Busy, sick, busy, sick, sick, sick.

The title basically sums up my past 7 or 8 weeks - my "personal leave" from this rotation. I had so much I wanted to get accomplished, and have done none of it because I've felt so flippin' awful. If I do feel like writing soon (hopefully I will - and prayers that I'll feel better are always appreciated), here's what you'll see:

• What the Internal Medicine rotation was like for me
• The evaluation with an attending physician who completely crushed my spirit and still has me wondering if I should be in medical school in the first place
• My Christmas photo shoot Gabe (and now Reed)
• Gabe's little brother Reed's entry into the world
• Christmas
• Some health & beauty products that I luuuurrrrve lately
• Your Fentanyl Patch and You
• A few good movies
• The recipe for some yummy fruit salad that I've been making lately (only 2 Weight Watchers points per cup!)
• My hope that I will soon wake up, discover that the past 2 1/2 years were only a terrible nightmare, and find that I am just preparing to start medical school, without pancreatitis or debilitating anxiety and depression - and that I'll be able to perform the way I could if I weren't shackled with this hateful pain and anxiety. Actually, that wouldn't be a whole post - it's just a thought.

I'll try to feel like writing. :-)

Shameless self-promotion, which may be interesting if you're looking for gifts for a beloved geek or medical student

So, I have a store set up at Cafepress. And it has stuff in it. And it's not all Ramble Strip stuff, because I realize that wearing "Ramble Strip" doesn't have that wide of an appeal, you know? Well, I would hope that it does, but it just doesn't. Anyway, I do have some items (clothing mostly - T-shirts, sweatshirts, tank tops, hats, etc.) that may be appropriate for those of the geek persuasion - your favorite nerd, a dorky acquaintance, you know. There's also some general medical student/doctor stuff there. So if you're looking for gifts, you might want to take a gander. Here's a sample of the slogans that are in the shop (either in "Medicine" or "Geek Love"). Most things come in a pretty wide range of colors, and the products I've bought for myself have been good quality - they wash well, keep their shape, that kind of thing. And I've found that for me, they're true to size. If you have any other medicine-related or geeky slogans that you want me to slap onto some products, let me know. We can work out a profit-splitting arrangement! Each product image is linked to the Cafepress page where you can find it.

My Brain is Hung Like a Horse

Curse Words Are Nothing To Swear By

Keep Out of Direct Sunlight

Geeks Make My Heart Go S1, S2, S1, S2

My Invisibility Cloak Must Have Malfunctioned

Be the Doctor Your Parents Wanted You to Marry (there's also a kids' version of this that says, "I'm Gonna Be the Doctor My Mommy Wants Me to Marry")

I Fear That Medical School Has Driven Me Completely Insane

Real Men Marry Doctors

Medical Stud(ent)

The mirror image of the word 'narcissist'

Optometrists Can't Keep Themselves From Making Spectacles

'I'm Quoting Myself,' I Said

You Can't Spell SARCASM Without L-E-T-T-E-R-S

Now, are those not all freaking awesome? Well, most of them are. Your life is incomplete without one, you know. Let's see, what else? Oh, "You Buy T-Shirts Now!" tm IMAO.

I may be away for a little while ...

I have had it up to here (HERE!) with GoDaddy (who, if this blog were outfitted with a western motif, would be wearing a black hat), and am switching hosting companies to AN Hosting (which is one of the companies recommended by Wordpress.org, and I want this to be a Wordpress blog by the time I start my next rotation in early January.)

Change is a'comin', y'all. Anyway, the blog may be down for a day or two while I switch from GoEvil to AN. Hopefully not before I get a chance to type up this rockin' awesome recipe for fruit salad that I make, though - you NEED to try this recipe. Because, like I say, it's ROCKIN' AWESOME. Dad? Can you vouch for me?

More love for GoDaddy

Geez, are they SERIOUS? I got this email today:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for contacting Customer Support.

The files in which appear to be non web related are as follows:

ramblestrip\pictures

If these files are in fact being referenced by your site please provide exapmle URL's so we can verify the content in question, if the files are non web related then they will have to be removed by 11/27/07 at 1:00am MST or we will be forced to suspend the account.

Regards,
Advanced Hosting Support

First of all, I'd like to know who the Sir/Madam is that contacted customer support, because it sure wasn't me and whoever it is deserves a swift kick. Also, do you realize what they're asking me to do? They're asking me to go through EVERY BLOG POST (all 600+ of them, about 3 1/2 years' worth) and document EVERY PICTURE that I used, and tell them the URL of the post so they can find it. This is going to take for-flipping-ever! Anybody want to help? It's about 7:00PM EST now - and I'm serious, if you have a free hour or so this evening, I will love you forever if you email ramblestrip@gmail.com and offer some assistance.

The suckage of GoDaddy and their stupid TOS

You can't see this right now, because GoDaddy has helpfully suspended my account. Do you know why? Because I have

"... content not directly related to your live website on your hosting account [and am] in violation of the TOS as the hosting is not meant to be used as a file repository for non web related content. Once you can confirm that you have removed all non web related content please reply to this email again."

Do you know what the "non web related content" is? It's my very amateur, non-copyrighted clogging videos and the also very amateur, non-copyrighted video of my high school senior year Homecoming pep rally routine to Thriller. Good grief. I guess I'll have to remove those links in the sidebar, even though I do get a fair amount of hits from people looking for clogging videos. (Seriously, I really do.)

I only stay with GoDaddy because they're so much cheaper than other hosting companies and I, as a medical student with a pretty high tuition cost, don't exactly have lots of money to throw around. If only I had more traffic, which would mean more people clicking on my G**gle ads at the top of the page, and more people using my Amazon affiliate link when they buy from Amazon ... sigh.

So I'm in the process of deleting those oh-so-threatening clogging videos. I'm not sure what harm they were doing to anyone, but whatever. I'll play by the rules, but I'm still putting GoDaddy on my List. You know, THAT List.

I may be climbing out of my pit

It's been a rough couple of months, y'all. I can barely talk about it without crying, because it was just so full of disappointment and sadness and pain, and it was like I was someone else entirely that I didn't even recognize nor did I like very much at all. (I do have horrible self-esteem and can't find much at all that's good about myself - except for Christ in my heart, of course, but that's Him, not me - but over the past couple of months, I *really* despised myself.) I'm sorry the posts have been so sparse lately, and I'm sorry that when I did post, that it was all about doctors and so on and so forth. Interestingly, my traffic has gone up quite a bit over the past 2 months. Figure that.

Anyway, I hope you, dear readers (I first typed "deer readers" - heh. Scott would be proud - that's what's on his mind at this time of year, too) don't have the idea that I'm some sort of drug-seeking pill-head. Instead, I'm a chronic pain patient struggling to learn to be a doctor, a good one - working 70-80 hour weeks in addition to trying to study in between, and also trying to spend time with my Scott, my family and friends, and some MUCH needed time at the Y. Oh, and sleeping, sometimes. It's hard to do that when it feels like someone is stabbing you in the gut, and pulling the knife around to your back. And then when you go to your doctor or to the ED for help, they instead berate you and you end up sobbing because of their jaded lack of compassion, it's discouraging.

Being in severe pain all the time, all the while being expected to perform in a superhuman manner (and getting bad evaluations when you don't - more on that later) and having more doors slammed in your face - it made me feel more hopeless and sad than I have felt in a long time. I didn't know if I was ever going to get help, or if this pain was going to become a part of my daily life. A Google search found a lot of information on depression resulting from chronic pain. I don't know what the answer is, fellow members of the healthcare system, but we have an underserved population of people here. I don't know how we weed out the true sufferers from the addicts and the dealers. But something needs to be done. And the way I heard other providers refer to patients requiring pain medication was less than encouraging.

I am doing all of the "alternative" stuff that the Interwebz recommends for pancreatitis - an antioxidant blend (the one I take is by Nature Made, with Vitamin A, 100% as Beta-Carotene - 10,000 IU, 200% RDA; Vitamin C: 250 mg, 417% RDA; Vitamin E: 200 IU, 667% RDA; Zinc: 7.5 mg, 50% RDA; Selenium: 15 mcg, 21% RDA; Copper: 1 mg, 50% RDA; Manganese: 1.5 mg, 75% RDA), and I'm also taking an additional selenium supplement, my trusty enzymes (amylase and lipase, aka Creon 10), and a couple of doses of Advil a day for anti-inflammatory properties.

I'm still hurting, though - I do have a new pain doc, and I'll talk about him later - I think I'm going to like him. He and his office staff are already a billion times kinder than the other Pain Clinic Which Shall Not Be Named.

I just didn't want you guys to think that I was an addict who was obsessed with getting my fix. Is that what you think? What DO you think? Let's have it, I can take it. It's why I have comments on my blog - I want to know what people think about what I write, and I appreciate and consider them all. Except the trolls, of course, which I just kick back under the bridge; and the potty-mouths, who I edit and *then* consider. :-)

Dreams, psychiatry, and future blogging

Y'ALL! I've missed you. I don't know why I'm not writing more - it's not like I'm at the hospital 24/7 or anything (I'm on psychiatry, for crying out loud!) I guess I'm just not feeling creative or something. Although I do have a lot to write about - speaking of that, here's the thing about HIPAA and patient talk. HIPAA, as I understand it, means that I can't talk about patients in any way that would allow them to be identified. So I can tell you about the patient who equates West Virginia with Egypt:

Me (doing a mini mental status exam): Do you know what state [current city] is in? (I was expecting a correct answer, because she did get the city right.)
Patient: West Virginia.
Me: That's corr-
Patient: You know, Egypt.
Me: -rect? Okay.

And you would have no idea who that patient was. You could even go onto the floor at the hospital where I'm currently working and still not be able to pick her out based on that. So I will not discuss patients in a way that allows them to be identified, but I may discuss them if I'm talking about a particular concept in psychiatry, or something that deeply affected me, or whatever. [/obligatory HIPAA statement, because I signed approximately 10^3 forms stating that I won't violate it or else they'll kill my kitty cats and let the air out of my tires. Oh, and chop off my big toe.]

With that said, I can't stop dreaming about my rotation. Seriously. I either dream about psychiatry, psychiatric patients, the other students on this rotation with me (which, despite popular-but-ridiculous belief, I have NO CONTROL OVER and it does not mean that I want to jump their bones in any way, shape or form), or marriage. For instance, I recently dreamed that Scott and I got married and moved to Australia, where I had to take Step One again (the horror!) and Scott's personality changed so that he was a completely different person. He was also wearing yellow capri pants, which was very disturbing. And then last night I dreamed that every person I talked to exhibited an inappropriate affect. This is when someone laughs as they tell you about the death of a person close to them, or smiles at strange points in the conversation - it also applies for crying or being sad at weird times as well. So everyone in my dream had an inappropriate affect, and I would point at each one of them and declare, "Inappropriate affect!" I don't think I'm right in the head, y'all.

Re: Future blogging - I bought a book called The Book Of Myself - A Do-It-Yourself Autobiography in 201 Questions, and I think I'll answer some of the questions here from time to time. Because y'all want to know me better, right? And I want to do a better job of chronicling my past and my thoughts about things. The questions are things like this:

• This is the profession that I often considered as a teenager and how I learned about it
• I was very hurt by this person I counted as a friend
• If I had any trouble with my mother/father when I was young, it was in this area
• This is how I met my sweetheart and fell in love

Just stuff like that. What do you think? Do you think that type of thing would make for interesting posts? Give me some feedback, please. I really wish that each of my parents would fill out one of those books for me. I love hearing about their childhood and early years together, and stories about family members - not just genealogy - I like the narratives.

All right, I'm off to a substance abuse lecture. Whee!

Yay! Feedblitz will work!

I've been tinkering with my messed-up RSS feed for awhile now. Since I switched to the new Blogger (erstwhile Blogger beta), my RSS feed has stopped updating. I discovered that it is because, since I publish on my own server instead of Blogger's, that they hate me. Not really. But Blogger hasn't worked out the kinks to get FTP publishers' RSS feeds to update like they're supposed to, and that made my Feedblitz service come to a screeching halt.

So I created another Blogger blog - published on their server - just for Ramble Strip updates. And I called it, creatively, Ramble Strip Updates. When I post something new on THIS blog, I post a link to the new post on the Updates blog (which is the RSS feed that Feedblitz uses now), and then my Feedblitz subscribers get an email that I've updated, with a link to the new post. Yay!

So you can subscribe via Feedblitz now, if you want to know when I've updated. Feedblitz doesn't spam - they will only send you an email when I post something new. There's a button in yonder sidebar if you're interested.

Also, here's a picture of my gloriously dorky class (well, some of the class) and our beloved First Aid for the USMLE Step One books. I ::heart:: these people. There's this kinship when you go through something crappy with other people, you know? And if I don't pass Step One next week (ack! Next week!) and end up in a class that does not include these guys - it will just be wrong.

SarahK is making me think of bloggable things

Like this post, which reminds me of that time that Scott was at my apartment and in the bathroom (actually, I think he might have been in the shower) and I only have one bathroom, and I had to pee in a jar. Have I just shared too much?*

And on this, the most gigantonormous post I've ever seen, she says that FrankJ thinks that Lipitor sounds like an alien name - I told her that she should see the cancer chemotherapy drugs or immunopharmacology. When I was trying to study those, I felt like I was reading notes in Martian. Gemtuzamab? Mylotarg? "I am Gemtuzamab, from the planet Mylotarg!" Here's what I know about those drugs - doxyrubicin and daunorubicin cause cardiotoxicity (I know that because "rubor" means red, and hearts are red. Reddish.) I know that bleomycin causes pulmonary fibrosis because "bleo" sounds like "blow". And I know that vincristine and vinblastine are vinca alkaloids and that they inhibit microtubules and work during mitosis. (I know that one just because I randomly memorized it.) And that's pretty much all I know about that.

From that same post, someone is telling FrankJ that he looks 17 (heh) and won't tell poor SarahK that she looks young (I tell her that she looks like Kate Hudson - I hope that helps.) We went to lunch at Subway once last semester, and I had a photo album with pictures from our first year of medical school in the backseat of my car. Todd and Michael were sitting in the back (with Christy in the front) and Todd was flipping through the album. He goes, "Wow, everybody looks so much OLDER since we started school!" Christy and I get identical looks of horror.

Us: Todd!
Todd: What? I mean, ALL of us look older.
Me: Nope, that's not better. Not better at all.
Todd: I mean, I'm sorry. We ALL look older - but you guys, you look, uh ...
Me: Todd, never tell a woman she looks older.

To his credit, he did apologize approximately 1,037 times in the next 24 hours. And then there was that guy in Walmart that time, when I was trying to buy an R-rated DVD and got carded (heh). My license still said "under 21" even though I wasn't, and of course the weight was laughably wrong. So I said, "Oh, I'm not under 21 anymore - and that weight isn't right anymore either, ha ha!" Clueless cashier boy goes, "*I* didn't say that." Boo.

I wish I got thousands of hits like Rachel Lucas. Or even an almost-thousand like SarahK. But I just don't have enough time to blog regularly enough. Ugh.

I have had a horrible week, pancreas-wise. More on that later.

American Idol - meh. More on that later too.

* I sterilized the jar afterwards, obviously.

Postpourri

As you've probably noticed lately, it seems as if I'm dead. I'm not, however, and I thought I should let y'all know. I've been doing things like taking tests, getting grades back, taking more tests, taking naps, taking tests, taking naps, getting fatter and fatter and uglier and fatter, and taking more tests. Oh, and jumping through the 16 hoops that you have to jump through in order to register for the first part of my board exams - USMLE Step One - which I'm taking in Cincinnati on June 14th.

YIKES, y'all. When I think about it, it kind of wigs me out. So I try not to think about it. Or if I must think about it, I try to remember that like, 94% of people pass it, and that my school's average score is almost exactly the national average, and that my grades are usually a little above my CLASS average, and that I did better than the national average on the microbiology/immunology mini-board that I took in December. So. I'll probably be okay - if it's the Lord's will, of course - and He's pushed and prodded me along thus far, so I have no reason to think He's going to let me fall flat on my face now. By chance, are there any medical students reading (my class or otherwise) who are taking Step One on that day in Cincinnati? Just curious.

Since I've been so scarce lately (although I have been adding some American Idol season 6 mpegs to the AI Downloads folder, slowly but surely) I have been trying to convince my medical school BFF Christy, who is quite witty and hilarious (more than me, actually, so I kind of hate her a little bit) to join my blog as a 2nd author. That way, there'll be more posts and such. And they'll be better than my blathery crap, too. I wanted to mention this convincing that I'm trying to do, thinking that you guys could leave comments for Christy to help me in my task. And I was going to include a lovely picture of her to go with it. However, she - like me - feels fat and ugly (although she's not) so she would only let my camera get this close:

And that arrow that I've drawn to point her out makes it look like she takes up about 3 1/2 states, which she totally doesn't. Finally, when she was worn down from studying for a set of block exams, I managed to get the camera *this* close:

So that's Christy. Somebody convince her to blog with me.

And finally, I have something like 9 days left that I actually have to go to my classroom. Do you know how bizarre that is? During the dark days of anatomy lab during my first semester, it seemed that the basic science years would never end - I kept expecting to fail, but thanks be to God, I haven't yet. And I *still* don't feel like I fit in with my class - I don't get invited to anything that the entire class isn't invited to (not that I'm a huge party animal, but it would still be nice to know that someone wanted me around) - but, that being said, at least there's only two people in my class that seem to hate me. That's 2/54 - not a bad ratio, I guess. Most people are just indifferent to me, I suppose, and don't particularly care if I exist or don't exist. I guess I can understand that, because I consider myself boring and annoying. If you can't tell, I'm having a kind of low night. I'm just so tired.

Thinning the downloads folder

So, I removed some files from my downloads folder - I also removed the link over in yonder sidebar. My server was down earlier for awhile (a problem with GoDaddy, it turned out) and I was afraid that I'd been pegged as a copyright infringer and yanked from the Internet. I got spooked. Also, I don't want to go to jail. Although jail might be better than these four exams I will be failing on Monday and Tuesday. Medical school sucks sometimes nearly all of the time.

Off topic (am I ever ON topic?) - SarahK, did you really think my MySpace quiz was "password to credit card / break into your house and steal your stuff / hurt you questions"? Eeek, I hope not. I re-read it and don't think I revealed any identifying information. (I also don't think that I'm so popular that I have stalkers - heh.) Also, MySpace may be for celebrities who want to think they have a blog, teenagers, and child predators (I won't argue with you there), but it also happens to be for me and about half of my medical school class - it's a good way to keep in touch with people from high school and college, too. I'm actually using it at the moment to contact people about a reunion.

So what if I lost!

File It Under is being very, very nice to me. Should I tell them that I (sadly) don't look like that anymore (yet*)? Naaaaaaah, I'll just enjoy it. Thanks to everyone who voted!

*I'll be back to looking like that picture by this time next year. Yes. I. Will. Medical school has made me crazy and fat, but NO MORE. I rule this roost.

If you're a photog, I need you! And if you have a computer and the Internet (hardy har) I need you too!

I've had a Canon 30D for about 6 months, and I loooooove it except for one thing - almost ALL of my indoor pictures show up fine on my LCD, but when I load them into Photoshop or into a folder on my computer, they are underexposed. I can fix it with Levels or Curves in Photoshop, but it's annoying (and time consuming) to have to do that with every single indoor picture I take.

Does anybody have a clue what's going on here? I can't find any help in my manual. Is there a setting that I'm not using correctly, or what? I'm letting it do everything automatically (AWB, etc.) except sometimes I manually speed up the shutter speed for action or slow it down for something like birthday candles.

Attached to the 30D is a Canon 580 Speedlite. Direct flash is almost always too harsh, so I usually use the little white bounce card that is built-in to the flash or I bounce the flash off of the ceiling.

Over the summer, before I had the 30D, I used a friend's 20D (with the same flash) for a wedding, and had the same kind of problem. So I don't think the camera is defective or anything.

Any help is appreciated! I'm beating my head against a wall over this issue.

Another thing - have you voted in the last 24 hours in the weblog awards? I think first place may be out of reach (darn you, File It Under, for being more well-known than me and therefore getting endorsements which = votes!) but I may be able to pass Sean Gleeson and Gina Cobb if people will VOTE for me, once per computer (if you have a work computer and home computer, that's two votes - knock yourself out) every 24 hours, until December 15th. Y'all know I love you already, but I'll love you even more if you help me have a decent showing in this thing. :-) Thanks.

2006 Weblog Awards

So, I've been nominated and chosen as a finalist for one of the Weblog Awards - but, I need some votes. Like, about 100, in order to take the lead. Heh. If you'd like to help me out (and you think I deserve the award, of course) go here and vote. You can vote from the same computer once per day.

I'd really appreciate it! Vote early and often, and tell all of your friends, and their friends, and their friends! :-) Mwaaaaaaah!