Christmas, Lexington, Snow, and a Shark Hat

Christmas happened. Approximately December 25th, if I recall correctly. There were presents, meals, happy 70 degree weather. Henry didn't destroy the tree. (Score!) It was relaxing to be home together, and Hal got better at letting James comfort him instead of only his mom. (Hooray!) It was fun to fill Hal's stocking for his first Christmas. (Awwww!) Boxes and wrapping paper were greatly enjoyed for many days. (Bonus present!)



Before school started again, we went to Lexington: the horse capital of the country, nay, the world, nay, the universe!  (Or should that be "neigh"?) Sadly, on January 2nd, horses and their many attractions are apparently closed for the winter and holidays. We had fun driving past the horse farms, though, and it's just like Seabiscuit or Secretariat make it seem. One second you're in downtown, and not four minutes later you're surrounded by sprawling fields with white fences around them.

Note: This is a simulation and not a real horse.

If you're in Lexington and are unable to see horses or the Toyota factory (also tragically closed!), don't worry: Lexington is also famous for bourbon! There were dozens of upscale bars in the few square blocks we walked. It was impressive. At the visitor's center, they have different local bourbons you can puff some air into and smell. I couldn't tell much difference, but then I'm not a connoisseur. They all smelled appropriately fermented and dusty, though.

Inhale Lexington by wafting your favorite bourbon!

If you'll recall from last year, this area isn't well-equipped to handle snow. Remember that east coast blizzard a few weeks back? We didn't ever get more than 11 inches or so (all told, with melting in between storms, so it never got to be more than 8" at once at our house) but we were again "snowed in" for a week. The local school districts had even longer before they reopened. We did not get the enormous quantities of snow that, say, Washington D.C. got, but we got a fair amount for our area.

On the first day of snow, it was supposed to stop snowing at noon and then turn to rain that afternoon,which would freeze into ice overnight. So at noon on the first day we decided it was our best hope to get to the store. Our poor little 2-wheel drive Honda does great...except in snow. I think it's afraid of cold weather, frankly, and we should've just sent James in the truck, but nooo, we thought we'd make a "trip" out of it and all go together. Never, ever again. We only spun out of control once on the way there, and only got well and truly stuck on the way home at the stop sign downhill from our house. It had snowed three inches from when we left to when we returned. We only slid into one mailbox before two strangers with trucks helped tow us to the grass by our uphill driveway (no way was that happening!). The next day was the warm eye of the snowstorm, and while I was shoveling a nice old man in a bulldozer was plowing the road, and he helped dig our car out so we could get it back up the hill.

Henry remains undecided in his feelings towards snow. He was too busy staring at it to really feel much emotion towards it. We put him on a blanket atop the snow and, very uncharacteristically, he just lay there without moving, and waited patiently for us to take him back inside. He couldn't get enough time staring out the window at it, though. Despite his lack of snow, he sure was stylish in the hat I made for the occasion. Awww.

Om nom nom!

FAQs we get asked..well...frequently.

Every week or so I get a question about med school and doctors, residencies, rotations, etc. It's getting worse as 2nd year draws to a close: "Wait, he has a huge certification test already?!" "Why are you likely moving next year?" "Are they doctors when they're residents?" "Does everybody have to all this, or is your school just unusually demanding?" "Aren't you about done with that school thing yet?" "Sheesh, still not making any money, huh? Aren't you ashamed of yourself for not contributing to society yet?" (Just kidding. But seriously.)

This won't answer all of them, but this should start to shed some light on those burning questions in your souls.

Shock

Awhile ago I asked people what they wanted to read about and one of the questions was essentially, "what kind of medical culture shock have you experienced, James?" Well, I'm hear to finally answer that burning question.

Before starting school, I had very little exposure to doctors. I mean very little. We're talking in the realm of my only experience really coming from my occasional trip to the family doctor. I shadowed a little bit, but nowhere near as much as most of my classmates. The biggest shock for me was how little I actually knew about medical practice and the different specialties. I have no one to blame but myself. Even so, it was still quite a shock to meet people who already knew exactly which specialty they wanted to go into. To this day I haven't the foggiest idea what I'll go for. I'm really hoping that rotations next year will help me out in regards to that. I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't know if I can say that I've experienced any shock related to medicine. There are some things that have shocked me about medical school, so I'll talk about those.

The first thing that I'm still amazed about is the number of people in my class that smoke. I would really have thought that understanding what is going on when you inhale those toxic fumes would be a huge deterrent to smoking. Then again, I don't understand what it feels like to be addicted.

The next major thing that has surprised me about school is the insane pace. I always thought that college felt like cramming a year's worth of high school into a semester. The more I think about it, med school is like cramming a year's worth of high level college science into a semester. It's pretty crazy. Needless to say, I've had to adjust my study habits. In undergrad, I used to think that studying only from PowerPoints was dumb. It never seemed to work for me at least. I was more of the read the book kind of guy. Now I can't even imagine having the time to read from the books even if I wanted to. I was not expecting that at all. I envisioned my days being spent reading textbooks for hours on end instead of studying from PowerPoints. I will say this though: I have found a very (at least what I think to be) efficient way of getting all the information to stick in my head.

Another big shock of med school is something that they don't really tell you: the material isn't overwhelmingly difficult. What is difficult is the volume of facts and minutiae that you have to learn. That isn't to say that all of the concepts are easy, but much more manageable in terms of difficulty than I expected.

I'm sure there are other things that are shocking to me, but I can't really think of any thing else. Hopefully this shed a little more light into what it's like to enter med school.

Semester's End (a teacher's perspective)

I love the end of the semester. I love solidifying grades, the excitement of students, the final results of projects and papers, seeing what they've managed to remember, reading their favorite/least favorite topics of the semester, and playing review games. I do not love the grabbing for extra credit, the last minute "Oh, my doctor gave me a note for that day I missed class back in September" attempts, and I really don't like giving bad grades to good people who just didn't do it. I also don't like cheaters. But really, the end of a semester is fun.

It should be noted that poor grammar here is different than poor grammar I've experienced anywhere else. Things like, "I knoe it was wrong," "It isn't fare," and "Everyone has went there before" are typical, and people really do use the word "ain't" regularly. They don't really say "y'all" but there are lots of "you uns" instead. They also say, "I don't care to," which really means "I don't mind." It throws me off. If I ask someone to turn off the lights, they'll say, "I don't care to," and then I think, "Geez, I mean, it's just the lights, but if you don't want to..." but they're up and turning them off. They'll say on their review papers, "I didn't care to learn this chapter," but it really means they didn't think that the chapter was so bad. It throws me for a loop every time. I get even more confused when people use it as a question: "If you don't care to close the door...?" I never know what to say. Yes? No? Much of my classroom confusion this semester came from this.

And now for the semester highlights!

We did some fun stuff in class this semester. I had my anatomy class recreate bones and bony structures with candy, which was very fun. They completed it with varying degrees of success. Here are two of my favorites, both of which feature a foot.
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My biology lab class was supposed to do a science fair type project this semester. It was pretty basic - it had to be biology and not chemistry or physics, they had to do a formal lab report on it (they've been doing those all semester), they had all four months to do it, and they had to do a basic one minute presentation on it the last day of class. This was worth 25% of their grade. The last day of class rolls around, and fully half of my class doesn't show up. Of those who actually were there, here are the best moments:

• One person came who didn't do it. He pretended he did, and gave a fake presentation on what he pretended to have done. He told us about watering plants with tap water, boiling water, and frozen water. (Did he just put ice cubes on it? And wasn't the boiling water also tap water, only hotter?) Apparently, the tap water pretend plants (of unspecified temperature) did the best. (You think?)
• One person decided to go without sleep for as long as she could. Her title was "102 Hours Without Sleep." Her hypothesis was that if she didn't sleep she would experience sleep deprivation symptoms (which she did indeed experience; her formal lab report was simply a journal of her doings and symptoms for those days). Despite the utter lack of the scientific method in her project, her presentation was by far the most interesting. She got pulled over once during these 102 hours, but it turns out she had hallucinated the cop car and only thought she was being pulled over. "Looking back, I probably shouldn't have been driving."
• I loved this title: "Christmas Cactus: Which soil will bring more cheer to your holidays?"
• They struggled with the concept of background information, and researching their projects and past data on them. "Background - I was wondering what would happen." "Background Info - I looked this project up on google to find how to do it and found it in a kid science site." "Background - my girlfriend and her mother were fighting over this so we did an experiment." 
• Instead of "clean up," someone wrote this as their final step in the experiment: "Put all the materials back to their homes."
• Someone used an entire page (a whole page!) to list their three materials and four steps of their experiment, all neatly centered in the absolute middle of the page. This was in the middle of their rather wordy lab report - an almost blank page, just sitting there.
• Someone cited me as a source: "Professor. In class. October 2015."
• We learned all sorts of things: freezing bananas makes their skins darker, some types of bread never mold, painted toes may or may not grow faster, and in a how-long-does-it-take-for-this-to-dissolve experiment, "sometime in the nine and a half hours I was away, the substance dissolved."

Here's to education!

Nashville's temples

On Black Friday we drove down to Nashville to have a mini adventure and go to the temple. It's amazing how much having a child will impact the timing of mini adventures! It was the longest car trip Henry's been on, so we tried to time it so that it would include some of his normal nap times and make it easier for everyone. We...erm...mostly succeeded.

We stayed with some friends who were in our church here last year and then they moved there for their year 3 rotations. James got to see the hospital and talk to someone about rotations, which I think helped him solidify how it works.

We went to visit the Parthenon, which my grandfather says is worth it even if it's the only thing you do in Nashville, and I have to say - it was pretty impressive. Plopped right in the middle of Nashville you have a replica of a Greek temple for Athena (and there's an enormous statue of her inside). I loved it.

Athena's shield

Athena in all her golden glory

Right next to the Parthenon was another statue. We loved the benches surrounding it that had words on such as "integrity," "honesty," and "mechanical." Not all the words seemed to carry the same impact.


We were planning to stop by the Grand Ole Opry on our way back on Saturday but didn't because of...yarn. I needed another skein of yarn that only Joann's sells, so when we saw one off the freeway, we stopped so I could run in and buy it. It seems that at least at this Joann's, their Black Friday event was actually a Super Saturday event. I snagged my yarn and then stood in the long, bustling, holiday-cheery-and-crafty lines and that ate up all of our extra time. But once you've been in line for more than ten minutes, you're committed. I was getting that yarn, dang it. And woot woot, it was half off. Super Saturday! We opted for a local (and not that great) BBQ lunch and Joann's in lieu of the Opry. Next time!

We also wanted to visit Olan Rogers's store (The Soda Parlor) because we love his videos. But with it getting dark so early and such a long drive ahead of us with a Henry who hates driving in the dark, we had to forego that, too. Again, next time!

And that's pretty much all we had time for. On our way there we drove through several of the cities that are core rotation sites, so it was fun to see places we might be assigned to live for the next two years.

Halloween: Han Trio and Meeting Abe Lincoln

For Henry's first Halloween, all three of us dressed up as Han Solo. We were, collectively, Han Trio! We went around all night saying things like, "Never tell me the odds!" and "Who's scruffy looking?"

It was a good thing the church party was a week before Halloween, because Halloween itself fell on a test weekend. This means that James was MIA for the holiday, but never fear! Sariah and Henry went trick or treating with friends.

Out here people don't really go house to house to trick or treat. (Neither of our Halloweens in our area have yielded a single soul at our door. Extra candy for us!)  It may be because houses are so far apart (with no sidewalks or street lights), or maybe the local drug problems make people feel unsafe, but it just doesn't happen. Instead there are all sorts of events where different organizations provide a trick or treating experience. Henry and I went to one such event at James's school. Each sports team (and many clubs and programs) had a table and you would walk by and, in my case, say, "Trick or treat for the baby!" Then you would get candy. I went with friends and their kids, but I felt weird getting candy that clearly wasn't headed for my baby's tummy. I felt less bad when I saw middle-aged adults going through for themselves; I mean, hey, free candy is free candy, I guess. One of the people at a booth grinned at me and asked, "Which of these candies does mom want?" I, of course, chose Reese's. (Seriously, who on earth chooses Laffy Taffy? Pick Laffy Taffy! It's a tooth cement, complete with cavities! Bonus!)

Because Henry's Han Solo costume wasn't as complete as ours (the blaster and holster were not part of his outfit as he would have eaten them), and because we happened to have a baby monster costume on hand anyway, Henry went as a monster to the school event. James stayed home and dressed up as a studious student. Hal and I went with a family with girls, so here we see Henry in a pink stroller meeting the mascot of James's school. Hal is clearly beside himself with excitement.

There was a very long line to get into this event, and by the time I got in and went around collecting candy for...well...myself, Henry had fallen asleep after patting his puffy belly for a while. And that's how Hal spent his first Hal-oween!

The Electric Slide and My Violent Mnemonics

One of my classes I'm teaching this semester is an anatomy lab. Since we don't have cadavers for our anatomy lab, I have to get creative about what to fill that time with. I mean, students can only look at pictures of skeletons for so long.

This week we've been studying different types of motion (different ways you flex or extend your feet, hands, arms, neck, and the ways you can rotate them, what you call each of these types of motion, etc.). I didn't really know how to review this in our lab, though, until one thing caught my attention - the Electric Slide.

You see, last week was the skeletal system. The tip of your elbow is called your olecranon process (uh-LECK-ruh-non) and my kids couldn't seem to remember that. I said, "Well, when you do the eLECtric slide, you use your oLECranon!" and, pleased with myself, I waited for the connection to sink in.  "Um...what's the electric slide?" Fail.

So today to learn these different types of motion, we learned both the Macarena (heeeeey macarena!) and the Electric Slide in lab. It turns out most of my students know neither of these songs nor their classic dances (I'm still reeling at how people can't know the macarena) so it was quite fun. I made them pause every few minutes to tell their neighbors which movements they were using.  Then instead of calling out the moves, I'd call out things like, "Pronate! And supinate!  And plantar flex when you jump! I don't see any inversions out there!" It was a memorable day. I know at least one student took a video of it - watch for us on YouTube! Who knows if the students learned anything, but at least I had fun!

Dancing aside, James would be disappointed if I didn't describe my approach to remembering anatomical features when I teach them. But here's my secret: I don't really have an approach. Whatever crosses my mind when I teach them the word becomes my "this is how I like to remember this word" thing. Some of them aren't so great, it turns out (see the olecranon process above). Some, though, I think are pretty good. And some just happen and it's too late to backtrack. James thinks that I'm unnecessarily violent in these on-the-fly mnemonics, but I think that makes them all the more memorable. Here are my three favorite violent ones: the glenoid cavity, the acetabulum, and the trochlea. Let's see if you can remember them based on my "how to remember this word and its location" tips.

Glenoid cavity: this is the socket on your shoulder that your humerus fits into. Your friend Glen is a big sports fan and always sticks his hands up in the air during sporting events. You get annoyed at Glen. (Glen-annoyed = glenoid) and rip his arms off, exposing the glenoid cavity.  (James thinks I could've just stopped at "Glen's a sports fan who sticks his hands in the air.")

Acetabulum (ass-uh-TAB-you-lum): This is the socket for your hip; it's the part of the pelvis where the femur leg bone fits. Now, old people are prone to broken hips. However, if you're a young person and take acid (take, say, a tablet of acid - acid-tablet-yum = acetabulum) you might be too drugged up to climb stairs correctly - and then you'll fall down and break your hip. Moral: don't do drugs - particularly not acid - because you WILL break your hip.

Trochlea (troke-lee-uh) - the elbow end of your humerus. It's sort of spool-shaped, and it's what your ulna attaches to. You have an enemy named Leah and because she's evil, you decide to choke her (choke-Leah = trochlea) which means you'll put her in a head lock with your elbow.

I promise not all of my tips are violent. But whatever it takes to learn them, right?