Monday, January 24, 2011

Fruit Basket

Sometimes, you get lucky, and find an excuse to get out of the library and into the Real World to do Real People things. My luck came in the shape of one of my favorite women in the world- Maurine. Not only did we go Out To Lunch and go Shopping On Madison Ave, we also got to talk about everything from marriage to silk chiffon. What a nice change from bacterial endocarditis and acute non-ST elevation MIs! (We were in our cardiology block, if you couldn't tell.)

Of course, as it always happens when two doctors (am I allowed to call myself that?) come together, we did end up talking about medicine. Maurine gave me lots of good advice, about how to survive med school, what to do for residency, etc. But my favorite part were the ridiculous stories that she regaled me and my friends with, as we sat around a table at a Fancy New York Restaurant, sipping wine and eating tuna tartare.

Here's the best story (in my opinion) of the night:

We were talking about being a doctor in the 1970s, and Maurine busts out a story about a dude who comes in with a pear stuck in his anus. (Yes, for real.) And apparently this isn't really something shocking; the worst is when the person has a lightbulb stuck up there, because you sure as hell don't want that thing to shatter. But anyway, so, Patient With Pear Up Butt comes in, and the doctors are talking about how to take the pear out, being careful of rectal distention and whatnot, and they decide to take an x-ray of the guys abdomen, just to make sure that there wasn't any air in the abdomen due to a bowel perforation. Great. But, what did they see on the x-ray?

There was an apple shoved up there first. Yes, friends, an anal fruit basket, if you will.

I don't know about you, but I kind of want to meet this guy. If only to ask him, "How?"

Friday, January 14, 2011

Apples to Apples

Med students are notoriously good at procrastinating. Whether it's tv, internet, or even just staring off into space (which I find myself doing more and more in the library), somehow, we find a way to avoid studying. Every now and again, though, we find ways to procrastinate that are actually somewhat productive. Usually, these brilliant ideas revolve around food.

Now, it's a well-known fact that my mother supplies me with enough food to feed a medium-sized army, and sometimes I get overwhelmed by the tupperware temple in my fridge. Although there's not much to do with a whole bunch of Indian food, the five apples that my mother thought I could eat in two days offered us a world of possibilities. And so, one cold, snowy night, my friends and I decided to forego Lilly's Pathophysiology of Heart Disease, and study the intricacies of apple crisp instead.

I got the recipe for Pumpkin Apple Crisp from my new favorite food blog (everybodylikessandwiches.com), but seeing as we were lacking pumpkin and none of us were willing to brave the cold to go get some, we just modified the recipe a little bit to substitute more yogurt instead. And, in true we-are-future-doctors-shouldn't-we-eat-healthy? fashion, we substituted the flour for oatmeal.

Oh, and, don't be afraid to be heavy handed with the cinnamon. It will fill a room (and the hallway, and the stairwell) with warm, wintry goodness!



Saturday, January 8, 2011

Orgasm.

Have I hooked your interest with that post title?

There are so many things I want to tell you! One day I will. Until then, here's a ridiculous story that one of my friends shared with me:

ENT at UCSF where he did his residency was sort of a dumping ground for patients that had vague symptoms that could sort of be related to the ENT area. Bob had had a week of patients with weird complaints but the Friday patient topped it all. A woman of 27 years came into his clinic asking to have her tonsils "put back in." She said that she had had her tonsils removed 4 years previously because of chronic tonsillitis.

Dumbfounded, Bob asked her why she wanted them put back in. Her reply was, "I have not had an orgasm since I had my tonsils out and so I need to have the surgery reversed." Even to this day Bob said that he was so surprised by her response that all he could do was laugh (uproariously unfortunately).

Needless to say the referral was to Psychiatry not to the OR suite.