ADD

Attention deficit disorder is an interesting thing. Who draws the line between the daydreamer and the kid with a problem? The regular young boy and the one whose hyperactivity is pathologic?

Med school teaches you interesting things. In Behavioral Science I learned that you must be diagnosed by age 7 to have ADD. However, from Student Affairs, I learned that many medical students are diagnosed with it when they get here.

I guess there are exceptions to every rule.

The reason medical students get diagnosed is because many students have ADD, but function highly, and therefore compensate through school. It isn't until the fast pace and time crunches of medical school that their compensation fails and the pathology shows.

Of course, there are imposters too. About 8 - 10% of students in undergrad use stimulants that are for treating ADD as study aids. This off-label use is unethical and illegal, but rampant. The stresses of medical school are greater than undergrad, and so are the pressures to use these stimulants to get ahead.

My school does not grade on a curve, yet I believe we still have at least 10% of my class using Adderall illegally.

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blogging again?

I've neglected this blog for the greater part of 2 years, but I've always found it interesting. I can either merge this blog with my general one, or start this up again separate.

Now that i've got this blog set up to receive mobile posts, perhaps a real time blog about med school life is possible...kinda twitter-esque without the word limit.

Or i could just tweet.

--- Sent with System SEVEN - the new generation of mobile messaging

Day 56: Anniversary

Today is my second anniversary with my wife. I will post a much better post on my other, more beloved but less attended to, blog: The Bleeding Ear. So, go check it out. It use to be a daily blog about politics and Vietnam and stuff. Now, because of this and med school in general, I don't have time. Heck, i don't have time for these short SHORT daily posts. So I'm gonna make it a weekly thing. That way I cna schedule it into my Sundays and get something on it. I don't want to let it go.

So, go there for today's post.

Day 53: Friday and Ears

I am so glad its Friday. Now all i have is a weekend of more studying. At least tonight I'll break it up by doing what? Yep, you guessed it. Mattress shopping. Tonight's Dillards.

Today we had to disect the ear in Gross. We came at it two ways. Superiorly (from the top) and laterally (from the outside in). Out of the four of us, two did one and two did the other. I went laterally. It was tough. I think we called the professor over three times over the course of the three hours we were in there to make sure we were doing things right. The hard part are the structures of the inner ear. They are all so small. One small misstep and you're screwed.

That's what happened to our superior route. The two working on that side usually do a great job, but today, trying to follow vague directions while chiseling through thin bone, was just not our day. That side was totally demolished. But its ok, because have the lateral side.

And we weren't the only ones. Many people demolished part or all of their ears too. Beware the ear.

Day 52: x96 (fm 96.3)

Houston's radio stations suck. For the first couple months here, I just bent over and took it, but not any more. I listen to x96. No, this is not Sirius Satellite Radio. It's not XM radio either. It's just good radio.

See, I grew up here, and never knew bad radio. Back then we listen to 104.1 and 107.5. However, both stations sold out to Clear Channel, and now they're horrible -- unless you have the memory of a goldfish.

Clear Channel has some moron in New York City put together a playlist of money-makers over the last twenty years and plays them over and over and over again. I can't tell you how many times I've heard Nirvana in one week.

x96, is a radio station out of Salt Lake City. First, they haven't sold out to big corporations, so they still play local music, new music, and are willing to try different things. This makes for a refreshing, hip, current mix of music, with some old stuff thrown in every once in a while. Second, their morning show, the "Radio from Hell Show," is absolutely the best morning show I have ever heard. Period. The three djs, Kerry, Bill, and Gina, have a chemistry wanted by all in radio and television and achieved by few.

So, in the mornings, or when I need to change gears from one subject to another, I listen to x96.com.

Day 51: Beds

I keep getting farther and farther behind. My friends wonder how I'll ever catch up. Every night I go out with my wife looking for mattresses, since we're moving. My wife, bless her heart, has been to every matress store this side of Timbuktu. Hopefully, by the time we move in to our place, we'll have a matress. Oh yeah, but the date got moved to the 16th. So I don't get down here until the week before second block exams.

Day 50: Dinner With an Old Friend

So the other day I wrote about meeting my friend Anh on the bus, serendipitously. Well, today we went out to eat together. It was a great time.

Not that we went anywhere special, just the McGovern Commons, but nonetheless, it was fun. If I had a way of getting pictures off of my phone without paying T-mobile my first born child, I'd post a pic of us playing chess with a huge chessboard. It's outdoors, made of plastic, and each piece comes up to my knee. Very fun. She thoroughly beat me.

Then we went inside and got Chinese/Vietnamese from Kim Son. The lady serving was floored because I was speaking to Anh in Viet. Can't a white guy have a little fun? We can learn languages other than English. lol.

Lunch was talking about life and Vietnam, and food, and making plans to do this again. It was a great break from the stress that is medical school.