Island Med Student

“To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

“And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

“I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Sometimes you just have to dance the polka to get things done.”
- Kendra Campbell

There are a million reasons why I love psych. Actually, probably over a million. But don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you to tears with all of them. Instead, let me use an example from today to explain.

As I was just walking onto the floors of the hospital to begin my endocrinology rotation today, I heard the sounds of polka coming from one of the halls. Of course, I had to explore this wonderful anomaly, so I hurried down the hall to find the source of the music. What I found was so very, very extraordinary.

I found three nurses and one physical therapist dancing in the hallway with an elderly patient wearing a hospital gown. One of the nurses was holding out her hand, with her cellphone playing some polka tunes. It was definitely a party. I definitely had to join. Without thinking, I jumped right in and started dancing with the crew. We all had entirely too much fun grooving the the music. Afterwards, I found out that the patient was demented and refusing his physical therapy. One of the nurses knew that the patient used to play in a polka band, so she had the incredibly brilliant idea to use polka to draw him out of his room, and onto his feet. It worked beautifully.

There is so much room for creativity in medicine. But sometimes it seems to me that psych might have the most room out of all specialities. And not only that, but understanding how someone’s mind works can help you in any field. This is the stuff that gets me excited. This is the stuff that drew me to medicine in the first place.

Understanding the human (and non-human) mind and behavior has always been a passion of mine. It’s what motivated me to get a degree in psychology. As a psych tech, I put all of my knowledge and education to good use. You want a very delusional patient who doesn’t believe he’s sick to take a psychotropic medication? You HAVE to get creative. You have to understand people. You have to have a desire to understand behavior and motivation. And this is a worthwhile skill in any profession. And yes, this is why I am so excited to be soon starting my residency in psychiatry. I can’t wait to develop more skills, and more understanding. And I love putting those skills and knowledge to good use. And not just in medicine, but in my daily life as well.

Perhaps we would all be a little happier if we took the time to dance the polka with a stranger every once in a while. It certainly worked for me.

Photos: From my “Improv Thanksgiving Dancing Routine” with friends, two years ago.

“Every time I drive in rush hour traffic, I lose a piece of my wings.”

- Kendra Campbell

I’ve learned two important things this week (my first week of endocrinology, and first week of driving to the hospital):

1) I really like endocrinology. It’s interesting and not too complicated and I’ve learned a lot. My attending is the bomb.

2) I will NEVER drive to work. Ever. Again.

I’m pretty sure that driving is perhaps the worst torture that exists. It beats down your very soul. Traffic can turn the very best mood into the very worst. I am no longer able to take photos and videos along my route. I have no control over how fast or slow I can go. I am at the mercy of traffic. You might think that I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Driving to work even for one week has taken away a piece of my soul. Now I will have to regenerate that piece via walking for a year.

I have one more week of med school (endocrinology) left. I might decide to take the subway to the hospital (even though it would be a longer trip), just because I think driving is killing me.

Anyway, 5 more days of work until I am a doctor. Yes indeedy.

Photo: Taken today during endocrinology rounds. Infection control does save lives.

“Fire escape gardens are so 2009. Plantar boxes hung from child safety window guards are the new black.”

- Kendra Campbell

I feel very accomplished right now. I managed to get quite a few things done today. I woke up this morning and wrote an article for Medscape (soon to be published). Then I went for an 8-mile run with the doggies in the park. Even at 10:00 a.m. this morning, it was close to 70 degrees (it got up to 86 today!), and the doggies were panting like freight trains by the time we got home. I then managed to plant my new veggie/herb garden. Since I no longer have a fire escape, I purchased planter boxes, which hang from the child safety guards on my window ledges. I planted tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, mint and thyme. My local nursery was out of basil, but I hope to add that (and more!) soon as well.

I had a very “Kendra moment” when planting this morning. In order to do the planting, I had to put a ladder outside of my window and climb in and out with bags of soil and such. When I was climbing out of my window, I slipped on the ladder and fell down to the concrete below, crashing onto my knees. As if my knees didn’t have enough to worry about, now they are EVEN MORE bruised than usual.

After about an hour, my knees hurt so badly that I could barely walk. I contemplated calling in sick to my endocrinology rotation, but in the end guilt won out, and I went in to the hospital.

I hobbled around and actually had a great time. My attending is so incredibly awesome. He teaches so well and I very much respect and admire him.

When I got home from the hospital, I took the doggies on a nice walk and picked up some grocery items. My new neighborhood is so very awesome. I’m starting to befriend a lot of my neighbors, and I love how incredibly friendly everyone is.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day at the hospital, so I guess I should go to bed early tonight. I’m starving as well, so it’s time to make some din din.

Enjoy the photos of my new “garden” with this post. I hope to take some better ones in the future. (I was in a hurry today.) I think everything will soon start filling out nicely. Something about having a pseudo-garden in the city is oh so very satisfying to me!

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

Click Here To View the Entry

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.