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niveknat
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Name: Kevin
Country: United States
State: Ohio
Birthday: 2/15/1982
Gender: Male
Interests: Medical research, foods from the Far East, guitars, tennis, squash, Cardinals baseball, chaweenies, 24, House MD, gadgetry, books. Climbing mountains, blazing trails, discovering undiscovered beauty. Finding paradise. Being alone with my Creator.
Expertise: Being a smooth criminal.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Medicine
Message: message me
Member Since:
2/27/2003
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| latest developments and diversions
1. No love for the Cards in the WS? I laughat you, I cheer without you, I wear my freakin StL red cap, all youMets-crybabying, Detroit Tigers-infatuated sports analysts who just got shot down when my team won it ALL last night. Here's to the underdogs of the 2006 Fall Classic <roar>. Eck's my hero!
2. After 15 weeks of rotations so far, I regret to admit thatfirst impressions are often right impressions. Neuro for the past3 weeks has been awesome. I just saw an awake craniotomy fortumor resection on Friday. That was amazing. I was therehelping drill burr holes and cutting open the skull. The patientwas awake with his frickin brain wide open. Now I'm thinking ofdoing possibly neuro-ophtho or straight up ophtho. I don't knowwhy I dig eyes and brains so much. Must be the Hannibal Lecterinside of me. Creepy.
3. I got these sweet outdoor Barska binocs this week fromwoot. $20 including shipping. Worry not, I am no peepingtom. Just a peeping tom who loves looking at beautiful natureythings. Delightz to mine eyes.
4. Realizing how much humans desire companionship. I'll bebrutally honest: I desperately long for it in every way when I don'thave it. My hamster mei mei just doesn't do it for me.. she'seither burrowed in her abode-like contraptions or making a racketrunning on her wheel atnight or making terrible awful odors in her cage. Yeah, that'sattractive. She's cute though... would never abandon her. But it's that nagging craving for soul-to-soul connection. It's aselfless coveting for someone who can share their fears and dreams withyou amidst a fierce storm whose vices are to abduct, seclude, andunravel. "Atlantic" by Keane preciselycaptures it:
And if I need anything at all
I need a place that's hidden in the deep
Where lonely angels sing you to your sleep
Though all the world is broken
I need a place where I can make my bed
A lover's lap where I can lay my head
'Cause now the room is spinning
The day's beginning
5. Tears for a guy like me mean a lot, probably similar to a lotofpeople. To the one who sheds them come vulnerability, innerconflagration, sometimes divine joy, cathartic relief, but always aplugged nose and red eyes. Good practice of medicine ensuresbalance of "I's and O's" (ins and outs of a patient) as people callthem, but never (ever)measures the oft-forgotten "O's" of tears. To the scientist,they are merely a consequence of lacrimal glandular stimulation andsecretion. Whether large or small in amount, I cannot explain to youhow incredibly sensitiveyet remarkably complex are these 'secretions'--if we must label them assuch--that one can discover ultimate pedagogy in this'biomarker'. Which is what I discovered last Tuesday night, whenmy ownsenses stretched beyond the confinements of traditional Westernmedicine that I suddenly began to grasp the gravity of this "sixthsense". What do you say to a weeping family of a patient who'sintubated, unconscious, and about to die from a massive hemorrhage inthe brain and there's not one thing you can do about it. All Icould do was offer measured hope, and move on. And suck in thegoobers of eye-spit that was clogging up my nose.
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| Week 1, OB/Gyn, L+D ward.
Day 1. Check, check, check. Attending directs me to LDR5. She's
10cm dilated/100% effaced/+3 station, and ready to push. We all
rush in. Out pops the head, then the body, the umbilical cord,
and then finally the placenta. Exactly as it was described in
NMS. The 7 cardinal movements, yes!! I grab the syringe to
suction out the gunk in the nose and mouth. The first breath is
taken. Life is born. It's 4:10 in the morning.
Tally: 3 deliveries, 0 cesarean sections.
Lesson: Life is a miracle. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to be a childbearing woman in labor.
Day 2. Scrub falls in the sink. Crap. Re-scrub. Towel is
passed, wipe wipe, then slip on gown. Slip on 7.5 size gloves and
swing around to tie the gown. Trying not to annoy the OR
tech. Hurry, patient is waiting on the table. Incision:
23:45. Suction please. Yes, suction. It's dry
now. The uterus is opened. Suction again. Baby comes
out: 00:02. Blue, but okay. Thank God. Apgar of 7 and
8 at 1 and 5 minutes. Square knot, okay. Hemostat
please. Yes, in my hands. Cut. Sew her up, and let's
use staples for the incision (pointing at me). Attending
leaves. I staple, and staple, and staple. Crap, my staples
suck. Resident finishes my suturing mess. Out of OR:
01:00. My feet hurt like hell.
Tally: 5 deliveries, 1 cesarean section, 1 pathetic attempt at suturing.
Lesson: Life is precious. And I still don't want to be a childbearing woman.
Tally by end of week: 10 deliveries, 3 cesarean sections performed, 2 pathetic attempts at suturing, and 1 tired med student.
= Life is precious, a miracle of God, and exhaustingly awesome to
witness and participate in. I just wish it didn't have to happen at 3:30 in the
middle of the night.
Upcoming week: Gyn Onc. Cancer patients, here I come.
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| Pass. That is the key
word in tackling the marathon 7.5 hour USMLE Step 1 exam. It's
that wrenching feeling in your gut while you're staring at the
flickering computer screen trying to keep focused because you forgot to
memorize that one dumb factoid that you thought was "low-yield".
It's also that glorifying feeling when that one obscure word
in First Aid that you read the night before the test saved your
butt. Or it's the disconcerting feeling when your next-door
cubicle neighbor who's also taking Step 1 starts convulsing and seizing
on the floor. (This actually happened to someone in my med school
class.)
Post-test PTSD. I assure
you it affects medical students as much as it affects the folks who
went through Hurricane Katrina. Nightmares about Q-bank
questions, waking up with a hypnapompic hallucination of a question on
the test, seeing pages of First Aid in your head. And no, if
you're wondering, it wasn't a consequence of DTs from intoxication
withdrawal (although I do wonder what the prevalence is for post-USMLE
alcoholic stupor). Sadly, it's all part and parcel of the Step 1
experience, thank you very much.
The journey continues. With
faith in the God who does immeasurably more than I can ever imagine or
hope for, with a grateful heart for the immense privilege God has given
me to pursue medicine, and with knowledge that exalting my Savior is
ultimately the true purpose of my life. Thanks to all those who
were in prayer for my test and especially for those who took time to
encourage me all along the way over the past month. Thanks mom for cooking me awesome food.
Psalm 37:4 - Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.
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| I rented this movie maybe 3 weeks ago.. title is The Return. Pretty
provocative foreign language flick (plus the added bonus if you
understand Russian). Movie is basically about this family in
Russia whose father had gone away for some time (many years) and then
returned suddenly, much to the surprise of the kids and their
mother. Basically the two boys only know of their father from
pictures. So their father then decides to take them on a "family
trip" minus their mother, which turns into a chilling roadtrip of
estrangement and tension, fishing misadventures and tall
watchtowers. Movie moves on, and soon the boys suspect that
something is up -- that their dad may be trying to kill them. But
was he really trying to kill them? Movie ends when the boys watch
their own father die after falling off an island watchtower after a
seemingly climactic chase unto murder. Now maybe a change of heart... Brilliant, no?
This reminded me of the story of the prodigal son. What is it
exactly about human nature that incites anger and spite about a
beloved's returning? Certainly, we could all imagine what it was
like for the responsible son who stayed the course with his father,
only to discover the undeserved, extravagant forgiveness of the
prodigal son's irresponsibility. But why is forgiveness something
to be so angry over? Especially if family should trump a kid's
debauchery. Why is pardon or amnesty eschewed? Maybe it's
because
we cannot accept forgiveness. Forgiveness breaks the rules of
egalitarianism. Justice is cancelled. The social contract
is breached. Wrong simply cannot be rectified with right.
Or maybe it's because our hippocampuses are too good. Forgive and
forget is our motto but hardly a reality. Evolution would
certainly support the status quo. Consider why a world in which
survival of the fittest seemingly reigns supreme would allow a "misguided"
population of homo sapiens to forgive each other. How does one
reconcile love and forgiveness with a reproductive natural selection of
the fittest? One could make a good case that the prodigal son was
less fit economically (by wasting his resources and living with the
pigs) than the son who worked the land for crops and food and produced
for the family (therefore Son A > Son B). So why does it
appear that Son B > Son A in the father's economy? Forgiveness
is motivated by something greater than biological, intellectual, or
economical productivity. Something supernatural.
The return? Archetypal. Forgiveness? Radical.
Irrational. Illogical. But utterly amazing.
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| I'm in Cleveland now!! It has been pretty wild getting settled
here and not knowing my way around the area especially with a car. But being at the
Clinic for orientation has been pretty fun minus the boring lectures on
fire hazards and disability insurance. "Did you know that 1 in
every 117 medical professionals die each year and that more than 1 in
10 gets disabled?" OK, it's really retarded that this guy rambles
for like 30 minutes on something we CCLCM students already GET through
the program, as in the tuition we pay covers disability
insurance.
Anyways, I must say we HAVE been getting pampered with all kinds of
stuff like our custom-fitted, name-embroidered LONG Cleveland Clinic Foundation whitecoats, pagers already  ,
the catered continental breakfasts in the mornings, fancy lunches from
fancy places (the names of which elude me, haha), famous docs giving
inspiring speeches, getting expensive gifts like I've never seen, and
(just today) hearing from the NIH director Elias Zerhouni who gave the
CCLCM inaugural speech to nearly 500 people at the Intercontinental
Hotel Conference Center, which was telecasted on monitors and TVs... it
was absolutely incredible. Extravagance and posh like I've never
witnessed.
I'm an M-1 now!! Oh yeeeeah.
-KT | | |
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