Adjust It

After two weeks of clerkship, I thought that I had made a pretty good transition to the early waking schedule. I was wrong.

On 'Monday morning', I woke up and noted that it was awfully bright outside. Oh no! I'd slept in! I hurriedly put on my glasses, rolled out of bed, and looked at the clock. 12:15.. A.M.. Just after midnight. Okay, so I guess that it wasn't that bright outside. I went back to sleep.

Wednesday morning, something similar. My phone alarm went off, and I got up out of bed, turned it off, and collapsed back on the bed, to wait for my clock radio to go off a minute or two later. As I lay there, I thought, this is good, I managed to sleep soundly since 11 p.m., without waking up at all, so I got a full six hours of sleep. That was an improvement over previous nights. But, I was still quite tired. Very tired. Oh well, gotta live with it. Get up and hit the shower. Why hasn't my clock radio gone off yet? I looked at the time. 11:15 p.m.. Tuesday. I had slept for 15 minutes. The phone alarm turned out to have been the low battery warning. I went back to sleep.

Tomorrow, I get to sleep in, since we will start rounds late, at 7:30.. Maybe I can pop by the pulm rounds at 7, just for fun. :)

Tied Down

I went tie shopping over the weekend. I basically had four ties in total, and after one week of clerkship, it was pretty clear that I needed to expand that number to add some variability to my wardrobe.

First, I hit all the 'best' stores in town, and boy, was I disappointed. This town is full of ties meant to be loud and make you stand out in an oil-business crowd. To top it off, the salespeople all looked at me with suspicion; I suppose that I look more like a shoplifter than a med student. Anyways, I then backtracked to the cheaper places like The Bay, and found a couple of ties that did the trick.

That's a lot of effort for an outgoing fashion. Ties are losing popularity in healthcare these days, as they tend to help spread infections. However, they haven't been banned outright here yet, and the patients and preceptors still expect you to wear them, to meet society's standards of professional dress. Oh well, it just means more money for the dry cleaners.

In unrelated news, I have managed to acclimatize my body to getting to work by 6:15. Unfortunately, I've overdone it a bit, and now I'm waking up on my own before 4...

Lack of Intellectual Growth

Skinny Talls goes on elective last summer. Picture an OR, with a surgeon performing a laproscopic cholecystectomy; he uses his instruments to indicate the gall bladder:

Surgeon: "What am I holding?"
Skinny Talls: "A CAMERA!!!"
Surgeon: "Uhh... okay...? (Thinks to self: OMG, how dumb is this guy?)"

Today, Skinny Talls, on elective, assists in a VATS procedure. A full year of medical education has passed:

Surgeon: "What are *you* holding?"
Skinny Talls: "A CAMERA!!!"
Surgeon: "Uhh... okay...?"

A Waking Life

I've made it three days into clerkship. It has required some adjustments to my schedule. For the past few weeks, I'd generally been going to bed somewhere between 2 and 5 in the morning. This week, I've been getting up at 4:45, to try make it onto the wards at 6:15.

That said, it hasn't been difficult, as the work is interesting, and pretty relaxing. Hmm, what can I say about things...

I have been known to be jealous of people who get to retract. "He/She's probably in the OR right now, holding a retractor!" was one of the phrases I used most often last summer, always accompanied with the voice and face of pure envy. Well, now *I'm* the one who's doing the retracting, people, and let me tell you, retractors come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, including 196 cm. Okay, retraction isn't the only fun I've had; I put in a VATS port on Monday, from incision to insertion, and used a stapler for the first time yesterday.

Anyways, how is it? There is a mix of apprehension and enjoyment inside me. On the one had, it's clear that I'm grossly under-prepared for this. On the other hand, it looks like it will be a wild ride.

The Trashcan Sinatras wrote this about clerkship (I suspect):

But i forget the conversation we had,
i don't remember what you said or did
that made you so attractive.

Yes, attractive. It's the mesmerization that induces amnesia.

Konfusion

Happily, I was right in thinking that organizing my recyclables was the key to organizing my life. The apartment is almost ship-shape, and I've recovered my joie de vivre just in time for clerkship.

I'm still clueless as to what will be happening tomorrow, though. Will I be put straight to work, or will I get to relax and find out how the heck everything works? It's a mystery. I should have watched a chest-tube-insertion video or two today, or memorized surgical instrument names.

Like I've mentioned in earlier posts, I've been listening to the Trashcan Sinatras a lot recently. This verse reminded me of moving on from classrooms to clerkship:

Soothe your fear, we're off where it's warmer
Here's to all of us, I know you are worried
We're leaving here, regret to inform you
Leaving everything, it's just that we've got to
believe in everything, we're leaving everything

Anyways:

Bring it on...

Organized

My apartment is a disaster area, as is my clerkship preparation. Today, I went out and bought a bunch of containers to organize my recyclables, which is step one in cleaning things up around here. Studying all thoracic surgery and all anatomy tomorrow will fix up my lack of preparation on the clerkship front.

While I am staying here for my first six weeks of electives, like a baby hanging around in the 41st week, most of my comrades have left town. I'm used to being the one that moves on, and leaves everyone behind...

To quote Rivers:

The world has turned and left me here
Just where I was before you appeared
And in your place, an empty space
Has filled the void behind my face

Redemption

On Saturday, I picked up Magic Pants and Rococo, and we headed downtown for a late breakfast (at 2 p.m.). We went to a place none of us had ever been to before, 1886 Buffalo Café in Eau Claire. We found some parking nearby, and spent about an hour and a half eating, followed by wandering. The café itself was fine, if rather more expensive then Nellie's. Anyways, afterwards, Rococo asked me how much time I'd gotten on the parking meter. "You have to pay on a Saturday?" was my answer; sometimes, I am surprised by how dumb I am.

When we got back to my car, I had no ticket. Whew. However, the car behind me did. Checking my meter, I saw that I had 15 minutes on it. Somebody had come by, seen police ticketing cars, and put at least a quarter into the meter for me.

That's so nice. Good, Calgary, good!

In other news, on Sunday, I finally made it to 'Peters' Drive-In'. I figured that if it was good enough for Hugh Jackman (Wolverine!), then it was good enough for me. I had the double cheeseburger, with small fries and a shake. The burger was okay; it reminded me of a Harvey's hamburger. The fries had a too much oil flavour; I didn't finish them. Finally, the shake. Ah, I chose marshmallow, believe it or not. That was supposedly the flavour that was the culprit in the drive-in's E. coli O157:H7 crisis of '05. Well, it tasted like unflavoured soft-serve, and certainly wasn't worth getting HUS over (haemolytic uremic syndrome).

Okay, Harvey's is probably my favourite burger chain, so the burger was fine. The fries, I'll give another chance to in the future. The shake, I was later informed that I should have gotten strawberry-vanilla or chocolate. I guess I went with expectations set too high...

The sad part of the weekend was that it represented the end of the Triumvirate of Nerds. The other two are headed off to electives out east this week, while I remain in town. Well, we'll see if we end up finding the time to get together again, once we're in clerkship.

Welcome Back, Talls

I got back into town right around 3 o'clock in the morning on Monday. It took a good 45 minutes for my luggage to show up, so I was pretty tired when I got in my car and headed home. I was the only car on the road as I headed south on 19, cruising (crawling) along at a city standard of 45 km/h (gotta stay under the speed limit). Well, eventually a car pulled up on me very fast, and hugged my bumper. What's up with that, I thought to myself... it's a cop. After a minute and a half, her lights come on. Speeding? No. She ran my plates, basically out of boredom, and I wasn't registered. $115. Welcome home. Be careful, the streets are pretty slick tonight. Thanks.

Earlier that night, in Vancouver, it took me 45 minutes to check the bottle of duty-free vodka I'd bought for a classmate. Lucky the plane was almost two hours late, otherwise I'd have missed it. Well, it gave me something to do. I was surprised that a glass bottle in a plastic bag actually survived being checked.

Happily, Monday was redeemed when Rococo called me to go for a late lunch at Moxie's. The thing is, while the atmosphere there is great for a slow mid-afternoon meal, the menu has become tiresome. A new restaurant to hang in is needed, but none is evident.

Anyways, to (almost) quote Bruce:

Nineteen Street Northwest
Ridin' on a snowy night
'Neath the refinery's glow
Out where the great black rivers flow
License, registration, I ain't got none
But I got a clear conscience
'Bout the things that I done
Mister state trooper, please don't stop me
Please don't stop me, please don't stop me

Shangri-la

I went to L.A. for the weekend. The Man finally convinced me to come down, and since I had a free weekend, I went for a day and a half. Kind of a short trip... It was good to see The Man and his wife; it's been a few years now. This was my first trip to the US since moving back to Canada in 2005.

Highlights included strolling the beach in Santa Monica and going to In-N-Out Burger, not to mention seeing The Man's CalTech lab, and the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens.

I am told that 'The Grand Lebowski' (sic) is the quintessential L.A. movie.

Civilization there is very different from here. It's so not Cowboy.

Now, I'm back home in the cold and the snow, back to school. I shall return, though; I still need to meet up with my Enders floppy management partner.

Emulating a Life

Wednesday we had our last class of the year, and Thursday was our last exam of the year. Technically, we have three more, but they're all 'formative'; id est, they don't count. A bunch of us hit Nellie's post-exam, but considering that we're done with the classroom part of medschool, you may have expected a bit bigger celebration.

Friday, I thought I'd go to ACH for the m&m and a bit of surgery, but found that I needed a break from meds for a few days. So, instead, I got to playing with Virtual PC 7 on my Mac, which I picked up on Wednesday. I managed to install NT 4.0, and more excitingly, DOS 6.22 with Windows for Workgroups 3.11. I then installed Serf City under DOS, and lo and behold, it worked.

Why? Well, I was playing Serf City back in 1995, when I upgraded to win95 and ran into compatibility problems. So, I never finished the game. Fast forward twelve years, and it looks like I will finally get to do that. Who says I never finish anything I start?

Snow

It's been snowing a lot here recently. I swear, it fell almost continuously between Friday and today; it was always a light snowfall, but it just wouldn't stop. Anyways, since it's Valentine's Day, and I've been listening to the Trashcan Sinatras straight for two weeks, I offer you 'Snow':

snow...fills the fields we used to know
and the little park where we would go
lies far below
in the snow

gone...it's all over and you're gone
but the memory lives on
although our dreams lie buried
in the snow

sometimes the wind blows
through the trees
and i think i hear you calling me
but all i see is snow

everywhere i go
as the cold winter sun sinks low
i walk alone through the snow

I dropped off my car at the local Canadian Tire on Monday afternoon, to have new tyres put on my car. My old ones were worn right down, and two of them had 'slow leaks', and by slow, I mean they would go completely flat over the course of a week or so. Anyways, I ended up walking home from the shop, through the snow, which took about 45 minutes in -20 ˚C weather. Not smart, but it reminded me of my youth. :)

Ah, Good Times

This was one of those great weekends that make you happy to be alive... and in medschool. With Friday being the peak stress day for medschool so far, it felt great to suddenly have (almost) no worries whatsoever. Saturday was breakfast at Nellie's with Magic Pants and Rococo, at 1:15 p.m.. Today the three of us went to see 'The Queen', followed by dinner and a mile-high mud pie at Montana's.

Oddly enough, I'm a bit of a monarchist, so this was a bit of a 'Passion of the Queen' for me.

Anyways, we had a journal club over dinner. I assigned a paper for the group to read, and we discussed it a bit. We didn't read papers like that in science! We then moved on to the subject of the role of orientation week activities in setting expectations for student behaviour throughout medical school, something that Magic Pants has been thinking about a lot recently. At the moment, a frat-boy mentality seems to dominate in this kind of thing, and the times, well, they changed years ago in the rest of Canada.

Sitting around, enjoying some decent food, and having some great conversations, all in a background of pushing your physical and mental abilities to their limits, that is what has made this last year-and-a-half such a pleasure. Meds, there is nothing like it.

And... break

I just came through the crunch with flying colours. I was up all night writing and making figures, but got my last big project of the year done. Not only did I finish it, but I went totally over the top, with every single figure accompanied by a stereoscopic version. I didn't stop at just sticking in parallel stereographs; no, I went for the full-out cross-eye/parallel triple image combo. Yokochi would be proud.

In other school news, yesterday I also got the electives I was hoping for in March/April. Four weeks of thoracics, then two weeks of neurosurgery.

It's cold here. Last night when I drove to Wendy's to get dinner, the inside of the windows iced up, and I had to keep scraping the windscreen to get some vision. Funny enough, that reminds me of my youth, and gives me a deep feeling of contentment inside...

Textbook Case

I made it through my exams just fine... hurrah! Unfortunately, yesterday, I was feeling a bit weird all day, then fell very ill right after I got home after dinner. I pulled out a textbook, self-diagnosed myself (a textbook GI case), and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening sick, instead of working on the first of three reports I need to finish by next week.

I should be back at it tomorrow, though. I missed a 'mandatory' small-group class today; I wonder what the repercussions of that will be.

Time Flies

On Saturday night, I headed over to Big Poppa's for a birthday party. I realized afterwards that it had been a very long time since I'd been to any kind of party. They're fun; maybe I should go out more.

Yes, life is a bit dull these days. I did some online CD shopping over the weekend to try and lively it up. A whole pile of Trashcan Sinatra CDs. A Pizzicato Five DVD. Even an album from The Brilliant Green. Plus, I found a used copy of Mint Sound Greatest Hits, Volume 1. However, online shopping results in a ten-to-fifteen-day delay in satisfaction.

I have OSCEs this Thursday and Friday, with 'culture' and 'ethics' exams on Friday afternoon. Monday is our paeds exam. I should be studying, working, pushing. Instead, time seems to flow by, but I've stepped out of the stream.

Lappy's Back!

My computer is back from the shop. Phew! After getting it back, I immediately upgraded it to a 160 GB HD. Now I'm happy again.

I immediately ripped the CDs I got over the holidays, including "It's All Gone Pete Tong" and a Tengir-Too album. Good stuff. Then, I cooked up some Kraft dinner, opened up a bottle of wine, and enjoyed a good samurai movie, "Kiru" (aka "Kill!"). Damn, Tatsuya Nakadai was great back in the sixties; I'm glad to see he's still acting.

I'm glad to report that my stomach has adjusted well to my Kraft dinner diet.

Grey's

Soccergrrrl was out of town this weekend, so I headed over to The Smokehouse to keep Banana company. Yep, just Banana and the Breadfruit, hanging out, watching some TV. I ended up watching the first eight episodes of season one of 'Grey's Anatomy'. Now I get what the fuss is about, and I get the whole 'thing for ferry boats' too.

I need to buy a big swath of land, along with a trailer...

First, though, I have to get my PowerLappy G4 back. :( The local repair place called me on Friday, not to tell me to come pick it up, but rather to tell me that they had 'looked at it' and confirmed that the hard drive was indeed dead, but hadn't ordered a replacement yet. They actually expected me to be happy that they had 'looked at it' within a week! The thing is so integral to my studies, it was a struggle to go a week without it. Never again do I trust Calgarians with my PowerLappy!

Dinner

Yesterday, I finished the last instant noodle soup I had in my apartment. All told, I think I've had instant noodle 112 times since moving here, and it's time for a change of pace.

I'm now making my way through the 24 packages of Kraft Dinner that I bought back in August of 2005. Thank goodness that Ensure keeps my diet healthy and balanced.

HNY

Happy New Year, everybody!

I just got back into town. I was quite surprised to see how clean I'd left my apartment.

Anyways, for the New Year, I leave you this quote from Basho:

Another year is gone
a traveller's shade on my head
straw sandals at my feet

Xmas

Well, merry fifth day of Christmas. I still have two more nights here at home out east. I got my parents hooked up with a cable modem yesterday, so I'm back on the net... phew!

Christmas has been pretty good to me. Two notable things: first of all, my friend M. Tabernac gave me a call, and we got together for the first time in about four years. Recently, he posted his first ever Youtube video:



The other good thing was that my nephews got a book of 'string games' for Christmas. Now, I can do 'cup and saucer', 'Eiffel Tower', 'Cat's Cradle', 'Soldier's Bed', 'Jacob's Ladder'; you name it, I can do it, and I'm awesome.