I don't post often enough for anyone to have the context for what I want to say.

My third-year rotation schedule:
-Internal Medicine (outpatient)
-Internal Medicine (inpatient)
-General Surgery
-Behavioral Health (inpatient psychiatry)
-Pediatrics
-Family Medicine
-Obstetrics/Gynecology
-Obstetrics/Gynecology (elective, in Allentown, PA)
-Nephrology (elective, in Fort Wayne)
-Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (elective, in Indianapolis)
-Neurosurgery (elective, in Oak Ridge, TN) <== current rotation
-Pediatrics (elective, in Kingsport, TN)

DCOM treats every rotation as being worth 8 credit hours, so I'll have 88 credits from this year. No C's yet.

I've also taken courses on visceral manipulation and gone to the AAO Convocation. The Cranial Academy's annual conference is in June and should be as interesting as last year.

My sister is getting married in July!

Amazon sent me an E-mail with Tennessee sales or use tax information on it. My total purchases last year were $2,030. Of course, I don't reside in Tennessee.

Yay student loans!

Today at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, I overheard a woman talking to someone about how her daughter actually believes that Zeus, Persephone, Saturn and other gods and goddesses from various mythologies are real. And she had said, "Mommy, lets color pictures as gifts for Zeus!"

She wasn't going to play that game.

"Every session of CranioSacral Therapy, Energy Cyst Release, SomatoEmotional Release, and Therapeutic Imagery and Dialogue requires, if it's to be successful, the participation of the therapist. If the therapist does not blend with and become one with the patient, the treatment method is not one of those named here." - Upledger, Cell Talk.

Therefore these are not osteopathy.

Now that I'm on an elective rotation much closer to home, I've been able to go to my home church these past few Sundays (yay!). On Lent 1, there was a paper in the bulletin about reading one chief part of the Small Catechism per day during Lent, and repeating the cycle each week. (And that there's plenty of time to read through the whole Large Catechism during the same season.) So I'm trying to (re-)memorize the Small Catechism during Lent, though so far it's amounting to one chief part per week on its respective day while picking at the rest. My own SC is in storage, and all I have are the LSB, Treasury, and Concordia. Not conducive to the hospital or the office!

More later on my circumstances and rotations.

You know that smell that sinks in to everything, that acrid, ammonia scent of dried urine (especially cat) on the carpets, of a white trash mobile home, or perhaps the house of one of your shut-ins? That's what taleggio cheese smells like. Thankfully it appears limited to the rind and isn't overpowering. And the cheese itself tastes pretty good on some pane Italian bread.

Brought to you by Wegman's supermarkets, which actually has this kind of stuff. Puts Kroger to shame.

You know what's good? Soy milk with your raisin bran. Though I don't know if it's the vanilla.

I'm deleting Facebook. But there's this message at the bottom:

"Note: Even after you deactivate, your friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos, or ask you to join groups. If you opt out, you will NOT receive these email invitations and notifications from your friends."

I don't care if they save my account in a way that can be reactivated in 20 years. But I sure don't want anyone to be able to see or tag me in any way during that time.

This old userpic is 93x100 pixels. What was I thinking?! Was there something I was trying to clip out of those other 7 on the right border when I made it?

Since my listening is parsed out, and I have to listen to a bunch at once: there's a certain increasing brutality to Petersen's sermons.

Pediatrics rotation. I love the children and little babies! Got through my second cold already too. Now I just need to get studying for that shelf exam...

I'm one week in on my pediatrics rotation, though Thursday and Friday were off. The children are so much fun. And I'm already so sick, with this horrible cold that came on in a day and has all the snotty runniness you'd expect from a kid. I'm exhausted and can't sleep.

Wednesday night: Peruvian
Thursday lunch: Turkish
Thursday dinner: Italian
Friday lunch: Vietnamese
Friday supper: South African
Saturday lunch: Afghani
Saturday supper: Greek
Sunday lunch: Indian

Including lamb four days in a row. =D

I take back what I've said in the past.

I could live in New York City.

My mom called. She couldn't sleep. =(

They did get her grandmother's loom moved to safety beforehand.

The bookstore basement had water to the ceiling and beyond. I didn't know books could float.

Owego is destroyed. Not really, but the damage is incredible.

Water did not make it onto the first floor of the bookstore, but it was out on the street and sidewalk and running down the cellar steps to the basement, where my dad always kept half-off books that he could lose in a flood. At home, 'up to my sister's crotch' on the first floor.

The Owego gauge never recorded anything after 38 feet at 6 AM; it probably got to 40, 4 feet past the record.

Owego still reeling from flood waters

Estimated 90% of commercial buildings in Owego affected. Owego was cut off.

http://www.pressconnects.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=CB&Dato=20110908&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=109080807&Ref=PH

Picture #12 of 23 has my dad's bookstore, the yellow building in the upper left.

It went over the flood walls in Binghamton, I think.

This sucks. =(

But no one in the area died.

Owego is flooding. The crest in 2006, the record flood, was 35.9 feet at the Owego gauge on the Susquehanna River. Water was visible down in the grate on the first floor at home. With the flooding up there from Lee's remnants (and still raining hard), it was forecast to equal that flood, around 8 AM tomorrow morning. Now the forecast is for 38.1 feet at 8 PM tomorrow. It's around 34 feet right now.

This one is coming in as a flash flood, though. My mom said she's never seen the river rise this quickly before. They got some important things off the first floor, hopefully all. She is staying at home tonight.

I wish I were at home to help. =(

Orientation is tomorrow and my first internal medicine rotation starts on Tuesday. They put me down in Kingsport for my first rotation, which means I'll be 6 minutes from the nearest available Lutheran church instead of 50, for four weeks. I went there this morning. This church is confusing me.

"Heritage Worship (Traditional)" at 11 AM. It's such a sad thing that the historic liturgy is given a name, like a gimick, to get people to come to the church. Though there's a certain Schadenfreude when the contemporary service is relegated to 8 AM - let them get up earlier. The pastor actually did chant parts of it, including the prayers. The acoustics of the triangular sanctuary are great, no microphone required, and the people there can actually sing, with accompaniment of both trumpet and violin. It looks like there's Communion at that service every Sunday.

One of the ushers, a woman, did the Old and New Testament readings and the responsive psalm between them. From the pulpit side. And the Pastor did the Gospel reading from the lectern side and gave the sermon there. And that greeting thing was thrown in, when I just want to be left alone. The bulletin and website show a lot of gimicky slogans and program names too.

He crossed his thumbs like at Redeemer (and which apparently irritates the Seminary), yet has never been there. I kind of think they're confused too.

But I need a church, and especially the Lord's Supper, lest I die.

My dad brought over black chantrelles (last post). They were good. =) And we went and picked several bags more of them. He dries them up on the 4th floor of the bookstore, and it only takes two days before they become tiny, but can be reconstituted in water in 15 minutes. They blend in with the leaves really well, but it's easier now that I can recognize them.

Today my dad was out picking yellow chanterelles. Except they were the golden chanterelles, which do not have the apricot scent or flavor to them.

There is a genus of mushrooms, Amanita, which is notorious for poisonous or deadly members (95% of fatalities), but some are edible and supposed to be tasty. He found some Amanita caesarea today too. But Amanita is not something you play around with, so he took them to a mushroom expert and brought me along. She identified them based on the base, though at first glance she had thought they weren't. She also assured my dad that he had identified them correctly. Wonder if that counts as 100%...

He cooked them up, and the golden chanterelles too (some with apricot brandy to make up for it really made them better). And she included some chicken of the woods that she had already prepared. They were good. I think, really, that mushrooms aren't all that special just grilled in olive oil and butter, except for some morels I've had. (My dad says you're supposed to have a titch of sugar and salt too.) I like them much better when they're prepared in a special way, like wild mushroom soup in the Adirondacks or a mushroom stuffing one Thanksgiving which were both excellent. And I do detest bell mushrooms and think they're slimy and gross, and would even pick chops of them out a mushroom soup if they were put in.

Oh yes. And a skinny, outdoor, formerly stray cat, who never bites or scratches and apparently will let children nearly pick it up by the head and just leaves if they're too much, yet who has the most wonderfully ferocious purr. =D

Away since Christmas for school and classes and conferences, I'm finally HOME!!! =D

My dad brought over some black chanterelles he collected; we're going to go hunt for more later. =)

COMLEX tomorrow. 400 questions, 8 hours. Prayers appreciated.

Pennsylvania Dutch English

So that's why my relatives near Harrisburg have that funny stress pattern on questions and the more rounded O's. They don't use any of those words, but I hope that the sound pattern doesn't fade in the future.

And a little bit of pride that I had picked up on the language being different around there. =)

As long as I'm taking it this easy, I can't really excuse not posting to LJ.

I did well on a big simulated practice test for Step 1. 400 questions in 8 hours. I slightly beat some smart students who studied more than me. =) So I'm having trouble keeping going on studying this last little bit before next Tuesday. Sigh. The main disappointing thing on that is that I ought to be on Skype helping a classmate, especially because I remember everything we talked about, and it's over one of my weak points.

I'm in Fort Wayne now. Here are some fun things so far:

2/2 on the 4 opportunities for Communion before COMLEX. Not counting the Tuesday one at the Seminary that I didn't even think about. =/

Went swimming at a friend's pond. A deer fly bit me and a mast cell degranulated on my face, with the swelling slowly filling out a ring around my left eye. That's mostly gone now.

I brought up some frozen meats to use up so I won't have to figure out where to store them over the summer. So we had lamb yesterday, and I cooked lamb spiedies tonight at that friend's pond. And salt potatoes too; I haven't made them before but they're great! So thirsty now...

Another volume of Gerhard's Theological Commonplaces. I guess I'm locked in on that series now, at what looks like one new volume per year. Funny to have it be number XXV as the fourth one printed, though that means there's no predictability for any topics I might be interested in.

Went to a Tin Caps game. Jonathan sang the National Anthem really well, again. They won 7-0.

Have to get through Tuesday's hurdle, then a conference and a class and moving my things down in Tennessee, then I get to really enjoy my month off. =)

I'm taking step 1 of the boards on June 14th. 8 hours, 400 questions, or something like that. I'm having a hard time getting going on studying. Part of it's from fatigue, part from not having to study so hard to do well up to this point. Part is actually because the material is so beautiful and I'm disappointed that we can't spend four years learning the science portion intimately. I wish I hadn't gone into hiding and had kept up helping everyone else out with the material; that really kept me going before.

A few things are encouraging me, however:

• The inaugural class had its graduation on Saturday. I'm so proud. =)
  
  
• A group of us went out and got a tour of our core rotation site today.
  
  
• The material really is that interesting. So I'm starting to have fun even though the review questions are still blowing me out of the water.
  
  
• I'm going to be a doctor. Osteopathic medical student is my vocation, and it's a God-pleasing thing to do the work He's given me: study.

When I'm dreading it, it's easy to wish for bad things to happen that will delay boards. But I need to keep after this. Some classmates comment on Facebook that they're not going to use that until afterwards, but what's best for me is to just turn this laptop off altogether. =) Please pray for me, my friends.

Taste on the anterior two thirds of the tongue is innervated by the facial nerve (cranial nerve VII), which fibers make up the chorda tympani before piggy-backing in on other nerves as components of the autonomic nervous system are wont to do. The areas for sweet, sour, and salty are up here. Touch sensation for the anterior two thirds happens to go back via cranial nerve V (trigeminal), however.

Taste on the posterior one third of the tongue is innervated by the glossopharyngeal nerve (IX). The glossopharyngeal nerve is also the sensation part of the feedback loop that does the gag reflex. Bitter taste is on the posterior third of the tongue, so maybe this is why bigger things can make us gag. (Some poisonous things are bitter, like wild type almonds, which produce cyanide.)

There are more taste buds distributed around the pharynx and epiglottis, which are innervated by the vagus nerve (X). The insides of the cheeks and the roof of the mouth have some too; I don't know just what picks those up, but it probably matches the others embryologically.

Most of "taste," though, is controlled by the sense of smell, and food becomes relatively bland to people whose smell is diminished. Thankfully the neurons for both smell and taste regenerate, unlike the rest of the nervous system! There's also some thought that the taste buds reflect drives to eat things based on the needs for body homeostasis - glucose for energy and building: sweet, sodium for osmolarity: salty, acid for pH: sour. I guess bitter is alkaline for the other end of pH? And umami (which eternally makes me think of leoetiquette!) for protein (for building), specifically the amino acid glutamate, though those taste buds don't seem to have a particular localization.

So, there are taste buds lining the tongue, mouth, and throat. The Ali Baba Time Out Deli in Knoxville (serving Mediterranean food) hits all of them.

Man is their food fantastic!!!!!