Wiiiilllllllmmmmmmaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

So Wilma came and went, and thoroughly trashed the neighborhood ... my grill went into the pool (which is now green with algae), and all the fences came down. No power here, or in the entirety (sp?) of Broward County for that matter, for probably the next two to four weeks. The landline was dead too, but just came up so I'm using dail-up with my laptop battery, which I'll have to charge in the car tomorrow. (An attempt to use the Treo as a bluetooth modem, while initially promising, was a total disappointment). Everyone's safe, luckily ... and since the storm we've had the best weather we've had all year. Our gas stove works too, as well as the running water ... gotta find some way to turn that into electricity. Imagine that, no cable modem, TV, microwave, printer, for a month! Also no businesses are open, no gas stations, no grocery stores. Kind of like the Dark Ages, except with gas, running water, and a laptop and a car, and a working phone line. And a house.

If you look closely at the following picture you can see the grill in the pool - the propane tank is upside down.

ABIM SEP Module I - Internal Medicine

Well, I finished the first module ("Internal Medicine") of the ABIM SEP process, and wanted to present DIODE with some stats, since "If no one else cares, DIODE won't either™".

I had the CD version and copied it (about 70MB total) to my hard drive and ran it from there. It uses Internet Explorer, and I found it somewhat annoying to have to hit the "Next" button 36 times if I wanted to resume at question 37, although I just now discovered that if you hit the "Review" button, you can start at any question you like. Oh well.

It took me a little more than 5 hours, about 1/2 to 1 hour at a time, over the course of 2 1/2 weeks, to do the module. I did the 'research' for the questions entirely on the internet, switching back and forth between IE and Firefox. A few of the questions are actually verbatim on forums out there - though the answers submitted by users tended to vary and some were quite wrong. I did get a lot of the info from eMedicine. Info for the question about vent settings was hard to find on the net, and I guess I could have just cracked open my "ICU Book" or IM'd our resident podcaster, but I found it eventually.

Out of the 60 questions, there were about 17 that I "marked" as not being completely sure about ... passing grade was 70% which means you can get up to 18 wrong, so I just submitted when I was done and wound up with only 6 wrong (most of which I didn't mark). Anyhow as it turns out, you can submit as many times as you want without charge, until you get it right.

All in all, I do think I learned something - if anything, just how to think clinically again since I've been out of the game for so long. I'll certainly be prepared to tell scombroid reaction from ciguatera if that ever arises here at home in the next few weeks (before I forget again.)

I went ahead and ordered the other 4 IM modules, which cost $392. (Sadly, I don't have an employer that will pick up the tab). Hopefully I can get them done by 12/2, since I'll be leaving for Japan then and will be gone for most of December.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, here is an absolutely enormous photograph of Henri Delbeau that I found: http://www.wipac.org/images/Comp2005_Henri%20Delbeau.jpg

Go White Sox! (I can't stand the Angels. "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim"? Whatever!!!!)

Medical Humor!

I know you've all gotten the email from the mailing list, but I just wanted to make it easier for our friendly neighborhood search engine to find the latest & greatest medical humor, medical satire, medical jokes, and nursing humor.

(Hey, the blog's gotta be useful for something, right?)