Hallelujah, It's Raining Tea

Medical school is dangerous.

No, I'm not talking about inadvertent needle sticks, patients with tuberculosis, homicidal drug seekers, or angry nurses. I'm talking about foosball. Yeah, foosball.

This afternoon after classes were over, three friends and I decided to get in a quick game of foosball like we often do before heading home for the day. My teammate and I were winning (as usual), when a giant insulated beverage dispenser fell off a ledge and plummeted down to the floor below where it violently came to rest next to the foosball table. Covered in iced tea and very confused, we slowly glanced up to see a caterer peering down in horror.

Luckily we were all okay, despite our unexpected yet surprisingly pleasant newfound lemony aroma. We cleaned off the foosball table and decided to call it a day.

The Art of Bagel Theft

Before me stands a mountain of bagels so magnificently grand that God himself would be jealous of my handiwork. As the big man stares down from above with his mouth gaping and his sacred drool cascading gently down through the clouds, the villagers of a small Indian seaside town run in terror from the impending monsoon. The sesame seeds glisten in the light of a hundred gently swaying incandescent light bulbs, and the poppy seeds simultaneously snuff out the glow like tiny pinpoint black holes strewn across a universe of flour and sugar. There is an ovarian tumor on a large screen in the distance. I sit in class amongst the sound of scribbling pens and the soft scrape of highlighters across freshly photocopied notes still warm to the touch. I take a large bite and sit back in my chair to cherish the flavor of cool cream cheese and soft dough dancing around my taste buds. I look to my left and see a similar towering peak of taste. My friend gives me a thumbs-up as we both continue chewing.

Medical school is a time of discovery. Here we discover our strengths, but more often than that, we unwillingly unearth our greatest weakness. For many of us, that weakness is bagels. Is there anything on this earth so perfect? I don't claim to know who invented the bagel, and I refuse to believe Wikipedia when it says it was the Polish. I mean, come on, they've already got Chopin, so stop being greedy.

Anyway, regardless of who did or didn't invent the bagel, they remain a staple of any medical student's diet. Obtaining bagels, however, can prove difficult. Admittedly, there are many bagels in medical school, but finding them is the key. More often the not, the bagels in medical school are not for you. They are for somebody else. But much like the ninja of feudal Japan, as medical students we must utilize unorthodox methods of, shall we say, "warfare" in our struggle for bagels.

Last week there were bagels in the student activities center. They had been placed there for the first-year students who were taking a series of exams that week. We swooped in along the rafters and infiltrated the heck out of those bagels.

This week there were bagels for the fourth-year students as they learned important skills for their upcoming transition into residency. Using a slight diversion, we pounced upon those bagels like hundreds of parched wildebeest on a small puddle of muddy water.

The scene is always the same: In a matter of seconds we are upon them, and in a matter of long awkward minutes we are gone. Seriously though, it's hard to make a decent getaway with your pockets and arms full of bagels. But no matter -- we never fail.

Attention: Med School Applicants

Strictly speaking, this isn't a "medical blog." But sometimes I feel the need to talk about something medical. It's really not my fault; it's just what I do. If there are any medical school applicants that read this blog, this is for you.

You shouldn't feel the need to try and find "medical relevance" in your non-academic activities and hobbies. Doctors are humans and medical schools want humans to fill the slots in their entering class. Humans have hobbies and interests outside of their jobs. This is one of the main things that separates us from robots, and that's a good thing. Why? Because robots make terrible clinicians. Robots would more than likely make decent surgeons, but that's another topic entirely. The point is, medical school admissions committees know that robots make bad clinicians, so they welcome the chance to learn about your hobbies.

Bottom line: they know that you don't play poker, kayak, or play bingo because you think it'll make you a good anesthesiologist. They know it, I know it, and you know it. But that's OKAY.

Thank You, Harvey

Knowledge was your gift,

through patience unrelenting.

You have my respect.

September 2008 - May 2009

Medical Storage

We keep human brains in Tupperware. Their big cube-shaped containers happen to be the perfect size to hold an entire brain and sufficient preservative fluid to submerge it. I sometimes wonder if anyone in the design or marketing department ever considered this as a potential use for their product. I don't see anything about it on their website.

Sample product description with slight modifications:

Keep Extra-Large Produce Brains Extra-Fresh and Flavorful!

Say hello to the grandest member of the FridgeSmart® Container family! The Large Round's generous shape and size provides vent-controlled storage for whole heads of cabbage, lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower. The 20-cup (4.7 L) capacity - available in Sea Mist with permanent storage chart molded in - also offers ample room for large quantities of your favorite smaller pediatric fruits and vegetables brains. Seal in Sea Mist.
9"Dia. x 6 7/8"H (23 x 17 cm)

To store other fruits and vegetables organs use our unique Small, Medium Long orLarge FridgeSmart® containers.

Fruits and vegetables Brains have different airflow needs when stored in the fridge. View the FridgeSmart Storage Chart(Bilingual) to learn the best vent settings for your favorite fruits and vegetables brains.

Also, with the addition of the word "Tupperware" into my blogging vocabulary, I've successfully expanded my demographic to include housewives. I hear this subpopulation tends to include ravenous bloggers and blog readers. Starting today, this blog is going places.

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.

Arnold and Me

My family and friends have often asked me what it's like to be applying to medical school. I tend to meet their question with a generic response which, in terms of thoughtfulness and depth, lies somewhere on the spectrum between a giggle and a slow nod. I'll say things like, "It's rough" or, "The process is pretty tedious," but I always make sure to shy away from details. It's not because the questions annoy me. No, I hold back the specifics not because I want to, but because I have to. In all seriousness, and without hyperbole, if med school applicants were to clue in the general public on the ins and outs of the application process, our health care system would cease to exist. Nobody would agree to go through with it.

Perhaps surprisingly, the medical school admissions process has a lot in common with The Running Man, that 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you haven't seen it, the basic premise is that "The Running Man" is a futuristic game show where convicts are given the chance to run to freedom all the while being chased by "stalkers" who are trying to brutally murder them before they escape.

For med school, each school you apply to sends its own team of stalkers who will try and take you down. Defeat the first stalker and you get a secondary application, defeat the next and you get an interview, defeat the third and you get your acceptance letter. Sure, like Mr. Schwarzenegger, you might yell out a witty phrase like "He had to split!" or "What a pain in the neck!" after cutting in half and strangling two respective stalkers, but the plain truth of it is that the majority of your time is spent huddling in dumpsters and crapping your pants in fear.

Of course, the abilities and aggressiveness of the stalkers depends on the school. Drexel's stalkers might only have foam bats and a couple Nerf crossbows. Johns Hopkins' stalkers, on the other hand, have battling robots and an unending supply of heat-seeking lightsaber missiles.

It's a daunting task, and surviving is no easy feat. Yet we still do it. We endure the toil, the sharpened hockey sticks and the rolly-polly man who shoots lightning (seriously, watch the movie) so that we can eventually become doctors. After hearing the truth about the process, you may ask why it's worth it. I think we, as med school applicants, know the answer in our hearts. Though we may come from different backgrounds and bring with us different strengths and vulnerabilities, we all participate in the game because, well, we know that at the end we get to kill Richard Dawson.

"That hit the spot."