Coffee does not meet Bagel...yet

So about 3 weeks ago, I learned that I would be spending the next 3 years of my life in Michigan as an Emergency Medicine Resident at Henry Ford Hospital.  With that established, I decided to follow the advice of one of my friends from Chicago and installed an application called "Coffee Meets Bagel" on my phone.  Essentially, it is a dating app that connects you to people of your preference in your vicinity.  Within a few days, I had a few matches.  With the first match, I actually wasn't sure that I was really attracted to her, and because of that, I didn't see something being there long term.  Subsequently, I ignored her and never messaged her.  The next day, I matched once again with a different person, and I began a conversation immediately after the match.  The conversation went well, and we decided to meet up, but because she was out of town, we wouldn't be able to meet until the following week.  I continue to ignore my first match as I matched with someone else and I feel uncomfortable about talking to 2 people at the same time.

Several days into my ignoring my first match, she speaks up first and says hello.  I feel bad.  I offer to buy coffee, and when she doesn't respond, I entice with food and drink.  She pretty much says no.  Guilt overwhelms the mind.

Following week arrives - I message my 2nd match "Hey, hope you got back into town safely," and she replies that she did, and says "Would you be willing to meet up with a few others? Looks like you've spoken to my roommate on this app".  And instantly, I know that the already low chances of success in developing a relationship with my 2nd match, the match I was looking forward to meeting, has plummeted.

Folks, the lesson here is use your blinkers when you change lanes, and put down your phone while driving.  Maybe you won't die in the ensuing accident, but someone else might.  It's not worth it.  Also, talk to all of your matches on these dating things.  Know your agenda when engaging others, and be honest with your intentions.

So what happened?  I don't know yet.  There's a double date 2 days from now where I meet up with my 2nd match, and my first match will be there with another guy (another match??? I don't know).

Turn signaling

It is one of my greatest pet peeves when people don't signal before they turn.  I'm of the opinion that lack of turn signaling causes more accidents than other things that people get tickets for: namely not using seat belts.  Sure. I understand that seat belts save lives when accidents occur, but isn't it equally, or perhaps even more important to prevent accidents from occurring in the first place?  I wish the police would crack down on people who don't use turn signals more.  

When I ride with people who don't use their turn signals and ask them about it, they say it annoys them or they're just too lazy to do it.  Please allow yourself to be annoyed 5 seconds at a time when changing your lanes in the future to possibly save lives...

Lunch + Dinner = Dunch?

I got off my EM shift yesterday at 3.  Left the department at around 3:30, then stopped by Subway to Eat Fresh and to possibly fulfill both lunch and dinner.  Got myself a nice sub.  Foot long Honey Oat, Spicy Italian, Mozarella Cheese, toasted, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, pickles, and olives.  Light Mayo to top it off.  This submarine was about to get torpedoed by my mouth as soon as I got out to one of the outdoor tables behind the School of Medicine.  So I get there, and there's a homeless woman.  She has a bunch of stuff with her.  She gets up and asks me to watch her plastic bag for her while she goes somewhere.  I say sure.  She comes back in about 5 minutes.  I'm about 3/4 done with the first half of the foot-long.  She sits down back at her table, looks at my sub, makes the motion of breaking bread.  I give her the other half of the foot-long.  I'm thinking, "This is a good deed. I will be fuller by having done a good deed rather than eating the whole thing myself."  And maybe I tricked my mind to feel that way initially...but my stomach wasn't fooled at all.  I hungered not more than 2 hours post-1/2-sub-feast.  So I had Thai food.  And that, kids, is the story of how my Tuesday Dunch failed and got really really fat.

Headline:

"Native Americans KILLED AND ATE DUMBO, say archaeologists"

White people came and KILLED THE NATIVE AMERICANS AND WASTED ALL OF THEM BY NOT EATING A SINGLE ONE, says Alex Lee

Extra Hot is not Extra good

I ate Thai food for lunch today.  As an open-minded consumer, I ordered the potato curry with chicken in extra hot.  Mistake number one.  I brought it home, and started eating it.  It was fine, except that it was extra hot with scathing pain on my tongue with every bite.  But because I bought it, I had to eat it all.  Mistake number two.  Now I have never experienced a stomach ulcer before, but if I were to have one, I imagine this is probably what it feels like to have one.  And my GI system must have panicked with the package it received today, because I feel a bowel movement coming on pretty soon.  And from past experiences, I know that things that burn going in, usually burn on its way out.

Pre-Step 2 Clinical Skills

I am dreaming about weird things.  For example, I dreamed about hidradenitis suppurativa yesterday.  A woman presented into some situation in my dream (neither clinical nor sexual) with several yellow purulent lesions between and under her breasts.  Maybe my dream is telling me to go derm.  Lol...nice try dream...the lesions are more classically just under the breasts, not in between them. #noderm

Selfish medical student = Alex bruising

I was hanging around the emergency room the other day just to get some face-time in with one of the staff that works there. By a stroke of luck, I ended up getting a bit of facetime with the residency program director as well.  Anyway, there were some M1s who were hanging around as well for their externship and they were just sitting around, so I decided to do some charity work and teach them how to put in IV's.  It was a female and a male student and the female student adamantly stated, "NO ONE IS STICKING ME!"  I replied that she didn't have to get poked, that I would volunteer.  So I let the guy go first and guided him on how to put in an IV into my right arm.

I remember when I put in my first IV.  I got that effer on my first try.

This guy, on the other hand, did not get me on the first try.  In fact, he would do things that I told him not to do, e.g. putting the needle in, and redirecting the needle while it's already kind of deep.  I have bruises here and there on my right arm to prove that this happened.  Alright, I'll face that fact that not everyone does perfectly on their first try.  But still, I think he poked me a total of 5 times before getting the IV.

In any case, the girl was able to do it to the male student on her first try, although she did withdraw the needle before advancing the plastic catheter part of the IV and did ultimately not get it in all the way.  The moral of the story is this: Don't let first year medical students try to put an IV in you.  Make sure they do it to each other - no matter how ardent they are about not wanting to be poked.  If you want to poke, you have to be willing to poke.

Now that I think about it, I think that's a good way to look at medicine overall.  We as caregivers probably shouldn't administer therapies that we ourselves wouldn't take.