almost forgot

this is just a sweet video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNCJTFhbzZY

half marathon

So I had the half this morning. It went pretty well. I ran a 1:47:41 (officially). Thats a 3:30 ish pr from my old best time. I was happy with it because I was plagued with shin splints and hip problems this season. The shins were fine for the duration of the run, but at about mile 7 my hip started acting up. It has happened before on a training run. Basically it's something in the capsule that is a shooting pain at every step. Last time it happened I had to stop and walk, and even that was difficult to do. This time I basically said I wasn't going to walk and adjusted my stride to keep going. The rest of the race was great. The weather was awesome, a little windy by the end, but nonetheless great. Then I spent about 2 hours on the couch afterwards trying to sleep, but was unsuccessful. Oh well, I can sleep when I'm dead. Now its basically study time for the next 3 weeks until finals are over. 

Our first final is in histology on monday. Histology is basically looking at stuff under the microscope. Generally it is extremely extremely boring. We even have 3 hour histo labs that basically consist of us looking under microscopes the entire time. Most of the stuff that we study is not interesting. However, in the exam coming up we have the ear and eye (among other things). The ear is absolutely amazing. The way it is able to turn sound into something that we can understand is nuts. I mean, I don’t think anyone could think up a system like this, but it works. And for 90% of the population or more it always works. It’s remarkable. Here’s a video that basically explains the ins and outs of the ear. If you have a few minutes I would really recommend watching it because it is pretty cool. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeTriGTENoc

Finally, I would like to thank those of you who were generous enough to send in money. I really appreciate it and I know that it will be put to good use. I'll be sure to take pictures of the equipment when we get it. 

talk to ya'll later

Ecuador

As many of you know I am going to Ecuador this summer on a medical style mission trip. It won't be as rural as my trips to Honduras, but will still be good to work in under served communities. It will also be great because half of the days we spend there will be in Spanish classes. Hopefully my Spanish will get even better to the point where I will be able to use it more proficiently in the hospital setting.

The trip should be great and being that I will be there for an entire month, I'm sure I will learn a lot that I can take with me in my future medical career.

One part of our job as the students going down is fundraising. The hospital that we will be working at does not have an EKG monitor. It is a standard item found in virtually any hospital in the US and is used to measure the activity of the heart. You all have seen them in use (they are the sticky patch things that they put on people's chest and then the machine shows their heart beat on the monitor). They're virtually crucial for the medical field and it's amazing to think that these people were able to go on without one. They cost about $5,000 and it is our job as the students to raise the money. Now, I absolutely hate asking for money from people because generally I don't like to give money to something that I cannot see implemented. I don't like just throwing money at a cause if I don't know if it is actually doing any good. I also hate asking for money when it is going towards something that I want to do or a trip I want to go on. However, in this case it is going directly to something tangible that these people need and that I will physically be able to show you we used. I am starting the funds "pot", I guess you could call it, with a $100 donation. I would like to, through various means including things we are doing here at school, like to raise about $350. Please please please do not feel obligated to donate any money. I am simply putting it out there that I would take donations if you would like to. I, in no way, will be mad at you for not donating or have any sort of ill will against you, don't worry. I'm just making you aware. If you do decide to donate some money (does not have to be a large amount at all) I will be in your debt. In fact, I would do whatever you wanted if you decide to donate: clean your gutters, mow your lawn, dig up some plants or do some other sort of yard work, test watch a new TV you just bought, paint some stuff you need painted, you get the jist. Anything. Just let me know if you want to donate. You can comment on here or email me at slotz2550@gmail.com if you would like to. Then next time I see you I can get the money or you can just send it to me. Anything works. That's all for now. Sorry its such a needy post

Scott

another mich weekend

This weekend saw more exciting St. Joe house stuff:

First real-ish dinner in her new house

Trust me I'm a doctor

Not so good with the hammer....

Basically what we were doing was ripping out the little dog house thing that they had for the dog in the back of the garage. It had outdoor access, so basically was so the dog could be inside if it wanted to.

So I had to put in the garage door opener code thing. Jenna was inside doing something so I was outside unsupervised. Therefore, I put the opener at a comfortable level for me. However, my eye level is not quite the same as Jenna's eye level. I did not notice this until she pointed it out to me. Oh well, that's why its free labor. 

The finished product. No more dog pen in the back. We were able to salvage wood from it to make a work bench in the place where the pen was. 

Completed work bench. Not the prettiest, but it'll do. 

Jenna is planning on putting a deck on the front of the house so she sent the specs of the house to her brother, who made this drawing of the house in CAD. It's exactly to scale. Now they can use it to basically stick different looking decks onto it to see what works best. Pretty cool. 

house pics

Like I said, the house is awesome.

Front

Living Room (it's an open floor plan so the living room, kitchen, and dining room is one room) Yes the TV is staying

Kitchen. Larger than my apartment now. 

Master Bathroom

Dining Room

Other Bathroom

One Bedroom

Another Bedroom 

Last Bedroom

Deck

Master Bedroom

Another Of the front

We visited the med school building that is .4 miles from the house. Its really nice. 

Main Area of the Med School Area

Like I said its all really nice. Pretty excited. 

free time??

Another round of exams done. Now we have a few weeks off from exams before finals start. They’re going pretty easy on us for now because we had only 1 class today, which I accidentally must have missed. Woops. It was anatomy (which we had a test on yesterday) and it was at 8:00 am. We also went out last night, so with those factors combined, class attendance would definitely be minimal.

After our afternoon anatomy practical exam we went up to Rockford to check out a house for next year. It’s a house owned by a retired prosecutioner and his wife who works as a warden at a juvenile detention center in Chicago. She recently got the job there so they are basically moving to Chicago and want to keep the house occupied. They said they will probably be coming back to Rockford a couple times a month at most and when they do they will stay in the basement which is basically completely separate from the rest of the house with its own kitchen, bathroom, etc. We would rent out the upstairs as our own. We thought it was kind of weird at first, but the guy, Tom, said it would be ours and they would not intrude. He mentioned partying until the wee hours of the morning and stuff like that, and made sure that they would not step on our toes at all. It would be our house and occasionally they would stay in the basement. Fine by me. Also, the house is only a couple blocks from school which is great. The best part is that rent is $1200 for 4 people. Then for it fully furnished its an extra $100 total. Amazing if you ask me. I’m paying almost twice that much in Champaign for a studio. One of my roommates took pictures of it that I’ll post when I get copies. We also found out that Rick Nielsen of the band Cheap Trick lives next door. For those who don’t know Cheap Trick, they sing the song that goes “I want you to want me, I need you to need me.” So that’s pretty cool. We think that were just gonna blast Cheap Trick sometime when its nice out and if he comes outside we’ll be like “oh man this is our favorite song, have you ever heard of Cheap Trick?” Then we’re in. Yep, that’ll be the life.

OMG this could potentially be our neighbor!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQ9dm7zaQU

this is a doozy...

So I had my final CPP yesterday. For those who remember, our CPP program is the one where we go shadow a doctor in the Champaign-Urbana community four times over the course of the year. The experience was good and really helped me find out some stuff about the kind of doctor I want to be. For instance, my doctor really doesn’t look anyone in the eye when he is talking to them, including patients. For me that’s a sign that he is not confident and I think that a doctor should be very confident especially when his advice/decisions will affect the patients’ lives, good or bad. I also learned to be more personable with patients than my doctor was. There were two older husband/wife teams that came in today in which it was the husbands who were having problems (both carpal tunnel problems, I believe) and it was obvious that they had been together for a long time and often would joke around with my doc and myself. But my doc is always about business and never really shares in the laugh with the patients. He would simply just start talking about the patient’s problem again as if his time was too valuable to take part in their petty jokes. I’m hoping that it is just him and that not all doctors seem to become more distant from their patients as time goes by. I can’t see myself practicing like that regardless of the type of medicine I go into. Now, don’t get me wrong, he is a great doctor and I would definitely want him operating on me if I was in need, but I’m just not a fan of how he goes about doing his business. He also just seems negative about most things and a lot of the things he tells me are things about how stupid he thinks the ED docs are or how someone didn’t do their job right because the x-rays from the ED weren’t at the perfect angle or basically anything about the ED in general. One time he told me about how he had to come in on Friday afternoon at like 5 to surgically repair a little girl’s broken wrist. He was complaining that he had to go in on a Friday and do a surgery that he wasn’t technically getting paid for because it was past his salaried hours or something like that. The whole time I was thinking that I would love to get the opportunity to go in and fix a little kid’s arm. Yea I know he’s older and been at it for a while, but still, I think it would be cool and really rewarding to do and I hope I never lose that feeling. However, I think that’s just him because he says that if he could have it his way he would do surgery all day every day and just do carpal tunnel releases. How incredibly boring. I spent a lot of yesterday thinking about how cool I thought his work was at first and now how boring I think the majority of it is. I had the chance to go into surgery with him yesterday but all he had was two trigger finger releases and two carpal tunnel releases. I opted out because in only three other visits with him, only 2 of which I went into surgery with him, I have seen like 5 or so carpal tunnel releases and 3 trigger finger releases and let me tell you, they don’t get any more exciting the more you see them. I could probably do a carpal tunnel release right now, that’s how easy they are. It got me thinking about what kind of practice I would like to have and what kind of procedures I want to do and how I want to treat patients. Now I know that there are always the basic procedures that you build a practice around, but I’m just hoping that there isn’t a day that I say, “I wish I could just do X surgery all day every day.”

Along those lines, I was reading an article in the New York Times recently about how doctors want to work less and have more time with their families than in the past (surprising, I know). It basically talked about a 3^rd generation doctor who, unlike her father and grandfather, decided to work in a hospital, have set hours, and have time for her family to be (she was pregnant - also something that wouldn’t happen in the past). Anyway her grandfather started his own one-man practice like 60 years ago in a small town where he did everything, but also made himself available whenever (basically permanently on call). Then his son came along and joined the practice and continued on the same lifestyle. His daughter (the pregnant doctor) told about how he would either never be home for dinner or if he was his beeper would go off and he would leave. She decided that wasn’t the route for her and decided to work in a hospital with other doctors so she could have time off. Surprisingly more and more doctors are going this route. Strange… It made me think, again, about the kind of practice I want to have. I mean my CPP doc is there 8-5 Monday-Friday and is on call one weekend a month, I believe. That’s pretty nice. I would really like to have something like that. However, I’ve heard that for ortho, it’s rarely the case. I guess we’ll see when I get to surgical rounds and can figure more stuff out. I just can’t imagine working all the time and never having time for my family and just time outside of the hospital in general. Medicine is scary. You go in young and eager to learn all you can. You’re constantly impressed by the simplest things. Then you go through the system and all of a sudden you’re a middle aged doctor who would love to have a carpal tunnel assembly line. How does that happen? I can’t imagine doing something like that. Or the majority of medicine nowadays, “Sir, you’re obese. Here’s your cholesterol meds, your blood pressure meds, etc. Now you need to start exercising and eating a healthy diet, okay?” That’s not the kind of medicine I’m signed up for.

On a completely unrelated note, I was in anatomy lab last night and we’re on superficial head and neck. I was working on a body with 2 other people and we were find nerves and whatnot on the face. Then we had to lift up the head a bit to look on the side/back part for a nerve. The skin of the scalp was no longer attached and basically pulled up in my hand and the cranium (top round part of the skull) fell off and landed on the table. It was pretty gross and the girl we were with had to step away for a minute. Pretty sure she was going to puke.  We were much more careful after that. 

welp, see ya later