Entries tagged with minimed

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My allergies have been kicking my butt lately. They’ve been bad for a week or two now, but mostly in the headache plus scratchy throat accompanied by the occasional sneezing bout and uncontrollable runny nose kind of way. Which, now that I list it all, sounds like a lot, but still. And then my chest was kinda tickly all last night, like I had to cough. Woke up this morning with full-out massive chest congestiony symptoms. Not the goodish kind where you can actually cough and make yourself feel better by getting something out—it doesn’t feel like I’m actually clogged up at all, I just have the cough tickle and the sort of labored breathing, you know?

Fail, I say. I was afraid this morning that it was because I was getting sick and not just allergies, but as it hasn’t really gotten worse throughout the day, I’m assuming not. Which is good, because I’m tripping down to Columbia (‘bout 2 hours away) on a bus with the fakey!minimed people for another leg (the last one, thankfully) of the program.

Which should be interesting. It’s all day Sunday and Monday morning. Which doesn’t make me happy in itself, because I’m only going because a) it’s free and b) we’re shadowing doctory people on Monday, but the doctoryshadowing is only a few hours. The longest part (the Sunday bits) are almost all going to be me vs. the idiots (I’m sorry that sounds pretentious and snotty and horribly bitchtastic, but they’re so dumb) on some fictional case study they’ve got going on.

That, and the schedule is really weird. Meaning I’m worried about my nutso sleeping and the food stuff. I’m afraid that every meal is going to be shitty and unhealthy and pizza and such (at least one of them is pizza, another is something else in a food court-esque place, etc.) not to mention provided at times where I’m not at all hungry, and I’m going to end up not being able to eat all weekend. I planned on bringing some soup and veggies and other healthy food type things along, since the hotel we’re in has both a microwave and a fridge in every room (it’s freaking swank—we’re talking more than $100 a night standard rates for this place) but it turns out we’re only going to actually get to the hotel for the first time after 9:30pm on Sunday and leave again (presumably not to return) really early on Monday to go do more stuff. Which restricts what I can bring along with me, because that means we’re probably leaving our clothes and stuff on the bus while we do most of the stuff, meaning I’d have to lug whatever food I wanted to bring for the day on Sunday around with me. Along with whatever food they provide that I decide to stash in my bag for later rationing/sharing/saving until I’m hungry—necessary because I’ve been eating my biggest/highest caloric meal around 2am lately because I’m fail like that, and when I screw with my system too drastically I get migraines, which would really manage to ruin the weekend in a lickedysplit type manner.

But yes. Yay for that in a not-so-much-yay type of way. The shadowing will hopefully make up for it, providing I got matched with somebody in the emergency department. If I’m chasing around somebody from the path lab, I’m going to be pissed. Because I have to call my boss today (I’ve been putting it off because I feel bad because I know I’m really leaving him in the lurch) and tell him that sorry, I can’t work on Sunday night because I’m going to be out of town, and since I don’t have anybody who can cover for me . . . sosorry. I want him to just call the coaches of the volleyball teams and ask them if we can cancel Sunday and tack another day on the schedule at the end, because that way I still get paid, but idk if that’ll happen. He’ll prolly either get one of his daughters to sit up there and just keep score (since I’m pretty sure none of them can ref) or try to do it himself. Still. Prefer, I would, the money.

Got free tickets from school to a baseball game for Tuesday evening, which might be nice. I’m not interested in baseball, really, but just going out to the thing is most of the fun. It’s for the Character Council (promoting character education, blah, blah) thing I’ve been sort of taking the lead on this year. Which I’ve been really enjoying, actually. I’ve developed a quite nice relationship with one of the administrators (Mr. S.) that is in charge of the program because of it—he really recognizes both the work I’ve been doing and that I’ve got interest in doing it and has been seeking me out for other leadershippy things, both related and not, which makes me rather proud. Plus, he’s just a pretty awesome guy all around—I was in his office yesterday on a conference call to give feedback on a panel/conference on cyber bullying that I went to back in October through the Council, and afterwards we were talking about everything from school policy on things to his personal history; he reminds me a bit of my dad—managed to turn things around from a poor family where nobody went to college and barely graduating high school (him)/having to drop out of college to work (my dad) to having several degrees and working in education and co-owning a swanktastic French restaurant (this is where my dad diverges, because unfortunately, this is not a possession of ours, LOL) and such. And we (there was another girl in there for the feedbacking too; actually the daughter of my theatre teacher of previous years, point of interest) were talking about religious stereotypes—she’s Southern Baptist, which people hear and go “OMG, conservative”, as with my Catholicism; Mr. S.’s grandparents were Orthodox Jews but were unexpectedly really cool with him marrying a Gentile, etc. And he bought us sodas afterwards, which was the cementer him into the winnage column.

But Character Council leadershippyness continues, as we’ve got some kind of national character award evaluator people coming in week after next and I’ve been fingered to be one of the two smarmy, lead them around type people, which is a big deal because most of their information about us and what we do is thus going to end up coming from me and my choices of places to take them to see “character in action”. Kinda high-pressure when I think about it. Which is why I’ve been choosing not to as of yet.; Mr. S.’s going to take me through a bit of what they want to hear, what it’s going to be like, that kind of thing on Thursday, methinks--after we have the discussion period on Wednesday that we’re going to part-reproduce/part-critique when the guys come the week after. The day the national people are coming is the day of the all-day Special Olympics thing that I’ve done for the past couple of years, though, which makes me sad, because I really like doing that and I’m going to have to miss it. I don’t think I got to do it last year either because of some big test I had that day, so doublesuckage.

Indeed. I’ll be leaving for home in a few minutes, then it’s callage of the volleyball boss, then to Shop N’ Save to return the nectarine that they shafted me on; $1.07 for one piece of fruit, which is frakking outrageous in the first place, but then it was totally worthless because it had been frozen and had that nasty, ex-frozen, mealy texture—no way I wasn’t taking that back. When I went by last night, though, the lady couldn’t give me my money back because it was after the hours that the customer service/cashbox desk was open and policy was to not give any cash back then (why she couldn’t slip me a freaking dollar out of the register, idk) and they didn’t have any new nectarines to swap it with (not that I’d really want to anyway—when one’s frozen, chances are the whole batch has been exposed to the same conditions). Should be a new batch today, she said in between being bitchtastic (it’s always the same lady when I go there after going to the gym, and she’s always got this huffy, exasperated attitude that really pisses me off), so I might just swap the fruit out, but idk if I want to chance having to do the whole thing again if this one’s bad too.

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So the teacher from my school with whom we go to this Saturday Scholars/stupid people!minimed? I hate that I can't decide what to think about him.

I've never been a student of his, but he used to be the person who sort of watched over the people waiting for the late bus, and he learned my name and we'd talked several times. A nice guy. Always said hello in the hallway, etc. I liked him.

Come to this fakey!minimed thing. First day of it (two weeks ago yesterday), we're in the hallway outside the anatomy lab dumping our stuff so we can get gowned and gloved and in there, and he mentions having forgotten to bring the smelling salts (or something; I didn't quite catch exactly what he called it, but that's what it was). He then turns to me (and only me): "You don't get nauseous, do you?" Me: "No. I mean, in cars when I'm trying to read, and when I'm sick, and. . . no?" I didn't get it at first, because I was trying to reconcile smelling salts with nausea, until it clicked--he was afraid I, being of the weaker sex, was going to get dizzy, sick, and pass out at the sight of preserved cadavers. I wouldn't have had a problem if he'd asked the whole group of people from our school, but he singled out me, as the only female.

Yeah. So miffed about that. To the point that I suffered through a migraine this Saturday (though oddly, one with no headache, just nausea--that's a new thing, though I definitely prefer it to getting the whole shebang, but it took me a while to figure out that that's what it was and not the salmon from the night before) while at the program even though I was pretty sure (turned out I was wrong, but still) I had a migraine pill in my bag right outside the lab, simply because I couldn't admit that I was feeling sick whilst in the presence of the cadavers for fear of justifying his earlier comments.

And then today. One of the med school presenters was asking some anatomy questions all quiz-style as a recap during part of the lecture. I knew all the answers, no surprise, because they weren't hard. (Though evidently I'm the only one who's heard of the hepatic portal vein? Or, you know, knew any of them?) But said teacher decided to hiss the answers in my ear even though my hand was already up to give the answer (though not very high, so I doubt he saw). I ended up just putting my hand down and not bothering for the rest, because by saying anything, I would be giving the answer he fed me and not the one I was planning to give, even though they were identical. Does that make any sense? I've been trying to figure out how to phrase that to bring the feeling across for a while now, and it's not quite happening. Anywho. offended, I was. I don't know why he chose me to feed the answers to and not the other three people there with our group--perhaps because he felt I'd be more receptive to actually raising my hand and giving them, idk--but I didn't like it.

So I've been getting this really patronizing vibe off of him lately, which is sad, because I liked him. And I don't think he realizes he's doing it--it's not out of any kind of chauvinistic intent, methinks, but maybe some twisted form of chivalry? Or not any of these things and I'm reading too far into stuff, permaybehaps.

I started updating this about the last few mock trials on Friday, but I wrote the beginnings out in a Word file and then left it on the computers at school, so that'll have to wait. Tuesday's regionals round 2, though (and the day I said I'd meet to work on this f!mmed presentation we have to do, which I'm going to have to reneg on, as I'd forgotten about mock trial when I said the date was okay), which should be interesting, as we're hitting (I think I've mentioned, but maybe not) one of the teams that we shouldn't, by all rights, be hitting until the state rounds. They changed the rules of ranking and matching again, so according to the results going into Regionals, we were ranked either 3rd or 2nd (depending on if you calculated rankings by the new rules: point differential between you and who you beat, or the old rules: number of points) and due to the ending of the power matching stuff (to stop the best teams from knocking each other out too early in the competition, the group that went on was split in half by ranking and #1 hit the top person from the bottom half, etc.), we're hitting the number 1 team on Tuesday. Gah. So expecting to move to State this year we are not. Especially with all the casting mixups going on lately--a good half of our people are doing something different/additional during Regionals than they did in Prelims.

AND MY DOG IS ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM BUT IS PASSING SO MUCH GAS THAT I THINK I'M GOING TO HAVE TO LEAVE OR DIE FROM THE STENCH. FAIL.

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So I'm at this Saturday Scholars program right now (they've got computers at some of the tables in the cafe area we're at, which is amazing). Should be well on my way home from it, but they're bussing us to the Science Center to look at that Bodyworlds exhibit, with the plasticized human bodies and such. I'm not that interested in it, honestly, as I feel like I've gotten all I could get from it by just looking at the pictures of the plasticized bodies--it doesn't seem like there's all that much of a difference seeing them in person.

The whole program's so basic that it's a waste of my time, to be honest. There's an hour and a half or so on basic anatomy of one body system (cardiovascular last week, respiratory this week, gastro. next, I think), where nothing new is presented and what have to be some of the stupidest people in the city ask questions that make no sense and prove that they've obviously been living in some completely different world than the rest of us when it comes to knowledge about the body. Then the anatomy lab, which is okay, but we spend far too long in there, IMO. We saw the bodies last week, so this week was somewhat pointless except to sort of reinforce the respiratory anatomy stuff for the people that didn't know it. Then the medical library, where they show us basic websites and such to prepare for the presentation we have to give on some of the stupidest topics possible (okay, not stupid, but not fun like I'd like--ours is Crohn's. I wanted Twin-to-Twin-Transfusion-Syndrome, but we had to pick from a list and I wasn't even there when our group chose). Tomorrow's medical library presentation is on public speaking. Joy.

I'm currently avoiding the pizza table like the plague as we wait to leave for the Science Center (I mean, come on. What kind of thing provides lunch that's only pizza? Not even a bloody salad), which is not easy, considering we were in the dissection room a bit before and the formalin's (I think that's what it was--the bodies' preservatives, whatever they were) appetite increasing effects are quite evident. And there are people holding a conversation over my head, which is really pissing me off. Shouting, they are, with one of the parties leaning right over my head (from a sort of split level bit) to do it. Jesus, just move down here, there are plenty of tables on this side of the divide. Plus, erm, not so much with the you leaning over the rail and spying on my typage, thanks.

I think I'm going to post this now, though I'm not done, so I can run up and see if there's any Diet Coke left up there. I'd leave this, but I can't guarantee that nobody'll snatch the computer, so no. And gah, evidently this compy doesn't even have Word. What? How can I do my spellcheckage to make sure I didn't type something stupid (I hate LJ's checker--it's worthless, IME).

Must return to explain about Mock Trial (regionals, here we come--except for fail in that they're TUESDAY) and such.

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So there needs to be a major update in here somewhere for the past few days (really short one: no school Thursday or Friday because of the ice, mock trial pushed to Tuesday, walked almost all the way to the gym through the ice/snow on Thursday to prove a point, made a really awesome omelet this morning, etc.) but for now I'm going to settle with talking about how today is going to go.

Short answer? I've got no idea.

There's this Saturday Scholars medical program (which shall now be tagged under "minimed" since I've done all of those and feel like recycling) that I found out I got accepted to all of Friday afternoon, which means I'm downtown at the medical school all morning. Should be fun, I'm hoping, and there are a lot of cool things that go along with it (at some point, we're getting bussed down to a different med school to stay overnight and shadow doctors and such, and one or more of the Saturdays takes place in the cadaver lab [!!]). I know very little about it, however, as it was always presented to me in just about as many words as I've just summarized it--this is the thing I had to write the "favorite booth" essay from the health careers fair to get into, idk if I mentioned that when I went to the latter.

On a side note of that. I don't know how I feel about this cadaver lab bit. I'm really interested in how I'll react to it. I've seen real surgeries and autopsies and tons of like stuff in educational videos, and I've seen little procedures on live people in person, and I've dissected various animals and such, but it's different when there's a real ~~live~~ person being dissected. I'm positive that I won't have a problem with it, but a good large chunk of why I'm looking forward to it is because I want to quasi-objectively check out how I respond.

But next comes my random scholarship interview. Which is a good 3, 3.5 hours drive away. And at 4:30. Meaning I've got to leave from the one and go pretty much straight to the other. Here's the thing, though. It's not enough time to look around the place. I'm going to get there right before I've got to walk into the office for the interview and since it's a Saturday evening, everything will be closed by the time I'm done and we'll have to leave rightquickedy in order to get home at a reasonable hour. And gas just hit $3 a gallon. (Okay, 2.98, but still.) Edit: And did I mention, I'm one of some 260 interviewers for 40 scholarships. Not the worst odds, especially when you consider my test scores and such, but not the best, either. The school's people offered the option of conducting the interview over phone if we have to due to weather concerns (as it's still icy as all getout around here and presumably in other parts of the state as well) as a last resort. ("If possible, we will call you at or about your assigned interview time and allow you to conduct your interview with our panel via telephone. If we do not contact you by phone at that time, we will contact you early during the week of February 25 regarding options.") I'm thinking about taking them up on this. It's probably going to hurt me in terms of getting the scholarship, though, due to the whole "getting to know you" part that will be missing over the phone. But I really don't want to have to drive 7 hours for a 20 minute interview when I'm going to have to drive out some other time to check out the campus anyway. Add to that the fact that there's car concern--the one we were going to take has been acting up again and the van would cost us $90 billion in gasoline money because it's. . . a van--and I'm definitely presenting the option to the parents. I'd almost rather the school chose to reschedule the interview than do it over the phone, because that'd give me a chance to go down there on a day when I had time to look around and remove the impersonality issues (and the fact that PHONES = HAET) of doing it telephonically.

Either way, I've got to take a shower and get to bed, as I've got to be at my school to caravan down to the med school at 8 in the morning (OMG, only 5 hours) and I got very little sleep this afternoon due to constant interruptage (which seems to be happening a lot lately--no, I do not want to talk to the person from the National Guard, thanks, now stop waking me up!).

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The nausea from my restarting the birth control? Overwhelming. I was sick all morning today, and then randomly (which had never happened before) also sick all evening. Except for then I was all OMG, DILEMMA. I couldn't figure out whether the huge increase in nausea in the evening was because of the pill or because as I'd been nauseated all day to various degrees, all day I hadn't eaten more than a bowl of oatmeal in the afternoon.

So I was afraid to cook something because thinking about food is making me nauseated enough by itself, but I was afraid not to just in case it is something like low blood sugar which I can fix, because this is frakking miserable. It may have been this severe before, but never this long-running. I'm pretty sure it's due to the combination of the amoxicillin for the root canal (which--along with my mouth in general from holding it open--hurts, btw, because I had an appointment on Tuesday where they drilled out the old filling, poked around a bit, and then temp-filled it back up and then refused to give me any pain medication) and the birth control, because there's no other explanation for the night nausea, as the bc usually only makes me sick about 8 hours after I take it (maybe earlier, but before that I'm prolly asleep still).

But I did. Choked down half of one of those big rectangular crackers, and have now moved on to trying a bit of protein in the form of a scrambled fakey-egg type thing.

Unfortunately, it appears to not have been low blood sugar. The nausea has subsided a bit (but that may be because by now, the night wave has been going on for 4.5 hours), but it's nowhere near gone. So there is now half of a microwaved fakey-egg thing in a bowl next to me, because I don't know if it's worth trying to force the rest of it down when it's obviously not helping and just typing about the prospect of it is making me ill.

I'm almost to the point of trying to find a doctor I can call right now for a script for Compazine or some such (even though the Minimed presenting doctor talked about how that was one of the medicines that can induce Parkinsonian symptoms, LOL), because I've got homework to do and sleep I should be getting and I can't concentrate (or really do anything but sit here with my hands over my face) when every time I move my head even a little, I have to internally debate whether I need to run to the bathroom because I'm going to throw up or not.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I should add migraine to the list of possibilities. I've only really ever had one really bad one (I'm more of a tension/hay fever/cluster headache kind of girl), but I seem to remember the nausea being like this. I don't have the tunnel vision that usually comes with them, though, nor an actually headache, so idk. Added to the differential anyway.

Edit again: Gah. As I expected, nothing's open but the ER, and I'm not going to bother them for dumb nausea, especially since ~~it's gotten tolerable~~ I'm not constantly feeling like I'm urgently going to vomit anymore unless I make the mistake of moving any part of my body. Though during my searching, interestingly enough, I found that in July one of those urgent care centers is going to be opening only a bit more than a 1/2 mile walk from my house. Were it 8 months later and 6 hours earlier, I'd be golden.

As it stands, I really can't see going to school in the morning having been this sick for this many hours (we're up to five now, not even counting the couple in the morning) all night. But I have to, as I already missed one day in this four-day week, and like I griped about then, am already at least one day over the semester limit to still get credit without makeups.

IDK. I'm prolly going to go wake my mother up (which I hate to do, because she's got to get up even earlier than I do) to see if maybe there's something in the house left over that could help with the nausea. This is not cool.

AND. Has just remembered that I need to take another amoxicillin something like nowish (or earlier). Yeah. That's going to happen.

Edit again again (because this is turning into an all-night saga, as sitting on the couch with the laptop is something I can actually do--or maybe because moving away from the laptop is looking like it's going to make me hurl): So I did actually get up for a moment, and asked my mother, and she pointed me to this Trimethobenzamide stuff in the very back of one of the medicine cabinets. God knows how old it is, but I remember taking it once before, so I figured I'd try it. It was in the wrong prescription bottle, though, so I googled it to make sure this was the stuff I wanted. Tis the stuff I wanted, but, erm, evidently this stuff was banned by the FDA in April for not working.

That's not enough of a deterrent for me, though, because if there's even the slightest chance of this working, I'm trying it. I'm just trying to make sure that there wasn't another reason attached that they're not reporting, just in case it causes hair loss or cancer or something. Aparece que no, it's just the not working.

So yes. I'm going to take this, then prolly go lie down (my bedroom's closer to the toilet anyway, if the path is a little more treacherous due to the fact that I've got piles of clothes on the floor in my room still from the last time I was trying to sort things out/clean up. LOL, hopefully saga end for the night.

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Yet another dentist appointment has gone by where the receptionists were obnoxious, the drive there and back was long, the time waited in the office was both long and tedious, and after getting myself psyched up (as much as one can) for pain and misery, nothing happened.

I'm so tired of wasting time and gas money at these places. This time it was because they needed insurance information (my mother's SSN, which they expected me to know, idk why) and couldn't do anything without it. (After, btw, taking an xray of my mouth without putting the lead on me, so if I have no functioning thyroid tomorrow, this is why.) The idiot receptionist (after/before/in between explaining back to me and my father in a quite patronizing manner and at least 8 times exactly what I had told her in the beginning was wrong with the tooth) finally decided to call the insurance company (wonder of wonders; I sure wouldn't have thought of that--oh, right. I suggested it a good 45 minutes before she did so) and found out how much they'd cover (there was issue of it being a retreatment--though I explained that it shouldn't be, as the root-canal-initiating dentist told me they weren't charging at all after she botched it--and thus maybe they not covering for a certain amount of time after the initial one), but by then, she had wasted so much time that I just got sent home.

Then had to go by the eye doctor to pick up my new glasses (it was closer to the dentist than home, but only a bit short of equidistant in a totally different direction), and then my dad and I went for lunchishdinner (it was like 5pm, which is way earlier than I usually eat, but was still considered dinner by the restaurant) in a place that should have been about halfway between where we were and home, but we ended up getting lost, so it took way longer than it should of.

All together, I got home, didn't even sit down before heading out to MiniMed. (Which was, interestingly, rhumatoid arthritis and lupus. Which made me laugh, because it's never lupus.)

When I finally got home, I ended up freaking because I was getting yelled at for things I didn't do, and I couldn't find the keys with the passes to the gym, even though it was 10pm (and then 10:15, and 10:30, and 10:45, and 11pm as I kept frantically looking) and later than I should go on a school night. Because since we went out to eat today, not exactly the best day to skip (even though I don't usually go on minimed nights).

Current Mood: listless

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So. Internet's been down since early Wednesday, no idea why. Just came back on late this evening. The most annoying bit was that the entire time, the DSL box thingie said it was okay.

Mock trial tomorrow. I find that I don't care at all. In fact, I'm rather pissed about it. I feel like it's cutting off the last days of my vacation. But get this. We've got to go two rounds, one Friday evening and one on Saturday. I figured the one on Saturday would be at a civilized hour. But no. After a week of sleeping poorly (my allergies have been hell these past two weeks, getting worse any time I try to lie down) and not going to bed until 3 or 4 and getting up around noon, I'm supposed to be downtown by 7:45 in the morning? Meaning I'd have to leave home prolly around 7:00 because it takes about half an hour and that time sounds to me like right around rush hour, no? WTF? I don't want to do this in the first place because I'm tired of the case (because it sucked to begin with) and I don't feel like we deserved to make it this far at all. We're only in because some other team dropped out and that cheapens it somehow. The season was supposed to be over in February, we've gone two trials past normal and now we're expected to do this horrible case for two more? It's also futile, not only because we're a totally new team to this (nobody from our school's ever made it to regionals, let alone state, I believe) but because everybody hates the case and is as tired of the whole thing as I am. Plus, I've got a new lawyer for when I'm being a witness and a new witness for when I'm being a lawyer, neither of whom I have practiced with more than once.
Well, shit. I had counted on time on Saturday morning/afternoon to memorize my questions and other lawyery stuff again. Because nobody's touched this in two weeks minimum because we didn't practice over break. In fact, we've only practiced once since regionals (again, because everybody's tired of it) and that was what, three weeks ago? I dunno. I don't like having to do it because stretching it out so long is all but killing it for me.

My face is being a whore. I don't know if perhaps it's from the general allergies that have been killing me lately (though nothing like that's ever happened before) but it's like the entire thing's sunburned. And it's most definitely not, as the only times I've left the house this week have been for a couple of quickish runs to the store. It feels all sensitive and weird. And my cheeks are so killer dry that right along the cheekbone they're bright red and actually all sunburny painful. And then I tried to put lotion stuff on the dry bits and the entire both sides of my face turned bright red and hot and painful and reaction-like. (Of course, this was right before minimed, so I imagine I looked quite entertaining with my hair pulled down in front of my face and bright red peeking out under it. Hurt like a bitch.) This wasn't lotion I'd ever used before, okay, so that's the problem. I tried to wipe off as much as I could in the car on the way to minimed, but no luck stopping/slowing the reaction. It was gone by the time I got home (but the red painful cheekbones weren't) and I tried some moisturizer stuff I had used before and had no problem with, and even as I stood there in front of the mirror my face started to turn red again. I was able to wipe that off quickly enough that it didn't last long, thankfully. But it's bothersome. I don't get why my face is being so sensitive and annoying. You'd think with the anti-histamine stuff I've been taking lately before bed that I would be less likely to have something like this happen, no? Odd.

Minimed was interesting. Bariatric surgery, which I didn't think was at all interesting but ended up being rather intriguing, especially when the doctor lady showed video of an actual lap-band surgery. Which was wicked. But confusing, as the camera was close to whatever was being worked on and it was hard to get a grasp of the big picture with it so close. (I kept being all "So that's the stomach. No, no, liver. That's the stomach? Over in that corner? Umm, okay. Not what they're working on? No? Ahh, they're cutting the hepatogastric ligament. But isn't that, err, helpful in the whole peritoneal membrane thing? No big problems with hernia after? Okay. Whatever you say." I think I needed more explanation than the lady was giving as she narrated along with the video and answered completely random questions at the same time.) The second guy had an interesting title for his lecture (The Hot Zone: Pediatric Infectious Disease), but from that I expected cool diseases that were life-threatening and, you know, cool, especially after hearing that he worked with the Center for Disease Control. Instead it was all about vaccines. He was very much of the opinion that everybody should get vaccines all the time. Which is interesting, because I've been hearing a lot of anti-vaccine stuff from my parents all of a sudden lately. But he wasn't nearly as good of a speaker as the first presenter was, unfortunately. I would have liked to see him with children, as he seemed rather timid the entire time, which I thought could simply be explained by his having to talk in front of people, but he was the same way when I came up after to ask a question.
But then my ride was 30 minutes late and I had to stand outside the building which was annoying and not altogether comfortable as it was downtown at almost 10pm and dark (though the sidewalk I was standing on was lit, thankfully).

Oh, and what the hell is up with the weather? It was 83 degrees-of-the-F-persuasion on Tuesday afternoon. 76 or so tonight at 7pm. It's March, for frak's sake, and we had to turn on the bloody air conditioning on Tuesday. Which is undoubtedly why my allergies have been working overtime lately. Not fun, I say. Not fun at all.

Current Mood: nervous

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There's an ad for House above my email box! You know with Yahoo how you've got "Yahoo Mail" and then a little banner ad and then the main email thing with "Mail, Addresses, Calendar, Notepad" and so forth on down the page? That's where it is. Yay for adverts for tonight's ep. Which I won't get to see for several days due to the fact that I'm going to make somebody take me up to mini medical school this week. But the lecture's going to be about ethics in medicine, which is cool.

Ahh. Studying. Yeah. Going now. Both of these are really important as the bio teacher told us that this is the biggest whore of a test this semester and my grade in math, as previously reported, sucks arse.

Ooh, next week Denver is playing San Diego in football. Nice. I think we might lose, though. As they seem to be sort of better. Though we've been tied in standings most of the season. So maybe.

Current Mood: (cautiously) pessimistic

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Election not looking as good for the Democrats as I had anticipated. I wonder how much of it was the Kerry thing that screwed it. Because, compared to all the stuff that the Republicans have had hit them lately, that was nothing. Yet it was really close to the election. And though people seemed to be making a big deal out of it, it was mostly through jokes about how that was going to lose the election for the Democrats, not even seriously. But polling before seemed to be much more Democrat favorable than the results that are coming in now are. I'm doubting the Democrats are going to get the senate, as it's pretty much looking certain that they're not going to get MO and out of the 5 big contested states, they could only lose one and still take control. MO is going to be the one. And the other states look pretty Republican leaning to me.

Didn't pass a couple of things I wanted passed (tobacco tax? I was a fan of that bitch), passed a whole bunch of stupid crap changing the town charter for my municipality basically giving the aldermen unlimited power, and my district is stuck pretty heavily republican House-wise. Which is dumb, as I pretty much live in the ghetto. Though I suppose the district probably incorporates the rich people on the other side of the town too.

So yeah. Worked at the fakey kids elections today for like 7 hours. Craziness. Talked quite a bit with this law student from SLU, though, who was cool. Got a headache again, so didn't go to the liberal union meeting. I think that makes two in a row I've missed. Bad.

I've had really really bad headaches for the past four days or so, and they're getting really annoying as I can do even less work. I'm thinking they're yet another stress manifestation. I'm not even trying to do anything anymore. I can't. I was feeling better but now I'm not and as it stands, I don't even know if I'm going to pass this quarter because I've been doing so badly and really don't see being able to do any better, as I'm just sinking farther and farther under.

So. To recap. Election: bad. Headache: bad. Me not doing work and never going to get in to college: bad. House episode: good.

Speaking of. OMG, House slipped up. Now Cameron knows. She doesn't believe it was just a joke. No way. I think she can figure it out. She knows now. Which is yayyayyay for Cameron/Cuddy shippers como yo. So is Cuddy yelling at House and then finding out it was Cameron who really did it and that Cameron had a good explanation and then looking like she was fighting to keep the disapproving face on just for show but was really proud that Cameron stood up to her like that. When Hugh said the line something like "Because I can't come up with any more amusing things to say", he totally slipped up at the end and started laughing. I wonder why they used that take. A little quirky smile would be like House, but that was a little too much of a laugh. Were I the director, I would have reshot that scene.

Yeah, and I watched House because my little sister had her parent-teacher conferences so both of my parents had to go to that and couldn't take me downtown for the tour of the medical school. Because even though I didn't really care about the lectures today (this time I actually wasn't interested, not just apathetic, as they were glaucoma and diabetes and I don't care about glaucoma and I know diabetes), I really wanted to go on the tour. So I'm rather pissed about that, seeing as how it was probably the one of the extra minimed things that I wanted to do most and they both didn't really have to go to her conference. So good in that I got to watch House, bad in that I didn't go on the tour. And bad that there was no SVU because of stupid elections.

Also bad? The 6 million emails I had yesterday and today from all these different people reminding me to vote for their endorsed candidates. And I really want to know who's got my name and is giving it to everybody, as I'm getting regular mail every day from random stuff I don't care about. Such as yesterday's letter from the Cheech and Chong fan club. Or some kind of marijuana people. Personally? I'm not a fan of drugs. So you're just wasting your mail on me.

Oh, oh, oh! Ha! Perhaps not as bad as I thought, the elections. The Republican (Talent) has some 60,000 more votes than the Democrat (McCaskill), but the 53% reporting is only hickville MO, it appears. They just mentioned vaguely that St. Louis and Kansas City haven't reported in yet. What, both urban with some 8 universities between them? Meaning young people and African-Americans have pretty much not been counted yet, so there's still a chance. I was wondering why they weren't just calling it as he's got a 4 or 5% lead. This is why. I still don't hold out a whole lot of hope, as MO has been pretty Republican in the past bunch of elections, but it's not as far gone as I had thought.

So yes. Cautiously optimistic seems to be the phrase of the day. Call me cautiously pessimistic.

Current Mood: ecstatic

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minimed

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So this is from a while ago. Meaning Tuesday the 17th. But I never posted it because my internet has been off. Grr. So here it is.

Mini Med? OMG*dies*amazing! This was the one where we got to play with the laparoscopy stuff and suturing. The guy that presented stuff for surgery at the beginning (like normal, with lecture and slides) had video. And I'm geeking out here in the back row, lamenting the fact that I can't see horridly well as I accidentally left my glasses at school today, just watching this laparoscopic cholecystectomy (there were some other video clips, one of a mesh insertion for a hernia repair, but this was the longest and most complete one) and grinning my ass off because it was so cool.

And then we went down to the suturing, where we played with real needles and sutures and drivers and pickups on this foam+batting (like from a quilt)+plywood thing. Natalie (whom I've known since we were in the elementary gifted program together and who is in my Spanish and English classes) and I went down to the room that we were going to do the suturing in and there was only one med student looking person that was going to teach in there, and she was up at the front, so we wanted to go up there, but that table was full. So we went to the back where there was room, and then more teaching type people came in, and somebody (one of the residents that was teaching) asked 2 people from our table to move to the one next to it so the two were even and she could move from one to the other to teach both tables, but both Natalie and I for some reason felt like we should stay where we were, which ended up majorly paying off. Because you can probably imagine my little internal freakout when who else came to sit next to us to do the teaching than Dr. freaking Cynthia Wichelman, the assistant professor of emergency medicine who was in charge of the whole minimed thing.

She ended up learning Natalie's name because Natalie was having trouble with the stitchage, which ~~sort of~~ made me jealous (because she is the one who above everyone else I want to learn who I am) but then she was all with the complementage as we were fast and I got the small, tight, lined up stitches with the smaller needle (which was thin and a little less than 2cm long, as opposed to the one that was like 6cm that we started on and most of the other tables stayed using the whole time) thing going on pretty quickly, which made me happy. Though I did have a bit of trouble with the knots at the very beginning, which I realized was because I was trying to hold my right wrist with the needle driver like I would my viola bow (not the fingers but the arm position) and my elbow needed to be in farther so I wasn't completely inverting my wrist for every bite I took. But Dr. Wichelman had me come over and sit right next to her (*yay!yay!yay*) so she could show me what I was doing wrong (as originally Natalie was next to me and there was an open space between her and the doctor) and I got it then right away. And the doctor was muy impressed by how fast our group (Natalie and I plus a father and daughter) got everything.

So then we moved to the research laparoscopy lab in a different building (which you totally can't get in or out of without all kinds of clearance, as it's an animal research place) and got to look at the cameras and general ORish setup (it wasn't like the operating theatre type that I imagined, but apparently looked pretty standard, though smaller, for the hospital's general O.R.s). And we got to play with a fakey setup of the scope and the grabber bits and try to tie knots in this surgical tie thing and move little beads and jacks and stuff around in this boxish thing (that slightly resembled a chest cavity, as I assume it was supposed to).

And the last place (it was sort of rotationy as we had so many people) still in the laparo area was with this nursing student named Laura who's been working (not as a nursing student, but just as post-undergrad stuff; nursing student makes her sound inexperienced and it was very much the opposite) in research a lot, for the last while with the laparo guys, and she explained some stuff about what they actually are doing in that place (lots of pig stuff, one thing being organic mesh for hernia repair versus the synthetic with laparo installation, stuff like that). We didn't have a whole lot of time there, as we were already just about at the time we were supposed to end. So everybody was starting to leave.

And then I started asking aforementioned research lady all these questions. Mostly about education and what she was doing and how the research fit in to her wanting to be a nurse practitioner and undergrad research and stuff. Kept talking. She walked down with me all the way out of the building, into the education building that we started in where we left our stuff (which wasn't a very short way, completely out of one building which took a while as we were way back and up in some corner, and then 3 blocks or so, upstairs again into the lecture room of the edu building), we stopped in there and were talking for quite a bit, got my stuff, started walking back, and she kept putting up with my questions and walked all the way to the car with me. The entire trip to the education building was the totally opposite way she needed to go, as she had left her stuff in the laparo place.

We were talking for like 30 minutes.

I'm in so much love.

She actually was listening, and I could tell that she was paying attention to everything I said (she had the whole very active listening thing going on, facing sideways on the escalator so we could keep talking and pausing talking the two times we went through the revolving doors so she was sure that both of us were able to hear what the other was saying) and she thought my questions were good and she asked stuff back about what I was doing/want to do and I'm pretty sure she enjoyed talking to me and she went quite a bit out of her way to continue the conversation past when everybody else had left, going all the way out to my freaking car where we stood for a bit so we could finish talking (though the car was on her way back to the lapro building). I don't think that I have ever had someone (especially someone older than me who'd been working already that day and undoubtedly wanted to get home and do other things) listen so well and be so receptive to and encouraging of my incessant questioning. I was so impressed. So talking to her definitely made the whole thing even better (though suturing and laparoscopy was already OMGcool).

So I think I've sort of got one of my crazy admiration-infatuation things going on now. Though I'm pretty sure (though more than one part of me really, really hopes not) that I'm probably not ever going to see her again. (Do you ever think about that? Like, you've met this person and had a conversation and you enjoyed it and each other and it's such a shame that you'll probably not meet again because you think that you could be good friends. I sort of wish that I was older and could have asked for her phone number or something, just so maybe we could talk again. Because I really very much enjoyed her company.) Laura is really pretty and really, really nice and smart and works in medicine, all of which are pretty much my major (for lack of a better word) turn-ons. And I sort of got that flutter; not the 'OMG do me now!' flutter but the 'You're so cool and you're actually interested in me' flutter (nobody probably has any idea what I'm talking about) when we were talking, particularly when she touched my arm (I totally cannot remember why she touched my arm or what specifically we were talking about at the time because my memory sucks and I sort of think that then was really when I was thinking about how lucky I am that I had that rotation last and that she was there and that I actually had the nerve to go ask her something, but I can completely imagine exactly how she looked when she did it). Which sounds really sexual, the remembering what she looked like when she did it more than the point she was making, but this is how all my minicrush type things go. Though there's an element of that, the majority of it is "I want to learn everything you know." They're more intellectual crushes than anything.

But I had a couple of questions about the actual pig procedure things that I didn't ask her when we were talking because we were talking more about the educational stuff and research in general than the specific stuff they were doing right then. (And when I came home, I know I mentioned both questions to my mother, and after I got to telling her the second one she was like "You really ought to email her and ask" and I was like "Definitely", but I couldn't remember the first question already. My short term memory has a capacity of nothing.) I'd like to ask her about them. But I can't find an email for her (though I know the students get emails) as for the studies she's listed online as working on or as the contact person for, the email given is the one of the physician supervisor. So I can't find one that will go specifically to Laura. Which makes me sad. I figure I'll try and just guess (first initial + last name @ school abbreviation.edu tends to be how they go, so hopefully LTodt @ wustl.edu will work), as it's better than nothing and I'm actually pretty interested. I just really hope that I can come up with the other question. Because this is bugging me. I thought I almost had it again a second ago, but nope.

(Just so I don't forget, I wanted to ask about how they strip the cells from the pig skin to implant it as an alternative to the synthetic mesh they use to repair hernias and whether this is used for humans [though the skin thing as hernia/AAA repair is experimental still, hence the pigs] and how much it cuts down on rejection and whether they need less anti-rejection meds.)

So anyway. Was going to post this tonight (meaning Tuesday night, though by the time I've just finished, it's ~~1am~~ 1:40am Wednesday) but dad decided to turn off the internet again. I love how he does this because he doesn't want me to be up all night. He doesn't realize that I've got enough stuff writing/vidding/episode watching wise that I don't need the internet to stay up all night. (Not that I'm going to, as this is the 3rd night in a row that I've been up too late. It's already later than I wanted to be up, but I had to get all this down so I didn't forget. Not that I particularly think I would, but still.)

I figure this is long enough for one post. (If only my fics and in-class history and English essay-tests were this long.) It's unlikely that anybody will read all the way through this (though I find I'm actually more apt to read long posts because they catch my eye scrolling down my friends page and it makes me think that the person actually has something to talk about), and I'm probably just ticking everybody off because they've got 6 pages of my text to scroll past now. So I'm going to leave out how the assholes at school didn't read my ally week announcement. Remind me about that. That's going to get ranted on.

Current Mood: tired

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Bobbi Bernstein was coming from St. Louis in the Sports Night episode 1.19 "Eli's Coming". Which really entertains me a lot more than it should. Lisa E talking about sports shouldn't be this hot.
"I turned into quite the babe, didn't I?" Was anybody else vehemently nodding in agreement there?

So *is exhausted*. The Alzheimer's neuropathology thing wasn't as cool as I had hoped, mostly because that same stupid guy who has thought it was his personal consultation time with doctors every week so far continued to ask stupid questions to things off the topic the guy was presenting on and on things he'd already covered. And all the old people crowded around the table and nobody else could see. There was one lady who was very nice, talking to me (I thought she was a business student from her nametag, later I found out that she works at the school and has a kid only a bit younger than me. I really suck at guessing ages.) and making sure I could see when even she couldn't very well because of all the stupid tall old guys. That and we were standing for a while and I was already tired and we ran over with the macroscopy bit and the microscopy slides had to be rushed through and because the guy wasn't a terrific speaker (he was obviously a pathologist, not a teacher) I was struggling to stay awake at some bits.

But I've got to finish writing the announcement for ally week (as I'm trying to get it all phrased correctly, but the guy that reads them does it so horridly anyway that it doesn't matter) and then I'm just going to get to bed. Even when I'm not staying up late the night before, I'm really tired. This is not good.

Current Mood: okay

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First presentation on tonight's minimed thing wasn't that great. Pretty basic if you've taken freshman biology in the past decade. But the older people seemed not to have as good of a grasp on it as we did, so that was probably the reason it wasn't horridly in depth. Had a cool discussion with the second presenter, a neurology professor, about the effects of Alzheimer's on Broca's and Wernicke's areas. And had some pretty good tea, as they give us dessert and they always have tea and coffee and soda and such along with whatever (cookies and popcorn last time, two kinds of pretzel/cheese cracker snack mixes and little candies this time) else. The lectures, a whole big binder with copies of the slides and room for notes, fancy printed up nametags, extra enrichment tour type things, and dessert. Pretty nice for $75. Not bad at all.

History teacher was pointing to the map behind Katie and me today, like he does often, (which is annoying, as it's "and now, everybody stare right above their heads") with this long 6.5 foot stick (you'd think a yard stick, but no). He was talking about how he used to have this telescoping rod thing to point with, and I go "Not a laser pointer? Who's going to take you seriously if you don't have a laser pointer?" and then laughed in my head for several minutes. Yay, House quotes. Boo, House not on this week.
On Monday, I happened to walk by these teachers and one of them mentioned a ream (of paper, I assumed) and I just giggled my way down the hall, all "Cuddy just reamed me!". Yay, Housequotefemslash.

Amnesty meeting was pretty good. Teacher sponsors still seem to not understand that Katie and I are in charge of it together. Kinda pisses me off. The main sponsor still seems surprised every time that I'm in front of the group with her.

There's this huge spider web that showed up yesterday between the screen and wooden doors at my back door. And the bottom edge of it is right at my head height, so twice now when I'm letting the dog in, my head catches it and I have to try and get spider silk out of my hair. I feel bad for the spider, though, as it's having to rebuild this thing all the time. The spider's huge, though. Huge for around my house, at least. Thing's like half a pink eraser big.

Chemistry test today/yesterday/Tuesday was one of the hardest tests I've ever taken. A lot of the stuff on the test was in the review packet, but it doesn't count. You know why? You can't review something you've never been taught. That's not a review. That's learning it all yourself because the teacher is incompetent. Going through this test, I felt literally like I had missed an entire week or two of class where she covered all of it. Turns out, nope, everybody felt that way. Hopefully that means a big curve.
One of the questions that wasn't covered in the review happened to be on the one topic that I did not get at all last year, which was v. unlucky. I didn't study it as it had nothing much to do with organic molecules. I figured she would teach it again, as it wasn't very in depth and was rushed last year. Nope. On the test.
And on Monday when we were reviewing, she was talking about heat of formation, and I was like "Did I just die or something for 3 whole chapters? I thought we were doing organic chemistry." For some reason, there was a problem on that on our test. Can't complain much about that one, though, as one much like it was in the review packet (I think she puts AP problems from old tests in the review and test even if it has nothing to do with the chapter we're on) and I think I got it.

Spanish test bad also. It's pretty darn impossible to determine between the imperfect and preterite if you've got no idea what the paragraph you're conjugating verbs for is saying. A couple of us that are all in the next hour together were talking after the test, and we were like "The guys were walking and sat down by a dead deer and saw a guy that the police were looking for and then ran for some reason?" Loads of us had no idea. Plus, half of my verb conjugation choices I would defend if given the chance, like "I took this sentence this way, and so this form works better" but I already didn't finish the whole test (thought I was making good time until 30 seconds before the bell rang and I realized that I had another whole page to go) and I don't think that he would allow me to do that anyway.
But 4 long paragraphs with a total of 70-someodd verbs to determine the correct form for from (hee, those three words are practically all the same) the context, plus two pages of 'start with this prompt and make up 3 other things that happened' was definitely way too long.

That Death of a Salesman english paper, evidently the teacher really liked it, as it was the best in all of her classes, or so she says. I don't doubt overly much that it was one of the best in all her classes, because most of the people are morons. It still wasn't that good. But I'll take my 98%s where I can get them.