Saving Monica

Stories like this one make me proud to work at this hospital and in this ED. I’m already aware of how much I will miss this place and the environment that is acute care. One of the crazy things about working in a high-profile trauma center is that very often I’ve seen these patients that are in the news — the drunk drivers, the tragic MVAs, the sexual assaults, the stabbings, the pedestrians struck. It’s always interesting, being on this side of what gets reported in the Globe.

I’ve wondered off and on (along with the debate of MD vs. NP, a story for another blog) about whether or not I should’ve chosen Acute Care and if I’ll be bored going into geriatrics/primary/long-term care after two years of fascinating cases in the ED. But the more I think about it, I realize that I’m  just plain excited by everything that has to do with taking care of people. And I think I’ll always be eager to be a part of it.

ps. For another amazing nec fasc story, check out this book by another Boston doc. 

And the winner is…

Well, I dropped the class, making Yale my de facto choice. Realized that tonight was the add/drop deadline to get half of my money back from Harvard… and decided that I need the $350 more than I need the remote possibility of going to UW. Because even if I get in off the waitlist, I’m ambivalent about going there, and most likely, I would have to send six hundred nonrefundable clams to Yale before UW has any news. So I’m done. It’s not worth the money to stay on their list when I know that I liked Yale, was impressed with their faculty, program, and students, and I’m confident I’ll be happy there.

Now what I’m going to do all night at work without assigned reading, I don’t know… 

You know what else is kinda funny? When I was in elementary school, I had a blue Yale sweatshirt that I wore all the time. I have no idea where it came from, I’ll have to ask my mother if she remembers it. I know we didn’t know any Yalies. And I also recall owning one other piece of collegiate apparel – a cheap Harvard T-shirt. I guess someone must’ve given them to me, or maybe I asked for them since my brother was always getting Michigan stuff and for some reason I decided to align with the Ivies. I remember wearing those shirts all the time and telling amused aunts and uncles that I was going to go to one of them… Funny that I didn’t apply to either as an undergrad but will end up with an affiliation to both after all.

Skulls & Bones

For those of you who hadn’t yet heard, I did get into Yale. The letters haven’t yet arrived, but the Admissions Director, saint that she is, called me personally on Friday with the news because of my add/drop deadline.  I had originally asked her if she would know before the 10th, with the idea that I would call Yale on Friday and ask, but once UW let up with the orgo nonsense and she said Yale would accept the class, I figured I was in no hurry to drop and could just wait and find out with the rest of the class.

So it was a very nice surprise that she remembered my situation and went out of her way to look up my phone number and call. Twice, in fact, before she reached me. So kudos again to Yale for treating their students like actual people and being pretty damn awesome.

But she asked me not to tell anyone, so a blog announcement was no-go until she sent out all the congratulatory emails yesterday. So now it’s official, but since I haven’t received the letter or the financial aid info yet, I won’t be making any final decisions for a while. 

In other news, my anatomy class is dragging along with nothing interesting learned thus far except the fact that my fellow students aren’t smart enough to realize that a cultural anthropologist giving a painfully cursory overview of the central nervous system is not going to be able to answer pedantic little pathophysiology questions about something you read in NEJM. The poor woman hasn’t been asked a single question within her scope of knowledge so far this semester.

But I digress. What I was getting at is that I’ve been pretty bored and feel like I’m still not learning any actual anatomy, so instead I’ve been watching a 15-hour human anatomy dvd set  that is just, well, unbelievably cool.

One thing I learned from Dr. Acland’s dvd came just in time for Valentine’s, so I’ll share. The human heart is, well, “laid down on its back” from what we usually imagine: the atria aren’t above the ventricles like they teach you in school — they’re behind them. Happy Heart Day!