Island Med Student

Check out my post on Medscape to read my “fake” new year’s resolutions.

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I’ve been converting very, very old VHS video footage from my family’s home movie collection for the past few weeks. I thought it would be fun to share two short clips from my childhood. The first one is me trying to look cool while rollerskating (and wearing tight-rolled jeans!). And the second is me attacking my younger sister, Briana. Yes, I did torture her from time to time. But she forgives me now.

Enjoy!

I recently received this comment on my “Well That Sucked” blog post:

are you seriously writing about this crap on your blog?
why do i come back here? it’s so unsatisfying.

I’ve stated this before, but I feel compelled to state it again. This blog is primarily for me, my friends and my family. Yes, that is a bit selfish, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I try to also post helpful tips and advice for others out there, but that is not my primary mission. I have intentionally not allowed this site to become commercialized. I have denied many people advertising space. I don’t intend for this site to be a “med school advice” site, or anything like that. If it was, I would not write about my personal life on it.

I write about all kinds of things on this site. Sometimes I give advice, sometimes I share about my med school experiences, sometimes about patient experiences, sometimes about broken baby strollers, and sometimes about my dog urinating on my foot.

I will not apologize for not being exciting enough, or medically oriented enough. If anyone is unsatisfied with the content of this website, by all means, do not visit it!

I hope I don’t sound like I’m ranting too much. I just want to be clear about my intent and goals for this site.

I went on two residency interviews last week, and I will share more about that soon.

For now, please enjoy this completely un-medical and very random photo that I took at a restaurant in Bushwick a few months ago.

“Yo Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit” Photo Series

I just went down to the laundry room IN MY BUILDING to discover that someone had stolen my bathroom rug from the dryer! I am PISSED, to say the least! Seriously, who steals bathroom rugs?! Anyway, I am going to Kinko’s to print out 20 or so copies of the above flyer, and hanging them all over my building. I WILL get my rug back!! Someone has messed with the wrong girl!!!

I am what you might call a list-aholic. I obsessively make “to do” lists, “grocery lists,” and just about any other list you can imagine. Whenever I am feeling overwhelmed by the volume of crap I have to get done, writing it all down on a piece of paper, and then crossing each off one by one as I accomplish them never fails to reduce my anxiety.

Several days after moving into my apartment in Brooklyn (which was one year ago), the towel rack in my bathroom broke. Basically, the screws came out of the wall and were just hanging there by a thread. Every time I put a towel on the rack, it would come crashing down and create a huge mess. So, “fix towel rack” has been on my “to do” list for the past year. I would have normally fixed it right away, but I needed a power drill, which I didn’t have with me in Brooklyn, and I didn’t want to buy a new one.

So, today I saw the superintendent for my building and I sweet talked him into letting me borrow his power drill. I raced up to my apartment, and a few minutes, sweat, dust, and loud sounds later I had a working towel rack in my bathroom.

You might be thinking, wow, this is a totally stupid post. And that’s okay, because it is. But there are two points I want to make:

1) After I fixed the towel rack, I went straight to my “to do” list, and scratched out “fix towel rack.” As I crossed it off, a huge wave of relief came over me. I don’t care if this is silly. But it made me happy.

2) I love power drills and fixing crap. Seriously, I can’t wait to move into my own house someday and do all kinds of renovations. I love building stuff. I love power tools. I love dirty, sweaty work. Mad props to my mom and dad. They raised me in a dirty, sweaty, building crap environment. Seriously, my parents do more building than some construction workers. There is nothing more satisfying than using your own two hands, two feet, (or one or none, if you don’t have any), to build, fix, and create. It’s the cat’s meow.

I have a bunch more “stuff learned” in cardiology to post. I will do so soon, I promise! But in the meantime, happy Friday!

J-Hawke tagged me with this “25 Random Things About Me” challenge. It’s taken me forever to get around to doing it, but here it finally is. Enjoy!

1. Although I consider myself to be somewhat of a “free spirit,” I can be an incredibly goal-oriented and focused person. I have OCD tendencies and I tend to obsess about relatively small details like the positioning of pictures on a wall and rugs being centered on floors. I always brush my teeth in the exact same way every day.

2. I grew up on a goat farm. Although I spent about half of my life on a farm, I spent the other half living in relatively large cities like D.C., Baltimore, and Brooklyn. While I am incredibly enthusiastic about living in big cities because of things like being able to walk to places, and 24 hour sushi restaurants, I am still a country girl at heart. I love being outdoors in nature, and I consider shoveling poop to be a pretty fun task. I enjoy getting dirt under my fingernails, and a hard, sweaty day’s work.

3. I eat an avocado almost every day (well maybe like 3-4 times a week), and I eat hummus pretty much every day (6-7 times a week). There is no special reason why. I just happen to love both of them.

4. I’m allergic to cephalosporins. I also once had an allergic reaction to topical erythromycin. I don’t have allergies to dextromethorphan and pseudoephedrine, per se, but they make me hallucinate and have dissociative experiences.

5. I don’t consider myself to be all that “girly,” but I do have two guilty, girly pleasures. I get a pedicure and eyebrow waxing almost every month. Actually, I had to give this up in Dominica, and it totally sucked! I know I don’t need to get these done, but it always makes me feel good, and I love being pampered!

6. I trained for a marathon, but never ran in one. I trained for months to run in the D.C. marathon, and then the night before it was to take place, Bush decided to bomb Iraq to start the war. Due to safety concerns, the marathon was cancelled hours before it was to take place. That sucked.

7. I don’t have a very bad temper, and very few things piss me off. The two things that can pretty much always set me off, though, are racism and homophobia. Please try to avoid either one of those things in my presence.

8. I was a vegetarian for over 10 years, and a vegan for about 6 months. I’ve since began eating fish and other seafood all the time. I will occasionally eat white meat, and very rarely will eat red meat. But I tend to eat vegetarian most of the time. It’s mostly just due to habit at this point.

9. I had braces when I was a teenager. They came off, and I was supposed to wear a retainer for years after that. I quit wearing them early, and my teeth moved back to their crooked positions. I wish I would have kept wearing the retainer, but having crooked teeth is fun when eating cheese (I like looking at the design/impression left on the cheese after a bite is taken out.)

10. I’m scared of public buses. I know that they are a good thing, and can help you get around, but pulling that cord freaks me out. I also think the schedules are too complicated. I generally walk instead, even when it means a 5+ mile walk.

11. Although I’ve never taken speed reading courses, I believe I read at a speed-reader pace. I can finish a book in record time, and I take exams faster than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.

12. As I was making this list, my little sister texted me to ask if I had a pair of white go-go boots that she could borrow. I told her yes, in fact I do, although they are a bit scuffed up. She knows me well.

13. I’ve lived in well over 30 different apartments/houses/condos/etc. But in every place I’ve lived, I’ve always had at least one indoor plant.

14. I have had many different jobs in my life. Some of the highlights include: tour guide in a cavern, Taco Bell drive thru specialist, car parker at a car auction, receptionist, housekeeper in a resort hotel, data analyst, barn cleaner, marketing assistant, McDonalds cashier, data entry specialist, psychiatric technician, factory worker in a label factory, and telemarketer selling Chippendales dancers.

15. I never took the SAT. I didn’t need to since I didn’t graduate high school.

16. I have very ugly feet. They are big (size 9) and oddly shaped. My big toe sticks out funny and my little toes do a strange curling thing. They are just not very pretty, or feminine. Perhaps that’s why I get pedicures (see #5).

17. When I was around 11, I wrote the script for, directed, designed costumes for, produced, and starred in a remake of the movie, Princess Bride. Hence, it’s one of my most frequently quoted movies.

18. I once had a pet goat named Porra. She had four teats instead of the normal 2 for a goat. She was my best friend. And then one day she was slaughtered. That was a life changing event for me.

19. I hate wearing a bra. I know that it’s the right thing to do, and I know that it’s more socially appropriate, but I don’t care. I still hate wearing them, and I avoid it whenever possible.

20. I used to ride a motorcycle. It was a red Kawasaki Ninja ZX6-R. I miss it lots.

21. Most mornings, I drink espresso with brown sugar in it.

22. I don’t call my mother mom. I call her Bob. It’s a long story.

23. I once won a spelling bee, but lost before getting to nationals. I spelled decaffeinated incorrectly by transposing the e and the i. But I ended up getting a full set of Encyclopedia Britanicas for second place, which I thought was pretty cool.

24. Every time I’m about to clean something, I put on the song, “Kiss” by Prince.

25. In high school, I used to walk around backwards, and I once zipped myself up in a gym bag and rolled down the hill beside the baseball field.

Today, I was very excited and pleased to discover a fully decked out clown in the hospital lobby. Apparently, he was making balloon animals and doing face painting for all the kiddies. Since I am myself a perpetual child, I excitedly stood in line for my turn. I was at least twice the height of everyone in the line, but I didn’t care.

After an interesting exchange with the clown, I had a brand spanking new, very colorful butterfly painted on my cheek. I was quite the happy camper.

I wore the butterfly on my cheek for the rest of the day, including my time at the hospital. I must admit that I seemed to feel less sick, and had a very cheerful pep in my step for the rest of the day. Of course I got many interesting glances from folks, but about 99% of them resulted in smiles. And I think quite a few kids were very jealous of my butterfly (even though I directed them to the clown in the lobby).

The butterfly on my cheek is merely one example of a fun “prop,” as I like to call it. I get much joy from wearing things like oversized sunglasses, caution tape belts, rainbow suspenders, tiger parasols, and the like. It seems that when I spend the day with a non-traditional and brightly colored object that doesn’t quite “fit” the occasion, my day is all the much better for it. In honor of today, I think I’ll name this phenomenon the “butterfly effect.”

So, it really got me thinking. Is it because I am a generally happy and jovial person that I have the urge to play with oversized and colorful props? Or do I play with oversized and colorful props and am then consequently very happy and jovial?

Which came first? The joviality or the oversized egg?

Perhaps the mystery will never be solved.

But I know one thing for sure, one should never underestimate the power of the butterfly effect.

Please check out this super scary video I just uploaded to YouTube, compliments of Midori, and taken the other night at the hospital.

After I uploaded this video, YouTube was nice enough to automatically show me other videos with the word “Kendra” in them. The first one that came up was of Playboy Bunny, Kendra Wilkinson, doing her “Booty Dance.”

My impression? Cool to see another white chick with the name Kendra! And really? Those are her only booty dance moves? Me being the insane person that I am, and doing anything that I can to avoid studying, I decided to make my own “Kendra’s Booty Dance” movie, in full SNL satirical style. Please keep in mind that I didn’t have her outfit, videographer, lighting, or cool slow camera action techniques, and I literally made this movie in about 2 minutes.

I have no shame!

Kendra Wilkinson’s Booty Dance:

Kendra Campbell’s Booty Dance:

Now that I spend up to three hours a day sitting in a car, I have a lot to say about crappy drivers. I heard a story on NPR recently that DC has the most car accidents per year of any city in America. I also heard that Maryland is launching a new campaign against aggressive drivers, which includes using helicopters to spot these evil offenders.

Without exception, every time I get on the road to drive from Baltimore to DC, or DC to Baltimore, there is at least one butt head that pisses me off to the point of me fantasizing about their demise. I’m not easily pissed off, so this says a lot.

Recently, I’ve experienced people riding my bumper, laying on their horn for me driving slowly during a major thunderstorm, cutting me off and then flicking me off, and many other egregious offenses.

What’s wrong with these people??!! Why can’t we all just get along?!

I have a fantasy that one day horns will be a privilege, and not a right, just like drivers’ licenses. If you abuse your privilege, you should have your car horn removed.

I have another fantasy which involves putting a sign on the roof of my car that says, “if the green light is on, pull over the person in front of me.” I will have a big green light on my roof as well. And when one of those evil butt heads starts driving like a lunatic, I’ll turn on my sweet green light, and the helicopter above will radio down to the police on the road, and they’ll pull over those beeotches.

If all else fails, I’m going to start carrying my large black foam fist in my car, and the next time someone honks at me for obeying the traffic laws, I’m going to stick it out the window in a threatening fashion. That’ll teach those beeotches to honk at me!

A few nights ago I saw Wall E, a Pixar/Disney film. If you haven’t yet seen it, you should! It was a fabulous movie.

The basic plot is that humans managed to destroy Earth, and eventually fled the planet to live in a giant spaceship. The only survivors were the cockroaches (of course!), and a robot that compacts trash into little cubes. The majority of the film is silent, which I found incredibly moving. There is a fantabulous love story, when Wall E meets a another robot sent to Earth to find life.

The best part of the movie is the current plight of humans living on the Spaceship. They have turned into obese, lazy people who float around in flying chairs, eating food from sippy cups, and playing virtual games. I think this is a completely realistic depiction of future humans. To me, this Sci Fi story could absolutely come true someday.

The floating chairs reminded me of something I used to say all the time: “Only humans would create escalators, and then create the stairmaster.” Seriously, think about it…..

Micah, now do you understand why I refuse to stand on those moving walkways in aiports?!! They frighten me! I also avoid escalators and elevators to the best of my ability (unless I have heavy bags, or am going to the 113th floor of a building, etc.) I also believe that “virtual” sports (aka sport video games) are just about the worst idea I can imagine. I understand if you are physically handicapped, and could not otherwise play the actual sport. But seriously, if you have the ability to swing a golf club, for goodness sake, swing it! Using your thumbs to swing a golf club just seems incredibly silly to me.

Come on people, when are we going to get it?!