Coxing while intoxicated?

So this saturday, I got up at 6 in the morning so I could be rowing at 7. The only problem is that our coxswain was half an hour late. Her mom dropped her off at the lake. She said she was really sorry, and that she had had a late night (going to bed at 5 in the morning to be exact). She said she was still drunk from the night before, after having quite a few drinks with her friends. And from the way she coxed the boat, she still clearly was. The smell of vodka on her breath was still strong. We joked weather she could get in trouble for coxing while drunk. But all was good, and we had a good row, even if I got quite sunburned in the process.

I spent most of last night and this morning figuring out how to replace the battery in the cox box (the thing that amplifys the coxsain's voice). I went to wal mart and found some RC car batteries, which were perfect (600 Mah NI-CD's). After a lot of soldering, the cox box is working again. Yay for saving a few hundred bucks.

So much has happened

So I spent this summer in England, studying for Step I of the NBME examination (the first step to becoming a licensed physician). This was probably not the best decision I've ever made, since there were plenty of distractions and other stuff to do.

We went to the Isle of Man for a vacation. This cost a fortune (as everything does when the dollar is so weak) but it was well worth it. We stayed at the Wicklow Hills hotel, which is within a half hour walk of the ferry terminal. A guy was waiting outside, and greeted us as we walked up to the place (at 1 in the morning). "Mr. and Mrs. XXXXXX? Welcome to the wicklow hills!" He showed us to our room, and told us that we could arrange payment the next day. Fucking amazing service.

Wow, so much has happened since I last posted. I went to England to study for my step I board exams, and that seemed to go fairly well. While in England, I went to the Isle of Man, went to the Cambridge Beer festival, got chased down an alley by a drunk guy bent on hurting me, and had a jolly good time overall.

I got back to the US. I studied a lot. I took the boards exam, and think I did ok. And now I'm starting the third year of med school.

Wow, I'm half of a doctor already. Who would have known?

MedWars

So let me tell you about MedWars. It's an adventure race with a medical theme to it. This year it was held in Augusta, Georgia at an army fort there.

We left Nashville an hour late because V screwed up her schedule. We got there late, but I slept like a log on my wonderful thermarest.

The next morning, we registered and got everything ready. V hadn't brought a pack with her, but by some miracle, I decided to bring two, just in case I wanted to use a larger one. Then I saw V in jeans. She was the only one there with jeans on. I tried to get her to put on my spare north face pants (which would have fit her fine) but she refused. "If my jeans get wet, I'll put on my other pair of jeans!"

The race started at 11 AM. We got slightly lost, but not too bad. Three hours in, we had to cross a swamp - and the only way across was to wade (swim) through. I was up to my neck in water (and I'm 6' 2") and decided it would be easier to swin than to try to keep my pack dry by holding it over my head.

Afterwards, V changed into her spare jeans. I simply took off my shirt and hopped around to keep warm.

And then it started to pour. And it got much colder - into the 50's. V forgot to bring a jacket. All she had were her soaking wet jeans and a tank top. I gave her my jacket to keep her from serious hypothermia.

And then her hip started hurting. She walked slowly, and would sometimes simply stop and sit on the side of the trail. I ran in place to try to keep warm. At this point, I was shivering constantly.

At the last checkpoint, me missed the time cutoff my 15 minutes, and were disqualified. It continued to rain constantly. We walked back to the campsite. The tents were soaked. M had no clothes, so I put her in my car and warmed it up. My hands had trouble gripping anything.

And after 7 hours of driving, we were finally home, and I got to bed at 3:30 in the morning.

Purgatory?

I was talking with a few med school friends the other day. One had just recently gotten divorced after six months, because his wife was a giant bitch (anyone could have told him that). He said "I think I need to find a new church." I said, "What do you need a church for; it will just cost you time and money."

The girl in the group scoffed. Like I had said something heretical.

The conversation went on from there. The girl said how her grandmother kept a bottle of holy water with her, and splashed it on every kid she saw so they would not have to go to purgatory.

I said, "I thought they got rid of purgatory."

She said, "I guess she didn't get the message."

Music

Have you ever discovered a new song on your computer, one that you had never heard before? Has it brought you joy - a feeling of happiness and euphoria that you haven't felt in a long time.

This happened to me today. "Prize Fighter" by The Velvet Teen popped up on Itune's Party Shuffle. I have not been the same since.

Ambulance

I’m riding in the “box” of the ambulance. There’s a call for a 80 year old African American woman with "seizures." Doesn't sound too serious. Besides, an ALS (advanced life support) fire engine is on the way, well before we will get there.

Mid-way there, the driver yells back into the box "they're doing CPR." The driving gets noticeably more serious. We're running red lights like crazy now. Oh boy.

I rehearse what I learned over a year ago in my head. 30 compressions and 2 breaths. Or is it 30 and 4?

We arrive at the scene. The patient is lying on the floor, with a tube into her lungs. Someone is performing chest compressions. A woman cries in the corner. Another man looks forward, blankly, as if nothing is registering at all.

I see a big bottle of oxygen in the corner of the room, as well as a peak flow meter. She must have lung problems.

The paramedics flop her onto the blue backboard. They struggle to keep her lifeless hands from flopping to the side. Someone instructs me to turn the stretcher around, which I do. They place her onto the stretcher. The paramedic I'm with points to me and says "Start chest compressions!" I do. They load her into the ambulance with me compressing away. "Use the heel of your hand! Harder!" I continue compressions for about five minutes until someone else takes over. I’m exhausted. I could feel that some of her ribs had broken (not unusual). And there's no discernable heartbeat pattern on the monitor.

I hand someone a stethoscope. No left lung sounds. Must be a right mainstem intubation. They pull out the tube a bit, and it sounds better. They give her epinepherine and atropine through a needle in her neck. Someone asks me "Do you feel a femoral pulse?" I reach down there. "Um, maybe, yeah, I think so." Indeed, she now had a (slow) palpable pulse. God Damn, I was sure she was going to die. Wow. We saved her!

We arrive at the ER. The doctor looks none too pleased. He asks "how long has she been down?" "About 10 or 15 minutes, but she has a pulse." "Damnit! Well, resume chest compressions, then. We have no critical care beds!"

In any event, she will probably never leave the hospital.

ER tonight

Radio says kid was shot in neck, point blank. Five minutes out. I'm there in the trauma bay, expecting the worst. He must be dead or close to dead. They wheel him in. I'm in full protective equipment, wearing what amounts to a garbage bag and face shield to protect me from flying bodily fluids.

The EMT asks him if he can move over onto the other gurney. WTF? He's conscious?

They examine him all over and take X-Ray films.

He's fine. The wounds are mostly superficial. The bullet is still lodged in his arm, though. To make it from the neck to the arm without hitting anything important is incredible. No one could believe it. If only everyone could be so lucky.

Plastic Surgery

We went into the examination room. A woman was confortably sitting in a chair. I silently thought that she probably wanted a face lift or some such thing, even though she looked fine. This is plastic surgery after all.

How wrong I was. Ten yers ago she was in a car wreck, without a seat belt, and her face was smashed to pieces (the so-called pan-facial fracture). With some surgical wizardry, the plastic surgeon made everything look PERFECTLY NORMAL, at least to me. He still says that her maxilla is a little bit too big. Her only problem that day was that her nose itched a bit.

Damn. The thought that with your knife and skill you can make something look like it never happened. To give someone back their life, free of shame, free of self-consciousness and embarassment. Amazing.

John McCain

I've never been to a political rally before, so I thought I would at least make the effort to walk across the street to my old highschool's gymnasium.

I got there half an hour early. Plenty of people were already there. A woman offered me a McCain sticker, which I affixed to my coat so I would blend in better. "This is my country" was blaring from the speakers by the stage. The backdrop was a huge American flag. I didn't see a single black or hispanic or asian person.

Interestingly, there was NO visible security. None. You would think they would at least check people for guns, especially for a guy who is about to be the Republican presidential nominee.

There were three throat-clearing speeches before McCain took the stage. One guy talked about how he took Sadam Heussein's blood pressure after Saddam was captured. Another read a poem about Tennessee, written buy a POW in the Hanoi Hilton who was in the cell next to McCain's. McCain's wife talked about the daughter she adopted without her husband's knowledge.

"Where's she going to go?"

"I thought she could stay with us, dear."

"Oh, Ok."

Then there was the pledge of allegiance. And then the national anthem.

And then McCain finally took the stage with a huge cheer erupting from the crowd. Cameras flashed from every direction.

He gave his well-rehersed stump speech. Promised to find Osama. Promised to make Bush's tax cuts permanent (I had to concentrate to keep my groans from being audible). Promised to reign in federal spending using the "veto pen that Reagan gave me." Promised to give better healthcare to veterans.

And then he walked into the crowd with his wife, and was immediately swarmed by people wanting an autograph or wanting to shake his hand or wanting a better picture.

It's too bad McCain is a Republican. He would probably make a great president if he weren't so beholden to the conservative right.