Germy

Today  in school we had one of our "balancing" classes, designed to remind us that we, by necessity must become imbalanced in order not to flunk out of med school. At least, that's what I take away from the classes. Nevertheless, there are usually some nuggets of wisdom to take home, and today provided a couple. The first one, I'll just briefly mention, is about a doctor who was diagnosed with terminal esophogeal cancer and, during this time gave lectures and wrote a book. It was only last spring he was in the lecture hall, kind of as a dead man walking, lecturing about the important things in life. The students who are now second year OMS's got this lecture, and I wish that we would get the same honor, but alas, he passed a few months ago. The second half of the class we formed small groups and discussed how 9/11 affected us, what happened to us that day, etc. Of course, many of my fellow students were still in high-school back then and in a few short years...

During one of the first days of my time working in the ER we had a newborn brought in for phototherapy to help with it's hyperbilirubineremia. I really didn't know what this was, it kinda sounded familiar, but I knew next to nothing -- not even how to spell it. When registering patients, we would put in a brief description of what was going on, in this case my more experienced coworker told me to put in "bilirubin." What I wrote was "Billy reuben." Even though it was closer to breakfast, I'm always game for a Reuben sandwich, even if the rye bread is a little more yellow than it should be. 

Earlier this year I emailed Billy Hunter & Derek Fisher telling them that David Stern had called them some bad names. I also emailed David Stern to tell him that Billy & Derek had also called him naughty names. I did this so that there would be no NBA season and thereby eliminating the temptation to watch Blazer games instead of doing homework. I'm glad to get this off my chest, as this is the first I've spoken about it. I would like to apologize, as I know it was a selfish move on my part, but I felt it was what I had to do.

This week we've had some really good lectures on HIV/AIDS. I'm old enough that I can remember the late 1980's which saw the near panic crescendo from all of this. Perhaps, the climax was Magic Johnson's diagnosis and retirement from the NBA. It is a little hard to believe that that was 20 years ago, as the anniversary was just a few days ago. I can actually remember thinking that this was good for the Portland Trail Blazers, since Magic's retirement left the Lakers in a bind. Of course, this was the thoughts of a young boy insulated from most harsh realities of the real world. All that surrounds the AIDS epidemic is so crazy and dramatic compared to most other areas of medicine. A friend whom I worked with a few years ago was getting a master's degree and in one of the classes she was taking the professor espoused the idea that the CIA had created HIV on purpose and distributed it to people in Africa, and this is where it came from. I really don't know m...

This evening I made a run to the small market  a mile or two from our house. Seeing as how today was the last day of our block exam fiasco, and my knee is progressing to the point where I can nearly bend it without blinding pain, I figured it was important to pick up some laffy taffy and lemonheads. While in the market the lady who owns the place, whom I've gotten to know, asked me about my still prominent limp. I started to tell her about the whole experience of being diagnosed with gout and how bad it was and that the timing was about as unfortunate as it can get and all. In the line behind me was a younger guy, could have easily been me from 7 or 10 years ago who chimes in and tells me that doctors are just drug pushers who are no better than a crack dealer. He says this with a sly grin, obviously having no idea that I was actually working my ass off to try and join the ranks of the "crack dealer." I just kind of half smiled, nodded and finished up my conversation ...

Since we moved to California from Colorado, I've had a couple of weird things happen with my joints. In fact, throughout my life there has been many issues. Dozens of dislocations, mostly of the shoulder, but also an elbow, patella and a couple fingers. The only surgery (besides wisdom teeth removal) was a shoulder reconstruction deemed necessary from all the dislocations. In July, before school started I came down with an attack of gout in my large toe of my right foot. I was drinking a few glasses of wine most nights, but other than that I really wasn't engaging in overt gout promoting behavior. It put me down for 3 or 4 days though. There have been a few other times where my knee would swell up, and since it correlated to a coldish, stormish front moving through I chalked it up to one more thing that confirms my old-fartness. Well, if I needed one more confirmatory episode I was handed a whopper over the last few days. I had another gout attack, except this time it was in my...

 Take that, liberal arts.