No food blogs today

I ate too much at a drug rep dinner tonight. Now, browsing through my normal food blogs makes me sick. Ugh.

I'm almost done with Plastics Surgery. It was surprisingly enjoyable and diverse in practice. When I asked my attending why he went into the field of plastics, he said "because they do good work and they're a fun bunch of people." Not the most clever response, but true to the core. It would be hard to work in a field of medicine where you thought your co-workers were all self-promoting assholes. I think the first part of his statement is definitely true; the jury is still out on the second.

On a similar note, I've decided that I don't actually like people with high ambitions. It's too easy for them to adopt the "drop 'em if they can't help you" mentality - which should be a big no-no in healthcare anyway. However, I must say that my inherent dislike of the notion that our relationships should only advance us is probably why I am making one of the most stupid, potentially hurtful decisions of my young life. Oh well. What can you do? If you claim to have principles, then you have to adhere to them, and no one ever promised you that it would be easy or fun.

I like the thought in the collage above.

"Ordinary Tragedy"

Maybe it is precisely because there is no one to point the finger to that this news story made me so sad...
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93-year-old froze to death, owed big utility bill

Mon Jan 26, 3:32 pm ET

BAY CITY, Mich. – A 93-year-old man froze to death inside his home just days after the municipal power company restricted his use of electricity because of unpaid bills, officials said.

Marvin E. Schur died "a slow, painful death," said Kanu Virani, Oakland County's deputy chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy.

Neighbors discovered Schur's body on Jan. 17. They said the indoor temperature was below 32 degrees at the time, The Bay City Times reported Monday.

"Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly," Virani said. "It's not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they're burning."

Schur owed Bay City Electric Light & Power more than $1,000 in unpaid electric bills, Bay City Manager Robert Belleman told The Associated Press on Monday.

A city utility worker had installed a "limiter" device to restrict the use of electricity at Schur's home on Jan. 13, Belleman said. The device limits power reaching a home and blows out like a fuse if consumption rises past a set level. Power is not restored until the device is reset.

The limiter was tripped sometime between the time of installation and the discovery of Schur's body, Belleman said. He didn't know if anyone had made personal contact with Schur to explain how the device works.

Schur's body was discovered by neighbor George Pauwels Jr.

"His furnace was not running, the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him," Pauwels told the newspaper.

Belleman said city workers keep the limiter on houses for 10 days, then shut off power entirely if the homeowner hasn't paid utility bills or arranged to do so.

He said Bay City Electric Light & Power's policies will be reviewed, but he didn't believe the city did anything wrong.

"I've said this before and some of my colleagues have said this: Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors," Belleman said. "When they think there's something wrong, they should contact the appropriate agency or city department."

Schur had no children and his wife had died several years ago.

Bay City is on Saginaw Bay, just north of the city of Saginaw in central Michigan.

Very true

“To most physicians, my illness is a routine incident in their rounds, while for me it’s the crisis of my life. I would feel better if I had a doctor who at least perceived this incongruity.”

- Anatole Broyard

Urgency

Met with my former psychiatry department adviser to get a letter of recommendation, and broke the news to her that I declared ob-gyn instead. I think it's the right choice, but I still felt kind of bad about it. Especially when she mused, "So many promising psych students end up going into urology, surgery..."

Somewhere in medical school, the allure of investigating the unknown gets swept up by the urgency of impending death. It's hard to juggle both at once, because one requires lots of time spent sitting and thinking, and the other requires action. In the end, we all end up picking one of the two. I guess at heart, I'm a bit of an adrenaline junky. Who would've thought.

Favorite Places

I've always felt bad that I was never any good at favorites. I could never name a favorite color, a favorite animal, favorite movie, I vacillated between favorite books, and I remain loathe to name a favorite friend. On a philosophical level, I despise favorites. BUT there is one favorite that I always wished I could name, and that is favorite personal spots. Nothing feels more intimate than being privy to someone else's favorite locales, and I've always wished that I could show someone mine. But like I said, I'm bad at favorites, horrible at scouting out nooks and crannies of towns, and generally don't get around much.

I'm trying to change that. I've started giving some thought to my favorites in the current town I'm in (and it isn't that big, which makes my tasks somewhat difficult). Today, I found my favorite daytime place to visit: the canal. It's gorgeous in an understated sort of way, and I can easily imagine myself spending time there to unwind or to talk to a good friend. I'm still working on the favorite night-time place. Maybe someplace with some good finger foods and a view? Somewhere where I won't get shot?

I'll take some pictures later. For now, enjoy this shot courtesy of the world wide web.

Hear No Evil

I was studying at Borders this weekend, and I got approached by a deaf veteran who was selling US flag pins so he could raise money to learn sign language. I didn't have any cash in my wallet, and I felt tremendously sorry having to turn him away. I'm starting to meet more veterans in my line of work, and for the first time, I'm getting a sense of what hurdles they have to jump through on a daily basis to get their well-deserved benefits. Apparently, in cases of hearing loss, there isn't much that the VA administration can do for you medically or otherwise. Hell, they're not even paying for your sign language classes, so what more could you expect?!

What is the real cost/benefit ratio of joining the military? On weekends, I see all the army recruits walking down the streets, and they seem chipper, fearless, and young. But as for me, I feel fear for them, because my main interaction with them is at the hospital, when all their youthful invincibility is irrevocably stripped away from them. Do they truly know what they are signing up for? Do they have a plan ready for if and when they come home with a war injury?

With the debt from med school building up (I'll prob pay around $150,000 when it's all said and done), I've considered doing a military payback plan. But then I see people like the veteran in Borders, and I realize there's no way in hell I would ever deliberately put myself in a situation where that might happen to me. Luckily, I have that privilege of choosing no, and knowing that my life will probably turn out just dapper anyway. I would imagine that the kids who end up getting recruited have much less rosy options.

I can't change that. I can only change how I treat the veterans I see, how much effort I put in, how much advocacy I chose to take on in my personal career. The more I'm involved in medicine, the more I see that there are SO MANY problems to be fixed, so many injustices, so many situations where I feel overwhelmed. Obama's inauguration is tomorrow, and I think a lot of people are expecting his presidency to usher in a new wave of.... something. I voted for the guy, but I don't think he can do more than inspire us. In the end, it's us who have to do the work, who have to make the commitment, who have to sacrifice some of our precious personal time.
I've given up on finding love while still in medical school - it's a pain in the ass anyway, and after all the effort, I still wind up feeling more bad than good. I'm going to spend the rest of this year just trying to be a good medical student, and crossing things off my list like I promised myself I would. Then maybe I can finally go to sleep at peace at night, without asking myself - as I have for the past few nights - just what the hell it is I'm doing with my life.

"I shall pass this way but once..."

The quote or the picture? I think it's the quote. Sometimes, I wonder if I've made the right decisions in life, spent time with the right people, done enough good. It's not something I like to think too much about - the images of all the various futures I have already cast off into oblivion are clear enough as it is. And these are hard questions to answer for a girl who's got superglue stuck to her fingers...

This is sort of cute

Those damn one uppers! Almost as annoying as the Debbie Downers, only that skit is slightly more funny...