“I hear there’s internet out west!”

Hey guys, so I am woefully back in Kirksville. For the week before, I was tying up all the loose ends and packing up my entire life (sans lifemate, he’s stuck in Denver for another few months). Then there was the loading of the truck, driving 14 hrs, unpacking the truck, unpacking all the stuff…all while wrangling 2 dogs without a fenced in yard (Ack, it was supposed to be put in before I got here!) So sorry to have been gone for so long, but I promise once I return, I’ll have quite an epic to share. Namely, me going without technology for a couple weeks. I have no internet in my house and I have to sneak off to the library to even write this. I only have one channel on TV. Scratch that…HAD one channel. It inexplicably decided to fade back into the white noise right before the season finale of Hell’s Kitchen. Dammit all! I feel like I’m doing a cleanse, like that Oprah’s 21 day cleanse, only with more meat and tequila.

Random Michelle: Pieces of Flair

Just added these into the Pieces of Flair application on Facebook. They link back to here. Want one? Then get the app, and they should be showing up in the Newest directory soon, or else just search “michelle med student.”

Random Michelle: Rama Lama Bang Bang

If I could go back in time and get like 20 yrs of lessons, I’d do be on Broadway so that I could do crazy shit like this:

*Warning: do not play if you do not want to have this song in your head the rest of the month!

Exercising some of that creativity I mentioned

Ok, so lots o’ new stuff. Starting off, new pages! It is Michelle vs the Med Student after all, so I turned the Med Article page into just “Med Student” and then added a “Michelle” page. On “Michelle”, you’ll see various pics that are in my art projects, interjected with home videos, and some quotes I just find inspiring. Remember the TOME! video? Thats where you’ll find it. On “Med Student”, I haven’t done much except add more articles. I’m still pondering how I’d like that page to develop.

I’ve added the pics I promised to flickr. Some of Josh & the pups were taken while working on a good head shot of Josh for a family art project. He’s shy so I didn’t put it, but I put some of the happy accidents. In there is also some pics of our weekend outing with Australian Adrian & family to Conifer’s gun range for skeet shooting and BBQ. We literally spent 8 hours in the sun and then decided to swim for 2 hours. I couldn’t move by the end of it but it was a blast and the day produced some pretty nifty pics. Plus I was a bad ass with a shot gun. All my years playing Duck Hunt, I suppose.

Friday the 13th my Firefox rose from the dead

That sounds like a really dorky B horror movie.

My Firefox suddenly died 4 days ago. Before then, all I had done was a song I wrote about my FP rotation called “Boring as Hell (But Rum Gets Me By)”. I got halfway through that and decided to switch gears and now I am working on a parody of “I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T” called “M-E-D-S-T-U-D-E-N-T”, which needless to say, is much less depressing to write (and requires less rum and tequila in the process). I’ve also been doing alot of photography art projects which I will post at least the individual pictures that make up those projects on flickr soon. Channeling these creative energies elsewhere has made me neglect the blog a little bit. Lo siento.

But as I was saying, Firefox randomly stopped coming up on Monday. I would click on it, it would seem to think for a bit, then stop. Multiple restarts did nothing. Neither did uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox. Internet Explorer worked fine, so I was tempted to come here and rant about the Microsoft/Vista conspiracy that destroyed my computer with Windows XP on it so I’d have to buy this new comp with Vista on it, and now it won’t let me use a non-Microsoft web browser! Argh, fuck Bill Gates in the ear, I say!!

Today it came back after a third attempt at reinstallation. There’s apparently a way to do it where you delete every single remnant of Firefox on your computer, not just the traditional uninstall. After doing that “clean uninstall”, it had finally come back to life. I don’t know what happened to make it go away. My theory is the recent neglect, and not being truly grateful of the convenience and loveliness that is Firefox. I love you Firefox, don’t ever leave me again!

Random Michelle: Saying goodbye to Boulder

In Colorado, I’ve learned to smile from my heart.

Random Michelle: Sundays are for Jamba Juice & The Office reruns

Dwight Schrute: In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, ‘Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me. I’m dead.’ Well, I’m not dead. I’m the lion. You’re dead.

Lessons I Learned in 3rd year

#1–When patients and drug reps ask about where I am in my education, I say I am done with the science part of medicine, sitting in a dark room stuffing my noggin with every bit of medical minutiae I could fit in there. I have moved on to the art portion of medicine, namely gaining the experience of how & when to apply that knowledge. And NO, I am not a fucking intern. Thanks to Gray’s Anatomy, I have to explain where I am in my education in reference to intern year. FYI, currently, I have one more year to go, then I graduate, and yes…then I am an intern. And apparently I will discover the appeal of the gross on-call room.

#2–Everyone wants to know what you are going to do and the whole story behind the choice. If you don’t have the story, you sound flaky. As for what I want to do, I don’t know yet. Not surgery. Not anesthesia. Definitely not radiology. Probably not FP, peds, or OB/GYN. I might do something with IM, PM&R, or Psych. Thats all I know.

Other medstudent: “So what do you tell docs you want to be then?”

Me: “Interventional Cardio”

Other medstudent: “Why that?”

Me: “Well if I say anything primary, including IM, I get the speech about how I’ll never make enough money to pay off my loans. If I say PM&R, they might ask me why, and all I can say is “I just think it sounds neat.” If I say Oncology, they’ll ask if there is a story there and then I have to launch into my mom’s story and its just such a serious conversation when first meeting someone. So I say IM- Intervent Cardio, b/c
1) IM is general enough to where whatever the rotation is, it could apply somehow and they don’t feel like they are wasting their time teaching me,
2) “Cardio” makes me sound smart, and
3) “Interventional” b/c they always respect the desire to do billable procedures.”

#3–The key to preventing burnout is to find humor in your work. Thats probably why I like psych so much. In FP, you get fat old men who won’t take care of themselves, but then complain that they hurt all over and want you to fix it. It pisses me off, especially if a rectal exam is involved. But with psych, I find it hard to get mad at someone who is wearing war paint and says they didn’t take their meds b/c they crawled away.

New Kirksville Page

I’m bringin’ Osteopathy to the center stage with its own page. Because nobody puts Kirksville in a corner!

What to look forward to:

20 above Picklecakes

I’m the #718 med blog. Considering my recent bi-monthly posting, I’m amazed to show at all. That’s ya’ll!