January 15th 2009- Coldest day of my life

When I woke up this morning, I sent a text message to google to find out the weather forecast... and it came back -17 degrees! I was shocked and a little leary about stepping outside but I bundled up anyway in my new scarf, gloves, ski coat and headed out to class. It was sooooo cold! Once inside the lecture hall I decided again to check the weather and this is what I found..."feels like -35 degrees!" I can assure you that it felt cooold!!! I will not be getting on the plane to antartica anytime soon thank you very much!

Lectures today were about the pancreas and adrenal glands, and a mumps epidemic that occured in Iowa in 2005. Nothing too exciting except that the reason for the mumps epidemic was from college age kids who only had one booster shot and were exposed from someone who came from england.

For our MLK jr celebration we had a guest speaker, James Jones Ph.D. from Washington DC, who gave a lecture on the very contrioversial 40 year study that was done by the US public health department in Tuskegee, Alabama. From 1933- 1973 the Public Health department INTENTIONALLY denied African Americans treatment for syphilis in this area so they could study the course of the disease. I dont have time to go into all the details but I gotta say that it was morally wrong in so many ways! Why do you need to study a disease when there is already a KNOWN cure!? And then only in African Americans? Unbelievable. Obviously there was some racial bias that went along with it and it started out with good intentions(the study started before the cure was found in the 1940's) but should've been stopped when the cure was found! End of story. Americans have come a long way, but it still amazes me sometimes racial biases that were present.

And lastly, the results are in from the rotations lottery and I will be heading to Ohio next year. In two weeks another lottery will be held to find out the specific site. I'm excited but a little nervous to move yet again. But it really is the best situation for me. I'll keep ya'll posted on where exactly I end up

January 12th 2009-not bad for a monday

Its been awhile since i've blogged, and this may be my first post ever on a weekday. I would be unwise to fail to mention before I get to the day at how fantastically awesome Thanksgiving and Christmas were! I got to go home and visit lots of family and friends and it was so much fun! I loved sitting around chatting, playing games and laughing with each other! I even got to spend alot of time with the girl i've been dating the last few months, Makenna Barton! I intend to post some pictures and describe the specifics of christmas then...so when my camera arrives in the mail and I have some time, i'll do that.

As per my family, and anyone else who is interested (I won't be offended if you're not), I'm going to try to post more frequent, short entries of my day to day activities here in Iowa and hopefully I don't get carried away and take away from my precious study time doing it. :) I woke up to snow and cold temperatures this morning and got to class at 8 am, which was a first for the new year. Lately i've been sleeping in and listening to the lectures on mp3 at double speed, hoping that would save time. It was good to wake up and get there on time especially since the Dean of the medical college was lecturing on thyroid cancer. Interesting fact from that lecture: the most common thyroid cancer, papillary cancer, has the best prognosis(90% survival) of the 5 or so cancers you can get. Next lecture taught by a funny German guy who I sometimes had a hard time understanding with his accent. He talked about the thyroid and parathyroid's role with Calcium. Interesting fact from his lecture: If the body is low on calcium, the Parathyroid releases the parathyroid hormone and it resorbs calcium from the bone to raise your blood calcium level. I used the next few hours to study for the ethics exam this afternoon, which turned out to be easy! I guess that means i'm an ethical person. ;) After owning almost every challenger in ping pong in the ritual after test tournament, I spent the rest of the day preparing for the upcoming endocrine exam on wednesday. I did take a few breaks to use the Wii (it helps with my future surgical skills;) ), and read the Scattered Suns, book 4 in the saga of the seven suns. Tomorrow I will be studying all day for the endocrine exam...don't be jealous of me...I know you are! But the most exciting news of the day: Brad and I worked out a way that i'll be flying to Milwaukee to spend the MLK Jr weekend with him! I'll keep you posted on how this turns out.

Lastly, the CES fireside with President Monson last night was fantastic!! If you didn't see it, get a copy of the transcript!