The Fab Five: Their Final Frontier

This morning we watched a new episode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", the final season. I love this show! Months ago I was so sad when I heard it was cancelled...I didn't realize that they had one last season (episodes are airing now). I love them. I wish I had these guys around to make me fabulous 24-7 in every way. I wonder why the show got cancelled. Anyone know? Anyway, last night Marcus and I watched "The Kingdom" in the theatres. Intense movie! It's about 4 FBI agents to head off to Saudi Arabia to investigate a shady mass shooting and bombing.

Two Things That Are Alive and Well right here in the USA

#1: The plague, as in the bubonic plague. Here in the states, it's found in the southwest, like in New Mexico. In addition to humans, other mammals like cats can get and do get the plague. A bacterium causes it (Yersinia pestis) and it's transmitted by fleas.
#2: Mullets. Yes, up here in Western New York, they're alive and well. I was reminded of this today when Marcus returned from running some errands and asked the rhetorical question "why is it when you go into Walmart the hairstyle of choice is the mullet?". I went onto wikipedia and they have not only a historical overview of the mullet and its origins, but sub categories of the mullet, like the skullet. It's great! I think my most memorable and disturbing mullet moment is last summer when Marcus and I were in the Phoenix Aiport on a layover and I witnessed a middle-aged Filipino man with a mullet.

The Pug Puppy in MRI

My last day on anesthesia was a good one! I felt comfortable, was on top of things, and my patient did great under anesthesia! She's a 6 month old pug who has a SEVERE vertebral malformation, and when I say SEVERE, I mean SEVERE. I tried to copy and paste a shot from the MRI or her x-rays, but it didn't work. But just imagine this: if your spine literally made a 90 degree angle, like the shape of a step. OUCH. Anyway, I didn't hear the final word from the neurologists, but there may be a chance this malformation can be surgically treated. Don't know. I even googled around trying to find a photo, even a human one just to get the point across, but I couldn't find one. But I did stumble across a strange website that chronicles malformations in the cat like a cyclops kitten and a two headed kitten. Although these sorts of things are definitely possible and do occur I am not sure if any of the photos are doctored. But they can occur---I've seen some freaky stuff in my neurology courses. Back to pugs...these dogs are brachycephalic, meaning their faces are squashed; other examples of brachycephalics are the boxers and the bulldogs. Of course, humans have bred these dogs to be this way, and have created anatomic abnormalities that are now built into these breeds. As a result they inherently have difficulty breathing (the snorting, for example) relative to other breeds and have slightly different needs in terms of anesthesia.

Indian Summer

Thursday night. I'm on call and I'm REALLY hoping I don't get called in tonight...I have a lot of studying (and hopefully relaxing) to do. I cannot believe the weather we're having in October. Although I detest the winter, isn't it really scary that we've having such mild weather NOW??!? It makes me wonder how the Earth will be in just 20 years. Very scary. Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? Most people have. If you haven't you should! Just be in the right mood for the ugly truth. Highly recommended, very informative. On a brighter note, tomorrow is Friday. I am so happy. This weekend Marcus and I will hopefully go watch a movie, or brunch or something. I just want to relax (and study though). And hit the gym. Unfortunately, due to "runner's knee", Marcus opted out of running the NYC marathon this year, but he's guaranteed a spot for next year, so that's good news!

Counting Sheep can be Challenging with a Bad Mattress

It's Tuesday morning. I have to go to school in a little while. I have been swearing I would get up early to study, but it honestly hasn't happened. Marcus and I are seriously considering getting a Tempur-pedic mattress. My parents have one and seem to swear by it. I never realized a not so great mattress could really affect my sleep until recently when I was tossing and turning, therefore not sleeping very well. So we may take the plunge and buy one of those mattresses, since we figure if it's that wonderful, we shouldn't want to get rid of it anytime soon. But there are so many models in different price ranges, which leads me to ask "is more expensive better?". Because as you go up in price they get more complex. I guess I wonder if there's more benefit in the upper end models or maybe it's all about what's comfortable to us. Actually if that's true, then the Hastens (another Swedish mattress company) "Vividus" mattress must be the ultimate mattress since it runs at $49,500! Marcus went to a mattress store yesterday and tried some Tempur-pedics out and were a few models he liked. Maybe if we have an incredible mattress, then miraculously I will be able to get very concentrated periods of high quality sleep, be able to sleep less hours as a result, and THEN be able to actually wake up early to study!!!

Friday Night In Ithaca, New York

I was on call last night, still doing the anesthesia thing. A horse ended up coming in for emergency surgery and its story was really crazy and sad. Apparently, a stallion had been fighting with this horse and they literally crashed into each other. The stallion ended up in really bad shape and broke one of its limbs on impact. It was euthanized. The horse that came to the hospital had fractures in its facial bones and its eyeball had ruptured. The plan was to do a CT-scan (the photo above is an example of a horse in CT), then proceed with surgery if the surgeons thought it was possible to repair the damage. First let me just say that anesthetizing a horse is a whole other ball game! They're huge, so when one of those get drowsy from pre-medications, all 1000 lbs. of them fall to the ground, and multiple people have to help them go down as safely as possible. Lifting them from the induction room to the O.R. also involves multiple people and cranes. Just to get the horse into the CT room involved over 10 people, a crane, and me following this creature while it was being lifted around and giving it breaths of oxygen with an O2 hose while it was temporarily off the anesthesia machine. Anyway, it ended up in surgery. I was assisting the anesthesia resident and the chief of the service. It gets really draining watching all the monitors, taking readings, and tweaking the fluids and drugs for hours and hours. This horse weighed about 900 lbs., and by the end of surgery, we had given it about 14 liters of intravenous fluids! Horses are huge! The ophthalmologists did their thing and removed one of its eyes, and the equine orthopedic surgeons wired back together the bones of his face. Then recovery came along...woah. You crane lift the horse into this padded room, and you watch it recover from a TV just outside. Then when it finally wakes and tries to get up, 5 people from outside the room try to support it as it gets up by pulling on a rope. Finally around 11PM, we brought the horse back to its stall. I hope he's doing okay. But he did well during surgery. Monday it's back to the world of cats and dogs!

Long Live Analgesia (and weekends)

It's almost the weekend! Yes! Last night I watched "Prick Up Your Ears", a 1987 flick about British playwright Joe Orton. I enjoyed it. I was supposed to watch "L'avventura" the other night, but that brokedown DVD player still haunts us! We thought we fixed it by cleaning it, but we were wrong. I think this weekend we really need to buy another DVD player...for real. Because although I can watch films on the computer, which I did last night, it's not always ideal. While I'm on the topic of computers, I am not a big computer wiz, but I saw this really sweet high speed USB that stores up to 500GB. Honestly, I really don't know what that means, but I really like the way this thing looks, and 500GB sounds like a lot of storage, right? Today I dealt with my first "issue" with a patient under anesthesia: hypotension (low blood pressure). It is an expected "issue" with anesthesia, due to a number of factors, but it can still be frustrating. It was a little stressful, but enlightening. The anesthesiologist and the technicians showed me all sorts of fun ways to combat it like decreasing the inhalant anesthesia, bolusing fluids, and giving dopamine. Just say no to hypotension! (Well, you can say no, but it'll probably happen and then you have to try to make it go away).