the life and times of ohiosnap

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2007-05-16T17:47:00.000-04:00

almost 2 months without bloggin', that's some absence

kind of at a loss where to start. i think i'm going to do the numbers thing again.

1. i signed on an apartment in the east village! it's in a nice little area just off of tompkins square park, it's near plenty of wonderful restaurants and bars (some of my most favorite ones that i've found in the city so far), and it's a little bit farther away from the subway than i'd like to be, but honestly i couldn't be too picky after all that huntin'. living in the bronx, 1 hour away from downtown, working 6 days a week, makes for difficult apartment hunting. after spending 2 full weekends looking for and finding awesome apartments that i would then lose out to other applicants because they either saw it before i did (i could never get into the city much earlier than 5pm) or they didn't need a guarantor (since i definitely do not make 40x the annual rent for most places), i decided to bite the bullet with this one. it's undersized and overpriced and it's going to be probably the smallest bathroom i've ever had, but i will be in the city and i will be happy.

2. one of my apartment hunting stories is kind of funny. it involves car accidents and lost and found cell phones. supposedly my broker's office was contacted by the new york times for "funny apartment hunting stories" and they want to interview me for mine. if they think it's funny enough, i'll be in the new york times. i'm totally going to put this on my CV if i get it, since i don't have any research publications to list.

3. i start at NYU in 6 weeks! only 5 more clinics to go! i move in 3 weeks!

4. i need to hire movers.

5. living in the bronx, in hospital housing has been very cheap and frugal and i've saved a lot of money. then i spent it all on first + last month's rent + broker's fee + (movers). my tax return came and i was excited and then paid off the credit cards and then bye bye tax return.

6. my computer's hard drive died. i was very sad because i thought i lost all my digital photos and my music (as in the stuff i composed, not the stuff i put on the ipod). turns out long ago i had moved my iphoto library to an external drive, so most of my photos were saved (hooray!). turns out i didn't move my music stuff over though. booooo.

7. so now i have an old computer with a brand new hard drive.

8. my rotation right now is at the county hospital. it fucking blows. my attending, who isn't even a "real" attending, but a teaching attending (who is basically just supposed to give us lectures and stuff but we don't follow his management), who retired and came back as a volunteer attending JUST to do teaching rounds, is a COMPLETE FUCKING ASSHOLE. he's condescending, demeaning, belittling, arrogant, narrowminded, sexist, loves to beat dead horses, loves to ask esoteric questions and then sigh and groan loudly when we say "i don't know," yells at us for management decisions that were not ours (i.e., for a patient that was admitted overnight by the nightfloat resident), and today decided to make an example of the meek 3rd year medical student that follows me (i.e., is on call with me) and berated her to the point where she was crying. fuck him, that fucking asshole. medicine should not be taught by means of fear and shame.

9. and while i'm all pissed off, good fucking riddance, jerry falwell

10. congratulations to zamelia! thankfully i have secured their wedding weekend off and will be flying back to the midwest (on the same flight as tamz and bard, interestingly enough) for the first time since last october. very excited for what will undoubtedly be in the lead for wedding of the century!

11. see you there, chasbot!

12. have you guys heard the new battles album? straight heat

13. packing up my things in the studio makes it feel like a dust bomb went off.

14. there is a 10 year high school reunion in early august, back in wisco. haven't decided if i'm going to go yet, assuming i have that weekend off. not sure if i'll be able to justify the flight home, though i know my folks would love it. besides, i gotta save up the bucks for c-wiggle's wedding in september.

15. it is so damn humid.

i'm doing a good job

2007-03-20T14:03:00.000-04:00

jeepers creepers, it's been a million years since i wrote anything worthwhile. so what have i been up to?

since my own memory is probably not functioning up to snuff, let's go in reverse chronological order.

my family was in town this weekend. we did a lot of stuff that mostly revolved around eating.

they came in on saturday afternoon, and we immediately hoofed it to k-town and dined at kum gang san, which made us smell like kalbi for the rest of the day (a sweet delicious aroma). then i took the crew to pinkberry for dessert, which blew everyone's minds because janice had read so much about it and it was low-cal and low-sugar so it was ok for my mom and we watched some dude suck down the large pinkberry bucket of froyo all by himself in record time. then an employee made my dad put away his camera because there were no photos allowed.

neeext we went to times square, where we watched an afternoon matinee of THE HOST (the korean campy monster movie) which was pretty fun and exciting even though my dad fell asleep, but my mom loved it and actually understood most of it, since it was in korean. the theater, by the way, had a million stories and we went up a million escalators to get to our screen. fyi.

then we went to chinatown for dinner, and slurped down soup dumplings at joe's shanghai (where i'd never been, but heard much about, and o lordy, thems some good xiaolongbao). i also ordered the braised pork shoulder, which was about 25% fat and gristle. but that remaining 75% was delicious, brother.

afterwards we had very loose plans to go out, but considering the idiot quotient in the city (being St. Patrick's day and all), and our caloric quotient (since we had only paused the eating for 2 hours to watch a movie), we are all pretty pooped, and called it for the evening.

on day 2, we had breakfast at the little cafe metro that was right next door to my family's hotel. then my parents took us all to st. patrick's cathedral for sunday services, since they realized that they would be the only way they'd get us all together to do such a thing. i'm not sure when the last time i went was (since i was on call on christmas last year), and jennie was pretty sure it had been years since she's been. but hey, it's st. patrick's cathedral on st. patrick's day. and i'm technically still a catholic, so why not? it was surreal though.

next we dined on noodles at hyo dong gak, a chinese/korean noodle house near k-town (more korean food!), and then purchased discounted tickets (i mean, TKTS) to Mamma Mia! on broadway. then to kill time i brought the field trip to soho where we did a spot of shopping (everyone oohed and aahed at uniqlo. also, everyone used the restroom at uniqlo) and then returned back to times square for the show.

i've only seen one broadway show before and it was the lion king and it expanded my mind. it was freaking unbelievably amazing and i'd go see it every week if tickets didn't cost $120. so i expected a similarly mind-bending experience with Mamma Mia!. i knew nothing about it except that it was all ABBA songs and probably about a wedding since all the ads have a woman in a bridal gown.

OMG it was such a chick flick musical (jennie's words). a story of 3 women who grew up strong and single in the 70s and now one of them has a daughter who's getting married, but oh no, we don't know who the father is, because 20 years ago the mom had summer trysts with THREE DIFFERENT SEXY MAN BEASTS (one american, one brit, one aussie). also the whole thing takes place on a sexy greek island.

it was done well but it was no lion king. highly recommended if you're 40 and female and reuniting with the sorority sisters for cosmos and a NIGHT IN THE CITY! WOOOOO

so that was the weekend.

prior to that i took the USMLE step 3 exam. it was misery. i don't want to talk about it. ok i'll talk a little about it. it's 2 days long. the 1st day i came out feeling confident because i finished like 2 hours early. the 2nd day was painful. there was some error with the computer system so the 8am test didn't actually start until about 10:15am, and they warned us that they might have to reschedule us (and my family was flying in the next day). then as i was taking the test it seemed so much harder than the day before and i think i might have failed. it was horrible. won't get the scores for weeks.

prior to that i was on night float for 2 weeks. now THAT's misery. it's a long shift, 5:30p-8am, factor in the commute and it's about 15.5 hours everyday. if you do the math, that leaves you 8.5 hours to sleep, assuming you fall asleep the second you walk into your apartment. factor in more time to maybe eat a little something, check some emails, make some phone calls, take a shower, and you're left with NOT MUCH TIME TO SLEEP. and the one day i decided to do laundry was a bad idea - that cut into my sleep margin by almost 2 hours.

night float was a difficult rotation. as everyone leaves to go home, they sign out their patients to me, the idea being that if any shit went down, i'd be there to take care of it. so it's common courtesy for people to wrap up as much work as reasonably possible during the day, and leave me with NTD (nothing to do), which is what is "supposed" to happen.

of course, if you have a sick or crashing patient, then inevitably there will be lots to do but that's a given, and the daytime MDs should try to set things up to go as smoothly as possible overnight (i.e., "if the BP does this, then give this med. if that doesn't work then add this med. and if that doesn't work then call this consultant, they are already aware of the patient"). that's the least stressful way to do it. the worst is when there's a really sick patient and i'm told "oh he's fine, nothing to do" and THEN he craps out after they leave. then i have to run and get the chart, read about the patient, try to make a decision on how to act, if i'm stumped i can call my senior (who is busy admitting patients in the ER overnight), and decide if i need to call a consultant or not. and then i hope that whatever intervention i decide on works.

some nights went better than others. and some of my colleagues give much better signouts than others. nightfloat is a way to really see what all your co-workers are like. when you work with them during the day, it's hard to tell, because you all work side by side, but independently of each other. so if my buddy is doing a crap job, i might not be able to notice, because it doesn't affect MY work directly. but if he's doing a crap job, i'll DEFINITELY find out overnight, because all the loose ends that he leaves hanging at the end of the day will be my mess to clean up overnight. there are some classic violations like IV lines that are just barely hanging out that the interns will try to duck out of, telling me that there's nothing to do, then high-tailing out of the hospital, and then not even 5 minutes later i'll get called that i need to place an IV. and i don't MIND placing lines and such, but it just sucks when your night starts off with several of those calls, all because people don't want to do their own work.

then there are the calls from family. it sucks when the family insists to speak to a doctor because the daytime MDs haven't told them anything. and then at 645pm, when all that's there is me, the guy that's covering 80 patients overnight, and they want ME to tell them what exactly is wrong with grandpa and what tests do we have planned for tomorrow and how come nobody has called his cardiologist and are we sending him to a nursing home? and so i read the chart and try to decipher handwriting and figure out what exactly the primary team thinks is the diagnosis and where they're going with it, and then regurgitate that info to the family. lots of times i had to deal with family members who are angry at what happened during the day (i.e., when i'm NOT THERE and have NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT'S GOING ON), and so they take it out on me. one family yelled at me repeatedly over the course of a night because they weren't allowed to stay past visiting hours and wanted to speak to a supervisor (who's not there at 1am) and they said a nurse said such and such to them and she's a bad nurse (she's not) and one of the doctors earlier promised them this and that and none of it happened (i didn't make those promises!) and because of all this, they want to remove their ventilated vegetable mother from our hospital and take her home at 1am - a horrible idea. so i have to go there and calm them and remind them that i'm not the enemy and that pulling their mother is a terrible idea and they should just let her stay the night and re-address the issues in the morning. and after a couple of hours of berating me, they agreed.

blech. anyway i'm on vacation now. not going anywhere too fancy, heading to philadelphia this weekend (it's jennie's birthday). looking for an apartment to live in (east village). gotta get my tax return filed, pronto. and then: 3 months left in internship. halle-freaking-lujah.

why i haven't posted

2007-03-05T09:15:00.000-05:00

i'm on night float right now.

5:30pm - 8am, on the daily.

also i'm studying.

how to survive a night in the hospital

2007-01-15T10:21:00.000-05:00

last wednesday i was on overnight call. that means instead of coming in at 6am and picking up admission #1, and accepting a total of 4 admissions over the course of a day and leaving around 10pm, i come in at 7am, do NOT pick up an admission, see my old patients, leave by noon (that never happens) and then return at 9pm to pick up 5 admissions throughout the night - and then the next day is a full day. (yes, overnight call sucks).

so i forgot that i was overnight and just assumed i was on regular long call, so i started off my day by showing up at 6am for no reason. awesome. the morning was uneventful and i left and returned by 9pm. i had 2 admissions already waiting for me, and those got worked up at a fairly sluggish pace (as an intern, you are only as fast as your resident, and the night admitting resident that night was SO s-l-o-w). by 2am we had only finished 2 admissions. i received admission #3 shortly thereafter, and this was quickly followed by #4 and #5, around 3:30am. so the idea is to get all the admissions done by 7am so you can again see all your old patients and be ready to round with the team by 8am. having 3 admissions left to do around 3:30am is a bit of a crunch, so i was a bit anxious and really pushing my resident to pick up the pace a bit.

4:00am i get a call that one of my old patients is not doing well, i'm needed on the floor.

***

this is a guy who's my age, only medical problem being wildly uncontrolled type 1 diabetes, who came in with a pretty bad pneumonia. his pneumonia got worse despite IV antibiotics and he continued to spike fevers through it all. for a while we thought he might have had TB but all of his tests came back negative for it. he then developed a large loculated pleural effusion (basically, pockets filled with fluid in the space surrounding the lung, which essentially pushes on the lung and collapses it). we expected it to be full of pus (an empyema) and thus be the source of his infection - except that when we drained one of the pockets, there was no bacteria in the fluid and no pus. we then decided that a drain would need to be put in to take out this fluid, since it MUST be the source of his infection, even though all the cultures and gram stains were negative. so we put in a pigtail catheter and he drains a few 100cc's (which is not really all that much) overnight.

the next day the pulmonary fellow comes by and infuses tPA (tissue plasminogen activator, used during heart attacks to break up clots) through the pigtail, the idea being that the tPA will break up the loculations and allow more fluid to drain without having to place a second pigtail. so we do that and it works, he drains about 500cc's overnight. the following day, pulmonary decides to repeat the procedure, which he does and this time it only drains about 25cc's overnight.

so we either have run out of fluid to drain, or something else is wrong. clinically the patient seems to be feeling better, he says his breathing is easier, his cough is better, his chest hurts a bit less. but he still continues to spike fevers, really high fevers up to 104 degrees F. he's still on 3 different IV antibiotics that should cover just about any bug that could be causing this.

we call and ask the cardiothoracic surgeons to come and evaluate him as we think he may require surgery to decorticate (strip the loculations) the lung and help it reexpand. they say they will come by, and they left a note, but for the "plan" section of their note (the most important part) they leave it blank. which is of no help whatsoever.

the next day we call CT surgery again and ask them again to come see the patient and remind them that we need a plan from them otherwise their consultation is useless. later they come by and write "discuss with attending" in the plan section. that's it. nothing else. the patient continues to be clinically stable, the pain in his side hurts a little more, but otherwise breathing is okay. his oxygen saturation continues to be about 97-98% on room air, which is fine.

that night was when i got paged to come to the floor.

***

so i arrive and the overnight team is already at the bedside, a 100% non-rebreather oxygen mask is over my patient's face, and he looks delirious and woozy and doesn't recognize me when i first show up. i find out that the nurse came in to do a routine vital signs check overnight and found that his oxygen saturation was 74%. she called the overnight team to assist, they placed him on 100% oxygen and rechecked, and his saturation went up to about 85% (still not good). critical care medicine was called, CT surgery was again called, and pulmonary was called. critical care recommended a BiPAP machine, which is basically the last step before you intubate someone. it forces oxygen into the lungs and is this hugely uncomfortable mask that you have to strap on to your face. we tried that for a few minutes, got him up to 95%, but then he dropped back to the 80s because you have to be awake and cooperative for BiPAP to work, and he wasn't either one. the respiratory therapists were forced to ambu-bag him to keep his saturations up as they prepared for intubation.

to intubate someone you need to sedate them, or at the very least relax them. you're placing a tube into their throat and down the trachea, past the vocal cords. as you may imagine it is a very unpleasant experience to be awake for. but this guy just would not calm down. we push nearly 50mg of sedative (4mg at a time) trying to get him to calm down. after the third attempt, he was finally intubated, and coughing up pink frothy foam, which is a sign of pulmonary edema - fluid and blood in the lungs. chest X-rays showed signs of fluid all over both lung fields - he was in ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome. yes, this is bad.

after the initial incident and intubation, all the services write event notes for the chart - medicine, pulmonary, critical care, nursing. CT surgery does not write a note. the resident was present during the event but did not contribute anything. she had left to go look at chest X-rays and never came back.

i proceeded to spend the next 15 hours more or less at his bedside, managing his sedation and ventilation, suctioning him as he needed it, pushing more sedative as he needed it, speaking to family on the phone, talking to all the consult services, speaking to my attending, etc. by 7:30pm that evening he finally was transported to the PCU (pulmonary care unit).

***

it was only then that i was able to finish my next 2 admissions (#4 and #5, which i had to put on hold because of all of the aforementioned events). i left that evening around 9pm. 24 hours straight, no sleep, no food, no water. i pissed orange that night.

since that horrible day was technically my "post-call" day, i was due for an admission the next day. that meant coming home at 9pm, showering, passing out, and waking up to be at work at 6am the next day to get my short-call admission.

***

but my karma has come back around. yesterday i was on long call again, this time not overnight. eligible for 4 admissions between 7am and 7pm. i received zero. i don't know if that's ever happened before, to be on long call and receive no admissions. but it was great. i watched a lot of football (though i missed the end of the bears game) and ate a lot of food.

***

my patient is still in the PCU, still intubated, still on sedation. he looks a little bit better. i can tell he recognizes me again. he makes a bit of a smile when he sees me. but otherwise they still haven't fully drained the loculations and they still don't have a source for the fevers. he continues to spike through the antibiotics. more than likely he will eventually need surgery and this will probably become a chronic problem for the rest of his life. CT surgery now sees him and writes notes daily.

2006/2007

2007-01-01T21:37:00.000-05:00

my flickr account expires in 4 days.

so far this year i watched tv and ate chinese food.

resolutions for 2007 to come later.

bringing it all home with you

2006-12-18T21:20:00.000-05:00

work is painful.

today we had an ethics meeting concerning the care of one of my patients.

she is young, by our standards (under 50 years old), HIV+, infected with a horrible brain disease called toxoplasmosis (the same toxo that can be found in kitty litter, which is why doctors recommend that pregnant women don't scoop it - although most patients with normal immune systems don't get THIS sick - and the danger is more for the baby than the lady) for years. a disease like toxo doesn't go away. you have to take a massive dose of medicine every single day just to get it under control, and then you have to continue to take a slightly smaller dose of medication every day just to keep it from coming back. this woman's partner had passed away from AIDS related illnesses at least a year prior. until then she had been doing well, coming to the infectious disease clinic once a month to get checkups and modify her treatment and pick up cases of ensure. after her partner's death she called it quits.

toxoplasmosis basically eats at your brain. well, it really causes encephalopathy, but in the end it destroys your brain. this used to be a high-functioning woman who owned her own real estate business and raised three children. right now she is bedridden with a nasogastric tube pumping her nutrtion and medication into her stomach because she's simply not awake enough to take her medication by mouth (and toxo treatment requires that you take some medications by mouth - they're simply not available in IV form).

unfortunately, before she reached this state, she had not established a health care proxy - someone to make her health care decisions for her, in the event that she would be unable to. so we had to have this meeting with family members to decide what to do, and to gather their input as to what they believed she would want done. a nasogastric tube isn't a permanent solution (she pulled it out once) and the other options were a PEG (percutaneous gastrostomy tube - a tube directly from the stomach to the skin) or to stop treatment and let her die. even after a PEG tube, there is no guarantee that she'll get better, but without one, she would have no chance.

it's impossible not to become completely cynical and bitter and angry as an intern. some of the more astute readers may have picked up on my less than complete enjoyment of the internship experience from my previous posts. you begin to hate everything. patients become less human, another name on the list, another checklist of things you need to get done in the same amount of time, another "rock" that will never leave the hospital because of any myriad of reasons (they refuse treatment, they refuse nursing home placement, they can't be placed because they've punched nurses/patients in the past, they threw a box of sharps at a doctor, they tear out their IVs/NG tubes/foley catheters every night, they continue to spike fevers despite antibiotics, they use angel dust while in the hospital (i've had two patients have their urine tox screen turn positive for PCP while in the hospital), they're nauseated, their back hurts, their chest hurts, they're anemic, they're vomiting, they had diarrhea, they're depressed, they hate their family, their family hates them).

we look up past information on every patient that gets admitted. this is all past hospital information - former diagnoses, medications they were on, imaging studies that were done, surgeries they had, who their primary care provider is, are they at a nursing home?, etc. we find out very little about their lives outside of the hospital, other than do you drink? smoke? drugs? work? sexually active?

then you have a patient like the one above, who's nonfunctional and nearly nonverbal and you can't get a story from until 2 weeks later when you're at a breaking point so you call the family in and then you finally fill in the blanks and realize that this patient had a life and a family and a business and an apartment and a husband and a daughter who just got married two weeks before admission (and she even attended the wedding). and suddenly the burden you carry feels even greater and even more depressing.

then i come home and i eat dinner and watch reruns and think about how hard and awful and terrible my life is and i become selfish and cynical and bitter again and almost spite the woman for creating more work for me to do and making me stay an extra hour and a half later because of this meeting.

this of course, only breeds more self-loathing.

then i flip open a magazine that came in the mail and read about reasons to love new york, which includes a small blurb on firefighters that died fighting a fire in the bronx earlier in the year. and it includes a passage on a fireman that i helped care for while in the ICU. and i can remember that bizarre night, the first overnight call and first day in the ICU, with firefighters and family swarming the bed. the commissioner of the FDNY was there that night. bloomberg was there too. they turned one of our conference rooms into an impromptu pre-funeral reception, as grim as that sounds. that was one of the longest nights of my life.

then once a month i write something that seems profound but is really just thinly veiled complaints and whining, brush my teeth, go to bed, wake up, shower, iron a shirt, and go back to work and do it all over again, and every morning, before it even turns 9am, i already feel defeated.

merry christmas. don't get sick.

how does it go, what does it do

2006-11-22T19:58:00.000-05:00

hello, faithful readers, intern year is breaking yours truly.

once again we find ourselves overdue for an update.

for the first time i will be missing thanksgiving with my family. if i was celebrating it with friends or some other group it wouldn't be so bad, but i will be celebrating it with ICU nurses and patients who are determined to reach the grave one step earlier than we will let them. this is a depressing prospect.

i thought i would try to make myself feel better by making a turkey sandwich for dinner tomorrow night, but i forgot to buy turkey. so it will be peanut butter, but i will pretend that it is sweet delicious roast turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. then i will pretend to curl up on the couch and watch football til i pass out in a tryptophan coma when really i will be drawing bloods and informing family members that their beloved aunts and uncles and mothers and fathers and grandparents are imminent and this is really serious and they should be prepared for an outcome that may not be the best case scenario, no matter how much they pray, and that auntie may not ever wake up even though she twitched a toe after 2 weeks of complete unresponsiveness, no matter how well christopher reeve was doing after his accident, and just because we are going to ask the surgeons to slice open their neck and put in a tracheostomy doesn't mean they're going to be awake and talking again, and that large mass that is growing in the upper lobe of their left lung isn't going to go away and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and one day it will keep them from breathing properly and that day could be very soon but in the meantime we really need to open a bed in the ICU so we may be sending them out tomorrow.

it's hard not to assume such a horrible, cynical view of the inevitably dying patient while you're working in the ICU. i spent 90 minutes this morning compressing the right femoral vein of a 55 year old diabetic cocaine user, because the doctors previously treating her had suspected she had a bloodclot in her lung and gave her blood thinners and then decided to try to put in a femoral central line and missed and she bled and bled and bled and bled and her hematocrit slowly went from above 30 to about 15 in the span of 3 hours (she didn't have a blood clot). around the same time this happened, a 47 year old guy who came in with a stroke started having a seizure while he was on dialysis and afterwards became very agitated and aggressive and nearly pulled out his dialysis catheter (which is a huge, huge IV that would very likely spell disaster if forcibly removed). and one of our patients died today, an IV drug user with a crapped out cirrhotic liver who had never even had anything approaching a viable mental status throughout his entire stay in the ICU, who had no family we could contact and only had a common-law wife who did not own a telephone and only appeared twice and we were sending her telegrams (seriously) with daily updates of his deteriorating condition as each of his organ systems went from barely functional to completely failed, one-by-one, and to whom we sent another telegram this afternoon informing her that he had passed.

honestly i don't know what my point is, i'm just saying that today was hectic and crazy and scary and i feel completely worn out and exhausted and tired but more so mentally than physically. my head hurts.

anyway, i've eaten my tuna sandwich dinner and i'm tired and dirty and would like a nice shower and pass out in bed while reading one of the three books or two magazines i'm slowly plodding my way through.

and so and on and on and on and on, and so it goes.

why medicine sucks in '06*

2006-10-29T19:28:00.000-05:00

or, how i've become depressed before i reach the halfway point of my intern year

*ref: DJ Shadow "Why Hip-hop Sucks in '96"
(it's the money)

so i worked this whole weekend. so what.

today i showed up for dayfloat at the other hospital we have to work at, which requires me calling a cab to get to and from there on the weekends (because the shuttle which runs at very particular times onloy runs from mon-fri).

dayfloat during the week means you take sign-out from the interns as they finish up their work and leave for the day, and just answer pages for them until 5:30pm when night float shows up. it's actually pretty boring and easy for the majority of the day, and usually only gets a little busy towards the 5:30 mark (murphy's law).

dayfloat during the weekend is much worse. you have to write progress notes (daily progress notes are required on each and every patient - and the primary team gets one weekend day off per week, so the dayfloat writes notes on those days) as well as do any work required for the patients (whereas on a regular day, the primary intern would do all the work and tie up all the loose ends BEFORE signing out).

so i was already not looking forward to today before i woke up.

i showed up at 7:30am and was immediately warned by my first sign out (who was already waiting for me) that this one lady was breathing hard and rapidly, and her oxygen saturation wasn't as good as it should be. hmm.. okay. so i'll go see her first and foremost and make sure everything is okay.

this is a pretty sick lady. she came in over 2 weeks ago with an MI (myocardial infarction, aka heart attack) and was promptly sent to the cardiac cath lab, where they perforated her LAD (left anterior descending artery, a pretty fucking important coronary artery). she ended up in cardiac tamponade (blood filling the inelastic pericardial sac which surrounds the heart, compressing it and preventing it from contracting fully or effectively) and began throwing emboli (lil' blood clots) everywhere. she developed strokes on both hemispheres of her brain, bowel ischemia (essentially, clotting off the blood supply to the intestines and effectively killing it) and GI bleeding, and cyanosis of her feet (again, due to clotted off blood supply). however, she remained mentally stable in spite of all of this, and was able to talk and understand her situation, although at times she would become confused. normally in a patient like this we would use heparin to anticoagulate the blood and prevent it from clotting (and in turn, making it more likely to bleed), but they couldn't, given the fact that she had GI bleeding.

so i went down to see her (never seen her before - only covering) this morning and she looked bad. unresponsive, unarousable, eyes lolling back and forth (nystagmus), pupils hardly reactive to light, not moving any of her limbs, not reacting at all to pain. within 15 minutes respiratory therapy had intubated her. over the course of the next few hours i called critical care medicine, pulmonary, vascular surgery (her toes were looking worse and now her hands were turning purple), neurology, cardiology (she was having another heart attack), and hematology.

everyone said the same thing: prognosis poor, no [surgical/neurologic/cardiac/critical care] intervention indicated at this time, thank you for consult, please call us with any issues. so i basically called them all back several times today.

by the time i signed out at 5:30pm we were still waiting for hematology to call back and critical care were refusing to take her to the ICU because there was "nothing we can do" (although they expected the nurse on the floor to check vitals every 15 minutes - ridiculous!).

so that was one patient.

i covered about 30 or 40 patients today. there's two dayfloat people. technically the full patient load of coverage is divided more or less equally between the two. but there's no telling how sick one group is versus the other, so the work load can end up being very disproportionate despite the best of intentions.

but the schedule had been messed up today. unfortunately we didn't figure this out til the end of the day when the other dayfloat and i were both signing out. turns out all the interns who were sticking around all day because they were on call were assigned to the other dayfloat. that means that they're in the hospital, hence no sign-out. all the interns that were leaving early or had the day off were assigned to me, meaning i received nearly ALL of the sign-outs.

the tally at the end of the day was that i carried the boards for 8 interns and she carried 2.

..

oh, and i forgot about daylight savings and woke up and got ready for work an hour earlier than i needed to.

..

tomorrow i'm dayfloat at the nearby hospital. tuesday i begin overnight shifts in the ER, four in a row.

..

huh. and i was wondering why i was depressed.

back in the USSR MICU

2006-10-17T21:31:00.000-04:00

vacay!

today i took the in-service exam for internal medicine. the purpose of this exam, which medicine residents have to take once a year, is to gauge your knowledge base, weak spots in your clinical acumen, etc - and to see how well you improve over the course of residency, in anticipation of taking the internal medicine boards. in essence, it's step one of a very long board preparation. seeing as how i'm NOT actually going into internal medicine, i don't think i need to elaborate upon why i was not thrilled to spend 7 hours today answering 340 multiple choice questions.

today had a big upside, however - my schedule was successfully manipulated and i now have new year's eve off! hooraayyy! this means let's get started with planning NOW (not really). i'm so excited to have a holiday off, finally.

i saw the departed last night (p.s. i don't think i ever noticed that movies have myspace pages now). it's martin scorcese's adaptation of infernal affairs which is a crazy good hong kong action flick starring andy lau and tony leung (he of wong kar wai cinema fame). scorcese's version has a hell of a cast - nicholson, matt damon, leonardo dicaprio (even though i find his boston accent tough to believe - not that i know a thing about boston accents - i just know that HE doesn't have one), mark wahlberg (absolutely hilarious in his totally not funny role), martin sheen, alec baldwin (he gets funnier as he gets fatter), and even that guy from harold and kumar.

anyway, the language was politically incorrect and abrasive, the violence was graphic, the gunshots were plentiful - it was a great movie and i was thoroughly entertained. i'd seen infernal affairs several times, several years ago, so i had forgotten most of the plot details, which made it much more shocking than i expected. i give it an A PLUS PLUS.

and finally i've been catching up on that hot new tv show studio 60, and i must agree: it's great.

jesus i'm boring.

hokay

2006-10-03T11:34:00.000-04:00

alright, back in beloit. been gone since june.

so i haven't posted much at all in the past few weeks. what have i been up to?

the past couple weeks i was on the OPD rotation, involving a blend of clinic days, dayfloat shifts, and ER shifts. i've complained about this before in earlier posts. the ER is fucking crazy. there are three sides (north, south, west) - the sickest patients go to west, the crazies go to south, and everybody else goes to north. as a medicine intern, they stick us in north or south. i spent most of my days working in south (with the crazies) and didn't realize how much quieter the north side was until they finally assigned me to that side late in the rotation.

the ER is exciting, fast paced, and hectic/stressfully social. there's this small "island" work area that all the doctors and nurses station themselves at. all the computers and desks and charts are there, and you work side by side numerous other residents and nurses at all times. so if you get lucky and you're on a shift with a friend, it's not too bad. you go see a patient, come back, write it up and can bullshit with your neighbors for a minute, then present to an attending, put in the orders (and sometimes put in the IV lines), maybe draw some blood, bullshit some more, and then pick a new patient to go see. i prefer fast paced, busier settings (as opposed to the easy but mind numbingly boring clinic days or lonely and equally mind numbing dayfloat shifts), so the ER is quite entertaining for me. it's also located across the street from my apartment, so transportation is a non-issue (i have to take a shuttle to both dayfloat and clinic). the downside is that a 12 hour shift is pretty long. although you do get to pretty much leave when your shift is over (more or less).

it did take me a little while to warm up to the ER however. the first few days were fucking CRAZY. one side of the ER has areas for maybe 15-20 patients. ergo, the entire ER is designed to hold 60, maybe 65 patients. my first ER shift i walked into it filled with 140 patients, 60 on the side i was working on. later that day it ballooned into 165 patients. we had 3-4 patients to a "slot" (simply an assigned area for a stretcher), some in the hallway, some in the walkway, some of the less acute people were simply sitting in the "asthma chairs" (where they put wheezing folks to sit and breathe oxygen and albuterol and then hopefully walk home), and the nurses kept bringing more people in. we had to tetris beds around to get people hooked up to cardiac monitors, to pull curtains to perform rectal exams (a delicacy), and to line them up for the GYN exam room (of which we only have one). those days were painful. so when it finally calmed back down to days with a census of 80 patients or so, it seemed like a piece of cake.

i've said it before and i'll say it again: doctor dayne, how the HELL do you do this, day in and day out?

dayfloat sucks, and here's why. your job as dayfloat is to cover interns on the medical floors. the interns that have to leave early are the ones that are post call from overnights the night before, or the ones that are pre-call and have clinic in the afternoon, or the ones that are on call that day and have to leave before lunch so they can return at 9pm for an overnight shift. so on a normal weekday, you show up to round with the on call team (so you can hear about the first patients you will be covering for the day), get sign out, and then go hang out somewhere and wait to get paged. this first sign out usually occurs around 11am or so. at 12:30 there is conference, so you get pick up some food and then fight off your postprandial coma for an hour while you get lectured about something that you most likely will not retain for more than 20 minutes after the talk, probably some esoterica which will never apply to anything that you'll see for months. after lunch, the clinic people sign out to you. around 3 or 4pm, if the post-call overnighters are good, they may be finished with their work and sign out to you. and then at 5:30pm, night float arrives and you sign everyone out to them, and then go home.

the whole idea behind signout is that you're supposed to write your own notes, get all the work done, stabilize the patients as best you can, and then sign out to the float. so the float, in theory, will answer pages for little easy things like "can we give some tylenol for mrs. so and so's headache?" or "can you write a diet order for mr jones?" etc, and hopefully not "mrs smith has been bleeding out the hoo hoo all afternoon and now her blood pressure is bottoming out!". so if the interns do a good job (and they did, for the most part), then you, as day float, really don't do much.

the WORST part about dayfloat is that you have to talk to families. i have no problem speaking with families if i'm taking care of their patient. it just sucks to do it when you barely have a grasp of who the patient is. and families always come in the late afternoon, after work or something. i hate saying "i'm not sure what's next, i don't know what the plan is" and so i try to bluff my way through it after a precursory examination of the patient's chart. it's a horrible feeling and pretty much no way out of it.

the other horbs part about dayfloat is floating on weekends. that's when you have to write progress notes for the interns that get the day off. so you're examining patients and supposedly making treatment decisions and such on patients that have been there for weeks or something, and you are just learning about. and there is nobody signing out to you in the morning, you just come in and figure it out, and then answer pages on them all day long. there's no educational value in dayfloat, it is simply a distribute the work sort of thing.

clinic is just boring. end.

ANYWAY now i am on vacation. enough talk about work. i spent the past several days in philly visiting jennie. we saw "the science of sleep" which was cute like amelie and not as trippy as i had thought it would be, but i liked it a lot (a LOT) and definitely would recommend it and i want to see it again. we also saw "jackass 2" (matty was in philly too and he was a strong force in deciding to watch that movie) which was every bit as hilarious and disgusting and filled with poop as hoped. and we ate at a burger joint called five guys burgers (i think) which was also on matty's recommendation, he being the burger aficionado that he is (the walls were lined with positive press clippings). it was a painfully delicious and greasy amount of food (the small fries, for us, was a medium styrofoam cup of fries, plus about 6 inches deep of fries in the paper bag - the entire thing weighed like 7 pounds). we were also very entertained by the comment cards pinned to the walls. i expect matty to post his pictures up soon. *cough cough hint hint*

this week i plan on doing a whole lotta nothing. i got in last night after a 4 hour delay with my flight, proceeded to eat waaay too much korean food and an apple, did some laundry, and then passed out at like 9:30pm. it was awesome. i woke up and have done little else but drink a cup of coffee and putz around on my dad's imac (he's been converted). i did somehow scratch my eye in my sleep though.

this friday is korean thanksgiving. that means more eating.

this weekend i hope to coerce rob into driving down to chicago to see, um, EVERYONE, and also the may or may not show on sunday night. monday morning i fly back to philly, spend a couple more days there, and then it's back to work in the MICU by thursday morning.

oh, also, that half marathon - unofficially, i clocked myself at 1:59. not as fast as i hoped but certainly not as slow as i feared. and now the farthest i have ever run is 13.1 miles. with proper training, i hope to get it down to 1:45 or so.

i listened to the new hold steady album and so far i like it better than the other hold steady albums. i listened to the new my morning jacket double live album and so far i like it better than the other my morning jacket albums. i listened to the charlotte gainsbourg album and it reminded me of science of sleep. i was inspired by the trailer for "old joy" (starring will oldham) to dig up "i see a darkness" and listen to it again and remembered how perfect that album is for a cold grey rainy day.

how stoked are you guys for season 3 of lost? (rost)

2006-09-24T06:00:00.000-04:00

i've enabled word verification for the comments since i've been lucky enough to begin receiving comment spam. so when the comments window pops up, make sure you enlarge it so you can see the entire bit about typing in the word and everything. i'm not design-savvy enough to figure out why the window pops up in such a small size.

being up this early on a sunday to go in to work sucks.

bargaining for your life

2006-09-11T14:32:00.000-04:00

so i'm being fucked at work.

that's totally not as sexy as it sounds.

no, i was called today by the chief resident to see if i was willing to switch one of my MICU (that's Medical Intensive Care Unit, not to be confused with the SICU, CTICU, CCU, NICU, or PICU, which stand for Surgical, Cardiothoracic, Cardiac Care, Neuro/Neonatal (there's two) and Pediatrics, respectively) two-week blocks for OPD (that stands for OutPatient something, not sure, but it's a combo of clinic days (easy 9a-5p), ER shifts (7a-7p, or 10a-10p, or 7p-7a (ugh)), and day float on the medical floors (hit or miss, 8a-5:30p). apparently some of the other interns are asking for time off requests and one of the solutions would be to replace my MICU time with OPD.

i am loathe to do this for the following reasons:

i actually enjoy working in the MICU. it's critcal care, which is very relevant to anesthesiology, so i feel like i'm learning something that i may actually use in the future, as opposed to tinkering with someone's nighttime insulin dose to get their sugars in the just-right-range. you get to place lines and do proccedures and the nursing staff is great.

as previously stated, the MICU is q4 overnight call. so when you're on, it's no joke. sometimes you get lucky and sleep (that happened to me twice), and sometimes you don't (that happened to me twice). but then you go home the next day by 11am - and if you managed to sleep that night, that's a free half day right there. then the next day you write 1 or 2 notes and go home after rounds, which can be as early as noon sometimes. then the next day you only write 1 or 2 notes (easy ones) so you can make it to clinic for the afternoon, and you're done by 5pm. pretty nice again. THEN you're on call the next day. but if you're not on call on the weekends, you get them off. NICE.

so, today was my short day. i wrote 2 notes and was audi5000, home by 2pm (this is actually later than usual).

also, the start time in the MICU is 8am. NICE. i've watched more matt lauer in the past 2 wks than i ever have, ever.

OPD sucks butt (so i've heard). i actually haven't done it yet, but the way it's set up, there's NO early days. you either put in a solid 12 hours in the ER (which is supposed to be mind numbingly busy and hectic here - my hospital has one of the busiest ERs in NY state), which can be overnight (thus ruining your normal-life schedule), a full day in clinic (not so bad, but you'll never be out before 5pm), or do day float at one of the away hospitals (annoying because #1 you cover patients you don't know and #2 it's at an away hospital, so you have to either take a shuttle (which only runs like 8 times a day and stops by 5:15pm) or a taxi (which, while the program does give you vouchers for (only 2 wks at a time), i've heard the service can take up to 30 mins to respond)).

so, i told my chief resident that i would rather not switch out, because the MICU is more relevant to me, etc etc. and he seemed to get the picture. then i decided to do some finagling, since i had him on the line. i'm scheduled for 2 weeks of ICU at one of the away hospitals, and i hear it's absolutely MISERABLE over there. you're on call q3 and the in-between days you still don't finish until 7pm or so. and then you have to call the taxi to get home. nightmare. also, i'm on call on thanksgiving. so i asked the chief, since i dont have transportation, would it be possible to switch my ICU over there for MICU over here? he said he'll try.. sweet.

then i did more research. i know i have 7 months on the medical floors. SUCKS. but i'm a prelim, and i figure, hey, prelims get screwed, that's how it goes. but then i checked out our block schedule ... i'm the ONLY ONE with 7 months on the floor. everyone else has 6. including the prelims. and some lucky few have managed only 5 floor months this year. so i emailed the chief and let him know that, and told him i'd gladly pick up more ICU time in exchange to get off the floors for a month.

eagerly awaiting his response. hopefully this will save me a thanksgiving call. we'll see.

and in other news...

i'm running the philadelphia half marathon in 6 days. i was going to go for a run today but my right hip has been making a funny popping noise sometimes and it hurts today for the first time. so i'm gonna lay off for a day and try it tomorrow.

the US open was some good shit, was it not? sharapova steamrolls to a victory, and federer brings out some good matches with blake and roddick. when i was on call on saturday, there was a lull in the afternoon so we (me, the fellow, and the attending) were all watching the men's semifinals in an empty patient room.

and of course, today is the 5th anniversary of 9/11. in the MICU we observed that by sneaking peeks at patient's televisions while we were rounding. there's like a million events going on in the city in remembrance of it. i can remember exactly how i heard about the towers back in 2001. schlarb came into my room and told me that the weather channel said something about a plane crashing into the tower. so we turned on cnn, and chuck woke up in time for us to watch the 2nd plane hit. at that point i think we woke up everyone in the house, i don't remember exactly. i remember being pissed off that i had to go to work and then being told we couldn't have the radio on because it was depressing our customers (we turned it back on after gary left). after i got back i remember watching CNN for hours.

gothamist asks readers to remember where they were when the towers fell. as expected, it's quite depressing to scroll through the comments.

i'd also like to note that the WWB was born only a week or so before the attacks. my man charles said (this was before blogger had spell-check):

well.. I don't know what to say about this except for the fact that I am shocked and horrified. The one thing that I can hope for is that maybe the countries of the world will realize that all of our petty disputes are pointless and we should try to cooporeate on an even greater level. My biggest fear in all this is that there will be some kind of a retailiatory attack on a country, thereby potentialy causeing some kind of massive war.

unfortunately for every living breathing human being on the planet, nobody listened to charles.

2006-09-01T00:29:00.000-04:00

just found out that i'm on call overnight on thanksgiving, and on call (maybe overnight) on christmas eve and new year's day.

this is awesome.

i'm totally pumped to get a good night's rest to be on overnight call tomorrow.

picking up where we left off

2006-08-30T23:26:00.000-04:00

anyway, let's talk about why this resident i had on call sucked so bad:

he made inappropriate jokes. our attending was a young-ish eastern european lady, fairly attractive. just before rounds began (meaning i had been there for a total of 20 minutes or so) i asked this guy if the attending was nice. "she's got a nice ass!" was the reply. seriously. i'm all for stupid jokes but jesus christ its 8am, just tell me if she's gonna bite my head off or not. so i faked a smile and asked again, and got a similar reply about her rack. SERIOUSLY. (turns out she is a nice lady.)

later on i asked him a question about patient management. "why, you don't know what to do?" i replied that if i had known, i wouldn't have asked. "wanna know what you do?" he waits a beat (comedic pause) and says "you shit your pants." THANKS A LOT

then he asks me "hey who was that super hot chick i saw you with the other day?" first off, i'm thinking, i just met you this morning, how are you remembering who you saw me with and when? anyway, i venture that he probably saw me with jennie. so i reply, "um... probably my girlfriend." "seriously dude? that's your girlfriend? dude, she's SUPER HOT" ok... so this is kinda sorta flattering in a boorish, oafish, frat-boy-retard sort of way (ok, so not at all), but he was being a bit overly excited about the whole thing. he then follows up with "you know what you should do?" (no, please... TELL ME what i should do) "you should break up with your girlfriend so i can hook up with her!" if this guy was one of my good friends, i might chuckle and let him know what a dumbass thing to say that was. this guy is very far from being a favored acquaintaince.

he repeated the "break up with your girlfriend so i can hook up with her" bit about 3 or 4 more times.

this lumbering oaf then proceeds to stick himself with a needle from a patient. ok ok, honest mistake, whatever. the part about this that makes him so horrible is that he decides at 7:30am that he's going to leave before 8am (when rounds begin) so he can get to occupational health before it opens, so he can get samples of medications which he won't need to take until the next day (since he was already treated for his needlestick in the ER), but he "doesn't want to spend all day waiting in line." the thing is, at 8am, when we round with the team, the 2 on-call people (myself and the blubbering giant) present all 10 patients. usually it's common courtesy to divide them, 5 and 5. and it's only natural that you tend to know the 5 you're presenting better than you know the other person's 5. so when you find out 30 minutes beforehand that you're going to be presenting THE WHOLE FLOOR, it's a bit of an inconvenience. i was being asked questions if this guy had done things or not - not that i had any clue, since he was the senior, he wasn't exactly running things by me (turns out he missed some important lab results and forgot to order some key tests). needless to say, it made for a miserable and stressful morning.

that is all. otherwise, that guy was the best resident ever. aside from the qualities and experiences which made him the worst resident ever.

i'm going to try to run the philadelphia half marathon on september 17th. 13.1 miles. today i ran 6. i'm going to really need to ramp it up if i'm going to be in shape in time for the run. but i did listen to andrew WK's new album and sweet jeebus is it a great running album.

the US open. i definitely need to attend this event next year..

fin (end)

throwing bones

2006-08-30T07:37:00.000-04:00

briefly, since i have to leave for work in about 15 minutes..

spent the weekend in philly and it was oh-so-nice even if it was a bit-too-hot since jennie has no-a/c. we saw factotum, the indie film based on the bukowski book, starring matt dillon and lili taylor. it sounds much better on paper. the film just didn't really go anywhere, never really developed characters at all (i know, it's bukowski, but STILL, it was a freaking MOVIE, make me ENJOY it), and never really engaged the audience. and then, it ended. there was a little bit of humor, but it was somewhat cringey-depressing bukowski humor. anyway. more on philly later on maybe.

monday was my first day in the MICU (medical ICU). i never did an ICU rotation in medical school, so this was my first time there. i heard good things. even though it's q4 overnight call (every 4 days), i heard the 3 days in between were nice, pretty easy, get to go home early, etc. unfortunately for me, i was on call monday.

it's always a bit stressful being on call the first day you start a rotation, because not only are you trying to just get re-oriented and re-learn the ropes, you're also getting more work and more patients directed your way since YOU'RE the guy on call. so it really helps to have a good (in the hospital we say "strong") resident to work with, help you out, and generally make you feel that you're not an idiot.

my resident SUCKED.

ok, so i was biased a bit. this was a second year resident (i'd prefer to work with third years, especially when i'm just starting, since they're obviously more experienced) i had never worked with before (not that that's hard to come by, since this is month #3 of internship).

but! i had gone out for some drinks with another intern and maybe 4-5 of the senior residents last week. inevitably the conversation turns to work, exchanging funny stories, comparing experiences on the floor, and bitching about bad residents and attendings. one of the residents mentions this dude. "OH DUDE THAT GUY SUCKS" "SUCH A SHITTY RESIDENT" etc. i asked what made him such a bad resident, and they all assured me that he was just bad, and i should just hope i never have to work with him. guess who i was on call with on monday?

ok... i have to brush my teef and get ready to go in. i'll post more later today, but just had to get that little bit out there...

the year in review

2006-08-22T18:54:00.000-04:00

if by year, i mean birthday weekend.

friday, we started off the night by going to kum gang san in koreatown. it was my second trip back there - the first time, we brought a bunch of white people there and they loved it. this time it was 9 koreans (yes ben, you count) - and the food was every bit as tasty. i met up with my sister and her boyfriend and their 5 friends from yonsei in korea including my evil doppleganger named ben from philly.

then we went to sugar sweet sunshine (on recommendation from peter and the majority of magazine reviews) and picked up a nice big heavy order of 3 dozen delicious cupcakes.

from there it was on to sing sing karaoke where we had a room reserved for up to 20 people. it was amazing. there was a phone in the room. you dial 101 and then the bar picks up, you tell them what you want and then they bring you the drinks! like magic! it was like, awesome!

the turnout was pretty good, a nice mix of old college buddies and new new york friends and even a handful of doctors for good measure, and of course a couple of people i didn't know and i don't remember their names now. cupcakes were eaten, songs were sung, photos were taken. "baby got back" got played twice.

the tab for the night was pretty impressive. i think we made the proprietors very happy, especially when i gave away about a dozen cupcakes to various staff and patrons and people on the street. so they bought us all shots to end the night, and the remainder of the party + strangers in the bar sang me happy birthday. awwww.

we then trekked around the corner to rififi for the trash party. we got in around 2am or so. we were all dancing on stage within 30 minutes. then we took a $40 cab home...

saturday, woke up in the late afternoon with a major headache and dehydration. watched little miss sunshine, which is waaay funnier and better than i expected it to be. we had dinner at yuva, which was delicious and indian and maybe a bit pricey for the quality even for new york. and then it was decided to bail on the rest of the evening, given the prior evening's debaucheries.

sunday was my (real) birthday. did some shopping in soho, bought (another) jacket. jennie gifted me with the most awesome and most desired brian anderson dunks:

had dinner in tribeca at next door nobu, which was expensive and incredible and delicious and probably one of the best meals i've ever had, ever (although that meal at l'etoile will always be memorable). we had a tasting menu of maybe 7 or 8 plates. trying to remember.. raw fatty tuna finely minced, with wasabi and caviar and something else, and a japanese peach on the side .... oysters in some sort of delicious sauce ... lobster tempura ... alaskan black cod marinated in miso with duck foie gras ... a plate of sushi including toro and giant clam .. dessert was green tea ice cream with a chocolate lava cake and mint sauce on top. i'm pretty sure i'm forgetting a dish or two as well. it was amazing.

then as we were leaving, i was shoved aside by a little man in a suit, who asked me to wait to let the people in before i walked out. i was a bit defiant and ready to say something until i looked and noticed that jenna and barbara bush were walking in, and i had just been neutralized by a secret service dude. WOW. (capital letters = sarcasm). outside there were about 8 secret service people just milling around, getting paid.

and that was it. that was the weekend. not that i went in to work on monday or anything, but you know.

catching up

2006-08-17T13:33:00.000-04:00

more at flickr

i've been very lax at keeping up with my flickr account.

lots of old photos have been uploaded, including several trips to philly, evenings of fun with the finger-stache (total borrowed idea from MBIMOTMOG), lots of pictures of cats and dogs, and photos of our trip to mexico.

maybe i'll sort through more old stuff.

tomorrow night, for my pre-birthday party:

Sing Sing Karaoke
81 Ave. A (between 5th and 6th)
9pm - 12am
let's get retarted

bring expensive gifts

back in action

2006-08-11T06:54:00.000-04:00

apartment life at flickr

i replaced my broken camera. pictures will now be arriving again.

this morning's running soundtrack:
spank rock
cage "hell's winter"
"we got it for cheap vol 2"
"use your illusion II"
the new roots album
les savy fav
DFA79

it was nice

2006-08-05T22:00:00.000-04:00

ok that was the worst chinese food i've had in about 10 years.

get it right here in the bronx. ugh.

things done changed

2006-08-05T20:42:00.000-04:00

yesterday i rode down to the south street seaport to catch hot chip. it was soo good. i was going to try to do an interview with them for STUCK (since the publicist asked if i wanted to), but after i said yes she told me that they had to do an interview with sirius satellite radio and wouldn't have time. so, thanks for asking.

but hot chip was awwwesome. it was outdoors on the pier where i was drowning in hipsterses, it was kinda warm (but it cooled off nicely towards the end of the set), it started early (at 8pm) and finished early (9pm), the drummer dude from LCD soundsystem/les savy fav held it DOWN live, the lead singer looked like a slight mike skinner in a pink lumberjack flannel (in this weather??), and the band was ON POINT. all the songs sounded fantastic, most of which i attribute to the fact that i was hanging out by the soundboard. i think i was standing next to a hipster first date, which was amusing until the set started, and they continued their getting-to-know-you-by-telling-you-all-about-myself-first puppet show throughout every single song. (seriously, they should just start a blog)

the rockinger songs (like "boy from school" and "over and over"(which, incidentally, tore the sky off the sucka)) came off sounding terrific, with the heavy backbeat laid down by the live drumming and the thick layers of synthesizers - i think it helped that they used synth bass, because that shit was LOW and LOUD. even the quieter songs like "colours" and "keep falling" got rocked out in a bit more of an upbeat and uptempo fashion. they never lost their pace through the set, never missed a cue, even the three part vocal harmonies were all perfect. it was great.

the show finished early, and i raced uptown to barca 18 to join my co-interns for dinner. there's a group of four of us interns that have established ourselves amongst the seniors as "the ones that go out," aka, "the only ones we know outside of work." the four of us have gone out every night for the past four nights. it's been fun. i met the other 3, plus 2 second years (one of them is actually younger than me (by almost two years) and went to med school at northwestern and states that life during wartime dance parties at the hideout was like her fave dance party there and that she also loves club foot). i showed up a bit late so they had set aside my share of the tapas ... which almost filled up a plate the size of a saucer. then the entrees came, which .. of my portion .. almost filled the rest of the saucer. then we had dessert and sangria. it was kind of expensive for the amount of food. but the morsels i ate were quite tasty.

we then went around the corner and killed a couple hours at underbar (described as "sexy, subterranean lounge is like a basement makeout party for grownups" - i certainly saw no making out and no grown ups, although the DJ was spinning some 90s hiphop, which was a welcome change). after it was decided that the night had grown ripe enough, we trekked to the LES where we met up with some of the other senior residents at club tuts, which is a hookah bar with a dance floor and all the bartenders look like vin diesel (or mini-me dressed up as vin diesel). the bar probably wouldn't have been as fun if i hadn't already been drunk. for some reason i got really fired up at this place and constantly demanded that everybody keep dancing and for the most part, they listened to me. i had fun.

we shut down the place at 4:30am.

then i realized that i left my keys..in my bag...in my friend diana's car...who parked a cab ride away...and left earlier...and was leaving early in the morning for the hamptons.. FUUUCK.

so i crashed with one of guys in my class, slept for like 2 hours on a futon in a living room without a/c and without being able to brush my teeth (that was the worst part), picked up my bag and keys in the morning, and was back in the good old bronx by 9:30am. then i showered and brushed my teeth for like 20 minutes and then passed out and woke up not long ago. now my circadian rhythms are all fucked up but it's a well documented fact (i have several case reports i can cite) that general tso's chicken will cure pretty much everything, from altered sleep biorhythms to broken bones to depression. it does it all. and it just arrived.

in between takes

2006-08-02T17:54:00.000-04:00

there's a lull right now. i have about 15 more minutes until the wash cycle ends. why does the laundry room have to be as hot as a damn firepit?

radiology is cake. i'm taking friday off. it wasn't even my idea. the senior resident suggested that i take 3 day weekends (um, ok! duh!).

friday, hot chip is playing south street seaport for the river to river fest. i'm going to try to get an in-person interview done after they soundcheck at 2pm. pretty excited about this. this is all being made possible by the fact that i won't be going into work on friday.

tonight is the "hooray we survived the first month of internship" party for all of us interns and residents. it was supposed to be at some outdoor bar in this 300 degree heat but because it's been so hot, it's been postponed. so tonight's party is a self-pay. whatever. it's in manhattan, i don't have to be in until 9am tomorrow, i'm going to try to catch a ride with someone down there, it's all gravy.

our chief resident totally make dorky jokes like "we're going to elevate our transaminases and depress our mental states" and warnings about the heat like "let's avoid sever hypernatremia and malignant hyperthermia" or something similarly nerdball. i know you're the chief, i know you LOOOVE medicine, but jesus man, reign it in a bit, mmkay?

last night a number of us took a field trip into the city (bed bath and beyond, specifically) and loaded up on some much needed housewares. i got a lamp, a bathrug, a dishrack, and a microwave. i still need a smaller bedside lamp, and a vacuum cleaner of some sort.

after the shopping, we ate at mustang grill, which had a pretty damn tasty cubano sandwich and delicious fries. also there was a drink called the silver snake or something which basically tasted like 3 shots of tequila and a splash of lime. unfortunately, it was a bit of a meatmarket, but hey, for those fries, it was kind of worth it, sort of.

wash cycle is almost over. READY THE DRYER SHEETS

can't complain

2006-07-27T16:24:00.000-04:00

today was the last day of the first month of internship. for once i was able to sign out early. i started off the month painfully, my service ballooning to about 10 patients at one time (3 of them intubated/ventilated, 1 dead).. today out of 4 patients left, i discharged 3. i handed the intern who is taking my place a very empty board, much to his delight. and i was able to sign out early today! plus, i was fortunate yesterday - had a nightmare of a patient (she was faking seizures - that's a whole different story) who was drug seeking, i had a loooong list of shit i needed to do to get her out of the hospital, and she got so pissed off by our lack of action (which means, we weren't giving her 50mg of morphine when she wanted it), she walked out of the hospital and left (that's called eloping).

so now let's talk about signing out AMA. that means signing out against medical advice. sometimes perfectly competent, intelligent, reasonable patients will sign out AMA. i had one lady who signed out AMA from an ER in connecticut, even though she was pretty anemic, because she wanted to come back home to the bronx and receive her care here (we transfused her here). and there was the guy who came in with whole-body itchiness and dark urine, elevated liver transaminases, who signed out AMA because he had to take care of his kids when his wife went to work (he came back the next day after arrangements had been made). those are perfectly understandable reasons to sign out AMA. however, the "best" AMA signouts are from the crazy crazies who come in demanding pain medications and scream and yell and accuse you of being bad doctors or whatever, who bounce from hospital to hospital with drug seeking behavior, and finally bounce to you, and when you tell them that "no, i can't give you 8mg of dilaudid every 4 hours for your ovarian cancer which has never been biopsed in the 5 years that you claim to have had it, and for which all our imaging has been negative" they get upset and sometimes, SOMETIMES, if you're lucky, they'll be so pissed off they'll sign out AMA. saves you a lot of work

jesus i am cynical. i blame my job

tomorrow i start on radiology. 9am start. unbelievable. i can't even imagine the amount of sleep i'll be getting. plus i get this full weekend off. and it actually looks like i might be getting ALL my weekends completely off this month. i'm seriously having some difficulty wrapping my head around that idea. i mean, wowsers.

i have received my ikea shipment o' scandinavian el-cheapo furniture. now i have two bookcases (more like stilts with shelving), a small table and two chairs. i've been able to unpack a few more boxes, which now actually makes my place look worse than it did before. i have a lot more cleaning to do. and a lot more stuff i need to get. like a bathrug. and maybe a lamp (there's a corner of my apt that has no lighting.. kind of becomes unusable during the evenings.

not sure why i got cable. i've watched about 2 hours of tv this past month. i may cancel this soon.

saw may or may not and co. last weekend, and it was a very fun and reunificatory weekend. i felt like a normal person for about 36 hours there. and those MOMNers get better and better every time i see them. and new guy on the drums is gonna kill someone with those snare hits i swear to god.

and while i'm talking about my friendses bandses, this sleep out cd is really great. my favorite songs are still "it wasn't darkness" and "your voice"

p+k have now departed this fair city, so that makes 2 less friends to see once a week. but i know they're coming back, so i'll see them again as long as the bronx doesnt eat me

new music! the new psalm one album is pretty good, seriously. as an aside, i love jean grae and all but i always kinda felt that her production lacked a little sumfin sumfin. well psalm one does not have that problem. pretty ridiculous album. i listened to it twice in a row last night while building some ikea furniture.

new music 2! the justice "waters of nazareth" ep is pretty good as well. not sure how i feel about the title track, but the other tracks on there are quite outstanding. i think they're french. it's like industrial-tech-disco-dance-punk-lite. that was a total cop-out description. feel it.

what else, the new dr octagon is still good and still burning out my itunes. the new lady sov singles are also fucking great. i know a lot of people hate on her, and i must admit that like jean grae, i thought her first singles were amusing but a bit flat in the production department. these new tracks bump pretty hard. loving it.

you know, i STILL haven't gotten around to listening to the new junior boys, despite all the wonderful things i've heard. i'm going to put it on RIGHT NOW.

i have to get a digital camera soon. i miss taking pictures. i feel like i've missed out on a lot of great opportunities. what fucking horrible timing, break your camera right before moving to new york. god i am a knuckleheadbrain.

just got a wedding invitation in the mail from my long lost friends chris sample and his bride to be kelly, both of jason's freshman year fame. it's on saturday september 23rd, in plymouth michigan. i'm pretty sure it's going to be tough to score that weekend off, but i will do my best. everybody's getting married, i just hope i can go to these weddings. I HATE IT WHEN LIFE PASSES ME BY

wow, this opening track on the new junior boys IS really good. shit.

more cleaning and general organization of my apartment awaits. keep your ear to the ground.

we've done our x rays and its clear that you have a turtle inside your body

2006-07-20T18:28:00.000-04:00

jesus h, this new dr octagon album is the whoooooooooooweeeeeeeedoobiedoobiedooo
intern year make me ccrrrraaaaaazy

NO SLEEP TIL JULY OF NEXT YEAR

2006-07-18T18:33:00.000-04:00

more bullets

working 100 hours a week will not kill you. working 100 hours a week makes you wish that it would kill you.

having no furniture in the apartment is kind of tricky. i have one chair. and a bed. i eat on my bed. i read on my bed. sometimes i sit in the chair. makes it difficult to do anything. ikea will be delivering me a lot of cheap furniture soon.

intern year, contrary to what they may tell you, has nothing to do with education or learning or anything like that. i ain't learneded shit no how. seriously. no time for reading or learning or anything. just work, work work. my medical student knows a lot of esoteric knowledge which makes me feel stupid. my resident is a superbrain, but thats ok because he's senior. and my co-intern is much smarter than i am, but thats ok because he's categorical. i'm just a knucklehead that's trying to survive so i can go live the good life in anesthesia next year.

i've been real lucky with my team. my co-intern, mark, is a real cool guy who definitely knows his way around internal medicine. the med student is a bit goofy at times (goofy like awkward - ok, one of his eyes doesn't point the same way as the other one), but also a chill dude who is totally not a gunner. and my resident is the coolest dude, like, ever - basically knows everything and hates medicine. like me, except for the knows everything part. he's actually thinking about going into anesthesia once he finishes his residency this year. we may end up as CA-1s in the same program, how cuuute.

spending as much time in the city as i can when i have free time, which at best translates to about 1.5 days per week, at worst, about one afternoon. done quite a bit of shopping. all of a sudden i have a craving for denim. and shoes, but thats not really a new thing.

the grilled chicken and the turkey burger are really the best things to get in the cafeteria. the best value is whatever the hot entree is, which can be fairly good (the paella) to nauseatingly terrible (vegetable lo mein). the lunchlady (dinnerlady, whatever) already knows me and piles on like 2 pounds of food onto my styrofoam tray thing when she sees me, because i gotta "thicken up" a lil bit.

i think i'm losing weight.

also its nice to stockpile the little bags of chips and yogurts and such and save them for later. that's a nice "perk."

project runway just started last week. i found two PGY-2's who are into the show. we have lively discussions about this.

i'm making friends in my intern class (awww). and i'm already deciding who i don't like. one intern basically talked shit about anesthesiology, so i was like "psssht whatever bitch please" and shit. and another one constantly gives me terrible signouts, and then constantly complains about how shitty other people sign out to her. oh and theres this guy who's a pretty good guy but his voice is uncomfortably loud and he sounds like his nose is congested all the time, he's the guy that you can't just say "how's it going" and keep walking - you ask him that, and he will give you a long answer. i've definitely had to do the walk away backwards, slowly, thing with him.

it is painfully hot up in the bx, but my apartment is nice because i have central air. however, the hospital does not. sucks dick.

matt and tamar came up to the bx the other day. we explored the neighborhood, that took like 20 minutes. then we ate at a weird kinda-nice, kinda-not place called caridad, which served us fried chicken chunks and rice and beans and an avocado salad and a cuban sandwich and we only got charged for like half of it and nobody else in the restaurant was korean or jewish or you know. it was pretty good though. bit of a weird vibe.

not having a microwave means that when you put your leftover chinese food in the fridge, the next morning it will not taste very good. sooo i need a microwave.

i am afraid to start my ICU rotation in september.

you know what i can't figure out? how to deposit a check into a chase atm. i have like 4 i need to deposit. one of them is from may. i mean cripes.

i subscribed to the new yorker. and also new york magazine. we'll see how much i read.

crap! reading! i'm supposed to read this article about pneumonia for journal club tomorrow. snoooooooozzee

ice cream is soooo good

the WWB turns 5 years old this year. i turn 27. i think i told someone i'm 27 the other day. i forgot how old i was. intern year make-a me stupid.

i'm on call tomorrow.

Ok. It works. Spending plenty

2006-07-15T17:28:00.000-04:00

Ok. It works.

Spending plenty of time raiding the bargain bin of denim at Barney's. Thinking about buying more shoes. Must. Resist. Urge.

I forgot how to do

2006-07-15T17:25:00.000-04:00

I forgot how to do the mobile posting thing. Just testing to see if I'm guessing correctly.

the boogie down

2006-07-03T21:42:00.000-04:00

so here i am in the bronx.

saturday morning i "moved in," meaning 3 duffel bags and an aerobed. i found that the apartment was not clean - paint on the floor, dust and dirt everywhere, dirty windows, dirty bathroom, dirty terrace, and the central air didn't work. what a nightmare. so i went down and talked to the super and he came right up to fix the central air, and then noticed that my room wasn't clean. so he called up his russian cleaning crew (not even joking. a little russian guy with a bad tan and worse comb-over, wearing a halfway unbuttoned black dress shirt tucked into stonewashed white jeans, complete with bronze chest hair tangled up in his bronze chains, and his crew of 3 skinny, young, pale russian girls and what looked like his wife (or mother)) and said they'd come over to clean.

i planned on showering before i began call that afternoon. well the RCC came early, around 12:30pm, and i was effectively kicked out of my apartment at that time. so i went over to the hospital and figured i'd begin my shift early (on overnight call you get up to 5 admissions (and you almost never NOT get 5)), since that would presumably mean that my early start would equal and early finish.

such was not the case. i ended up not sleeping at all. 1 of my patients died (it was a terminal extubation - the pt's family decided to remove his breathing tube), 3 of my patients were intubated and placed on mechanical ventilation (1 of them was supposed to go home today), and one of them was absolutely fucking nuts.

i stayed until 7pm. i was supposed to be done by 3pm. i had a 28hr call, 36 hrs awake. my resident said it was one of the worst call nights he's ever had. i came home and showered and pretty much passed out.

today was much better. i got in at 6am and was supposed to pick up one admission, but the MAR (medical admitting resident) felt that my board (list of patients) was so heavy that i should be spared an admission if at all possible. which it was. and which i truly appreciate.

then today i came home and discovered that i can steal internet. hooray!

View of the bronx from my terrace

2006-07-01T11:48:00.001-04:00

View of the bronx from my terrace
Originally uploaded by ohio snap.

With anti-pigeon netting

Another view

2006-07-01T11:48:00.000-04:00

Another view
Originally uploaded by ohio snap.

Of my 1st apt in nyc

My first in nyc

2006-07-01T11:45:00.000-04:00

My first in nyc
Originally uploaded by ohio snap.

"living area"

damnit

2006-07-01T09:19:00.000-04:00

when i lose sleep over a period of nights, i tend to not sleep well when i have the opportunity. i've been sleeping about 4-5 hours the past few days, and last night i could have slept in until 9:30 or so this morning. instead i went to bed around midnight and have been up since 6am. couldn't fall back asleep. i was even trying to read a copy of forbes magazine that's laying around here (jesus that was boring) and it didn't put me to sleep. just made me bored.

in about 45 minutes i will be leaving brooklyn for the bronx. not that i really want to do such a thing, but at least my commute will go from 75 minutes to 75 seconds.

thanks to tam/bard for the aerobed and the duffel bag to help carry it. i just realized that my sheets and bedding and pillows are all in u-haul storage still (with my real bed). so i guess i'll be sleeping on a sweatshirt pillow for a week. fuck! i don't even have a blanket.

damnit.

also i highly doubt my apt is internet ready at the moment, so these posts may come to a halt soon. unless i feel so bold as to post from the hospital. which i don't.

in 6 hours i'll be on for 24 hours. ho boy.

today sucked butt

2006-06-30T20:59:00.000-04:00

but i performed a lumbar puncture today. that's a spinal tap to all you laypeople/christopher guest fans.

i heard germany won the best match of the tournament so far.

i waited 45 minutes for the chief resident to finish lecturing the night float interns before i could do my 2 minute-long signout.

i got home too tired to go to tv on the radio.

i'm leaving brooklyn tomorrow at 10am. i will be a bronx resident by lunchtime.

tomorrow i begin overnight call around 3pm. 5 admits. it will hurt.

short call

2006-06-29T21:05:00.000-04:00

today was my short call day.

this means that i come in at 6am, pick up an overnight admission and have it worked up by 7am. then i do work rounds until 8am. then i round with the resident. at 9:15am we round with the attending. this is supposed to last til 11:15am. then you resume work. from 12:15-1pm, there is usually a noon conference with lunch served - this has been cancelled for the first few days so the interns have time to adjust. then you finish your work and sign out to night float by 5pm. then you go live your life.

so what REALLY happened was:

wake up at 3:45am. out the door and on the brooklyn train platform by 4:30am, hoping to get in a bit before 6am so i can have a cushion of extra time to work up my admission. i sweat it out in a shirt and tie in a humid and stagnant station and the train doesn't arrive until 5:05am. i get on and after a few stops realize that this 4 train isn't running express. i don't know if it's because the 4 runs local before 5:30am or something, or if i picked the wrong train, or maybe i was on the 6 (shout out to j.lo!) the entire time and didn't know it. so i actually arrived at 6:15am.

got my admission, get sign out from night float, immediately start getting pages. finally see the new patient at 6:30am. not really paying attention to time very well, and being very inefficient overall, i work on the admission until about 7:45am. then i realize i need to see the other 7 patients before 8am.

that obviously doesn't happen.

look like an ass in front of my resident (and later, my attending), because i haven't had enough time to check up labs and see all my patients - but the 3rd and 4th year student have all their data. i feel like an idiot.

attending rounds just kind of dissolves on the floor about 11am or so for some reason. we all separate and resume work. i have 8 patients on my board.

and then, somehow, i start to get the hang of it a little bit. the nurses are tough but all of them are super nice (and all of them think they're making the "OHHHHHHHH DOCTOR OHHHHHhhHHHHhhhH" joke for the very first time. some of them repeated the joke from yesterday) and they seem to like me, which is a plus. something happens. i start feeling a bit more confident. i spend a bit more time going over my orders and the patient's vitals and labs and my pager screams a bit less. i end up discharging 3 patients, gearing up 1 for discharge tomorrow, and one for a transfer. that would leave me with 3 patients (right now i'm sitting with 5).

so i didn't eat lunch again today, but i got a lot done, and signed out an hour earlier than yesterday (actually since i got in an hour early, i guess that works itself out).

tomorrow is my "pre-call" day (since i'm on overnight on saturday), so i will not be taking admissions! nice! and i'll be sending off 2 of my 5 patients. TECHNICALLY i'm supposed to be done by 3pm on fri pre-call, and it really seems like i might be able to pull it off. definitely NOT eating lunch tomorrow.

tomorrow night tv on the radio is playing in prospect park. i can't wait to pass out in the grass before they start playing and lull me to sleep with their throbbing basslines and peter-gabriel-on-heroin melodies. that's not hate, i totally feel TVOTR, but i've been averaging 4 hours of sleep a night, so i'm just sayin.

saturday morning i will move in to my apartment in the bronx (thus eliminating the million-year commute) and live out of bags and on an aerobed for a week. saturday 3pm i go in and work overnight until sunday 3pm (i get 5 admissions). monday the whole thing starts all over again.

still don't remember a damn thing about medicine. but i'm getting the hang of working the system, which is really what this is all about, anyway. see you in brooklyn.

today was my first day

2006-06-28T22:27:00.000-04:00

the long awaited first day of residency.

i had to be in at 7am. so i woke up in brooklyn at 4:30am and left the apt by 5:20am. it was pouring. my pants were soaked up to mid-thigh (even though i had an umbrella, apparently those don't stop SIDEWAYS RAIN). i got to my station and it was closed. so i doubled back and took a different entrance. then i waited 15 minutes (it seemed like eternity) with wet legs for the 4 train. i rode with the sleepy people until nearly the end of the line, and made it into the medicine conference room about 10 minutes before our scheduled 7am start time. i drank two dixie cup things of black coffee and ate a blueberry minimuffin. i was too anxious to eat too much.

i met the intern who was on his way out. it was his last day, off to another hospital for his ER residency. ("so how was the year?" "are you kidding me? don't fool yourself into thinking it's anything but tough.") he was on call last night, so i got slammed with his 5 brand new admits on top of his established patient list (my co-intern had 4 patients total). they gave us until 8am to walk around, meet the patients, say hi, maybe get the "S" (subjective) part of the SOAP note done (that's the progress note we write daily). needless to say i spent most of that time relearned where everything was and how to log on to the computer based orders system.

by 8am we were to recongregate in the conference room for a 1 hour intern crash course orientation. my pager blew up about 4 times during that orientation. i couldn't listen to how to survive because i was answering pages. incredible. the novelty wore off in like a second. although it was fun hearing nurses refer to me as "doctor".

at 9am we had attending rounds, which is where we meet with the senior-most physician on the service, and discuss our plans with him. since i had no clue what was going on, the former intern did most of the talking. these rounds tend to last a while, but today's rounds last a painful 4 hours. this is the nightmare of internal medicine. ROUNDING ALL FUCKING DAY. (there is no rounding in anesthesia)

so i didn't get much done by 1pm. now, after answering all these pages and calling for consults and just trying to figure things out, i had to go see patients and drop in notes on everyone. but not all the patients are in their rooms (some are off to radiology, some are off to physical therapy, etc), not all consults have been called, not all the blood has been drawn (i drew 2 bloods today and 1 blood culture), not all the labs have been sent, not all the radiology has been read, etc...

by the time i figured out what i was doing (to a point) and how to do it (for now), it was 7:30pm and time to sign out.

by 8pm i was out the door. 9:15pm i was back in brooklyn. 9:30pm i had dinner (my first meal of the day - had no time for lunch). 10:30pm i am writing this thing for your enjoyment.

tomorrow i need to be in at 6am for my short call admission. this means waking up at 3:45am to be on a train by 4:30am. so if i passed out instantly, that would be about 5 hours sleep.

also i feel very stupid like i remember ZERO medicine.

and that was my first day.

2006-06-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

aw i'm depressed because the korean team has to go home.

Korea vs Switzerland

2006-06-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

Korea vs Switzerland
Originally uploaded by ohio snap.

This should be killer.

nyc scorecard

2006-06-23T14:10:00.000-04:00

in the past 4 days..

approximate length of time spent on subway, per day: 3hrs

average number of rides on subway, per day: 4

number of times i ate at an asian restaurant in the city: 2

number of restaurants with the same name (on the same block) in st. mark's place that i went into before figuring out that rodbard was in the third one: 2

number of times i wore sandals on the subway: 1 (i learned my lesson)

number of times gone shopping: 0

number of pictures taken: 0 (the camera done brokeded)

number of questions i got right in pubquiz: at least 2 (the answers were iceland, and joe vs. the volcano)

number of questions i got wrong in pubquiz: at least 1 (mcgregor is gwen stefani's kid's SECOND MIDDLE name, not first name)

number of falafel sandwiches consumed: 2

number of hot dogs consumed: 1

number of japanese beers consumed: 4

number of MSTRKRFT DJ sets attended: 0.5

number of dollars spent to see aforementioned set at a surprisingly swank and pleasantly climate-controlled venue: 7

number of free MSTRKRFT t-shirts acquired (courtesy of Puma): 1

number of times i've hung out with Rory: 1

number of World Cup Team Korea matches viewed: 1 (soon to be 2)

number of World Cup matches viewed, total: at least 4

number of World Cup matches viewed in the waiting room of a hospital in the bronx since that was the only place we could find a television: 0.5

number of times i've used the Treo to get live score updates on the World Cup: countless

number of people i've spoken to that were surprised by the US loss to Ghana: 0

number of nights i received less than 5 hours of sleep: 3

number of buck ass naked men seen on the E train at 2am: 1

average temperature in NYC: one million degrees

I am posting to my

2006-06-21T18:27:00.000-04:00

I am posting to my blog via text msg! Hooray! This is much better than stressing out about what i'm going to do about moving in... I'm hungry.

the goddamn stars are aligned against me.

2006-06-21T18:03:00.000-04:00

so i've suffered through 3 long days of orientation. so long and painful and pretty boring. i want to yell at some of these incoming interns, "JUST BECAUSE YOU ASK A MILLION QUESTIONS DOESNT MEAN ITS GOING TO GET EASIER".

so where do i begin? remember my moving fiasco? so far my move-in date is set for july 1. so i got everything sorted, and now it seems i can re-rent and re-load a u-haul truck on july 1 and move in.

EXCEPT that we got our schedules today and i'm on call (overnight) on july 1. that is a saturday. so i lose my sat and my sun. now the interesting thing is, before the weekend overnight call, i get to leave early on friday (early being 3pm), and i don't start on saturday until 3pm. so that gives me a very odd pocket of time in which i may be able to move... except the friday is still one day before my official move-in date.

ALSO, i met one of my fellow interns (who hails from california) who is living in the exact same building i will be living in, who was able to move in THE FIRST DAY OF ORIENTATION! and she knows of another intern who was able to move in THE WEEK BEFORE! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK! i called that fucking housing office so many times to ask if i could move in early to no avail.

so i called them again today to ask if there was any chance, they said the apartment i've been assigned is scheduled to move out on june 30. i asked if there was any chance they'd move out early and basically got yelled at for suggesting that they kick out their tenants early (totally NOT what i suggested), and so i asked if they might move out a day or two early, the lady said MAYBE, and that they'd call me if they did - i won't hold my breath for that one.

SOOOooo my best case scenario seems to be if they let me move in ONE DAY EARLY, and then i can leave work on fri early at 3pm, go straight to u-haul, and with the assistance of hired help (which will cost me about $200-300 more than i have planned) move in quickly that evening. worst case scenario is trying to do the same on saturday morning, before i go in for an overnight shift, on the same day that EVERYBODY will be moving into housing (not to mention the fact that i'd be commuting from brooklyn at like 5am to get there.. how the hell i'd stay up all night is beyond me). medium case scenario is do all of this mess on sunday after i get off the overnight shift.

BASICALLY THIS IS GIVING ME A FUCKING HEADACHE AND I AM TIRED OF THINKING ABOUT IT AND AM JUST A LITTLE BIT IRRITATED THAT I HAVE NOT ONLY NOT RECEIVED ANY HELP FROM MY PROGRAM, BUT THEY ARE MAKING IT EVEN HARDER FOR ME TO GET THIS SORTED.

but let's see, more news.

i got my pager.

i got my id.

i got my rotation schedule.. i have vacation the first half of october and the last half of march. i will be working the medical floors during thanksgiving, christmas, new year's, and easter. i suppose it's possible i'll get a day off here or there, but right now, it looks like i won't be going back to wisconsin for any holidays anytime soon.

also we learned that during our elective month (normally a "free nights and weekends" month at most institutions), they are adding on 2 ER shifts on the weekends and a clinic shift or something and something where we come in on the weekend which basically means you don't get all your weekends off that month either.

also we learned that the "free food" we were promised is actually not as such. we get $15 a day for food. but not in an expense account. in meal tickets. $3.50 for breakfast, $5.75 each for lunch and dinner. and they are labeled, "breakfast" "lunch" and "dinner". and you can only use each ticket during those meal hours. NOT EVEN JOKING. and you can not combine tickets. and the cafeteria closes at 7pm and there is NOTHING in the hospital overnight. also none of the coffee stands open before 7am either (they recommend arriving before 7am on a regular day). so much for free food.

yes, it's intern year, yes it's supposed to be terrible, but fuck man, i didn't think i would be this disillusioned already. i'm already telling myself "it's just one year" and then i get to move into the city.. isn't it too early to be thinking those thoughts?

more tests

2006-06-21T09:34:00.000-04:00

just trying to see if I can post from my phone...

Somewhere in Indiana...

2006-06-17T14:38:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in Indiana...
Originally uploaded by ohio snap.

They light up when they bounce!

This is a test post

2006-06-16T17:53:00.000-04:00

This is a test post
Originally uploaded by ohio snap.

Just testing out the photoblogging capabilities of this new phone. Nice.

refrections

2006-06-16T17:29:00.000-04:00

ok, tomorrow we are waking up super duper early and going to try to hit the road as early as possible, meaning 7am in all reality.

that means i have less than 24 hours left in wisconsin. less than 24 hours left in the midwest. less than 24 hours left in CST. i have lived in wisconsin for the past 22 (nearly 23) years. i have lived in madison for the past 9 years. it has been quite the experience.

the car done got sold. the marshall head and amp done got sold (and cot damn it cost a pretty penny to ship that cab, boy i tell ya).

i am very excited to make NYC my new home. i am excited to live in brooklyn for the first 2 weeks even though that means my commute to my hospital will be painful. i am excited to not have to have a car and not stress about the price of gas (cue music). i am TOTES X-CITES for the KOREA v FRANCE match on sunday. i am excited and nervous and terrified to begin residency. i am curious as to if my name will be embroidered on my white coat. i am still getting used to the fact that one of my magazine subscriptions has now begun arriving addressed to me with a prefix of DR and a suffix of MD (ok its a medical journal but still).

i have a whole lot of shit in a uhaul truck, and that's after getting rid of just about all my furniture. i kept my bed and frame, one chair, a piece of shit folding table (because it folded into a small size), and i think that's it. everything else is clothes and music and guitars and one tv and a couple or four speakers and one receiver and computer stuff and books and stuff and "other stuff." also i have a box of ramen.

looking around my parent's place, it's weird to think that everything i own right now is either in the uhaul truck, or in two duffel bags in my bedroom.

and i've upgraded my phone to a treo. so now i can check email and read the WWB while on the road. not sure if i can do blog posts from it, but if i can, be prepared for some residency life hilarity, sure to be coming in the next couple of 4 years.

goodbye wisconsin, it was a good run.

KOREA WINS vs TOGO, 2-1

2006-06-13T12:15:00.000-04:00

Air Force 1, World Cup Team Korea edition

yeah, i'm thinkin about it.

here's the play by play, by the minute, of the match.

2006-06-12T09:20:00.000-04:00

lots of stuff to do. lots of packing up to do. moving on saturday. goodbye wisconsin.

japan just floated in a pretty questionable goal on australia. this is going to be quite the controversial goal for this opening round, i can tell. USA plays their first match today. korea plays tomorrow. matty, we're going to be watching lots of world cup.

liz, i saw the men's french open championship - totally thought federer was going to pull that one out and take it into a new set. totally thought wrong.

gonna cop out with another bullet point list:

the music blogging thing looks like it's already collapsed. i'm just too busy right now. dang.

just got back from mexico - it was nice and warm, i'm nice and brown. no montezuma's revenge - nice and solid and well-formed, OH YEAH!

i just sold half of my marshall half-stack. the amp head just got sold in hours on ebay (someone decided to BUY IT NOW), the cab has been languishing on there for the past day.

thinking about using the proceeds to buy myself a new phone. or maybe a new PDA for intern year. or maybe a new camera to replace my dead one. or maybe a new ipod. or maybe the deposit on my housing.

the car will be sold on wednesday. i have a buyer for it and he's got a cashier's check and we're all set. the plan is to drive up to madison and sell it, then rent the uhaul truck, fill it with whatever's left in madison (most importantly, my bed), clean the apartment. then drive that back to beloit, fill it, then drive that bitch to the bronx.

just found out that my elective month is in august. damnit! so early! i think this means i'll have weekends off so i will prob have my birthday off though. still don't know what my elective is, though. originally i requested anesthesiology, but that's too early in the year for them. so now i'm asking for radiology.

you know, elective in august isn't so bad. i can go to a lot of shows on the weekends. i think.

um... so that's about it right now. i should really start boxing some of this shit up.

i don't play soccer

2006-05-31T10:41:00.000-04:00

the 'oxygen tank': park ji-sung

the 'football genius': park chu-young

not as in, "i don't play soccer", like "i don't eat onions" or "i don't go above 14th street" or some other snotty negative remark. i mean it like "i do not competitively play soccer and my skills were embarassing when i last played at age 12 and have since inevitably deteriorated so i entertain myself by running for miles and miles alone when nobody can ~~catch~~ watch me."

but the world cup is the world cup! it's like the olympics. nobody luges, but everyone watches the luge. or something.

whatever. it's all about team korea this year (like it wasn't all about them 4 years ago, too, sheeeit). they were drawn into Group G, along with the french, swiss, and the togo-ans. ESPN magazine (i read it at barnes & noble yesterday) favors the french and swiss as #1 and #2 out of that group. haters. you know where my allegiance lies. henry and zidane aside, i think the reds have a fighting chance.

i just subscribed to mobile updates on my cell phone, supposedly they'll be letting me know score updates as each goal happens. you can do this for any team.

who are you cheering for? i mean, besides team USA. support our troops, bring em home.

rocking the boat

2006-05-30T13:58:00.000-04:00

posting thins out a lot when you don't have internet at your place. getting to a coffee shop with free wi-fi just to check your email is a new experience for me.

where did we leave off?

ok, so after reading my lengthy complaint below, matty was kind enough to offer me his roommate's bedroom for the 2 wk period before i'm able to move in to my own housing. since a hotel would simply be too expensive, this seems to be the next best (aka ONLY) option. his roommate spends most of her time at her boyfriend's place, so it would be an easy arrangement, plus i get to live with matty in brooklyn. the downside would be that it's in brooklyn, and that means we're looking at an hour-long commute, one-way, on a good day. the upside will be i'll be in brooklyn, rather than the bronx.

anyway it seems that the right thing to do would be to offer to pay some rent for the 2 wks there (essentially a very short sublet). so i emailed my program to see if maybe they'd pay for a sublet versus the $99/day in a hotel thing.

that was last week. quite a few things have happened in the interim, things which i should probably not post about on a public blog, since i'd rather not have them somehow track me down, etc, make my life a living hell, you know. i might be persuaded to complain over email, however.

the ending of the story is that i received a call today from the office, and it seems that i'll be able to arrange/pay for a sublet instead of a hotel. so this is good news for matty and me. or me n' matty. wacky shack forever 2006.

slow times in wisconsin

2006-05-23T19:54:00.000-04:00

expect the blog posts to be a bit skimpy for the next few weeks.

back in madison for a spell, blogging (brogging) from electric earth. since i've cancelled cable and internet in my apartment, i've had to hit up internet cafes for free wifi (fuck a t-mobile hotspot, did you know them shits cost like $6 for 2 hours or something? totes bogues). i'm halfway through a two-day ACLS course which is boring and expensive and mandatory for residency. better to do it now than to do it in late june when i could be having the weekend off to prance around and get mugged in the bronx, that's what i always say.

speaking of the bronx, i received my packet in the mail the other day which tells me about my housing (that was horrible grammar - liz, please fix). looks like i will not be getting lucky and in fact will not be able to move in until july 1, possibly a day or two earlier if i'm lucky. SO. i will need to find a hotel to live in for 2 weeks, since orientation is june 19 and i will be moving out there on the 17th or 18th.

the upside is that my program will reimburse me $99/day for the hotel. the downside is that after cursory examination on orbitz and hotels.com, the only hotels in NYC that are <$99/day are SHIT-TAY. almost all rooms at that price point involve shared bathrooms. some involve shared rooms. as in, bunk beds (the gershwin has a 4 bunk bed/8person dorm room! wtf!).

my residency will begin while i'm in this hotel (whichever one that may be), so i'd prefer to not share a bathroom or a bedroom, since i'll need to dress up and be professional, iron my clothes, shower daily, all KINDS of hassle in a dorm room. also there is pretty much nothing near my hospital in the bronx (except for one hojo which i found, which is NOT near the hospital NOR a subway line, and that means its NOT doable). almost everything listed on the aforementioned sites are at midtown or lower. there's a few at UWS or harlem, but again, those are hostels/dorms with shared yada yada yada.

so that's the downside. in all likelihood it looks like i'll be coughing up another $20-75/day for my own sanity, on top of the $99/day i'm getting from my program. multiply that by 2 weeks and i'm looking at what could be another grand or so.

also the fact that i need to move twice is a downside. and that everybody will be moving on july 1 will be a fucking nightmare.

so i'm trying to sell the car ASAP to help cushion the blows from moving and hotelling. i've craigslisted it, and i sent out an email to the med student listserve. i received 3 genuinely interested responses, 1 joke from alex, and 1 warning from the dean of students telling me that using the listserve for auto sales is inappropriate and illegal (as in, i could do time? really??).

the moral of the story is that i won't be posting much music for a bit. but who knows, maybe you'll get lucky.

fast times in chicago, part 2

2006-05-22T10:45:00.000-04:00

the farewell photo set from my camera

fast times in chicago, part 1

2006-05-22T00:17:00.000-04:00

rob and i spent the past 5 days in chicago; it was a whirlwind. pictures will follow.

big thanks to mr. stv slv for putting us up for 5 days/4 nights of hot action. not like that.

to describe it in any amount of detail would require more effort than i'm willing to put forth at this moment. so let's sum it up with some bullet points:

"Lost" (the hit TV sensation on ABC) is like a drug

the islands put on a great live show, you should check it out

busdriver's dj was not as impressive

harold's fried chicken is delicious. try the hot sauce. the coleslaw is forgettable however, it's like a dixie cup of mayo garnished with shredded cabbage

tamales from the traveling tamales guy are awesome. especially with a high life

dropping your digital camera on the lens while the lens is extended will not prolong its life, and actually, will end its life right then and there. think about that one.

just because graham smith is late doesn't mean graham smith won't perform

karaoke gets better the later it gets. and we all sing better the more we drink

there is a smooth-music revolution going on in chicago that i never even knew about. i've never listened to so much TOTO before in my life

the chris ware exhibit at the museum of contemporary art, while brilliant and fantastic, is also a bit overwhelming. the man can write so small

grilled chicken with boursin cheese on a pretzel roll is DEEELICIOUS

one cat is funny, two cats are hilarious. one of those cats being fat is even hilariousier

H&M has quality clothing at competitive prices

smoke-free bars are the bee's knees. coming home from a bar with stinky clothes is the bee's ASSHOLE

visual reference

2006-05-15T18:21:00.000-04:00

the true story of when i became a doctor

you can now officially and legally call me doctor.

2006-05-14T12:56:00.000-04:00

graduation weekend at flickr

graduation was a flurry of cameras and neverending drizzle. i was tired, i ate too much at dinner, then i stayed out very late with friends at a bar that i never ever go to except for medical functions (i.e., the only other time that i can remember ever being there was on match day).

the next day we hit up a couple of graduation parties and then went to rob's parent's place in wauwatosa for his birthday+graduation party. the food was excellent (the roast beef in particular, oh and also that amazing chocolate cake) and there were several shots taken, and there was an entire band setup in the basement. i may or may not have been jamming out on the drumkit for the better part of an hour or so. we pulled a decent crowd, we got about half of the people from upstairs to come down, playing things which were only simple variations on 4/4 time (since i was on drums, of course).

returning to madison today, i sold off the last of my textbooks for one lump sum, which was convenient. now instead of 27 books laying around i have one hot check burning a hole in my pocket.

off to chicago this wednesday!

Lil' Wayne - Cash Money (from The W. Carter Collection Mixtape)

Juvenile ft. Mike Jones, Paul Wall, Skip & Wacko - Way I Be Leanin' (from Reality Check)

being all done with medical school

2006-05-11T00:10:00.000-04:00

hasn't really sunken in yet. but i can stay up late and sleep in if i want to.

i think i'm going to eat some chips.

tomorrow is the last day i wear a short white coat.

2006-05-09T20:23:00.000-04:00

ever.
tomorrow is my last day of medical school.

it's not even really a day at "school" (it hasn't been since third year began 2 years ago), but just another day at the clinic. it will be so ho-hum i can't stand it. and then on thursday i'll go up to madison to pick up my cap and gown (and andy's cap and gown). and then on friday i'll walk across the stage at the union theater which will be filled mostly with my classmates and people i've never seen before.. then later i will walk across the stage at the kohl center which will feature even more strangers and even fewer people who have any idea who i am (BUT YOU CAN CALL ME DOCTOR NOW, BITCHES!!!!!).

so it's been a long painful road through medical school and i can honestly say HOT DAMN i'm glad this is over. what is this, phase 2 or whatever? (if you call undergrad phase 1 and residency phase 3). 4 more years of training, which just HAVE to be better than medical school was. don't get me wrong, i had fun, i made good friends, but i could have done without the constant barrage of exams and tests and competition and stress and worry over applications for this and that and painfully high board exam fees and the entire step 2 CS experience and, most of all, overzealous and righteous preclinical students with ridiculous nicknames that they gave themselves who email the listserve and complain that people are selling used textbooks at prices well below 50% of the retail cost over email and then flood the inboxes with 4-times daily updates of their fucking pro-life group*. not going to miss that. not that i'm bitter or anything.

*there's no one person who's done this, it's just a composite of everything i'd like to complain about right now. that's all. and if you think this is about you, well YOU"RE SO VAIN (sing it carly)

no seriously, i'm going to be done with medical school in less than 24 hours and i couldn't be happier. i received a certificate from the alumni association today, and it had my name printed on it, followed by an M.D. (NICE!) -- also, the letter was addressed to DOCTOR!

wow.

The Sounds (Official) // The Sounds (myspace)

these former paris texas labelmates were dismissed early on as none-hit wonders, disregarded as blondie biters and another notch on the swedish import bedpost, following such luminaries as ABBA and ace of base.

i remember listening to their first album, but i don't remember the album itself. i merely remember the act of listening to it. i don't even know where we are in the discography at this point. is this #2 or #3? who cares. this album is a lot of fun. the first tip-off is that the album art features one of the mis-shapes, chillin with a random shaggy haired chica all nippin' out and shit. IS THAT FUN OR WHAT? where does this cover art even come from? did their art director just raid last night's party or something? anyway. kind of hilarious, in an IRONIC SORT OF WAY, REALLY.

look, i like the album cover. no hate intended. i'm just saying that you shouldn't be surprised if the cover of the next 446 album features emcee high life and brian stanger in a similar position

anyhow, this album is a big pile of new-wave synthesizer, over the top pop melody and huge, huge, HUMONGOLOID choruses which grab you by the throat and put bulletholes in your brain like a prion (look it up). i totally mean all that in a good way. its a very fun, catchy disc. i'm not expecting much from it. i don't even know what they're saying (they're singing in english). maja ivarsson sounds like bjork singing a straight melody, and that is A.O.K. with me, i think it lends itself very well to the sounds' sound. actually, there's one song where they sing about "fucking with your feelings," that part i remember (he's saying they're trying NOT to fuck with them).

the album is produced by the dude that produced the killers album (who are supposedly working on one of the greatest albums of the century or something equally preposterous), so i expect this band to be featured at the bait shop any day now. unless that already happened and i missed that episode.

i bet these guys and girl are totally retarded awesome live. but i wouldn't know. they're touring sweden at the end of this month. that's too far away for me.

The Sounds - Tony the Beat
reminds me of the romantics' "talkin in your sleep." which is a good song. so is this one.

The Sounds - Hurt You
dude. so good.

The Sounds - Painted By Numbers

also i just wanted to say that thanks to bit torrent, i'm all caught up on the O.C., and i must agree with tamz when i say that it has really gotten a lot better in the past few episodes. BIG KOREA, WHAAAAT!!! OPPAAA!!! SA RANG HAE!!! (omg morts)

the hood internet

2006-05-07T18:16:00.000-04:00

operation rehab the right knee continues. i've been running with this strappy thing on my leg and so far i've had no problems. my knee has felt fine so far (haven't gone farther than 7 miles yet) and my hip seems okay as well (nothing that a little ibuprofen with the morning coffee can't fix).

i've been running on the treadmill in my parents' basement, because that way i can closely monitor how fast i'm going and if my leg gives out, i won't be stranded and have to limp several miles home. the big downside is that treadmill running is kinda boring. i'd rather be outside. but it's also more of a cushioned run than the asphalt, so that also needs to be taken into consideration. the upside is that i can watch tv while i run.

it's been a long time since i've watched music videos on mtv. and i mean one after the other, without programming about dudes dating mothers or 15 yr old prima donnas throwing parties or reality tv leftovers wrestling each other in dirty for the entirety of their annual income.

sundays are sucka-free on mtv2, and i was able to catch the end of the countdown somewhere on mile 2. in reverse order, the top of the pops were:

#3: three 6 mafia ft. project pat & crunchy black "poppin' my collar"

easily the best video of the three. white plastic-frame sunglasses (as seen on crunchy black) are the shit. i know i gotta get me some of those for the summer. the blu-blockers are too ubiquitous now, it's time for a change. three 6's video is total classic action, down to the titled intros for each rapper, and little kids playing the roles of project pat, juicy j, dj paul, and crunchy black in the escalade. reminds me of biggie's video for "sky's the limit" (prob one of the best hip hop videos ever) - this is no spike jonze affair, mind you - but still a fun video. bus' a head, win an oscar.

on a related note, check the video for "stay fly", esp the opening shot, with juicy j's verse, which appears to be all done in one camera shot. this video would have been incredible if it stuck with that idea. i'm just saying.

#2: chamillionaire "ridin'"

for a song about racial profiling by the police (note how cham and his girl turn out to be a white couple, who get waved off), the video is quite the light-hearted affair. with a cameo by tiny "zeus" lister as a hulking cop/pro wrestler, i can't help but feel like i'm watching "next next next friday" starring cham, sounding like a cleared-throat hyperarticulate juvenile and looking like a starving 50 cent (starving, probably, because recent g-uniters mobb deep's "blood money" has leaked on napster). krayzie bone kills his verse as far as i'm concerned. also keep your eyes peeled for a couple other bone thugs. this is like where's waldo, only with micro-machine-man-fast late 90s rappers.

#1: t.i. "what you know"

one of the hottest songs to hit the airwaves in a long time, if you ask me. this shit is hot and on fire. the synths destroy on this track. (by the way, this whole album is killer) unfortunately, the video, even though it's directed by chris robinson (he of boost mobile ads and "ATL" fame), is a bit slow and not much really happens. although peep the scantily clad womenses pumping iron in the front yard. also check the spinners on the roller skates. towards the end TI and his crew roll up to his own movie premier (did anyone see "ATL"? i kinda want to still). fun fact: the loaded knapsack in question (the one where he holdin all the work at) is actually a louis vuitton messenger bag. actually it IS a knapsack in the very beginning. speaking of the beginning, mike epps talks about getting a midget pregnant ("got a midget pregnant last night, need some counselin' on it").

well i guess this video has it all. no wonder it's number one.

after the countdown killa cam got on that screen to host the monster mix, which is a show where they mix videos into one another. they started by blending chamillionaire's "ridin" into three 6 mafia's "poppin my collar". not even joking. the next video after the break was "what you know". such variety.

via mr. chrysler (he of the WWB and Tha 446), the entirety (2 hours and 8 minutes!), on google video, of the dipset movie "killa season".

and finally, i would like to direct your attention to lemon-red, whose monthly mix series always does a head good, and this month's contribution from bonde de role's DJ Gorky (find that shit here) is no exception. and check out bonde de role while you're at it. if you're a fan of MIA, you'll love this crazy, off the wall shit.

posted up like a blog entry

2006-05-05T16:09:00.000-04:00

ohiosnap guest correspondent DJ STV SLV aka MAC G6 aka STV HOLT (STV HOLT!) reports:

note: STV SLV is NOT pictured above

DEVIN DAVIS: official site // myspace page

Natron and I were DJing at Club Foot last week and he asked me if I had heard the Devin Davis album yet. I hadn't, and he had already recommended it to me once, so I felt like a damn fool. He played "Iron Woman" and granted, I was drunk, but I was instantly feeling it. Nate described it as "Kleenex Girl Wonder, but better produced" (sorry, Graham) and I do see what he's saying, some of the songwriting is very similar. It's straight up pop-slash-rock, well-composed and cleverly arranged.

Devin Davis - Iron Woman

Devin Davis - Giant Spiders

Dude is from Chicago and also reminds me a bit of Chicago band Head Of Femur; interestingly enough, Nate from HOF plays bari sax on the album. Feel the sax solo that closes out "Iron Woman." THE SAX IS BACK

poor planning

2006-05-04T08:28:00.000-04:00

orientation begins on june 19

the housing office will let us know when we can move-in in mid-may

most people don't get to move in before july 1

i called the housing office to ask what i should do, being that i'm from wisconsin and it makes it kind of a long commute to the bronx for those first two weeks.

"stay with friends," (with all my stuff??) she said. "or, you might get lucky"
"all the other interns are in your situation." (that makes it SO MUCH BETTER)

FUUCK

update!

the saga continues: my program will pay up to $99 a day for a hotel room for us to stay in if we can't get a place before orientation. that's nice, but i still don't want to park a loaded u-haul in a hotel parking lot (even in jersey) for almost two weeks. that sounds like an invitation to i-dont-want-to-see-any-of-my-stuff-ever-again. not to mention the continuing costs of renting a u-haul that long.

update! update!

i just noticed that certain u-haul centers give you one month free storage with a one-way truck rental. this looks like my likely option (read: "solution"). this also means that i will be loading and unloading a truck twice as many times as i previously thought. gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh

iliotibial band syndrome is forever

2006-05-03T19:51:00.000-04:00

i might have iliotibial band syndrome. this is not a fun party trick. but if i run with special straps above my right knee, it should help. i done hurt myself purty good last week. so i'm going to take it easy, do shorter runs at a faster pace, in order to limit the mileage but keep up the ?fitness? (is this even going to work? we'll see) today i ran 3 miles and it felt okay. we'll stick with this for now.

we inherited a new 3rd year medical student at the clinic. he gets to share the work burden. this means my day is easier, which means more boring, which means more time to surf the internet on my preceptor's dell laptop from the 90s. today i spent a good chunk of time looking up NYC running clubs (word to the brothers and sisters in the korean road runners club) and trying to decide if my next phone is going to be this nerd-tacular beast (it's tempting, it really is), or something more... sensible (aka smaller). i stay busy during the day, clearly.

that is not me in the bottom left or wearing the cowboy hat. big ups to asians in cowboy hats though. rocking the bowtie too, natch. looking like an oriental colonel sanders an' shit.

Islands (Official Site) // Islands (myspace)

of course the unicorns were a lot of fun. they combined goofy, tongue-in-cheek lyrics with lazy bedroom production, and sing-song melodies that sounded as if they were sung by creaky voiced 14 year olds pushing the pubertal envelope. i thought they had one of the catchiest and entertaining albums of 2003 with "who will cut our hair when we're gone?" (which is a rather existential title if you stop and think about it, i haven't). they caught some hate for their "2014" ep, which, to be honest, wasn't as great as WWCOHWWG (nobody calls it that) but i found enjoyable nonetheless.

the unicorns imploded in 2004, and lucky for the rest of us, the islands are here. the two holdovers from the 'corns are frontman nick diamonds and drummer j'aime tambeur, and the rest of the cast and crew consist of various members of other hot indie rockers from canadia (arcade fire, wolf parade, wooden stars - although i wouldn't be surprised if broken social scene were somehow connected to this).

the islands preserve the unicorns' brand of psychedelic, experimental basement rock and gentle, urgent melody - which gives them an A+ in my book. the main difference here is that the sound is tidied up much more, with cleaner, sharper production, and more developed (as in, post-pubescent.. just kidding. not really) songwriting. they (the islands) have described this album as having "some dancehall influences, some calypso... It's more diverse and sprawling and ambitious.. A bit more mature than The Unicorns... More of a Neil Young / Brian Wilson vibe running through it."

the track "swans (life after death)" sounds like classic 'corns - dirty guitars and keyboards occupying the upper registers, under earnest lyrics and simple harmonies - but it sprawls (in a good way) over nine minutes (this is the opening track, mind you) into an epic of canadian proportions. "don't call me whitney, bobby" is a bouncy little ditty about skeletons (maybe). on "rough gem," the keyboards dance around a melody that almost sounds like an interpolation of may or may not's "when you were mine," (famously covered by prince in 1980 on his album "dirty mind") but then a second later it doesn't and then there's a plucked violin. "where there's a will there's a whalebone" is another matter entirely, very reminisicent of the unicorns' "tuff ghost" (famously sampled by Tha 446 for the syrup sippin' club banger, "prince of the rodeo"), with the centerpiece being a couple rap verses spit by busdriver and subtitle (most likely influenced by the islands' involvement with th' corn gangg) that has debatable merit. "volcanoes" is my favorite track on the album, with its creepy answering machine intro, swelling slide guitars and bluegrass rhythms giving way to singing violins and those soon-to-be-classic diamonds melodies, and ending with another over-the-top rock and roll flourish.

Islands - Swans (Life After Death)

Islands - Rough Gem

Islands - Volcanoes

04 May - San Diego CA @ Epi Center
05 May - Los Angeles CA @ El Rey
06 May - San Francisco CA @ Slims
08 May - Portland OR @ Loveland
09 May - Vancouver BC @ Mesa Luna
10 May - Seattle WA @ Neumo's
12 May - Salt Like City UT @ Kaya Gallery
13 May - Denver CO @ Larimer Lounge
14 May - Lawrence KS @ Bottleneck
15 May - Omaha NE @ Sokol Underground
16 May - Minneapolis MN @ First Ave
17 May - Chicago IL @ Metro (psst... stv... guest list...)
18 May - Cleveland OH @ Grog Shop
19 May - Toronto ONT @ Opera House
20 May - Montreal PQ @ Le National
22 May - Ottawa ONT @ Babylon
23 May - Waterloo ONT
25 May - Quebec QC @ L'Anti

i will if you will

2006-05-01T21:19:00.000-04:00

graduation is next friday. 11 days away. there's a weekend in there, so that means 9 real days left. and the 9th day is graduation. so 8 days of clinic left. this is how i pass my time during the day.

and here's my american moment:

stephen colbert tears the president a new one, part 1 and part 2 and part 3

(since when did this become a youtube blog?)

woka-chika-woka-chika-woka-chika-woka-chika-woka-chika

they are chipmunks on speed, kids-on-coke bop (spz rmxe), all key-tars and analog knob twiddlings and lap-top comp-u-rock-onica. at first it was a bit difficult to tell if DAT Politics had a girl in their group or if they just sped up their vocals to improbably high-pitched registers. the answer? yes and yes!

Wow Twist is the french electronic freak-out trio's sixth album in seven years. admittedly, i know very little about this group, but i can say that the album's got lots of clicks and pops and square-wave synthesizer and drum machines and yelping and buzzing and fuzzing and such, all while maintaining a tenuous grasp of melody and a healthy dose of repetition, wrapped in megaphone vocals. i think i can feel my teeth grinding. if you think you'd like to spaz out in your bedroom to the spawn of cibo matto, atari teenage riot and the vengaboys, then this might be your ritalin-spiked cup of tea. this is the casiotone for the mentally blown.

check their myspace page for more songs, tour dates, and photos of them in costumes which are not nearly dissimilar enough to discourage any comparisons to hooded klan members. disturbing?

DAT Politics - Viper Eyes

DAT Politics - Turn My Brain Off

DAT Politics - What's Dat

all tracks off of "Wow Twist." the whole album is a lot of weird fun, so necessary.

*disclaimer - all drug use mentioned in the previous paragraphs were for embellishment purposes only and assuredly do not reflect the habits of either myself nor of DAT Politics. i certainly don't know what the hell i'm talking about. if i want to trip balls, i listen to the katamari damacy soundtrack on repeat.

tipping the scales

2006-05-01T01:11:00.000-04:00

why am i blogging about music and posting songs all of a sudden? and since when did this become an mp3 blog? (since a week ago, apparently) this is more fun. it's an experiment of sorts, to see how long i can keep up output of this nature (i don't really expect this to last very long once intern year begins) and if i can keep it interesting enough that other people will continue to read it. (also, the last post was an experiment on typing with proper punctuation and capitalization and it was tiresome.)

as it is, my life has enough routine that i get bored easily, and honestly, being bored doesn't make for interesting writing (from myself, anyway). when everything becomes routine and uninteresting, then i go 2 weeks without posting and someone will post a comment that i've been neglecting this blog and then i'll post some rubbish about the movies i saw on tv or something.

I"M TRYING TO FIND A BALANCE (trying to find a balance)

so here's the low end of the see-saw: i saw A&E's made for tv movie Flight 93 this weekend. not on purpose, it was just on after SNL - they ran a special for "saturday TV funhouse" (i lead a busy life) - and once i realized what i was watching, it was hard to turn away. i almost felt like it was my patriotic duty to watch. and it was disturbing. oh lord was it disturbing. i can't say right now if it felt cathartic or whatever. it was just weird. and i can't imagine paying money to go sit in a theater and watch United 93. it's hard to decipher if all the positive talk surrounding the movie is because nobody's got the balls to say "this is a shit movie" or because it really is that good. or is it obvious that i'm drowning in hype because i'm even having these thoughts?

and now the balance:

i don't know a whole lot about metronomy. what i do know is that it's one dude named joseph mount who lives in brighton, and last year he released the curiously titled album, "Pip Paine (Pay Back The £5000 You Owe)." he also dabbles in the odd remix, such as the franz ferdinand one i posted a couple days ago.

i like his remixes a lot. the remix of pal of godin and dunckel and overall french weirdo sebastien tellier's "la ritournelle" transforms the original from a very AIR-like, mellow orchestral number into a nice thick slab of falsetto-laced casio-rock which would make any hot chipper proud.

as far as his full-length album, i think it's a bit of a different affair. for one guy, he can definitely change up the style from song-to-song (and sometimes within a song). "you could easily have me," the lead off track, is wiggly synths and garage rock in a haunted house. "danger song" has a microhouse start, and swells into an 8-bit arcade get-to-the-next-level finish. "this could be beautiful (it is)" is sweet, glitchy lap-pop a la múm. "black eye/burnt thumb" is another interesting merging of lo-fi guitars and vibrating synthesizers over a backdrop of choppy machine beats. and so on and so forth. i'm not going to write about every track.

also also also i hear he plays live with a backing band. dude.

the official site, under construction.

Sebastien Tellier - La Ritournelle (Metronomy Mix)

Metronomy - You Could Easily Have Me

Metronomy - Danger Song

never underestimate the power of the peacoat

2006-04-27T15:40:00.000-04:00

Phoenix's shiny and clean production style has always been instantly likeable. Something about how they get their guitars to blend just-so with the synths in the mix really just does it for me. Their music sounds like the music which would be made by very nice boys who would win your mother's approval. It doesn't hurt that these dudes know how to write a catchy hook, either. "Alphabetical" was one of my favorite albums of 2004. And did you hear last year's live album? Makes me that much more sore that I've never seen them live. And it appears that I won't be seeing them live on this tour, either (still another 6 weeks or so until I move to NYC). Here's to 2007!

Phoenix are wrapping up the US leg of their tour in a couple weeks.

30 Apr Coachella Festival
02 May San Francisco CA @ Bimbo's
06 May Washington DC @ 9:30 Club
07 May Philadelphia PA @ Northstar
08 May Cambridge MA @ T.T. The Bear's
10 May New York NY @ Bowery Ballroom (SOLD OUT)

By now, if you've been keeping up, you've probably heard the track "Long Distance Call" off of their upcoming album "It's Never Been Like That" (release date May 23). Here are a couple more tracks from that album... if you go to their myspace site, you'll find some of these songs available to listen. They seem to be rotating the songs on there at a pretty good interval.

Phoenix - Consolation Prizes

Phoenix - Rally

Phoenix - If I Ever Feel Better (Live) (from "Live! 30 Days Ago")

taken from the official website:

"IT'S NEVER BEEN LIKE THAT" Phoenix third album, is being released...
in Europe, Mexico, Australia, South East Asia > May 15th
in Japan > May 10th
in US > May 23rd (on Astralwerks)
in Canada > June 13th

Digital album out May 15th on all legal platforms!
(> deluxe version inc. 2 exclusive live tracks available on the iTunes stores across Europe + an awesome surprise package will be soon available on iTunes France)

"LONG DISTANCE CALL" is being released in Europe on May 8th!
It will be available as a digital download on all US platforms on April 25th.

Half-days are good for the mental health. Posting music is way better than writing about how bored I get in the clinic. Posts about my life will resume once something interesting happens. Have a nice weekend.

happy early weekend

2006-04-27T00:26:00.000-04:00

i'm taking a half day tomorrow. weekend music comes early.

Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To (Metronomy Remix)

Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out (Hot Chip Remix)

Scissor Sisters - Take Your Mama Out (Hot Chip Remix)

Le Tigre - TKO (Hot Chip TK Max Mix)

p.s. people, if you're not listening to the coup, then you're not paying attention.

posting songs is more fun than posting mundane details about my boring life

2006-04-24T21:53:00.000-04:00

from the same team that brought us "blue eyes meets bed stuy" comes this hot platter, PURPLE REIGN. this time they mix dipset with prince. honestly i could just stop right there. and so i will.

first, listen:

The Bangers - The Whistle Song vs. Kiss & A Love Bizarre

The Bangers - Horse & Carriage vs. Sexy M.F.

(both songs available for download from their myspace page.)

the song i'm particularly antsy to hear is the one that mixes "What Means the World To You" with "When Doves Cry" - jesus peas that shit will be so hot!

you can order this hottness from sandbox automatic, and they even throw in a juelz santana mix tape for free! this is something i am very tempted to do unless someone wants to send me a 4 month early birthday gift. if you like, we may also call it a 3 week early graduation gift.

---

and for those that prefer the details about my life: clinic was boring, happy to be almost done with school, procrastinating about packing and such, wong kar wai knows colors, samurai 7 is good fun, bit torrenting is consuming my free time, spank rock is still the heat, fishscale is still the heat, wearing neckties is still tired, and a haircut of drastic proportions is being threatened. anything else? ask tamar what was on TLC last night.

more intensity

2006-04-23T15:04:00.000-04:00

to make my lazy sunday a bit more noisy, i present to you, dear readers, a smattering of music i've been listening to lately (some tracks are lifted from other mp3 bloggers out there).

Van She - "Kelly (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke Remix)"

Luscious Jackson - "Naked Eye (Propellerheads Remix)"

Hot Chip - "Boy From School (Erol Alkan's Extended Rework)"

also, make sure to head over to my new favorite mp3 blog with only the occassional english language post, fluo kids, scroll down to this post, and proceed to download all 4 christina milian tracks, because they're all pretty fantastic (unless you've got something against three 6 mafia, lil' wayne, young jeezy, and juelz santana).

charles, any translations you can offer for that site would be well appreciated.

suuuunday morning

2006-04-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

last night, as a testament to how jumpin' beloit is, i stayed in and watched wong kar wai's "chungking express". it was beautifully shot, and the two plots were fairly loosely connected, but i enjoyed it nonetheless. i loved the shots where the cops were moving in slow motion, drinking a coffee or dropping a coin in the jukebox, and people were moving blurringly fast in the foreground. or those smeared, frozen-frame shots of whenever brigitte lin was dancing through the streets, squeezing off gunshots.

embarassingly, that's my first WKW film, i've never gotten around to seeing any of his stuff before. insert various reasons and excuses here. that will change soon, i plan on getting through "in the mood for love" and "2046' shortly. watching his film almost felt to me like i was reading a murakami book. does that make sense? he shoots like murakami writes. all dreamy and such.

while we're on the subject of interesting asian films, i'll also comment that i saw "oldboy" last week and while it certainly was violent and disturbing, i didn't find it to be nearly as shocking as i was warned it would be. don't get me wrong, some of the subject matter in the film would undoubtedly be untouchable in George's America, but i definitely thought movies like "battle royale" were much more violent (even though it's a different sort of violence, on a comic scale), especially if we're talking about blood-and-guts gore here.

*kind of a spoiler* what i found most interesting about the film was how when viewing the characters and their search for revenge, you realize that park chanwook actually misdirects you initially into thinking that the title character is the true focus, the vigilante, when in reality, the real vengeance is coming from his tormenter, as it were. *end pseudospoiler*

so. enough about asian films. let's move on to asian myspacers that look exactly like me. homeboy hasn't written back yet. clearly he's afraid of the same things that i was - what if he messages me and it gets delivered to his own inbox? creepy.

on a final note, alan braxe and fred falke can remix anything into pure genius. for an example, listen to their remix of van she's "kelly" - WOW.

dopplegangopolis

2006-04-21T18:24:00.000-04:00

that is NOT me.

and this is NOT my myspace page.

www.myspace.com/kimchipower

but what the hell, dude LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE ME
bunny ears and everything

anyway, i tried to add him as a friend but he isn't biting
so i sent him this msg:

so here's the deal

we look a LOT like each other
no joke
its fucking scary
and i'm korean too
i just opened my myspace thing up and you were under "cool new people" or whatever and i just about shit
also because we have similar haircut
also creepy

so lets be friends because its funny
also, my rap crew performs in chicago
and i can't make a lot of the shows since i dont live there
so YOU can be my stand in, you would just need to lipsync
NOT EVEN JOKING

give it a thought

later

j

i realize that using the singular for "haircut" makes me seem even more asian than i really am. so sorry

yes, i totally stole that from her flickr site

2006-04-20T21:08:00.000-04:00

big ups to my lil sis on her birthday

you done it for real now

i know, i'm bored too

2006-04-14T15:21:00.000-04:00

more at flickr

yes i realize i've been quite slow in getting these pictures up.

the quiet life

2006-04-13T20:39:00.000-04:00

living in beloit, doing rotations at the clinic and hospital, staying with my parents = quiet. slimson and i have spent a lot of quality time watching asian films, which is always a must. i'm trying to convince him that spending 3 hours watching a kurosawa samurai flick is a great idea.

i haven't been posting much. not much to talk about. mon through wed i'm in clinic, doing mostly geriatric stuff, which is not hard but not terribly interesting. thurs and fri i'm in the OR doing anesthesia stuff which i find way more interesting, which was to be expected.

so what's been fun?

i was unable to make the live in-studio recording of tha 446 on WLUW's Radio One, but i was able to listen to the mp3 here. i'm totally biased and i found it brilliant and hilarious. is jacob EATING the entire time? awesome. i heard their cd release party went off without a hitch. totally wish i could have been there. i hope i'll have time to share the stage with them again before i leave for NYC.

i'm listening to the new streets album. maybe i've come around or maybe i just think this album is better, but this is the first streets album that i'm actually enjoying thus far. honestly i thought the first two were just crap. ok, maybe not CRAP, but the beats were unimpressive and his raps were barely there. no cadence, no beat-riding, weak vocals, and so on and so forth. so i'm on track 2 and so far so okay.

what's really impressive is the new T.I. album. seriously. that and the new ghostface.

i received my ACLS materials in the mail today. i will be taking the course in madison on may 23 and 24. this way i will have an extra weekend off in late june in NYC. unfortunately, montefiore housing will (probably) not be able to give me a move-in date until mid to late may. so much for planning ahead.

ok track 3 kinda blows.

and here's the plan for moving: rent a cargo van from enterprise, fill it with stuff, drive to bronx, unload, drop off van. this way i don't have to deal with packing and shipping guitars and electronics, or stressing about how much the moving company will rob me once they lock the doors on their truck.

hi charles, look at how expensive this sandwich is. buy one and tell me if its any good. send me some.

track 4 is better. have critics commented before that mike skinner is like a british pre-angst eminem? i'm sure they have.

i finished reading ham on rye by bukowski. it was really good. i will definitely seek out more of his writing. currently i'm reading a book about human cadavers used in medical practice. we'll see if it holds up against bukowski.

track 5 is starting off ok...

now listen close because this is so important

2006-03-31T10:26:00.000-05:00

fishscale really IS that good. really.

finished the surgery rotation today. "finished." haha. i was done with it a while ago. seriously, what a do-nothing rotation. just what i needed post-match.

tonight mr. and mrs. jaxxxon chrysler and mr. and mrs. pdubs will be rolling into town so we can go watch the crest throw down at the king club. somewhere in the course of today i will also be tracking one lizard_sterz as well as one hubba binskas

if this post don't make no sense to you, just do as the t-shirt tells you, and it still won't make any sense but damn that's a good record.

here it come now

2006-03-27T13:02:00.000-05:00

this is the new apathy.

7 weeks left until graduation, most of which will be spent on rotations that will not be preparing me for the future but instead fulfilling graduation requirements. the academic guilt of more or less avoiding the OR on a general surgery rotation pulled me in today, and i spent a total of 2 hours scrubbed in and being sterile (and doing nothing, literally, DOING NOTHING) while watching the surgeon and a third year plastic surgery (read: overqualified) resident excise sebaceous cysts (which, incidentally, are digusting little monsters in their own right and definitely tried to spray the attending in the eye more than once with its watery-cream-cheese cyst filling.

anyway!

so what's good? the new graham coxon album is pretty damn good, actually. spank rock is still unbelievable. i love listening to shit in the car with bass turned ALL THE WAY UP. and i've been rocking (or gently grooving) the new yeah yeah yeahs album and i like it more and more. i noticed that pitchfork gave it a half assed thumbs up today. they also reviewed a couple remixes of a shit-hot tiga track last week ("far from home," fyi - seriously the album version is irresistible; downloading the remixes now as we speak).

i had to fill out my vacation preferences last week. i don't even know when to ask for time off. i asked for january and some time in the spring, like april or may or something. who knows if i'll get my top choices though. i could end up with both of them in september (god that would suck).

i sort of cleaned out my storage closet today. there is now a pile of old boxes in front of my apartment door that needs to be exiled to the dumpster. i discovered another box full of old medical journals. and yet another box of classnotes was discovered. all fodder for the dumpster.

the cleansing continues. erratic posting of irrelevant and uninteresting details of my life continues.

MATCH DAY recap

2006-03-18T12:33:00.000-05:00

ok, so what the hell happened.

we kicked it off early morning style at andy's house, with a nice breakfast spread of bagels, donuts, homemade delicious scones, a cheese bowl (haha), a plate of bacon (awesome), bloody mary's and mimosas. everyone got a nice buzz going and then we trekked through the wet snow to the medical school where match day ceremonies were beginning.

the ceremonies started with some awards handed out to different residents, nurse practitioners, etc for being great educators, and about a third of the recipients were unable to attend, which made for anticlimactic announcements, though it was nice to be reunited with some of our favorite residents over the past 2 years. we then transitioned into a 30 minute long video slideshow which was far more entertaining than it sounds, if for no other reason than the fact that i got to see pictures of several classmate's spouses for the first time. i also discovered that certain classmates were dating each other, let alone got married already (seriously! i wasn't gone THAT long!)

then we began the match. i don't even remember who went first. i remember saying that if i didn't go in the first 20 minutes, i was hoping to be last (to win the fishbowl full of money - we each put a dollar bill in as we went up). i didn't quite get my wish, jen bahner called my name at about a half hour into the ceremony, but i was DAMN SURE READY. as previously blogged about (which is a statement i hope to never reuse), i received my number one choice at NYU, preceded by an internship at montefiore in the bronx. HOLLA BACK. one of my classmates proposed to his girlfriend in front of all of us, but before he opened the envelope. she seemed a bit mortsed by the entire production but said yes. then he opened his envelope and said "kalamazoo" (true story).

after match concluded (in which several of my good friends all received their #1 matches), we scampered our giddy lil' bottoms (another statement i hope to never reuse) back to andy's house to finish off what was left of the mimosas and bloodys, and then called cabs to cart our asses to the kollege klub. at the KK we found that the booze was overfloweth and the food was mediocre but free. so we ate a lot of pizza and wings and meatballs and drank beers and redbull vodkas and i don't know how many rounds of car bombs and one round of scooby snacks (which i am no longer a fan of - the shot, that is), and basically drank ourselves into a frenzied mess by about 5pm.

once the KK wound down, we went and got some food at chipotle and then something about going to madison's for more drinking and then something else happened and then i came home and went to bed and woke up with a nice headache just in time to see wisconsin get blown out of the water by arizona.

THE END

DRUNK MED STUDENTS 2006

2006-03-18T08:39:00.000-05:00

the party don't stop at flickr

THE MATCH

2006-03-17T02:08:00.000-05:00

it happened today!

will post in more detail tomorrow, i'm exhausted right now after drinking for about 16 hours, more or less continuously, hitting up multiple bars and filling myself up with free pizza, wings, and meatballs...

i matched today at NYU for anesthesiology and i couldn't be happier (it was my #1 choice!)... my prelim year will be in the north bronx (aka the NOBRO) at the montefiore medical center, which, while it wasn't my #1 choice for prelim, i'm still happy with because the benefits are pretty great at monty and the cost of living is very cheap by NY standards (we're talking as low as $400/month for a studio apt and just about every single meal comped), so i'll be able to save loads of cash and (in theory) be able to afford a nice apartment the next year when i start at NYU down in manhattan.

i took loads of pictures and will sort through them when i have more energy.. for now i'm feverishly reading about my new residency programs and thinking about how i should get some sleep..

thanks everyone for your support and congratulations! so excited! so surreal...

i couldn't sleep

2006-03-16T07:42:00.000-05:00

got maybe 3 hours of sleep. woke up with a queasy stomach. man this match bidniz needs to happen soon!

it was supposed to be snowing by now.. i don't see shit.

more match week weirdness

2006-03-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

from a program which rejected me for interview:

From: [censored]
Subject:
Date: March 15, 2006 4:10:50 AM CST
To: Distribution@inet616.aamc.org

Dear Chris,

We need to receive your USMLE scores at this time.

sincerely,

[censored]
Chicago, IL

which was followed very quickly by THREE emails stating that the previous was an error. all three were worded differently, a bit more urgently with each one, including:

Please disregard the previous message from me regarding your USMLE scores.
THIS MEMO HAS BEEN SENT IN ERROR. PLEASE DO NOT CALL OUR OFFICE WITH YOUR
SCORES.

haha. i wonder how many overzealous students just started calling/emailing/faxing their scores over, just because they were told to. although i imagine if you were scrambling and your name was chris and you had called there, than that could have caused some confusion. i wonder how many people that sent in scores weren't named chris.

unfulfillment

2006-03-14T15:02:00.000-05:00

rumors abound on the interweb about programs that didn't fill their anesthesiology residency programs.. some surprises among them:

rush univ (chicago)

UCSF (widely regarded as the #1 academic anesthesiology program in the country)

virginia mason (also regarded as a top program)

johns hopkins (also regarded as a top program in just about everything, and although the burgeoning bmore club scene would be tempting to immerse into, i hear not-so-nice things about baltimore living)

univ of iowa

jackson memorial (florida - duh, it's florida)

univ of connecticutt
st. louis univ

med univ of ohio

univ of kentucky (apparently they REALLY fucked up and listed their 3 year program as a 4 year, and their 4 year as a 3 year. their intent was to rank applicants only at the program length they preferred, but due to the fuckup i guess they're out like an entire program, or something. i don't know. something like that. it's kentucky)

i did not interview at any of those programs. i applied to rush, UCSF, and VMason, but none of them were interested. WHAT IT IS NOW BITCHES

in NYC, it was nassau county and SUNY upstate that were still empty (i didn't apply to either)

i heard that cornell (NYC) didn't fill a couple years ago, because they were 'cocky' and only ranked 20 applicants for their 15 slots or whatever, thinking that they were SOO desirable that they didn't need to rank more than that. then the program really blundered by sending out an email saying "you may have heard we didn't fill, but its okay because we didn't want any of those other people anyway, potential troublemakers and poor fits" or something of the sort, and then accidentally sent that email out to EVERYONE who applied to cornell that year. so all the closet misfits and social miscreants who weren't ranked by cornell were able to read just HOW cornell felt about them.

that story made me feel better about the fact that cornell was the only NYC program that i applied to that rejected me for interview. fucks.

and in more over-analysis news, i found out that my #2 preliminary year program in NYC did NOT fill, even though i was told it was a highly competitive position in a very desirable location (lower manhattan). now, this could mean that i definitely matched at #1 or #2, since #2 isn't even full and i ranked them that highly. which would be great, since #1 and #2 are at the same hospital, just different programs (transitional year vs preliminary medicine). however, maybe this hospital was cocky and didn't even rank me (in which case, they can go fuck off), and then maybe i'm actually at my #5 or something.

and i've been thinking about it, and i've decided that this tells me nothing. i guess i'll know for sure within 48 hours.

the great pre-match purging

2006-03-14T14:04:00.000-05:00

1. i've been very bad at keeping my life streamlined. i accumulate clutter quite quickly and hang on to it for much longer than i should. this clutter includes medical textbooks, class notes, magazines, random junk mail that never made it to the trash and somehow burrowed into the magazines pile, etc. this morning i dumped out about 3 large cardboard boxes full of old class materials, notebooks, notes, handouts, whathaveyou. also a large pile of accumulated magazines over the years, including giant robot, the face (remember that one, chuck), sleaze (remember THAT one, chuck?), and far too many copies of things like musician's friend or american musical catalogs, which just migrated themselves into that pile. i still have a couple piles left, i just got tired of going up and down the stairs all morning. also a milk crate full of old JAMAs which i'm trying to decide if i should donate or dumpster.

2. the wardrobe cleansing has resulted in two large and one small bag of clothes that need to escorted to the nearest st. vinny's. it's embarassing. a various assortment of clothing items which have gone out of style, were never in style, have fallen apart, or no longer fit well. i have yet to tackle the sock drawer. already considering a second-time-through-purging of the wardrobe, just to be sure i'm getting everything.

2.(b) any chicago 446ers want a megamayne costume?

3. i think i'm going to get rid of all my VHS tapes. i don't believe i've watched anything on VHS in at least a few years. anyone want a large collection of VHS movies?

4. i've arranged for charter to disconnect my cable and internet service on april 3rd. thats the day i start my preceptorship in beloit. since i'll be living there for the bulk of the time (coming up to madison on wknds, i presume), there's no reason to keep that service going up here.

CHARTER GIRL
And why will you be cancelling your service with us, sir?

SELF
I'm moving.

CHARTER GIRL
And you wouldn't prefer to transfer your service to your new place?

SELF
Well, I'll be moving out of state.

CHARTER GIRL
Oh, you are SO lucky. Moving somewhere warm I hope!

SELF
Nope, most likely I'll be moving to New York City.

CHARTER GIRL
You mean you don't know?

SELF
Not yet.

CHARTER GIRL
Not yet?

SELF
I'll know on Thursday. So can we get this disconnection scheduled for April 3rd?

(beat)

CHARTER GIRL
Um, sure...

(END SCENE)

Congratulations

2006-03-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

You Have Matched!

AHHHHHHHHH

2006-03-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

2 hours until i find out IF i matched!

why u wanna treat me so bad?

2006-03-12T21:15:00.000-05:00

1. listening to leaked tracks off of prince's new album makes me listen to hott tracks off of prince's old albums.

2. tomorrow will be DAY ONE of match week. tomorrow i find out IF i matched. i can get a variety of messages, anything from "sorry you didn't match" to "congratulations you matched". in between are the messages that say various things like "congratulations, you have matched at an advanced position but not a preliminary position" or "i'm sorry, you're ugly". the excitement begins tomorrow at 11:00am CST.

3. and so begins the process of inventorying and selling or throwing out many of my accumulated possessions over the years. books will be returned to their rightful owners (namely, my sister), schoolbooks are being sold (almost half of them are gone so far, thank god), old class notes and such will be thrown out, furniture including my dresser, bed, coffee table, desk(s), bookcases (yes, even yours charles) will be given away (to ben) or donated to goodwill or curbed if i'm too lazy, there will be a massive wardrobe purge wherein i will rid the closet of many old thrift-store t-shirts and the like which haven't been worn in ages ((and hang on to the keepers, of course) said purge will also include my embarassingly large collection of shoes and outerwear), assorted sundry items such as a vacuum cleaner and ironing board which will be surveyed for value and more than likely abandoned in front of st. vinny's, and then a thorough reexamination of my electronics, among those on the chopping block: my 19-inch tv/vcr combo i've had since freshman year, several stereo speakers, and a marschall jcm 900 head with matching slanted 4 x 12 cab (how much does that go for these days, anyway?). serious consideration is also being given to selling off the 5 channel sony receiver which will have no aforementioned speakers to power.

4. hopefully this means i will be moving with only the clothing and footwear i wear on a regular rotation, books that i truly own that i MUST keep with me or haven't finished reading yet, the small family of CD binders which follow me from apartment to apartment, assorted cookware, glasses, and plates, the extended family of computer equipment and home recording setup which has been pieced together over the years, my two guitars, and my cell phone charger.

5. speaking of cell phones, this piece of shit phone with piece of shit service will be over and done with by the time of the move, i hope. my contract expires the day before graduation, and i have zero intentions to renew it. i hear verizon offers nice service. anything but sprint, frankly.

6. and the car. the car will be sold as well. to help fund the move.

7. and finally, my current rotation is general surgery at a local hospital which will remain anonymous and it is a terribly organized, complete waste of time. there are maybe 3 or 4 ORs with general surgery cases going on at any given time. this means, at most, there will need to be 4 people covering those rooms to assist with surgery. the general surgery team (currently) consists of a third year plastics resident, 2 anesthesiology interns, 1 urology intern, and 3 surgery PAs. so, MORE than enough to cover those 3-4 rooms. and also there are 2 of us fourth-year, nearly post-match students. as you can see, there is a whole lot of necessity for us to even be on the team, let alone motivation for us to do, well, ANYTHING. the cases i've been on, i've been treated like a mentally retarded farm animal that doesn't understand english. AWESOME. usually what happens is we show up at the cafeteria by 7am, receive a 30-40 minute "lecture" on a topic by whoever is the designated lecturer that morning while we eat our breakfast which is fully comped by meal cards (twice last week we learned about appendicitis), look over the cases, realize that there isn't anything to really do, and then go home. i'm totally serious. after being first assistant for two pilonidal cyst removals (which means, doing just barely more than nothing), the novelty died and i went home.

8. charles's (charles'? charleses? charlese? charlize?) lists are always much more fun than mine. YOU WIN AGAIN, drat

trying to make myself pass out

2006-02-28T21:48:00.000-05:00

1. the rank order lists are in (and have been for a week). in a bit more than 2 weeks i'll know where i'm going for residency. keeping fingers crossed...

2. in the meanwhile, looking at NYC apartment listings on craigslist has been sucking away much of my free time.

3. my medicine sub-internship is 2.5 days from being over, friday being a half day so we can take a final exam, which is pass/fail, and incidentally my final exam of medical school. i'm excited for it to be over and impossibly unmotivated to study for it.

4. up next: general surgery for 4 weeks. mentally, i'm about 98% checked out of medical school right now. i have friends that were wise and saved up vacation time and are effectively graduating within the next month ("official" graduation is may 12). i go all the way up until may 12, since i spent so much time on the east coast taking time off to rotate and interview. as long as i match highly, it will be worth it.

5. clearly i have a lot of interesting things to report, ergo the frequent and exciting updates on this miserable miserable blog.

6. life will get much more exciting in about 2 weeks. i'll keep you posted. hold your breath.

congratulate me

2006-02-16T12:56:00.000-05:00

looks like i love lists

1. I GUESS I'M GOING TO NEW YORK CITY (maybe). columbia anesthesiology just sent me an email to tell me that they would be delighted to have me in their residency class and plan to rank me accordingly. YESSSSsss! (it might be a generic email) currently they are ranked in my top 3 (not #1 and maybe not #3) so that basically means that i'm going to match in NYC (since #1-#8 are all in NYC). now if i can just get a nice email like that from my #1 (and also my #1 preliminary year choice) then i'll be all set. but this calls for a celebration (possibly). i'm going to order chinese and pass out in front of the television.

2. i'm post-call. last night was a pretty good pace for a call night. we kept steadily busy until about 7pm, had time to eat dinner (sitting down, like normal people), and then had plenty (as in too much) time to prep our paperwork for an incoming admission which didn't transfer out of the ER until close to midnight. by the time we got that patient tucked in for the night, i was able to crash and get about 5 hours of sleep (unheard of!) and didn't miss any admissions overnight. also i sent home 3 of my patients, and this new one is going home today. so that means tomorrow i return with ZERO patients under my name! which is kinda bad because that means i'm picking up EVERYONE that comes in.

3. this snowstorm we're having may fuck me in the end. rumor has it that many patients may not be coming in today because of the road conditions, and might wait til tomorrow. FUCK! see #2

4. i had a haircut scheduled for today, but it's been cancelled because the spot is closing early due to the storm. FUCK! having only 1.5 days per week off makes it very difficult to get things done during normal business hours.

5. better order that general tso's right now, before the snow gets worse..

things i've learned

2006-02-12T19:16:00.000-05:00

1. i'm getting older. i can't finish the entire general tso's chicken combination platter from oriental wok in one sitting. although i murdered the hot and sour soup and crab rangoon.

2. oriental wok, no matter how long they tell you it will take, will be at your door in about 20 minutes.

3. i'm almost done with medical school. this means intern year looms. this means that i will match in one month (about). rank lists are in, fingers are crossed.

4. the last exam i have to take in medical school is in 3 weeks. all i have to do is show up and not fail. so far this past week i've shown up, and i can definitely tell that my motivation level is rather sub-par. so what, i showed up. working 6 days a week blows, no matter how you slice it. unless you have chuck's job.

5. i can text message charles in london and it doesn't cost extra (that i've noticed so far). this opens up a whole new world of ~~killing time~~ staying in touch.

5.(a) his folks are at the 'lympics.

5.(b) seriously considering a june holiday in london before intern year begins.

6. leaving the olympics on mute all day long does not mean you'll get anything done just because it's on mute.

7. i enjoy watching team USA women's ice hockey, apparently. especially if they're trouncing the german team.

8. i enjoy hearing the countless superlatives on olympic commentary. "the most decorated athlete in the men's luge." "the most decorated nation in ski jumping." "the most decorated american olympian in super-g." or whatever. everyone gets a superlative. the most decorated superlatives in olympic broadcasting history, ever.

9. i can run 8 miles in 68 minutes while its snowing. the plan is to get 8 miles in an hour or less. i have no idea how long that could take. also my knees burn for about 6 hours after i wake up the day after the run. probably not a good thing. or maybe a sign that i need to TRY HARDER.

10. sentry hands out free sunday papers if you spend $5. nice. kinda sad that i'm excited about this. see #1.

11. ooh. gotta go. men's snowboarding is on. the most decorated snowboarders, ever.

in absentia

2006-02-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

i haven't really been good about updating.

well i finished interviews. st. vincent's interview day somewhat devolved into a mess (they told me my scheduled time was 10:30am, then called me at 9:30am on the day of to ask why i hadn't shown up to my 9:15am appointment). it was fine in the end, but it was unnecessarily hectic and stressful, since i was inadvertently late.

cj got engaged! Wa Wa Wee Wa

i made my rank order list last night. i can't tell you where i ranked programs because it's a BIG SECRET but suffice to say that new york city occupies slots 1-9 or something like that. i'm eager to see where i'll match. can't wait for march 16.

started the medicine sub-i today. what a chore. not as bad as i thought. yeah, it sucks putting on a tie and accepting admissions until 4pm and writing up long H&Ps and such, but i'm going to be doing this for a year before i start anesthesiology anyway, so fuck it, i may as well get used to it. luckily my intern and resident are both pretty laid back people and are totally the type that look at me shocked at 4:30pm and say "what are you still doing here! go home while the sun's still out!" i love it when they do that.

i'm on call tomorrow, so.. see you never.

the worst organization, ever.

2006-01-25T10:56:00.000-05:00

on the advice of a fellow classmate, i sent out a class-wide email appealing for the return of these books soon so i could get started on this stupid reading course. i got one legit reply. but it was from one of my friends, and i'll be able to pick the books up tonight. score, right? well i still need to go to the course office and pick up the exam and evaluation form. but i figured, hey, since i did the footwork to find the books i should be able to keep this set, right?

WRONG! the lady tells me that since i'm #2 on the list, if i bring in the books then they go to whoever's #1. normally that sounds fair except that #1 isn't trying to get the books themselves. there's no incentive for me to rush these books in, then, since i don't get to keep them.

so i may have implied that maybe i wouldn't bother going to get these books since i'd just be turning them over, and maybe i'll just wait until i find 2 sets before coming in. after some discussion, the lovely ladies at the course office agreed that if i bring in a set of books, i can use them. aww. THANKS YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST. gotta love it.

back in action/madison

2006-01-24T11:16:00.000-05:00

currently i'm taking this independent reading course on international health. it's 2 weeks long, counts for 2 credits, and requires 0 hours of class time and a purported 40-50 hours of self-directed learning and reading. sounds like a vacation right? what you do is you call up the course director (because they won't contact you) and tell them you're taking the course, then you come in and pick up a stack of books and a multiple choice exam, and turn the whole mess in 2 weeks later.

that's what's supposed to happen.

the course was slated to start yesterday. i spoke with the course director's assistant (because the director herself sounded on the verge of severe illness) and they said they have no books currently, because the last crop of kids hasn't turned their books in yet. so i'm on a waiting list. for course materials. ridiculous! they say they have "absolutely no control" over when the students turn the books in. so they said it's possible it could take a day to a few weeks. A FEW WEEKS! i'll be full-fledged into another rotation if that happens.

they don't really care when you turn this shit in, so the lady said that i could pick these up in february and turn it all in in march, that's okay. but i was hoping to throttle through this shit quickly before my "real" rotations start so i won't have to even think about it later.

ugh. i'm just upset because someone got to the washers and dryers before i did this morning, so i've been waiting.

the weeks are longer but the days are shorter

2006-01-15T23:35:00.000-05:00

honestly, not much more to see at flickr..

trying to recap the past week...

monday: can't remember. must not have been very exciting. i'm sure matt and i watched the office DVDs again.

tuesday: interviewed for preliminary medicine at SUNY downstate. a lot of foreign and carribbean grads, which makes conversation a bit uneasy and awkward if you arrive too early. i arrived too early. plus side: one of the students i rotated with at sinai was there, so we had fun catching up with each other while everyone else asked the residents questions about the program. i just kind of lost interest midway through the morning. the interview itself was pretty lame. about 10 minutes long, with the doc repeatedly saying "i guess we'll see you on july 1st". he said it at least 3 or 4 times. i told him "see you then." i'm pretty sure neither of us believed the other. that night i had dinner at frankie's 457 in carroll gardens and it was delicious but it got cold that night.

wednesday: interviewed for anesthesia at mt. sinai. i rotated there last october, so i had some idea of what to expect. out of 8 other interviewees, 2 were sinai students, 2 had rotated with me, and 1 had rotated earlier. counting me, that makes 75% of the interviewees. everyone and their mama wants to come to this program it seems. and i loved it while i was there. although to be honest, it didn't feel as much as "home" as i thought it would. and i certainly didn't walk out of there feeling as good about it as i did at NYU. and i didn't get such a "good to see you again" vibe as i was hoping for. i'm sure they're used to students fighting tooth and nail to get in... so score one more for NYU so far. that evening, rodbard and i went to MSG and took in a knicks game and it was awesome. i'd definitely go to lots of games if i match into residency here, since its just a 30-40min subway ride away. we sat in the nosebleed, and the knicks blew a 20 point lead, but they still pulled it out and beat the mavericks in overtime. it was a good game. then we came home and watched the replay on MSGtv. seriously.

thursday: interviewed for preliminary medicine at new york downtown hospital in chinatown. what i knew about the program beforehand was minimal, except that their housing is awesome (in terms of price and location, maybe not necessarily in terms of size and quality). the hospital is a workhorse. 6 days a week, nearly every week. we were told not to expect much time off. the program director was abrasive, arrogant, and challenged us to defend why we applied for transitional years. homeboy was defensive as hell. my interview was equally bad, consisting of a doctor complaining about how stupid his med students were when he was a fellow and he had to teach them, and how much he hated stooping to their level to get them to understand. on the plus side, you can pay $400 for a studio apartment in chinatown. that evening i trekked to the upper west side to have dinner at Rain, a fancy shmancy thai restaurant. the bill was footed by the columbia anesthesiology dept, and the handful of residents that i got to speak with that were seated near my corner of the table were all very friendly and pretty fun to hang with. definitely a good impression of the program.

friday: interviewed for anesthesia at columbia university waaaaaay up in washington heights. about an hour on the subway to get there. i liked the program immediately. it really reminds me a lot of wisconsin's program, in terms of the hospital environment and the resident-to-faculty culture, and the overall gut feeling that i had of the program. the interviews went very well (one was with the program director), except that one of my interviewers called in sick, so my substitute was unprepared (hadn't read my file) and was being rushed through the interview because he had other scheduled interviews to conduct. still, considering the situation, i came out of there with a very good feeling. that night i got very drunk in the lower east side.

saturday: nursed a hangover all day. got very nauseous later that afternoon. slept a lot. decided to go out to union square that evening after it got really really really fucking cold and shitty and hailing. that was a bad idea. had some drinks at the coffee shop bar or something. the plantain chips with black bean dip were to die for, but good lord was it cold out.

sunday: aka today. wrote some thank you notes. listened to a lot of hot chip. i've been listening to a LOT of hot chip lately. good shit, hot chip. helped tamar make a spinach and mushroom lasagna, then we made a strawberry trifle cake, which i will eat all of within the next day if they let me. then we watched intervention. and now i'm going to try to finish sputnik sweetheart and go to bed.

goodnight.

lazy sunday

2006-01-08T22:33:00.000-05:00

more at flickr

last night the cook sisters accompanied us to a neighborhood bar called brooklyn social for some cocktails and conversation. i had a drink called the "fellini." it came with a sprig of mint.

today we went to bar tabac for a delicious sunday brunch (i had the eggs benedict norvegiene, an excellent take on eggs benny with salmon; bard and i split an order of merguez, a spicy lamb sausage - also awesome) with an entire cast of characters of tamar's buddies n' pals. then matt and i watched the office for hours and hours. tamar did some sewing on her new machine.

tonight we had a very tasty homemade dinner of butternut squash soup with roasted red pepper puree, asparagus, and turkey sausage.

that is all. like i said, lazy sunday.

the return of the mumm

2006-01-07T13:27:00.000-05:00

last night lisa mumm had a party and she brought out pictures of us from CMJ 2000(?) and we laughed and drank sparks and talked about madison and brian stanger. she had a lot of nice party treats like melba toast and goat cheese and vegetarian eggplant caviar and homemade pickled string beans and asparagus and also there was a candy bowl filled with little toblerones and gelt and a couple of cold-eeze. oh, mumm was also late to her own party (we got there before she did). totes mumm.

also jeff o'neill and his girlfriend were there and i found out that she went to madison too and she's from rice lake and went to high school with my friend andy's wife. true story. also two other people i've never met before who also went to madison were there. one guy was pretty sure we had met before. he didn't look familiar. then tamar told us all about our horoscopes and we learned that leos are the best.

got home around 2:30ish, woke up around 5:30ish for my interview today at st. luke's-roosevelt for a prelim. i felt nauseous pretty much the whole day and got little relief from the continental breakfast. the interviews went over really well though. one interviewer was a korean doc and we joked around about being raised in typical asian households, taking classical piano lessons, learning golf, etc. hopefully my chances are strong there - while the program isn't anything incredible, the location is nice and the subsidized housing is a big plus.

whatever. i'm home now. rodbard was listening to "i just called to say i love you" and tamar's at the gym. i'm going to take a nap. i hear kara's in town. WELL I GUESS WE'LL SEE ABOUT THAT NOW WON'T WE.

I LOVE NYU

2006-01-05T17:20:00.000-05:00

i interviewed at NYU today and it was awesome. for those of you that have been following along, last fall i rotated at NYU and mt. sinai, and it's basically going to be a toss-up between those two hospitals for my #1 and #2 spots on my rank list. the part that causes me anxiety is if i'm going to end up being anywhere on either of those two hospital's rank lists (i.e., if they rank me at #35 or something, the likelihood of me getting in is nil). so next week i interview at sinai but today was NYU and i was determined to make an impression and secure my spot there.

and i honestly feel like it worked. i interviewed today with the program director and associate program director, and both interviews went really well. we talked about the band, about why i'd like to move to nyc, about how important it is to rotate at the hospital i'm interviewing at (the PD mentioned that he woudl feel more comfortable ranking an applicant such as myself that has spent time at the hospital already, versus a complete stranger. not to say that it guarantees me anything either way, but that it does play somewhat of a role). also, both interviewers mentioned several times that i'd fit in well and be a "perfect fit" for them at NYU, and i kept that train of thought going and told them that i would really love to come to the program and would be hard-pressed to find a better one (it's true.. and if there is a better one, i'm pretty sure it must be sinai... but i guess we'll see).

the kicker was when the PD very off-handedly mentioned that if i ranked them #1 then it shouldn't be a problem for me to match there. since it's kinda sorta not-kosher to discuss these "where would you rank us" sort of things, i merely said that it would be very difficult for me to consider them as anything less (i think that dances around the issue enough while still making it obvious), and that i would LOVE to come there (and i really would).

anyway, i left the interview feeling great about things and hopefully this confidence can carry me through so i can perform equally well at sinai. and then we'll see who gets the top spot on my list, and who lets me in on theirs.

so why do i like NYU so much? after all, sinai is the big popular residency-advocacy program in NYC (which is why i contacted them about an away rotation first). some reasons:
1) a more diverse residency class, not just in terms of ethnicity but also in geography. i met kids from miami, chicago, california, etc. seemed to have a broader representation than sinai (based on my limited observations).
2) a more diverse caseload/patient population. bottom line, these guys see trauma all the time at bellevue. sinai residents only see trauma at elmhurst, which is an away rotation for like one month a yr or something.
3) more diverse environments. NYU has 3 hospitals you rotate through: bellevue, the big city hospital that also functions as a level 1 trauma center, academic teaching HQ, and is known to be "resident run." they also feature team captain call, which means as a CA-3, you run the show on a call night as a junior attending, essentially. Tisch is the bigger private hospital, and hospital for joint surgery does a lot of outpatient ortho cases, which allows for a lot of regional techniques.
4) better location. bellevue is at 28th and 1st ave. tisch is at 33rd and 1st. and HJD is 17th and 2nd or something like that. sinai is 100th and madison. nice view of central park up there, and a nice safe upper east side neighborhood, but kinda bo-o-o-oring, if you ask me. expensive wives walking alongside expensive nannies pushing their expensive children in expensive strollers, drinking starbucks.
5) better $$$. cuz that's what it all bout anyway, shit. love and education never bought no rims.

and just like that, it was 2006 and i was back in new york city

2006-01-04T11:16:00.000-05:00

new york city? get a rope.

rob picked me up in beloit, bags and all, and we went to chicago and bought sparks and vodka (not originally intending to mix the two later in the night), and met up the chicagoans at the new china buffet. the food was aiight. the mac and cheese was mediocre. and i never saw the pizza until we were leaving, well after i had developed an unfounded obsession with finding it. also tjk got called in to do a liver transplant and none of us thought we'd see him again until next year.

after dinner, rob and soup and i (aka the beloiters) went to jim wakefield's new year's eve party, which was themed "bad porn." (see top photo.) grape soda karl had an amazing moustache. seriously. i'm pretty sure we talked about it for the bulk of our short stay at the party. we had to make a quick escape because 1) rob was arguing anti-union viewpoints with union organizers (probably a bad idea) and 2) we had another party to get to. soup and i finished a sparks, rob drank his vodka-sparks cocktail, and this other guy talked to me very LOUDLY about how he liked to make a drink called the "sparkplug" which sounded overly complicated and totally not his own creation.

we finally got to doc dayne's a bit after 11pm, where we quickly learned that we were not the only revelers who thought to pick up the $9 six-pack of sparks that were all over the city. we watched the ball drop on tv (totally anticlimactic) and danced to whatever was playing on the ipods. somewhere along the course of the night, the girls started doing backbends and other yoga moves on the dancefloor aka dan's very nice rug. also there were pull-ups. and also i would like to make a special mention of the delicious cheesecake things that virginia made, that were excellent and probably fattening.

i think there may have been about 10 of us piled into a minivan cab after the party. minivans are not supposed to hold 10 people.

the next morning, zaid and amelia (who had the foresight to stock up on breakfast supplies the evening before), provided us with a make-it-yo-damn-self post-new-year's brunch. it really was great. we had omelettes and bagels and fruit and coffee and juice and potatoes and chocolate and pistachios. then we watched the packers beat the seahawk's second string, which would have been a bit unfulfilling if i had cared. i remember favre waving to the crowd at the end of the game, as if to say "thanks for the memories, now i'm retiring." even though he hasn't said that yet.

lazy sunday (not that lazy sunday) continued, we attempted to go see a movie but parking was nuts and the line for the box office was nuts, so we went to blockbuster and rented this and disc one of this and then we also rented this atrocity, which was selected for its incredibly stupid packaging and the fact that it was in the "horror" section. we figured it'd be good for a few laughs. (it wasn't. we fast forwarded through a large portion of the movie and suddenly were faced with the closing credits. we should have expected as much from a horror movie about genetically altered crops. or something.)

i woke up monday morning, took the blue line to o'hare, met up with fellow beloiter amanda for breakfast at wolfgang puck's chateau d'prices exorbitant in the B gate pavilion (my flight was at 9am, hers was at 10am.. we totally planned to meet up, it wasn't random). i paid $5 for a bottled water and a thing of yogurt. then i flew back to new york city, had an interview at st. vincent's yesterday for prelim/transitional (it looks to be a great program, i'm going to rank it very highly, plus it's located in greenwich village), and went to TING HUA for dinner last night.

today i've got off of interviews (tomorrow is NYU) and so does rodbard. so we're going to try to do the double-dip and watch 2 movies for the price of one downtown. one of them may or may not be the ringer. the other one might be munich.

i sympathize with the miners' families in west virgnia, but according to CNN, nothing else has happened in the world for the past 2 hours.

all quiet on the wisco front

2005-12-30T15:32:00.000-05:00

you might enjoy this if you're from beloit

um yeah so anyway. i've been holed up in beloit for the past week or two, and let me tell you i really haven't been doing much of anything, which has been rather nice.

i finally finished reading the fortress of solitude, which i began reading before i left for NYC (so, a while ago). i really enjoyed it, especially after having spent time in brooklyn and being able to mentally identify many of the neighborhood landmarks that the author references. now i feel that it's time to revisit the murakami fever that i had many months ago, starting off with sputnik sweetheart. can't wait.

i've been listening to a lot of hex enduction hour and pink flag, and also tracked down this pixies tribute album on a japanese label featuring mostly japanese artists (minus seafood). it's a curious find, to say the least. some of the new arrangements of those pixies songs are off the sheezy; others are just plain off. it also features two versions of "debaser."

tomorrow rob and i will be heading south to chicago to ring in the new year with fellow chicagoans at the estate of dr. miller, and then on monday i will be flying out of o'hare to finish up interviews in NYC. this means that today i'm doing laundry and trying to figure out how to pack for 3 weeks in winter-time NYC (with interview clothes and dress shoes) and keep it all in one suitcase. i'll allow myself a garment bag as well. but i'm really trying to keep luggage to a minimum here.

kind of a boring post. well, you get what you pay for.

holladays

2005-12-18T23:04:00.000-05:00

catching up on flickr

last night was spent catching up with various compatriots and colleagues in madison, at le chateau de ramo. we had high hopes of going out to dinner and then maybe going out to a bar or two or three, but instead we opted for glass nickel and a whole lot of PBR. there also was a camerafight.

since i've been gone (or Since U Been Gone) in NYC and chicago, it's been a few months (at least) since i've hung out with these kids, so it was a lot of fun to rewind and hear about how peoples rotations and interviews are going. to illustrate how far out of the loop i've been, i met for the first time some of my friends' girlfriends that have been girlfriends for, like, YEARS, and one that's even a fiancee now (i totally missed out on the girlfriend years).

more than once we realized that we were all "talking shop" (i.e. babbling about hospital scut work, making fun of andy's brain MRI (it was pointy), talking about talking about the hospital, etc.). yes it's happening. total nerd fest. we're turning into THOSE people....

big up to my main mang p dubs for charging through 50% of law school so far and still managing to fire off a holiday edition of his Law Schmah mixes. the leon redbone/zooey deschanel closer is the big clincher for me.

oh and big up to bono and the gateses for scoring time's personses of the year. can't wait for microsoft windows U2 edition.

p.s. west wash had its annual "list day" a couple days ago, but it's been slow enough over the weekend that if you scroll down you can catch most of it. otherwise, jaxx c kicks things off with his list. just scroll up from there. and please keep those eyes peeled for stv slv's glorious contribution to the david hasslehoff animated GIF collection.

SOMEONE SAVE US FROM ALL THESE CIVIL LIBERTIES

2005-12-17T16:28:00.000-05:00

we don't elect kings

Yesterday, the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies [THE AMERICAN PEOPLE] have learned information they should not have.
...
I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from Al Qaeda and related groups [i.e., FOREVER].
...
The N.S.A.’s activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and N.S.A.’s top legal officials, including N.S.A.’s general counsel and inspector general.

in case you were worried, the NSA is making sure the NSA is acting properly. check AND balance.

i read that bushie's wiretapping antics are an impeachable offense. i say let's go for it! i mean, we already tried to impeach a president for getting a blowjob, and that was a HUGE national issue that affected EVERYONE IN AMERICA and damaged our own RIGHTS AS CITIZENS. i'd say this is at least (or possibly, POSSIBLY EVEN MORE SO) as impeachable.

someone make me stop watching/reading the news. seriously.

wrenches in the system

2005-12-16T17:44:00.000-05:00

i had an ACLS elective scheduled at the end of january. one measly credit, one week long, pretty easy (and required for internship, eventually), plus i needed that credit to graduate. seriously, without it, i'd be one credit short (you do the math).

today i received an email that the course would probably be cancelled because there's only one other student signed up for my slot, and that's not enough to run the course, i guess. DAMNIT! i need that credit! so i did a little browsing in the online course catalog, searching in vain for a one credit one week course that i could replace it with. then i remembered the story of the international health elective.

from what i've heard, you pick up some dusty ol books, and read on your own for 2 weeks while filling out a take-home multiple choice exam, and then turn that in on the last day. SOUNDS PERFECT. sign me up. (i signed up)

now, i've got my one final interview in the middle of this course, and it's in NYC. i imagine it will not be any sort of problem whatsoever to do this. but correct me if i'm wrong, o few classmates of mine that are in the know and punish themselves by reading this blog.

anyway, i felt like i was on a roll so i set out to replace my 4 week surgery clerkship at UW with either a 4 week turn at st. mary's (supposedly the cushiest of the cush), or a 4 week stint in "orthopedics for the non-orthopedist" (which essentially sounds like a month of ortho clinic - but also no call, no weekends). of course all slots are full. so begins the campaign to charm the ladies in charge of the medical student education dept in surgery to let me get in on some of that nice n' relaxing surgery action. what it do.

also, and i'm totally NOT joking, but i spent a good portion of the afternoon reading about different rappers on wikipedia. i can't remember how it started but it ended with me reading about the bloods and crips and then getting that aforementioned email, which effectively put a stop to my self-education of 90s gangsta rap and los angeles gang culture.

but i totally feel like i've been studying. why can't you be a rap major in college?

thank you mank you

2005-12-15T19:40:00.000-05:00

happy holidays. now go cop that shit

so the "interview etiquette" thing to do, i've learned, is send out a thank you note to everyone you interviewed with. now, this can be a not-so-bad thing because:
1) you may have had a great interview/conversation/discussion, and really do want to thank that person (for a great convo? uhhh)
2) the interviewer in question has had a bigger role than simply interviewer (i.e., advisor, letter-writer, etc), and as such, is deserving of a note.

BUT, this is an immense chore, because:
1) most interviewers say or ask you nothing of note and you can barely remember even having the interview, let alone being so impressed you need to THANK them.
2) the people you usually have the best convos with (residents), usually don't "need" thank you notes, because their input into your selection is fairly limited
3) having multiple interviews at one institution means sending out multiple cards to one place (my high point has been 5)
3a) this means trying to think of different or unique ways of saying the same mundane thing
3b) this means you give up trying to be unique and end up sending out everyone the same thing, minus the name and address on the envelope.
4) you actually DIDN'T EVEN LIKE the interview/interviewer.

the thing is, NOBODY gives a shit. the committees could care less if they received a thank you note from you, it's not going to make you any more selectable. although, if every tom dick and harry sends in a card, and you don't, THEN they might notice. GAAAAHHH THATS LIKE HOW EVERYTHING WORKS DURING THIS GODFORSAKEN INTERVIEW SEASON - it doesnt matter unless you don't do it. then it counts against you.

ifuosbef9owubf40w83nc

NOW, to recommend some excellent thank you note writing music, i'd like to wholeheartedly recommend BLUE EYES MEETS BED-STUY, which is a "mash-up" of sinatra's music underneath biggie's verses. i put mash-up in quotes because the songs are all chopped up and rearranged, making this as much of a mash-up as, say, any black album remix or .... tha 446. (fyi, i consider a mash-up a simple layering of one track over another. the chopping and dropping makes it sampling).

anyway, this is just outstanding. some of this shit sounds fresh as hell. juicy + new york, new york. hypnotize + little green apples. and the beats are really great considering what they were working with. now, paired with my recent acquisition of the "advance" copy of biggie's duets album (plus the duets bootleg), everything's been coming up b.i.g., yfeelsme?

medtour, leg 2: complete!

2005-12-14T16:33:00.000-05:00

god i have been really unmotivated to post on this thing lately.

finished with chicago. UIC and UofC are both nice, great programs. medtour leg 3 looms in early 2006. in the interim: send out thank you notes, wrap xmas gifts, sleep, leisure reading, 446 backroom production, looking forward to not really using my brain too much over the next 18 or 19 days or so.

2005-12-06T22:32:00.000-05:00

so i had my first pre-interview dinner tonight. last week i had a post-interview happy hour, which was pretty anticlimactic. only the beer was paid for, everything else we had to pay for. plus there were so many residents there that they kinda hung out amongst themselves, which defeats the point, sort of.

tonight we went to crave restaurant and lounge. there were maybe 20 people there, and the bill was over $1000. nice. i'm sure the waitress LOVES us now. i helped eat some of the calamari, ahi tuna, buffalo wing, and coconut shrimp appetizers, ordered a nice seared ahi tuna steak for entree, and took part in the "indecision" dessert platter, which featured chocolate ice cream, raspberry sherbert, caramel cheesecake, and chocolate suicide cake. INSANITY.

i am so full right now.

tomorrow i interview at UW. should be interesting, since most of the staff knows me and vice versa. then, post-interview, i will pack my bags, stop for dinner with the parentses, and then take off for chicago for the week (you can find me at the lo-zone).

i got that sims record, finally. i've listened to it 3 times today and i give it an A PLUS. it reminds me a lot of the P.O.S. record, but then again, it's all doomtree. so it's all tiger woods y'all.

it's dark and hell is hot

2005-12-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

actually it's sunny and freezing.

back in madison for a few. this apartment is so un-lived in it kind of disgusts me. it's a sty, to be sure. piles of school papers, books, old mail, cd's, etc. why do i acquire/save/keep so much crap? seriously. granted, i haven't really been home since the end of september. but still. ripening food in the fridge, ripening garbage in the garbage, dust everywhere, a huge crack through my living room window (damn kids!), and a complete lack of motivation to do anything about any of it.

i'll throw out the food. and i'll clean the bathroom a bit. but these piles of junk, strategically placed throughout my living room and bedroom, i think they're staying. they will be purged when i move out.

binge and purge, binge and purge.