Endoscopy is Cool

Gastroenterology is very procedure-based. I saw one of these today.



Down the esophagus, through the lower esophageal sphincter, through the body of the stomach, down the antrum, and out through the pylorus into the duodenum.

New name!

I think it's about time I rechristened this blog, particularly since I'm no longer living in Waterloo and unlikely to return there that soon (and certainly not to live). It is very wintry in Halifax, though, so I might consider going with "Habitating in Halifax" - nice and alliterative. That's perhaps a bit silly, though, so I might have to think of something else. I might change the template too. We shall see! I'm welcome to any suggestions of course.

Concerning winter air travel...

It's not too fun. In December, flying from Halifax to Toronto necessitated waiting from 8:30am to 3:30pm to find out that our flight was cancelled, and subsequently waiting until after midnight to depart on our rebooked flight. This rebooked flight routed us through Montreal, so we sought and found a quiet area in the departure lounge at Dorval to "sleep" for a bit before our 6:30am flight to YYZ. All in all, we spent about 24 hours from arriving at the Halifax airport to arriving at Pearson. It wasn't *that* bad, and I can't blame the airlines for the weather or icy runways (and unlike WestJet, Air Canada has many more flights on more routes, along with a "secret" reservations line for relatively quick re-bookings), but I'd sooner fly in the summer or, well, at any time of year apart from Dec/Jan.

The trip back was a dream in comparison. I had a brief stopover in Ottawa, whereupon I was called to the gate as I evidently needed to change seats. They put me in executive class and, as ever, the Seinfeld depiction is almost wholly accurate (though my meal was just a light lunch).

Random Stuff

I've been quiet of late, primarily because of being away from the internet (or else focussing on physiology). Next week we delve into the workings of the gastrointestinal system. Exciting, eh? Interestingly, Dr Des Leddin, the head of GI at the QEII here in Halifax (and our intial GI lecturer), appears in this CBC story concerning a study concerning the effectiveness of colonoscopies at detecting cancerous growths. That's suitably random, I think.

Otherwise, the next exam approaches, comprising 80 multiple choice questions with 8 for each week of this unit. I think I have just enough time to study, but we shall see. The other big news is that I have two opportunities for an international elective in the summer - (possibly) Thailand or Austria. I'm really not sure which I prefer at this point, though Thailand might be more of once-in-a-lifetime thing. How often do you get a chance to learn about rural community medicine in Southeast Asia? I'm open to any suggestions there!

On the Grand Coalition

James Bow writes eloquently about why we should throw out the Conservatives:

In two and a half years, we have seen how Stephen Harper governs. He is not pragmatic; he is an opportunist. He believes in openness and accountability only when it suits him. Most importantly, he refuses to respect the democratic will of the Canadian people; twice denied a mandate to govern with majority power in the House of Commons, he has consistently refused to reach out to any party in the opposition to govern cooperatively. Government has been a battle for him, and his opponents, be they on the opposition benches or standing in the streets, are not Canadians with legitimate points of view of their own, but enemies to be crushed and humiliated.

That, of course, describes the problem only in the broadest way; James provides a thorough list of examples of Conservative hypocrisy, mismanagement, and general immaturity. I look forward to seeing Harper on the opposition benches and urge the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc not to back down.

May you live in interesting times...

Well, PM Stephen Harper certainly excels at setting traps for himself. I'd never have guessed that we'd be on the brink of a Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition government this weekend, but we may well have one in time for Christmas:

Negotiations by Opposition parties to form a coalition began hours after the Harper government failed to introduce an economic stimulus package in its annual economic and fiscal update yesterday.

Instead, Harper proposed billions in spending cuts, the suspension of the right of public servants to strike, pay equity changes, and a small but significant reduction of public funding for political parties.

I think there are lots of good reasons here to bring down the government, but the public funding for political parties issue is probably the spark that lit this fire. (Each party annually receives $1.95 for each vote it received in the last election, which was implemented to lessen the impact of wealthy donors being able to disproportionately influence political parties, along with corporations and unions. The much larger indirect subsidy comes in the form of tax credits for people who donate directly to the parties.)

This proposal concerning party funding was bizarrely attached to the Harper government's otherwise Harrisite "fiscal update" (spending cuts? compounding a recession?), in what can only be seen as a naked attempt to harm the finances of the opposition parties, if not cause their outright bankruptcy. That this comes during an unprecedented global economic crisis when compromise and consensus are warranted in Parliament is despiscable. I don't think Canadians are terribly interested in Harper's game, but are at least a bit concerned with the tanking stockmarket and the looming collapse of the auto sector, to name only two things. In this regard, I do think the opposition is more in tune with "average" Canadians (i.e., though who aren't political junkie who live for Harper's games of chess). Instead, Harper's playing chicken with the fate of his own government:

Angered over the lack of an overarching spending package to kickstart the sluggish economy, the Opposition parties cried foul.

Now the Liberals say they will introduce a motion of non-confidence in the government.

NDP Leader Jack Layton and Stephane Dion have discussed "roles and responsibilities” in a new coalition, an NDP official confirmed.

It is expected that Layton would have a place in the new cabinet, and “various players would play different roles,” the official said.

Liberal finance critic John McCallum said a new government would roll out a stimulus package that was "a whole lot faster and a whole lot bigger than anything they would provide.”

Anyway, I'm not sure whether Dion would be the leader of this still-hypothetical coalition. It's a possibility, but since the confidence vote has been postponed (by Harper, a sure sign that he's attempting to buy time for some sort of last ditch attempt to save his government), I expect the Liberals will have sufficient time to figure out their leadership issues, at least temporarily, so that we'll soon be treated to the spectacle of a joint Liberal-NDP cabinet with tacit Bloc support. Interesting times, to be sure!

Still here

I've been remiss in posting lately, but I'm glad to say that I survived my anatomy exams (at least, I'm pretty sure I did - we don't get the actual results til later this month). After a brief respite, I'm back into the thick of it - and feeling very glad that I've taken genetics and biochem in the past. I find it a bit difficult to get out of the studying mentality and I feel I'm becoming mildly obsessed with being in the hospital - my elective is really just that interesting and fun. To maintain this feeling, I'm watching (and, sometimes, criticizing) House, though it's not really very good this season, and I've even tuned into the pre-emininent "medical" soap opera, namely Grey's Anatomy.

But how bad is Grey's Anatomy? Bad. The characters don't strike me as being anything approaching real people and, worse, they get away with things that even Gregory House would probably find unthinkable. Last week, in fact, several characters were dissecting cadavers in a storage room (for surgery "practice" I guess), unbeknownst to the senior resident. Where did they get them? Well, it turns out these bodies were simply unclaimed, so that the interns (shouldn't they have finished their residencies by now?) decided, hell, why not cut them up? Usually, of course, most cadavers used for dissection are expressly donated to science for that purpose, and otherwise there must be express authorization from the relevant authorities under laws like this. Setting aside the questionable ethics and the fact that they casually eat and drink in the same room (absolutely disgusting), the consequences consist entirely in a Stern Lecture from the senior resident about Why What They Did Was Wrong and Bad, Bad, Bad. To compare, at Dal, letting someone into the lab who's not unauthorized or otherwise removing *anything* from it would have "serious consequences" - expulsion quite probably. I guess we can say that they at least weren't experimenting on live patients.