Big Bend Camping Adventure Extravaganza Part I

So my fourth year of medical school has officially started -- with absolutely nothing to do with medicine. Actually, I lie. My fourth year of medical school started with a trip to Lake Travis, but I do not have any pictures to share of that yet so why quibble over details? The point is, I am now a fourth year medical student and it's time to start brain-purging vital clinically relevant information!

Anyways, amongst all my scheming for the upcoming year this is one of the few trips I've had any success in putting together and might I say it went off... flawlessly? Perhaps not flawlessly, but I must say I rock at planning trips to Big Bend. Irregardless, we left last Tuesday morning, drove some seven or so hours, and arrived Tuesday afternoon. The drive was, unsurprisingly, boring. The South Texas desert landscape was pretty, but after 30 minutes or so of it by car it all kind of looks the same. There was one natural curiosity to be observed, however, and that was Adam driving with his lights on in the middle of the afternoon. Why? Some say swamp gas, but the truth may never be known.

That evening we also took a quick hike down to "The Window" which was a lovely rectangular space between two large stone walls which provided a lookout over a significant portion of the lower park. Never satisfied with what Nature provides; Josh, Paul, and I decided to climb up one of the flanking hill sides in order to obtain an even better view of the valley below. Although our ascent was successful, we each returned with a variety of cuts, scrapes, and abrasions complements of the local plant fauna. It seems all desert plants have a different way of greeting you with a two inch barbed appendage. The rest of our evening was spent relatively uneventfully at our camp in Chisos Basin aside from a frantic 3 AM securing of rain flies due to a hysterical fear of an impending rain which never materialized.

The next two days were then spent on the mighty Rio Grande or at least what there is of it. I feel that I was misled to believe as a child in elementary school that the Rio Grande was an impressive, powerful river on par with the Colorado and Mississippi. Well, my friends, it's not. It's mostly mud and heavy metals it turns out. Not that our rafting trip wasn't a good time nevertheless, just that most of our time was spent floating idly, followed by boat-dragging, and then only lastly by actually rafting through anything resembling rapids. All that aside, most the first day was spent outside Santa Elena Canyon and in the hot, hot sun while most of the second day was spent deep inside said canyon taking it easy and avoiding further mutagenesis. Our overnight campground though a bit hard to find was amazing, and truly we were the only ones out there aside from a few cows, road runners, and raccoons.

Thursday night we returned our raft and returned to the Chisos Basin campground. We finished off the macaroni, chili, and spaghetti dinner trifecta, had ourselves some wine, popcorn, and s'mores, and promptly retired for a good night's rest. The next day Adam, Paul, and Annie headed back early to take care of whatever needed to be taken care of, while Sara, Josh, and I trekked off for one last hike to Cattail Falls which our old-hippie shuttle driver had pointed out to us the day prior as the best unmarked hike in the park. While it was unmarked it was certainly not unknown, but despite doing the hike with a few other groups of people the end pool and falls were quite lovely. An impressive waterfall only when noted its location in the desert, the hike provided a nice end to our Big Bend experience. After that we hiked back to our car and unceremoniously drove the seven hours back to San Antonio for a prompt return to showers, full meals, and climate controlled residences. Not necessarily the most wild foray into the bush ever, but, I've come to realize, not too bad for a bunch of city-slicking medical students.

For the rest of the my trip photos check out:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Scott.Scooter.Crabtree

For Sara's trip photos check out:
http://pictures.aol.com/ap/viewShare.do?shareInfo=qehO4z9cYlmELnYkvLWV%2b98GCFE3TuiFIj0fxlUJWuBWGd%2bBXiXp6w%3d%3d

An Opportunistic Divorce?

Rarely does a divisive civil war lead to much good, but in Palestine perhaps a little division is the opportunity long since needed.

The opportunity amongst the tragedy is for all to see in real time two different Palestines under two different governments trying their hand at existing in the Middle East. Potentially their citizens can compare and contrast the continued economic strangulation of Hamas-lead Gaza with the rebirth of a Fatah-lead West Bank funded by a return of its Israeli collected taxes and Western aid. They can see that ideology and violent resistance is nice to talk about, but it will never succeed in bringing food to the table. Likely things will go amiss in the scheme as Fatah will remain corrupt and Hamas will export its terrorism, but nevertheless things can’t always go wrong. Then again, in the Middle East, I could be wrong.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4669266.stm

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0615/p25s02-wome.html

There’s Crazy and then There’s Crazy

Having just about finished my third year of medical school including my psychiatric rotation I can say with confidence, “there sure are a lot of crazy people out there.” Considering that the prevalence of schizophrenia (http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic520.htm) is believed to be anywhere from .5 – 1% of the population, go into any large body of people and there’s a good chance a few of them will be completely out of their minds.* While that’s a bit disturbing, what is perhaps a bit more mind blowing – to me at least – is that sometimes these unfortunate people aren’t quite as crazy as they seem. Although the following stories are mostly fabricated, they’re loosely based on accounts I in at least some small part had a role in.

One patient, who since we’re in South Texas we’ll call him Juan, lived for years obsessing over the opposite sex. While this isn’t entirely too unusual for many guys, Juan’s obsession was accompanied by a full cast of supporting characters that existed only in his head. Throw into the mix a few delusions about the world around him and some unorganized thinking and we had ourselves a typical schizophrenic patient. Or so we thought. One particular story he consistently returned to, which we of course seeing through his psychotic ruse knew to be a hallucination or delusion of some sort, dealt with his recent girlfriend who we’ll call, oh, Juana. As the story goes, Juan, who as far as we can tell had never had a girlfriend before, met Juana at a friend’s place and they quickly hit it off. One thing led to another and they shortly became friends and then more than friends. One day, however, Juana decided to share her deep, dark secret that she, in fact, was a dude. Yes, only a short time ago she had been a man, but thanks to the miracle of cosmetic surgery she had fashioned herself into the woman she had always wanted to be. Juan was pissed and we were confused. Initially we saw this as an indication to step up his antipsychotic medications but through continued questioning with Juan, friends, and family we came to the realization that, despite the weirdness of it all, Juana did in fact exist, was in fact at one time a chic, and Juan, the poor guy, wasn’t quite as psychotic as we thought him to be. A troubled guy no doubt, but not all that crazy.

Our second unfortunate patient goes by the name of Juanita and she too had a long history of schizophrenia. She also had a long history of stories relating to people breaking into her apartment, messing around with her stuff, stealing a knick knack here and a few bucks there, and promptly leaving just as mysteriously as they came. Police efforts were hampered by the fact that Juanita kept a pretty messy place and there was no sign of forcible entry into her apartment. It would be months more during which she would receive treatment for the rest of her psychotic symptoms while fully maintaining that the stories of her home invaders were true before we’d find out the real source of her scattered paranoia.

It was on one not particularly unusual evening that Juanita came home to find that yet again things in her home were not as she had left them. She couldn’t quite place it, but things just seemed different. In particular there was an open beer can on her couch which she knew had certainly not been there when she left. Armed with this evidence she once again called the cops, and once again they came to do a cursory search of the premises. This time, however, the villain made it easy for them for they found, in the bedroom, a wallet casually lying about complete with identification. The owner of the wallet and license turned out to be a local vagrant who the police were already well acquainted with and within a few days he was arrested, questioned, and had confessed that, on a regular basis, he would wait till the woman left for work, sneak in through an unlocked window in her bedroom, help himself to her snacks and drinks while he watched television, and then promptly leave again before she returned home. Once again we realized that, in reality, saying crazy shit doesn’t always mean you’re crazy. And one out of five Americans have a Soviet-era chip in their brain.

*That’s not absolutely true as many schizophrenics receive treatment and control their psychosis while the really nutty ones tend to live in hospitals and under bridges, but it’s close enough if you add into uncategorized psychotics, the depressed people with psychotic features, and those actively nuts secondary to active drug use.

Salty Plum Soda

Many things can be said about the Vietnamese: short, communist, rice paddies; but all my uncultured stereotypes aside we can perhaps add a new word to our Indochinese related vocabulary. Maybe, ingenious?

It seems that while the Western world is still fiddling with adding shots of vanilla and cherry to its sodas or vitamins and dyes to its water, the Vietnamese have taken it to an entirely new level by combining soda, salt, and fruit all into one remarkably vile beverage. A short while back some friends and I went to dine at a local Vietnamese restaurant which we heard was both generous with its portions and cheap on price. It turned out to be both, but what carried the day was not consumer economics but rather the restaurant’s drink selection. I originally purchased what we will, for lack of a better word, call a “coke” for a friend, but in the end we somehow all had a little bit of a taste of what is officially known as “salty plum soda.”

To be brief, it tasted like a mouthful of the Pacific Ocean. The plum, mostly dissolved, from what I could tell only served to give it the texture of what I imagine vomit mixed with mineral water would feel like. There was no hint of plum flavor, fruitiness, or even sweetness. Just the corrosive mixture of a couple table spoons of salt stirred in to your favorite carbonated beverage.
The waitress asked if there was something wrong with it. We told her it was fine as I imagine it tasted exactly like it was supposed to taste like. That being the worse liquid I have ever willingly put to my lips. I would gamble to guess that if it we stuck in an IV bag and stuck it into someone’s arm it’d cure what ails ya. No electrolyte problems too big with salty plum soda in the house. And perhaps that’s what it was intended for by its original creators so many generations ago: a third world treatment for hyponatremia. But beware the random bout of central pontine myelinolysis (http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic50.htm)! Or, perhaps, the Vietnamese just have weird tastes in horrible drinks.

The drink was a disaster, but like much of our third year of medicine it is the times of suffering that bring us together. After tasting the drink and paying the bill we all agreed to remain: best friends forever!

First Post: Paris Hilton

As is only proper being an upstanding American citizen, I feel my first post must be about Paris Hilton. That whore.

All arguments as to whether Paris is a bad person or not aside, I am surprised not so much by the amount of press Paris's imprisonment is heralding, but by how much universal spite and gall there seems to be for the woman. Good lord the nurses were up in arms when they heard of her release a few days ago. I think a good ol' fashioned lynching would have taken place had Paris been in Southern Texas as opposed to Southern California. In as much as I'm inclined to not like her, I have to admit I don't know her, and, more importantly, I can't seem to find a good reason why we should even care. Have we not enough faith in our justice system to perform appropriately and make the right decisions? Have we not enough sympathy to realize that what is likely a shallow woman with likely an even more empty, frivolous life is also dealing with what is speculated to be a serious drug addiction or a psychotic break? Have we not better things to do with our time? I don't know, perhaps all this hateful hubbub is making our country stronger, our children smarter, and our crops grow faster. Personally, I'd rather waste my time with World of Warcraft or watching squirrels loot our bird feeder -- ha, ha, those crazy squirrels.

Anyways, this temporary aside aside, future posts will hopefully be more autobiographical or at the very least amusing. If not, well, we had a good run.

And as for Paris, perhaps some dissociative fugue is in order...
(http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3484.htm)