Noted.

"You just don't remove someone's liver.  It's bad form."
-Hematology professor

Back

Med school has started, and with it, the panic dreams have begun.  I generally have three types of panic dreams:

1) The (really) realistic: The other night, I dreamed I was filling out paperwork for my PhD application.  I generally tend to wake up bored.

2) The based-in-reality premise but factually nonsensical: This morning, I had a boards preparation dream.  I was taking a class from a guy who was making us do a team-building exercise that involved hauling heavy ropes around.  Then we took a practice exam, but most of the questions were about pop culture.  I asked a few of my peers how this was supposed to help us prepare.  No one had any good answers.  I woke up feeling a need to review the glycolytic pathways.

3) The ????????: The night before that, I dreamed I had become embroiled, through my own free will, in a plot to steal...a something from the medical school.  Really, I don't know what it was, or why I did it.  (I referred to it as a "prank" at some point.)  All I know was that the something was in a small chest near a row of lockers, and I was with two other guys who were in on it.  So we opened the chest and stole this...thing, whatever it was, and promptly got caught.  My parents came to try to defend me, but I actually got irritated at them, as I was, you know, blatantly, incredibly guilty.  My PI was trying to cheer me up and said, "Well, you'll probably never be able to practice as a medical doctor, but you'll still get your PhD."  Surprisingly, this failed to brighten my mood.  At some point during the dream, I was in a water park in Florida, and went down a long, twisting water slide that, to my surprise, ended not in a pool but in the Gulf of Mexico.  I woke up feeling incredibly guilty, and it took me a little while to realize that nothing had actually happened.

So yeah. 

In other news, I've now officially submitted my boards application.  At some point in my life, I'm sure I will learn to graciously accept that I must pay fees to take exams, that although I do not want to take these exams, I do want to pass them and move forward with my education.  That point has not yet come.  I spent most of yesterday fuming about how I HAD TO PAY $535 for an EXAM THAT I DO NOT WANT TO TAKE.  Woe is IL-X! 

Non-science/-medical news: Two things are of note.
1) I ate vegetarian sushi, and I liked it a lot.  This shocked me to my very core.
2) Intaglio is in the process of teaching me chess.  I think I am improving, based on the fact that it now takes me much longer to lose.

Museums and the Medicine Nerd

Just returned from a week-long jaunt to Washington, DC to visit my parents, Dr. and Mrs. IL-(X-1), and my sister, IL-N.  I arrive back in the snowy north with lots of warm fuzzies, new snow boots, a t-shirt of a turtle wearing a top hat and holding a briefcase, and an extra 1.8 pounds (true fact: adding cayenne pepper to simple chocolate cookies makes them physically addictive).

My boyfriend, Intaglio, came along.  He is an artist.  As such, we visited a large number of art museums and galleries.  Despite my lack of artistic training, I was able to glean a few insights from the many pieces I viewed:
1) There sure is a lot of art around.
2) Yup.
My participation on these outings was, on the whole, limited to carrying the camera case and periodically exploding into paroxysms of rage that were generally triggered by 'pieces' consisting of blank canvases.

But on my very last day in Maryland, on a clear blue day, we happened across the National Museum of Health and Medicine.  It has recently moved, having previously been housed on the now-defunct Walter Reed Hospital campus in DC.  It's not set to become fully operational until May, so only two exhibits were open: a basic overview of normal and pathological anatomy, and field medicine during the Civil War.

And they.  Were.  Fantastic.

It was nothing at all like the shameless sort-of exhibitionism and thinly-veiled gawking of the awful Body Worlds show (that's worthy of a post in and of itself).  Each exhibit was the perfect balance of scientific fact, illustration, exhibition, and human interest.  A lot of it was review (but a cheerful sort of, "Oh, I remember this!" review, not "Ugh, not this again" review), but there was plenty I did not know.  For example, both the respiratory professors and the infectious disease professors neglected to teach us about scrofula, which is the cutaneous manifestation of tuberculosis.  Given how they often seem the prefer the shock-and-awe approach to medicine, I can't really see why:

Image taken from the Visibly Human Health and Disease in the Human Body website, National Museum of Health and Medicine

And, as someone who has, on occasion, forgotten to use hand sanitizer when beginning an examination of a standardized patient, I can personally attest to the fact that once you have seen the Civil War surgery exhibit, this will never again slip your mind.  Ever.  There are only so many references to sepsis and pus-filled sponges that one can take. 

However, I was most impressed with the Civil War era successes in medicine.  Take the reconstruction of a soldier whose face was eaten away following the formation of gangrenous ulcers due the use of a mercury-based medicine:

All images taken from Trauma and Surgery: Medicine During the Civil War website, National Museum of Health and Medicine
When you consider the technology they had to work with, that's really not too shabby!

But yes, I am back now, which means more grant proposal and schedule-wrangling.  Onwards!