I bought tickets yesterday for Harry Potter. Saturday, July 14, 9:45 pm, row K, seats 6 and 7. $21 total with a student discount. It's the IMAX version (I asked; it is the IMAX film which is 70 mm instead of 35 mm, and the screen is IMAX height, but not full IMAX width or curvature like the science centers, although it is still a bigger screen than they use for regular movies), and the last 20 minutes of the film are apparently going to be in 3-D. Whoa. We are totally Harry Pottered out at this apartment, with Eric reading all the books for the first time, me being upset that I already re-read them all and don't have the reading-them-for-the-first-time-bliss he does, re-watching the movies, and in general getting really excited for movie #5 and book #7.

This weekend I'm going to be manning a single-payer health care booth at Baxter Avenue Theaters for Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare in conjunction with the release of Sicko. Yay, socialist propaganda! (Louisville shoutout: Footage of Congressional testimony by Dr. Linda Peeno, whose former job was to reject medical claims for Humana, and who was portrayed by Laura Dern in the movie Damaged Care, reportedly appears in Sicko.) Sometimes it's fun to be in the minority, able to associate with only a few friends over certain topics and spread my liberal agenda, but mostly I just wish I was back home, where I could make statements like "I'm going to see Sicko this weekend" and not have someone respond, "Why would you ever see a Michael Moore movie?" or not worry about what someone else might think. It gets tiring, you know, to always be aware of who's near and what you should think twice about saying.

This past weekend we went to a Bats game and we watched the Pawtucket Sox pitcher throw a perfect game for 8 innings. It was busted, and then it started to pour, so we left. I'm told I saw something momentous that I might remember for the rest of my life and relate to future generations ("Why yes, I once saw a perfect game. It was 2007, Sox vs Bats, and it was broken in the 8th inning."), but I'm sure I won't, so I document it here for posterity. Whatever posterity this blog might pose.

This week is technically my first on Ob/Gyn, but we just have to attend lectures. Today I learned all about normal and abnormal labors and deliveries, with terms and phrases like "occiput anterior," "platypelloid pelvis" "engaging the pelvis," and "shoulder dystocia" being introduced to my vocabulary. Did you know that on average, the baby of a smoking mother is 9 oz smaller than one of a non-smoking mother? Or that the average length of the diagonal conjugate* is 12 cm? Or that the LD50** of blood loss is 1.5L? That's pretty astonishing when you think about the fact that when you donate blood, you give a whole 1L. Half of us are only 500 ml away from death when we donate to the Red Cross.

I requested the opportunity to observe at least one elective abortion during the next 8 weeks, a risky request by all assessments. But I thought I should do it, since this is my one chance to do so. There are only two physicians in Louisville who perform them (actually, they're the only two in the state, I'm pretty sure), and it all hinges on whether they are registered as gratis faculty with the university, so that my observations would count. So we'll see what happens. Again, I could do without the fear and nervousness associated with making requests like that.

My Ob/Gyn experience starts for real on Monday, when I'll be on GynOnc surgery for 2 weeks (that's gynecology oncology). Normally, we have to be DONE rounding on our patients by 7:15 am, which means, that's right, starting my day at about 5 am. Then it's surgery all day, which I've not heard good things about***. Other than that, I will reserve judgment until it starts. Open mind and all that...


*Don't worry, no one cares. But if you do, it's the length from the bottom of the pubic symphysis to the sacral promontory. That is, you hold your right hand like you're making a fake gun, with two fingers for the barrel instead of one, and put those fingers into the woman's vagina and feel for the sacral promontory, the bony protuberance that's sort of the bottom of the bottom spine bone before it curves into the tail bone. Here, this shows you. Only that's on a model pelvis, and it's very easy to forget that you are sticking your fingers into the inside of a woman and feeling around for bones sticking out at you while she's in labor. No, thank you.
**LD50 (the "50" should be subscripted) is the "lethal dose 50" or the dose that is lethal in 50% of patients. You usually hear it in terms of the LD50 of a drug, but here we're talking about the amount of blood loss that is lethal in 50% of patients. 1.5L, seriously. No wonder I have so many problems donating blood.
***As a medical student, that is. I'm sure it's fun to do surgery when you're actually DOING surgery. But I haven't heard rave reviews for retracting.