My goodness, my share of all my blogs has disappeared. Hmmm .... maybe I havn't blogged in awhile.

I had a really awesome time doing Medicine II and HCMC, and now I'm pretty sure I'll go into internal medicine. On the other hand, Ob has been kinda easy, but not too terribly interesting. The only thing is that they require a ton of reading assignments. Probably gonna skim it, and do the questions instead. Just spent over a couple of hours reading, and I'm only on page 60 (very depressing, 600 pages total).

Back to work.


John

Dearest Anita,

Thanks for

Always Being Caring
Deliciously Exquisite Face
Gracious Hostess
Illuminating John
Loving Kiwi
Many Nights Of Phonecalls
(Thought of using something that starts with P and rhymes with fashion)
Quiet Radiance
Sweetness
Thoughtfulness
Understanding
Very Worthwhile eXhortations
Your Zeal


John

Sorry for not updating in such a long time. My excuses are that I wanted to spend more time with my beloved one, instead of updating the blogs. Yup, that is such a sorry excuse but I'm sticking with it. She is such an amazing person and time passes by so quickly, sigh .... I can't wait until the next time we meet.

New stuff:

Internal medicine.

I am going to be an internal medicine doc, but somehow it's been hard to not get involved emotionally about the patient. Confidentiality won't allow me to disclose any info, but I've been coming home fairly depressed each day. Gotta learn to be more detached. Gotta go back to the lessons I've learned since I was a child.

For I am not my own ..... Heidelberg Question #1.


John

I'm back home in warm California, escaping the bitter winters in Siberia. OOps I mean Minnesota.

So far this has been really cool. The highlights
1. Talking to a bunch of my friends from high school, college, and church
2. Seeing my cousin and his family
3. Watching ping-pong videos with Dave
4. Playing ping-pong
5. Going to In-N-Out
6. Going to Donutman
7. Getting a French cookbook from Dave

John

Drat ... just lost a blog.

Oh well, it was only about me getting a brain scan. No, I'm not sick but I just wanted to get the experience of getting inside an MRI scanner. It is a little bit creepy with all the shrill magnetic sounds and the feeling of being entombed inside this machine. I'm just waiting to get hard copies of my brain. Cool ....

John

I had the most amazing trip to Dallas over the Thanksgiving Holidays. Everything was perfect, even the travel during the peak Holiday season. Believe it or not:

1. I didn't get searched
2. The plane left on time
3. The plane arrived early
4. A really beautiful Texan girl came to pick me up
5. Went to see my favorite hockey team on my birthday

Unfortunately, my favorite team (The Wild) did lose to the Stars. I did hedge my bets against that possibility, so it was actually a very special night.

One of the best things that night was spending time with my girlfriend. We were underneath the Stars (no pun intended), and we did a lot of things together. Her parents also made the night special by getting a fruit torte from La Madeleine's. What a way to end the evening :)

The next day, we spent the day at White Rock Lake. It was just nice to just sit and watch the ducks glide on the water. At times, we were completely oblivious to the world around us. We then went home for a Thanksgiving meal with her parents. It was a semitypical Thanksgiving meal with beef tongue, turkey, oxtail, lettuce and mushrooms, and sweet potatoes. I can't think of a more diverse Thanksgiving combo, but the food was definitely very tasty. The next day, I got to meet some of Anita's friends from church. They were very nice people, and I got to see a lot of them at church later in the evening.

The next morning Anita and I studied over at the SMU library. What struck me the most was the number of studious law students on a Thanksgiving Saturday weekend. I'm the epitome of slackerness, so I just wasted my time doing nonradiology reading. We then went to a TexMex place. I'm still confused by TexMex, because it is similar to SoCalMex. Oh well, the food was good but it was very hot. It was definitely not a Minnesotan hot dish (Although, I'm probably one :).

Sadly I had to go back home to Minnesota, but I'm already making plans to come back to Texas.


John

More quiz results

How Spiritually Intelligent Are You?

You scored 24, on a scale of 9 to 27. Here's how to interpret your score:
23 - 27 Spiritually Adept: You consistently act with spiritual intelligence, through sensitivity, compassion, and understanding

Which Bible Hero Are You?

You scored 28, on a scale of 10 to 40. Here's how to interpret your score:
25 - 34 JOSEPH. Self-assured and proud of it, you're leadership material through and through. Hey, can you help it if other people think you know it all? You do!


They wrote that I was a Mainline to Conservative Protestant. Already knew that, but took the quiz anyway.


John

Radiology is totally a self-motivated rotation, unfortunately I havn't been feeling that motivated for this past week. I'm making up for that by doing call tomorrow evening :)

Right now I'm wasting time by taking quizzes at Beliefnet.com

For my spiritual type quiz, I got a score of 90 (25-100) which makes me a "Candidate for Clergy."

Here's a description for what type of Christian I am. I completely disagree with the "Jerry Falwell" descriptor, and it was somewhat inaccurate. Rebuttal in Italics.

Jerry Falwell Christian
(a.k.a. "Historicist" or "Literalist")
You view the Bible as historically accurate and divinely inspired (Agree with this). You go to church every Sunday (Yup, sometimes twice), with the Good Book in a Bible cover (Three bible versions: RSV, TEV, and NKJV. No cover though, will get the Message and NIV sometime later in my life), and Wednesday night (Thursday night)for Bible study. You've read at least one of the books in the apocalyptic "Left Behind" series (completely disagree with the eschatology behind Left Behind), prefer your iced tea very sweet (prefers Chinese tea), and suspect Bill Clinton has murdered (had intimate relatons with) somebody somewhere in Arkansas. You watch "Touched by an Angel," even though you think it's not Christian enough (too saccharine for my tastes). You may watch Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network, and you adore Dr. Laura (Yeecch!), Chuck Colson (Great guy), James Dobson (Has good points), and Rush Limbaugh (pretty good). If you're Catholic, you go to Latin Mass and weekly confession, though you don't have much to confess. You think homosexuals are sinful but try periodically to love them. You think the surrounding culture is so polluted that you shop at Christian bookstores (Hey, Northwestern is the best bookstore ever!!!!), listen only to Christian radio (I have 3 Christian radio stations on my dial, but I also listen periodically to Cities 97)and send your kids to Christian or parochial schools--or homeschool them. You give generously to your church and Christian charities. The Bible provides you not only a direct connection to God but a roadmap for how to lead your life (Can't argue with that).

John

Today is a very special day for me (November 10). However, right now I'm dithering in the library reading stuff instead of doing what I really need to be doing.

Next up is Radiology! Will write more later.


John

Pediatrics has been going really well, and I have a really cool team. All my patients have been doing very well -- they are simply adorable. I still think that I will like to go through a medicine subspecialty, but I'm really excited about somehow incorporating kids in my practice.

Tomorrow, I'm going to pay my respects for a dear friend. He has inspired me to become the doctor I'd like to be.

John "A Wild-Stars Wars" Fan
P.S: Thank you Anita!!!

A suffering Minnesota sportsfan

Ok, I admit that I'm originally from California. However, I've been rooting against my hometeam Angels in favor of my newly adopted team the Twins. Aargh ... the pain, the agony. Only a page can save me now. Wait a sec ... I just got a page. I hope it's not another admission. Nope, it's for dinner. Cool.

Dinnertime,


John
P.S.: I really dislike the rally monkey!!!!

It has been awhile since I've written a substantive blog, but forgive me in advance for rambling because I have just completed my first overnight call schedule at St. Paul Kids :)

My team is amazing! The residents are super nice, cool med students, the food is good, wonderful kids, great teaching, etc... It is probably my best rotation experience yet. Sure it started out pretty slow, but then I had two admissions and got 3 hours of sleep last night. However, during the down-time Brad and I threw my tornado red foosball back and forth to one another. We also made jokes about our fluid rounds :)

Anita's visit

My girlfriend came to visit me this weekend. I've been looking forward to that weekend ever since I started surgery. We had a brunch get together at Highland Grill with my friends Jessie, Gully, Tseganesh, Heather, Lydia, and JP. Yeah, it was the usual crew but I havn't seen them in ages. The night before I went bowling with JP and Kirk over at Rand-Ham. We then went to Stillwater to visit the antique shops, apple picking, hay ride, climb trees, and watch the autumn leaves. Afterwards, I made some apple pie (actually Tseganesh helped a little) and ate my Kiwi-Apple-Sugar-Cinammon concoction. The next day, Anita and I had an adventure locating Bethlehem Baptist church. We missed the first service, so we ate breakfast at this little underground water-hole over at dinkytown. Unfortunately I started panicking that we would miss the next service, but ended up being 15 minutes early to the next church service. This weekend was definitely one of the most special weekends in my life. I'm constantly delighted by all the little surprises that Anita thinks up. She always manages to bring a smile to my face :-)


John

Getting Published

I'm gonna be published in the journal of In Vitro (Cell and Development) :) Sure, probably only 50 people in the entire world will read it but that's ok with me. I doubt there are that many people who are interested in murine leukemia viruses or myogenesis.


John

Survived my orals

I studied really hard for the oral exam, but it was actually very straight-forward. Hmm ... it would have been nice for me to show them that I've learned a ton of stuff. On the other hand, I heard that the multiple choice test is exceedingly difficult. Oh well ...


John


John

It has been a really slow surgery service this week, but I still have a lot of reading to do. I've made up my mind that I will not go into surgery as a profession. Right now my top three are still internal medicine, pediatrics, and neurology.

Interesting things:

1. Listening to Derrick's (the intern) self-produced CD, Love is Amazing.
2. Getting a new nickname, QuickSilver

Things to do next week.

1. Study
2. Sleep
3. Surgery rotation


John

Biking

I've gotten to enjoy biking. Now is actually the perfect time to go biking, but I don't have the time. Sigh ...


I love ..... ...... .....

09/10/02

John

Tying knots redux

The best part of surgery is actually doing surgery, not standing around with retractors. Today, I was fortunate enough to participate in the med school's animal lab. Although it was pretty sad that a pig had to be sacrificed for our education, it definitely bolstered my confidence in surgery. I had the opportunity to cut out the spleen, gallbladder, and do a gastric pyloroplasty. Sounds kinda complicated, but it wasn't too hard of an operation. I even had a chance to practice my knot tying skills. At first, I totally forgot how to do a one-handed knot but like biking your muscle memory automatically remembers and does it for you. That's the coolest thing -- knowing how to do something without actually thinking about it :)


John

Tying knots

I'm starting to get the hang of tying knots, but I'm still incredibly slow compared to my chief resident and surgeon. They are just amazing to watch -- knots flying like crazy, little squirters everywhere, tools flying around :) My legs are like jelly though after a 6 hour operation -- I can't imagine doctors who continue to operate past 20 hours.

Today I was pimped quite a bit by Dr. Tuttle, fortunately I was able to answer all of his questions during his Q and A session :) He did stump me on one question: What drug was Dr. Halsted addicted to? The answer: The same drug that John Belushi overdosed with minus the heroin.

Who is Dr. Halsted? Well, he is probably the greatest American surgeon of all time, a cokehead, and an icon over at Johns Hopkins.

Tomorrow, I will be on call. Fun, fun, fun ..... Slowing down .... Yawning ... Getting Tired ... Need my sleep ..... To be continued ....


John
P.S.:

Favorite Quote of the Day

"My friends like to tell each other that I am not really a born-again Christian. They think of me more along the lines of that old Jonathan Miller routine, where he said, "I'm not really a Jew -- I'm Jew-ish." They think I am Christian-ish. But I'm not. I'm just a bad Christian. A bad born-again Christian. And certainly, like the apostle Peter, I am capable of denying it, of presenting myself as a sort of leftist liberation-theology enthusiast and maybe sort of a vaguely Jesusy bon vivant. But it's not true...I could go to a gathering of foot-wash Baptists and, except for my dreadlocks, fit right in. I would wash their feet; I would let them wash mine."

Anne Lamott


Here I am in the computer lab procrastinating as usual, instead of reading Surgical Recall, and somehow I stumbled into this quote by Anne Lamott. Sure she is as diametrically opposite of who I am theologically, politically, but both of us are completely embraced by Jesus. By the way, I would let those foot-wash Baptists wash my feet too :)

Going to church in scrubs

You know you are addicted to foosball once you start going to church in scrubs. Here I was finishing my 28 hour surgery shift, (happy as a clam sustained by a Belgian Waffle with whipped cream and blueberries), figured I could get a few games of foosball before going to church. Unfortunately I didn't have time to change so I went to Park Avenue in scrubs. In the evening I decided to change into my bright orange Northwestern volunteer shirt for church at Stadium Village. (God is probably laughing at my dress choices :). After church, pastor John challenged me to a game of ping-pong. Even though we played with an orange ball (the T-shirt was a convenient camouflage), he still whooped my butt.

John

Surgery call

I'm sneaking out of surgery to write this blog. Actually my resident decided to take a nap, so he sent me out to do some reading :) So far surgery hasn't been as bad as I expected. On the other hand, it will get a lot busier in the upcoming weeks. The residents have been really nice, but I still think that this will be my last surgical rotation ... sigh ... Anyways, neurology is still my favorite rotation so far. That reminds me, I need to take care of my recommendation from Dr. Ramirez.


Gotta do some reading,


John

Miniature golfing and air hockey

I went miniature golfing for the first time last Friday. Pastor John was so surprised that I have never miniature golfed that he insisted that I try it out :) On my very first hole, I had a hole in one!!!!! I didn't do so hot afterwards, but he only beat me by 4 strokes after 18 holes. Beginners luck? Next we played air hockey, where I barely beat him 7-6 on the very last second. Now Pastor J wants to challenge me in ping-pong :) All in good fun. His wife is a very good cook, unfortunately she is going to Germany for 3 weeks so I won't be able to learn cooking from her. Hmmm ... I'm doing surgery right now so I might not have the time. Anyways .... procrastinating again


John