once a runner.

i got to run on kelly drive today.


likes it.



running to him was real; the way he did it the realest thing he knew. it made him weary beyond comprehension....

....but it also made him free.


~once a runner

heart to ground.

humble. adj. {middle english, from anglo-french, from latin}

on the ground.



face to palm.
tear to tear.
heart to ground.

somewhere in the world...

someone is training when you are not.

when you race him, he will win.

thank you, mr. fleming. a short recap of the weekend: productivity was quite low, but not so low as to make me unhappy. friday night was the reception for first year medical students at the philadelphia college of physicians. very lovely old building with a pleasant garden and an impressive, though somewhat overwhelming, collection of medical artifacts. i liked benjamin franklin's signed copy of newton's opticks the best. saturday was spent in the apartment studying, cooking, and being a general waste of space. sunday was the 'soul of medicine' brunch held at the same location as friday's event. not as epic as i had imagined, but nevertheless valuable in its own right. late saturday night, five duquesne basketball players were shot outside of the building i lived in junior and senior year. random act of violence on an otherwise safe campus. utterly depressing in many aspects.

today i went running. outside. down broad. not as scary as it's made out to be, though what it lacked in 'scary' it made up for in garbage. sir, if you just rake all the trash from your lawn onto the sidewalk, it's just going to end up back in your yard. ad infinitum. turned around at the hunting park subway stop which is just shy of school. making it to city hall and back (12 mi.) in decent time is october's goal. i don't like running straightaways though, which is all broad street really is. straightaways are only good after a wicked curve. of all the things i miss from duquesne, besides my friends, is consuming large quantities of food at towers. i think i also like how they did my dishes.

but there's plenty of things that make me happy here :o)

five o'clock. time's up.

i hate John Mayer.

or at least i really really want to.



...you tell me the names of your brothers
and your favorite colors
i'm learning you...
and when it snows again
we'll take a walk outside....

illness is easy. wellness is hard.

here's to the crazy ones.
the misfits.
the rebels.
the troublemakers.
the round pegs in the square holes.
the ones who see things differently.
they're not fond of rules.
and they have no respect for the status quo.
you can praise them, disagree with them,
quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
about the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
because they change things.
they invent. they imagine. they heal.
they explore. they create. they inspire.
they push the human race forward.
maybe they have to be crazy.
how else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world...

...are the ones who do.


went to the first meeting for physicians for social responsibility today. i am tremendously excited--not only because this group exists but because philadelphia has the largest chapter in the country and are hosting their annual 'soul of medicine' brunch this sunday. i hope to tape some of the speakers, one of whom is the head of trauma here at temple.

'many new physicians are surprised to discover that most of health care doesn't have much to do with medicine...a close look at the history of disease suggests that clean water, adequate housing and improved literacy are as necessary for a population's health as the latest in medical care.' --avery hunt, the new physician.

many people believe that curing ::insert disease here:: is the chief concern of doctors around the world. don't get me wrong, curing cancer would be huge. but is there any less honor in starting small?

as for 'illness is easy, wellness is hard'--chalk another one up to dr. lyons who, incidently, is the advisor for psr at temple.

i'm perfectly comfortable with crazy.

real world: kresge 701

this is the true story
of one hundred and eighty strangers
picked to attend medical school
and have their lives drastically altered
find out what happens when people stop being polite
and start getting real.

it's no joke. we've stopped being polite. we've learned to just change into our scrubs in the middle of the student lounge. we spend hours on end together waist deep in ::insert bodily fluid here::. daily routines have been established--from who you sit next to in lecture to who you have coffee with at night to who you ride the subway with in the morning.

and i bet if there was such thing as the kresge video confessional, there would be some rather shameless admissions right now. despite our best efforts at focusing on the task at hand, the cadaver isn't the only person under careful scrutiny.

so we sit back and watch. and in between frantically memorizing pages worth of fifty-cent words, we are trying to sort out who's puck, who's wes, who's julie. ad nauseum.

as far as i know, no one has jumped into any pool stark naked.

yet.

well that's another whole box of pandoras.

dinner at zanzibar blue was a lovely time despite the timing and quality of food. it was really nice to see everyone all polished and not smelling like death. i listened to some excellent stories about life in spain and miami and how everyone in cuba is really psyched about castro being on the verge of punching out.

being in med school now is like being in high school all over again. except the faculty is way more intelligent and no one is paying attention to what you're wearing. we all have lockers. there's 30 people to a room within the anatomy lab (i.e. it's homeroom). everyone sits outside on the wall for lunch. there are cliques--minus the whole rivalry theme.

coming from a small private school in pittsburgh (read: white, christian, european demographic) to here has definitely been eye-opening. i don't know the stats from our class, but it's a great deal more diverse than duquesne. way cool. i guess the best analogy i can muster is that it's like walking into the library of congress for the very first time. dumbfounded at the array. intimidated by the sheer volume. curious about what's contained on the pages. :o)


4:30 = time to learn about kidneys! whee!!!

it's time for a sexy party.

sometimes, you just can't get any work done. you just gotta roll with it.

i've been reciting the boundaries of the omental bursa for SIX days now.

today's epiphany: i have had more episodes of can't-breathe-pee-your-pants laughter in the past three weeks than i have had in the past three years. :oD

tomorrow is: fabulous dinner at zanzibar blue, the season premier of family guy, and manning vs. manning. eli is definitely better looking.

i'm ms. brightside.

today was a very nice day.

:o)

and it's not so important that it's happily ever after...

....just that it’s happy right now.

a word to the class of 2011: if you're coming to medical school, come without drama. school is a beast by itself. be 110% at peace with yourself and those around you. know exactly where you stand with the people you cherish the most. those who will, without fail, do their best to support you. those who will make room on the couch when you return home. your wingmen. your rat pack. your all-stars.

then leave. anchors aweigh. full steam ahead.

even though i'll be returning to pittsburgh in two years for rotations, i still have two years here in philadelphia. that's two years to get to know some tremendously cool people. two years of incredible opportunity. as it turns out, i'm approaching my life here with one foot out the door: "i'd love to get to know you but i'm only here so i can go back home." i can see now that i never really committed to philly. and that's suicide. by tiny, tiny increments.

steelers play tomorrow night.
(NB: committing to philly doesn't involve swearing allegiance to the eagles. ha.)

time to get some work done now.

a very good friend brought me lilies today :o)

false start. fifteen minute penalty. still first down.

week 4, day 1.

i'm at home in pittsburgh currently on labor day break. i'll evaluate how exactly my time here went once i'm back in philly. i'm kind of sad...steve irwin died today from a stingray barb to the chest during a dive in the great barrier reef. while that's indeed pretty gruesome, i'd be willing to bet that steve would have preferred death by stingray instead of death by carcinoma. or car accident. or even quietly in his sleep.

this past friday was my first exam. i was well-rested going into it. i put on my game face around noon, suited up, and went to school. i had the practical portion of the exam first. for those who are unfamiliar with the term 'practical': half of the exam is being able to identify specific structures on the cadaver or on bones or diagnostic images such as x-rays or CTs. a few rules of the practical: no touching anything, you get a minute to look at whatever the question is and jot down your answer. sometimes the question wasn't to just identify what the arrow was pointing to, sometimes it was 'what is the function of the muscle that inserts here?'. so not only do you have to figure out a) what the arrow is pointing to but also b) what muscle attaches to said spot and then c) what that muscle does. all in a minute. but wait! that's not all. sixty students take the practical at the same time. we have twenty-eight cadavers, twelve computers, roughly twenty 'rest stops' and two skeletons. they marched all sixty of us into the anatomy lab and set us each at a different station. i ran straight to my group's cadaver figuring that if i knew anything at all about anatomy, it was going to be on this lady. she was question #7, so that's where i started on my answer sheet. because there is only a minute per question, you have to pay attention to where the person ahead of you is. so we are sitting here ready to start and the proctors are making sure everyone's set. waiting to begin that exam was the worst fifteen minutes of my life. i've never had that bad of an adrenaline rush before and to be honest i can't remember how bad it actually was. now in retrospect, it couldn't have been that bad or else i would have quit school. perhaps that's how it is with certain kinds of voluntary physical pain. pain so bad that if you really remembered how terrible it felt at the time, you'd never agree to experience it again. pain a la childbirth, marathons, skydiving.

and if waiting to begin wasn't bad enough, something went awry during the first minute so that they had to stop the clock. so yes, more waiting. hey! how bout another giant bolus of epinephrine straight to my heart? at least i had more time to sit and second guess myself on what i'd put as the answer to my first question: "was it really semitendinosus? i'd spent fifteen minutes cleaning the fascia off that muscle on tuesday. it looks like a tendon. what if it's the other one? did i spell that right?" mindlessness.

so whatever went wrong was fixed and we started again. it was all over in forty minutes. everyone gathered their belongings and headed downstairs to take the written portion of the exam. that was considerably less nerve-wracking, but by then i was fighting a massive stress-induced headache.

i need a 70% on the exam to pass. fifty-six questions out of eighty.

i'll know soon if i trained hard enough.

but for now, it is important that i ran when the cannon went off.

(even if they had to stop us dead right off the line. grr.)