Ink And Blink

Orange Juice

2011-06-25T00:28:00.001-07:00

So back to the part where I said there were only 5 patients in the ICU. We normally should have 13 dying people dammit, but I’ll settle for a couple. Means I can have more coffee breaks I guess.

So after restraining myself from force feeding a hypoglycemic man cream of wheat, I was caught by a nurse and asked if I could run an extra orange juice into a room. As this is a task that I’m in no way overqualified for, I happily agree and find a fridge with orange juice in it to bring to her room. The orange juice, not the fridge.

So I get in the room and hand the OJ to a beautiful 50 year woman who looked thrilled to be getting a beverage. As I unwrapped the straw, she asked, “How is the lady from last night doing?” And I’m like, “Oh, who?, I can find out for you,” thinking she was talking about another ICU patient. She’s like, “Well, she was trying to fix something under the house. I don’t know why she was trying to fix something in her condition, but she can be obstinate sometimes so I guess she’ll do what she wants.”

And I’m following so far.

“So she goes under there to fix the whatever she’s trying to fix and she brings her kid down there with her, and I didn’t think it was a good idea, but who am I to say. So she goes down there and then she’s stuck and I just got so so so scared.” And I could tell. This lady was so so worried. “I just want to find out if the woman is ok. I was so scared with her down there with her child and being all covered in bugs. Covered in bugs and stuck, how awful.”

“I had to run across the street to get help. I broke a window to try to get someone to help me. I didn’t have time to put any clothes on before I ran to get help. And when my neighbor finally let me call the fire department and they came, all they wanted to do was talk about me. They wouldn’t listen to me about the pregnant lady stuck under my house. So…I just want to know…Is She OK?”

Now, I was all with her and concerned up until about halfway through the story. But then was all smarted up in the end. Pregnant ladies under houses don’t get covered in bugs, this is California after all. We don’t have bugs here.

But this lady is legitimately concerned. And I’ve been there before, being hyper paranoid about dumb shit. First time I smoked weed, I thought that the entire party was just trying to take pictures of me. Like that was the ENTIRE purpose of them inviting me was to get me fucked up and then take pictures. It may be a delusion, but it is non the less really really REAL to the person experiencing the delusion.

I assured her by saying, “Hey, I know some firemen (which I don’t). And they are REALLY good at their jobs. If you called the firemen, they have no doubt found whoever was under your house. Firemen and paramedics are the kind of people who are exceptionally good at their jobs.”

She liked this. She believed in my belief in the integrity of firemen.

Turns out since we didn’t have very many dying people,we had some overflow from psych. But this I hadn’t known until now. And maybe 15% of me was thinking, what if there really is a stuck pregnant lady under a house in Van Nuys, CA who was RIGHT NOW covered in bugs. So I had to sneak a peek at her chart which assured me with the letters ALOC. Which my iPhone says means “Altered Level of Consciousness.” Breathing a sigh of relief, I was able to move onto more productive things such as punching holes in paper. (3 hole punching – this is no joke).

Later the lady’s husband came in and gave the run down on her situation. Basically, she had not been taking her anti-depressant/bipolar medication for the last three days and had been declining until the seizure and ALOC that had brought her into the hospital. Supposedly the story goes that she liked to use her medications early on in the month to get high and then would run out of medications by the end of the month. She had had a history of severe mental and physical abuse at the hands of her parents, and she and her sister had never been the same. Either nurture or nature, she was fucked.

Basically, the husband really cared a lot and was trying to convince the doctor to let HIM handle his wife’s medications because he thought it was silly that his addict wife should have access to her own addict medication. Makes sense up front, but you could tell the doc was suspicious regardless. Nobody knows who to trust. Everyone wants to just do what’s right.

After the discussion of the husband with the doctor, the husband steps in the room, and the red headed lady says, “Are they gonna be ok??” And the husband says, “Yeah, they alright, see you later sweetie, get better.”

You Know You Want Some Orange Juice

2011-06-24T12:38:00.001-07:00

My second trip to the ICU came after a two week hiatus in which I had allergies/a cold/sinus infection followed by a sudden onslaught of laryngitis after a particularly upsetting episode of the Bachelorette.

I wasn’t incapacitated sick, but I was definitely unsure of if I should be in an ICU even remotely sick. This is a new game for me.

I walk in and begin my morning chores like setting up patient billing cards in the inventory room and filing away patient lab reports in their charts. This went pretty quick seeing that there were only 5 patients. I was a little stunned. Average headcount is 13 in the ICU.

I spent the first half of the morning trying to convince a hypoglycemic man to eat some toast to raise his blood sugar levels. About 15 minutes in, he started listing off excuses as to why he couldn’t eat. He was tired, he had heartburn, he had cramps. These might have been legitimate complaints, or they might not have been. And Of course I can’t force him to eat, and I felt like a total failure. It’s different from consulting in that I can’t just deliver you an entity relationship diagram and call the day a success. In nursing, the deliverables are less concrete. Was my deliverable that he eat 50% of his meal or was my deliverable just my actual effort to get him to eat 50% of his meal. In one, I’m a failure, in the other I’m a success. And how is actual effort measureable?

I’m beginning to realize that in health care it is harder to manipulate the variables involved in making my day a success.

Causing Harm

2011-06-02T10:16:00.001-07:00

Spoiler alter. I’m gonna complain about religious people.

*****

I never fret about getting the shifts I want at the hospital. The shifts I desire are always Sunday morning shifts. Mainly because I view this as a time when I would otherwise be sleeping. It’s hidden time, freely available hours that won’t take away from another part of my life. I’ve never had a hard time getting this shift. In fact, when the ICU volunteer team passed around the shift sign up sheet, I let everyone else get anxiously grab at the sheet. I waited until the end before I even took a look at it, and sure enough, every single Sunday morning shift was still open. I work with a lot of Catholics. Either that, or all the other atheists like to work during the middle of the week.

So back track a few weeks to about the midway point of my rotation in the medsurg department. I walk in to work, and notice that I don’t recognize a lot of the nurses and CNAs. People seem unfamiliar. I normally work with the same basic group of staff, but today was different. In the break room, I asked a nurse that I recognized who all the new people were. He said, “Oh, those are just the people that were on call to come in if someone called out sick.” Then he added, “It’s Easter Sunday.”

So Catholics. You’re welcome. You’re welcome, that the godless covered for you while you lied your way out of helping sick people so that you could go love on Jesus. You’re welcome that somehow patients got their morphine, bandages were changed, hygiene was maintained so you could go get mouth herpes out of your nasty communal wine. You’re welcome that some of us have chosen not to believe in God, so that you can go believe in God. What the hell would have happened if we were ALL Christians. Isn’t that what you claim to want. But then who would take care of the SICK PEOPLE while we are all at church??

I talked to the secretary, who I’d never seen before. She was hoping she wouldn’t have been called in on Easter, because to her it was Armenian Genocide day. But she came in, to cover for the Catholic who called out.

I’m not here getting mad at people who call out sick when they aren’t. I’ve done it before, and have been on my way to Vegas. The mad comes in because Christians like to claim they are better than the rest of us. That they lie less, that they have the “fruits of the Spirit,” that they are more moral, that they help the sick more. That’s the problem. For the same reason it’s a problem when priests complain that their sexual abuse stats aren’t any worse than the rest of the world’s sexual abuse statistics. Well, they SHOULD be much better stats if you’re claiming to be more moral than the rest of us. I AM evil sometimes. But so are the Christians.

Call out sick. I don’t give a fuck. We’ll gladly cover for you when you lie about being sick, just like you will gladly cover for me when I lie about being sick. But you HAVE to stop pretending that being a Christian gives you the right to be snooty about your supposed predisposition to morality.

How to be Treated Like a Human in a Hospital

2011-05-30T18:22:00.001-07:00

Where I work, hospital staff is busy all of the time. The nurses and CNAs aren’t sitting around surfing the internet. They are truly working their asses off. However, despite their hard work, they have more things to attend to than they have time. In addition, they see people like you every day. To them, you aren’t anything special. Even though you just woke up with an amputated arm, to the nurses, you are just another drugged up body lying in a hospital bed. You can’t be special to them, because then everybody would have to be special to them.

This disconnectedness can be very cruel to the patient whether or not the situation actually is cruel. To treated as an animal, as a number, as a part of an assembly line. The disconnectedness of the staff is compounded by the fact that you aren’t really behaving like a human. You are drugged up and miserable, and you look like hell.

Sometimes the disconnectedness can take a darker turn. It sucks and it breaks my heart to see people crushed by the potential (and rare at my place of employ) indignities of the hospital. CNAs who don’t pull curtains around when they help a person with a bedpan. Patients in agony who have to wait for their pain medication because their nurse is on a break, and all the other nurses have their own emergencies. It sucks, and in healthcare, things that suck, suck a lot more than it sucks in other industries. A barista handing you a cup of old coffee is a lot more forgivable than a nurse forgoing to change your bloody bed sheets because she was busy.

Customer service jobs are about prioritization. You can’t make pizzas, take money, and bus tables at the same time. Nurses have infinite things to prioritize. And you are part of that list of things. And you need to bump yourself up on that list. In addition you have to FIGHT to not be treated as a product. You need to take an active role in humanizing yourself to hospital staff.

Here’s what you can do to keep yourself from being treated like a lump of flesh while you lie in a hospital recovering from your surgery.

1. Flowers – And the more the better. Trust me. This is the biggest signal to hospital staff that someone gives a shit about the patient. I don’t care if your ailing mother has been in and out of the hospital for the last 5 years. You need to send her flowers --EVERY--TIME-- she is admitted. Flowers advertise that a person is actively loved. Nurses don't want angry friends and family. If you don’t have friends and family sending you flowers, send yourself some flowers. It’s important.

(If this seams wasteful, buy plants instead of flowers then take them home afterwards.)

2. Resist wearing the hospital provided gown and pants – But only if you can get away with it. Bring and wear your own clothes. You might not be able to follow this if you have IVs and tubes hanging everywhere. But the point is that you don’t want to look like every other patient in that hospital. You don’t want to be just another miserable animal wearing a blue sheet with snaps. You want to look like an individual.

3. Put up pictures of yourself when you were healthy – Bring in frames, and set them up around the room. Nothing humanizes a drugged up lump of flesh more than a picture of the same lump with makeup and pretty hair running around in a field with three kids. If the patient is super, super old, pictures are especially important.

4. Act lucid – If you can. Don’t spend 8 hours a day staring into the hallway or watching TV. You don’t have to act like an intellectual. Just grab a People magazine about the royal couple and read it or just stare at William and Kate’s pretty faces. Talk on your cell phone. Play crossword puzzles and word finds. Acknowledge people who walk into the room. It’s easy for a nurse to down prioritize a person who isn’t acting aware of their surroundings.

5. Know the names of the individuals on your patient care team -- Ask for names when people come into your room. When you ask, don’t be all cliché and say, “Awe, that’s such a pretty name.” Fifty people have already said that to your nurse this month. Just look thoughtful and file the information away. Write it down. Use it. I answer call buttons on a regular basis. When a patient requests, “Please send Sheila to my room,” instead of “Can you call my nurse?” The effect is much more authoritative and indicates that the patient is aware of surroundings.

6. Insist on basics – If you smell, that’s bad. If your sheets haven't been changed in 4 days, that’s bad. If someone decides to change your diaper with the door open, that’s bad. Asking for these things to be fixed doesn't make you needy, it makes you human. I’m sometimes appalled at how insecure patients can be in demanding they be treated well. The patient care team has an infinite list of things to do, but you need to be an ACTIVE part of being at the top of that list.

In the end it boils down to – You will be treated better if you are lucid and loved. If you aren’t either of those things, do your best to fake it.

Suicide – At the Clinic 4

2011-05-25T13:12:00.001-07:00

The other day I was posted on suicide watch at the hospital. Any time a person in the hospital threatens to take their own life, a staff member is assigned to watch them for the entirety of their stay at the hospital.

The RN on duty needed to take her lunch break, and since the patient can’t be left alone for even a second, I was lassoed into sitting outside this patient’s open door. Instructions for this position are, “yell help if he tries anything” and “don’t ever leave this spot.” Done and done. I sat in a comfy chair and played angry birds for 20 minutes.

Yes, that’s the entirety of the story. If you wanted it to be more interesting, shame on you.

ICU 1

2011-05-21T16:06:00.001-07:00

At my volunteer job, I’ve been notified that I’ve been moved departments from pre/post op into the ICU. I start in June.

Today we had our basic training. No pushups involved. Major differences between the previous department and the ICU seem to be.

1. There are three crash carts on the floor instead of one. We’ve been instructed that our part as a volunteer in a code blue is to “get out of the way.” “Getting out of the way” wasn’t covered in my CPR course, however. So who knows how I’m going to respond.

2. Visitors are monitored much more carefully. The department is locked down. Visitors must be granted access, no children are allowed, and no more than two visitors at a time are allowed in rooms unless a patient is on their death bed.

3. We REALLY are not allowed to have much patient contact in this department due to the critical state of the patients. Therefore, many of our duties seem to be more secretarial in nature. That won’t make for good stories, but hopefully some drama will go down regardless. Maybe I’ll get to tell a story about how we ran out of orange copy paper.

Potentials

2011-05-21T15:26:00.001-07:00

I visited my first med school. The Medical University of South Carolina. MUSC.

MUSC accepts mostly South Carolina natives. But they also will accept out-of-staters with “ties to the area.” Thankfully, I have an aunt and uncle and a set of awesome grandparents just sitting there in Charleston waiting to be my “ties.” Also, with declining subsidies from the state, MUSC plans on increasing out of state admissions (because we pay more).

Our tour guide James had just finished his first year there and drove in special to give us a t0ur. Seems he owed the dean’s office a favor. The campus was pretty deserted as the semester had just wrapped up, the first years had finished their finals and were on break for the summer.

He was a nice little talker and my BFF and I were aggressive with our question asking, so there was not a lot of down time in that hour long walk around campus. We saw some lecture halls, simulation labs, libraries, anatomy labs, and dining areas.

James was hesitant about taking us to the gross anatomy lab. He was like “Well, we don’t have any safety gear on. And if I get caught, I’ll be lectured cause I should have known better.” But he let us in anyway because that seemed like an essential part of a medical school tour. The gross anatomy lab contained about 30 dead bodies covered in individual black tarps. I don’t know what I expected walking in there. But it was jarring. He mentioned that some people find the gross anatomy lab an emotional place. And I was like, “yeah…” letting my voice trail off. I found it more than a little disconcerting for sure.

I had concurrently been reading a fictional book (The Good Thief) which was tangentially about a couple of men hired to dig up recently dead bodies so that a surgeon could teach his pupils about anatomy. Apparently, from 1742 till 1832, this was a relatively common practice. The practice officially ended with the Anatomy Act in 1832 even though it wasn’t really legal to begin with. Today, med schools are still not allowed to purchase dead bodies, and all specimens must be donated.

We asked questions about “the day in the life of.” Which he answered, “class from 8 to 12, lab till 4, study in the evening. But you get used to it.” We asked about the cost of living, to which he replied, “Well, if you want to live in a NICE place, you could go over there next to campus and pay $$…” And he names a price that’s the exact same cost as the PoS apartment that I live in now (in Los Angeles). So at least if I get in to school in South Carolina, I can expect a decent living conditions upgrade from my current apartment for about the same price.

Charleston is beautiful and the med school school seemed great. The tour guide raved about how much the staff wants you to succeed. (Apparently 90% of the students have private tutors that are provided by the school (included in tuition)). My close family is nearby and so is their super cuddly miniature poodle. The school is also decently close to my big sister, who I could visit on weekends. And gaining entrance into this university seems attainable. I could really be happy there. It’s fo sho going on the list of places to apply.

The Accomplice–At the Clinic 3

2011-05-10T13:49:00.001-07:00

I had to help an 80 year old lady take a shower. I didn’t have to wash her cause she was entirely mobile. But they wanted me to sit there in case she needed help. I really just had to open the soap bottles for her. And help her back into her clothes. This lady was a doll.

Before the shower, she had had a pair of hospital slippers on. Earlier, when she was trying to do the shower by herself, she had soaked the hospital slippers. So she asked for a second pair.

After the shower, we put a new pair of hospital slippers on her, but after about half an hour she hesitantly asked for a third pair of slippers saying that the slippers were kind of damp cause her feet hadn't been totally dry when we put them on. But she looked scared when she asked. Like I was gonna slap her face and make a comment about her upbringing.

I was like, “Yeah, of course.”

And she said, “Everyone is going to be mad at me aren’t they.”

“What do you mean? No one cares how many slippers you take.”

“Well…I’m not sure. I think they are going to be upset.”

“Hey, it’s no big deal, we have lots of slippers.”

She still seemed really, really nervous. I tried to act nonchalant and brush it off as a silly worry. Cause it really is.

Then she asks, “You won’t tell anyone will you? That I’ve been using so many slippers?”

“I promise I won’t tell anyone. But really, no one cares.”

“Ok, but you won’t tell anyone?”

“No”

I thought this had settled it. I cleaned up the room a bit, putting the towels in the laundry, and making sure she had enough blankets, cause she was SO COLD.

As I was about to throw the slippers in the trash, she spoke up again.

“Could you put those in someone else’s trash. I don’t want people to know that they were mine. They’ll be mad.”

I imagined a bunch a accountants wearing protective goggles over their spectacles meticulously going through bio hazard bags that are labeled with room numbers. They pull out a pair of slippers with tongs and shake their heads in disgust. “That’s the 2nd pair,” they say before angrily adding another row to an excel file.

Well, if that’s what happens, then the person in the room two doors down is totally screwed.

At the Clinic 2

2011-05-07T12:25:00.001-07:00

A number of departments are in the basement of the hospital.

The Distribution Department for when I go on a run to get lice caps.
The Dietary Department for when I need to stock up on tea bags for the floor
The Cardiac Catheter lab for when I need to be reminded what a “warning radiation” symbol looks like
The Pharmacy for when I need to go grab some insulin for a nurse

So the basement is super creepy like you would expect a hospital basement to be. It has long hallways. It’s cold. It lacks any decorations save the diorama of the new hospital addition set to roll out in 2003. But regardless of just the general creepiness factor, I find the hospital basement terrifying an a very different level.

The walls of the basement are made of concrete, and we are in earthquake country. In the picture below you can see earthquake cracks in the basement wall running about every foot down the wall. I can only show so much with this picture, but imagine these earthquake cracks for the entire length of the basement. These cracks probably appeared during the last large earthquake in LA, and there is every reason to believe a much larger earthquake is on the way. Needless to say, I can do a pharmacy run faster than anyone else in that building. I think about nothing else while I’m down there.

I know that technically, I could get crushed on the floor of the building where I work, but for some reason getting crushed in a basement seems so much worse than getting crushed on a middle floor.

How they convince dietitians and pharmacists to work down there is beyond me. I would quit as soon as I saw the working conditions.

At the Clinic 1

2011-05-06T18:05:00.001-07:00

I volunteer at a hospital now, so I figured I’d start posting stories about my experiences there. Of course HIPPA compliant which basically means you as a reader shouldn’t be able to identify anyone I talk about via my descriptions.

I started about three months ago, and I generally volunteer for 4 hours a week. I have to do about 280 hours total. So if you know math AND care, you can figure out how long I’m going to be doing this for.

The hospital is a standard community hospital, it’s not known for anything other than a couple appearances in movies. It serves a rather poor district of LA, and it’s common to find that homeless people have snuck in during the night and taken up empty patient beds. I am assigned to a single department floor, and act as a runner for the floor. If someone needs something from the pharmacy, I’m the one who goes and grabs it, if a urine sample has to be taken to the lab, I go do that. If papers need to be delivered, if a patient wants socks, if a bed needs changing. I have a decent amount of patient contact if I wish for it. I can help patients wash, feed them, take them on walks in circles around the floor if the doctor recommends that they get moving, change diapers, help them order food, or listen to them cry about just being diagnosed with liver disease. I of course have no access to medications, needles, whatever, and I can’t help in a code blue. But I CAN say, “Hey, I think that guy may be choking.” (which happened)

One of my favorite things to do is to take the patients on smoke breaks. The nurses of course don’t want to do this, cause it takes a while, and they are always over-busy. So like I get to have a little smoke break of my own, without the cigarettes and all the chit chat and camaraderie. I wheel the patients down to this hidden area behind the hospital in the back of a parking lot and sit there for 20 minutes yapping while they suck down 3 cigarettes. The area is super camouflaged and hidden away, as if the hospital is embarrassed to have a smoking section. Huh?

The day of daylight savings time, I helped change more than 200 clocks. We did about one a minute, going in to each and every patient room in the hospital that we could get to before my shift ended. Delivery rooms and operating rooms were top priority because apparently those are the rooms that care the most about the actual time.

I work in pre/post opp surgery. So anyone in the hospital who is there for a surgery will see my department both before and afterwards. Normally, I don’t get to see any medicine happen as most patients are in a normal recovery period during their stay. The program does department rotations, so next month, I could be transferred to a department which is more active, such as the ICU or labor and delivery. There, there will be more of an exposure to doctors. For right now, my main contacts are nurses, CNAs, and patients in a lot of pain (or nutty from morphine). When you are confused as to why your 45 year old nurse is no longer dancing professionally, perhaps you are high.

One of the things I do is sit by the department phone and take calls from the patient rooms, and I dispatch the nurses via the pagers if a patient calls requesting pain meds or needs an IV changed. If a patient calls and wants orange juice, I’ll run and get them that. This last week, a patient pinged the front desk from her call button and I picked up the phone. She said, “I need help in my room immediately.” Since she was right across the hall, I put down the phone and walked over. This lady had recently had a hip replaced and wasn’t mobile. She looked at me frantically and said, “Can you grab me my purse, I need to place a bet on the Kentucky Derby. I was too late yesterday!!!” I was slightly not expecting this and was like, “Oh! oh, yeah of course,” and went and grabbed her purse while she explained that she had given up putting money in the stock market, and had decided that putting down a $150 dollars routinely on horse races was a better call because of her background in equestrian sports.

I also do a fair bit of medical record filing. Nothing special. Just taking in the lab reports from the day and filing them away in the gigantic patient binders. Coming off of a background developing for a technology consulting firm, I was quite shocked at their genuinely archaic way of managing information. The room for data error is HUGE. If I file an x-ray report under the blood results tab (as in a tactile file folder) instead of under the radiology tab (something that could totally happen), the information flow of patient care could be seriously interrupted.

Well, that’s a general background of what I do at the hospital when I’m not sneaking down to the cafeteria to grab some free coffee.

Just Another Coffee Shop Convo

2010-11-25T12:05:00.001-08:00

So I’m at the coffee shop once again. And sometimes I sit by the line, which gives people in line the opportunity to comment on my study materials. They say, “Oooooo, Chemistry. Fun!!” That’s the comment 90% of the time And that’s how this next conversation started out. The man was a perhaps 35 years old, dressed in jeans and a sloppy t-shirt. He was there with a friend who was wearing a kippah. He was overly friendly, and I couldn’t get a bead on his mental status. He could have been medically mentally challenged, or he could have just been giving off that vibe. My Information Systems teacher in college would tell the story about how he was sitting in a park one day writing code when a cop came up to him and asked him if he had a place to stay that night. My teacher was unquestionably brilliant, but from the outside, you could have easily deduced he was homeless from the unruly hair, distracted gaze, choppy speech patterns, odd eye contact, untucked, spotted shirts, and the fact that he was just chillaxin in the park. I couldn’t put the coffee line guy in an appropriate box, but it didn’t really matter; I was open to chatting him up for a bit.

The line was moving slowly. He wanted to tell me how difficult he felt that Chemistry was. But that Biology was pretty easy. Then suddenly the conversation derailed with him asking…

“What’s your birthday?”

Me, “Oh, are you into numerology or something?”

“No, just curious.”

“July 13th”

“No Way! I’m July 15th.”

I’m running with this, “Wow, that’s crazy.”

“You know "The thing about us Cancers is that we are interested in the Truth!"

I was stunned with irony. “Oh, and is that why we like astrology so much?”

He looked taken aback and confused. But then plowed right on.

“Well, you know, some people like to know the truth through the facts, but some people can know the truth cause it just feels right. And that’s what Cancers can do. We can feel truth.”

This went on for a bit, my eyes glazing over. When people start discussing woo I stop storing information in my head, and I go into a bit of a dissociative fugue. My bestie gal friend at the front of the line glances at me and gives me the, “Are you all right?” look. She had caught on to the off-kilter vibe as well. I give her back the, “We cool” look, and she goes back to getting coffee, while I go back to looking mildly interested in the way I deduce truth. Wondering why I study so damn hard when all this time I’ve had the power to feel my way through midterms.

When he’s done talking I say, “Oh.” And I smiled.

By then he realized that he wasn’t getting enthusiastic nodding. And I wasn’t sure about how to proceed debating with a guy with questionable mental status. There was a beat before he said it was nice to meet me and then left the coffee shop without buying any coffee.

What’s Wrong is Your Patent Leather Shoes with Your Green Cargo Pants

2010-11-16T12:09:00.001-08:00

I’m sitting in here in a Starbucks. In Studio City. This place is always packed. And since I’m in Studio City, I’m here with lots of industry people who like to write screenplays and do whatever else people like to do at 11:00 AM on a Tuesday. I’m always in conversations with people who write for Nickelodeon or late night shows. And the guy sitting next to me right now illustrates graphic novels for a living; he’s discussing with a writer how to collaborate on storyboards. This is the vibe of Every Studio City coffee shop.

So I’m studying Chemistry, and this lady walks around the counter and asks to speak to a manager. One of the baristas walks over and says, “How can I help you ma’am.” She goes, “I can’t find a table. I’ m coming here with my friends, and I can’t find a table. There are too many people here using this place as an office. I’ve been standing here, and noone is moving. People shouldn’t be doing this. They shouldn’t be coming here and using this place as an office.” The barista was nice and said, “Yeah, we don’t have time limits on tables, but you can go to the website and make a comment.” The barista placated her nicely and she stomped outside to go join her friends for their mid day tea.

5 minutes later she stomps back inside, skips the line and asks the barista for a refill on the water for her tea, cause it is “TOO STRONG.” She then reiterates the table situation saying “It’s just Wrong, It’s just Wrong.” She then dramatically asks a hardworking screenwriter if she could borrow one of the wooden chairs from the screenwriter’s table and after getting a friendly affirmative, she dragged the chair outside with her in a huff.

“It’s wrong” she said. Not “I don’t LIKE IT”!!!! Her sense of self was so high that her personal opinions of “What I don’t like,” somehow translated into, “What’s wrong, regardless of my opinion on the matter.” I’ll tell you what’s wrong lady. What’s wrong is female circumcision, killing gay people, and blanket training. What is Something You Don’t Like is, people sitting and working in a coffee shop while you and your botched facelift have to sit outside on a beautiful day and complain about strong tea.

I’ll update this post later with a pic.

Crazy fact about USC

2010-11-15T23:14:00.001-08:00

If it was its own country, USC would be ranked 12th in the world in terms of Olympic medals. Since 1912, USC is the only university in the world to have a gold medal-winning athlete in every summer Olympiad

-- From Wikipedia

Bio Lab Tests

2010-11-15T22:04:00.001-08:00

In Bio Lab, we have tests that in part require us to use a microscope to identify organisms on prepared slide. We have two of these tests this semester.

Mondays before the test we are allowed to go into a lab and review all the slides that could be on the test. Most people come in with a pad of paper and sketch the 20 different slides, and then study from the drawings. This doesn't work for me because I am THAT bad of an artist. Also, it is hard getting sketches on to electronic flash cards.

Instead of drawing the organisms, I write down ordinary things that they look like. So my study notes look like this.

ORGANISM	DESCRIPTION
E Coli	Pink Frog Eggs
Foraminifera	Brown - Some look like snails/ some look like sticks
Ceratium	Pink Lobster Claws
Hydra Budding	Pink Lizard
Chara Sex Organs	Looks like a cactus made out of turquoise tissue paper
Radiolaria	Looks like black honeycomb and loophas
Trypansoma Levisi	Pink Cous Cous with red snakes
Paramecium	Like Eggplant with a bruise
Treponema	Like Brownish Peubs
Euglena	Like Blue rice
Spirogyra	Hair with springs in the middle
Amoeba	Pink goo thrown at a wall
Fern Sporangia Mature	Hang Glider
Obelia hydroid colony	Pink octopus tree
Pine Staminate Cone	Eyeball/Iris
Dipylidium caninum mature gravid	Red Chiclets
Pinus Ovule	(up close) River with rafts in it.
	(from eyeballing it) like a purple leaf
Trichinella spiralis	pink muscle with circles that contain more circles (WORMMMMS)
Sponge Skeleton	Red tumbleweed
Grantia (Scypha)	Spilled blue sugar in a circle pattern
Selaginella strobilus	looks like skinny pine cone

See, you could memorize this list without EVER seeing the slides and get the 4 questions related to slides on the 50 question lab test right! Go you! Because when you focus on the following prepared slide, you’ll be able to figure out what it is!

Bio Lab

2010-11-04T22:04:00.001-07:00

So far in lab we’ve dissected a Tulip, Worm, Starfish, Squid, Frog, and Rat. But the thing in bio lab that has made me the most nauseated was watching a hydra sting and paralyze a Daphnia water flea 20 times its size and then swallow it whole. I need to start bringing a camcorder to class, because all the YouTube video’s of hydra vs. Daphnia are NOT up to par with what we saw. All the jerking and spasming. And the sheer size difference! Our hydra was itsy bitsy compared to the Daphnia it had no fear violently stabbing it and nomming down.

Hydra have no separate food-in end and food-out end. The mouth and the anus are the same in the phylum Cnidaria. So the hydra will suck all the nutrients out of the paralyzed Daphnia and then spit it out in whole the same way it came in. But it didn’t get the chance to do that, cause we put him in the bio waste bucket. Bwahahahahaha. And I’m sure that little fucker dried out.

Our rat today was preggers, but apparently that wasn’t too unusual in a rat dissection. Our lab TA bragged about collecting rat fetuses all week from her 8 different labs. And she proudly walked around showing every one her collection of different sized fetuses, one was the size of a small super ball.

Here is our rat, Sophia, from today's lab. And since one of the major things on my mind this past week was my stolen car, I couldn't help but notice the similarities in the stolen/recovered Camry to the dissected rat.

Also, interesting from today’s lab. We learned about lampreys. A fish that lacks a jaw. So it just attaches to other animals or to rocks and sucks. And it is one of the ugliest creatures alive. I’ve never heard the term lamprey come up before, I swear to you. But later that afternoon I was reading "The Pillars of The Earth” by Ken Follett, and a hundred pages into the book, and I only read like 5 pages today, it says…

“King Henry has always treated the Church as if it were a subordinate part of his kingdom,” he began. “He has issued orders to bishops, imposed taxes, and prevented the direct exercise of papal authority.”

“I know,” Philip said. “So what?”

“King Henry is dead.”

Philip stopped dead in his tracks. He had not expected that.

Francis went on: “He died in his hunting lodge at Lyons-la-Foret, in Normandy, after a meal of Lampreys, which he loved, although they always disagreed with him.”

I looked it up, turns out that’s a true story. King Henry 1 died of food poisoning in 1135 by eating this ghastly thing. Lamprey’s are a European delicacy, so King Henry musta just had a bad batch.

Dead Lamprey (Since I don’t have a pic of a dead King Henry from lab)

FREAK OUT!!!

2010-10-05T17:31:00.001-07:00

Busiest week of the semester

1 bio lab exam

1 chemistry test

1 4 page bio lab report

1 chemistry quiz

1 bio post-lab exercise

1 chem lab report

1 chem pre-lab quiz

1 chem pre-lab

All of this is due on Wednesday and Thursday.

And now I’m multi-tasking my blog to take inventory of all the stuff so I don’t forget anything.

OMG FREAK OUT

Biology Test

2010-09-29T21:26:00.001-07:00

I think I did really well on my bio test! Yipeeeeee!!!! What. A. Relief. One down, at least 10,000 more to go.

Lessons in Biology

2010-09-27T22:08:00.001-07:00

I just remembered something I learned in class today.

On average each person has slightly over three (let’s just call it three) recessive alleles that would have killed you if the genotype was homozygous instead of heterozygous.

Meaning that each person’s parents gave them at least 3 genes that would have killed them if they had gotten that same gene from the other parent as well. How exciting. But because we have gene alternatives that come from each parent, the dominant gene that comes from the good parent protects us from the killer recessive gene that comes from the evil parent.

Which means that if you’re alive and healthy, you dodged a killer bullet three times . And we all play Russian roulette with our offspring when we decide who to knock up or get knocked up by. You and your partner are the gun, and you and your sinful trigger finger are aiming that semi-bullet-filled chamber at YOUR OWN CHILDREN!!!

Remember, abstinence is the answer.

Again with the Coffee

2010-09-27T18:14:00.001-07:00

1. Today, at the coffee office, one of my least favorite homeless men (He’s very aggressive in underground parking lots), started rapping on the window and yelling, “TOMORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY.”

2. Do you ever site at a coffee house for like 4 hours. And you’re next to a the same person the whole time. Like you’re studying Chemistry, they’re studying Accounting. You don’t speak one word to each other for the entirety of the stay, but when you leave, you feel obligated to say goodbye. As if otherwise they’d be all, “How rude. That bitch didn’t even end this relationship properly.” And when you DO say goodbye, they smile and wave goodbye as well, cause that’s what was expected of you in a weird way. Just being close in proximity to someone for an extended amount of time is enough to form a bond that must be formally broken.

3. I’ve been without caffeine now for about 2 months, ordering decaf every time I go into a coffee house. But I got a caffeinated beverage the other day by accident, and was quickly reminded how I did so well in undergrad. Caffeine has a way of turning my brain light way, way up. It laser focuses my concentration levels and puts my ability to memorize and recall information on steroids. It’s absurd how much better I can think on that drug. I always used to down a couple espresso shots right before each test.

So even though I spent a good two months OFF the drug, I’m now, against my better judgment, trying to wean myself slowly back ON to caffeine. It’s for my future, because I cannot afford to not do well (translated: I have to do well).

Peet’s Coffee

2010-09-26T13:29:00.001-07:00

I’m at a Peet’s Coffee studying for my Biology Midterm on Wednesday. In order to connect to their wireless, I have to get a 4 digit code from the barista. I asked for my network code yesterday, and they handed me a stunning ticket that said XYXX which was more than enough momentum to push me into my study of evolution. Today I got a code that said D4BR, and spent a solid minute trying to come up with a relevant scientific explanation. Too bad there isn’t an element called Darmium. Cause then I would have had Tetradarmium Monobromide. Yeah, that could never exist. Cause Bromide has a –1 charge, and that couldn’t balance out with 4 of anything. And that’s Chemistry anyway, so how’s that supposed to help me on my Biology midterm?

Ok, back to studying.

CPR Class

2010-09-25T17:42:00.001-07:00

In addition to doing well in class and on the MCATs, I should be volunteering, researching, and doing clinic work. In order to start volunteer clinic work (whatever that may entail), many places require CPR certification. Which I spent all last Sunday getting at the Red Cross Center in Burbank. It enjoyed it. But it always shocks me to see how far removed actual medical care is from what I’m learning in school. The skills required to keep someone alive through chest compressions (cool head, stamina, ability to count to 30) are so different from the knowledge I’m learning in the classroom (evolution, chemical reactions). Of course these separate bits of knowledge are related, but not really in an immediate practical way.

It’s like asking me what I did for a living, and I say “computers.” Maybe that used to be all the same thing, but now that means VASTLY different things. 5 people could work in computers and have knowledge bases that barely overlap with each other. I could work with search engine algorithms while my friend could work in front-end web design, a third could work in hardware networking. We would barely speak each other’s languages. And knowing about optimizing SQL queries won’t make me better at hooking up my sound system. But from experience, many people think that working under the technology umbrella means we all know the same things even though many of the subset fields are only tangentially related. And knowing about every technology would hardly be productive for any one field within technology.

There must be a more efficient way to get from lay-person to hernia repair expert and maybe that route doesn't involve learning about combustion reactions. The super high investment cost of becoming health care personnel is prohibitive. And much of the science learned in pre-med and medical school is irrelevant once a medical specialty is chosen. Can’t we stop pretending that we have to know ALL science in order to be good at some science. I don’t need physics to diagnose a urinary tract infection just like I don’t need to know about ecommerce shopping carts in order to do a mainframe upgrade.

Robbed

2010-09-24T18:15:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday, I wake up to a text from my roommate that tells me that someone broke into my car. She says “They smashed in your side window, there must have been something they saw that they wanted.” I’m mystified. I don’t keep anything valuable in my car since last January someone broke in and took my $300 dollar Brand New Garmin GPS. I sigh and walk slowly outside to find my driver’s side rear window smashed in and my trunk open. I peer in and my gym bag is gone. My gym bag! Nothing else. There was nothing else to take! So they got some sweaty clothes and my rock climbing shoes, harness, and chalk. And this is such bad timing, because I just renewed by rock climbing gym membership THAT Monday! I’m really trying to get momentum back in the climbing world.

It’s such a waste. They won’t be able to get more than $20-40 for the gear, but getting that window replaced, plus buying more shoes is worth 10 times that much. I wish they’d have knocked on my door, so I could have handed them a 20 dollar bill.

A day later I realize that I can’t find my other set of keys, I had a suspicion that I had left my keys in the car in my gym bag. I lost a good night’s worth of sleep over it. Worrying that I was going to wake up to find my car gone. My car is still there. I figure (hope) stealing a car takes a different criminal than one who snatches and grabs purses. But I DID have the locks on my apartment switched. Just in case.

I constantly have to defend the area I live in to other people. I really like this area!! Great shopping, nice young city crowd. But this is the 4th time someone in our 7 unit apartment complex has had their car broken into since January.

Beads And Bio

2010-09-21T21:40:00.001-07:00

Bio Lab is turning out to be one of my favorite things about school. I have not one partner, but 4. Two freshman girls and two freshman guys. We all sit at a large table. And we are by far the liveliest group.

Last week’s lab was to demonstrate the Hardy-Weinberg Principle which is used to show if alleles are changing within a population. In this demonstration we had 10 Large Red Beads, 10 Large Pink Beads, and 10 Large White Beads. Representing 30 red Alleles and 30 White alleles.

We then dumped all the big beads into a container with lots of small white beads. We then had 30 seconds to go hunting with tweezers to get out as many large beads as we could. My side of the table raced the other side. We were imitating predators essentially, and the large white beads against the white small bead background were essentially camouflaged.

After the first round of hunting, we would put the population of beads up to 50 proportionally based on the percentage left in the population after the initial massacre. We went hunting and then re-grew the population 4 times.

The whole lab process turned into one giant metaphor for hunting. Whoever won was “just that much hungrier,” and that “white meat taste just the same as red meat.” If we accidentally tweezed out a small white bead, we had “strayed into omnivore territory having eaten some shrubbery.”

At the end of the 4 rounds of enthusiastic hunting, I announced to my table after calculating some quick Hardy-Weinberg math that “Our red beads have succumbed to extinction.” My lab partner Stacy quickly confirmed my results on paper.

We had ended up with 0 red beads 24 pink beads and 19 white beads. Our red population had gone from 10 => 10 => 9 =>7 =>0. Our white population had gone from 10 => 9 =>15 =>15 =>19. It all makes sense. Alleles from less camouflaged populations are less likely to make it into successive generations and vice versa.

Kevin from across the table pipes up, “Then why are there red beads in the bucket if your red beads are extinct?” And me and my hunting partner are all, “What!!…Ah, man, we must have had twins a couple times while we were reproducing.” Meaning, “Shit, we accidently added back in too many beads while regrowing our population.” My partner Stacy shrugs, picks the red beads out of the container and says, “Nooooow they’re extinct.”

In lab, also emphasized was directional selection, stabilizing selection, and disruptive selection. One of the questions on the lab was “In humans, birth weight is an example of a characteristic affected by stabilizing selection. What does this mean to the long-term birth weight of human babies? How might the increasing number of caesarean sections be affecting this characteristic?”

Stabilizing selection means that outliers on both ends of the population are selected against. So both high and low weight babies are less likely to survive than average weight babies.

The answer ends up being something like “The birth weight would be normalized, and the normal curve would stretch out due to caesarian sections.” Meaning both higher weight and lower weight babies are now more likely to survive due to caesarians. Stabilizing selection still occurs but at a wider normal distribution than before.

During discussion of this at the table, my lab partner Johnny pipes up that he would really not like to have to have a caesarean, cause that seems way more painful. Discussion ensues. Me saying that, “Either way, you shouldn’t get to stressed about it.” Megan pipes up that her mom has had 3 caesareans. I don’t mention that mine did 8 vaginally (that tends to derail conversations). Then Kevin pipes up that “he would rather be cut open than have his pelvis broken.” And the table goes silent for a beat. “Pelvis broken?” we all ask.

“Yeah, if you give birth vaginally, your pelvis breaks.”

The four of us at the table are all, ‘Nooooooo….”

“No, it does.” You can tell Kevin is being serious. He’s not one of those be-stupid-just-to-be-funny type of guys. He really thinks this. Just like my friend from work who thought that “All the genes come from the dad.”

“Kevin, that’s not possible. Women dilate, but that has nothing to do with the pelvis. And then they aren’t in a lot of pain after a vaginal birth, that wouldn’t be the case with a broken pelvis.”

Kevin is looking more and more confused after 5 minutes of vigorous discussion. He calls the lab instructor over siting “The need for an expert opinion.” He asks her, “How much medical knowledge do you have.” She giggles and says “not much.” Kevin plows on regardless. “Ok, when a woman gives birth, does her pelvis break?”

She looks a little shocked. “Noooo, that would take a Really long time to recover.”

Chemistry Test Prep, and a Wee bit o’ Bitching

2010-09-14T22:12:00.001-07:00

I’m studying hard for my first Chemistry test on Thursday. I have to work extra hard to catch up with all the little smarties fresh out of high school AP Chemistry at their respective prep schools. AP Chemistry is what many high schoolers like my little sister take. AP courses are equivalent to college courses. So most universities will accept AP Chemistry credit so that the students don’t have to take Chemistry in college. Except, med schools don’t accept AP chemistry, so most of the pre-med students in my classes have already taken AP chemistry and are now retaking essentially the same course. And these people are my competition.

I did not take AP Chemistry.

Let me tell you about my high school Chemistry experience at Hartford Christian Academy some 9 years ago. My 6 classmates and I were warehoused in front of a small television, INSTEAD OF A TEACHER, each class period watching a man teaching Chemistry. This man was broadcasting live 900 miles away via Bob Jones University’s abortion of a teaching system they call BJ LINC. The chemistry teacher would spend the first 10 minutes of every 50 minute class praying and recapping chapel sermons. Chemistry class was always part-devotional period. But that wasn’t exactly unique to this class in my school.

The 7 of us were “proctored” by the dying janitor as we sat around the class ignoring the TV and goofing off while he pretended to not know what was happening as that was his illusion of control. Tests and homework were barely noticeable milestones. We just shared answers hurriedly so we could get back to doing nothing.

I learned NOTHING in high school Chemistry. And it’s truly symbolic of the rampant propaganda within the AACS (American Association of Christian Schools). The teachers at schools belonging to this association never stop talking about the quality of education you can receive at these church schools. The teachers would constantly be telling us to be happy that we were at Hartford Christian Academy because you couldn’t imagine how bad the education was at Public Schools dear Lord. It’s complete BULLSHIT. At my school the man with the Bible degree from Bob Jones University taught us math when he wasn’t busy flirting with 15 year olds. Another science teacher/math teacher was a recent Pensecola Christian College grad, who had failed to get a job as an RN. The Chemistry/Math proctor was the school’s janitor. The school clearly had a policy of taking those in the church, who were otherwise struggling with employment, and said, “Well, maybe we should install these fine Christians in our church school to instruct the children of our parishioners.” My high school geometry teacher skipped the chapter on proofs because she. did. not. understand. them. Hartford Christian Academy, is THAT what you call superior education?

Maybe for destination pastor wife or destination military kids, HCA’s education would suffice, but for those of us who want to be scientists or pursue higher learning in a non-Christian institution, we were intellectually abused. My peers were in public school taking AP Chemistry and AP Calculus. I was preached at during basic Chemistry and told that proofs were too hard.

Another piece of cold fact that further illustrates the abysmal education at AACS Schools (most of whom use Bob Jones University’s or Pensacola Christian College's textbooks) is the ruling that upheld the right of the University of California to deem incoming students from high schools that teach history, government, and science from these textbooks, inadequately instructed. The UC system may deny matriculation or require additional coursework for applicants coming from a high school which teaches from these text books. The ruling basically says, “[Universities have the right to set admissions standards, and if you want to get into that University than it’s up to YOU to meet those standards. And if you’re religion doesn't like it than too bad.]” See here for some analysis of the lawsuit.

Guess which high school taught from these text books? Hartford Christian Academy. Guess which high school sat us in front of a TV and told us we were getting a good education? Hartford Christian Academy. Guess who would have been denied enrollment had I applied to UCLA or UC Berkley. ME.
I currently am enrolled at the University of Southern California. NOT a UC school. But in my interview, USC was very trepaditious about accepting me given my high school background in science. They advised me to take pre-chemistry courses before the start of the first semester.
But of course, these high school administrators don’t care about the students getting denied from UC Berkley. You would have received counseling from the principal if you decided not to attend Christian Fundamentalist higher-education where they debate such things as the correct version of the gospel instead of reasons why AIDS viruses are developing medication resistant strains . (Evolution Oh. No. You Did NOT.)

God-fearing students would want to go to Bob Jones University or Pensacola Christian University. So the problem of the BJU curriculum being instructionally inadequate is moot. The Christian school lords have behaved correctly in “God’s eyes”. Done and done. Nice for them, but it ends up creating victims, who are now woefully behind their peers in knowledge and opportunity, before they even get a shot at making decisions for themselves.

I’m angry and I’m bitter. And I want to shake my first-year freshman Facebook friends all skipping along the pre-determined path after high school to enroll in Bob Jones University or Pensecola Christian College, where they will receive Non-regionally accredited degrees. I want to urge them to reconsider for the sake of their future selves. If they wish to continue their education after attending these institutions, they can take out Vegas odds on their changes of getting accepted into grad school or obtaining a legitimate professional certification. Droves of students have had their lives screeched to a halt because of the misrepresentation of the schools’ legitimacy during the enrollment and education processes.

I spent 9 months trying to convince a 3rd tier University (University of Nevada, Reno) that my credits from Bob Jones University were worth something after I had been expelled from there. I had to beg them to let me transfer without losing 2 years of my life. But I still think getting expelled from BJU was the best thing that ever happened to me because I don’t want to imagine what I would have been unable to achieve had they been my alma mater.

Before the last USC football game, I asked my friend who was explaining football to me, “How many feet are in a down?” And she sighed, and said, “Maybe, we should take a step back here.” Turns out a down is synonymous with an attempt. So you have 4 attempts to go each 10 yards OR 4 downs to go each 10 yards. And then she starts explaining what a goal post is. That thing at the end of each side of the football field that is metal and tall. (Hardi Har Har)

This is what I feel like in Chemistry, though. I have a LOT to learn, and I have to learn the building blocks of the game. My peers fresh out of high school already know this stuff. Hartford Christian Academy bludgeoned my appreciation for science almost out of existence. I have recovered from that. But I still need to work twice as hard as my peers in order to get the same initial grades.
I have to study more. This discrepancy in knowledge between my abysmal education and my AP Chem educated piers will hopefully only last for one semester. Then the playing field will be leveled, and I will truly be a peer in both knowledge as well as ability. No thanks to all you Christians.

Differences

2010-09-13T22:48:00.001-07:00

I’ve been working in “Corporate America” for the last three years. And there are a lot of comparisons to be made between working and school. The people are hotter, the assignments and deadlines are more predictable, and you get to grow salmonella in a Petri dish instead of attend status meetings.

One of the major differences that keeps striking me as strange is that classes are SO SHORT. Each class is a standard 50 minutes long. Which is what they’ve always been since the beginning of my education. But for some reason they SEEM a lot shorter than ever before. This might be because 2 50 minute classes with a nice 10 minute break in between is nothing compared to 8 hours banging away at your desk at the same Application Requirements Document or 8 hours creating a batch process to bring data from one place to a whole nother place ( So. Damn. Exciting).

So it’s a piece of cake sitting for 2 hours in class listening to teachers explain topics they are obsessed with. And when people start packing up their bags a minute before class ends, I’m always jolted. Going, “Oh! It’s time to move along. Ooooooo, now I get to go to Ground Zero Coffee Shop and sit in a dimly lit room studying while I drink a one dollar Americano.”