in the study

Sometimes things happen that are best left to the imagination, food poisoning, C. Diff infections, major trama to an extremity.  Well, 12 days ago at 3:15pm my pinky, yes the smallest of my phalanges, was rendered useless to me for the next week and 1/2.  Yep, my pinky got smooshed.  It was a random collection of events (bad judgment, big part of lake, unseen wake) that ended with my pinky between two boats.  All things considered, however, I was very fortunate to sustain only soft tissue injury.  No broken bones, no loss of motion or sensation just a really nasty wound (more graphic pictures of my finger after the break).  As you can imagine - typing and other activities requiring a pinky have been rather difficult the past week or so.

Otherwise, I've been hanging out with friends playing games, biking Cades Cove and doing a lot of working and reading.  I learned a new game, a group version of the classic battleship game.  Everyone is given a sheet of paper where you mark your ships and after everyone has placed their ships turns are taken lobbing bombs.  It is somewhat a bingo/battleship collage.  It was fun watching and learning.

As to school, recently I did surgical subspecialties (last month) and am currently on Emergency Medicine.  Surgical subs consisted of ENT, Urology, Ortho and Ophthalmology (hence the pic).  I have to say I had expereinces in doctor's offices I've never seen before or probably will never see again.  It was fun and I learned alot.    I've really been enjoying the ED or emergency department.  For the longest time I've considered doing Family Medicine and then doing a fellowship in Emergency Medicine, however, all the doctors I've spoken to have highly suggested I just do the Emergency Medicine residency if that is my interest.

Well, count this as your warning - graphic pictures after the break - and this time they are real.

Well, it has been a good week.  Lots of stuff accomplished and getting my schedule setup for the rest of the year so that I'll graduate in Dec.  Yeah, it is 6 months late but all in all I'll still be an MD.  It is different, but, I'm enjoying the life of an M4.  Did Rheumatology last week and am doing it this week as part of my ambulatory medicine rotation.  It has been good and I've been able to see interesting conditions.  Looking forward to this week.  Cutting back on extraneous activities and trying to focus on my core tasks to cross some stuff off the list that has back-logged for the past couple of years.  Well, onto the e-mail backlog.  Just noticed I have an e-mail from 2008 I need to answer.

Wow, studying for Step 2 (both CK and CS) has really kept me busy for the last few weeks (interspersed was a week of being sick).  I didn't realize it has been almost a month since I posted.  I've been working on the WIFI and think I've actually figured out how to enable it.  I'm still trying to figure out if the SD8686 kernel module has the necessary android commands enabled to use it.  The main resource I've found to do this is this howto for Android wireless.  More later . . .

Tired and sad.  Two words to describe how I feel right now.  What a wonderful month of learning and adventure.  So many amazing things and people.  How cool it was to discover so many individual with similar interests.  I'll be posting more tomorrow from the hike, but I'll post a few photos from the hikes right now.

Day 19 --

Everyone split-up today and went different directions enjoying the beautiful weather.  Some went bordering, others hung-out at camp and enjoyed the sunshine while others went for a hike on Rainbow Trail almost getting to Mt. LeConte.  The snow became knee deep and thus they had to turn around but they really enjoyed the beautiful views.

I on the other-hand went home to do laundry and rested for most of the day.

Day 20 - 

Today we went to The Lost Sea and did the wild cave tour.  It was great fun.  Our guide, Shane, was really enjoyable and really tailored the tour for our group.  It was funny to hear him really enjoy having a tour of adults rather then children.  The lake in the cave is huge.  In the 70's they went diving with sonar and couldn't identify any walls or floor.  Thus the floor is deeper then 3500 ft and the back wall is farther then 3500 ft.  That is a huge cavern.

After finishing we went to a place call Joe's for the best burgers in Sweatwater, TN.  The burgers were really good.  They were really good.

Well that's all for now, enjoy the pics.

All good things must come to an end and certainly the lectures went out with a bang.  We had 3 lectures spanning from 8am to 4:30 pm with 3 breaks (one for lunch).  It was a marathon session but very interesting.  The lectures were over Space Medicine, Toxicology (i.e. venomous and poisonous animals) and making a Wilderness Medical Kit.  It became one of our first beautifully sunny days and during our few breaks we made sure to enjoy it.  All the pictures of us today were on the front porch of Tipton Lodge where we had all our lectures and was the headquarters of all our scenarios.

Day 16 was a day full of lectures as will be day 18.  Day 17 was our final day of scenarios.  The posts are a day late and a bit short in content because as a camp we exceeded the daily bandwidth allotment and I didn't take time yesterday to write.  Yep, no internet yesterday so I couldn't post anything about Day 16 or 17.  It made me lazy :).

On day 16 we had lectures for a bunch of different topics.  We learned about Dive Medicine, a recent medical trip to Haiti, preparing to lead a wilderness expedition, making a medical kit and lots of random facts.  Some of the most intriguing were from the dive medicine lectures.  Did you know:

Almost a day of rest with no scenarios - but a day of constant activity.  We left camp at 8 am and drove to the University of Tennessee (UT) Medical Center in Knoxville (UTMCK).   We spent the morning in the Graduate School of Medicine Family Medicine conference room treated to donuts, orange juice and coffee.  We had three short lectures regarding group travel and emergency medicine finishing off with a visit to UT Lifestar helicopter.

Finally about half of us went over to my parents house for some good home cooking and to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics.  Another good day and looking forward to our days off.