Royal Wedding

I'm not ashamed to admit it - I was up at 5am to watch the Royal Wedding. I'm a sucker for love, I really am. What a beautiful way to celebrate love, by watching two people commit the rest of their lives to each other. The wedding was an elegant way to remind us of how important love is; it's one thing that every person on earth wants...which explains why nearly 1/3 of the world's population - 2 billion people - tuned in to see this ordinary, middle-class woman marry her Prince. I know as Americans, we can over-celebrate things...and this drives Mike crazy...but why not? What's wrong with celebrating something as beautiful and rare as true love?! There are extremists all over the world, killing others in the name of their religion or for a corrupt leader or for money; I can't think of anything better than to stop for a moment and have the whole world be reminded of the power of love. It's such a beautiful thing.

I've been looking through a lot of wedding magazines during the past 4 months, and I absolutely love the lace in a wedding dress. All of the ones that Mike and I both like have a bit of lace in it, and they have definitely more of a classic and elegant feel to me. My mom wore long sleeves made of lace with a lace bodice on her wedding day, and I am absolutely drawn to those dresses now; they are so elegant and timeless. Kate looked absolutely stunning in her dress; a perfect combination of elegant and sexy.

What a beautiful reminder of the one thing which is common to all of humanity - love.

Bright Eyes

I became a new patient for a Perrysburg eye doctor this week. Since I don't go home nearly as often as I did during my undergrad years, I finally decided to find an eye doctor up here...

You all have experienced the Glaucoma test before, right? Well the only one that I've ever had was the puff of air test and peripheral vision check..where you put your eyes into a microscope-looking thing and get a puff of air blown at you when you aren't expecting it. The doctor is assessing your eye's pressure with the puff test.

My new eye doctor does it a bit differently; maybe you can relate to this other test. 

First the nurse put a drop of an unnaturally yellow solution, called fluorescein, into each eye, and the purpose of its use is to examine my cornea for scratches or ulcers. 

After the nurse had a look at my eyes, she then put a drop of atropine (or some similar drug) into each eye. Atropine is a really well known drug; you may have heard of it in relation to its somewhat controversial use as an anticholinergic cardio drug. It works by competitively inhibiting the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors which are present in our parasympathetic nervous system. The use of it as an eye drop is to cause pupillary dilation by inhibiting the parasympathetics in the third cranial nerve (the oculomotor nerve). The antimuscarinic drug also blocks the parasympathetic-controlled lens accommodation (which allows us to focus our eyes when reading). By inhibiting the parasympathetic innervation to our eyes, the pupil dilates (because it is under unopposed sympathetic control), and the lens is relaxed. This allows the doctor to examine the retina more precisely, and to be able to be more accurate in deciding that your eyes truly are healthy.

I appreciate that my new doctor wanted to have a good long look at my optic disc and retina, but I was NOT a fan of waiting 4 hours for my lenses to be able to accommodate/my eyes to be able to focus on my studies!...But I guess it was a good excuse to take a night away from the books and spend it with Mike and Marley! :)

"Mydriasis": dilation of the pupil

...I just LOVE medicine; such amazingly fascinating stuff!!! :)

Farewell, HEB 110

I can't believe it; I just can't believe it! Am I seriously finished with the classroom?! I've sat in classes and listened to lectures nearly every weekday for the last 18 years of my life; Can it be true that those days are finally over?!?

Today, I sat in the last classroom lecture of my life. Sure, in the future there will be countless hours of continuing medical education, clerkship orientations, and pharmaceutical education during which I will sit in a classroom and listen, but today was my last lecture as a proper student. For the first time since my white coat ceremony (which was nearly 2 years ago), I feel like I am really truly on my way to becoming a physician. They may be tiny little baby steps most of the time, but today, after finishing my last fully didactic day of my medical school career, I feel like I am a real big leap closer to my MD!!!!

The view from my seat in HEB 110:

First year of Medical School included 657.5 hours spent in lecture in room HEB100.

Second year of Med School included 538.5 hours spent in lecture in room HEB110.

Farewell, HEB110!!! ahhhhh am I really nearly halfway through Medical School?!?!?!?! :) :) :)