Recently a patient came in who had reached a breaking point with his family; he felt they were being totally ungrateful for how great of a father he was, and he had had enough.  He stopped taking his medications, and broke down and eventually brought himself to the hospital.

During my interview, he had explained how he had bought most of his children cars, and that he had a lot of money and always treated them well.  He was very proud of how successful he was during his whole life, always running different businesses and doing well with them.  I guess it was no surprise that he had a known diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder (type 1).  These patients have periods of multiple days where they can go without sleep and have unlimited energy and grandiose thoughts.  There was actually an article *in the New York Times this week about how these people can harness their ailment for success (although they refer to BPD type 2).

What was interesting about this patient was that prior to his admission to the unit, he had apparently attempted to pay someone to kill him for 10,000 dollars, since he did not want to do it himself.

Okay, I admit it’s been a little lame around here with just the car pictures, and not even on a regular basis for that matter.  A quick update, I took my Step 1 Exam in June and have since been doing rotations in my third year of medical school.  I can explain what those things are later, but for now I can give little tidbits on the types of patients I encounter.

I have been working in a Psychiatric unit for the past 3 weeks, and needless to say we get some interesting stories.  One interesting one that was admitted last week and we discharged on Friday was an 80 year old who was struck by lightning earlier in his life.  The people around him thought he was dead and apparently he got as far as a body-bag when he regained consciousness and began to freak out when he realized where he was, which is a primary cause of his post-traumatic stress disorder.  He also claims that he has been crazy since then.

On his discharge meeting, the topic of the end of his life came up; he was adamant about wanting to be buried the same day or day after he died, and not to be embalmed or in a funeral home for viewing.  He began to describe graphically how the internal organs are removed and how all the body orifices are plugged up in preparation.  Probably the best line was: ‘if you have a penis they tie it up!’ This was of course said with a straight face to the attending physician, with our social worker trying to stifle her laughter.  He also said he didn’t want an autopsy because he didn’t want some guy taking his brain out.

Another side note is that on a previous admission to the unit he had an ankle transmitter since he allegedly was a low level soldier for the Mafia at some point.

8 Days???

I had my last final exam the morning of Wednesday, June 10th.  I’ve done a bunch of stuff in the past month, and chronicled most of it in pictures.  Here’s part 1 of what’s been going on.

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Edit: If you’re curious, this is from a north-facing window of Shepard R.C.

I was going through some of my older files randomly and stumbled upon some archives of webcam pictures taken during freshman and sophomore years, when I had set up an automated uploading system.  I figured it would be fun to compile into a video so you can watch.  This is roughly a 6 day period up to Halloween of 2004…almost 5 years ago.

Most of it is pretty similar to the rest, but you should at least check out the 3rd minute for the shadows.  If you’re curious, it’s running at 60 fps, with the cam taking pictures every 30 seconds; every 2 seconds of video is 1 hour passing.

Edit 5/18: Added a 30 Rock clip to the end.

Even though I still have about a month of school left, I figured I’d write a little something about the year since most schools have finished up now. Speaking of which, I don’t think I’ve ever finished the school year before June since Kindergarten.  Thanks NU quarter system and longer MS1 year.

Our affiliated teaching hospital

The first year of medical school is probably one of the most remarkable years in the four that a med student experiences; I use the word remarkable not in the ‘amazing’ or ‘fantastic’ manner, but due to the fact it’s probably the one most people talk about. This is most likely due to the signature course of medical education, Human Anatomy.  You may remember I *already wrote a post regarding that.  Alison also *wrote briefly about her first year back in September, just as she was beginning her second year.

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For the initiated, the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) is the current system determining who plays for the championship in college football, instead of a playoff, but is more famous for how much it outrages 90% of anyone who gives a damn about college football. Personally, I have trouble staying interested in college football precisely because of the BCS.

So in combination with my other interest(s), I found this recent Facebook group HILARIOUS:

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

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