Quick notes

Blogging time has been restricted by time crunches, so I'm resorting a seven-quick-takes style today. I can't call it seven quick takes because I'm not sure there will be seven, and I cannot assign it a day of the week, either, since I've been meaning to type this post up for two and half weeks.

1

I am growing celery. It's fun to have a little greenery in the room.

2

After a certain event in September, I whined that I would never host another event again. This was ridiculous, as I was already planning to host a family practice doc to come and talk for MedSFL and two more CMA-SS meetings were on the books. The MedSFL event and one of the CMA-SS meetings are happening next week, on successive days. Oops!

3

I am shocked and slightly embarrassed at the hatred that radiates from people who disagree with me. Things I wish people knew:

1. Disagreement isn't the same as hatred.
2. Religious people can have intellects.
3. People who have not had the same life experience as you can have valid things to say.
4. Dialogue can focus on one issue at a time (restated: just because I hold one position that you disagree with, does not mean that I also hold another, or that want to talk about another).

4

Turning the other cheek and being polite is so hard. I want to be all things to all people, simultaneously never lying or withholding the truth out of fear. Someone liberal on Facebook can sling mud on Romney and say "I hate him," but I must only politely point out that Obama's policies aren't working, or draw attention to little-known facts like his support of inaction if a botched abortion results in a live fetus. 

Or, in comboxes: someone can lay a thick layer of Red Herrings, Ad Hominem, and Internet-Disinhibited Judgment on me, and I must truthfully and meekly answer for their good and the good of future readers. Humility in the face of misunderstanding; gentleness in the face of accusation; short replies in the face of diatribes. Basically: the second greatest commandment? Not cake.

5

I am in a group at the Catholic student center here called "Samuel Group," and it is put on by some religious sisters here and meant to teach youth, over day-long meetings throughought the academic year, how to discern. The requirements include monthly (or more frequent) spiritual direction, regular reception of the Sacraments, daily prayer, and restricted use of recreational television and internet.

We began with working to increase our trust of God, then looked over our life to find his providence in it (even those terrible, hard times that you never want to think about and think something must've gone horribly wrong with God's plan) and discover how we can magnify Him. Tomorrow is the third meeting and we will work on detachment.

6

The Respiratory block is over and we are now in the final block of the semester: Renal. This block is notoriously laborious because of all the physiology involved. Bring it.

Yesterday I learned how to intubate, put on casts (I casted someone in a short-arm cast for practice, and it looked like the one at right, although it had a final layer of deep blue, and I thought it looked amazing), take off casts (terrifying because you're sawing into someone's arm with the same kind of saw we used to cut bones in anatomy lab), do vascular and thyroid ultrasounds, and...

deliver a baby!!!

Although the "mother" and the "baby" were both mannequins, I thoroughly enjoyed it. In my small group of medical students learning together, I was the only one who had ever seen a vaginal birth, and the teaching resident had me explain what I thought of it for the other students. I told them that it was a surprise (there's a head coming out of where??) and a delight (this is a new person that no one's ever seen with their eyes!).

This is sort of what our L&D model ("Sim man") looks like. She breaths and pushes out the baby, who can present in any way. She also has a placenta, cotyledons of which can be "retained" so that you have to manually scrape them out. Our workshop only focused on normal deliveries, though. Source.