Winter has Arrived

This morning, I woke up at 4:45, to complete silence. As any Canadian knows, there is no silence like that of a snowfall, so instantly I knew that there was a blanket of snow on the ground outside. When I looked out the window, I was greeted by about three inches of snow. June is in a week, and I still need to get the snow off my car before I head out to the hospital.

Anyways, I was gonna say a bit about my 24 hours of trauma call last weekend. It was pretty crazy. There were some car crashes, a couple of stabbings, etc. But, the big shocker for me was the number of ATV/quad injuries, who made up the majority of cases. In terms of long-term problems, I think that it will probably the quad riders that will end up in the most trouble; those things are dangerous, holy cow.

Good to see, though, how the whole system works. The city has a few good people standing at the ready to save our lives, 24/7.

Well, I got about 30 minutes of sleep during my shift. I was pretty much shot when I got out the door late in the morning on Victoria Day. Oh, it was snowing then too...

Keep Your Pants On

I just finished my week of urology. Now, it's the Victoria Day long weekend, but unfortunately, I have to do 24 hours of trauma call starting on Sunday at 8 a.m., so my weekend is shot. Tuesday, gen surg begins in the northeast.

I have one little story from the past week. On Wednesday afternoon, I was following my doc for an afternoon of cystoscopy. That's looking inside peoples' bladders with a scope, in case you're wondering. Well, for one patient, we had to use fluoroscopy, so we had to get on our lead aprons. My lead was different from the ones I have become used to for OR work; it closed at the front, with big velcro strips. After we were done, the doc started writing his notes, and the nurses and radiation tech were talking to the patient. I began to remove my lead. Riiiiiipppp, I pulled open the velcro. Unfortunately, the waistband on my scrubs had adhered to the velcro, so zooop, my pants fell down.

Pretty embarrassing. I'm not sure if anyone actually saw, since I was pretty speedy at getting them back up again. However, I can hardly believe that all of the five other people in the room failed to notice me standing there in my underwear...

Very inappropriate behaviour for a med student.

Face Time

Facebook use has exploded around here. Everyone is doing it. On Monday, I started in urology in a new hospital, a bit more laid back than Foothills. During one of the cases, I looked over to see what the anaesthesiologist was doing so intently; she was facebooking. Walked past the fluoroscopy control nook; the x-ray tech was facebooking.

The only two hold-outs I know of are Magic Pants and Vibe. How do they resist the peer pressure?

Speaking of Magic Pants, I think I've mentioned that we both owned the same crappy phone, a Motorola V220. The worst phone of my life. His phone was crapping out in the same way as mine, with the phone hanging up when you answer it. That's the opposite of what a phone is supposed to do, Motorola; you may want to look into removing that instant-hang up function. Anyways, things reached the breaking point for me on Saturday, when I had a phone conversation with Rococo consisting of about a dozen ten-second individual calls, with the phone crapping out each time.

So, on Sunday, I picked up a W180i. It's good to have a Sony Ericsson again; I feel alive once more.

Geysers

I think I've been sprayed with more human blood in the past week, than in my entire life up to this point...

Murakami

When I got home from the hospital today, the latest English translation of a Haruki Murakami novel was waiting in my mailbox: 'After Dark'. The first few pages are great; too bad I have to study! :(

Hmm, Amazon says that it isn't out for another week! :)

Come Together

Things have been slack at school for the past week, but I've been pretty tired nevertheless. Things should get busier again tomorrow, but I am not sure... it looks like my next two weeks won't be what I'd hoped, since my preceptors are out of town for most of it. :(

Anyways, yesterday, Rococo, Magic Pants, and I got together for a late breakfast at Nellie's, with Rococo constantly watching her pager, as she was on call. Our pagers have become central to our lives. Today was almost a repetition of yesterday, as we once again went for breakfast at Nellie's, this time with a bigger crowd of classmates and their spouses. We're kinda starved for contact these days...

I took my motorbike out for a ride this evening. It's been around five months since I last rode... a very long time. It was chilly out; lucky I'm still wearing my winter clothes these days, with my scarf at the ready.

The World is My Oyster

I survived my last elective, and it was not easy. I'm tired out of my brain, and considering going to bed for the night just after 8 p.m.!

But, I find myself suddenly very excited again about the future. Neurology or neurosurgery, two incredible fields. Ah, what to do? Everything else has been forgotten.

Neuro Calling

I just finished my first night of call ever, in neurosurgery. I ended up being there for 35 hours. It started and ended well. Yesterday, I saw a live cauda equina for the first time, sitting there in its dural sack; I was assisting in a laminectomy. I was feeling a mixture of elation and awe as I suctioned and retracted away. This afternoon, I scrubbed into a craniotomy, and saw a live brain for the first time. It looked a bit sad at first, but by the end of the procedure was pulsating away happily in its skull. Wow. That's a living skull. That's a living dura. That's a living brain. That's a living person.

I also attended an interesting clinic in the morning. Overnight, though, between 5 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., all I did was write up an admit note and history for one patient. I was expecting to be pushing myself a bit harder...

Well, at the moment I am preparing part of a talk for Friday morning rounds. Fun! :) Suddenly, though, I am missing having a lab to play around in... maybe I should ask someone in neuro here for a project I can work on.

Unexpected Vacation

Yesterday afternoon, I found out that today would be a holiday... not a bad surprise.

Things started well. I had a comic book and a new CD waiting for me in the mail when I got home. However, I was so tired that I ended up going to bed sometime around 9. So, this morning, I got up bright and early at 4:15.

That's right, it's a holiday, and I slept in until 4:15 a.m..

I guess I should do some neuroanatomy studying... I've already gotten in a full day's worth of wasting time.

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. :)