So I was secretly hoping that Ike would come a little closer so I could postpone my exam again...but now that I've seen the devastation, I retrospectively take that back. We haven't gotten ahold of Marlon since the hurricane hit, when he called several hours earlier to tell us that he was having a hurricane party.
This weekend I completed some of my required community service hours at the Saturday clinic. The T4 I worked with made me actually do a full exam on all of our patients, which is different from the usual hovering I get to do. Unforunately, HEENT exam skills isn't until this week, so I had a lot to learn in a hurry. Fortunately, my patients didn't mind, and actually seemed interested in watching me learn.
We have a prospective student staying with us this week, which I'm really excited about. There's something about not hanging out with medical students that I feel adds value to my life - and is a great distractor from all of the dumb microbiology jokes we make now. (I think everyone has cat-scratch disease.) We're hosting two girls this month, and another guy the first week of October. Finally, some non-med school conversation.
And for some political non-commentary - the SNL skit with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin was awesome. Also, I think I might not vote for the first time since I've turned 18. In every election that I've been eligible for, I'm made sure to apply early for my California absentee ballot, and then read the voter guide and send my ballot back the day after it arrives. This year, I'm not sure who I'd pick. It's really a sad state of affairs - really old people running with really inexperienced people. Hopefully, things will start to become more clear for me in the next few weeks.
We left Houston at 9pm last night to avoid any major traffic. Our evacuation actually became a pretty good hurrication, spending time with med school and non-med school friends in the area, while learning a little bit about bacteria and fungi in between.
Houston is a pretty great place to be, if only because it reminds me a lot of being in Northern California with wide freeways and big shopping malls and fewer incompetent people. I have to say, I was truly disappointed by the Mexican food we had there, from the fast food joints to Tex-Mex. Chipotle, which I am constantly hearing my Texan classmates RAVE about, was a major disappointment. I've never tried it, even home in California, and it was awful. Perhaps Dustyn and I are the only people who think lime-cilantro is over the top and not very good, but I'm definitely not going back. The local tex-mex was also overpriced and bad. My favorite food ended up being queso and tortillas late night at Taco Cabana.
So, seeing as I had packed literally my entire life into my car, I had a neat little set up on Marlon's coffee table with my laptop, my 24" monitor, and his 47" plasma screen in the background so I could feed my neuroses about hurricanes for the first four days. It worked out well for the studying I was able to do, and wasn't a terrible hassle to pack back into my car.
We went to a place downtown where it was 80s night, playing a really fun band, the Spazmatics. Interestingly, at some point, a girl picked a fight with me after trying to shove me over in front of the stage for several minutes. I'm really not quite sure how it happened except I turned around to look at her and she clawed me in the arm. If it weren't for the claw marks and three witnesses, I wouldn't have believed it happened. Apparently I won. This is also a source of confusion for me because I just stood there and looked angry. Perhaps I am very scary looking? Hope not.
Now we're back in NOLA, with an exam waiting for us this week. Also waiting for us: another hurricane! I'm so not unpacking.
My car loves going 90 mph so much, it got me and 1000 lbs. of my belongings to Houston at 34 mpg. That's almost double what I get driving around the city.
We made to to Houston to shortly after 7 am. The trip was mostly uneventful, except for the pace cars maintaining traffic at 45 mph on I-10 all the way to Baton Rouge, apparently to allow the convoy of prison evacuees to get ahead. It's interesting that it's a really big deal that they aren't allowed to mix with the general population when I've seen them in clinic, and even to the extent that we can't be on the highway at the same time We also passed a string of charter buses going the opposite direction to evacuate people who don't have access to their own transportation. There were about 20 disabled vehicles along the side for the road. (How awful would that be? I'd have to unpack my entire trunk to get the spare tire out.) Also, the town of Adams Bayou, somewhere just inside Texas, smells like garbage. And then I saw the sun rise over Texas. (In my review mirror of course, since I was driving west.)
We got to Marlon's, and of course the first thing I did was check the status of the storm, which, since I left New Orleans had been upgraded to a category 2. After napping for a few hours, I went back to my computer to find that it was now a category 3. Sometime while I decided to do some school work, the internet went out, and I had to put the Weather Channel on mute so I could keep myself updated. Since then, it's been fluctuating between cat 4 and almost 5. For details on what the category differences are, check out this NHC page.
On the bright side, we met up with some med school friends at Goode Company BBQ, which was pretty tasty.
So I've spent the last 28 hours trying to pretend there's no hurricane coming at me - it's just a tropical storm, it could hit Florida, etc., etc. Unfortunately, I suspect it's this kind of denial that stranded so many people here in New Orleans three years and one day ago, so Dustyn and I have decided that we're definitely leaving for Houston late tonight.
It's also finally reached the wind speed to be considered an official hurricane, somewhere in the ocean southwest of Cuba.
It's funny how two days ago when the small threat of hurricane had me all excited about taking a road trip to Texan and perhaps having our exam delayed. This morning, however, on my drive to Home Depot to get a 4-D cell LED flashlight (that doubles as a self-defense weapon), the mood was obviously somber with numerous people stocking up on batteries and other hurricane-weathering accessories, debating with each other whether or not the should really leave the city. And now, that I have thus far packed up half my life and I still have a quite a bit to pack into my car, I'm kind of sad to be leaving. What if I don't get to come back?
Most of class this morning was spent overhearing people's conversations about who is evacuating where and why. Less than the normal 30% showed up to lecture, probably running errands like Aaron, who needed to replace the busted spare tire in his SUV before the few of us the possible trek to Houston this weekend. Rumors keep flying and by now, I've heard from someone eighth-hand that the dean of the med school has canceled classes Friday-Wednesday, and from someone else (insert prime number here)-hand that the dean has only canceled class from Monday-Wednesday. But Monday is a holiday anyhow, so...who knows?
Some kids have already made big plans to leave tonight. So far, my only plans are to get gas and stop at Home Depot for some batteries and a big flashlight. And, of course, compulsively check NHC.
I'm not sure what it is that makes me think that checking the NHC site every 20 minutes will give me new up-to-date information on whether or not we're going to evacuate. Last I checked, I couldn't have been too dumb or irrational to get into med school.
Well, regardless of my intelligence, Wednesday evening's map of the project storm trajectory shows a hurricane headed my direction, with expected landfall by Tuesday. I wonder what this means for my microbiology exam next Friday?
I saw this in one of my favorite blogs to read in my spare, albeit infrequent, spare time.
Running a hospital: First known picture of Michael Phelps
Last Thursday, a few of us took a well-deserved break from studying for our inflammation exam to celebrate a friend's birthday and catch one of Phelps' races. (No, I don't know which one. I can't swim. All I know is that Phelps gets to swim in the middle lane, there's a green line showing the rate he'd have to go to beat the world record, and he was moving faster than the line.)
Amongst my friends, Dustyn used to be a swimmer, Aaron played tennis, and Jay wrestled (among a myriad of other things). And I thought to myself, how good could they have been if they had spent more time on their sport and less time in school? But then, how would you feel if you devoted your entire life to one task, and didn't come out first in the world? After all, there can only be one.
I can't say I spent a lot of time thinking about this; I had a lot of pathology to read, and honestly, I was in the marching band in high school. The closest I ever got to an Olympic sport was competitive walking. I was also attacked by a big hand stamp and was more worried about looking like I had Stevens- Johnson syndrome, which in case you don't know what it is, you really don't want it.
(The stamps says AWESOME, if you can't tell. Apparently I'm really awesome.)
Back home in SF for a week to enjoy and luxury of sleeping 12 hours a day and not having to go to work...
Sunday I met up with my old work buddy Aaron. I missed the memo and walked out of the Civic Center BART into a crowd of rainbows and scantily clad (or less) men. Did I really leave New Orleans for THIS?
We managed to escape the Gay Pride Parade and had brunch at Flipper's, because Aaron remembered that I love eggs benedict. Aaron and I talked about med school applications, work, significant others, and startup ideas before wandering back up to Pacific Heights so I could meet up with my family for dinner.
I had a minor aversion to the restaurant we ended up at, because it was called Five Happiness, the same name as Jay's favorite place in New Orleans. (I think it's terrible.) The place in SF, though, was definitely somewhere I'd go again.
Yesterday I had appointment to go to the Concord DMV. Kind of a trek but the only place I could get an appointment while I was still home. My license expires on my birthday in October, but I wasn't sure what the process was for renewal and thought maybe it would be easier to take care of while I was still in the same time zone. Unfortunately, I discovered that to renew early, I had to retake the written driving test. I can't recall how far you're supposed to follow an emergency vehicle so this didn't make me very happy. I guess I also overestimated the intelligence of the average California driver as well because the test only took me five minutes and I passed without looking at the manual.
Tonight I had dinner at Delancey Street, which has this cool concept of using the restaurant, as well as other business ventures, to both educate and fund the rehabilitation of ex-convicts. It's actually rather inexpensive, with good service and food. Seeing Aaron and some other favorites from my old job was a good time - a bit of reminiscing about work, mostly politics and med school (and how much I LOVE being in the OR), baseball. It's fun talking about how much I loved my first year in med school with people who've been there or will be there - it's such a small subset of the population that can truly understand what it is to love the grueling work of training to become a physician. Hopefully my excitement about being able to stick my finger into a person's neck and feel a pulse from the carotid is contagious - and I hope Val and Aaron love med school as much as I do when they get there.
There are a lot of reasons I miss SF, and this crowd is definitely one of them. Lack of potholes is also high on my list.
So I've been cleaning my email box to procrastinate and avoid studying for the physio and biochem NBME shelf exams and came across the graphic my friend Jay sent to me recently on choosing a medical specialty:
Apparently weebly is a terrible (or very good, depending on how you look at is) procrastination tool, because in my blogging hiatus I've done progressively better in school. Or I could just be getting better at studying medicine.
In my free time, I've been playing Halo and attempting to get a positive K/D ratio (the instances are few and far between.) A few of my roommate's friends were here this weekend, which set off a string of disaster. First of all, it thundered and poured all Saturday while a good portion of our class was trying to rock out at Jazzfest. We elected to watch the NFL draft over 20 lbs. of crawfish at Aaron's, only when we went to leave, my car wouldn't start. I probably should have done something when the "Battery Voltage Low" indicator came on two weeks ago, but I was busy trying to get a solid grasp on Respiratory physiology and the GI tract. No worries, Dustyn's beat-up minivan was still available to drive home, rest up, then back to Aaron's to pre-party for the night out.
Back at Aaron's, after several rounds of beirut, we're walking out to the car...what car? I always thought that part of town was a little sketch, but not that much. Out of beer, we sat around and waited for the cops before heading down to Ms Mae's, the neighborhood open-during-Katrina one-dollar-drinks watering hole and then Harrah's for the breakfast buffet.
Aaron was kind enough to lend us his SUV the following day, which was definitely needed so that we could drive across town Sunday evening to the site of the accident Dustyn's car had been in. Apparently the kid who hot-wired it crashed into the back of a parked car, sending it across an intersection (and then some). Fortunately, most of the stuff in the car was still there, other then some workout stuff and sadly, the cash box for our med school academic banquet this Friday. The kid was caught, and sulking in the back of the squad car until we arrived .
Yesterday, we had some time to drop my car off at the dealership in between classes, and then picked it up after a PBL session on diabetes. And then I went home and washed and waxed it. It actually looks terrible, because I was doing it until late, and couldn't see where the wax wasn't buffed off. Oops.
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