Dear guy in my shared office,
Do you only come into this office when you want to make personal phonecalls on the office phone? That seems to be the case. You speak very loudly and have heated conversations with people that clearly are NOT work related. That is inappropriate and disturbs everyone else in the office. Please, be a bit more considerate. You have a cell phone, use it. Go out into the hallway.
Thanks
And by their facial recognition they came up with these matches:
Erica Durance
Renee Zellweger (but not this photo, one with her a little heavier... I thought this one was nicer)
I'm pretty impressed with the software's abilities - atleast they dont' look really unlike me!
Oh, and my third match was Hillary Duff. Wooohooo.
I just finished a FANTASTIC book. It's called 'The Girls' and it's by Lori Lansens. My aim this summer is to read some more Canadian Lit and this was a great start. She also wrote 'Rush Home Road' which I read last summer and also really loved.
The novel was extremely touching. It made me cry several times, which isn't really anything new with me and novels, both for joy and sadness. The imagery was so bitter sweet that it made my heart ache. A lot of the scenery of Southern Ontario was familiar to me.
As medicine is so much of what defines me right now, it also made me contemplate medicine and humanity and how dehumanizing a visit to the doctor can be, especially for those who make a lot of visits. So far, I have found that some people define themselves by their illness and some do not. Some people wear their survival or suffering like a badge of honor and some bury it deep within themselves and strive for a "normal" life. It's difficult as physicians to appreciate these individual differences and deal with patients according to their own coping mechanisms. It's hard for friends of the afflicted to do that as well.
I'm now reading 'A Student of Weather' by Elizabeth Hay. Hopefully it's just as great!
So,
On Thursay I'm going to Vancouver for the first time. I'm stoked! I'm also going to the SOGC annual clinical meeting which should be very informative. They're having an ob/gyn residency fair and some special med student sessions and stuff. Hopefully I'll be able to solidify my plans on whether to go for ob/gyn or not. I'm really leaning towards it right now. I need to figure out what kind of research I'm going to do for my critical inquiry and if I'm going to try to get an ob/gyn residency spot I'd better focus on that area. I'm not sure what kind of study I want to do, I know I definitely want to do something clinical (but hopefully more exciting than a chart review). I know it's still a year away, but I like to think ahead!
In other news, yesterday I realized just how much of last semester I had forgotten. I was wracking my brain trying to remember the difference between TTP and DIC and it just wasn't coming to me which one affected the PT and PTT. I think it's DIC. I'm going to have to look that up. If I've forgotten that, what else have I forgotten? I feel like I'm going to re-learn this stuff a million times before I really understand it. yeesh. I wish I had a better brain for retention.
Anyways, wish me luck in Vancouver without a car and staying a half hour drive from the hotel where the conference is. I think I'll be spending a lot of time lost on city buses.
This is my model now: Progress!
I think I have become narcoleptic. I keep falling asleep unexpectedly at my desk at basically any time of day. I wake up 10 minutes later thinking 'what happened'. I think it's probably a side-effect of extreme boredom. So far this is my eye model:
So, exam results will be coming soon. If I've failed, I'll get a phonecall or an email on June 21 telling me. If not, I get my results on the 22nd if I phone in and on the 26th if I wait for the internet posting. I always get this pit in my stomach when I know the time is near. In my head I know I probably didn't fail, but my body says different. My body says "what if". My body is also disagreeing with my head in other ways these days. I am trying to get back into shape after taking a month off exercise to study for exams and it's not going as swimmingly as I would like it to. I have an easy time getting to yoga/pilates but a hard time doing cardio and making time for it. I haven't touched the bike since I got home and going from riding every day to that is not good. This weekend I think I have to go to the cottage on Saturday so that cuts out a day to ride. Sunday we have some family lunch thing but hopefully I'll be able to make it to bodyjam beforehand. Something's gotta give and I don't want it to be my body. Ben is coming on July 14th and I'd better look good naked.
It's funny when you're a med student and you go to the doctor and they tell you that you have something that you don't think you have. And then it's also funny when they give you antibiotics and they don't work because, gasp, you don't have the thing that you don't think you have. I got diagnosed with scarlet fever on Sunday after repeatedly telling the doctor that my rash isn't red, it's just bumpy, and the reason that my face was red is that I was flushed from the heat in the waiting room. How many times do I have to tell him that before he believes me? So, I'm on amoxil but it totally isn't doing anything. He took a throat swab and I get the results today I believe. Now, do I stop taking the amox when the throat swab is negative or do I keep taking the whole script? I guess I can't induce antibiotic resistance if I never had the bug in the first place.
The new question of the day is - what the hell is this rash. I think it's irritant dermatitis from air pollution exposure. It started the day after I moved back to Toronto and went walking outside on a day with a high smog alert. It's just like dermatitis, it's just all over my face and neck which is unusual for me. It's a diffuse papular rash all over the face and neck with some clusters around the corners of my eyes and corners of my mouth. From what I can tell, I just need some cortisone. Instead, stupid amox. I need to go to my family doc. She actually listens to me.
Well, here it is. Summer. Everyone gets excited about summer, me included. This summer I'm doing research at a University close to my parents house. I'm doing some work in imaging and ocular biomechanics, the field of research that my masters is in. Research is a funny thing. It sounds really exciting when you get your project and you're done exams and you're all ready to go, but by the second or third day, I always start to ask myself why I got myself into this. Why didn't I take a job as a waitress or a grass cutter or a camp counselor or something other than this. Here's why: I am sitting in my lab. The walls are a pee yellow color, there is no A/C and it's 33 degrees outside, the only window looks at a red brick wall, and the person sitting behind me isn't wearing deodorant. Add to that the fact that I'm manually segmenting 300 MRI images of an eyeball and I have 36 more to go... and this is going to be every day for the next 3 months. I'm not nearly being paid enough.
In good news, I'm going to see David Francey tonight! I have only heard recordings of his music, never seen him live and I'm SO stoked. He's an amazing folk singer who's currently lives in Lanark county but he's originally from Scotland and grew up in Toronto. His website is http://www.davidfrancey.com . He's playing tonight at the Edward Day Gallery in Toronto and also in Toronto some time in July. I believe the 24th. You should all come out and see him. This is him in his youth (age 18):
And this is him now: 
