What’s with the weather?

Welcome to Alberta.  Tuesday the weather was warm and sunny and 20degrees.  Then Wednesday rolls a round, the temperature drops and tonight we are getting snow. I guess that is the way it is.

I've spent most of the last week not feeling so good.  I stayed home from work on Friday and Monday, and spend the weekend lying in bed.  I am feeling better now, but my voice still sounds like I'm smoking a carton of cigarette's a day.  And I'm still trying to hack up a lung occasionally.

On Tuesday, Barbra and I went to see the Canadian movie "One Week".  It is about a man who finds out he has cancer and then goes on a road trip.  (Okay, it is more involved than that).  I liked the movie, a bit odd, but well worth going to see.  That makes two Canadian movies in the last six months; "One Week" and "Paschendale".  Of the two I preferred "One Week".

Spring Time in Alberta:

Pancakes Every Day….

The best explanation of what it's like to study medicine I have seen yet.

The Easter Bilby

Apparently we have been deceived in North America. The Easter Bunny is an evil hoax.  The credit for the chocolate instead belongs to a native, endangered marsupial known as the Bilby. haha!  This makes sense here, as rabbits have ravaged good chunks of the countryside as an invasive species. Check out http://www.easterbilby.com.au/save_bilby/chocolate.asp for the story.  So I did my part and bought and consumed one! There. My conscience is cleansed!  Happy Easter to all our friends!

I have this coming week off, somewhat like a reading week.  And I am actually reading! (what a keener!)  So are most of my classmates.  there is just no point at which you can be comfortable with your level of understanding when it comes to med.  there is simply too much, about too many things.  So you catch as much as you can, and pray that you won't be endangering patients with the gaps in your knowledge.  The other problem is that the knowledge base is changing almost daily.  So what I learn this week may not be true by the end of the year.  I guess that's why they have second year, and 3rd, and 4th, and internship...and the rest of your career.   The learning just doesn't stop- perfect for a professional student like me!!!  Please don't take this as whining- it's just the way it is.  I am super grateful for a little pause in the flood, and hope to be rarin' to go again by the 20th of April, when classes resume.

This Easter is, like all my holidays so far in the last 5 months, is strange.  Easter usually entails going to Innisfail, to visit with my mother-in-law at the Spring craft show.  There's also the time with the Klassen clan and celebrating Christ's resurrection with our church family.  None of these things happened for me, and Easter is a fall holiday here.  One day I'll get used to the new way of doing things!

So, Easter blessings on you all.... I hear a textbook calling me... gotta go!

Life Continues

I now have been at my new job for 4 weeks now.  Everything is going fairly well.  Pretty good place to work.  For the first two weeks it was really busy, but it has slowed down in the last two weeks.  I think some of the old customers were a nervous about the change over and were ordering extra toners and servicing.

The lastest news from Australian Immigration is that they will start processing my class of visa application after May 30.  Hopefully mine should be fairly close to the top of the list because I have been on the list since last July.  If all goes well I should be in Australia by August.  I guess we will see.

This has been an odd adventure.  Barb & my latest catch phrase is "It is what it is".  We could be terrible upset about waiting six month (or more) but it is what it is.  We have to just live through it.

Well that's all I have to say.  God bless.

Rob

When the mouse is full, the grain IS sour!

"Wan daut Mustje saut ess, ess daut Kuarntje betta" This is a quote my Grandpa Klassen used to say.  It is basically used to refuse yet more (fabulous Mennonite) food. Translated, it means "when the Mouse is full, the grain is sour".  Who knew that he was right? I found a paper demonstrating that leptin, the hormone which indicates "uncle" to the brain and tells it to stop eating, actually dampens nerve impulses from sweet receptors in the tongue (in mice)!! Here is the Abstract:

Kirio Kawai et al.  Leptin as a modulator of sweet taste sensitivities in mice.  2000 PNAS.
"Leptin acts as a potent inhibitory factor against obesity by regulating energy expenditure, food intake, and adiposity. The obese diabetic db/db mouse, which has defects in leptin receptor, displays enhanced neural responses and elevated behavioral preference to sweet stimuli. Here, we show the effects of leptin on the peripheral taste system. An administration of leptin into lean mice suppressed responses of peripheral taste nerves (chorda tympani and glossopharyngeal) to sweet substances (sucrose and saccharin) without affecting responses to sour, salty, and bitter substances. Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings of activities of taste receptor cells isolated from circumvallate papillae (innervated by the glossopharyngeal nerve) demonstrated that leptin activated outward K⁺ currents, which resulted in hyperpolarization of taste cells. The db/db mouse with impaired leptin receptors showed no such leptin suppression. Taste tissue (circumvallate papilla) of lean mice expressed leptin-receptor mRNA and some of the taste cells exhibited immunoreactivities to antibodies of the leptin receptor. Taken together, these observations suggest that the taste organ is a peripheral target for leptin, and that leptin may be a sweet-sensing modulator (suppressor) that may take part in regulation of food intake. Defects in this leptin suppression system in db/db mice may lead to their enhanced peripheral neural responses and enhanced behavioral preferences for sweet substances."

so, w00t!  Grampa didn't even know he was on to something!
We are in the midst of studying metabolism and nutrition, in the context of cases of Enzyme deficiency, Anorexia Nervosa, and juvenile diabetes. And my partner in crime, Brady and I, are currently attempting a low/slow carb diet.  So that gives me a good excuse to read up from both directions.  There is an amazing amount of conflicting nutrition information published. And I don't mean just on the lunatic fringe of cyberspace, but in published journals on PubMed. Everybody's got a theory, but nobody knows for sure. All I know is that I've tried everything from Jenny Craig to Weightwatchers to Nutrisystem(lost my gallbladder over that one) to the Cabbage Soup diet to Xenical to lose the pounds, and they just seem to roll right back on. But I can't give up yet, I'm not dead! Either the fat or the diets will kill me. Stay tuned.

Saturdays Rock

Today I did a skills learning day. I learned to cannuate (stick honking needles into a big fake rubber arm with Kool-Aid running through its veins- to set up an IV drip), venipuncture (how to take blood with smaller needles for lab tests), suturing (the medicalese term for sewing), plastering a wrist fracture and intubating (a very "HouseMD" moment). Fun to the extreme level. If learning medicine was like this everyday, I would explode with happy. But usually there's a lot more reading and a lot less sticking things into people. Oh well. Those days will come.  Then again, it's propbably far easier working on patients who don't smell funny, won't wiggle, aren't drunk or argumentative, and don't complain if you don't get it on first try.  Those days, too are coming....The pics are on Facebook, and Rob might upload them to our site too.

Rob and I celebrated the condo possession date with "Celebratory Whoppers", a tradition we've had for a while now. In Australia, Burger King is called "Hungry Jack's"  but they still have Whoppers by the same name.  We webcammed (Hey! I just verbed a noun!)  so we could do it together (3 pm my time, 10:00pm his time).  Rob will upload his side of the story soon. YAY! Condo is gone!!!! Thanks, Jesus!

Lastly on the news front, There is a cyclone winding down the coast of Queenland.  Brisbane is so far unaffected. But about 3 hours north us is going to get wacked pretty good.  It actually hit Category 5, which is as bad as they come.  However, by the time it hits land, it should downgrade to a Cat 3.  Which is still bad, and they are estimating there may be up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage.  Part of me wants to see a cyclone in action.  Which probably only proves I have no idea how scary they can be.  Yikes.