Tag: Medicine

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Exoskeleton Troubles or Crown of Despair.

I’ve finally stopped biting my nails (and I’ll write a detailed howto article about that in a little while). But as soon as I fixed that, I broke my one an only fake tooth.

You see, one of my childhood friends was chasing me (with the intention of beating me up for something or other), and caused me to trip. I chipped my front tooth. When I was already in the US, my former half-assed dentist talked me into killing off that tooth and turning it into a crown. The result of his work was pretty sucky — the crown came out in a year or so. But by then I had a really, really good dentist replace it. And that lasted my a good while.

But a few days ago I carelessly bit into a piece of chicken. There was a loud crunch and…..

Luckily my other childhood friend is a second year dental resident (yes, dentists have an option to go into residence, although it’s not required). I could not get a dental appointment with my regular dentist until the 18th, but my friend took that x-ray the same day.

In any case, I’ll need an implant (or a bridge, which I don’t want to do). For a couple of months I’ll have to wear a temporary replacement called a “flipper”. I know, har-har, flipper.

But at least the implant is cool. An implant is basically a titanium screw that goes directly into the bone. It’s installed by either a dental surgeon or a specialist.

Woohoo! Titanium! I’ll see if I can get a laser cannon, cell phone or a supercomputer mounted in there. We have the technology, right?

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Down the Memory Lane

When I was in high school, I got into this summer program for underprivileged kids. We’d work 4 days in a children’s camp near Floyd Bennet Field, and then for 1 day we’d spend a day in a training center.

The job was somewhat easy – a couple of hours cleaning and then helping camp counselors with activities. I mostly helped with fishing – casting the rods and baiting the hooks and such (I was the only one in the lot of us who had that skill). One kid even caught a fluke once. But everyone involved got a nice tan and a lot of fresh air.

The training part was a bit demeaning though. I remember how they staged a little game show where if you answered a question right, you got a condom. White for 1 point, red for 3 points and black for 5 points. Many of my co-workers already had children, so the idea was valid. But geeks like me usually don’t get to have sex in high school, so that was a bit demeaning. I am not even talking about the fact that the instructor chuckled when he assigned color values to the “prizes”.

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Rubor, Dolor, Tumor, Color!

Found new LiveJournal community, med-school.livejournal.com. Oh, man! What was I missing!

“I was poking around in my cadaver today just kind of checking out the pelvis”
“I did a history and physical on a patient today with one of those “weird” problems”
“They flush out all the blood in our cadavers”

And most importantly:


“Getting a radioactive seed implant for prostate cancer is pretty humiliating. You get to lie on your back, spread eagle, while somebody shoves a phallic-shaped ultrasound up your ass [skip] My patient farted about 50 times during the procedure”

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Good, Better, the Best / Never have a rest / ‘Till Good becomes Better and / Better becomes the Best

That was a little rhyme that my English teacher used to help us remember irregular forms of adjective “best”.

In New York cops are called “New York’s Finest” and firefighters are called “New York’s Bravest”.

But let’s not forget about the lesser known adjective described services:

NYC Department of Sanitation Workers: “New York’s Strongest”
Corrections Officers : “New York’s Boldest”
TLC Enforcement Officers : “New York’s Proudest”
EMS drivers and paramedics : simply “New York’s Best”.

And they are all exactly that, and more.

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Enema of the State

I am a caffeine aficionado. I mostly take it in form of espresso, but I don’t mind getting my daily allowance from regular coffee, soft drinks and/or caffeine tablets. I’ve been known to spike tea with caffeine. But recently I learned about two other methods which are probably taking it too far:

  • As it is well known, chemicals are absorbed very rapidly through the colon. I hear of coffee enemas being taken by celebrities like Janet Jackson. Treat depression, my ass. Huh, that actually makes sense :)
  • Caffeinated soap. I am actually thinking about trying this one. I am just not sure that it actually delivers 250 mg per shower and does not just contain that much.