Wherein I ramble because I'm tired

This is what I had for dinner tonight. I didn't realize until I put all the food on the plate, but everything is orange. I'm pretty sure the only thing I learned in nutrition was that a monochrome diet is not well-balanced. What's that saying? Do as your med student says, not as she does.

In other news, I am apparently no longer allowed to sleep. I've had have some sort of insomnia for the last two weeks, which is perfect timing considering all the tests. I don't even try to go to sleep until about 1 am because otherwise it's just like torturing myself, lying there pleading with my brain to TURN OFF. Three nights ago, I decided at about midnight that I'd rearrange the furniture, make it more Zen or something. Two nights ago, I watched about 4 episodes of Glee. I figured maybe the cast of Glee could lull me into sleep with their rendition of Don't Stop Believin', but no such luck.

Last night, I was getting desperate, so after about 30 minutes of tossing and turning I got out the big guns.

I figured maybe I could read some of it and maybe bore myself into sleep. After all, I did pay $100 for this sucker; in addition to teaching me something about medicine it better double as a sleep aid. 

 There's 2754 pages in Harrison's, so there should be something soporific enough, right? Beetle vesication apparently wasn't boring enough. Maybe I should have tried the section on African Sleeping Sickness.

Tonight I'm going to have to break out my Robbins. Maybe reading about the histologic appearance of squamous cell carcinoma will put me to sleep. If it does, Pathology will be my new best friend. And if it doesn't, well, then maybe all that reading will help me do better on the test...that is, if I don't fall asleep on the scantron.

Sugar

In all the studying I did today, here's the only useful piece of information I learned:

Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250

Harpers Index

I wonder if those the regular or pretzel kind...

What I Do Instead of Study

Accessorize the skulls.

I wish my cranium had hinges on it like this guy's so I could cram some more stuff in my brain.

What do AIDS and med school have in common?

It sounds like the start of a bad joke. Unfortunately, it's not a joke; it's just bad. Or pathetic. I can't decide.

Here's what my notes say about AIDS dementia:

Cognitive Impairment: memory loss, difficulty reading, inability to concentrate, increased difficulty in performing common and then complex tasks.

Behavioral and mood impairments: apathy, lack of initiative that can progress to a near-vegetative state, agitation and mild mania.

I have textbook AIDS dementia minus the actual part about having the HIV. Maybe I have med dementia. This must explain why I have to ban myself from Walmart on test days otherwise I'll stand in the shampoo aisle for 20 minutes because I can't make a decision. Oh, and why I have no idea what month it is. And why sometimes I stop at green lights. And why I can't remember the name of the organism that causes Cutaneous Myiasis.

Dear Moron,

To the people of the town in which I'm being held hostage by my medical education:

Were you too busy making meth to learn how to read? Is that why you've never read the Missouri Driver's manual?

Or have the rules of the road different here than in civilization.

Perhaps it's just that in this God-forsaken, redneck hell-hole, your kindergarten teachers forgot to teach you about waiting your damn turn!

Is that why you refuse to obey the law and actually stop your car at a four-way stop. How hard it must be on you to wait the four extra seconds it would take for you to stop and let the person with the right of way go first.

No, wait! Let me guess. You're Sandra Bullock and this is some low-budget version of the movie Speed. If you press on your break your car is going to explode, right? That must be the reason why I get cut off at least once a day by some moron that hasn't figured out that blinking red lights = stop. They are not saying "Please run me! And crash into the law abiding citizen next to you."

And what's even better, when I honk at you because you're breaking the law and getting your piece of junk dangerously close to one year old Conrad, you get all pissy, LIKE IT'S MY FAULT.

Whew, rant over. I think this blog has just become a place to store my whining. Either that, or my life just sucks right now. Or both.

I realize this sounds dumb, but I've been in more near-accidents in a one mile radius in this teeny, tiny town than I have been ever anyplace else. How many more days until I get to leave this place? If I end up here for third and fourth years, I'm quitting med school. It's not like they even have a Target here to make up for all the morons.

This is just another of a million incentives to pass my classes so I am not stuck here for another year. Please, fancy hospitals in far away states, don't make me stay in this town-sized insane asylum. I'll do all your scut work for free, and I'll even pay you for it.

P.S. Boards studying starts today... Goodbye, life.

Tales from the Homefront

This just in: my dishwasher actually works. I haven't used it since the day I moved in and water came gushing out the bottom and all over the floor. I've been hand-washing my dishes all year and using the dishwasher as a giant drying rack. I decided that because today is the first day of a new quarter (and, therefore, a self-imposed no-study day) that I'd try it again (pathetic, I know). A year later. And it totally works. It's like magic....

Or it could just be that the last time I used it, I may have put in dish soap instead of dishwasher detergent.
Just think, I could be your doctor someday!

As a bonus, the thing washes my dishes to the back beat from We Will Rock You by Queen.