Not Doctors Yet

A lot of people are discouraged from becoming physicians because of the extensive time commitment the schooling and training require. Most people--those who've not experienced medical school, will tell you the length of training is due to the massive amount of information students must absorb in order to be competent clinicians.

Wrong.

We've all seen The Matrix. We all know that acquiring essential medical knowledge can be as simple as plugging a firewire cord into your brain stem and downloading the WebMD knowledge base into your head. So what's the real reason? Well, now I know.

The purpose of lengthy medical training is to lock away potential doctors until they no longer have the urge to laugh at hilarious medical sights and sounds. Plain and simple. But it's not our fault. It's funny when an enzyme acronym sounds like a dirty word. It's funny that physicians test newborn reflexes by lifting the baby slightly and dropping them back onto the table to observe whether they start writhing around. It's funny when the cursor on the computer screen is positioned in such a way that it appears to pick the nose of a woman giving birth. It's just funny.

So the next time you tell your doctor about the trail of vomit you left as you hurdled towards the bathroom from downstairs, thank the lengthy medical training they went through for allowing them to keep a straight face.

Who Chaperones The Chaperones?

This question popped into my head this afternoon during our second biochem lecture of the day. I'm feeling that this little brain twister could provide the foundation for a totally kick-ass story. Better yet, if I formatted it as a graphic novel, I'd really broaden my demographics.

Chaperone proteins really are the superheroes of the body. They give of their time and energy to combat energetically unfavorable conformations and ask nothing in return. They assume a profound leadership role within their society as self-appointed vigilantes. But what gives them this right? They stand not apart in terms of stature or sedimentation coefficient, and sequences of the same twenty amino acids teem through them just as in the masses. They are flawed. They are vulnerable to denaturation.

They're...The Chaperones.

Med Student With Benefits

Being a medical student really has its perks. Just this afternoon I received my first issue of the NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), and while this may not seem like an event worthy of a blog post, it is.

It's the little things like this that make becoming a doctor worthwhile. The fact that I didn't even have to subscribe and that they respect my privacy enough to address my issue to another person, really speaks to the fact that there is still good in this world. I looked up my assigned pseudonym on Google and it seems that when the folks up in New England start something, they take it all the way. My "name" has a detailed history and background. I won't tell you the name because that would defeat the whole purpose of a pseudonym, but as far as the public knows, I'm a second year general surgery resident (PGY 2) at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Is it coincidence that this is the med school across the street from my apartment complex? I think not. These guys are just that good. Maybe I would have preferred being an MD instead of a DO, but I don't think that someone like me is in a position to complain about this sort of thing.

I can't wait for next month's issue!

Final Days In The Orient

Tomorrow is the last day of my med school orientation, and the process itself has proceeded much like you might expect. I admit that I am blissfully unaware of the orientation procedures at other med schools, but for me orientation has consisted mostly of faculty and staff reminding my fellow first-years and I of how much debt we're getting ourselves into. Yet matching the consistency of the financial downers has been the prevalence of barbecues, and this is nothing to complain about at all. I theorize that this phenomenon may be our first venture into the world of homeostasis--the body's inherent state of equilibrium that must be actively maintained at all times by various organ systems. I can clearly see the faculty's logic in this macroscopic analogy, as I can think of no better remedy for depression than steaming burgers and crisp, cool watermelon.

I'm joking of course, as I've had quite a bit of fun these last few days. I've met some cool people, relaxed in the grass, watched a volleyball repeatedly land in a bowl of potato chips, eaten lots of picnic food, visited my first cricket club, sat in a ridiculously squeaky microanatomy lab chair, and seen the total dissection of the incredible hulk (a.k.a. a cadaver of an elderly woman whose body tissues had been stained green during embalming due to biliary leakage).

She even had her ovaries intact which, according to the lab instructor, is unusual for a woman her age. I'm telling you, the excitement never seems to stop.

Counting Down To Med School

Once I start medical school in a couple of weeks, this may become a blog about medical school.  Who am I kidding, though?  It probably won't.  However, as I have yet to reach that point, the blog will remain a kettle in which my deepest thoughts, ideas, and questions can stew. Eventually I shall feed said stew to a hobo and move on into a blog full of purpose.

For now, however, I will continue along in my traditional fashion...

I recently downloaded the iTunes exclusive "Live from SoHo" album by the Counting Crows. I like the Counting Crows, and I like SoHo because it's a neighborhood in NYC named after one of my favorite food stops in DC, The SoHo Cafe. Longtime stalkers of this blog would recognize that name as the aboveground counterpart to the Mutant Food Court (see Mutant Food Court and The Return to Mutant Headquarters). As a small tangent, I cannot express how refreshing it is to know that this little restaurant has had such a significant influence on The Big Apple.

Anyway, the album is great, and it's live which makes it even greater. However, the most significant mass of greatness lies in an accretion disk surrounding the final song of the album, "Rain King". Sure, everyone and their gardener knows "Rain King"; but only really music savvy gardeners know that in the middle of the song, Adam breaks out into a rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road", before returning to the song at hand in time to close out the jam session. Essentially what we have then is a "Thunder Road" sandwich, which, admittedly conjures up images of a very agonizing lunch period. However, the effect is quite the opposite. The song is probably one of the greatest things I've ever heard.

So download the album because it's awesome.

Hemlines of the Day

The sleeves on my white coat are too long.

I think that really sums things up well. The process of becoming a doctor is a process of growth--in terms knowledge and in terms of self, and I don't quite fit just yet. The woman at the bookstore was nice about it though, and she didn't laugh even once.

I have an apartment now too. Right now it's a lot like my white coat. It's a little big on me, it's yet to be embroidered or personalized, and I can't actually be in it until after orientation and they've sewed the school patch on the sleeve. But they're both essentially mine nonetheless.

I also found a sweet shortcut to the medical campus that bypasses the highway completely. It's a scenic little bridge that traverses the Schuylkill, and which utterly negates the need to sit in traffic. What could be better?

Yep. Things are really moving along.

Welcome To The New Cause

Oh, hey. Yeah I forgot to mention that I have a brand new video! The video is sort of a public service announcement/mini-documentary on the struggles faced by shadow puppets during the daytime hours. It's kind of sad, but I think it's important because it really exposes people to this little known problem being faced in puppet communities worldwide.

If you're going to get behind a cause, this is the one to support. These shadow puppets are facing daily bouts of severe depression, ridicule from their sock puppet cousins, and discrimination from employers who remain insensitive to their disability. Things are even worse for shadow puppets residing in the upper latitudes, such as in Alaska, where months of continuous daylight are causing the suicide rate to skyrocket.

Anyway, watch it. Tell your friends. Make posters and bumper stickers. Hold rallies. Tell Bono.

The Power of Shopping

So....I got into medical school.

Yeah, it's awkward, I know.

I don't know much about fate or divine intervention. Furthermore, as a dude, I've lived my life completely oblivious to the Power of Shopping. I capitalize, embolden and italicize the term because this is the highest honor one can bestow upon something on the Internet. I firmly believe that it was the PoS that brought me the joy of an acceptance. Let me divulge:

On Monday, July 14th I walked into JCPenney in Butler, Pennsylvania and purchased two ties for an upcoming job "meeting." Everybody said it was going to be an interview, but the lab director said meeting, so it turns out I was right and they were all wrong. The ties were quite nice, nothing over the top, and I paid the clerk $3.16 TOTAL.

This should have been my first clue. The ties themselves were 95% off, and therefore, before tax, $1.58 each. The ties were trying to tell me something, but I was too naive to notice it. Well it turns out, I was accepted on July 16th--sixteen being the amount of cents I paid for my two ties. What's more, July is the seventh month, and taking the remaining numbers from my tie shopping and doing a little "24 Game" mathematics, we find that [[(8 - 5) - 3] + 1] * [9 - [(5 - 4) + 1]] = 7.

Amazingly simple, yes.

So the moral is, I should have known I was going to get accepted to medical school, but limitations set forth by my gender held me back from becoming enlightened to the fact.