I give up. I surrender. You win. Do with me what you will. I can no longer fight you; your power is simply too great. I think I deserve recognition for simply lasting this long. I have to pick my battles, and I guess there are others that are more worth fighting. I am your humble servant.

I’m officially a medical student. I’ve embarked on a new journey, a new phase of my adult life. I have begun to become addicted to coffee . I held out for 8 months, with only a couple instances of failure. But with Preview Weekend coming up for the newly admitted students, and a test on anti-arrhythmics and cardiomyopathies and lymphedemas on the horizon, no longer can I afford to take the nap I once treated myself to. This step also forces me to realize that I am one step closer to becoming my father, a future I have sworn against since the age of 13 (sorry Dad). His favorite anecdote, “Y’know, I never drank coffee until medical school… there’s just too much to memorize to sleep.”

I’m also having horrendous allergies , as all my classmates are. These allergies have been handed down, generation by generation, through my father’s lineage. It’s practically a family heirloom. After a visit to the health service, I’m now armed with Afrin, Flonase, Allegra, Sudafed, and Ibuprofen for a painful lateral allergic rhinitis and sinusitis (translation: nasal allergies and sinus pain). I’ve probably now taken half of the medications my father is now on, and well on my way to lisinopril if I’m not careful. Kidding Dad. Love you.

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I’m starting to think that the structure and formation of words in English was instrumental in making the scientific revolution and medical advances so prominent. (I’ll admit, I read a paper about this in undergrad, but now I’m starting to think there’s something to it.) It’s so easy to make new words in English, using prefixes and suffixes, in a way that I don’t think is so easy in French or Spanish (the only two other languages I’ve studied, so I could be totally wrong about this). It’s become especially apparent in recent weeks; different professors use different terms to mean the same thing, but we all understand them anyway:

* A thrombus is a blood clot in your arteries or veins. Thrombo genic means something that helps generate clots. Thrombolytic means something that helps lyse (break up) clots. And then you add the prefix anti-, and it reverses the word.
* Hyper- and hypo- are all too common. Same with the prefix ‘dys’. You can have a hyperlipidemia (increased lipids/fats in your blood), a hypolipidemia (decreased lipids/fats in your blood), or just dyslipidemia (an abnormal amount in your blood.) Or it can be called hypercholesterolemia.
* The ‘-emia’ suffix just means “in the blood.” Bacteremia, lipidemia, kalemia, anemia. On and on and on.
* And you can always just add adjectives wherever you want. A myopathy can become a dilated, cardiomyopathy.

Is it this easy in other languages? I haven’t found it to be so, but maybe I just haven’t delved into foreign medical textbooks to find out.

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By George, I’ve done it. I’ve discovered the mystery behind the notoriously bad handwriting of the physician. It’s medical school that’s to blame. You could take a calligrapher extrordinaire, or my friend Yen Pham from elementary school, who had the best handwriting I’ve ever seen in my life, put either one in medical school, and their legibility would drop to that of a three year old. A three year-old on 4 cups of coffee. And 2 bags of M&M’s. Writing in a dune buggy going off-roading.

Here’s how the game will be played out for the next 3 quarters, according to my Miss Cleo-like predictions: I get to memorize physiology, which can be somewhat over-analytical, but at least has some logic to it, and makes sense. As for pharmacology and pathology, however, it’s all rote memorization. Some of the drug names have common endings, but most are woefully lacking in any logical naming scheme. This has led me to try using pitiful, ridiculously inane mnemonic devices, which are almost as hard to remember as the drugs themselves. (Example: Prop Tim’s nads [and] carve [him a] label pin! That would be beta blockers. Sigh. I’m trying here. Seriously.) Pathology is only slightly better, but naming diseases after people is about as terrible an idea as you can get.

But this tangent does have a point. Because this stuff is so hard to memorize, a lot of my classmates and I have to write everything out to get it to stick in our heads. And then write it out again. And then write it out another time from memory. And again. Ad nauseum. And since we’re just writing it out for ourselves, and sometimes we don’t ever look at the sheet of paper again, our handwriting gets sloppy. And our hands get tired. And then the vicious cycle continues, and before you know it, your handwriting’s gone to crap. (Personal note: I’ve always had bad handwriting, partially because I’m a lefty. I proudly received grades of “S-“–unsatisfactory–when I was in elementary school, and never got any better. Nobody’s perfect, right? You have to be bad at something. Mine just happened to be handwriting and gym.)

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In a fashion that has become all too common for me, I finally got some of my new photos up .

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A simply heart-warming piece in the NYT today about Asperger’s Syndrome , an adult type of mild autism. Many of the people affected by it seem to have a weight lifted off their shoulders–no longer are they “social rejects;” they are people with Asperger’s.

It’s such a relief to be able to give something a name. You can understand it better, try to control it, accept it, treat it, or find others with the same condition. It sounds similar to other situations–diagnosing someone with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), dyslexia, or a learning disorder. Or even realizing you’re gay, or just that there’s a word gay. In each case, the individual struggles with something for a time, not understanding what it is, or why they are the way they are, but in each case, so much comes from simply being able to give it a label.

And no, please don’t treat being gay. Accept it and understand it.

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Classmate Cheri Blauwet won the Boston Marathon a couple weeks ago . She’s now won the Boston, LA, and New York marathons, and she’ll be heading to Greece this summer for the paralympics. In her free time she memorizes pathology, physiology, and pharmacology like the rest of us, runs an international disability organization, and somehow has time for her way-cool boyfriend Dan. I usually consider myself a fairly driven fellow, but she simply blows me out of the water. Congrats again, Cheri.

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I guess I’ll have to start including mountain lion maulings in my differential diagnosis now. Yikes.

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Big geeky day. Got a Gmail account ( Enoch beat me ) and looks like my historical anatomy links made it onto Metafilter .

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I recently came across an astounding collection of historical anatomy illustrations at the NIH’s Dream Anatomy Gallery . Historical Anatomies on the Web is another great exhibition with anatomical drawings from 300+ years ago. The NIH’s latest exhibition , Changing the Face of Medicine is not only full of great content on women in medicine, but is also a great, clean site design. I love it.

Man, big government like the NIH never can do anything right, can it?

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Blogborygmi’s latest just made my day .

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