Medical School People!

I've decided that I'm going to start a recurring topic on my blog about all of the people I've met in medical school. It will be called "Med School People," abbreviated to "MSP." In the past 20 months, I've met all sorts of characters. Some of them are amazing people to whom, in a few years, I would trust the life of a family member. Others are some of the craziest, most annoying, consistently underperforming people I've ever met in my life, to whom I would not entrust the life of my remote controlled race car. In each post, I'll introduce you to the type of person I'm talking about, point out a few of their distinctive qualities, and give you my opinions on where they'll end up in the future. Yes, these characters are all based on real people and real events, but I will not actually be giving up any identities or calling anyone in particular out. The first post is coming shortly...I hope you like them!

Up first: MSP #1: Mr. Einstein....WOW I'm smart!

Yes, I want one!

What is there to say, but Damn...that is one sexy piece of medical machinery! Currently, the LP12 is pretty much the standard or care in ambulances and emergency departments around the country. This bad boy is the brand new LP15! The looks has been somewhat updated, and it looks as though it now comes with a much nicer, multi-color screen. It also has the ability to do a pre-medication 12 lead, and then continually monitor the 12 lead in the background to check for ST segment changes...pretty cool stuff.

The new LP also has some hokey-sounding (to me) new prompts that give you the proper breath to compression ratio for CPR. I've never really understood the point of having an AED on these things though. AEDs are supposed to be simple to use. If you know what you're doing with the LP12, the AED is simple to use. But, if you're not entirely familiar with its operation, and most people aren't, you're going to be completely lost. It's my humble opinion that if you don't know how to manually defibrillate a patient, you have no business anywhere near one of these. Using an AED usually requires one or two buttons, but look at all the buttons on this thing! How in the world are you supposed to know which two to use, and not get lost in the sea of other flashy lights? Maybe people are just less easily distracted than me, but I don't think so.

Judging by the side of this particular one, it's completely tricked out with a bunch of ports that you wouldn't usually see outside of the hospital, such as invasive BP monitoring. But, they're all things I'd throw in there if I had the money and the need. I doubt the fire departments will be seeing this anytime soon, since the beasts can run over $20,000, but maybe I'll get lucky and get to play with one in a hospital.

Headed back to the island

Well, as of today, I've only got 15 days left on the island anyway, but I'm headed back to finish it off tomorrow. That will put me back in class on Thursday, in time to finish up ICM 6. I will barely have had any time to review for the comp (that's sort of hard to do while you're doped up on Morphine), but I've already passed it once, so not really a big deal. In the next 15 days, I have to finish ICM 6 (which from what I hear, is nothing to worry about), finish the couple days of ICM 5 that we still have left, take an ICM shelf exam, and finally, take the Kaplan comp. Also in there, I need to find as much time as possible to try and get through as much Kaplan as I can. I really do want to finish as much of Kaplan as I can before I head off to the Falcon program. And, between the crappy AUC 5th semester and being sick, I have not done nearly as much as I would have hoped by now. It seems that no matter how close we get to the end, AUC always comes up with some new silly hoop to jump through. But, they can only do it for another couple of days, so whatever! Next time i get on a plane out of St. Maarten will be the last time!

Success!! so far...

I just finished my Wendy's chicken sandwich, baked potato, and frostee....and they were delicious! They've had me on a strictly liquid diet, but I couldn't deal with the liquid hospital food anymore, so I had my mom sneak that stuff into me. Besides, if they are going to release me today, I wasn't going to be comfortable leaving before I knew I could eat real food! So I just ate the most I've eaten in days with only oral pain medicine, and my throat is feeling pretty good, all things considered. I just have to wait and see what the PA has to say once she comes back later this afternoon.

The only thing I have not been thrilled with while I've been here is the huge number of PAs I've seen and very few MDs! Most of them have done a good job consulting with physicians and relaying things back and forth (as they should). However, I had one particularly bad one on admission, who I think completely overstepped her role as a mid-level provider. On admission, she knew my ENT had written me a prescription for antibiotics and high dose steroids, in addition to pain meds and fluid. However, she decided that the steroids might be too much for my immune system and didn't know if I needed the antibiotics or not. Her two years of PA training were apparently equal, in her mind, to the 4 much more rigorous years of medical school, plus years of difficult residency that the MD went through, so she changed the orders. Fortunately, the doctor heard about that early in the morning and changed it back.

I really do like PAs, NPs, and nurses. I realize they play a valuable and important role in health care delivery. Some patients don't need to see a doctor for every little complaint, and doctor's couldn't do their job well if they didn't have some help. However, it's unfortunate when a few of them forget where their role ends and just how much more training the physicians really do have.

Discharge today?

I'm still admitted in the hospital, but it's looking like I'm going to be discharged finally today. Until last night, I've been hitting my magical morphine button almost every time it would let me, along with frequent Toradol, to keep the pain away. But, it looks like the steroids and antibiotics, along with time, are finally doing their job and things are starting to improve. My lymph nodes are still big, but no longer sticking out of the side of my neck. And, I'm about to try my first real meal, but I think the oral pain medicine might work. Time to eat a chicken sandwich and find out...here goes nothing!

Broadcasting from the Anne Arundel Medical center!

After the past two days of having to come to the ER for IV rehydration and pain medication, they finally decided to admit me to the hospital. When I got here today, it had been over three days since I've had a single bit of food or liquid by mouth. I know that mono doesn't usually sound like a terribly debilitating disease, but let me be the first to tell you....IT SUCKS, A LOT! Literally just swallowing is excruciating, and without medicine, even drinking water is not even a minor possibility. When I came in to the hospital, I wanted to die.

But now, I've got a morphine drip hooked up with a magical little button that delivers me more every 10 minutes, IV toradol, and a bunch of steroids. It's also pretty likely that I've got a bacterial infection on top of all of this, so I'll probably have some antibiotics in there soon too. I'm not sure how long I'll be here, but they say at least 24 hours. I'm just worried that as soon as the IV's come out, I'll be right back to no sleep again. I guess they'll just have to taper down the pain meds eventually and see what happens. A few minutes ago, for the first time in a while, I had a major milestone...I ate my first bit of jello!! When you feel this bad, I guess it's the little things. But, on the plus side, I do have a private room with a TV and free internet connection. Time to watch some Cops, while I wait for Heather to get back.

The Ritz of hospitals!

When I went to the St. Maarten ER to have my mono checked out, they gave me a bag of fluid, hardly payed me any attention, and sent me on my way.

This morning, I woke up completely unable to swallow without being in excruciating pain. I couldn't get any medicine down and I felt like even the smallest sip of water would cause me to aspirate. So, since I had again basically eaten or drank nothing of the past couple of days, I went to the hospital again. The experience this time was wholly different. I felt like I was in a 4 star hotel! First, the tech did a much better job with the IV, and actually used modern IV and blood draw equipment. Then, the doctor actually seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Instead of just giving me a bag of fluid, he gave me two bags of fluid, dexamethasone, toradol, and 4 mg of morphine! They also had pillows and blankets from a heater.

While I left the hospital in St. Maarten feeling largely the same as when i walked in, I left the Anne Arundel Medical center feeling about 100% better. My throat is still sore and my tonsils are still pretty enormous, but at least I can swallow again, and I'm pretty sure I'm about to get some sleep for the first time in a while. I was also given a prescription for Roxicet, which is basically liquid percocet. So, that's taking the edge off. It's amazing how much being in St. Maarten for a while can make you appreciate the little nice things in the US.

you win some, you lose some

Yes, I am missing out on the Kaplan Live Reviews, as someone pointed out on my facebook wall. I've heard they're great and I do with I had gotten to see them. However, even if I was on the island, i likely would not be able to sit through them right now. Also, I'm paying an awful lot of money to sit through 7 weeks of Falcon Live Review in a couple months! So, I think I'll be OK.

However, what I did get yesterday for my birthday, that i absolutely would not have gotten in St. Maarten, was delicious fresh sushi and miniature ice cream birthday cakes from Maggie Moos!!

Happy Birthday to me

Since I felt (and still feel) like absolute crap, and didn't want to risk being sick in St. Maarten without power or water, I decided to come home for the week and try and recover here. Unfortunately, the mono did not decide to be any nicer to me on my birthday, and my tonsils are so swollen that I can barely swallow water. Taking a shower also sucks just about all of my energy out of me. This virus really is just not very considerate of the day!

But, I went to my doctor's office today (my real doctor who actually talks to me and gives me appropriate answers) and I have decided that I am going to kill the virus, for inconveniencing me today. He prescribed me prednisone to reduce the size of my tonsils and golf-ball-sized lymph nodes, and valacyclovir to try and kill the virus. Valacyclovir is not actually used for EBV yet (the virus that causes mono), but there have been clinical trials with it that have been very promising. In fact, in one trial, the virus was eradicated in 1 week from nearly everyone that took the drug! So, I'm just going to hope that it works for me! For those of you out there who were probably already thinking it, NO, I do not have herpes!

Aside from that, Heather is bringing me home Sushi from Joss (imo, the best sushi restaurant in the world) and a coldstone cake. I likely won't be able to get much down, but the little I do eat will be delicious! Oh, and I stopped at the grocery store today to get my prescriptions filled, and I was amazed at just how beautiful meat is, after seeing less-than-fresh meat for 2 years in St. Maarten. I forgot how red it is when it's fresh. And, I nearly forgot how nice a supermarket can look when it's properly stocked, labeled, and taken care of! I can't wait for my first major grocery trip at home when I'm healthy again! Some people on the island like to talk about how great the food is in St. Maarten. Well, I can tell you for sure, they have just been away from the US for a little too long, because the food on the island can't hold a candle to anything here.

And, Mono it is!

After being sick for 2 weeks now, I finally got tired of not knowing what was actually wrong with me. So, this afternoon, I took myself to the St. Maarten ER and requested a CBC, blood chemistry, and a mono spot. The doctor thought that sounded reasonable and went ahead with it, along with giving me a liter of fluid to help with dehydration. Not surprisingly (as my lymph nodes feel like golf balls), my monocytes and CRP (a measure of infection) are both very high. And, the test confirmed that I do, indeed, have mono! So, after 2 weeks of feeling like crap, it looks like I've got another 2 or more ahead of me! Couldn't have really come at a less convenient time, with Wine and Cheese tomorrow night and Fifth Semester Party next Saturday, both of which I'll almost surely be sick for. I'm supposed to teach CPR tomorrow but seeing as I can barely get myself to reach to my nightstand for water, I don't think I'll be waking up at 6am to go do that. grrrrrr....this is definitely the sickest I've ever been, or at least the longest!

Interesting note though for all the Americans out there...St. Maarten's lab will not run your lab tests unless you pay them first! After my labs had been ordered by the doctor, the lab tech came back, gave me a bill, and asked for my credit card! She then ran my card, got a signature from me, and then said, "thanks, now I can run the blood." Good think I remembered my credit card tonight!

Why do viruses love me?

Although I can eat again and the coxsackie virus appears to be gone, it would seem that I have mono now. I just cannot get my energy back, I continually have a fever, and my lymph nodes are enormous. I called my doctor in the US and he seemed to think I probably have mono. I just took a look in my throat just for fun, to see how my throat was healing from the last virus, and sure enough, my tonsils are now covered in white crap, which looks an awful lot like mono! I just can't win! Mono is a lot less painful, but damn if it's not annoying!

But, for now, it's time to go see what I can do with this pharm shelf exam! Wish me luck!

Good luck to my dad!

My dad was parking his motorcycle last night when his foot slipped on wet pavement, causing him to do a split. This would be a painful maneuver for most self-respecting men, but it was particularly painful for him since it broke the neck of his femur!

The trauma center wanted to put a rod in it and call it a day, but fortunately my mom had the good sense to send him to a hospital that specialized in Orthopedics. There, they told him that the rod surgery would have been basically a waste of time, with far more complications. Instead, he his getting his hip and socket replaced tomorrow! For the moment, I think he's pretty doped up on pain meds. So, wish him well!

Another St. Maarten Scam!

I've gotta say that S.M. Caraibes, a motorcycle and scooter repair shop in Marigot, is unequivocally one of the biggest scams going in St. Maarten! To get to the point, it seems that when you go to get something repaired there, they break something else (namely, the carburetor), so you need to go back again in a couple of days for another repair! Here are the experiences I know of with the place:

1. My roommate had a scooter that we just figured was a piece of crap American Scooter (which is still actually probably pretty accurate). But, after the first time it broke down, he took it to S M Caraibes to have it fixed. It worked great when he picked it up, but a day or two later, it would just randomly shut down. He took it back to be fixed again, only to have it break down again! This cycle repeated about 4 or 5 times before he finally gave up on it and rented a car

2. My neighbor bought a scooter that was also having some problems. He also took it to S M Caraibes to be fixed. Again, it worked great for a day, but stopped working the next day! Unfortunately, it stopped working for him in the middle of driving somewhere on the island, and it was stolen as he called someone to pick him up!

3. After having his scooter stolen, after a poor repair job, Ray eventually bought my scooter. I have not had a single problem with this thing in the more than a year that I owned it; it was nearly perfect. However, it soon had some battery issues, and he took it to S M Caraibes to be repaired. They told him it was a problem with the ground wire, and he drove it home. A day later, it would start fine, but would just stop after you put on the gas...the same problem that had happened with multiple scooters that they had fixed before.

Finally, we got smart and took it to Moto Caraibes, also in Marigot. They fixed it in a day and now it is working better than ever. Apparently, it was the carburetor. But, interestingly, they asked Ray if he had already tried to take the carburetor apart and fix it himself. When he told the guy that he hadn't, he was told that someone definitely did, and put something in it! When Ray told him where he had it fixed in the past, the guy just shook his head.

So...lesson learned...DON'T GO TO S M CARAIBES!

Whoops

I guess I have forgotten to blog for a couple days! Maybe that's because there's really not that much interesting going on in my life at the moment. I took the behavioral science shelf exam on Friday, and it was slightly more difficult than I expected. There were quite a few questions where they just asked "what is the best thing to say to this patient," and I think those are usually "gimme" questions. Typically, I pick the answer that I am LEAST likely to actually ever say to a patient, and that's the right answer. But, there was also a lot more pharm on the exam than I had expected!

Now, I am beginning to study for the pharm shelf which is this coming Friday. 5th semester is filled with an awful lot of exams! And, the ICM department has been so kind as to make sure that we don't sleep too late this week, by making us attend ICM lecture the 3 of the 4 days leading up to the shelf. Why would you want to study all day for an exam that covers all of pharm, when you can go to the ever-interesting ICM lectures?

The only good news is that I finally think this virus I've got is starting to go away...8 days after it started. That is within the 7-10 day range though, so I can't complain too much. My throat is definitely still sore, but it's no longer excruciating to swallow, and I've started to eat again. Unfortunately, after a week of almost no food or drink, I feel like I have the stomach of a gastric bypass patient. Yesterday, half a meatball and about 10 bites of pasta filled me up pretty good. Good news is that the pasta I bought yesterday for $12 might last me a week!

I PASSED THE COMP!!!!

Two very exciting things happened to me today!

1. I found out that I passed the comp, and with a fairly safe margin! I didn't do outstanding, but I did well enough to pass, and my score also equaled a passing score on the step 1 exam! I really was not BS-ing last week...I truly was nearly certain that I had failed the comp. My score definitely does not correlate to the percentage of questions that I was confident on. Passing the comp with this score makes me feel good for one very major reason...it means that I was able to achieve a score good enough to pass the step 1, with basically no meaningful studying. Of course I've been studying the whole time I've been here, but never studying specifically for the step. That makes me confident that finishing Kaplan will get me around a solid 225-230 and Falcon will hopefully get me the extra 20 points I really want on the exam. Oh - another big bonus for passing the first comp is that heather can now come for 5th semester party! Otherwise, it would have just been too close to the second exam to have a multi-day visitor.

2. I got my reminder from USAir that my flight home is approaching. Specifically, I have 33 days and 18 hours, but who's counting? I can only hope those 33 days fly by as quickly as the past 19 months! I will be literally dancing down the aisle. In fact, they may have to detain me to put my seatbelt on. I don't know how I'm going to be able to sit.


Oh...and just to help some people out, I'd like to share a little pearl of wisdom that I've acquired during my time in Medical School. I probably should have learned and applied it earlier, but such is life...

In most situations, don't go against the much larger group, and don't always be the one person to throw out the unpopular opinion. Sure, there are situations where something needs to be said, or a group might need to be brought back on task. But, the vast majority of the time, you will lose, and you will look like the asshole. Even if you're right...if you're going against everyone else, you're still probably going to lose, and still probably going to look like the asshole! And especially, DO NOT go behind people's backs to try and prove your point! Take it from me...being the asshole can wear on you after a while.

You can still think, or maybe be 100% certain, that you're right (Darwin knows I do), but sometimes it's smart to limit the people you tell those things to.

I just love orthostatic hypotension

I can't actually take my own blood pressure, but I do at least have the associated tachycardia. When I lay down, my pulse is around 75, which is already high for me. When I stand up though, It goes up closer to 105. Isn't that cool? If I were home, I could just pop by the firehouse, have an IV dropped in my arm, and be good to go. But, since the ambulances here just pick you up and drive you to the hospital, I don't think that's going to be an option.

This virus is getting old!

OK, I'm really beginning to hate this coxsackie virus nonsense! It's now been since Friday, and I still can hardly swallow water. My total food intake today consisted of a small cup of yogurt and about 1/4 of a pint of ice cream. I try to drink water, but it hurts too bad to drink much. If I were back in the US, I probably would have gone to the hospital for fluids, but I'm not about to do that here. I've resorted to Percocet to help me sleep a little at night, but it knocks me out too much to take during the day.

Thursday is Luke's wife's birthday and they're celebrating at Pineapple Pete's. If my throat is not better by then, I'm going to be pissed. Do you have any idea how much I love food? I won't go into details, but it's a lot. Anytime you wanna go away, virus, would be just fine with me!

Good news though...I did finally get my toilet fixed today (the pipe that feeds it water was leaking). And, I learned that the plumber actually can speak English, even though he doesn't like to show it.

Finally...reason prevails over religion!

Despite my overall dislike for Obama, he definitely has some positive things going for him. Chiefly, he does not allow religion to influence politics...a field in which religion should never have had any place. Today, he overturned Bush's archaic views on stem cell research and the ban on using federal money to finance one of the most promising therapies of our time! Hopefully, it won't take too long for the money to start funneling out and for new embryonic stem cell lines to be created. People should be very excited today!

A moment of silence for Circuit City

As of today, Circuit City is no more. I used to work there, back when they still paid commission, they employees had to take product exams before they could sell, and they really wanted to help you. During my time there, they decided to get rid of major appliance. Maybe that was the beginning of the end for them. They could no longer compete with Best Buy, Lowes, etc. Shortly after, they did away with commissioned sales positions, and I think that was really what did them in. Now, instead of being a knowledgeable salesperson, their employees were just hourly workers, who didn't really care much about helping you (much like Best Buy employees). It's been a little sad to see the place continually go downhill, until today, when they are officially closed. Now, the only choice is Best Buy, and that's just too bad.

Antibiotics for everyone!

I went to the local doctor's office today just to make sure that my diagnosis of my throat was correct. Turned out to be a huge waste of $25 and my morning. The doctor took one look at my throat and said, "It might be viral, but it my be strep, so we should just give you antibiotics." He said that by the time we got the results of a culture, the antibiotics would be done, so might as well just give them. I asked about a rapid strep test, but apparently, they don't do that here. Aside from the fact that my symptoms and throat shouldn't really lead someone to believe I had a bacterial infection, I am definitely pretty sure that you're not supposed to just throw antibiotics around, particularly when they're likely unnecessary.

So, since I didn't trust the doctor, I asked my ICM professor (who's also an MD) to take a look. He said he was pretty sure that it was not bacterial. But, just to be certain, I asked my med micro teacher to take a look. She took about half a second to look at my throat and say, "oh look at that, that's definitely coxsackie, that's not bacterial." I should have just gone to the med micro teacher first. I don't know why I even bother with the local physician anymore.

I'm about as excited as they are

This is an actual screen capture from the beginning of the Kaplan Behavioral Science review video. See the Kaplan Medical watermark in the bottom right corner? That means I'm not making this up. If this is any indication of the excitement to come...I just can't wait to get started!

I hate being sick!

I woke up this morning at around 7:00AM because I couldn't swallow. Waking up at 7 might be normal for some people, but I usually wake up at around 11 or 12. I took a look back into my throat, and I'm definitely sick! I'm pretty sure that I've got coxsackie virus, which is a very common cause of sore throat in children. It's not that common in adults, but based on the way my throat looks, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do for it but go a couple days barely able to eat or swallow. Some quiz on facebook thinks that I'm really only 21 years old though, so maybe that's why I'm still getting children's viruses.

Become a fully qualified chiropractor

Also taken from the same website as below...this guy is my new hero

Dolphin Facts

Dolphins can hold their breath for up to eight weeks but need to surface occassionally to look around as they cannot open their eyes under water.

Singing to a Dolphin will make it love you and be your friend for life. Anything by Neil Diamond will do.

Dolphins are not fish. They are mammals. They give birth to live offspring. Usually each dolphin gives birth to eighty or ninety calves at a time but few survive as the mothers eat their young.

(Taken from this site, the same hilarious website which brought us the spider picture email!)

Just a bad two days

If you were to think of all of the possible things that could go wrong the day before the first comp exam, I think you'd have to put having an 18 hour power outage right at the top of that list! Yesterday, we lost power at about 3:00 PM. Despite numerous calls to the landlord, at around 11:30 PM, I was finally notified that the power company just decided to call it a night, and that they wouldn't be coming to check out our place until sometime in the morning. So, I attempted to sleep, on top of my covers, in the heat and humidity. It didn't work very well, due to a combination of the heat, and my being very pissed off at things that could only happen here.

After the power finally came on (at around 10:00 AM), I jumped in the shower and headed off for school to take the exam. 200 questions and about 3 hours later, I was done, but just about 100% certain that I failed miserably. The exam was actually not as bad as I had expected it to be, it was just that we've really had no time to study. So, even though the questions weren't particularly difficult and I think the basic science faculty has done a great job preparing us, I just couldn't remember most of it. This seems to be the overwhelming consensus amongst those I've talked to in the class...that the exam wasn't necessarily hard, but nobody had the appropriate time to study for it.

Just a few minutes ago, I walked into my bathroom, to find it completely flooded. Eventually, I figured out that the plastic pipe that fills the reservoir had sprung a leak, so now I have to turn it off and just hope that a semi-competent plumber can make it out tomorrow.

FYI: behavioral science was just as low yield as I have suspected. Out of 200 questions, about 3 were behavioral science, and they were questions that you probably could have answered without ever having taken the class. But, they did probably raise my grade slightly.

Well at least tomorrow can't be any worse (I hope). It will at least be nice to sleep tonight in air conditioning.

How To Smoke Smarties

In case you were wondering... Thanks to Ray for this one. America's youth sure does show promise! Too bad Ray can't do this...it's not good for his diabeetus (his spelling, not mine)

One more hurdle down

This morning, I passed my ICM history and physical exam test! We had 20 minutes to take a history from a patient (one of the ICM faculty) and then 40 minutes, with a partner, to complete a full physical. Most people have probably never had an entirely complete physical, but they take a little while, if done correctly. The grading sheet they used had over 200 points that they were supposed to make sure we hit on!

The case that I had to take a history for and diagnose wound up being intermittent claudication. The word "claudication" did not seem to want to come to me this morning, but I did manage to get out "intermittent vasoconstriction," which means essentially the exact same thing and was good enough to pass. If you're interested, it presented as an overweight 60 something year old man with pain in his calf after periods of walking, which subsided after a few minutes of rest.

The physical exam was not very difficult, after doing it for the past 3 semesters, over and over and over again, in ICM. Like I said, it's pretty involved and covers EVERYTHING, but when you do it as often as we have to in ICM, it kind of just comes to you. Fortunately, that is the last history and physical that I'll be doing on a mock patient; the next time will be a real patient in the hospital!

Unfortunately, I'm not so confident about my chances of passing this first comp exam on Thursday. The end is in sight, but right now, it's just a faint light...far off in the distance. I'll definitely make it through the Goljan path lectures before then, but that's about all I'll have time for. That only leaves biochem, physio, anatomy, histo, genetics, pharm, and behavioral to go! Fortunately, Goljan integrates a lot and touches on all of those subjects, but probably not enough for this exam in 2 days! So, I should probably get back to it!

FREE CONE DAY!!

Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day is April 21st and this year, I will definitely be there! Ben and Jerry's is, hands down, the best ice cream ever invented. In fact, it is one of the most amazing things that can be put in your mouth. If you disagree, then you probably have a very poor sense of taste and you might enjoy snacking on cardboard. In any case, I am mostly excited about this because this year, I'll be back in the USA, for good!! Come on April 15th!!!!!!

Only 44 days left until I leave the island, but who's counting? ;)

Daily Douchebag

I was tempted to think that this guy was from Jersey, but the hair is not nearly blown-out enough. Bang up job on the fake-tanner though!

Goljan, Day 2

Today is the my second straight day of Goljan, and I'll likely be up until around 1 tonight trying to get through the day. I only have until Thursday to learn as much as possible and try to pass this first comp (If I do pass the first comp, I'm also going to start buying lottery tickets). I've decided that listening to Goljan lectures is probably the highest yield thing I can do at this point. He makes path about as simple to understand as possible, and also does a lot of integration with the other subjects.

After a day and a half or so, I've just finally made it to the real path stuff; the first couple lectures were a lot of biochem integration and the very basic path. But, I think I've already picked up on a lot of things. We'll just have to wait and see if I pick up enough to pass!