Trigg is a 25-year-old computer science graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has hit upon what he thinks is the way he can do maximum good for the world. He goes to work each day at a high-frequency trading hedge fund. But, instead of spending his ample salary, he lives the life of a graduate student and gives a large chunk of his money away to charity.

David Brooks urges caution on following his train of though and life philosophy.

A short abstract of my favourite parts of where Trigg went wrong according to Brooks:

"First, you might start down this course seeing finance as a convenient means to realize your deepest commitment: fighting malaria. But the brain is a malleable organ. Every time you do an activity, or have a thought, you are changing a piece of yourself into something slightly different than it was before. Every hour you spend with others, you become more like the people around you.

Gradually, you become a different person. If there is a large gap between your daily conduct and your core commitment, you will become more like your daily activities and less attached to your original commitment. You will become more hedge fund, less malaria. There’s nothing wrong with working at a hedge fund, but it’s not the priority you started out with.

If you choose a profession that doesn’t arouse your everyday passion for the sake of serving instead some abstract faraway good, you might end up as a person who values the far over the near. You might become one of those people who loves humanity in general but not the particular humans immediately around. You might end up enlarging the faculties we use to perceive the far — rationality — and eclipsing the faculties we use to interact with those closest around — affection, the capacity for vulnerability and dependence. Instead of seeing yourself as one person deeply embedded in a particular community, you may end up coolly looking across humanity as a detached god.

Third, and most important, I would worry about turning yourself into a means rather than an end. If you go to Wall Street mostly to make money for charity, you may turn yourself into a machine for the redistribution of wealth. You may turn yourself into a fiscal policy."

Oh such a good read!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/opinion/brooks-the-way-to-produce-a-person.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&

Pneumonic for pituitary hormones

Good GirlS Don'T Collapse, Very Often.

Anterior pituitary: GnRH, GHRH, Somatostatin, Dopamine, TRH, CRH. Posterior pituitary: Vasopressin, Oxytocin.

GO ME!!!

Hehehehe!

Ahhhhh How adorable is this??? *Melts* :)

Oh my god please stop it already :( The dogs next door have been barking incessantly non-stop for the past 1 hour while I've been trying to study. It's like an alarm clock that has gone off and the snooze button is next door. Woof woof woof GRRRRR.

You know the feeling of walking while carrying a bowl full of soup? The feeling of trying to walk as still as possible to avoid disturbing the fluid too much? That's the exact same feeling I get just before an exam. My brain is filled to the brim with steaming hot knowledge, freshly memorised. And all I want is that there is a table to set it down on before the soup gets cold or is spilt.

I've got an ant problem in my house recently probably due to the change in season. The ants have been shifting location all over my house randomly and I've been tracking them down. They've chosen the stupidest place today - a path leading from my cupboard into my....... SINK! Hahahaha!-Margs the mighty ant tyrant

"Don't think zebra before you think horse."

Analogy by clin skills tutor when talking about not thinking about cancer before thinking of UTIs when haematuria is present. Lol!

BPE is the physical enlargement of the prostate that occurs as the result of the histologic changes of BPH. BPO is BOO in the setting of BPE.

Gee... That's helpful. Thanks.

Typing out my clinical encounter with a 81 year old patient (Mr WW) late at night and having a few thoughts...

I was just typing out the part about this patient's family history and this question struck me: When is it fine for someone to die?

Mr WW's dad passed away when he was 95 and his mum at 97. His dad had diabetes and his mum suffered from a heart problem and arthritis. I was deciding on how to phrase my sentence- did they die with those conditions or from those conditions? And then I decided: it did not matter. They lived till such a ripe old age, they should have died anyway. It did not matter what conditions they had when they were living or what they actually did die off. I should move on with my life.

2 seconds later and after finishing that section of my report, I felt the strangest feeling ever. I could not move on to the other sections. I felt so guilty for being so nonchalant about their deaths! It was as though I had just single handed-ly, in the most god-like fashion, waved my hands and passed the death sentence on these 2 individuals, simply because they had lived for too long. I might as well have killed them when I callously dismissed furthering the thought of 'what killed them?'. It might as well have been society, and our notion of life-expectancy that killed them.

And so I guess, with this acute bolt of my conscience which prompted this entry, my answer to my initial question is: Never. It is never fine for someone to die. And this probably ties in with how I had an inexplicable urge to wish Mr WW well when I left him. I bid him goodbye by wishing that he'll live to a 100 years old.

(And being able to tie in my thoughts and actions into a single unifying theory of what I believe in makes me happy. I think of myself as a sane and normal person whose brain and actions are well-integrated, with consistent thoughts.)

Incredibly tickled by this slide during a lecture (among other things. how hilarious is Darwin- guy w ear infection?!!) and keen to find out more, I trawled through 3 web pages and a 20 page Word document (I can't believe myself either) of compiled acronyms to present to you these funnies. (The things I do when I procrastinate. Sigh.)

Medical Acronyms

ART - Assuming Room Temperature (recently deceased).
Acute Lead Poisoning - Gunshot wound
Acute Pneumoencephalopathy - airhead
Adminisphere - where hospital managers work, reckoned to be "another planet"
AGA - Acute Gravity Attack (fell over)
Aggressive Euthanasia - A procedure that obnoxious patients would benefit from.
AHF - Acute Hissy Fit
Banana - patient with jaundice
BWCO - Baby Won't Come Out (needs Caesarian)
CBT - Chronic Burger/Biscuit Toxicity (obesity)
CCFCCP - Coo-coo for Co-Co Puffs (dementia or similar)
DIFFC - Dropped In For Friendly Chat (i.e. no medical problem)
GOK - God Only Knows
Gorillacillin - very powerful antibiotic
GOK - God Only Knows.
GFPO - Good For Parts Only.
GLM - Good Looking Mum.
Happy Little Campers - children in oxygen tents
HMF - Hysterical Mother Figure
Parentectomy - removing parents as an effective cure for a child's problems
Rheumaholiday - rheumatology (considered by hard-pressed juniors to be a less busy dept)
T&T Sign - Tattoo-to-Teeth Sign: survival indicator; those who are tattooed and toothless will survive major injuries
TOBP - Tired of Being Pregnant (especially patient demanding caesarian)
VAC - Vultures are Circling (dying)
YAVIS - Young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, successful.
YOYO - You're on your own (message passed from one doctor to another regarding problem/mystifying cases)

Vet Acronyms

BDLDLDL-big dog, little dog, little dog lost (usually Chihuahuas that try to fight a German Shepherd)
CSTO - Cat Smarter Than Owner
DIC - dead in cage or death is coming (technically, it means Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, which is just as lethal)
DSTO - Dog Smarter Than Owner
PU - paws up (dead)
ROBO – run over by owner

You know what? Sometimes you just have to suck it up.

I love love love definitive statements. Esp from someone of authority which supports what I was hoping for. Is it because I just do not have enough of a mind of my own to believe in what I believe in? Or is it more of a case that I am lazy and this definitive statement actually supports my inaction? Either way it doesn't paint too bright a picture of myself. *Self- doubt*

ZOOOMM

It seems to me that I am now constantly catching up with school work, and I am no longer on top of the ball game as I long have. I actually feel (or worse, know) that if I don't Buck up, I will flunk med school. Its an awful, draining, panicky feeling that I can't get rid off. It's like I'm on a threadmill that's turning too fast, and I am about to slip off. And it feels like until the actual scars I acquired from a treadmill accident last year fade, I will never get rid of these feelings.

AH CHOOO!

Just casually checking my inbox and I see these 2 emails. LOL! WTF?!!

New role as Academic Activities Officer and sitting into a Year 1/2 course committee meeting, with all the lecturers and course coordinator.

Balance between advocacy for the 1st years and raising petty issues and losing my credibility. Where is the fine line?

I've always had qualms about pple using the index to look up something in a textbook. When a pass leader recommends doing that to look for definition of terms, when I see my fellow classmates looking through the index etc, i just feel in my heart and brain that something is not right. As if some procedural step has been jumbled or someone is cheating. Fair, its a fricking 600 page textbook, an index would be like a crtl f- god sent to those unresponsive, unscrollable deadpan pages. But but- You are a student! And you are learning. Surely the content page, which contains the main concepts would be more useful to you than an alphabetical list? Surely locating a term using your existing knowledge of it, through the various body systems nicely segmented out for you in the content page, is more satisfying than trawling through an alphabetical list where neighbours are as related as a STOmach ulcer to a STOp codon??

Quaint old journal article on endocrine crises :)

Diabetic Ketoacidosis

Pathophysiology: Starvation in the midst of plenty

The Actors in the drama:
-Insulin
-Glucagon
-Free fatty acids: Essential for the play to begin
-Glucose transporters: Playing supporting roles in developing hyperclycemia

The Stage:
Scene I, The Fat cell: Insulin exits and the fat cells goes into lipolysis
Scene II, The Liver: Glucagon enters and the liver becomes a sugar and ketoacid factory
Scene III, The Kidney: Osmotic diuresis leads to dehydration
Scene IV, Skeletal Muscle: Potassium moves out of the cells

The Patient is the Star:

'The patient never stops making water and the flow is incessant... life is short, unpleasant and painful, thirst unquenchable, drinking excessive... if for a while they abstain from drinking, their mouths become parched and their bodies dry; the viscera seem scorched up; the patients are affected by nausea, restlessness and a burning thirst, and within a short time, they expire.' - Aretaeus of Cappadocia (2nd Century AD)

How I love reading articles that describe unfortunate conditions with such familiarity and flair, putting the art into the science, the soft, romanticism into the hard, objectified physiology. :)

If this hospital was a human body, you'll be the appendix. Ahahaha! Way to go Dr Cox in assults, how I love Scrubs and Me Time :D