I'm alive and Grand Rounds

Hey readers,

first of all, I am fine. Not shot yet, for the ones that were wondering.

Naturally, there has been an uproar about the Virginia shooting around here - but at least so far it doesn't seem to be as big as Columbine. I was in the midwest in '99 when that happened too (coincidence! I swear!) and it seemed like a bigger deal. Columbine was a high school shooting and I was in high school back then, this was university and I'm a university student now (again .. happenstance! Really!) but I'm not really in university per se. Still, I guess people are getting used to this kind of thing as they'll get used to anything. I fear soon school shootings will be "in other news" like suicide bombings in Irak, Palestinians and Israelis killing each other or AIDS killing millions. The one thing I see a lot of shaking heads around here about is stuff like "the president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed".

Yesterday was a long day in the hospital .. partly by choice though. Rounds lasted until around 7 and Jenn and the new attending did suggest I leave but I wanted to see that last patient, younger than me status post coronary bypass surgery.

Other than that, there's not so much to report. I'm still seeing one or two patients per day and still not completely satisfied with my presentations on them. Jenn keeps saying that I'm doing "perfectly", but you probably know how much that statement is worth out of an American ;) . There always seems to be a question the attending can ask about a patient that I have no answer for. Maybe by the end of this rotation I'll have the "perfect presentation" down.

In other news, I was just at Grand Rounds again and I'm a fan now. It's again been wildly interesting and I'm still amazed how American speakers can make anything interesting and captivating. Not that what this guy had to say about electrophysiology of the pulmonary arteries from the cell up to new clinical trials wasn't interesting in and of itself.

Gotta go get urine and go to rounds, blog to you later!