all uppity. Anyway I was sad because I lost my lasso within a few minutes of being there. I guess I didn't tie it tight enough to my waist. And after that hour of trying to get it to spin like a real roper. By the way, I did get it to work so I felt cool. We filled our plastic waterguns with liquor (mine had gin) and when anyone stopped us for a picture or to make comments, we asked them if they wanted a shot from our shotgun. The gin was cheap to begin with and on top of that, it was tainted with plastic watergun taste...NASTY! But only the sober people realized it. Those already drunk couldn't taste the nastiness. At one point, we tried to hop the guardrails and get to the other side of the parade route even though myself and Nida tried to convince the others that it wouldn't work. We were right. Only 2 of the 9 of us cowgirls and cowboy made it over. This fat cop decided to threaten us with prison if we didn't get off the route. So here's where his power trip officially began. We were on the side we were trying to cross over to and so when he told us to get off the road, our common sense said that we should quickly hop over this rail and go on our merry way. His overinflated ego decided to taint his common sense and so he told us we had to run back over to the side we just came from and hop back over that railing and cross at the corner because it would make too much sense to let us hop over the railing we wanted to hop over. Despite our best attempt to explain this to the idiot, his power trip won since we didn't want to go to jail. And since the bead hungry people on the other side didn't want to make room for us to hop back over, our time spent on the route was prolonged. And the cop started playing with his one set of cuffs. So I decided to ask him to at least ask those catty bead freaks to make just a little room so we can get off the route and still on his power trip, he replied shortly, why should I help you now, you had no problem getting over in the first place. So I risked it and said, well then be patient since we can't get off until someone moves. What a loser. This is basically the only time of the year that they don't need a valid reason for arresting people and I guess it goes to their heads. So we finally got back over thanks to one nice lady who made room for us. We decided to get a snack and later, when there was a 30 minute pause in the parade (a float broke down), a much nicer cop was helping people cross over so we were finally able to get over. Amber was more adventurous and after attempting to reason with the egomaniacal cop, she started yelling at the retard. It was only him and honestly, we probably could have outrun him since he was obese, like all the other residents of this fried chicken eating state. Then my pepcid AC stopped working and I started getting heartburn from my alcohol. And so I started to empty out my booze gun by soaking a pizza box on the ground. Now, this is gross because apparently there was still some pizza in it and the fool who put it on the ground informed me of the remaining slices and while he didn't really yell at me, since I was really starting to hurt bad from the heartburn, I started crying because my heartburn but everyone else thought it was because of this guy and other folks around us started yelling at the guy who put his pizza box on the ground for making me cry. But then the heartburn passed and I was good to go again. Later we got one of the security guys at McDonalds to clear out the guy's bathroom to let us girls use it. I ended up washing out my gun and gave it to this one little girl since I gave my little cowboy hat (It was the size meant for a doll) to her sister. We met this big black guy who was really nice and anytime a weird looking guy came near us he chased him away but normal folks were allowed to take pictures with us. Eventually, he was only protected one of my friends since the rest of us had pretty much sobered up and were tired of taking pictures with people. Hey, 8 cowgirls and a cowboy walking en masse are bound to gain attention. After sitting through traffic, I finally got back home yesterday around 7 pm sober and tired. I think I had the most fun at the Endymion ball but yesterday was pretty fun. My feet are tired from walking in cowboy boots ($5 from thrift city) and the left side of my forehead is slightly bruised from "catching" beads with my face at the Endymion Ball (they parade around the perimeter of the interior of the superdome to chuck all the beads they have left from the route). Joey actually is the one who bruised me but that's only because I was drunk and regardless am bad at actually catching the beads (the bigger ones hurt when they're flying through the air caught in any manner) and they hit my head before landing in my hands. At one point, alcohol from whoever threw the beads at me got in my eye and that was less than pleasant. Joey did save me one of every type of really good beads so I was psyched about that. I got so many beads from that Ball alone that I could barely lift the bag (they gave us bags to carry beads). I also caught a couple of footballs, a cheapo stuffed animal, and got this one cop to hand me the stuff that landed beyond my reach (actually he kicked them over because he felt it was beneath him to pick them up and hand them to me...it took him 5 times longer to complete the task this way because he obviously never played soccer). Funny, I got bruised from Mardi Gras, but I have not earned any cool injuries from rugby yet. Oh and I watched the Rex ball on tv for a few minutes and while it probably is this big honor to be the queen and King of Carnival, it looked VERY BORING. They had to sit on the throne couch looking thing the whole night and they only had each other to talk with. The queen is a college junior and the king is someone old enough to be her father or grandfather. But for the most part they weren't really smiling but appeared to be staring off in space. Yeah, THAT'S a fun mardi gras...Well, I need to start making my dinner. I'm making enchiladas and doing it the lazy way (not rolling the meat into the tortillas but just mixing it together with but up pieces of tortilla like how I made the crock pot version).
But first, I need to reveal the paranoid thought of the day...
Nearly a third of all bottled drinking water purchased in the United States is contaminated with bacteria
Today's thought brought to you by the letter T and the words, tetanus, typhoid, torticollis, tangible and the number 3748920388888394728934777839200083749208171977
~me~ at 5:29 PM

Monday, March 03, 2003

Happy Mardi Gras!!! Most of you are reading this on Fat Tuesday but I need to sleep and get up early tomorrow to get to the Zulu Parade and have tons o fun!
~me~ at 11:10 PM