Finalized list

I think I've put together a finalized list of potential med schools:

Albany Medical College
George Washington University
Michigan State University
Oregon Health and Science University
University of Tennessee
University of Washington

They all seem to have what I'm looking for: small med school (preferably amidst a larger institution), a balance between clinical and research medicine (with an obvious focus on the clinical side of things), and a broad potential for future opportunities. I'm pretty excited. I was going to apply to Indiana University, but as it turns out that is the biggest med school in the country. I think I'll go ahead and avoid it. I am surprisingly excited about Albany...probably because it's so close to the Adirondacks. I think if I went to Washington I would just stare at Mt. Rainier all day. Are mountains any reason to pick a med school? Sounds pretty irresponsible to me...luckily I can back the schools up with real reasons, too.

On another note, for about 3 months now I have been calling myself a temporal thinker. To be honest I really didn't know what it meant, it just sounded right. I did a little poking on wikipedia and it turns out I actually am a temporal thinker. To quote wikipedia, "In logic, the term temporal logic is used to describe any system of rules and symbolism for representing, and reasoning about, propositions qualified in terms of time.... Consider the statement: "I am hungry." Though its meaning is constant in time, the truth value of the statement can vary in time. Sometimes the statement is true, and sometimes the statement is false, but the statement is never true and false simultaneously. In a temporal logic, statements can have a truth value which can vary in time. Contrast this with an atemporal logic, which can only discuss statements whose truth value is constant in time."

That is me through and through. I've been trying to work out the difference between relative and absolute truth for a while now, but I guess the "I am hungry" idea does it for me...it's all varying degrees.

I bet none of you really care, but I think it's cool.

One Year

I think I made a mistake a couple of days ago: I checked out Touching the Void from the library. It's a book about the first two guys to climb an incredible route on Siula Grande in the Andes. The author ends up breaking his leg, falling in a crevasse, and crawling something like 10 miles back to base camp hours before his partner (who had thought he was dead) was about to leave to head back to England. Great book.

Hours after finishing it, though, I went into work to try to get some hours and I find Conquering the Impossible in my mailbox. This book is about a guy who attempts to circumnavigate the Artic Circle via sailboat and skis. I'm only 70 pages into it, but it's great so far. As part of his training he tried to be the second person to make a solo trip to the North Pole, without any Arctic experience. Crazy guy.

These 2 books got me thinking about adventure and endurance. In thinking about the next year I still don't know what I want to do. The one thing I know is that I'm already tired of simply having a job and filling idle time between shifts. I'm done with that.

I was listening to the radio yesterday while driving to a local fire department to inquire about jobs. The DJ had asked the question "if you had a year to do whatever you wanted, what would you do." I realized that I have a year to do whatever I want, but I couldn't narrow things down to one activity. I know what I want to do on the long-term (physician, adventure, etc.). I got to thinking about the short-term, though -- thinking about impossible mountains and incredible expeditions. If I dream as big as possible where will I end up?

Two things come to mind. If I go off to medical school in the fall of 2010 I will lose all hope in doing 2 activities that I've always wanted to do: wildlands firefighting and the Appalachian Trail. Both take up months of time, which I may never have again to the extent that I have now. Both are pretty long shots at the moment, but they are at least worth looking into.

I think my next big adventure will be a little AT test run: the Michigan Shore-to-Shore trail. It runs from Empire on Lake Michigan to Oscoda on Lake Huron: 220 miles. It'll be a good little test for the 2200 mile AT.

Anna Karenina and Memorial Day

I think I have found myself a bit of a Memorial Day tradition. For the past 4 years I have been up at SpringHill volunteering for their big family camp. It is tons of fun. I mostly go up there to hang out with old friends and meet new ones. For some reason I have gained a certain rapport at that place to the extent that I can really do whatever I want, and they still pay for my gas money to go to and from camp. Within minutes of getting up to camp I had a radio, a golf cart, and a key that would get me into (almost) any building on camp. Weird.

The weekend was a lot of fun. I hung out a lot with some old friends, met a few new ones, and learned how to waltz. This year marks my 1 year anniversary of not working at Springhill for the summer. The funny thing is that I realized that Springhill is not a deep spiritual place to me like it is for most people. I just really really like the people that work there. The place breeds a certain community that is very easy to succeed in. People just want to have fun there. I've never really understood the theological/spiritual role of a chrisitian camp, but I like hanging out with the people at springhill.

Just today I finished reading Anna Karenina. Amazing book. It's by the same guy that wrote War and Peace. The crazy thing about that book is the character development. It is about Russian nobles in the late 1800's and how one of them (Anna) cheats on her husband, and how the affair affects about 8 people involved. The funny thing is that nobody is the bad guy. Everybody clearly has strengths and weaknesses. Tolstoy somehow paints a complete picture of a circle of society that is absolutely mind-blowing. If you ever get a chance to read it, keep a lookout for the character named Alexei Alexandrovich Kareni. As far as I can tell I am him.

I've been sick for exactly 2 weeks as of today. It sucks. I went to the doctor and got some antibiotics. The scary part of being sick this long, though, is that my job regularly puts me in environments containing MRSA, VRE, and C. diff. I had a patient the other day with all 3. Lets hope none of them work on my depressed immune system.

Being sick has hurt my workout schedule, and my bikes took a dump on me, so I haven't been working out very much. I found a great 7 mile loop for running that gets me out of the city. I'll be doing that more regularly when I get better. I also took an Appalacian Trail book out of the library. I figure if I ever have a chance to do it it will be next summer. Here's hoping. Either way, I need an adventure soon.

So I saved a life...

I found out the other day that I actually had a hand in saving someone's life. Last year at the annual 25K in Grand Rapids I treated a guy who was seizing about 1/3 mile from the finish line. It was kind of cool because there was a huge crowd watching me. I didn't think much of it (seizures are real easy because you can't do much. You just let the body run its course and treat afterwards). I just kept his airway clear and kept him safe...and ambulance got there after a couple minutes and took him off to the hospital.

I talked to one of the medics who took the guy to the hospital a couple of days ago (the night before this year's race). He told me that he found out that our guy had heat stroke and was in the hospital for 4 days (or so). Heat stroke is something that is basically characterized by death. It's a level of dehydration and electrolyte imbalance that the body can not self-correct. So it's kind of cool that I had a hand in saving his life.

The race this year was totally uneventful, though. Lots of cold rain and healthy runners.

I just started the med school application for 2010. I'm thinking of applying to around 5 schools and hoping for the best. I'm going to talk to the pre-med adviser this week to hear her thoughts on the matter. Still trying to hear back from the research jobs, though.

80 hour work week last week.
50 hour work week this week.
I don't know what to do with all of the extra time.