Celiac Disease Awareness Day

I heard a rumor on a friend's facebook wall that today is celiac awareness day.  Like any educated person, I therefore felt it necessary to fact check before posting about it.  According to the almighty wikipedia: "A resolution was passed in the U. S. Senate, making September 13 National Celiac Disease Awareness Day. It is the birthday of Samuel Gee." Therefore, clearly, it is in fact national celiac disease awareness day.

Side note as to not embarrass my librarian friends: I promise you that my medical/scientific research is only partially based in facebook, google and the wikiworld.  I do occasionally also use peer reviewed journals for information and decision making. ;-)

In honor of this very special day, I present to you my recent escapades in gluten-free vegan goodness.  

 

Crepes! With chocolate-hazelnut filling.  We also made ones with daiya cheese. 

Peach blueberry birthday cake for the girlfriend.

Cake donuts! Next attempt will be a yeast version, deep fried &/or chocolate frosted- less healthy and more like what I remember.

Peds: day 15

I really like peds neuro.  Or at least, I really enjoyed my experience at the pediatric neurology clinic today.  It is totally humbling to realize how horribly wrong things can go (genetically, congenitally, maliciously and due to accidents) and involves a lot of guts to practice the unknown and unpredictable.  In one day I volleyed between heartbroken and optimistic, hitting on most emotions in between.    I watched one child have an infantile spasm, reassured a mother that her son could play football and could challenge the stigma of his diagnosis, and so much more.

I could imagine becoming a pediatric neurologist.  However, there is a distinct lack of a clear pathway to peds neuro.  It isn't like adolescents or peds cardio or something where you do a general pediatric residency and then do a specialty fellowship.  It isn't like peds surgery where you do a general surgery residency and then a pediatric fellowship.  Also, it isn't like peds psych which has the option of triple boarding, allowing for a single residency match. 

Heck, does anyone have a clear answer on how to become a pediatric neurologist with the least amount of relocating [of location/institution] possible?

3 questions

Today we had a lecture on MD compensation and productivity.  A very wise man, who is the business brains behind one very large local physician group, posed 3 questions to us.  He explained that he posses these same questions to doctors finishing residency and those early in their career.  If they can follow a path inline with their answers, he believes all else will fall into place.  I personally think these questions are good for anyone regardless of your professional track, so please feel free to answer in the comments section!

1) What are you good at?
2) What do you enjoy doing?
3) What do you feel called to do?

PSA for blogger users

I've tried responding to many of your post and it wont go through.  I was having the same problem on my blog and learned that it is due to the response setting style.  (I had googled the issue.) I guess it is an issue that blogger has been having.  You need to change your response setting so that it is in a pop up box or the such, anything other than the in text mode. 

(Solitary diner, I'm specifically looking at you!-  I want your polenta recipe!)

5th Annual Women Leaders in Medicine Awards and Reception

(taken from http://www.amsa.org/AMSA/Homepage/Events/Convention/WLIM.aspx, which is also where the application can be found.)

The submission deadline for nominations is Sept. 9, 2011 at 11:59 pm ET. 

Thank you for your interest!

The Women Leaders in Medicine awards were created by AMSA in 2007 to recognize women physicians and educators who serve as role models, teachers, highly accomplished professionals, and sources of inspiration for women and men who are currently in their medical training. These women deserve recognition for their accomplishments and dedication to fostering tomorrow’s women leaders in medicine.

We are currently accepting nominations for this year's WLIM awards. Medical and premedical students are encouraged to fill out our simple online form and tell us about an inspiring woman who has influenced the student's medical career.

Between four and six women are selected and invited to attend the AMSA National Convention in March to receive their award at a special reception. Many of our past awardees have considered their Women Leaders in Medicine award a truly meaningful honor because it comes directly from the voices of students. At AMSA, we hope to give back some recognition to these amazing women in addition to generating awareness about the importance of fostering leadership in medicine that promotes healthy change and equality in care and professional opportunity for women and men.

This year will be an extra special reception as we celebrate the fifth year of this inspiring event. We hope you will join us at AMSA's Annual Convention for the Annual Women Leaders in Medicine reception as we announce this year’s recipients!

My personal pep-squad

I recived a random gchat message from a random friend today:

"Are you ready to be my vaginacologist yet or WHAT?"

A simple, and lovely, reminder that there are people out there pulling for me to become a doctor.  I may decide not to be a ob/gyn, but finding out this week that I passed step 1, I am now much more confident that I will get through medical school with my degree [and hopefully my head still screwed on].  Thanks ya'll for supporting me through the annoyance of having to retake it. 

Now, if only I can get through the next 7 weeks of my pediatric clerkship without getting sick again...  I LOVE peds but I'm not such a fan of all the bugs the cute kids carry around.

Peds: day 5

I think I caught my first cold from the little buggers.  Either from them, or my roommate who has a pretty nasty cold/sinus infection that she caught during her OB/GYN orientation at the beginning of the week.   Between feeling like crap and closely watching the tropical storm over the gulf coast, I'm feeling pretty awful about this weekend.  I am supposed to be driving out to spend the weekend with my girlfriend when I get off call at 3 which I have been so excited about all week.  However, right now, I have no idea how I'm going to manage the drive when all I want to do is sleep.