"You Can See This Grossly"

I knowwww that words have more than one meaning, but sometimes when I hear a word, I think of the definition I like best, and then I get fixated on it and can't snap back to the "correct" definition which is "relevant" to the situation.

He's really grossed out

For our new class which started yesterday, DPPT (what? it's an acronym?! who would have guessed?), we have both histology labs and gross labs as part of the course.  In this case, in the histo labs we'll look at tissues under a microscope while in the gross labs we'll look at structures you can see with the naked eye (gross = macroscopic).  I get that.  I do.  I promise.  But I CANNOT help but assume the gross lab is going to be similar to one of those haunted houses where you're led from station to station and shown disgusting things like a bowl full of eyeballs (peeled grapes), or brainz (spaghetti?), etc.  The histo labs are where we look at tissues and the gross labs are where you look at gross things - obviously.


Something tells me I'm going to be grossly disappointed when I get to lab :-(

Nail-Biting

IHR, Infection and Host Response, comes to an end today (and because all of our course titles require an explanation, this class was Immunology and Microbiology).  If microbiology has taught me anything, it is this: it is a terrible idea to eat someone's feces.  Also, I should stop biting my nails.


A lot of the parasites we learned about are more prevalent in children/toddlers because they can't help but put their fingers in their mouths, so any parasite eggs they may accidentally touch (in the soil, or on any infected surface) get directly into their bodies.  Pretty sure I'm at the level of the toddlers on that one since I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to not biting my nails.

But it's a lot worse for me because first of all, I'm almost 25 and should be done with that by now (ALMOST - I still have two whole days before I'm in my mid-twenties, so stop rushing my life away, goshhhh) and second of all, I'm a med student and have seen the horrifying disgusting pictures of these parasitic diseases - which you think would scare me into never putting my hands near my face again.  But at least I've also learned that my immune system is wayyyy more developed than a toddler's - so ha-ha, whatup now toddlers?!

That's also why we can eat honey but babies can't; their crappy undeveloped immune system can't deal with the small amount of germs that are sometimes found in honey.  Adults - 1, Babies - 0.

Over 10,000 hits!

Granted, half of those hits are probably me - but still, that's exciting!

As a reward to all my loyal fans, I give you a surprise WEDNESDAY post with.... more ugly pictures!!!

Triaging Information

The "normal" medical definition of triage is prioritizing patients based on their urgency of need of care.  However, we (me and Jenna - remember her from all those Ecuador posts?  She's still around, I just can't seem to get rid of her) have created a new, and in my opinion, better, definition of triage for medical school.  Basically it means skipping over any information that we decide is not important enough to spend precious study time on.

There are overwhelming amounts of information to memorize for each test, so we have to prioritize where we spend our time, ideally spending more time on the topics that are more likely to show up on the test.  Usually we do a pretty bad job - we'll spend 2 weeks studying like 5 lectures (you know, so we can learn them reallly realllly well), and then all of the sudden we have 3 days to study the rest of the 30 lectures (and then forget everything about the first 5 lectures anyway).  So when it comes down to crunch time, you just can't spend the time on learning the inane details of all 30 of those lectures.  We started using triage as a synonym for prioritizing our time, but it's quickly taken on its new meaning.


"Do you think we need to know the serology for all the hepatitis viruses?"
"Triage it"

"What about the names of all the mosquitoes that carry encephalitic viruses?"
"Triage it"

"Horse viruses?"
"Triage them, and why are they even included in this course?!"


And so, ladies and gentlemen, triage now means skip.  Try to use it at least once in a sentence today.

Breathing? No - Dead. Thanks, triage card!

Jewish Housewives' Disease

In honor of all the Jewish holidays that go on during this time of year (I really want to be mad that our exam is the Monday after Yom Kippur, but since we haven't had lecture with new material since Tuesday, it's sorta hard to say we don't have enough time to study....), I thought I would shed some light on the disease called Jewish Housewives' Disease as a DIRE WARNING to people who are heading in that direction.

Jewish Housewives' Disease's less fun name is Diphyllobothriasis, and it's caused by a tapeworm that's found in some types of fish.  If you cook the fish that contains this tapeworm (full name: Diphyllobothrium latum), then no biggy.  But if you eat it raw or undercooked, then you can get an infection that's sometimes hard to diagnose because you get very non-specific symptoms - stomach pain, anemia, fatigue [read about a real-life tale of a tapeworm from the NY Times].

So why are Jewish housewives most infected?  Because the world hates Jews?  Maybe.  But more likely it's because Jewish housewives make homemade gefilte fish (or at least they used to) - which is basically a delicious mushed-up ball of all different kinds of fish as well as an excellent excuse to eat gobs of horseradish.  And like any good cook (not that I would know), they would taste the gefilte fish to make sure it was perfectly flavored before they cooked it - aka raw.  And then... they would get INFECTED.  And to get better, they would have to take MEDICINE.

It's the making for the perfect horror movie, right?  I already thought of the tag line (read slowly in a deep, menacing voice). "All she wanted for Passover was to impress her mother-in-law with homemade gefilte fish.  She didn't ask for the uninvited guest ...   in her BELLY." 

Stephen King and I are already collaborating on the script, if anyone else wants in.

Happy October!

Look, we got an itty-bitty pumpkin because we're merry med students!

Worth every one of the 79 pennies it cost!  It may be hard to carve though - I'll need an itty-bitty x-acto knife.  How many pumpkin seeds do you think are inside?  Five?

To-Do List

My ridiculous to-do lists are really quite ridiculous.  I get so over-ambitious when I make them up that there is really no possible way I can finish all the things on my list for a particular day.  But even knowing that, somehow I'm always still disappointed with myself when it happens, aka every single day.

Here is my to-do list, photo taken this past Monday morning:

As you've noticed, on Monday I was still working on things from the previous Wednesday.  As you've also noticed, Thursday is not on the to-do list.  That is because I finished everything I wanted to do on Thursday!  As I finish things, instead of crossing them off, I delete them.  Trust me, it's much more satisfying.  And being able to delete a whole day is really the best feeling there is.

I also usually include things like "shower" and "eat dinner" on my list because (A) those things do take up time in the day and (B) I really like being able to delete things from my list.  The reason you don't see any of those on the list above is because they actually get done, so they're always deleted from the list.  You're not gonna see "eat dinner" from Wednesday still on the list on Monday - that would mean I hadn't eaten dinner in 6 days!  Now that would just be ridiculous.