Island Med Student

I received a wonderful email today from a fellow Ross student. She apparently adopted a puppy in Dominica, as did I. And it just so happens that he looks exactly like my doggy, Scope! His name is Snoopy, and because of the small and incestuous population of doggies in Dominica, I’m sure that they are closely related. Below are the photos. Can you tell which ones is Scope and which one is Snoopy?!

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Kudos to anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post. Today, my partner Micah and I went to visit my sister Briana (Bruce) in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Our goal was to run some errands and shoot some video footage for an art project that Micah is working on.

We had a blast hanging out in Allentown with my sister and her doggy Chesney. We also got a wonderful surprise because Bruce was dogsitting another doggy named Wellington, who is an absolutely adorable white English Bulldog. We affectionately referred to him as “Piggy,” given his very porcine appearance and frequent snorting sounds.

As much fun as we had in Allentown, it’s great to be back in Brooklyn!

Click Here to View All the iPhone Pics

Check out my post on Medscape to read about my Match Attack!

Click Here To View the Entry

• New Rules Promise Better Mental Health Coverage – NYTimes.com
  (tags: news)

I get knocked down.
But I get up again.
You’re never going to keep me down.
- Chumbawamba

Yesterday, as I was about to finish my 8 mile run, into Manhattan and back, in 11 degree Fahrenheit + 50 MPH wind weather, early in the morning before my hospital rotation, I got knocked down. I was running with my two doggies, Scope and Molly, and Molly decided to lunge forward unexpectedly towards another doggy. It caught me off guard, and I came crashing down onto the sidewalk, with a huge amount of inertia, onto the side of my body. My shoulder, elbow, knee and hip slammed against the cold sidewalk, and then my two doggies (totaling 115 pounds) pulled me a few feet along the grit until I came to a non-screetching stop.

It hurt. I mean, it really hurt! The pain was overwhelming. I felt as though every neuron in my body was exploding. It took all my strength to peel myself off the sidewalk, brush off the dirt, and hobble the rest of the way home.

I almost called in sick to the hospital, but it was the last day of my rotation, and I didn’t want to disappoint my attending. By the time I got home, the blood streaming down my knee had turned into bloodcicles. When I got into the shower, the blood melted, and started flowing down my leg. It took a while to obtain hemostasis, and I ended up having to wrap my knee with a 4×4 and gauze to avoid having an obvious blood stain through my pants.

Then I walked one mile to the hospital and tried to pretend like nothing had happened. Since I run so often with my doggies, it was only a matter of time until an accident like this occurred. And although it was a very unpleasant experience, I’m not too upset about it. ‘Tis part and parcel of running with two very strong doggies. And as the saying goes, “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” My wounds will heal, and for that I count my lucky stars. And tomorrow I will pull myself up by my running shoe straps and go for another run.

• Doctor and Patient – Practicing on Patients, Real and Otherwise – NYTimes.com
  (tags: news)
• Study: Humans Were Born To Run Barefoot : NPR
  (tags: interesting)
• Radiolab: Why Is It So Hard To Do The Right Thing? : NPR
  (tags: interesting)

The awesome venn diagram above is from indexed, a wonderful site that I read every day.

Today, I finished my 4-week nephrology rotation. Learned a lot. Only 12 more weeks of med school to go!!

As many of you may know, I am somewhat obsessed with “Brooklynese.” Now you can be too, with a new “Fuhgeddaboudit” iPhone App!

Here’s an iPhone app for those of you who can’t get enough of the distinctive (yet undeniably contagious) local dialect known as “Brooklynese.” Fuhgeddaboudit features 5 cartoon, mafia-type characters who offer great words of wisdom spoken only as a New Yorker knows how. Amongst my personal favorites are “Whatsa matta, you no capish??” and of course “Lookadiss, I’m outta friggen’ hair gel!”

It’s a cool little app that I guarantee will make you laugh your first couple times through it ““ and the first time you show your friend in the next cubicle, and so on. It’s $0.99 on the App Store and was created by theappleseedstore.com, a startup app-development team based in NYC. Show ‘em love its the Brooklyn way.

My 2010 “Video a Day” Project continues. I’ve replaced a few clips here and there, and updated it through today. I’m really starting to enjoy taking my short, daily video clips. It definitely forces me to think. Enjoy!

My apologies for my lack of “stuff learned” tidbits during my nephrology rotation. Perhaps it’s my senioritis, perhaps it’s my “residency tunnel vision,” perhaps it’s laziness, or perhaps it’s just nephrology, but I have just been uninspired/unmotivated to write about the things I’ve learned during my nephrology rotation.

It’s definitely not for lack of learning, though. I’ve learned quite a bit during my 4-week elective. Tomorrow will be my last day, and then Monday it’s on to Pain Management.

One thing I know for sure is that nephrology seems to be a somewhat depressing field to me. The vast majority of the patients we are consulted on are very, very ill. Most of them are nursing home patients or otherwise rapidly decompensating. The prognoses are generally very grave. It seems that once your kidneys are on their way out, many times, so are you. It’s a sad, but true fact that I’ve experienced lately.

I’d say that I’ve heard “at this point, it’s about making the patient comfortable” all too many times. There tends to be very little that the doctors can do to “save” the patient, once a nephrologist has been consulted. There are exceptions, but I’ve found this to be true most of the time.

The photos from this post were taken during my walk this morning. The snow was coming down hard, and I enjoyed tunneling through the cold flakes of water during my journey to the hospital.

“Yo Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit” Photo Series