Friday, July 18, 2008

Your Integument System is Showing.

Today I bought my first text book! The cover alone makes me cringe at how academic-looking it is. It brings back flashbacks of my pre-med days 12 years ago. But, what freaked me out more than the book was that today I also received my schedule for my first course: Intro to Biomedical Sciences, or IBS, not to be confused with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which I will probably get as a result of that course.

Why did the schedule scare me? Well, for one, it's 10 days long, seven hours a day, but I knew that when I signed up for it. The second reason is that I have no idea what the title of first section (meaning 1:15 PM to 4 PM on day one) even means. Apparently, I will be studying the "Integument System". Yes, I had to look up the word integument. For those of you equally as ignorant as me, integument has to do with all things outer-layer related... skin, hair and nails (I know all about those!), sweat glands and whatever else is on the outside. Tattoos? Maybe. The Integument System section will be followed up in the afternoon by an overview on wounds! Wounds! Woohoo! I'm giving up comedy writing for a year for... wounds!

Okay, maybe I should be less cynical about all this. Perhaps cynicism is how I project my fish-out-of-water nervousness. Speaking of which, I believe the Nervous System will be covered on day two. Maybe the more nervous I am, the better I'll do in that part of the course. We shall see. If so, A+ for me!

In other news, my "Hopkins: The Show" viewing has been progressing nicely. I caught up on the last two episodes last night. What amazed me about the last two episodes is what lengths and expense doctors and hospitals go to save one life. On a recent episode, a team of doctors flew to Puerto Rico for a set of lungs. (The comedy writer in me would make an inappropriate joke here about the origin of the lungs, but alas, I'll refrain). Meanwhile, according to "The Wire", my other Baltimore television obsession, there are kids dying daily on the street in random gunfire. I don't know what it all means in the scheme of things, but the juxtaposition of a team of doctors, nurses and pilots flying to Puerto Rico to save one life versus one person using one bullet to take one life away in a split second.... well, I don't know. Something to think about. Another thing to think about: A lot of my information comes from television. Hmm... Maybe I can buy the Public Health degree set on DVD? I should look into that.

Another interesting, or frustrating, tidbit is that on another episode, the pilots who took the doctors to South Carolina to pick up a heart for a patient in Baltimore, could not bring them back to Baltimore because according to FAA rules, pilots are only allowed to fly for a limited number of hours at a time. Why? Because they'll get tired... and that would be bad as they have people's lives in their hands. And the limit on how many hours a doctor can work at a time? No limit. Doctors can operate on someone on zero hours of sleep... and often times they do. A doctor once raised this point to me a long time ago, probably coming off a surgery on no sleep, and last night it was touched upon on "Hopkins", but not explicitly. A doctor was literally holding someone's heart in SC, needing to get it back to Baltimore, while the pilots who flew the doctor there were on their way to bed, to avoid any chance of falling asleep at the wheel (or whatever pilots use these days). Eventually the doctors coerced other pilots to fly them back to Baltimore in time, but come on. Where's the logic, people?

Speaking of logic, now that I no longer have an income, it's time to treat myself to a big expensive meal with a dear friend before I say goodbye in a week. (Yes, this is the second link to a restaurant in two posts. If I had time and a bigger ego, I'd have a food blog, too. But one blog is more than enough.)

1 comment:

Nia said...

That was a damn good meal and a damn good night. *Sniff