brain....reaching....maximum capacity.

i can't do anymore work right now. it's 4:30. tomorrow morning brings the block 4 final and the beginning of spring break.

i came to temple with the notion of being an endocrinologist. hormones are just little molecular messengers that turn things off and on, enhance or dampen processes. neat. maybe i'll still do endo. if i could be any organ, i'd be the thyroid. if you mess with me, i'll give you toxic nodular goiter disease.

this block also managed to somehow include psychology. i am not the biggest fan of psychology. lots of theories. lots of stages of development. lots of fluff. some of it is interesting, some of it's a little nonsensical. however, the apgar score is neat as well as all the reflexes a baby does in its first year.

i'm excited for spring break. we're (meaning me + more temple kids) are going to new orleans to do relief work. nothing like manual labor after all these mental acrobatics. :o)

i think everyone is in need of a break.

::sighs and opens binder::

eat that frog!

if you could be anywhere in the universe right now, where would you be?

if you could be doing anything you wished right now, what would you be doing?

if your answers to the above questions weren't your present location and your present task, then perhaps it's time for a change.




"I wonder where we go when we die..."
".....Pittsburgh?"
"You mean if we're good or if we're bad??"
-Calvin to Hobbes

run for someone else's life.

philadelphia lost 406 people--including ten children under the age of 5--to violent acts in 2006.

the situation is not improving. as of march 6--just 65 days into the year--71 people have been killed.

the philadelphia chapter of physicians for social responsibility is holding their first annual Legs Against Arms race on april 15 to promote reduction in gun violence by youth as part of a larger city-wide peace campaign.

if you will be in philly on april 15, or live close enough to swing by for the day, PLEASE considering joining in the effort. (there's a 5K run in addition to a 1 mile walk---so the "i can't run" excuse won't cut it!)

the race begins at 9a on sunday morning and---depending on how fast you move your legs--you could be done as early as 9:15.

please help us out!

i am jack's raging pituitary adenoma.

did you know that 11betaHSD2 inactivates cortisol thereby protecting the mineralocorticoid receptor for aldosterone in distal collecting duct cells of the kidney?

no?

it's okay, i didn't either.

a typical psycho pre-med student in undergrad, i worked my butt off in every medically-related subject: biochemistry, toxicology, immunology, endocrinology, physiology. i'm happy to say that it paid off for me back then.

now i'm in medical school working off what's left of my butt--which isn't much, by the way--and i find no solace in my stack of notecards, no peace in my review sheets. just frustration at every turn. we are covering so much material in so little time that it begs the question of 'are we really learning anything at all?'

::grumbling::

don't eat yellow snow.

i enjoy fresh snow. it hides all the garbage in this city, at least for an hour or two.

the fruit truck was outside of church's chicken today, despite the weather. i had never seen food sold from the side of trucks before i came here. 'ted's lunch truck' sits outside kresge, the mediterranean one is across from the pharmacy school. they sell very tasty falafel.

the fruit truck. it disappeared from its usual spot in november for reasons unknown. perhaps it was too cold. perhaps north philadelphians don't eat fruit in winter. anyways, i was glad for its return. $1 for a bag of strawberries on a frigid march morning made today's 9am lecture....a little sunnier.

i bought an orange on the way home. :o)

faculty schmaculty.....

since when is it an acceptable practice for a professor to teach a lecture, post objectives for the lecture, provide practice multiple-choice questions on said lecture material and then send out an email four days later telling us that none of the material will be on the exam?

moreover....

since when is it acceptable for a professor to simply cut the top ten most recent research abstracts about topic X off scifinder, paste them into a powerpoint file and call it a lecture?

whatever happened to actual learning and not just rote memorization of straight-up crap?

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

naked. chocolate. cafe.

philadelphia may have just redeemed itself.

$3.50 for a petit classic drinking chocolate + $1.00 for a passion fruit ganache.

salvation by chocolate.

nb: if you're coming to medical school, you should note that no matter how much you study, you will always be behind.

oh, and never, ever will you be able to make the perfect flowchart. ever.

the rant.

this blog was supposed to chronicle my life as a medical student. hmmm. i haven't been doing too well with that, have i? i suppose a recap is in order.

anatomy was, by far, my favorite. i'm glad i didn't take it in undergrad.

good things about anatomy:

• 8am conference. one hour of question-based review on material you were supposed to learn the previous day in lab. similar to playing 'the weakest link'. i thought it was fun--as only a true nerd would.
• dr. schneck. smartest man EVER. he's seventy-something and still works eight hours (or more) per day.
• dr. habboushe. general surgeon who really liked teaching me and sam little things during lab. very fun.
• my lab group. we never managed to actually teach each other anything about anatomy, but lab sure was entertaining sometimes.
• netter's atlas of anatomy. that guy can draw.

not-so-good things about anatomy:

• rotting adipose tissue. it adds a new dimension of funk to anatomy lab. it's also another incentive to keep in shape.
• it was only eight weeks long. the rest of first year has blown in comparison.
  

moving onto block 2.

i should mention at this point that temple has an integrated curriculum. this means block scheduling--one class at a time--but the block is a conglomeration of a bunch of disciplines: histology, biochemistry, embryology, etc. anatomy was just straight-up anatomy: cadaver, x-rays, clinical correlations. everything after anatomy is basically...a mess. i guess i shouldn't be too harsh, this is only the second year for the new curriculum, but it does leave alot to be desired.

block 2: basic science a.k.a. biochemistry.

good things about biochemistry:

• computerized exams with instant results. good for the anxious. :o)
• it was only twelve weeks long. thank goodness.
  

not-so-good things about biochemistry:

• the 5'' packet of handouts + the textbook + 20 different professors + randomly interspersed lectures about bone structure in the middle of carbohydrate metabolism = academic and organizational nightmare.
• exams with poorly worded questions written by the 20 different professors. frustration abounded.
• learning about rare genetic diseases. the names tell you nothing about what's wrong with the patient and your chances of actually seeing one of these patient is well, rare.
• the 5'' packet of handouts. it really does need to be emphasized. they were completely unnecessary. they were not double-sided either. waste of trees. we all know how fond i am of trees.

biochemistry ended. week off for winter break which was spent in pittsburgh. low key. much needed.

block 3: cardio, pulmonary, renal, gastrointestinal physiology.

tough stuff. we get one lecture of embryology for every body system covered. embryology isn't supposed to be a single-serving discipline--it's too difficult conceptually. but hey, we're integrating here.

physiology doesn't really deserve a rant. the textbook was good and the faculty adhered to it reasonably well. don't get me wrong--it was still an unorganized mess with the giant stack of single-sided handouts and 20 different professors. still, it could have been worse. at least this time there were no rare genetic diseases. EKGs are neat. i have a very large QRS complex. go left ventricle, go!

block 3 ended last friday. we are now a quarter of the way through block 4.

block 4 = everything that didn't fit into block 3. immunology. endocrinology. reproductive physiology. head and neck development.

mmmm. nice 'n' random.


time for laundry and deconstructing the thyroid gland. i bet you wish this was your friday afternoon.

big yellow taxi.

the edge of seaton park, old aberdeen, scotland.

i lived in scotland for six months.

it was the best six months of my entire life.

growing up, my traveling experience was limited: frequent trips to cleveland or west virginia to visit my siblings at college and a scant handful of treks to niagara falls, canada to see extended family from italy.

i saw the ocean for the first time when i was twelve. my parents and i were on a 'proper' vacation in stone harbor, new jersey. every day for two weeks i ate watermelon italian ice from clarke's sunset market on the corner of third and sunset. i remember digging up the tiny clams buried in the sand and throwing them back in the ocean, thinking that they were suffocating to death. this lasted until i realized a) there were way too many to 'save' and b) they might just be there for a reason. in any event, i was sad to leave. i returned twice more to jersey during high school--once with my parents and then again the following year with my best friend from grade school.

if you've ever been to the jersey shore--or if you are capable of using google earth--you might have noticed that it's just a string of long islands. on my second trip with my parents, i had just started running cross country. coincidently, i had also just watched forrest gump. if you know me, you'll also know that i'm a little nutty. so i started running. i made it from our condo to the tip of the (stone harbor) island--a total of seven miles--in the middle of a summer afternoon without water. i felt like an idiot, delirious from dehydration and adrenaline. it's a rather brutal feeling to be excruciatingly thirsty while hobbling along next to several trillion gallons of sparkling, cold, and completely nonpotable water. regardless of the aftermath, i survived. i wasn't satisfied though....

forrest went from one end of america, then back.

the following summer i was with jen and her parents on the island north of stone harbor--sea isle city. roughly the same length, i decided to have a go at the round-trip--13 or so miles. only this time i was slighty wiser: i left earlier, took a walkman, and no water. i said slightly wiser. the heat exhaustion wasn't as bad and i returned back to the condo slighty cooked but otherwise fine.

i became a distance runner.

this post wasn't really meant to be about running. oh well. it was a nice aside i suppose.

to try and cram my unabashed admiration for scotland into one long post would not be fair. instead i'll leave you with the following observation.

the dormitories for the university of aberdeen were separated from the campus itself by seaton park. my route to school every day consisted of a walk down through the woods behind the dorms, across the park, up the hill to st. machar's cathedral, down the chanonry, across st. machar's drive and onto campus.

the walk across the park was the longest and best part of the whole journey.

in the spring the park staff planted literally thousands of flowers in the central pathway.
the park's perimeter -- which also doubled as a cross country running trail -- was one solid band of daffodils and crocuses. (see above. still working on my photo skills on here....)

every day. back and forth. six months.

i live in north philadelphia now. when i am required to go to campus, which thankfully isn't often, i walk two blocks north to the olney station on the broad street subway line. after a five minute train ride south to erie station, i resurface and walk two blocks more down to kresge.

there are no trees. just broken glass. chicken bones. hair. piles of food wrappers. puddles of mysterious stinking filth. tires.


don't it always seem to go...

...that you don't know what you've got...

...till it's gone?