Pavilion Apartments by O'Hare

Looking for a place to live? I'm living at the Pavilion near O'Hare next year, LOVE the place. Joey lived there for a year and loved it too. Check it out, if you like it put me down as a referral, I'll cut you a part of the referral bonus :) www.pavilionapartments.net

Things I like:

Location: 3 blocks from blue line stop, blue line drops you off right in front of the medical district, short drive to Lutheran, closer to school than the city is, less traffic, walking distance to grocery store, restaurants, starbucks.

Amenities: INSIDE: restaurant/bar open until 2am, delivers to your door, packing/shipping/fedex, salon, convenience store, large gym, heated indoor pool 8' deep w jacuzzi and sauna
If I'm baking cookies and run out of sugar I don't even have to go out in the cold or turn on my car. Convenience store has got it all. No more trips to the post office or the bank with an ATM and FedEx just downstairs.

Large outdoor pool 12' deep, tennis courts, racquetball courts, bbq grills and picnic area, borders forest preserve and running/biking trail. Ample free parking with parking for guests as well. Apts are new, clean, large, have balconies, free heating and a/c.

Admittedly it's not the city, and I know a lot of people are set on living downtown. But I find this place practical, with all of the things I want and a lot of extras, at the cost of being a moderate train ride from downtown. I think it's a fair trade, I like it, and I'm super excited to be moving there. Any of my city friends want to have a bbq this summer by the pool let us know ;)

I couldn't ask for more :D
Let me know if you're interested

Happiness

This weekend Joey visited from LA, found an apartment for next year, I made double dipped Ghiradelli dark chocolate strawberries, cranberry white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, peach mango smoothies, lemon ginger oatmeal pancakes, beef brisket w garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, mozzarella tomato sandwiches with sundried tomato pesto, chicken and fresh basil... happiness!! :D

Went for a walk this afternoon since the weather was awesome. Lotsa pretty flowers :) One thing I like about spring in Chicago is that they seem to love daffodils and tulips as much as I do. 

Apartment for next year is awesome. Inside the building is a restaurant/bar open until 2am, delivers straight to your door if you want them to, convenience store, fedex, salon, huge heated indoor pool w jacuzzi, great gym, gigantic 12' deep outdoor pool, BBQs, tennis courts, borders the forest preserve with an awesome trail, within walking distance to two grocery stores, restaurants, train station that takes me straight to downtown Chicago, spacious kitchen and bedroom, balcony, free parking, what more could I ask for?!? I'm super stoked.

Medicine

This animal is called a sooty mangabey
and apparently it created HIV 2

Ah, the things we learn in med school...

I've also learned that heliotropes are purple flowers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliotropium
Which is the color of the rash associated with dermatomyositis (why don't they just call it purple?)
(Heliotrope Rash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliotrope_rash)

And that orchids are called orchids because their roots look like testicles
"The name comes from the Greek "órkhis," literally meaning "testicle," because of the shape of the root." from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchid
I buy that: http://www.philaprintshop.com/images/besorch.jpg

Which is why inflammation of the testicles is called orchitis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchitis

I just needed to pee.

Note to self avoid public restrooms... today I ran into a woman who asked me how I was doing, I said fine, how are you... it turned into a 30 minute session of her sobbing about a bunch of stuff... I'm not sure if she's a poor woman who's been with a sociopath for 27 years, or a psychotic AIDS patient with persecutory delusions and Munchausen syndrome. Really, who PAYS a person to give another person lice, and there were no tears when she was "crying"... perhaps she has Sjogren's as well.

Ockham's razor says Munchausen.

Scarcity

Just another minute, just another point, just one more dollar, one inch taller, one size smaller, just one more time... and one more rhyme...
If we already had all of these things, we'd still want just one more.
Don't waste your life wishing for the things you can't have, bask in the things you do have, and you'll find it that much easier to get through just one more day.

April 18th, 2011

Is it really, truly April??
Where the @)$&@ is spring??

HVTCLT

I have to be at school at 8:45am on a Saturday morning... to learn how to do scrotal and rectal exams. Ah, the life of a med student...

Metochlopramide, chlorpropramide, chlorpromazine, prochlorperazine... If you're dyslexic they're all the same. Unfortunately they're really not... Now multiply that list of drugs by like 500 and thats what I have to know by May. I think I need some fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, paroxetine... Maybe I'll just settle with high velocity transcortical lead therapy.

High velocity transcortical lead therapy on CT

CT>MRI for blood and bone, T1 MRI lipid bright, T2 MRI H2O bright, FLAIR MRI for MS

If anyone ever tells you they're in med school it may be more fitting to offer condolences rather than congratulations, especially if they're a second year student.

HEEERRREEE FISHY FISHY FISHY FISHY!!!!

OMG THIS TOTALLY MADE MY NIGHT
Who remembers THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFTjeaDlxDI ??

WATCH THE VIDEO FIRST

and then read this article

_____________________________________

That Bert and Ernie scene is a huge childhood memory for me because my dad loves to fish and as a kid we'd joke around and I'd tell him just to call them, it was easier that way. I guess someone must've called REALLY loud on this boat

Wild!

Started the Wilderness Medicine Interest Group this year, got an email a few weeks ago from a random student saying:

I want to nominate your group for best new interest group at rfums. How do I go about doing that? I'm impressed with your group's ability to start a completely unique interest club from scratch, and your emails are great too. Thanks!

-Lee

I wasn't sure if such an award even existed or if anything would come of it, but I figured even if nothing official came out of it I could still consider the year a complete success since we made a good enough impression to get a message like that!

Today I got an email:

Congratulations!
You have been chosen for the below award as part of the 1^st Annual Student Leadership Awards Banquet!

The Award Recipient is:  Wilderness Medicine Interest Group
The Award Title is: Outstanding New Student Organization Award

Please see the below email for your formal invitation to the Student Leadership Awards Banquet. Professional attire is recommended for this ceremony.

So cool! Glad all this work paid off :D 

Can't make it to the banquet unfortunately :( but I'm stoked anyway!!

Congrats also to the other two officers, Matt & Jenny!

Hairs!!

Got my hair cut for donation, was gonna cut it shorter to give more but apparently my stylist didn't trust me with shorter hair... said she didn't want to cut it and then have me not know what to do with it. Thank God because I got up this morning and it was sticking up everywhere and I just threw it into a little nubbin of a ponytail and all was better :)
I still had 10-12 inches to give so that's awesome. Well over a year of hair growing (since last February)
Joey thinks it's cute so that's all that matters :P Success! Thanks Dolly!

Immense human suffering

Sometimes people really make me angry...

So a Facebook post regarding a Wear Red Day flier went something like this:
 

 

 
Which I responded to with something along the lines of

"I guess I shouldn't have gone to med school since I'm only contributing to immense human suffering. Fuck studying 16 hours a day and $250k in loans I'm gonna open some McDonalds and kill me some fatties. If anyone from administration at school is reading this please don't expel me. I'm being sarcastic of course."

 
And then I promptly decided to delete this post because I thought it was stupid and I figured it wasn't worth my time to argue with these people. Of course facebook emails them my response and I soon got a private message... below with my response following.

Wesley McLaughlin

helping rich people live longer

...is definitely profitable. Way more profitable than curing malaria, for example. So consider that $250k money well spent, assuming the economy doesn't collapse because of resource shortages before you get to reap the rewards. But what you wrote (and then deleted) is not an effective counter-argument against the carrying capacity of the Earth. Saying that something is unpleasant is not evidence that it's not true.

Now at this point I know I shouldn't be angry because it's just a waste of time... but I really couldn't help but respond to the guy who obviously THINKS that he's absolutely in the right about wishing death upon unfortunate people...

I'm not arguing sustainability I'm arguing that letting people die of preventable causes is not a valid solution. 

When I was in 6 and in 1st grade they taught us about endangered and extinct animals, how all these animals were dying because of habitat loss, pollution and human overpopulation... and I felt so bad for the animals that I wished a bunch of people would die, and continued to qualify it with "people that I don't know, not my parents or my brother, not my favorite uncle, not anyone that they know because I don't want them to be sad" and then I immediately felt bad - obviously bad enough that I still remember it to this day - when I realized that those people dying would probably make other people sad because they were someone else's mom, dad, brother, favorite uncle and I hoped that someone else in the world wasn't making the same wish I was. I think I'm in med school still paying for that thought. Over 1/3 of the pregnancies in the world are unintended, a large percentage of those are unwanted, and those who CAN get abortions do. Birth control win, preventable deaths not so much. 

I won't disagree that the human population is headed toward being unsustainable... but there's other ways around this... birth control for one... why do we have to go so far as to say people have to die in war famine and disease so the rest of us can live comfortably in our excess of food water and land? And why universal birth control only AFTER failure of equal distribution of war famine and disease??

Tell me that you've never been to a doctor or that if your family member were sick you wouldn't tell them to see one, tell me that you've never been vaccinated for anything, that you don't drive a car or use electricity and I'll believe that you're really convinced about the sustainability issue. Otherwise what makes you more entitled to life and luxuries than any other human being who is fighting to live? 

Shame on human beings for the things they do to the world and shame on them for existing. But now that we're already here the solution isn't to let people die. If that were really the solution to the world's problems then the human race should just commit mass suicide for the sake of the earth. The solution is realizing the problem and addressing it, about education, teaching people to make the right choices, access to birth control, realizing that 90% of the sun's energy goes unused, that there are better ways to farm or reuse our resources, and doing our part even if it's inconvenient to us. It's 28 degrees outside I just walked my 2 miles to study at Panera and I'll carry my groceries home afterward, my motorcycle gets 60 miles to the gallon, what if the rest of the world could do the same? It's depressing to me how wonderfully recycling could work but it doesn't because people aren't educated enough to know that every piece of unrecyclable trash they put in the recycling bin renders the entire batch completely useless and negates the positive efforts of everyone else... Ugh I could go on forever about everything and I agree people are stupid and inconsiderate and selfish... But does it mean they should die for it?? Why not consider the alternatives before employing the death sentence? Why should a hypothetical person who has spent their life advocating sustainability, volunteering their time to environmental conservation and who now is suffering from terminal cancer be lumped into a category with the rest of them and receive any less compassion or any more ill will than someone who you love? Why even should someone who was never taught any better be deemed worthy of death by war famine or disease. Why not blame the system, blame the entirety of humanity, hold everyone accountable for the downhill course that we're falling down instead of wishing ill upon those who are randomly unfortunate enough to die early and die miserably?

If I chose my profession for profits I wouldn't have gone into medicine. I would've started earning money when I was 20... Not gone through hell just to put off my career until I were 32 only to go into primary care which will earn me a measly 120k/year which I could've been earning doing any number of things 10 years earlier.

No prompt response this time... I wonder if he thinks I'm as hopeless as I think he is or if he just has no reasonable rebuttal.

_______________________________________________________


Update:


Randall Chiu
Hah I had no idea I would start a storm of debate here... I just thought the screwup was funny. I don't think anybody here would advocate letting people die. That is, we aren't saying that we would actually start a famine, or that if there were a famine that we wouldn't go and try find food for ourselves, our families, and our friends. Nor do I think anyone here purposefully ignores vaccinations and medicine.

Like the professor said, education and food and medicine are -good-. The paradox is that the logical endpoint of medicine (a cure for all diseases and ailments, or practical immortality) is most certainly -bad-. We don't have that capability now, but each breakthrough brings us closer. It may very well be achieved soon - and our wisdom has yet to catch up with our abilities.
5 hours ago · Like · 1 person

Bi-Ying Yeh ‎

"our wisdom has yet to catch up with our abilities" well said and 100% agreed
5 hours ago · Like

Wesley McLaughlin 

A few years ago, my grandmother died of heart disease. She was 84. Was her death "preventable" by modern medicine? Not yet (they tried) but soon it may be. Did her death make her family sad? Yes, but not as sad as the death of a child would. Old people are supposed to die. We may be reaching a point where they don't, as long as they're rich. I think that's unfair to the mother who has to watch her child die of equally preventable causes just because some rich old person is afraid to let go.
about an hour ago · Like

Wesley McLaughlin
I'm considerably less optimistic than most people about the prospects of education and technology (things like solar energy and recycling) solving this problem. Birth control works, in rich countries (most of them have negative population growth). Making it more available in poor countries will help, but China shows us that government coercion will also have to be part of the solution. When have lots of resources, having just one child and putting a lot of resources into that one child is a viable reproductive strategy. When you lack resources, and live in a place with high infant mortality, war, malaria, etc., it's not. As a result, poor people have more children than rich people (they need to play the odds).
about an hour ago · Like

Randall Chiu 

I'm not saying overpopulation isn't a problem, Wes, but what's your grandmother got to do with a dying child in Africa? That's a false dichotomy.
55 minutes ago · Like

Wesley McLaughlin 

It's indirect, for sure. But with finite resources, people are going to have to die. I think it should be old people rather than young people. What does going to medical school have to do with protecting endangered species? That's the train of logic I'm having trouble following.
41 minutes ago · Like

Wesley McLaughlin 

It's actually not that indirect. We're killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now North Africa over resources.

31 minutes ago · Like

Bi-Ying Yeh
endangered animals --> wishing people would die so animals could live --> feeling guilty for wishing people would die --> wishing people wouldn't die --> med school. But that's irrelevant.

I'm sorry about your grandmother, but yes, 84 is old. My paternal grandfather died of a stroke, I'm not sure how old he was but my dad was probably 20, he was probably in his 50s, I've never met him. My paternal grandmother died of TB when my dad was a toddler, he doesn't remember her, she was likely in her 30s.

My friend's boyfriend has a brainstem tumor, I know a little boy who's 2 years old and in and out of the hospital constantly for leukemia, I interviewed a 23 year old with a pancreatic tumor a few weeks ago, two of my friends from college died in a car accident the year they were supposed to graduate, an SUV veered off the freeway and struck my friend's boyfriend while he was trying to check out a flat tire, he was 26. My friend's father died of a heart attack at age 50, he never got to see his daughter graduate medical school, never saw his children get married. I can go on forever

People need to die, there's never a good time and there's no right time. Some die at 60, some die at 110, and it's always tragic, there's always sadness, but yes, it needs to happen and it will. But saying that "One of the worst things we can do is cure heart disease and cancer" is unfair and (bleep) ...

There's no right solution to the sustainability issue but halting the progression of medicine is not one of them. Killing people in war is not one of them. Until we've exhausted all other options and the end of the world is upon us, these shouldn't be things we even consider.
5 minutes ago · Like

Wesley McLaughlin
Yup, that's what we're doing. Pushing the problem off into the future until we don't get to choose how to solve it. I don't think we should halt medical progress, and I never said we should. But we should be devoting our resources toward curing diseases that affect mostly young people (like malaria) not mostly old people (like cancer). But because humans are inherently selfish and short sighted, and because of our market economy, that's the opposite of what we're doing. By how we choose to spend money on research, how we choose to use our resources, and by bombing poor people, we are choosing to kill young people far away rather than old people at home. Extending the life span of people in rich countries inevitably shortens the life span of people in poor countries. I strongly disagree that we should not make hard choices now and wait until the end of the world is upon us.

Bi-Ying Yeh 

Yes, let's focus now on humane ways of killing people. That's much more logical than renewable energy, recycling and sustainable practices.

I'm done here. Joey just sent me this http://xkcd.com/386/
and he's right, I have better things to do.

Wesley don't ever come to my hospital, I may just euthanize you. For the sake of humanity and our future generations.

_________________________________
Update again

Wesley McLaughlin

It is certainly easier to argue with what I'm not saying than what I am saying. I said we should devote our resources to curing diseases that affect primarily young people, and not diseases that affect primarily old people. How you go from that to "focusing on humane ways of killing people" is beyond my understanding. But yes, stop thinking about it. That's much better for your psychological well-being.

Joey Miller

 Arguing on the internet notwithstanding, there's a stark difference between actually devoting your life and talents to lessening the world's suffering... and to just talking about it.

Joey Miller

Plus also: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266308/ because that shit is awesome.

Wesley McLaughlin

I'm no saint, and I'm a total hypocrite. I don't know anyone who's not a hypocrite. Being as concerned about animal suffering as human, I foster for dogs that need homes. Beyond that, I try to educate people about the fact that economic growth is bad not good and that it makes much more sense to work on diseases that harm young people. Admittedly, I do this primarily by blogging, which might qualify as "arguing with people on the internet." I'm also spectacularly unsuccessful, since people just won't believe things that they find unpleasant. I don't delude myself into thinking that my net effect on the world is positive. I wipe my ass with dead trees, I exhale carbon dioxide. I don't drive, but I consume fossil fuels. But at least these two dogs are happier than they would be if I weren't helping them.

Joey Miller

Well with a track record like that who could hesitate to take up the mantle of your causes! ;)

Wesley McLaughlin

Nice jab. You guys have effectively refuted my argument that we should devote more resources to malaria prevention than cancer prevention. What I'm saying is unpleasant, it must not be true. And yes, people who speak of unpleasant truths should be euthanized. I'm convinced.