So, there's this website that i read about http://www.myheritage.com and it lets you upload a full frontal picture of your face...and it scans it and then tells you which celebrities you look like the most. hahahaha. It's done mostly by face shape.  it's very addicting!!! And depending on the photo (like how you hold your head, etc), you may get a slightly different crop of celebrities each time.  It gives you both female AND male celebrity look alikes.

So the ones that i got most consistently were: sometimes i'd get the redhead from buffy and american pie, charlize theron but mostly, i'd get penelope cruz, sophia coppola, liv tyler and denzel washington. HAHAHAHA.  Y'know what they all have in common? a big, wide FOREHEAD...like myself.  Surprisingly, i rarely got lucy liu or zhang zihi....so they don't discriminate!!!

Who do you look like?!!!

Have you ever gotten to one of those subjects in school that you just think is SOOOOOOO boring.  I'm trying to study for my therapeutics exam tomorrow and it's on GI and a little bit of neuropathy....but the I just find the GI module to be SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO boring.  It's killing me.  And i don't really know why i find it boring because the pathology of the disease states itself aren't all that boring..so like GERD and IBD and all that good stuff.  They're kind of interesting diseases..but just studying them and the TXT...i don't know...i just find it soooo dry.  Maybe because it's more memorization than figuring stuff out...but AAARGH...took me TWO days to read the IBD lecture.

So, i don't know if i wrote this before or not, but my prof for Disease State Management (basically, how to treat different conditions...also THE most important class in all of pharmacy education)....teaches the pharmacology portion of the curriculum at Harvard Med!!!  But it's fun because she'll come back and tell us stories about the med students there....like once she told us how they had to write a case report and they had to mention marijuana for some reason in it.  ANd how a good percentage of the class couldn't spell marijuana and had to resort to writing down "mary jane" or just plain old "pot".  But anyhow, it makes me feel good that i'm getting a harvard med equivalent edumacation...sort of.

But it makes me wonder what she tells them about us, because we have kids who say pretty stupid things too.  For example, on the last quiz, (and she made a top 10 list of stupid things kids wrote), we had to list non-pharmacologic methods to treat GERD SPECIFIC to the patient case we were given.  And our patient was a guy.  And some one wrote...and i am quoting this...it was so funny that i can remember it word for word, "You a big man.  Wear loose clothes.  No TIGHTS."  that was #1 on her top 10 list.  She couldn't make it through that quote without cracking up.  Okay...now, granted, i feel bad for whoever wrote that...but come on....we are graduate students...we've learned how to manage GERD a million times....and these are things we're supposed to say to patients as part of our counseling.  Are you really going to say that to someone when you go on rounds in less than 5 months?!!!! 

So, i have this class every monday and wed mornings....called Health care ethics.  And at first i thought it would be tolerable because i thought we would all just sit around and discuss controversial topics.  Not so...the class should actually be called The Philosphy of Health care ethics.  Although we do discuss controversial topics (right now, euthanasia), we do so by formulating arguments in the perspective of famous philosophers and ethicists.  So class goes like this,

Prof:  So can someone help me make up an argument advocating euthanasian from Kant's Deontological view

Overeager student: blah blah blah blah....therefore euthanasia is permissible.

Prof: okay, now, let's do it from an Act Utilitarianism point of  view.

And we are never allowed to discuss how WE "FEEL" because arguments are not constructed from "feelings".

OMG....KILL ME NOW.  I seriously do not know how i make it through that class time after time.  And what SUCKS most is that there's a short HW writing assignment due at every class....and your grade on the assignments constitutes 15% of your total grade.  So i have to sit there....first thing in the morning and listen to this crap.  Supposedly we have this class so that when we start working, we can make effective decisions.  yeah...okay.

Class participation is worth another 15%, but i just can not bring myself to raise my hand and create arguments from some dead philosopher's point of view at 9 in the morning.  So i will forfeit that 15% so i can just sit and sulk in the back of the room while eating breakfast and sipping on some tea.

So, for another class, each student has to give a 15-20 minute presentation (by themselves) on a medical question.  And some people are really trying to find topics that are interesting.  My goal is quite the opposite....i wanted a topic that was tolerable but one that most kids would find completely boring...that way, they'll zone out and --> no questions at the end!!!! So my topic is...............

GYONG HEEEEEEEEE!!!

Today, i found a Taiwanese restaurant in Boston....not chinese...not chinese-american...TAIWANESE.  And it's authentic....unless you opt for the typical Americanized dishes.  It tastes just like that taiwanese restaurant in flushing that we always went to (for some reason, i can't remember the name of it right now).  But for some reason, the waiters/ waitresses don't speak taiwanese...must be from taipei....i tried to order a bowl Bah-Gne (ididn't know if it was on the menu or not)....but they had no idea waht i was talking about.  I think one of them responded by saying what they thought it was in mandarin...but then i had no idea what she was talking about.  How do you say that in mandarin?

But they had a pretty good deal going...choose any two entrees plus one veggie dish and an appetizer for $35.  And the entrees included all sorts of seafood.  We ended up getting Steamed Sea Bass (it was HUGE...over a foot long...like banquet sized!!!), the Three spice chicken (san bei gee), some Cohng Shing Tsai...and some fried chicken appetizer thing...Oh, and it comes with a free glass of Nai-tsah.  SOOOOOO cheap for the amount of food that we got...that fish alone was worth $20.  I thought they weren't going to let me choose that as part of the deal..but they did.  (or you could order just one entree and a veggie and all that other good stuff for $23). 

And it tasted JUST LIKE FLUSHING!!!!!!! i was soooooooooo happy.  ANd the weird thing is that the place isn't even in chinatown.  It's on Newbury street...which is this really posh, trendy, shopping street where all the white people hang out (kind of like boston's version of 5th ave).  ANd it's not one of those posh restaurants either.....it's the weirdest location for an authentic taiwanese restaurant.  But that's fine with me since it's so much closer to my apt than chinatown...and in a much better locale.  I won't have to worry about getting mugged by crack dealers or anything.

YAYAY....i found some soul food up here! finally!  There's this once place in chinatown called Taiwan cafe....i tried that once....NOT AUTHENTIC.  Their "bah-gne" is hot and sour soup with pork in it.  This place is FO REALS!!!

ok, i have decided.  In order to combat my seemingly perpetual fatigue, i will start going to the gym.  Sigh.  I hate going to the gym..it's so boring.  I could go to my school gym for free...but it is SOOOO small...and it's in the basement, so it's HOT and there are only like 3 treadmills and everyone wants them.  There are very few of anything...it's just really not so great.

So i'm going to go to a neighboring college...and i'm going to pay to use their gym.  They have a newly built, million dollar gym building...aside from the regular gym stuff, they have a pool, sauna, hot tub, a suspended indoor track and mulitple studios for classes. It will come out to about $30 a month...which isn't SO bad considering it's probably just as good as Boston Sports Club (which is the boston branch of NYSC) and all those private ones..and those cost about twice as much.  AND...since the neighboring college is an all girls college, the gym will be ALL GIRLS!!! YAY!

OH...so i never wrote about what happened with one of the preceptors at during the lab yesterday (they're local pharmacists who come in to help oversee the lab).  So, i got a script for "TAC cream 0.1%".   So i have never heard of TAC cream and had no idea what it stood for.  Maybe they see it in a retail setting, but in my hospital, they discourage abbreviations, so i had NO idea.   So i did a search with a pharm database...and all these things came up....the first thing that came up was that TAC stood for a triple chemo regimen...but that didn't make sense.  

The second thing was "tacrolimus cream"...which  came in "0.1%".  So i looked at the script...yep...also 0.1% cream...so i thought oh...TAC = tacrolimus.  It made sense to me.  The directions read, apply to affected area three times a day.  But the directions for tacrolimus stated twice a day.  But it's a cream, so i knew it didn't really matter that much...but i called the "doctor" anyway...and i told her that tacrolimus cream was twice a day.  She said stick with the three times a day...but didn't comment on the fact that i said it was tacrolimus cream

So, i had the tech process the order....but there was no tacrolimus cream in the computer...which was odd...i had never had that happen before.  So i called over one of the preceptors because i thought it was a computer issue (there have been instances where patient/doctor info hasn't been in the computer...so i thought this was a similar case).  So one of the newer preceptors, this young guy comes over.  And i explain, oh i can't find tacrolimus cream in there.  ANd he looks at the script and was like, IS that tacrolimus?  And i showed him the search that i did...and that tacrolimus was the only sensible thing that came up (and i even asked classmates who thought it was tacrolimus as well).  And he says to me (with attitude), "well, you better keep looking". 

Well...at this point, i was totally annoyed and had NO idea what it was.  (this is why abbreviations are discouraged at children's hospital...too much confusion).  And i didn't want to call the "doctor" back...because if they consider the call unecessary (meaning, i should have known what it was), i get an automatic 30 points off (yes, thirty).  And time was running out...i had to work on other scripts and after i figured it out, the tech still had to process it and i had to check it afterwards.

Anyway, the preceptor then proceeds to walk across to his room where a group of preceptors were just standing.  ANd he tells them in a decibel loud enough for me to hear clearly, that "oh..that girl thinks TAC is tacrolimus"...and starts laughing and making a big joke out of it.  And telling them how he told me to keep searching...and saying how i didn't know what it was blah blah.  Okay, first of all, that is just RUDE and VERY UNPROFESSIONAL.  Second of all, you are not here to make fun of students who don't know something.  I'm sure he didn't know what TAC was his whole life...he had to learn it.  Thirdly, if you want to make fun of me or if you think it's so hilarious, please restrain yourself and wait until after class to tell your friends....and don't speak loud enough for everyone to hear.  What a freakin bastard. 

I was VERY pissed....but i don't want to say anything until the end of the semester because the class is graded so subjectively....and they can choose to grade whoever they want.  I can get him in trouble by reporting it...but chances are, they head prof's won't do anything because they need him there...and i'll just screw myslef over cuz the dude would know that it was me.  But i will not forget this.......when i write my evaluations at the end of the semester, he better watch out.

So finally, after looking it up in every pharm database, i find it....and it's Triamcinolone.  Which didn't come up in my original search because that database searches for drugs based on what is closest to it alphabetically.  So it listed anything that had "tac" in it...or that TAC was an acronym for.  So there was no way triamcinolone would have come up. And there's no way i would have known what it was unless i've seen it before on a script...which i haven't...and obviously none of my peers had either. The patient profile that we get wasn't complete enough for me to figure out what he could have needed.  And it turns out, there were a few other people in my class who also had TAC cream...and when they asked other preceptors, the other preceptors just kind of whispered the answer to them.  I just happened to have the jerk who: 1) would not tell me what it was...or even point me in the right direction and 2) thought it was so hilarious that he had to make a joke out of it.

The dreaded lab is over....with the exception of one sub-par "tech" (I
get two "techs" to work with), i guess it went okay.  So
basically, I, the "pharmacist" have all these prescriptions...and i
have to verify that the dose is correct for the patient...and for his
diseases...and no interactions, etc.  And if it's correct/after i
speak to the "doctor" to change the scrip, i hand it over to one othe
"techs" to do the actual filling.  And afterwards, i check their
work .

So my sub-par tech turns to me after i hand her the first script, and
asks, "what is QD again?"  So QD is short hand for 'every
day'...but she's a second semester, third year student...they learn
this stuff FIRST week of FIRST semester and they use it throughout the
semester.  I don't understand how she could've gone through last
semester withouth knowing waht QD meant.  I knew that was a bad
sign.  She didn't know ANY of the short hand...i had to stand
there and dictate to her what to type in for the directions.  And
she kept grabbing orders that i hadn't verified yet and she would start
filling them. And i'm like..um...like i said before, when i'm done
verifying, i'll hand them to you.  

And then, basically, the "techs" are responsible for writing down
counseling points, and i usually tell my techs to leave the monitoring
paramters for me to fill out because they haven't learned that stuff
yet....like what the patient's goal Blood pressure/cholesterol/sugar
levels should be.  And then she goes and copies like this huge
list of monitoring parameters from online onto the profile...and those
are really general and not patient specific, so i had to cross the
whole thing out.  And i told her again that I would take care of
that stuff.  and she's like "well, last semester, i used to write
them in"....i was like okay...new semester....new "pharmacist"...new
"rules".

AND THEN....i had a "patient" that was a male...and she goes and
writes, "do not take if planning to become pregnant" as a counseling
point.  yeah....that got crossed out too..i was like..um....men
don't become pregnant.

So i got a little flustered becasue i had to keep on checking up after
her...and i didn't really get to thoroughly check the other tech's work.

But the counseling went okay....you can get one of five grades: 100,
85,70,50, 0.  So from what i heard, everyone was getting 70's
(which is passing)...i ended up getting a "patient" with shoulder pain
and aches from lifting heaving objects....so i recommended advil...it
was pretty straightforward...they didn't mess with me like they did
with other people.  So i ended up with a "solid 85"...heck yeah,
i'll take that.  I would have been fine with a 70!!!

But this section of the class is soooo exhausting...i spent the past
week preparing for it...studying all the OTC meds...and reviewing all
my therapeutics notes from last semester...because you have no idea
what you're going to get.  I haven't even started reading for any
of my other classes yet.  All for 20% of one class....i hate this
class.

So, tomorrow i have community pharmacy lab (community pharmacy = CVS,
Walgreens, Eckgerds, etc) in that class i hate....that's the section of
the class i barely passed last semester (on the other hand, i had the
highest average in the class for the hospital pharmacy lab section of
the class....which just goes to show, they don't teach you anything in
the class....a lot of it is based on what you've already
experienced....and since i have ZERO experience in community
pharmacy.......that part is really difficult for me, since i have no
idea what goes on there). 

Anyhow, this semester's lab is going to be even more difficult than
last semester.  Last semester, part of our grade was
counseling...where we had to counsel the "patient" on one of their
prescriptions......which is pointless because in real life the
community pharmacist never does that.  So this semester, we still
have to counsel, but what they'll do it have us go over to the
over-the-counter section....and they, the "patient", will have some
sort of ailment and we'll have to assess them and choose the right
product for them, counsel them on how to use it, side effects, assess
for possible drug interactions, etc.  But we won't know what
ailment the "patient" will have...so it can be ANYTHING that can be
treated over-the counter.  Not only that, after the counsel
section is over, we have to tell the prof's how the drug works in the
body to produce their effects, which means memorizing the biology and
chemistry of every single over the counter product. Oh, we have to also
recognize the "signs" that indicate that we should refer the patient to
a physician.

UGH, why does this class have to be soooooooooooo annoying.

My favorite band of the moment:  Galactic.....SOOOOOOOOOO
good.....if you like funk jazz, which i LOVE...it's the only kind of
jazz that doesn't put me to sleep/make me feel like I'm in an
elevator. 

SEE PROTECTED!!!!

Week TWO of school.  In this short week i have a group
presentation, an exam, two group meetings and a case
presentation.  school sucks. 

So today, in my peds class, the prof asked if any of us knew why we
can't feed honey to kids under 2 years of age.  I was the only one
that knew....all honey contains botulism spores....so kids under 2 get
botulism.

I am smart.

I saw it on ER.  HAHAHAHA!!

seeeeee protected