Master and Commander, Apartment 406
by fiona
Master and Commander, Apartment 406
Mike and I got a kitty! His name is The Admiral Santiago P. Wellington III, but we civilians may refer to him simply as "The Admiral". He comes from a long line of sea-faring cats with good leadership skills (or so we have surmised), and he has taken full command of the apartment, including some of its closets and cabinets.
He is a great, friendly, lovable cat who sat and studied with me last night until he fell asleep with my arm around him. Well, he was mostly studying my petting abilities, but I think I passed the test.
I think I also passed the Neuro exam that I just took, but I predict that it will be one of my poorer performances. It was hard to get back on track after the week-long snow day, and I decided to take this one a little easy, with some stress-free, mellow cramming at the end. That's a new skill for me, and it feels great.
This test was all about the anatomy and development of the brain, with some extras thrown in about the sensory, pain, auditory, visual, and vestibular systems. One of the cooler things that we learned, but that was unfortunately not on the test, was the following: Did you know that you can give someone debilitating vertigo, possibly with accompanying nausea and vomiting, by simply dropping cold or warm water in their ear? Its true, and I've seen it. The temperature change causes convection currents in the fluid of the semicircular cannals of the inner ear, which acts just like how the fluid moves when you are turning your head really fast. Your brain interprets this as if you were spinning around and around, and your eyes even move back and forth to keep up with the spinnng world. One of our lecturers (a Neuroscientist) demonstrated this in front of the class last week, and he could barely stand up afterwards and reportedly couldn't eat his lunch later because of all the nausea.
So next time you're at a slumber party, screw sticking the hand of that annoying girl who came even though nobody really likes her into warm water - drop some of it into her ear! Then watch as the fun ensues.
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Posted on January 20, 2004 | Comments (1)
At present in my medical
by fiona
At present in my medical career I am steeped in Neuroscience. How intense does that sound? I think if you add "neuro-" to anything, it will automatically sound more difficult and awesome, and certainly more worthy of respect. For example, I am not merely studying the anatomy of the brain, I am studying Neuroanatomy (capitalization added for emphasis). Not pathology (which is a pretty nice word in and of itself), but Neuropatholgy. Instead of embryology, Neuroembryology. Actually, i made that last one up, but it could be a word, and if it were it would sound very impressive.
Here are some actual sample titles of lectures that I have been privy to in the past week: "Histology of the Nervous Tissue." "Somatosensory Systems." "Pain Syndromes and Physiology." "The Visual System: Cortical Organization." "Your Brainstem, Your Self: What Your Medulla Oblongata Can Do for You." Actually, I made that last one up as well.
Here's a cool word: pons. The pons. Kind of a brainstem-meets-Happy Days kind of thing.
Today I saw mold on a human brain.
One of the amazing things about this course (not counting being an entire week behind due to inclement weather and inopportune laziness) is the opportunity to examine and dissect real human brains. The brains come from the cadavers that are dissected in gross anatomy the first year. Last year I actually missed the day where we opened the skull and took out the brain (though I did get to saw the rest of the skull in half the follwoing day - one of the more surreal things I have ever done). But these puppies have been sitting in buckets since october, and some are a little worse for wear. You know that blue/greenish mold that forms in little discs on the surface of yogurt or on the inside lid of spaghetti sauce jars? Well, apparently that stuff likes brains as well. But who can blame it - its a great source of protein.
It truly is incredible to hold a brain in your hand, though. Suprisingly heavy, stragely dense, unnervingly fragile... the seat of all thought, emotion, movement, function. The ancient greeks used to think the pineal gland (a little pinecone shaped thing at the top of the brainstem) was the seat of the soul. Well, now we know that it has to do with regulation of the circadian rhythm, but still, how amazing is that?
Learning about all the myriad pathways, and relay centers, and regulation systems in excruciating detail kind of demystifies things, but the more things make sense, the more unbelievable it is that it all actually works, and that the end result is a fully sensient, conscious, thinking person. A person, who, if anything like me, has a lot more to cram in there somewhere before the exam on tuesday.
I think I might get a cat this weekend.
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Posted on January 15, 2004 | Comments (0)
Today is my grandmother's 95th
by fiona
Today is my grandmother's 95th Birthday. She is an old, old lady. She is also one of the most wonderful, generous, kind-hearted, and genuinely nice people that I have ever known. On Saturday we threw her a 95th birthday party that brought in about 75 people and rocked her assisted living facility from 2 to 6pm. Among the attendees was Richard Dwarsky, who is the piano player for the Prarie Home Companion (you hear Garison Keilor mention him every episode). He actually skipped out on that to attend my grandma's party - "a higher calling," he called it. He played a lot of music that day. It was great.
Most of my two weeks in Minnesota were spent either preparing for or thinking about preparing for that party. I was getting together a suprise present for Nana - the present to end all 95th birthday presents: her autobiography. A couple of summers ago I had interviewed her, and got 3 hours of really great stories and memories on tape. Since then I have slowly been transcribing them into written form, and more recently I got the idea to start editing them into a short book, entitled: "A Long and Interesting Life: The Autobiography of Mary Jo Garlich."
It turned out really, really well. It was suprisingly time-consuming, though, to go from spoken word to a fully formatted document in book form, with chapters, and pages that line up consecutively when you fold it right, and everything. I got my cousin Jake, a graphic design artist, to do the cover, and my brother and sister and he all helped me put it together (at the last minute of course), so it ended up being a gift from all of her grandchildren. We presented it to her at the party and read some of it aloud - i think it went over really well. She was really touched, and even though we made 40 copies, it didn't quite meet the demand.
Funny story, though. My dad had planned to read aloud this really cute, touching story of how Nana met my grandpa Al: she was at a dance and after she met him she said, "If I had a name like Garlich, I change it!" Its one of those nice family heirloom type stories that gets told a lot. But my dad unwittingly started reading the chapter before it, a chapter detailing my grandmother's unfortunate engagement to a couple of slimy guys who cheated on her and got other girls pregnant. Not exactly 95th birthday party material. Especially following the particularly wholesome excerpt that I read, which described her as a young girl growing up on the prarie, learning to ride horses and helping out on the farm. Oh well. It went over pretty well, nonetheless.
That was definitely one of the highlights of my trip home. Overall I had a great time spending time with my family, and catching up with some old high school friends that i haven't seen for years. One of the less jubilant aspects of the trip was that my stepdad Bud was in and out of the hospital with pretty significant heart disease. When I got into town we went straight from the airport to the hospital, where he was preparing for a coronary bypass operation. And considering that he was just finishing up chemotherapy for a lymphoma, that one of the chemo drugs damaged his heart muscle in addition to making him very immunosuppressed, and the fact that he ended up needing a whopping 5 grafts (that's a quintuple bypass - I didn't even know they went up that high), his recovery has been pretty miraculous. He was out of the hospital in record time, has exceeded all of the recovery landmarks, and has been feeling really well. We were all so relieved about that.
Unfortunately, an hour before I left, we got a call to tell us that another close relative, my step sister's father-in-law Chuck, was in the hospital with a possible heart attack. Bud thinks he was trying to steal his thunder. So here's my message to America (and especially to my dad): eat less meat, eat less fat, get more exercise, and take care of yourself. Or you probably will have a heart attack. Thank you.
Think of my grandma. She's 95 years old, for gosh sake. She has been a vegetarian for over 30 years, and she meditates every day. Think about it.
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Posted on January 5, 2004 | Comments (0)
I'm back in Portland now,
by fiona
I'm back in Portland now, and its COLD!! Colder then it was in Minnesota. Or atleast it feels colder because there you spend a maximum of 2.5 minutes outside in any given day, the time it takes you to go to and from your car. Here, anytime I go anywhere outside of my apartment, I am out exposed to the elements.
And right now the elements are going crazy.
Not only is it cold, but it is snowing, and they are predicting a big ice storm later on. Because of that, I decided that it would be prudent to stay home from school today, due to the fact that school is located on a large, steep hill that is only accessible via a one single-laned twisty road that is prone to becoming covered in ice. JUST KIDDING! The real reason I didn't go to school today is because I just wanted to hang out with Mike in our awesome apartment! We slept in, and snuggled, and mike made me eggs and tea, and we sat and ate breakfast at a table littered with all of the presents he got me. Way better than a morning in the lecture hall.
Some of the awesome presents mike got me (in order of opening): a cover for my iBook (so mike wont scratch it up when he carts it around), a cd of our friend Jona jamming to the music of J.S. Bach with an old guy and a young guy (???), an awesome artsy proactive 2004 calendar (supporting local artists), a power drill and drill bet set (yeaaaah!! I don't know exactly what i'm going to drill, but it will be awesome. I kept telling mike that i wanted to own power tools. I'm the son that his dad always wanted), and last but not least.... Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit!!! I smell a TAC event. We snuck a peak at some of the questions, and I knew almost all the answers. Very nerdy? No, this is nerdy:
I was reading Return of the King on the plane, and I came to the part where Theoden lies dying under his horse and Eowyn chops off the head of the fell beast and kills the king of the Nazgul after emersing the audience in classical feminist philosophy - you know, that part? Well, I realized that in the book, that whole battle takes place on March 15th - my birthday!! And I got really excited about it. Now THAT's nerdy.
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Posted on January 5, 2004 | Comments (0)
Right now I am sitting
by fiona
Right now I am sitting on the floor of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, wedged in between the Verizon pre-paid phone card machine and a carousel of pay phones. Its the only place I can find an outlet. An announcement just came on: "the current threat advisory, as determined by the Homeland Security Agency is: Orange."
This recording is apparently played every five minutes, because... why? Because I need an up-to-the-minute update on how much personal danger I am in as an air traveller? Because knowing that it is orange instead of red or magenta or teal, will cause me to behave much differently as i go about the business of being an air travller? Because it will reassure me and act to promote a sense of public calm and unity? Probably not. But whatetever the explanation, for some reason right now it strikes me as kind of festive. Orange. The color of holidays in America.
What is calming, though, is the fact that I was given the wrong boarding pass. They just called me up to the gate to give me one, but strangely, they had given me one when i checked in. I didn't think to look at the name on it, a testament to my blind faith in the well-oiled cogs of the airline processing system, but maybe I should of. Instead of Garlich, Fiona it was something like Rekyviska, Treminska. (Not really recognizable as a name, so I don't feel that bad).
It is funny, though, that even though you are in the computer, they will refuse to let you on the flight if you loose your boarding pass somewhere between the luggage search, the multiple checkpoints, and the shoe-removal pavillion. And yet somebody handed me somebody else's boarding pass. I hope Mr. or Ms. Rekyviska made it to Cincinatti ok.
Yes, that would be Cincinatti, Ohio. Not many people know that Cincinatti is actually located on the direct route to Portland, OR from the Twin Cities. Oh wait, its not. Just goes to show that when you say that you are going to buy your plane tickets early this year and not procrastinate like you do every other year, you should actually try to do that. Back in Portland, now, I can say that it is very satisfying to take a 2 hour flight in the wrong direction and then literally fly over your original departure city on the way back. Very satisfying. Especially when you consider that your plane tickets were not at all cheap, and that you dropped over $400 for the priviledge. I did learn, though, that Cincinatti, OH is suprisingly close to Kentucky. And yet some consider Ohio to still be the midwest. I think not.
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Posted on January 5, 2004 | Comments (0)