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.

So in response to my favorite picture in the Times-Picayune, a writer submitted this blog post.

On another note, I'm two for two on trips home where someone has seen me in my school sweatshirt and said, "hey, I went to <insert name of rival medical school here>."

I just thought I'd share this Sunday afternoon email I received from my roommate:

Merry Christmas

I, like many of you, have nothing better to do than sit around home and riffle through old things while sequestered under the pretense of "family time" OR maybe that's just me... In an endearing bonding moment between my father and I, he presented me with an old book titled "Mrs. Byren's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words."

Since I know you all check your e-mail I decided to spread some Christmas cheer by means of strange vocabulary.

Xenomancy (zen-o-man"se) n. fortunetelling by studying the first stranger that appears.
Onolatry (o-nol e-tre) n. ass-worship
Flapdragon (flap'drag"en) n. a game of catching candy from burning brandy (we should try this)
Randle (ran'del) w. a nonsensical poem recited by Irish schoolboys as an apology for farting at a friend.
Vinification (vin"i-fi-ka'shen) n. the conversion of fruit juice into alcohol by fermentation (we could try this, but it might turn out poorly)
Wiskerino (hwisk-er-en'o) n. a beard-growing contest (done and done)
Zumbooruk (zum-boo'ruk) n. a small cannon fired from the back of a camel. (why didn't I think of that)


Ciao,
Karen

Thursday was all set to be a study day at school - how convenient that half the roads to school were closed to block off a riot happening next door, in front of city hall. I sympathized from library while reading online that the protestors of the demolition of public housing were being tasered and pepper sprayed until I found this fun picture & caption:

Histology exam went fine Friday morning.  Cardiac muscle was on the practical portion, which threw most people for a loop (including me) since that was a block 1 subject.  Oh well.

Friday afternoon travel was a nightmare.  I rarely have travel troubles, but somehow my United flight to Los Angeles was delayed by four hours, so I would have missed my layover back to the Bay Area.  Every United flight was delayed and the line at the ticket counter was a mess, so I called the customer service line to get my flight changed.  Fortunately, the agent told me I could get on a 7pm flight to LAX and take a later flight into SFO and be home by midnight.  Unfortunately, 10 minutes later, I got a call from my dad because my flight had actually been rescheduled for Saturday night.  I ended up taking a couple of laps around MSY getting my flight rescheduled yet again   My original flight to LA was oversold so I couldn't get back on the plane, yet my baggage was checked for that flight.  I ended up getting a flight on another airline that actually got me home late Friday night. (Continental Airlines - left on time, flight wasn't even full.)  Note to self: no more traveling on United.  Poor Jenna's flight was canceled and she went back to her apartment and didn't fly out until Saturday.  Karen's flight to LA (same flight I was originally on) landed at the same time I arrived back in the bay.

On the bright side, streetcars are coming to my neighborhood!  Oh wait, that means my car will probably be hit by one.

Had a slow early morning for Histology review today - had to go home and nap afterward.  I ended up going to run an errand before going back to school for the afternoon.  My sister wanted a Christmas gift for her boss, who likes Tabasco sauce on everything.  Go figure that Tabasco is made in Avery Island, LA, and you can get almost everything Tabasco at the Tabasco Country Store in the French Quarter. 

I made sure to googlemap everything before I left so I could get there and to school and back to studying in the most efficient way possible, but somehow I still missed the turn after getting off I-10.  It wouldn't have been so bad, but I kept driving straight, looking for the Esplanade so I could make a right turn and driving straight off this particular exit takes you right into the Ninth Ward.  If that wasn't bad enough, I didn't realize where I was and crossed the bridge over the canal into the Lower Ninth Ward.  It's not actually as devastated-looking as I expected; just pretty deserted, but it was a sunny day and everything seems to look better in the sunshine.

I made a quick stop at the Tabasco Country Store before running over to Cafe du Monde for beignets, which I haven't had in awhile, before driving back into downtown and studying the Ear.  Fun fun.  I just have Eye, Lymph, and Respiratory system left to do before Friday.

So many ups and downs this block - there was the idiopathic chest pain aggravated by confronting some random sketchy man jogging in front of my house with his package hanging out, a trip to the ER that probably ended in a misdiagnosis, two chest x-rays and a lot of doctor visits - but I also made it home for Thanksgiving (first time in 7 years!) and I've been having fun staying busy ever since I got back.  I spent yesterday afternoon in a nursing home with a nontraditional population of mainly high-risk middle aged men who've beaten their bodies up with drugs and alcohol and motorcycle accidents without helmets; and today, I performed my first real intubation on the first try.  It's a busy two weeks for me before exams - tomorrow I'm going on a trip to the jail; Saturday I'm working at the free clinic, and Monday I will be giving PPDs.

I was rudely awakened by an annoying beep from my cell phone this morning that wouldn't stop - apparently my phone stopped charging.  Saturday morning before block II exams and I was completely cut off from the rest of the world.  After ranting about it for a few minutes, I decided to take the time and make a trip to the cell phone store and see what they could do about it.

I was a little anxious about the phone problem because I wasn't prepared to get a new one since I got my phone a little wet a few months ago and didn't think I could get it replaced for free.  Evidently the water indicator never changed color, so after driving aimlessly around Metairie for half an hour, I found the service center and got a new phone.  Getting back to school to start this weekend's studying got a little held up by traffic on the Causeway (worst place to be ever on a Saturday afternoon) and then traffic from the homecoming game bogged me down a bit when I got to the home stretch.

We went to Felipe's for lunch as soon as a I got to school.  Being a paramedic and wearing scrubs out of lab, Jay had to help a woman in the parking lot who had fallen when stepping off the curb and hit her head.  (My favorite part?  Random dude: Did someone get the doctor wearing scrubs inside?  Jay: Doctor? Sweet? (looks down) Oh wait, that's me.)

Jenna and I shot the shit for awhile, then went over to the lab so Dustyn could enlighten us about Histology.  The rest of the evening was spent discussing embryology while keeping up with the baseball game online.  We actually packed up at 10:30 (pretty early, considering the last few days) except Dustyn, whose response to me was, "I'm coming in a few minutes.  And you'll know why very soon."  Euphemism for something?  No.  I went down to the parking lot and found that Dustyn had parked 10 inches from the driver's side of my car.  He had actually folded my mirror up in order to get as close as possible.  So of course, I called him and yelled at him to get downstairs, then hopped in my passenger side and drove off.