Lasciate Ogne Somina, Voi Ch'intrate

For those of you whose conversational Latin is a bit rusty, This post's title is stolen from the famous phrase posted at the Gates of Hell in Dante's Divine Comedy. My slightly altered version translates to:

Abandon all sleep, ye who enter.

This is a fitting admonishment to all medical students about to start clinical rotations.

As first days go, mine wasn't too horrible, although it began at the barbaric hour of 0600. (Actually this will seem like sleeping-in from now on, since I didn't have to report today until 9am but tomorrow I have to be there by 0700! ) After discovering a short-cut of sorts to the bus stop, the walk this morning in the light rain was only a few minutes. Now I don't necessarily agree with all of Mayor Bloomberg's politics, but he must have taken a page out of old Il Duce's handbook because my bus was at the stop at the scheduled time and the trip took almost exactly as long as advertised, 45 minutes. So far so good. I ran into several AUC students and I actually wound up in the same group as a Nick, a classmate, so I will have a buddy to commiserate with for this 6 week rotation.

The orientation at Wyckoff was closer to a series of Chinese fire drills than any kind of organized affair. It began with cramming what seemed to be well over 100 students into a conference room with seats for only roughly half that number. Later there was a bunch of standing around and waiting, gnashing of teeth, and several venue changes (I counted 4) but once we finally broke up into our respective services, things went pretty smoothly.

Family Medicine seems to be a pretty good 1st rotation from what I can tell so far. It is sort of like Internal Medicine -"lite" since the rotation is only 6 weeks vs 12 and the hours are much better. You get to see a little of this and a little of that and even some outpatient clinic stuff to get your feet wet. The Doctor-to-student ratio is much lower and it seems this is a great time to brush up on your physical exam skills and note writing while you have more face time with the docs.

Schedule-wise, I am starting out with 2 weeks in-hospital 7a-7p, then 2 weeks of nights : 7p-7a but the pretty cool thing is that nights are only every other day for instance go in Monday 7p-7a finishing up Tuesday morning, you are not due to come back in until Wednesday night. Pretty nice! Speaking of Wednesdays, there is mandatory conferences every Wednesday from 2pm-5pm. After the 2 weeks of nights I will finish up with 2 weeks of out-patient clinic which is only either 8am-1pm or 1pm-6pm so not too bad there either. Generally speaking, the in-hospital rotations will be 6 day-a-week affairs with the senior resident determining which students will cover Saturday and which ones will do Sunday. My plans of coming home Every weekend are going to be "altered" a bit. I will request tomorrow that I be put on for this Sunday so I can go home and be a chaperon at the Relay for Life event that Meagan is captaining a team for. The hours are from Friday at Midnight until either 5am or 7am! She really loves her daddy!

Hopefully I will be able to get back to Philly for some time the 2 weeks I am on nights and the 2 weeks of out-patient. I may only wind up staying here for 1, maybe 2 weekends- I guess we will have to see.

Tomorrow they will actually let me play with patients, yay!

Oh, I almost forgot, I may actually have a roommate now after all. Yesterday afternoon he showed up. He is French and a student at UCLA out here doing an internship for the summer. We only spoke briefly as he had paid for a hotel room in Manhattan for a couple nights prior to getting the last-minute room opening here; so he dropped off some suitcases and headed back to a very expensive, albeit infinitely more comfortable, hotel room. As of this evening his bags are still here and, as far as I can tell, he hasn't been here and unpacked anything, so we will see how long this one lasts hahaha.

A Walk in the Park / The Bridge to Metropolis

To say that my sleep last night was not restful would be the understatement of the year! It seemed that I woke up every hour- tossing and turning. I am convinced that the draconian piece of torture, that passes for a bed here, was actually designed by the Catholic Church during their whimsical "Inquisition" period. A few nights on this thing and I certainly would have confessed to just about anything. Hopefully some of my insomnia is related to being in a strange place (and even stranger bed) and I will settle in and enjoy some quality sleep soon.

This morning my back felt as though a team of Clydesdales had spent the evening practicing Riverdance moves on my lumbar spine. So in an effort to work out some of those kinks and enjoy the glorious weather, I went out and explored the Brooklyn Scenery.

I walked around a couple of local parks and decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and back. Here are some pictures: (as usual-click on any picture to enlarge)

Since it is Memorial Day:







A perfect day at the park:








The Brooklyn Bridge:











Lady Liberty as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge:






The Empire State Building as seen from the bridge:

New York- The Arrival

With not a small sense of dread, I moved into my temporary home yesterday. I have to say I am pleasantly surprised. The accommodations are rather spartan, but the neighborhood is great and fairly convenient to the Hospitals where I will be doing my rotations.

Kathy, Rileigh and I drove up yesterday morning and I got an impending sense of doom as a series of events unfolded. We hit no traffic at all on the way up and made great time. Rileigh enjoyed her morning nap during just about the entire ride and woke up pleasant. We were able to find a parking garage immediately across the street from new room. I managed to pack everything I needed to bring without forgetting anything, breaking anything, or going on one of my little patented, curse-filled tirades that often occur when the baby gorilla tries to use his primitive spatial skills and tries to cram 10lbs of shit into a 5lb jar. Upon check-in at the dorm they actually had my reservation and the entire transaction went smoothly. It was turning out to be a great day. Those of you familiar with my life of course realize that all these factors portend some Bad Juju about to rain down. This was not lost on me. As we rode up in the elevator, I started to imagine that my roommate was going to be a pot-smoking, vegan, Christian fundamentalist, with a penchant for playing Milli Vanilli records and an uncontrollable flatulence problem. (it could happen!)

As it turns out, no one had moved into my room yet; so I got to unpack and set up without tripping over a roommate. Much later in the afternoon I met my roommate. He turned out to be a pretty nice guy- for the 6 minutes that he was actually my roommate. Apparently he, and more importantly, his father were less than impressed with the furnishings here in Shangri La, and decided to demand their money back and leave. So yours truly got to spend his first night in Dorm Heaven- alone. It remains to be seen, but I imagine they will be moving someone in here before long.

Here are some pictures:

This is the outside of the building (it used to be the Hotel St. George until it was converted into dorm rooms)




Some pictures of the room:





The neighborhood, lots of tree lined streets with really cool brownstones:





The Promenade is only a couple block's walk:







Rileigh enjoying her Brooklyn stroll(but not her hat):

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Birthday Kaitlyn. Today it's 14, before you know it you'll be 29 like daddy! ;)

Pretentous Carnivores

I am no vegetarian, nor am I am animal rights activist. I enjoy a fine meal as much as the next guy. I have, on occasion, spent a small fortune on a very nice meal with an equally nice bottle of wine. For that matter I'm sure I have spent the equivalent to Moldavia's GDP on Scotch throughout my life. I have an appreciation for the 'finer' things. I get it, believe me.

But I read this story today and all I can do is shake my head.

You can go to the Wall Street Burger Shop in Manhattan and order yourself this:




It is a burger. More specifically a burger made with a Kobe beef patty, lots of black truffles, seared foie gras, aged Gruyere cheese, wild mushrooms and flecks of gold leaf on a brioche bun. Sounds good, right?

Well, one of these babies will set you back $175.00. Yes Virginia, that is One hundred and seventy five U.S. Dollars.

Sweet mother of tap-dancing decadence!

For a $175 I would expect a little more in the way of ambiance than to sit in a burger shop that has ketchup on the table! But I'm a snob I guess.

Back to School

Well, kind readers, I am but a week away from jumping feet first back into my journey toward doctor-dom. My clinical rotations begin next week in Brooklyn, NY. I have enjoyed this long break from school and, despite my complaints, I will miss playing Mr. Mom.

Looking for housing in the Brooklyn area has been an adventure to say the least. After pouring over way too many ads and seeing some places, I wound up securing a room at what basically is a dorm building. And, much to my chagrin, I will have a roommate-since they were out of single rooms. There are already a slew of jokes going on in my family about my having a younger college-age roommate! I can see it now, having to filed questions in the dorm like, "Whose dad are you?" and "Mister, will you buy us beer?" Great, just great! Pick on the old guy!

Kathy and Rileigh will remain in the Philadelphia area while she completes her contract at work. In the meanwhile I will be commuting back on the weekends. It will be an adjustment, but this whole thing has been a series of adjustments so, adapt we must.

My first rotation will be Family Practice at the much maligned Wyckoff Hospital. I drove by there last week on our apartment hunting trip and, suffice it to say, it is not in the upscale section of Brooklyn. Fortunately, I will be staying in the Brooklyn Heights area, which is pretty nice and is not entirely unlike center city Philadelphia. The bus ride to the hospital should only be about a 1/2 hour, so it won't be horrible. This first rotation is 6 weeks long and immediately following this, I will be doing my OB/GYN rotation at Brooklyn Hospital-which is reported to be much nicer. As a matter of fact, all of my rotations are scheduled back-to-back and by June of next year I will have all of my required "core" rotations complete. Then it will be on to elective rotations, but much pain awaits me between then and now; so we will take it one step at a time.

Stay tuned.

Frater Magnus

I'm not what you would call a conspiracy theorist but if I were, my Big Brother-ometer would be starting to ring right about now.

Yesterday's New York Times had a piece on the Dallas school system and the adoption of a new anti-truancy program that involves the tracking of students with GPS transmitters to thwart absenteeism.

A little over a week ago there was also a story about other schools using various iterations of online monitoring software that allowed parents access to their child's grades, participation, pending assignments, latenesses, and any discipline issues instantly by logging on via the internet.

I don't disagree with what the above programs are trying to accomplish, in fact, I firmly believe that increasing parental involvement is one of the keys to reforming our beleaguered public school system. (as opposed to the ineffective No Child Left Behind Fiasco- but I digress) However, I am concerned about the proverbial road to hell being paved with these good intentions.

Could we be ingraining in our children an acceptance of this sort of invasion of privacy? In an age where we have seen a radical expansion of the government and the steady encroachment of Frater Magnus into our lives, are we just a few generations away from an Orwellian dystopia?

I would like to think not. Some have made the case that it certainly appears to be headed in that direction. Cameras are popping up on more and more street corners, there is a push by some legislators for a national ID system, who knows, someday perhaps a DNA library of all citizens. Admittedly, this is for the most part, just alarmist conjecture- after all, we still enjoy more freedoms than most of the world. The problem with treading along this slippery slope is that once rights are lost, they seldom are given back.

It does concern me though, how (quickly)we seem to have traded in some of the basic principles and what were once considered absolute liberties for an illusion of a safe, secure world where everyone gets along, the bad guys can't get us, and no one's feelings are allowed to be hurt.

You don't have to look far to find evidence of this. From the self imposed censorship regarding those silly Danish Cartoons by most every American news agency, to the Supreme Court's ruling on imminent domain. Little by little, we seem to be redefining what it means to be American.

I have spouted off about the USA PATRIOT Act before, and have gotten into debates with some of you about it. I think it is symptomatic however of our typical American immediate gratification syndrome and shortsightedness. After the attacks on 9/11 there was widespread panic fueled by disinformation concern about our security and we responded decisively to enact this nifty blank check to give us back our illusion of safety. Very few legislators bothered to read and or understand what it was we were actually doing ;and no one seemed concerned that it encouraged our government to take a healthy dump on America and wipe its bloated ass with the Constitution. Now I can already hear some of you grumbling about "shifting paradigms" and "needing to engage in a new type of war" and "taking off the gloves" etc... All those things make us feel good; but at the end of the day if you betray what you stand for and, indeed the very thing you are trying to protect and preserve, you have already lost.

It seems a perfect storm of world events, technology, greed, and an under informed/apathetic society have come together to allow the steady erosion of the liberties and freedoms we like to write sappy country songs about, and in its place fuel an ever growing encroachment by government.

What do you think? Are we sliding down a slope here, or did I simply drink too much Libertarian Decaf this morning?

Alas, Poor Yorick! I Smoked Him Well

Just when you think it can't get any weirder...

This story from the People's Republic of Texas : 2 men charged after digging up a grave and using the skull for a bong!

How big of a pot-head do you have to be to decide that it is worth the effort to dig up a human corpse, and fashion an impromptu bong out of the head?

They must have some Killer weed down in Texas!

I may have made a faux pas or two while under the influence of bit too much scotch in my day, but thankfully I have managed to draw the line somewhere just shy of grave-robbing and molestation of a corpse.

On Racism and Politics...

I am Caucasian. I have brown eyes. I have dark hair. I have a fairly long…last name. Do you know anything about my political views? Of course not. It would be ridiculous to assume otherwise.

Why is it then that it seems acceptable for the media to assume, that due to a genetically determined increase in melanin, black voters will blindly pull the lever for the candidate who happens to look like them? Where is the outrage? Is this not insulting? If you turned on the news and heard comments like,” well Joe Candidate is right-handed and is expected to carry Little Town, USA- a historically strong right-handed community”, I would suspect that you would be scratching your head, and rightfully so.

I have always been of the opinion that the more we define ourselves by ridiculous, arbitrary physical characteristics, we move further and further from a harmonious society. We seem to be obsessed with aligning ourselves into little tribal subsets. At the end of the day we are all supposed to be Americans. What used to be the unique thing about this experiment that we call America is that we, from various backgrounds, came together in a collective philosophy which espoused a common vision and a certain Espirit de corps which defined all of us is no longer palpable. Sadly, I think this time has passed, if indeed it ever totally existed at all.

What we have in its place is a loosely connected amalgam of individual tribes and an ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality. We have managed to fractionate ourselves ad nauseum. When I hear someone define themselves as an African-American or Italian-American or insert-your-flavor-of-the-month-here-American it irks me. Worse than this however, are the liberties that are taken along these lines; both tolerated and celebrated in the media. This divisiveness seems spawn an entire industry of Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons; ready to pick up the banner of perceived unfair treatment and inequality and run with it in the pursuit of, what can only be assumed as, vanity.

I am not naïve; I understand that, ridiculous as it may be, there is a certain level of racism that remains pervasive in our modern society. What I cannot fathom, what I will never accept, is why we still widely perpetuate that ideal. This is exactly what is done when political pundits make statements like “Obama is projected to do well” in some area just because it happens to have a high number of black citizens. This election in particular has focused on the “Black vote”, the “Female vote” or the “Hispanic vote”. Aren’t we supposed to be smarter than this? Shouldn’t we vote for the candidate that represents us best? Because you are a woman do you think any candidate with a vagina will best represent you? Or, if you happen to be black, that a black candidate will somehow make your life better solely on the basis of his/her skin color? What a ridiculously provincial idea!

The truth however disturbs me even more. The numbers, so far, indicate that the majority of black voters actually do align themselves with the black candidate. I suppose it is difficult to parse out why an overwhelming number of black people vote for one candidate over another. But I suspect this is, in part, symptomatic of the larger problem. We seemed to have created a society where being a victim is a good thing. Racism, sexism, ageism, religious discrimination, or any other perceived slight toward a group fills some sort of void and allows identification with a group that satisfies some internal need to “belong”. People think that somehow voting for the candidate that has: the same pigmentation as you, or the same anatomical features as you, or prays to the same god as you, will be the panacea that brings you fulfillment. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Perhaps I am just cynical but despite the rhetoric, I suspect that people have much more in common with each other than they do with any of the candidates they throw their support behind- skin color notwithstanding. If we need to draw an invisible line in the sand we would be more accurate to do it on the basis of wealth and power and influence vs. the non thinking subjugated masses.

The time is long overdue when we demand more of ourselves than to bleat on cue and thrust our support behind a candidate based on any silly physical criteria. Dum spiro spero.

Battle of Wits with the Unarmed

During one of my typical bouts of insomnia the other night I watched the riveting coverage by CNN of the Democratic primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Some fun!

First of all, the mind-numbing second to second coverage was absolutely painful to watch. Despite the high tech touch-screen multi-colored maps and fancy studio, there was seldom anything new to report and so, we were left with inane commentary from a panel of political pundits that covered every possible scenario with the only notable exception of Godzilla appearing on a farm in Indiana and eating a goodly portion of the electorate.

The highlight of the program was listening to the mayor from Gary, Indiana -Rudy Clay. Things in Gary must be tough as this mayor was just about the dumbest public official I have ever heard stumble through a sentence. This is no small feat mind you we have had some great orators in politics (see: Dan Quale, G.W. Bush et al) .

Let me set the stage. North Carolina's primary results were in and Obama was declared the victor by a comfortable margin. In Indiana however, senator Clinton was enjoying a slight lead but it was close enough to need more results in order to project a winer. The results from Indiana were almost most completely in but they were waiting for results from one county in particular (Lake county) where Obama was expected to do well and this could ostensibly change the outcome of the contest. The pundits in the studio as well as the senior political correspondent started to question why this county had not submitted any results yet. Whispers of impropriety began. CNN had a video link-up with a Mayor of a town in that county and asked him why the results were not being turned in. He reported that he indeed submitted his results as did many neighboring communities and he was able to provide some insight as to who won with respect to those communities. But still, no official results from Lake county.

Around midnight or thereafter CNN was speaking to the Mayor of Gary, Indiana and asked the honorable mayor Clay what the deal was with no reporting of votes. This is where it got fun.

The mayor responded that the delay was caused by a high number of absentee ballots that needed to be manually counted- some 11,000 such ballots, an apparent record number. The CNN correspondent asked about the machine votes that are counted by computer and thus need no manual counting. Why hadn't at least these votes been turned in? The mayor, in an apparent twist on the Chewbacca Defense, simply repeated that extra time is needed to count the absentee ballots. This logical merry-go-round went on no fewer than 6 times! It was embarrassing. Poor Wolf Blitzer looked like someone kicked him in the testicles and stood mouth agape while, I can only assume, his mind wrestled with some quantum reality trying to decipher meaning in what the mayor had said.

"But what about the regular machine-counted ballots?"

"we had a record number of absentee ballots."

"Right, but what about the regular non absentee ballots?"

"As I have already said, we have had a record number of absentee ballots that need manual counting"

and so on, and so on...

This video clip starts at about the 6th time they try to ask mayor Clay what is going on. Mayor Clay was on the phone, the Mayor in the video is from a neighboring town in Lake county.

Code Monkey

I came across this video and I really like it. It is a song by Jonathan Coulton and the animation is taken from an anime: The Legend of Black Heaven. To everyone who has a job like that, enjoy!

Carl Sagan is my Hero

I am watching the Science Channel right now and they are airing an episode from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series. Sagan is, without a doubt, one of the most eloquent and poetic scientists that ever walked erect on our little pale blue dot. Between his hypnotic voice and his skillful use of vibrant language he has introduced generations to the infinite vastness and complexity of our universe. There is something altogether humbling and yet reassuring when one contemplates the utter infinitesimal nature of all that it is we know.

Here is a brief sample: