#6: How I Got Paralyzed At The Polls (Polio)

I’m never voting again.

I woke up this morning excited to vote in my first presidential election. Being a part of democracy was great and all, but my local polling plaza was offering free popcorn! Who could turn that down? Today was supposed to be a good day.

Then, as I was about to leave my apartment, I got a call ‘reminding’ me of my tonsil surgery appointment. Today. I had scheduled it for next week!

The receptionist apologized for the mix-up but the next availability wouldn’t be until December. It was June. So I went in to get it over with. I walked out of the doctor’s office (exhausted from the drugs and with one hell of a sore throat) to find that it was raining. The weatherman said clear skies! And me, without my umbrella.

I had only an hour to get across town and to my local polling booth. Traffic wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but there was this one guy who kept cutting me off. When I honked my horn I guess it startled him. He sped forward and crashed right in front of my exit, making a huge pile-up that blocked both the highway and my exit. I had to get out and walk.

When I finally arrived at Grand Central Plaza Polling Center, the security guards stopped me. “What’s that smell?” one of them said.

I noticed it just then, too. It was foul. I checked under my shoes. I had stepped in dog shit. Of course.

“It could be some bioterrorism,” the guard said to the other. And just like that, I was a national security threat. I’m all for protecting the homeland and junk, but was it really necessary to make me strip down to my boxers? I don’t think so.

By now, I was quite irritated. When I walked into the voting area, I didn’t even care that there was no privacy: all the voting booths were not really booths at all, but computers with big monitors where anyone could see your vote. Whatever.

Of course I had technical difficulties. Someone had inactivated the account I needed to vote. I immediately knew who must have done it: Iggy, the woman I had gone on a blind date with a month ago, never called back, and was now stalking me. It took another thirty minutes to sign up for another account and reboot the system.

At long last, the candidates. There was GI Joe, who didn’t have a bio at all. The second candidate was Babyface, an R&B singer who was running on the slogan “Do it for the children: stop global warming.” The third was Albert Einstein, and his campaign slogan was a tad more ambitious: “Though the deficit’s at its peak, I’ll fix it in a week!” Finally, there was Clark Kent, who claimed he could end the War on Terror. He didn’t have a nifty slogan, but I had heard much about him. He planned to shut down all four branches of the US military, one by one, over the next 15 years.

I knew nothing about politics and was really itching for that free popcorn, so I went with the most popular candidate: GI Joe. I clicked on his name, and frowned.

“That’s weird,” I said. I tried clicking GI Joe’s name again. And again, Clark Kent’s box was checked. Again. And again. At first I thought this was more bad luck and then I glanced at everyone else’s computer. They had all voted for Clark Kent.

This election was rigged! The last pre-election polls I'd checked had GI Joe a clear favorite with 90%, but that wouldn’t matter if the damn votes were rigged.

Yeah, I know. Who cares, right? But now it was about more than just popcorn: it was about principle. Thankfully, I knew the law. I could vote orally if I didn’t want to use a computer.

I put in my request for an oral recording of my vote and, to my surprise; they led me out back to a dingy old cabin. They said that senior citizens weren’t allowed to use oral voting by law and, even though I have only a single strand of gray hair on my head, they checked my ID to make sure I wasn’t too old! This was all probably to dissuade me, but my throat hurt, I smelled like shit, and I was determined to have my vote heard. Besides, I wanted my free popcorn.

After the vote, I left the cabin with my free bag of popcorn and my 'I voted' sticker. I was about to finally pop the first kernel of popcorn into my mouth when, out of nowhere, Iggy came up and tazed me.

"That's for not returning my phone calls!" she said and then ran off giggling.

She left me there, writhing around on the ground. I spent the next hour trying to move my hand to grab just one of the popcorn kernels. I almost had it when an iguana came by and began to eat. Since when do iguanas freaking eat popcorn?!?

#5: The Rhino and the Corona (Rhinovirus and Coronaviridae)

Three old men get together every Spring during the rainiest night to exchange stories. This year, the topic is ‘the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen.’

The first man told the story of Rebecca the Rhino. He’d been responsible for her years ago when he worked as a zookeeper at the San Diego Zoo. Ever since Rebecca had been born, she didn’t like being naked and would try to cover herself with all types of things—leaves, grass, the trash people left. One day an overzealous tourist leaned too far and fell into the rhino pit. In her terror, she dropped a red ruby necklace as she ran away. Low and behold, the next day Rebecca was wearing it around her neck. From then on, visitors would bring her jewelry and by the time she died she had 113 different earrings and necklaces!

The second man told the story of the Beer Tornado that almost destroyed the world. One day, a college kid shook up a Corona for three whole days and then popped the cap. The gas had built up so much that it spawned a huge tornado that quickly spread throughout the countryside, coating the land with beer suds. The tornado was so strong, the old man claimed, that people could smell the beer all the way in the Middle East. The tornado was so strong, the man claimed, that it changed the constellation of the stars.

“How did they stop it?” the first man asked.

“They didn’t. It was wintertime and that night the temperature dropped something fierce. By morning the whole tornado was frozen solid. It was amazing how it stayed in one piece. People came from all around that Spring to drink from the Preposterous Corona Reserve.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” the first man said. He turned to the third man, who’d been quiet. “Well, what about you? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“That,” the third man said, pointing. They all turned around.

It was Recebba the Rhino, in all her 113 pieces of jewelry, drinking a corona.

#4: Gemma's Pet Shop (Enteroviruses: Coxsackie A/B, Echovirus)

Gemma’s Summer Pet Shop was located on the top floor of Coldstone Plaza. She loved working in a pet shops because she got to meet all different kinds of people. One day, for example, the cutest little girl and the most stressed-out father walked into her shop.

“How about we take the helmet off now, Autumn?” the father said.

The little girl, who was indeed wearing a burlap sack over her head with eye slits cut out and a #1 written on the front, didn’t respond. The father sighed and said, “I mean, how about we take the helmet off, Popcorn.”

“That’s right, I’m Popcorn, explorer of worlds!” the little girl said, standing tall with her hands on her hips. Her arms were caked with dirt. Gemma thought it might be an attempt at camouflage.

“We’re inside now,” the father said. “So I think you’re safe from the alien acid rain. So no helmet, okay?”

Giggling, the little girl took off the sack and went to look at the different animals in the shop. Gemma cringed a little as Popcorn touched the sparkling glass cages with her dirty hands.

“She’s going through . . . a phase,” the father said to Gemma.

“I can see,” Gemma said. “What brings you in today?”

“We’re looking for a pet mouse. You got any?”

“As a matter of fact, we have two. Right over here.”

“Perfect.” The father turned to call for his daughter. “Autumn--I mean, Popcorn! Come look at the mice!”

The two mice for sale looked very similar, but one could easily see the differences if they looked long enough. The first mouse, Angel, had a pretty red bow tied around his neck and a pattern of spots that Gemma had never seen on a mouse before. His body was completely white, except for black spots on all four of his paws and one covering his nose, as if he were wearing gloves and a muzzle. He was a lively mouse and immediately started doing little tricks to impress Popcorn. He even played dead, lying on his side for a full minute without moving. Popcorn clapped in delight.

The second mouse, Braveheart, was nothing like his name. He shied away in the corner, so afraid that you could see his heart beating through his chest and hear his strained breathing.

“Which one do you want, sweetie?” the father said. Gemma knew it would be Angel. Why would anyone want a scared mouse like Braveheart?

But the little girl thought about it, then surprised Gemma.

“Can I have both?” the girl said.

The father smiled. “Why not?”

On their way out, Popcorn stopped to marvel at Echo, my pet Bat. Echo was pregnant, and therefore wasn’t for sale. Before Gemma could say anything, the father grabbed Popcorn’s hand.

“Not a chance,” he said.

When they'd gone, Gemma went to clean the cages.

#3: The Merciful Mummy's Revenge (Measles, Mumps, Rubella)

The Parrot King was the greatest ruler Egypt had ever known. He was responsible for ending the longest Civil War in history and bringing Egypt back together. He was a just king and was known for being especially kind of animals, and was even mummified with his pet parrot (and thus the posthumous title, the Parrot King). He was so loved that all his laws remained unchanged for thousands of years.

Measopholees, a descendent of the Parrot King, was set to inherent the throne and all of his family's riches. He was a handsome man with bright blue eyes, but most people revered him as a great warrior. He was especially known for his strategic brilliance, and always wore the family crest (a Falcon rising above a tornado) with pride. Yet he secretly disagreed with one of the Parrot King’s laws: the law against incest.

His inability to abide by this law wasn’t entirely his fault: his sister, Ruby, had always admired her brother’s intelligence and wanted her own children to have his smarts. So she seduced him from an early age. The two were usually careful with where they broke the law, but on the night before Measopholees’ coronation, he was so taken by lust and excitement that he had sex with Ruby right in the Royal Plaza. When they were seen, Measopholees’ claim to the throne was immediately revoked. They took his family crest and he and Ruby were shamed in the street. From now on Measopholees and Ruby would have no ties to the royal family, and would be considered less than peasants.

“You must fix this,” Ruby said, for she wanted her children not only to have a sharp brain, but also the heart of a true King. “If you cannot, you are not the man I thought you were.”

Measopholees was nothing without Ruby's love. He quickly came up with a plan not only to regain his inheritance, but to also shame the Parrot King, who had made the stupid law in the first place. He broke in to the Parrot King’s tomb, where he had been mummified and laid to rest.  A king was said to rule even in the afterlife, and any failures would be represented in this world. An exposed head meant the greatest transgression, so Measopholees ripped the bandages off the Parrot King’s head. To further shame the king, he took the bandages off his groin and exposed a long-hidden family secret: the Parrot King had testicles the size of mangos.

Measopholees wasn’t satisfied. The humiliation the King’s law had caused him…Measopholees decided he’d leave with a little trophy. He was tempted to take the urn (which was said to hold the Parrot King’s brain) as a symbol of his own superior intellect, but stealing such a thing would be too easily found out. Instead, he took the bright red ring off the King’s pinky. “You stole my inheritance from me,” Measopholees said as he removed the ring. It looked marvelous on his own finger.

The next day the tomb cleaner discovered the King’s desecration and soon the whole city knew: the Parrot King had done something terrible in the afterlife and was thus shamed. The king was so widely loved that no one even considered this could be vandalism. Measopholees quickly took advantage of this and made the case that he should be given back his inheritance, and that the incest laws should be abolished once and for all.

Measopholees enjoyed his riches for two and a half weeks. Towards the end of the third week, a dark mist crept across the desert and fell over the land. No one in the city could hide from it. When they breathed in the mist it made all of their hair fall out, except for a single strand. The mist grew so thick that it blocked out the sun and caused freezing temperatures that no one had ever experienced before. For the first time in recorded history, it snowed in Egypt.

It snowed everywhere, except for over Ruby. A special cloud hung over her and a circle of rain followed her wherever she walked. And when Measopholees made a speech to the city about the current crises, he couldn’t finish, he was coughing so much. It was well known that both omens were signs of a curse. The city council launched an investigation on Measopholees and Ruby. At their trial, Measopholees wore all his jewelry, along with his pinky ring. The tomb cleaner recognized the ring as the Parrot King’s and everyone knew the truth: Measopholees had disrespected the king for his own gain and thus brought this hardship over the city. Ruby was befuddled as they took them in to custody. How could Measopholees do something so stupid as bring evidence of the crime to his own trial? That was so unlike him!

The only way to cure the town of the Parrot King’s curse was to get rid of Ruby and Measopholees. Since the Parrot King had been a merciful king, instead of killing them, they sent them into exile, but not without doing some damage first. Measopholees was sentenced to 10 lashes from the whip. They had to drag him to the courtyard kicking and screaming. Again, Ruby was surprised: Measopholees was a brave warrior. When had he become a coward? The city’s strongest law enforcer gave Measopholees his licks. On the last, the Enforcer purposefully hit Measopholees on the face, popping out one of his beautiful blue eyes. A stray dog ran by and snatched up his blue, bloodied eye in its mouth.

Measopholees was stripped naked of his clothes and Ruby was given only a toga to protect her from the desert sun. Then they were driven out of the city. The hot sun burned Measopholees from head to toe. Ruby still had the rain cloud hanging over her, but the heat made the water boil. As the bubbling water dripped down her body, it burned her hair from her head and boiled her skin. Soon both lovers looked like someone had hung them by their legs and dipped them in a vat of acid.

One night, when Measopholees tried to make a sand mermaid (it was actually pretty good, too) using Ruby’s rain, she realized why his personality had been changing and why his intellect was deteriorating: her lover’s brain was turning in to mush from the Parrot King’s curse. She had fallen in love with him when they were children because of his smarts, and now he was getting dumb and dumber. He got worse and worse, and as they continued on through the desert, his speech was the last to go. Soon he would only ever yell the letter ‘A’ in response to anything Ruby said.

As a last resort, Ruby told Measopholees news that she’d been holding in ever since their exile. If any of Measopholees was left, this would bring him out.

“Measopholees, my dear,” she said. “I’m with child.”

Measopholees stopped and looked at her. He opened his mouth, then screamed, “A! A, a, a, a, A!!!” He sat down in the sand and continued to scream. Ruby, devastated, left him there to die.

Ruby finally comes to a small town called Munich. With the bad omen still hanging over her, only one inn will let her stay the night because the innkeeper can see she is with child. She is in grueling labor for three whole days.  When her son is finally born, the rain stops. Ruby does not rejoice, because she knows this only means the curse has passed on from her to her child. She wanted her child to have Measopholees’ robust mind, pretty eyes, and the heart of a king, but, because of her greed, instead he would forever be dumb, blind, and heartless.

#1: The Boner Bandits Rob a Magic Shop (Influenza and Parainfluenza)

Pinky and the Brain (known collectively as the Boner Bandits) were cursed by Felix the Magician after trying to steal a wand from his magic shop. He disconnected their abdomens from their legs, so that every time they jump, or fall, they have to be put together again!

To take their revenge, they plan to rob his shop!

They hire Buddy Love as the getaway driver. Love wasn’t cursed, and so is in one piece, but loves mayhem so is along for the ride. His getaway car is called the F-Bomb because when it’s time to go it can 'get the eff out of here', no matter the terrain! It’s especially needed for this job since it’s been snowing all day and thick, white snow covers every inch of every surface.

“You sure you don’t want to come in with us?” Pinky asks as Love parks around the corner from the shop.

“I’m a getaway driver,” Love says. “I never go in. I’m staying right here.” He puts his legs up and takes out a big Caesar salad, full of croutons.

“Suit yourself,” Brain says. He and Pinky check the magazines of their M2 Machine Guns and then holster them on the inside of their big fur coats. “Let’s go, Pinky.”

First Pinky and the Brain have to get past the Magic Shop’s defense: a magical ram tied to the roof that sings all day and night. His music prevents non-magicians from even getting close to the shop.

While Pinky waits by the entrance, Brian scales the side of the magic shop, using only a sword to dig into the concrete walls. A Nameless Sellsword who owes Felix a favor is supposed to be watching the ram, but he’s sleep on the job. Brain easily sneaks by him. The plan is to slaughter the ram, but now that Brain sees it, he finds sympathy. He instead cuts the ram free, then shoos it away by flapping the tails of his fur coat. The ram flees, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Soon, the music is gone and the magical barrier is no more. Brain radios the go-ahead to Pinky, then sneezes over and over again as a strong wind blows dust in his face. The Nameless Sellsword begins to stir.

Down below, Pinky approaches the door with no trouble. The ram’s music wasn’t the only defense, however. The doors are locked and only the retina scan of a true wizard can unlock it. But Pinky and the Brain are ready! The day before they’d robbed the grave of a wizard and stole his eye. Pinky holds the eye up so that the scanner can see, unlocking the door. Delighted, he steps inside.

Felix has been expecting retaliation, and Pinky isn’t ready for the horrors of the Magic Shop and it’s loyal magicians. Pinky first encounters an old woman covered with bugs. Without thinking, Pinky rushes to help her. When he’s close enough, he sees that the bugs are not bugs at all, but rats! The old woman laughs, rises, and commands her pet rats to attack Pinky, who is able to kill many before the rest scurry off. But now the old woman (who looks a lot less helpless) is getting ready for her next attack: a fireball is forming at the center of her hands. Panicked, Pinky pulls out his gun, which makes his coat come off in slow motion, just like in the movies. One shot, and she goes down.

To Pinky's surprise, the woman immediately picks herself off the floor. In fact, she’s not an old woman anymore. She’s at least 20 years younger!

“I knew that resurrection spell would come in handy,” she said, brushing herself off. “Tell Felix that Mona took one bullet for him, but she's not taking two. As for you, call me sometime.” This New Mona kisses him on the cheek as she passes.

Meanwhile, sirens rage outside. The ram must have tipped off the police! Not only that, it’s the Magician police and they always have new and unusual ways of catching criminals. Today, they’re using their Synchronized Mastiff Unit: a pack of a hundred dogs, all barking in unison. It’s enough to drive any man crazy. In fact, their sudden presence startles Buddy Love so badly that he begins to choke on his crouton. They have him surrounded.

Inside the magic shop, Pinky advances cautiously. He just needs to find the cash register, and then he can leave. He turns down a hallway and finds a young magician boy, practicing his magic. The boy is wearing a shirt with the Ace of Spades on the front. When he sees Pinky wielding his gun, he does what any normal boy would do: he runs. There’s another boy still in the hallway, however. One Pinky didn't see a second ago. That's because this one is only a spirit. The ghost wears a crown on his head and a costume with lightning bolts on the right side, as if it's Halloween. Even as Pinky points his gun, the brave spirit charges and yells, ‘Ray to the rescue!’ If he were alive, Pinky would have surely thought him insane.

When the spirit boy runs through Pinky, his body goes weak all over. He loses his balance, trips, and his gun goes flying. Because of Felix’s curse, his torso lands in one direction and his legs in another. Before he can bring himself together again, Felix apparates out of thin air and snatches the gun off the ground. Grinning, he mounts it on a mantle. Pinky's legs make a run for it; his arms grab on to them.

On the roof, the Nameless Sellsword is really testing Brain's abilities! The Sellsword gets an opening and it looks like it's all over when he slices Brain through the middle. But Brain is already in two pieces from the curse! After this close call, he leaps over the side and quickly climbs down the wall. As he does, he sees the Magic Shop door bulging out in a very peculiar way. Brain recognize's Pinky's face pushing through from inside, frantically trying to escape! Brain slices at the elastic wall and frees his partner.

“Forget the cash, let’s get out of here,” Brain says. Pinky agrees. But the police have them surrounded. Thus ends the Boner Bandits' reign!

A week later, Brain’s cousin, Adrian, comes to pay Felix a visit. He doesn’t play games, he just burns down the magic shop.

#2: Sydney Drops The F-Bomb (Respiratory Syncytial Virus)

Sydney the Giant wasn’t the most popular kid in Mrs. Stark’s kindergarten class. In fact, he was desperately lonely. He was the #1 student, so he got teased for that. He was the only kid without a Pinky and the Brain bookbag (he had a Gargoyles bookbag instead) so he got teased for that. And, of course, he got teased for being a Giant.

One day Sydney tripped in the snow on the way to school and rolled down a great big hill and spent all day trying to free himself of the snowball he’d created. It was more than enough time for all his classmates to come and see. They laughed until their ribs hurt. For Sydney, this was enough. It was time to change. He needed to do something to make himself cool.

That night, Sydney watched 12 hours of the best stand-up comedy he could find, without taking a break. It was a marathon! By the morning, though, he knew what he had to do. He knew how to make people think he was cool.

The next day when Mrs. Stark called on him to answer a math question, Sydney got ready. This was it. It was his time to shine.

So he did it. He dropped the F-bomb. In front of everyone.

The reaction wasn’t what he’d expected.

Not only was Sydney the #1 kid in the school, he was the first kid to ever drop the F-bomb in class. Many of his classmates covered their ears and started crying. One classmate spit out the water he was drinking. Another tried to run out of the room in terror, tripped over the teacher’s desk, skinned his knee, and got blood all over the tests she was going to pass out at the end of class. Even the flower Mrs. Stark wears behind her ear was offended: it immediately wilted and died.

Mrs. Stark, to say the least, was disappointed with her star student, but she could sympathize with him. She needed a way to show him that grade-school popularity wouldn’t matter much when he got older, and that people who go around dropping the F-bomb don’t get very far in life. To prevent him from ever saying the bad word again, Mrs. Stark made Sydney watch hours and hours of compiled Sarah Palin speeches, titled “Palin’s Vision for the US of A.”

No time to write....or do much of anything

I have two tests coming up this week, one in Cell Bio and the other in Organic Chemistry. Surprisingly, I'm more worried about the Cell Bio test, but I'm studying more for OChem because...well, because' it's freaking OChem.

The sucky thing is (well, besides having a test one day and then a test the next...) is that I haven't had much time to write this past week. I've gotten literally sick sleep-depriving myself and still couldn't find the time to do the thing I love the most. And, of course, the last few days any free time I might have maybe could have possibly obtained was spent getting rest because....well, because I'm freaking sick!!

Excuses, I know, but hopefully things will get better this upcoming week. Although I do have a problem set due Wednesday in Physics (the day after my second exam). It shouldn't be a problem, as Physics is one of those subjects that comes easily, but it simply means I will either be up late Tuesday night or rushing to get it done.

When I decided to start taking classes again I was afraid I would hit this road: choosing between studying and writing. My classmates study a lot more than I do...I can hear them talking about it all the time. Even though I've been sleep-deprived this past week, I've spent some of my time doing things like reading novels (because a writer has to read!), going to my writing group, and trying to get my Twitter game going. Oh, and I've found this awesome podcast, Writing Excuses, and you should definitely check it out.

Don't get me wrong, I've been fairly on top of my assignments. Homework turned in on time, online quizzes mastered, pre-labs done, and I've been to every single class. Even an office hour or two! But I can't help but feel I am less prepared for Monday and Tuesday than everyone else, and I hope I can make this happen. To be honest, the biggest thing that bothers me is that writing has no logical weight in my priorities now. As in, if I chose to spend 2 hours right now writing instead of studying, that doesn't make any sense (assuming I need those 2 hours).

Still, that's what I'm about to do. And hopefully my plan to pull a pseudo allnighter doesn't backfire. I seem to be getting over my sickness. I once heard that once you get over a cold, you won't get one for at least another 6 weeks because of the body's immune system. It's probably a crock of shit, but sometimes shit is all us writers can depend on.

When the Air Hits Your Brain - My Thoughts

When I was walking back to my car after one of my shifts this past summer at UC Davis Medical Center, I had brief small-talk with a surgery resident. He asked me what services I had been on and what I was interested in the most. When I mentioned neurosurgery, he suggested I look When the Air Hits Your Brain by Frank Vertosick, Jr., M.D. He was a surgeon, and I a lowly pre-med student, so of course I wrote down his advice as if he were God and I was Noah and the ran showers were starting. I started reading it a couple weeks ago, and finished within a few days. Here are my impressions.

Dr. Vertosick begins at the beginning of his medical career: medical school and how he became interested in neurosurgery. His reasoning was more than a little odd to me. Neursurgery was his first rotation in his third year of medical school. At the time he saw the specialty and the work involved in it as boring and tedious, and there was no strong consideration during to pursue it as a post-graduate option. Still, there are stories he remembers from the rotation, one of which had significant importance. One day he was doing a physical on a patient who had been admitted for the removal `of a herniated cervical disk in his neck. Frank noticed that the man's pupils were aymmetrical. That, coupled with some other key symptoms, led Frank to believe the patient didn't have a herniated disk at all, but a tumor. He reported his finding to the resident physician and was able to save the man from an unnecessary and potentially harmful procedure. Some months later, the director of neurosurgery called Frank the Med Student in for a meeting and offered him one of the two neurosurgery intern positions after graduation for his 'good eye.' Frank said he had to think about it. Later, while working in the immunology lab for a side research project, Frank was moving materials under a microscope, where the slight tremors in his hands were exacerbated. The lab technician teased him about it and flippantly commented 'I hope you aren't going in to neurosurgery.' Frank was so offended by the jab that he called the neurosurgery department that night and told him he accepted.

When I read this I literally took a second to scratch my head. Huh? He became a neurosurgeon to prove something to himself? It's certainly not a reason you would bring up in an interview (which it sounds like he didn't have to have). As a pre-med student, I'm starting to get various strings of advice, and some of them have to do with interviewing. We are constantly presented with the question: why do you want to be a doctor? There are the good reasons and then there are the not-so-good reasons. 'Because someone told me I can't' doesn't sound like it would impress anyone.

At the same time, the real world is different from what people say in interview settings. So while it bothered me a little why Frank originally went into neurosurgery, in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it mattered much. He was honest with us, and from the rest of the book it is clear that he cared for his patients and his profession at the level we would all hope from someone with such responsibility.

Dr. Vertosick goes into great detail on some of the surgical procedures he was apart of. Having recently observed a few neurosurgeries myself, I especially enjoyed these pieces. One of them I'd even seen in person. With just about all of the procedures he described, he also told the backstory of the patient. He used these as examples of the many lessons he learned throughout his residency, such as being a surgical psychopath, not being too confident, and that no matter how bad a patient is, you can always make him or her worse.

I really clicked with the commentary on surgical psychopathy. It's an aspect of being a physician I am both apprehensive and understanding of. On the one hand, I never want to become the type of person who is unaffected by death, or who looks at the patients as just numbers on a chart or another procedure. If I make a decision that ends a person's life, I don't want to be able to shrug it off, go have a beer, and forget about it the next day. On the other hand, I don't take death well (at all) and I realize it will be extremely taxing on me as an individual if I let each mortality hit home. Will I be able to strike a balance? Can I gain some of the psychopathy without crossing totally over to the other side?

From reading When the Air Hits Your Brain, it seems that Dr. Vertosick has walked the line and has ended up somewhere on the caring side. There was a particularly heart-wrenching case of a newborn with a brain tumor. They worked on the infant but the tumor was so deep that the damage done to remove it was seemingly irreversible. That, and the cancer would almost certainly remit. The advice to the parents was to say their goodbye's and not come back, move on with their lives as soon as they could, as there was nothing that could be done for the child and the longer they lingered, the longer it would take to try again in starting a family. But the baby ended up living longer than expected, and had more cognitive development than expected. She was soon able to laugh and play, and Frank visited her often. As predicted, however, the cancer came back to take her. Before it did, though, Frank spent nearly a whole day with her. He says he will always remember how, in those moments, he was the most important person in the world to her.

What more fulfillment could you get in a profession?

There were other stories just as thought-provoking, but I don't want to spoil it all here. I have a few areas of critique, as is inevitable with any public piece of work.

For one, the narrative seemed a little rushed at points. For example, I think he went from his first days as an intern to his third year of residency at the turn of the chapter. Or, at least, I was temporarily confused about the progression. All of a sudden he seemed very comfortable in his environment, and the story quickly migrated from telling of his personal transition to focusing on the patients. I was wondering where his confidence had come from, and at what point he went from feeling like a clueless med student/new physician to a surgeon who could challenge the knowledge of other people.

I must admit that I felt a little disappointed by the amount of detail left out concerning the lifestyle of a surgeon. When I picked this book up, I was hoping to come away with a better understanding of how residency is for someone who chooses this profession. I'm getting married in December, and one of my main apprehensions about surgery (and especially neuro) is the demanding lifestyle, and if I can be successful in both my career and my family at the same time. Dr. Vertosick mentioned his girlfriend/eventual wife only a few times, and those were in passing. I was wondering how he maintained the relationship during, or what arguments and hardships might have come out of the lifestyle he chose? When did he get married and how did that affect his career? How did he deal with the long hours of being a surgeon, and was he able to balance work with other aspects of his life? None of that was in there. I can see why the decision was made to keep the focus on the patients and the procedures, as that is more exciting for the average reader, but I came away feeling like I only got one side of the life of a resident: in the hospital.

Still, Dr. Vertosick writes with care, detail, and a poignant grasp of humanity. He is a person who rips people apart and puts them back together, sometimes with dire results, and he knows it. It really is amazing the types of things he has done, and for that I recommend this book to anyone who can read. Sure, it's about being a doctor, but it's about being human more than anything else. And who can't relate to that?

"The Brain is Sexy"

That's what one of my peers said to me as we were watching neurosurgeons take off the half the top of the neurocranium of some poor victim of a hit and run accident. I'm nowhere near far enough in my education to pretend like I knew exactly what was going on, but the patient had been operated on before and had since suffered sinus problems. The surgeons were going to go back into the skull and plug up the sinus. The procedure was described to me in writing as an "anterior fossa skill base repair in a child with traumatic brain injury and a fracture through the anterior skill base that extends into the frontal recess." Yeah, whatever that means. I only recognize a few words in that, and I think my definition for one of them is wrong (recess is that time you get to play on the swings, right?).

I've been interested in neurosurgery since I was a little kid, when I read Ben Carson's Gifted Hands. Smart black kid reads about another smart black kid growing up and becoming one of the best neurosurgeons in the world? C'mon, I ate that shit up! Since, I have strayed from the path of not only neurosurgery or even surgery for that matter, but medicine as a whole. That's another story, and the end result is I'm back on that path now. Being in the operating room with those surgeons was inspiring. But I was only there for a short period of their life. They are in the hospital at 5am to prepare for rounds, give updates on all the patients at 6am, and then go to see them at around 7. Surgeries start at 7:30 am, and in neurosurgery, the longest ones can go until midnight. I've heard the average surgery is 4 to 5 hours long.

There was another case where a 17-year old boy with bad epilepsy had been implanted with electrodes from his brain to a fMRI. They monitored his seizure activity, saw where it was located, and determined if the area of the brain was safe for excision. Unfortunately, they found that the seizures were coming from the locomotive and language area of the brain, and doing anything in that area would be too risky. I watched as they cracked open his already sawed-through skull and removed the electrodes. When they peeled back the dura--the thin layer of membrane covering the brain--it was the first time I'd seen a brain in person. It was beyond cool, to see in person the thing that controls our humanity. I wish they could have done more for the boy, but even the ability to identify the source of a problem, determine if it can be fixed, and if so, actually go in and fix it....that's crazy to me. And awesome.

The brain boggles my mind. That thought by itself is crazy. The brain...thinking about itself. Fully utilizing  a process we don't understand to try and...well, to try and understand. Then I look over at my dog, Rambo, with his glowing eyes and propensity to pee five times a day whether I'm around to take him outside or not, and I think about how he'll never even come close to understanding himself the way I do. Or, at least, asking the questions that lead to understanding/the knowledge that you just can't, in fact, begin to understand. Yet his brain make those same connections (just less of them). But still, it's so limited. If you think about it, we're all kind of a prisoner of our brains. We perceive the outside world through a series of interpretations. Analogous to someone who has been blind his whole life, what else is there to perceive that we're missing out on? How much of the world is as we actually see it? Who knows.

If you're religious, I think it's fair to say that the brain is the closest connection to our soul. We often say 'with all your heart', but no...if you get a heart transplant, you're still you. Get your leg amputated, you're still you. If I take out a slice of your brain...well, then, you essentially become a little bit more like something else.

These are my random thoughts, transcribed over a series of a few days. The brain and my recent experiences in the hospital have definitely given me ideas for stories. We'll see what happens.

A Night in the Hospital

I'm writing this from UC Davis Medical Center. No, I don't have my laptop out, or even here with me. That would be rude, not to mention hell to carry around. It's three a.m. and I'm shadowing a trauma surgeon on overnight service. She is currently putting in notes for all of her 25 patients, so she doesn't mind that I'm busying myself with other things. She's a surgery intern, meaning that this is her first year and she is still nice. Who knows, maybe she will continue to be nice as her career goes on, but I don't think it's a coincidence that all of the 1st years I've encountered have been bright eyed and helpful while the Chief Resident...well, it's best to just stay out of their way.

Trauma is interesting. It's the unexpected to the extreme. Most illnesses give the patient and the family (and, for that matter, the physician) time to accept and understand what's going on. Even the ailments that strike relatively fast will still allow some time for transition. Trauma strikes fast. One minute you're planning your vacation for summer and then the next you're being stripped of you clothes by an ER doctor and having needles poking all over you.

As you get past a certain age in life, there is an expectancy of getting ill. If you are obese, don't exercise, and eat Twinkies everyday, becoming diabetic isn't necessarily a shock. Nor is a heart attack. It's rattling, and life changing, and sad, and tragic, but inevitably we all have to go someway, somehow.

But traumatic accidents don't hold the same bias that common diseases do. We just came back from visiting a patient who was in a bike accident. He's a 41 year old male who looks 31. He had multiple broken rips and a tube in his chest to drain excess fluid from his lungs. "You have a biker's heart," the surgeon said as she listened with her stethoscope. He was inquisitive, and interested, and she explained how the hearts of athletes are used to pushing out large amounts of blood, and the sound is different. Overall, his prognosis looked good. He was a little beaten up, but he'd go home soon. At least, that was my impression.

Earlier tonight I saw a 23 year old get a neck scan because she was in a car accident. I remember looking at her information and noticing she was born in 1988, just a year after me. A 6 year old deformed child hit his head after falling 10 feet from the top of a slide. He came in with a Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) of 7, which is pretty bad. They intubated him and did x-rays and CT scans. The mother was the calmest I've ever seen a parent in the ER. It was obvious that she was not new to rushing her son to the hospital. I don't know what happened to the kid.

Life hits fast here. And then sometimes it is depressing for other reasons. There was a a 15-year old stab wound victim. He was Latino, and had one hell of a mouth on him. He cursed out whoever he could, was uncooperative, and told his mother to 'get the fuck away from me' several times.

In case you didn't notice by my picture in the two right hand corner, I'm a black guy. Can you guess what race most of the gunshot and stab wound victims that come in are? Latino and African American. On one hand I feel that I can relate to these youth more than the white attendings, residents, and nurses who are administering care. I'm a minority, I grew up in DC, my cousin was gunned down in its streets. I can't totally relate to their lifestyle: I can't say I was on the edge of going down the wrong path, because honestly I never was. But I've been around people who were.

Yet at the same time I couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable. And, yes, ashamed. Embarrassed. There were times when I wondered how many people in the room were thinking that me and the patient were cut from the same tree. I wondered if anyone held back a comment or a joke they would have normally said if there wasn't a minority around. There's just a big disconnect between patient and doctor in these situations.  What makes it worse is the white, educated doctor taking care of the ignorant, foul-mouthed street thug who has little chances of ever amounting to anything. Or, at least, I'm sure that's how most would perceive it to be. It makes me think that maybe, one day, I'd be able to make a difference in such a patient's life. Perhaps that's naive, to think they would listen to me any better just because I'm black.

There was this one patient who had been hit by a car while biking. He'd recently had a tracheostomy, so he couldn't talk. He had been bedridden for some time and had developed a bad sore on his buttocks. Over time, laying in one spot can put more pressure on the capillaries than they are designed to handle and it causes the skin to die really slowly. Apparently, even when we sleep normally and think we are perfectly still, we wiggle around enough to keep this from happening. Not this patient. There was a hole above his anus large enough to stick two fists through. It looked painful. His entire back was tattooed, and he was missing rows of teeth. He was skinny and his skin hung off like rags. After the surgeon checked his wound, I asked her how old the patient was while taking a guess of my own: 87.

He was 52. When we went back later to change the dressing, he had shat himself. He couldn't talk, he couldn't get out of bed, and he didn't have control over his own bowels. He had effectively been aged 40 years. I felt sorry for him.

We went over to pediatrics next. I could tell the kid had been in there for a long time as soon as I stepped into the room. Posters on the wall. Balloons in every corner. The surgeon knew his name without having to think about it. And I guess now I do, too.

The visit was brief. It was around 4 am and the kid was sleep. The doctor quickly listened to his heart and lungs and then we left. She then told me he has been in a boating accident. He was being pulled on a small raft down a river on a leisurely family outing when he hit a rock, and, just like that, his spinal cord suffered irreparable damage. He's paralyzed from the waste down. He's currently learning how to deal with his condition. He has to use a self-administered catheter to urinate. His bowels also don't work as voluntarily as they used to. Specialists came in just to help him understand the fact that he would never walk again.

I can only imagine. I have a hard time accepting it myself. I asked about three times in three different ways if the kid would ever have a hope. Even now, after three no's, a part of me feels like something should be possible for the kid, somewhere down the line. But I'm no doctor. Not yet.

The kid was 15.

There were other interesting patients throughout the night. An older psych patient wanted to sleep on the floor of the waiting room and the police were called to deal with her. She was on 24-hour superveillance, and she didn't like the idea of eyes always watching her. She wanted to be discharged, and wanted to have a man's company again. The surgeon sat down and talked to her for about thirty minutes, explaining the conditions of her stay and assuring that she would try her best to get her discharged. It was truly a display of patience.

There was another psych patient who had beat up a couple nurses just a few days before, leaving them hospitalized. He had just been taken off restraints again and, apparently, he was off his psych meds. Sounds fun, right? He looked just like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, only hairier, and bigger.

I stayed with the intern all night while she checked on patients, administered physical exams, updated notes in the computer system, and responded to the many, many questions the nurses continued to have. At about 6am she presented her patients to her attending and the rest of the trauma surgery team, and then went home to get some rest before coming back that night to do it all over again. When she presented, she was an intern again, a little nervous and hesitant about the questions asked of her, and constantly being grilled on hypothetical situations by the attending. But during the night she was the one everyone looked to--from nurses to patients--to have the answers, to know what to do. And she did. It was inspiring, to say the least.

That, and a tad bit tiring.

A Year Goes By Fast

Without even knowing it, it's been a year since I posted on this blog. Shame on me, right? I said I'd start a video blog, but that fell through. Honestly, who the hell wants to see me just talk anyway? I think I was just excited about my new iPhone. It's still here, minus a piece or plastic or two missing from the back. And the home button sucks.

I've still been writing. My first thought is to say not as much as I want to, but that's not completely true. Not as focused as I want to is more accurate. I've written a number of short stories (10+) since last year, and have started a new novel. Not to mention I went through the hell of trying to get a book published last year. I got a few agents to request more pages, and one (or two) agents even requested to read the whole thing. At the time I was excited, but now I figure they must have been half-crazy. Still, it's a stepping stone. I might be back at square one, but it's like getting halfway through a video game and having someone hit the reset button. You have to go through all that shit again, but you know how to get to where you left off faster.

There are a number of changes in my life worth noting:

1) I'm engaged. I popped the question in June and I'm getting married in December (yes, this December...there's a very logical explanation on why it's so close, I promise!). I couldn't be happier....well, if weddings were about $15k cheaper I could be a tad happier.

2) I'm taking classes to apply to medical school. I'm actually writing this post from a Starbucks in Sacramento. I'm doing a Pre-Medical Surgical Internship at UC Davis Medical School. In about 90 minutes I'm going in for a 7-12 hour shift to shadow trauma doctors and surgeons. Cool, huh?

3) I'm writing children stories for this new company. I can't say much about it (hell, because I hardly know that much), but I'm getting paid $100 a story and they should launch later this year. I'll definitely be promoting my work on it when it's made public. All I know is that the stories I'm writing will be illustrated. How cool is that?

4) I'm working on a new novel. I wrote 80 pages long-hand, decided it sucked, and started over at the beginning. Now I'm actually planning out the novel and the characters. I'm excited about it, and I'm even more excited about the idea I have for the one after this.

With those changes, I think that this blog might transform into a chronicling of both my writing journey and my medical journey. I don't want to think of them as separate, necessarily, because they both blend to define the most important journey: my journey. My experiences in the medical field will no doubt influence my writing, and my creativity and the way I view the world will no doubt influence my impact on the world.

So here....we...GO!