Meta Picture Monday

Happy Easter!

While Easter Sunday technically celebrates Jesus rising from the dead three days after his crucifixion, it is also a time filled with bright colors, egg hunts and Easter candy.  Each year the Washington Post puts together a competition for people to create the best Peep diorama boxes.  Check out some of the winners!

Actual Club G

As an undergrad we used to joke that we were heading off to Club G many weekend nights; my poor mother thought for weeks we were going off to some hot new club.  Instead, we were heading to the Gelman Library, the main undergrad library at GW.  Most of the floors had big group rooms and were more for socializing/putting in your required "study hours" for your sorority/frat.  If you ACTUALLY had to study you headed to the top two floors to hide in the stacks.

Anyway, as I am sitting in the library late on a Saturday night, studying for pharm, I am amazed with the number of undergrad students who are here; almost all of the seats are filled in my reading room as if it was a normal Wednesday afternoon.  Dear reader you should keep one thing in mind as I am typing this all up: the only other time I have actually been in a library on a Saturday evening was three weeks ago when I was studying for my first pharm exam.  Who knew the hot spot on a Saturday would be the library?  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.  Whatever happened to work hard, play hard?  Emphasis on play hard on the weekend.  It is nice that they post a sign at the door/security post saying that they have the right to take anyone being too disruptive out of the library.

Well back to the grind for me.  

132 days until summer vacation starts (yay for no vacation between level 2 and 3)!!

Doubling Down on Some Erythrocytes

After weeks of getting calls from the Red Cross about making a blood donation, I finally was able to make it to a drive.  The one going on to day was especially for CMW negative donors and until two weeks ago, I had no idea I fit into that category.  Have you ever heard of someone saying they are a "baby donor"?  Yeah me neither.  Basically it means that you have not been exposed to the cytomegalovirus (a flu-like virus in the herpes family).  Most people are asymptomatic and don't even know they have CMV.  One of the reasons why it is so important is that it is the preferred kind of blood for pediatric transfusions.  If young children are given blood with CMN, it can lead to some serious medical complications and even death.

 

While I was answering all of the preliminary questions, the tech asked if I was interested in doing a double donation (I fit the ht/wt/hemoglobin parameters and I also have A- blood).  A double whole blood is where they take two pints of red blood and give you back your platelets and plasma.  The best part is they pump you up with some saline so you do not lose all that volume (things they don't do with a normal donation.  They also use a smaller needle so it is more comfortable.  So in honor of all things SUS this summer, I decided to double down. 

Common side effect of double red donations: tingling lips - think of the feeling you get in your foot when it falls asleep.  Basically the quick and dirty reason (because we all know that you have no interest in the pathophysiology) is because of the anticoagulant (citrate) used during the apheresis collection; it causes a temporary decrease in ionized calcium levels.  The quick fix ... suck on some Tums which worked pretty quickly. 

You also can get kind of chilly as they pump the platelets and normal saline back into your veins (everything goes back in at room temperature which is about 30 degrees lower than your normal body temp), but the fleece blanket came in handy.  And before you ask: no this is not me, no this is not someone who was also donating blood.  He just has the face I would have probably made had I remembered to have someone take my picture. 

Want to learn a bit more about the process, check out this video 

(it was one of the better ones I could find out there).

Best part about the donation ... the snacks you get when you are all done.  This donation center had the best snacks going (trust me I have done this a time or two).

Fingers crossed, it won't mess me up too badly for the Sole of the City 10k next month.

In Honor of Our Last PSYC Clinic!

Well the last eight weeks have FLOWN BY.  Not only does that mean that we are half way through level two, it also means that we all survived our PSYC rotation.  

And now off to start Adult Health I. 

Dementors: A Metaphor for Depression?

Perhaps everyone of my generation is familiar with Harry Potter.  How many of you secretly wished/hoped to get a letter before your eleventh birthday inviting you to study at Hogwards? 

Throughout history, authors and artists have used their mental illness to create some brilliant work; Beethoven, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens are just to name a few.  It is well documented that J.K. Rowling suffers from depression and she used her downward spiral to create one of the greatest metaphors for depression ... the dementors. 

These characters:

• Feed on positive emotions and force people to relive their worst memories
• Can fill a person with overwhelming sadness and hopelessness
• Can preform The Kiss, an action which sucks a person's soul away and leaves nothing but an empty shell
• Cannot be killed.  The only way to get rid of the dementors is to conjure a Patronus which is formed by thinking of the happiest, most powerful memory a person possesses.

Check out the full article over at Heart of Glass. 

Pretty Much IN LOVE With the Kid President

The kids (and adults who are really kids at heart) danced and the Kid President's crew put the videos together for two minutes which will only put a smile on your face!!