What Medical School Looks Like XIX

Sometimes medical school looks like healthcare volunteers wearing silly things on their heads to amuse their campers (and themselves) while giving medications.

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One Night in San Antonio

This July, I spent a night in San Antonio and treated myself to an evening of touristy things: the River Walk, The Alamo, the Tower of the Americas. San Fernando Cathedral (left) was founded in 1731 and is the oldest continuously functioning religious community in the state of Texas. The Cathedral building has the added distinction of being the oldest standing church building in Texas (~280 years). For almost 95 years, San Fernando served as the church for all of the religious denominations of San Antonio, as the Catholic Church was the only recognized religion of the Spanish and Mexican governments prior to Texas' independence in 1836. When I stopped by in the early evening a mass was going on, so I just snapped a photo of the remains of the Alamo defenders, which were re-interred in the entranceway.

A marble slab to the side reads: "Here lie the remains of Travis, Crockett, Bowie and other Alamo heroes. The Archdiocese of San Antonio erected this memorial May 11 A.D. 1938 R.I.P. Formerly buried in the sanctuary of the old San Fernando Church. Exhumed July 28, 1937. Exposed to public view for a year. Entombed May 11, 1938."

I meandered along the River Walk until I found a likely seafood place for dinner (shrimp and root beer) before setting off on foot to The Alamo.

I arrived shortly before closing time. One's first impression, of course, is how small the compound is now. It used to be much larger. I wandered into the restored shell of the church where the last stand was stood. Inside were glass cases filled with objects: a rifle, a powder horn, a watch, a spoon. The crowd wound single-file through these reliquaries. I don't think they knew why they were there. I didn't understand either, but the guide at the 3-D model was very passionate about the brave resistance the out-numbered band put up, all in the name of freedom! It was a fight they lost, remember.

Freedom from what? I circled the gardens outside the church and nearly turned to leave, when I noticed a long low barracks building, now a museum. I had just missed the last film showing of the day, but the exhibits explained, in impressive detail, the history of the Texas Revolution (1835-1836): how the Mexican government had invited Americans to populate the area, and then how the immigrants revolted against the increasingly centralist government in Mexico City. The revolutionaries disagreed amongst themselves whether they should return to the more federalist Mexican Constitution of 1824 or break away entirely. With the help of enthusiastic fighters from north of the border, The Republic of Texas was finally declared in 1836. Mexico refused to recognize the rogue nation, and its annexation to the United States in 1845 precipitated the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

The 750-foot-tall (above right) Tower of the Americas was built in 1966. It has a glass elevator to an observation deck with a museum of Texas history as well as a 3D movie show about Texas, complete with special effects and fancy moving theater seats. My favorite part was the video that played outside the theater, describing the eight geographical regions of the state: Gulf Coast, South Texas Plains, Big Bend, Panhandle, Hill Country, Prairies and Lakes, and Pineywoods. My least favorite part was the thing that whipped between our ankles like a rattlesnake!

Toys for Adults at the Art Institute of Chicago

I recently had to take a big medical exam in Chicago. The test would take all day, so I took the train up the day before and stayed in a hotel near the testing center so I could study and not worry about arriving late. However, once I discovered BBC America was playing a Star Trek—Next Generation marathon, little studying happened. The big day went fine, and after picking up my bags from the hotel, I hopped on the L into downtown, where I met Dear Husband at a different hotel. Located in a “historic” building one block from Millennium Park, our room was small, with a window-unit air conditioner, questionable internet, and no mini-fridge. We were paying for location, location, location.

Dear Husband had been cooling his heels since his train arrived and wanted to go out, do something. So we shared an entrée from the Thai restaurant under the hotel before heading out to the Art Institute of Chicago. The last time we were in the Windy City, our flight to San Francisco had been delayed, so we concocted a mini-religious arts tour to amuse ourselves before flying out the next morning. As luck would have it, we were once again at AIC on a Thursday evening = free admission for Illinois residents! Neither a little rain nor a thick line damped our enthusiasm.

Once inside, we took advantage of the breadth of the Institute’s collections, starting with the Paperweight Collection. (Yes, you read that right.) Arthur Rubloff made such a major hobby of collecting these blobs of glass, that he was able to donate 1,200 to the AIC, and there is a whole room devoted to the various styles, from abstract mosaics of color to be-dew-dropped roses to little insects captured within the glass orbs. As you may remember, I am a sucker for art glass. Still I found most of the designs--made in the nineteenth century--to be crude.

Next door is the Thorne Miniatures gallery. Narcissa Niblack Thorne (1882-1966) had researched home furnishings in Europe (France, Germany) from 1275 to the mid-1900s, and in America (Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine) from the 1700s to the mid-1900s. Essentially doll-house rooms with historical accuracies, the dioramas made for interesting comparisons and many instances of “I spy.” DH liked to point out the various musical instruments and whether they were anachronistic. I delighted in finding details such as portraits or firescreens.

Finally, before the AIC closed for the day, we explored the small Muslim gallery. Panels there explained common influences in Islamic art, from calligraphy and arabesques to geometrical patterns and even figurative designs. The next day we tackled the Field Museum, sunned/swam at the lakeshore, ate dinner at a diner, and then watched a Second City show. Because I was going to be too busy in August around the time of our anniversary, this counted as our annual Midwest trip. We celebrated our first anniversary with Second City, too--and here's proof!

Erasmus Galileo (7/3/1998-7/7/2015)

Ever the erudite cat--you even kept a blog for a while--you were named for two old dead white men: Erasmus and Galileo: Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), who is said to have been the last person to know everything there was to know [in Europe], and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who supposedly conducted gravitational experiments by dropping objects off the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Only your experiments involved drinking glasses and the edges of counters and tables. I only recently learned that "Erasmus" means "beloved" in Latin. It is a fitting name, for you were--are--dearly loved.

You had many names and nicknames, and you answered to none of them. (Although you would come trotting if I made "kissy" noises. You knew that meant chicken, or tuna, or pets.) 
Raz
Raz-ma-tazz
Fur-Face

Our furry child

Walnut-Brain

Die Katze

The Inspector

Lil Buddy
Pretty Kitty
Kitty Cat
Tiger

I was a complete sucker for the "paw over the eyes" position.

Daddy took this one. He thought you were so funny trying to chew up the Christmas tree.

Hold still for a family portrait--oop!
So much for a photo Christmas card.

I think we are studying French for Reading here. Yeah, that's it.

The older/dirtier the water in your dish, the farther out into the walkway
it would move, until I couldn't help but trip over it (literally).

With the way you nested in clothes, the paper recycling, or Daddy's coat thrown on the couch,
I sometimes wondered whether you were part bird. (Don't take that the wrong way.)

Tabby Cat as Conch Shell. That paw, though!

A squirrel was feasting on the innards of my jack-o-lantern.

Little did it know that a great predator was watching from above...

Typical Sunday afternoon at our place: I'm working, the boys are napping.

Now that you are not here anymore, I feel like I will have to change the way I do...everything now. No one greets me (or trips me) at the bedroom door when I get up in the morning. I can leave the bathroom door open, because you're not there to whine for a drink from the tap. I don't have to change your water before getting down on the floor to brush you while listening to the morning news on the radio. I can't tell you to "be good while I'm gone" or "watch the house for us" when we leave, and I won't have to step over where you have flopped on the floor for a belly rub when we return. I can leave a glass of water on the floor by my chair and not worry you'll stick your face in it or knock it over. Heck, we can even leave cups and mugs by the edge of the counter, and they will be right where we left them. I can sit on any chair in the house I want, because you are not laying claim to any of them anymore. I can actually work with my laptop on my lap, because you're not trying to sit there. When it's hot out, I can wear shorts without a second thought about how you can't stand to sit on bare human skin. When it's cold out, I can round the corner into the hall without worrying about tripping over you, curled up against the wall next to the furnace. It was clever of you to find the warmest spot in the house! I can have flowers on the table instead of up on a shelf, out of your reach. I can bring my spider plants inside over the winter without having to lock you out of the study, lest you nibble on the "salad bar" and promptly throw up. (It's raining while I type this, and I have to stop myself from wondering whether the ambient noise includes you smacking your lips...or retching. The heavens cried when your great-grandmother died, too.) I can close the blinds on the front windows in the evening without having to leave one up for you to watch "cat tv." Heck, I don't have to shut the bedroom door at night, because you will not be serenading me at 4 am. Anymore. No more litter box, no more orange spit-up staining the carpet, no more cat hair covering the couch. Anymore. No more warm heft in my lap or chirp when you wake up from an afternoon nap or soft fur under my fingers. Anymore. You were beautiful in life and still beautiful in death. I am sorry your body gave out before your spirit did. You are beloved, you magnificent creature.

~Signed, "Mom"

A 21st-century medical student's vade mecum

In the Middle Ages, physicians didn't have smart phones or tablets to help them remember important but random bits of information. Instead, they used a small book called a vade mecum (literally, "go with me"). When I "re-entered" medical school last summer, I didn't have a smart phone either, and I wanted a way to collect the hundreds of facts I would be acquiring as I entered the wards and clinics. So I decided to buy myself a little book. The idea was that I would keep it in my white coat pocket for easy reference. However, all the small booklets in the store were drab and ugly. I didn't want to hate looking at my little book for the next 2-3 years. So I bought a slightly larger one with a snazzy cover and four colors of pages. It doesn't fit in my pocket due to the metal spine, so it has lived either in my bookbag or on my desk. Some clerkships have lent themselves to using it more than others (internal medicine and family medicine, yes; Ob/Gyn and surgery, not so much). Now that I am studying for my next round of board exams, I keep it next to me, more to write things down in order to commit them to memory than to jog my memory when answering questions.

Blue is for pathology. On the left in purple are leukemias. On the right in red is Multiple Myeloma: "Bone pain + anemia = MM until proven otherwise."

Red is for clinical pearls and best-practice guidelines.These heart murmurs are differentiated by color, too: green for systolic murmurs and purple for diastolic murmurs.

Grey is for "Miscellaneous," including dermatology, pediatrics, and anatomy. Here I have drawn the musculature of the eye and the major tracts of the spinal cord. "Head trauma can stretch cranial nerve IV, but increased intracranial pressure is more likely to affect cranial nerve VI."

Green is for pharmacology. (I was thinking of Mr. Yuck!) From this catalog of Drugs and Their Antidotes: "Arsenic poisoning smells like garlic and presents with seizures and nausea, vomiting, diarrhea."

What Medical School Looks Like XVIII

Sometimes medical school looks like a cool summer afternoon on the front porch of the public library discussing diagnoses and workups with a friend and colleague.

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What Do Library Science, History, & Civil Engineering Have in Common? On Location Part 1 of 2

Editor's Note: Over the years long-time readers will have noticed that I frequently refer to the campus faith group with which Dear Husband and I celebrate holidays (some religious, some not), play games, and do arts and crafts. We are an eclectic group of "graduate students and like-minded persons" who meet weekly during the academic year to discuss books or videos. During the summer we sometimes offer alternative programming. This year, we are visiting our respective buildings around campus to learn about each other's research. Here is a sampling of the visits thus far.

The first week, a recent graduate of the library school took the group to the Rare Book Room to marvel at unique texts--such as a 1976 draft of the Star Wars script in which Luke Skywalker is still named "Luke Starkiller"--and very old ones, such as a book from the Cavagna Collection, Per la facciata del Duomo di Milano (ca. 1657) (below). This collection of opinions about architectural renovations to Milan's cathedral has what amounts to the papermaker's version of a footprint in fresh concrete: a handprint made while the paper was still wet. You can see more images, learn about making paper in the early modern period, and read about the Milanese cathedral blueprints in this blog post.

I led the next tour, representing history. We traipsed through four of the five stories of the big old building that houses my department. In one of my old classrooms, we stopped to do an exercise I learned in a German course and have used to good effect in history classes: we put up pictures on the walls and "visited a gallery." This gallery had portraits of Jesus: Jesus looking holy in Warner Sallman's ubiquitous "Head of Christ," Jesus teaching in a Rembrandt, and Jesus doing both at the same time in the Christ Pantocrator (Christ the Savior) icon from the 6th century... Check out the  picture above. The right side of his face is calm, and he lifts his hand in a gesture of blessing and teaching. The left side of his face is stern, and he carries a heavy Bible for instruction. This particular image is the oldest version of a common Orthodox icon and can be found in Saint Catherine's Monastery near Mount Sinai in Egypt. Then we went out for ice cream.

Finally, the group went to the civil engineering building, where we started by ogling the cranes, earthquake simulation center, and concrete canoes. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Our guide showed us the special material he studies with a super-high-tech microscope that can zoom in reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaallllly close to the surface of a specimen. He uses a diamond to stress the material, measures various parameters, and develops models for understanding these things. Then we went out for Indian food.

It turns out that what Library Science, History, and Civil Engineering have in common are graduate students excited about their research and eager to share it to build a community of faith. Check back later for more summer tours!