i've opened the hydrant

so, i know it's been less than an hour since my last and first post, but now i've opened the floodgates, so i think there will likely be some proliferation today.

first: i got a comment on my first post. no one knows i have this blog as of yet. it was a spam comment! grrr. but, i've left it so you can see it; after all, it does contain a compliment.

during dinner, we watched seinfeld, and it happened to be the one where kramer pretends to have gonorrhea for the med students. we have that. they're called SPs, or standardized patients. my first SP, the second week of school, rocked, cause i asked all these great questions and wrote up a great SOAP note (all that practice from the AAMC ER, you know). however, my SP's chief complaint was burning with urination, and i totally forgot to ask him about sexual activity. that was a bit of a blow, but i guess it's ok cause we weren't actually being graded on diagnosis, just on how personable and caring we were. on that, i excelled. and i told him to quit smoking and stop drinking so much caffeine (that was his eventual diagnosis -- he was drinking 8-10 cups of coffee/coke a day!). anyway, it could have been gonorrhea, which was what kramer had, but i didn't ask. oh well -- next time. tomorrow we're learning how to take blood pressures. most of the SPs are writers or actors -- i heard that one is a comedian at the comedy caravan on bardstown road. last week we had to do the mental status exam, and my patient was a depressed woman who worked as a copy editor at the C-J and was depressed because she had to read all the war and hurricane news all the time. boy, do i know how she feels. it was kind of funny, to me anyway. in real life, she's a freelance writer (i asked). they get really good training, from what i understand, and are trained to give us, the students, feedback. that's honorable and great and everything, but why on earth do they volunteer to let us do gyn and rectal exams on them? even for extra money? i guess i'm grateful, but still suspicious...

speaking of the news, i hate it. i hate that i'm addicted to it and a news junkie, but in the end that's not so bad because i'm well-informed. i hate news that's poorly reported and biased. i hate that mainstream news tends to get science news wrong. and i hate that other people aren't news junkies, so i have no one to talk to about the things i read. i can't say, "hey, so what do you think about such-and-such?" because i end up having to explain such-and-such to people first, and in doing so i inevitably bias them toward my viewpoint, and what's the fun of a discussion then? plus, even if we are in med school and have tons of things to be learning, what good is it if we don't keep up with what's going on around us? i may not like my addiction, but it's certainly relevant to life!

speaking of viewpoints, i've learned not to talk about "left-wing" things here in louisville. it's certainly not like i'm the only liberal-minded person at school, but it's just not worth my energy if i do end up in a dead-end discussion. and on topics like abortion, which i know are near and dear to everyone's hearts, it's just easier to have us all keep our opinions to ourselves. but all these new things happening with the intelligent design/evolution debate, like in kansas, would be fun to discuss with someone. and there's only so many times eric can listen to me vent about it. (in case you're interested, there have been some GREAT Science Friday broadcasts on the topic recently, and you definitely need to check out this website.) i'm used to just mentioning these things casually, as in, "hey, isn't it ridiculous what's going on in kansas?" but first i'd have to explain what's going on, and then i'd be worried someone wouldn't believe in evolution (what's there to BELIEVE, really?!?!! why couldn't god have created evolution? if i were god, i would have gotten pretty bored just creating everything and watching it stay the same for millions -- oops, i mean thousands -- of years. why not build evolution right into it and stay amused watching what happens?) and i just don't have time to get into those arguments with people. i have studying to do, for crying out loud! i need to memorize that the abdominal aortic plexus contains pre- and post-ganglionic sympathetic and pre-ganglionic parasympathetic innervation but that only the post-ganglionic sympathetics and pre-ganglionic parasympathetics continue out onto the branching plexuses!