Saturday, December 14, 2002

I love Sea Otters! They're so cute! If you don't believe me, do a search for "sea otter pictures" on yahoo and you can see for yourself. Right now, I have sea otter pictures as my desktop pictures. Who can resist a sea otter smile? They're just as cute as elephants, bunnies, and pituitary adenomas...wait, that's not right. I meant puppies. Pituitary adenomas are disgusting and they make you lose your peripheral vision if they impinge on your optic chiasm. Oh,if you're curious as to where your pituitary is, here's a simple bloody and deadly (so proceed with caution) procedure. Simply stick a long sharp object through your external ear canal enough such that it comes out the other ear. Then take another equally long sharp object and poke it up through your head at the point between your chin and where your neck meets your head. Where they intersect is about where your pituitary gland is. Now you know but since you're probably dead, the new found excitement of knowing where your pituitary is located really can't be experienced and your family and friends will be sad to see that you killed yourself trying to do something incredibly stupid like finding your pituitary...This just serves to show you that there are some really bad suggestions out there on the internet that are not meant to be followed. Oh and remember the whole david and goliath story? Well, David had an unfair advantage over goliath because Goliath probably had a pituitary adenoma or at least a hyperplastic pituitary to be that big and since it most likely impinged on his optic chiasm, he couldn't see David coming at him until it was too late.

~me~ at 6:47 PM

Friday, December 13, 2002

This entry and the last one were written thursday night but apparently the clock changed before it got published
~me~ at 12:03 AM

You know, it really annoys me when people don't think of others. Today I was studying at Starbucks and the weather got really nasty. It looked like it was raining hard (was actually light when I walked out there to go home) but the windspeed was incredibly high as evidenced whenever anyone walked by or tried to open the door to starbucks. Anywho, almost everyone who opened the door was careful to keep the door from flying open. Everyone except this one ass who walked in shortly before I left. So he and his friend walk in and the door flies open and the wind is keeping it open. Okay, so if he was naive to think that the door would close without his help despite just coming in from the wind and knowing or feeling the direction the wind was coming from (am I the only person who observes such phenomenon? No because everyone else took note and prevented the door from remaining open) then maybe...MAYBE I could forgive him (the average IQ in this state is lower than the national average...or so I hear). But what I cannot forgive is that he turned around, observed that the door was still open because the wind was pushing it open and could possibly rip it off the hinges (alright, maybe not that strong but you get my point), and then WALKED AWAY!!! Yea, this ass didn't go back and close the door! It was only a couple steps away and he walked away! What the hell!!! He was the last person to walk through that door and he ignored his responsibility to close it. It's not like they were going to run out of coffee! So anyway, he sits down at a nearby table facing me and so I gave him evil looks but being self-absorbed, he sat there staring off into space so my evil looks fell on blind eyes. I was hoping he'd ask me what my problem was so I could tell him but that didn't happen. I suppose I could have just walked up to him and told him what an ass he was but I was cold and hungry and decided it wasn't worth my time to deal with the idiot.
Okay now my beef with starbucks. First of all, their Tazo chai tea, as I have told Chris, is horrible compared to our beloved Oregon Chai. Or maybe it was the way the guy prepared it? Whatever it was it made me ill to drink it. I had it the night before but it didn't taste that heinous so I got the bigger size tonight. Oh and then out of the blue, I got a bloody nose. So was it the chai? Hmmm...I don't enjoy bloody noses in public places (it wasn't a bad one so I was able to get to the bathroom before anyone seemed to notice) so I probably won't experiment to tell if tazo chai induces bloody noses in me. Yea, I'd rather deal with gastritis than a bloody nose or drink tazo chai again. Is it wrong of me to go there with a big cup full of Oregon Chai and not buy anything? Here's my other beef. It's getting cold and apparently Starbucks is attempting to capitalize on that by not turning on the heat in that damn place so people buy more and bigger drinks as they sit there or leave. Their stuff I like is spendy so I only buy one drink while I sit there for 5 or 6 hours. I buy a drink because I feel guilty. Maybe I'll go to Barnes and Noble and study. The lighting is better and they have dictionaries and other resources there. Oh and then I can read books when I need a quick break. Like a library but the books are new. Well, I need to get some sleep.
~me~ at 12:00 AM

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Oh and Happy Birthday to my Dad! He's gaining the years necessary to cash in on those sweet senior discounts (have you seen the movie prices lately?!?).
~me~ at 11:15 PM

One more cool thing about today...I heard an S3. It's the 3rd heart sound that is only present in pathological states. If you think about the way your heart sounds (S1 and S2 are the normal sounds heard in everyone) Ba - Boom...Ba-boom...ba-boom, the S3 is heard immediately after S2: Ba - boom -boom....ba - boom - boom. Get it? It's heard when blood is falling into a partly filled left ventricle after the mitral valve opens. S4 (which I haven't heard on a patient yet), is heard immediately before S1 and is indicative of a stiff ventricle. Pretty neat, eh? Keep in mind that this info may be slightly off but this is my interpretation of what I was told by various profs. Apparently not all cardiologists can hear an S3 or S4 ( and the room needs to be fairly quiet) so maybe my ears are blessed...carry on
~me~ at 11:12 PM

Today I saw yet another patient with hepatic failure. This poor guy was doing fine until he was given a new medication for something unrelated and now he's got advanced liver disease and kidney failure ("hepatorenal disease"). Just like all the other liver patients I saw, this guy will die within the year as well. The cool thing about today's session was that I got to see a paracentesis (to remove the fluid collecting in his belly). According to my preceptor, the method of the person doing the procedure wasn't that great and almost scared him to watch when he thought of the anatomy. I must say I was a bit concerned since she stuck the entire 6 inch needle into the abdomen when the wall itself is only a couple inches thick at the most and shouldn't have required the entire needle to be stuck in the poor guy. But some fluid came out after much manipulation of the catheter and help from one of my classmates (he had to explain the fun world of vacuums to get the resident to do what he suggested). I feel bad for the resident since she was getting frustrated over the lack of free flowing fluid. It was yellow and stinky. The best part is that David and I now have something to tease Nate about. He almost passed out...he left the room to get a drink of water but after he came back, he was so pale! There wasn't very much blood either so who knows what did it for him. The smell might have contributed or maybe the yellow clear fluid (looked like urine). He later said that he may have been hypoglycemic. But being the cruel people that we are, David and I will surely find an appropriate time to tease him about it. Oh and then there was the mini standoff drug discussion between residents...which drug is best and blah blah blah...So all I need is lidocaine and long needle and a razor blade and I can perform paracentesis on you! Oh, and a bunch of syringes I guess to administer the lidocaine and collect the yellow stinky fluid. Hmmm...I also need vacuum sealed glass bottles...perhaps this isn't quite a garage procedure. Darn! I'm sure you were all salivating at the chance to have fluid drawn out of your abdominal cavity.
~me~ at 10:34 PM

Sunday, December 08, 2002

When I came back from Portland, I had discovered to my utter horror that I had picked up a cold of some sort somewhere along the journey. My first thought was that I got it from a few family members who were sick or that it was from the recycled air I breathed on the 4 flights I had. Well, since I was too tired to really use the mind over matter approach to get over it (telling myself I wasn't sick at all to make the cold go away...it worked sort of after mardi gras), I thought, I might as well give in early, let it go to whatever hellish level it was destined to reach and if it happened to end in the usual sinus infection, then I'd go to the doctor to get my usual amoxicillin to cure my ailment and be done with the whole thing in a short time rather than battle it out and end up at the same point anyway. Well, it must have been a weak virus since my immune system, despite my best efforts not to help out, got rid of the problem. While I still have little bits of a runny nose here and there, it's pretty much over with. So I guess I should be glad to know that there's nothing wrong with my B and T cells and neutrophils and the various other cells that helped out. From what I remember about immunology (way back in august-october), the fact that it was so short lived means that it was a virus my body had seen before or at least close enough that my memory B and memory T cells were able to recognize it quickly and deal with it efficiently. Ah, I can feel those antibodies swimming around in my bodily fluids as I type now. Okay, I can't but I often find myself thinking about the various cells that are cruising through the superhighways of my vascular system. Reminds me of the book "The Magic Schoolbus Explores the Human Body." Now only if that author wrote a book called, The Magic Schoolbus explores the Inflamed Liver of Viral Hepatitis. Bestseller, guaranteed!
~me~ at 9:52 PM

When I bought my dishes for my new place, they came with a set of teacups and saucers. While I have found the tiny plates somewhat useful to hold thick dipping sauces or for ranch when I want to eat a few carrots, the teacups are useless and pathetic. I tried to use them this weekend to drink my tea but they only hold 5.5 oz of liquid and so I kept having to get up to make more tea. They also seem to promote a very quick cooling process. And they're so small that my hand was getting crampy trying to hold the stupid cup. Maybe in Martha's world (they're martha stewart break resistant dishes) tea cups are meant to be tiny and dainty but in my world, they're useless. In fact, I don't think I've even seen my mom use her teacups that came with the dishes she owns. I think we use them with the little kids when we run out of clean plastic cups. So now I'm back to using my huge coffee mugs for my tea and I have the problem with dilution since the mug holds too much water for every bag of tea. I have enough tea bags to use 2/cup but sometimes it's too strong and tastes weird. Ah, there's no pleasing me. And now that I've experience chai tea and gotten hooked, my supply of tea is proving ineffective in relieving me of my chai withdrawal symptoms. I suppose if I drank some of my orange spice tea that might help. I think my cup of cinnamon plum is ready now (my mugs are quite efficient at keeping hot liquids hot).
~me~ at 3:25 PM