Rosen's Emergency Medicine. 203 chapters in this edition. About 3000 pages. I've read 180 chapters, and almost 3/4 of all of those chapters I have read after Christmas. The best part...I don't remember any of it.
That's not entirely true. I seem to remember completely useless, never-going-to-use-in-my-career sort of facts. For instance, I can't seem to forget how African Sleeping Sickness presents. Unfortunately, that information is taking up real estate where important information used to live (i.e. what to do if someone's heart stops beating).
For anyone who hasn't heard me complain about it, I've got an exam in May. Most of it is based on this book. I've made about 5000 flashcards so far. Every so often I pick up a flash card from one of the many piles just to see if it sparks any sort of recognition at all. I can usually identify the handwriting as mine...usually.
Trisha and I did actually manage to get away for a few weeks amidst all this studying. We went to Maui...again.
In earlier posts I've commented on how I used to think I was a hipster. In my pseudo-hipster phase, in keeping with delusional hipsterisms, I thought Hawaii was the lamest. So tacky (and not in a cool - thrift store kind of way).
Then I went there. There's a reason that Hawaii is the prototypical North American cliche vacation spot. It's perfect. I'm not even going to go on about all the reasons why, it just is. Go there.
Side note:
I think Hawaii falls into the same category as Volvos, being conservative, and architecture magazines. Eventually, every white, middle class loser likes them.
It also FORCES you to break all your impractical hipster behaviours. For instance, you would be insane to wear skinny jeans in Hawaii. Overpriced retro sneakers don't work on the beach. There are no college radio stations so unless you have satellite radio you have to listen to the oldies station and admit to yourself that popular music can also be good music.
We can't stop going now. This was our fourth trip. We've been to Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island. This time was Maui (again).
We were so excited to go. We went with Trisha's parents (built in babysitters!), we had the perfect location booked, and we got great, cheap flights. Everything was planned perfectly. But Trisha could not relax. For a month leading up to our trip, all she could think about was how terrible Otto was going to be on the plane. It's something I never would have even thought of, but Trisha was so worried about it that she started to get me worried. Trisha is very good at making the theoretical seem extremely inevitable.
"Wait...He's going to cry the whole time?! That's over six hours!"
"Why doesn't he want to eat? He loves to eat!"
"Can he really start teething at 10 000 feet?"
Well, as usual, all the worry was for nothing. Otto slept 5/6 hours from Vancouver to Maui and 5/6.5 hours from Maui back to Calgary. The only trouble he did cause was at a layover in Vancouver.
Otto is still young enough to fly free because he doesn't take a seat. That being said, most airlines will shuffle seats around to make an extra seat between parents with a baby if there are empty seats on the plane. If it's really obvious that there will be empty seats, they'll even let you bring a car seat on and buckle it in. On our flight from Vancouver to Maui there were almost 30 empty seats.
As soon as there was an agent at the gate in Vancouver, Trisha pounced on her to ask about the car seat. When she took Otto's ticket, however, she indicated that he had been flagged and that a security officer would be coming shortly. She was serious. Otto is four months old.
Sure enough, a border guard showed up. And he asked the following question with a straight face:
"Does he have any belongings with him?"
"Did he see his baggage at the baggage identification terminal?"
Then he "patted down" Otto. We actually had to wake Otto up, take him out of his car seat, and with four pats, the guard had effectively covered Otto's entire body.
He then expressed great distress as to how Otto was able to make it all the way to the gate. Apparently this "flag" should have prevented him from getting through several check points before the gate. This didn't seem like a oops-hope-that-doesn't-happen-again sort of thing. It seemed more like an excuse-me-while-I-go-fire-someone sort of thing.
I don't know what Otto did to get such special treatment, but it looks like he got away with it.
There's a lot I could say about Hawaii, but maybe I'll save those for future posts. After all, I don't know how many post I could make about reading Rosen's.
