Return of the Blogroll; or Shout-Out Time!

Some of you don't know what a blog roll is, and may think it is a tasty pastry to go with those lady finger sandwiches I wrote about in the last post.  Actually, it's new-fangled code words for "links to other blogs that are lined up on the side of your blog---just move the pointy arrow on your screen over, click on them, and you go there like magic."

So here's a run-down of friends of mine who have blogs.  If you have a blog, and are a friend of mine, lemme know and you can be up there to.  Traffic to your site will increase by leaps and bounds: both of my readers (Hi Mom and Dad!) will visit you on your website.

So, without further adieu:

Embracing the Passion

My friend good friend Lieutenaint J writes about life as an officer in the United States Marine Corps in Iraq.

An American in Paris Phoenix

My friend writes (formerly) about the travails of cooking in Paris, and now about beating the heat in the desert.  (It's a dry heat, they say.  So's the surface of the sun).

Mark&Ali

I did a quick stint in New Orleans, and the wonderful lady who helped organize our trip, Ali, is now working with her husband in ministry in Brazil.  His name is Mark, in case you were wondering :)

The Grande Adventure

My friend Chris, reaching out in the Eternal City.  Plus he links to music all the time.

Crash

My friend Chad, working with Young Life at Central Crossing

Among the Lampstands

Wes writes as only Wes can.

Well that is it for now, folks.  Bye everybody!

A Total Harvest

At the behest of my true friend, and last remaining loyal reader, Chris, I will put up some new content.  Indeed, in honor of Lent, I will try to put something up daily, even if at sometimes I must resort to the trite or mundane, but hopefully I will be able to churn out something worthwhile, at least occasionally.

My ultimate goal for this blog is to serve as a source of commentary on the prospects of professing Christ in a world that is often disinterested, but is often

...as we eat the flour of our pursuits, so, too, shall we live.

disintegrating, as well.  I understand that seems like both a vague and broad undertaking, and a daunting challenge, especially for one business medical student in a middling corner of the flat Midwest.  At this point, and as a means of introduction of my ideas, I can do no better than quote at length TS Eliot, noted poet, Nobel laureate, and erstwhile cultural thinker:

The fact that a problem will certainly take a long time to solve, and that it will demand the attention of many minds for several generations, is no justification for postponing the study.  And, in times of emergency, it may prove in the long run that the problems we have postponed or ignored, rather than those we have failed to attack successfully, will return to plague us.  Our difficulties of the present moment must always be dealt with somehow: but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.  The subject with which I am concerned in the following pages is one to which I an cconvinced we ought to turn our attention now, if we hope to ever to be relieved of the immediate perplexities that fill our minds.  It is urgent because it is fundamental; and its urgency is the reason for a person like myself attemptiong to address, on a subject beyond his usual scope, that public which is likely to read what he writes on other subjects. [More than I can say personally.--TE]  THis is a subject which I could handle better, no doubt,  were I profound scholar in any of several fields.  But I am not writing for scholars, but for people like myself; some defects may be compensated by some advantages; and what one must be judged by, scholar or no, is not particularised knowledge but one's total harvest of thinking, feeling, living, and observing human beings.

From, TS Eliot, Christianity and Culture, Harcourt Brace, 1939, p. 5.

Such is my endeavor, that "the total harvest of thinking, feeling, and living" as a believer in an age of uncertainty will be recorded here.  This apt phrase "total harvest" crystallizes many of my grave concerns facing society today: the compartmentalization of concepts and pursuits into specialized and distinct realms.  And as we sow our thinking, we reap our feelings and ideals, and as we eat the flour of our pursuits, so, too, shall we live.  

When our basic understanding of mankind at a fundamental level is fragmented within the increasingly inward-looking academy, the public eventually responds with indifference and moves to more hedonic pursuits.  And as hedonism is, at its core, selfish, what happens to society as people themselves become more inward-looking?

My goal is to restore and proclaim Truth that builds up such inward personal fulfillment that we can resume humanity's charge to live socially.  That the despair of consumption and its concomitant atomization of our society into the whims of the individual could subside into contentment and forgiveness.  Of course, I don't want to approach this naively, and want to convey emphatically that there are no easy answers, the usual suspects may not be guilty of the sins we charge, and supposed heroes may be flawed at best.  That arguing from conventional labels prevents serious thinking, but also that seeking common ground for fear of contention can be just as much an abdication.  That understanding first demands scrutiny of one's one positions, but not the assumption that apologies and doubt means you're being honest.  Perhaps you're just a wimp.  Strife is never valuable for its own sake, but contention sometimes is necessary.  It's been said before, but there is a difference between the use of a dagger and scalpel.  

I understand there's not much flesh on this skeleton of an argument right now, and you may have doubts or questions.  That's fine, and they're welcome.  I hope over the coming months I can, like in Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones¹, put sinew and muscle on them, and in the process, begin the resuscitation of a dying and dessicated culture.

¹Ezek. 37.

Housekeeping

Well, I'm gonna post a glut of new content. Some Hiding Place (remember that from July) that got lost inside my post manager and forgotten about. Some gallows humor for the economy. Other goodies.

What the heck is a pleural effusion?

During my trip to Europe, my lovely host--and loyal blog reader--Sarah (she's An American in Paris and cooks a mean English-muffin sandwich) suggested that I write about my goings-on as a doctor-to-be amongst the fine pages of this blog. Hence, I shall do so, and I will try and use regular person words so, at the very least, you won’t think I’m as big a dork as I actually am. And you might even learn something.

So today I am shadowing at the Hematology/Oncology ward at my university. And I can see I already lost half of you, so:

Hematology = blood studies
Oncology = cancer studies

So Heme/Onc focuses mostly on blood-related cancers, such as leukemias, which are found primarily in bone marrow, but may migrate elsewhere in the blood to other organs, and lymphomas, which primarily involve lymph nodes, where your body has little store-houses of immune cells that fight off infections (they swell up during infections b/c cells there are rapidly multiplying to fight the invaders, so if you’re sick the doc will often feel under your neck to see if lymph nodes there are enlarged—quick and dirty check to see if you’re infected). Heme/Onc also deals with other blood-related conditions, too, such as sickle cell anemia, which one patient we saw today has.

In any case, today I got to help out with a thoracocentesis—don’t worry, I’ll define it in a sec. Tumors can cause many different secondary effects. We had a patient who developed a pleural effusion, which I’ll define in a sec also, but you first you need to know about your lungs. Your lungs are normally surrounded by membranes—thin layers of tissue, called the pleura. You can see them in this picture from Wikipedia—don’t worry, it’s public domain. The pleural membranes kind of make a balloon—the membranes are in blue, and the space within is in black. Your lungs (red) kind of fit into and are surrounded by the pleura on most sides.

Imagine punching a balloon with your fist, and having it spread all over your clenched hand. This is what the pleura do around the lungs—they cover most of the lung surface, except where the lungs connect to your windpipe and the blood vessels connect to the heart (your wrist punching the balloon). The space in between the layers of the pleura is squashed pretty small. Normally, it’s filled with fluid—about 15 ml, or half an ounce per lung. This allows the inside and outside layers of the pleura to slide across one another when you breathe, so your chest can expand and your lungs fill smoothly.

Sometimes too much fluid can go into the pleural space. This is a pleural effusion, and happened to our patient today as a result of his lymphoma. Here is an x-ray picture from Wikipedia by Clinical Cases that is much like the case I saw today. In both cases, the patients’ right lung (left side of x-ray) is normal—air looks black in x-rays. The left lung is almost completely cloudy due to fluid—not inside the lung, but inside the space around the lung.

Our patient had trouble breathing, so we performed a thoracocentesis. We had him lean over on a table near his bed, and the internist (sort of novice resident) carefully inserted a needle in between the ribs and into the pleural space—but not into the lung. The needle was hooked up to a syringe, which was used to withdraw fluid and pump it through a one-way valve into a bag. This took probably 15-20 minutes from start to finish. When the patient was leaned over with the internist behind him, this transpired:

Patient: “But what if I have to fart?”
Resident (internist’s advisor): “It’s ok, you can fart.”
Patient: “I know, but it would be awfully mean.”

I should note here the patient had two Percosets in the morning. It’s too bad these things don’t get written up in case reports. Then again… (and to think, I’ve been looking all over for “gas impermeable Mylar pantaloons.”)

We removed over 1000 ml of fluid. That's a quart, you metric-hatin' Yankees. And I got to hold the table the patient leaned on so it wouldn’t roll away. I am basically paying $30,000 a year to be a door-stopper. With a white coat. Living the dream.

Also, I know I've been bad about updating, but I'll try to do better. Promise! I know my Week of Being a Real Man turned into a Month of Being a Bum, and everyone's been pestering for the Official Finches and Sparrows Europe Experience, which I just might deliver to you, if I can decipher whatever I scribbled on that napkin at the train station in Munich. Witness the potential--posts on Wall-E; Blade Runner; biological perfectionism; the Louvre and the dying art world; German beers and Italian wines; why your photos are terrible; why my photos are only mediocre; more medical adventures; the long-awaited Weekend Blog round-up; peculiar cocktails you can't afford but wouldn't like anyway; novel art with novels; the best meal of my life; building a culture of heart and hands; the Holocaust; the Gospel according to Mark; T.S. Eliot, and the craziest Italian wedding that didn't involve the mafia (as far as I know).

Plus I might even redesign the blog layout itself, which, if I pull off, will be beautiful, but will require more Photoshop skills than I have, John James Audubon, a better understanding of CSS and XHTML, typographic vector art, a new blog host, and Scotch whisky. Maybe even a fountain pen. I told you it was crazy, and I'll probably just end up spilling liquor and ink all over my computer.

That being said, pray for me.

PS. John, that last inside joke was for you. If you didn't get it, I'm marching down the hall and smacking you.

It's time for Lent Resolutions...

Howdy everybody!

It's good to be back in the saddle...

Well, here's the scoop. I've been thinking about how I've been living lately, and I've kind of been convicted about....well, let's screw the timidity for a moment, and say that I've DEFINITELY been convicted about wasting too much time on the internet, visiting every random blog from yon to hither. My typical routine would be to mark out stuff I'd want to write about, but then I'd never get around to doing it. Meanwhile, the list of feeds in my Google Reader (if you don't know what that is, imagine all the lanes on the Information Superhighway merging together) kept getting larger. I knew something was amiss when I was talking about the political opinions of folks that even my friend Patrick had never heard of, and he has Anderson Cooper on speed dial.

SO. I decided I need to take steps this Lent to be, shall we say, a little less anti-social, and a little more creative. What does this mean?

1. MORE BLOG POSTING ACTION.

I know, you're thinking, "Tyler, you silly doof (goof + doofus), you make less sense than an Arnold Schwarzenegger film" Normally, I'd agree with you, but hear me out...this way I am actually communicatin with y'all, and some of you even seem to like what I have to say. Plus, I can finally write some stuff I've wanted to, and you might find it edifying. If there aren't too many links to Youtube.

2. THE GOOGLE FEED IS DELETED.

I am not checking the horde of blogs for Lent, making two very special exceptions I will write about in a post in the next week or so. So the link to my Google Reader on my homepage is deleted. Or "Baleeted!" if you're a Homestar fan. This means no more American Scene, no more Evangelical Outpost--even no more Crunchy Con!! Believe me, this hurts. And believe me, this also shows how much of a nerd I actually am. But won't be for long. Hopefully.

3. I WILL BE CALLING YOU.

And asking you how are things? Cause it would be good to know.

4. INDIANA JONES is COMING BACK

This has nothing to do with anything, but it is important nonetheless. Check this out. Even John will admit that it's cooler than Lost.

Well, that is it for now...I should have some stuff up in the next few days or so. Keep them eyes peeled.

Quick question---do you guys actually LIKE the random links I put in here? Cause if they're distracting, consider them----BALEETED!

The picture above is by Ewing Galloway and is available as a poster here. Just so I'm not infringin' on anybody's copyright. Wouldn't be the cowboy way, now would it?