So the day after my previous post was my birth'd day. The whole festivations started out by going out on the eve for dinner at a Korean restaurant that I liked. The weather was really eerie... it seemed like it was going to storm and weird smells and colours. On my bike ride into the city, the only other life form I saw (it was a Sunday) was a possum, a heron standing in the middle of the path, and a woman jogging in white sneakers, a nice black skirt, and a lace black bra. Fun. After dinner we went to a Belgian beer garden thing and got some fancy beer that tasted like cherry. A lot.
On Monday morning a friend dropped off cupcakes spelling out a birthday wish, which was quite cute.
School was pretty good in that vain as well. Normally I don't really care about my birthday... this time was not much different but it was still pretty cool since I actually have a decent group here and so reaped rewards. Speaking of rewards, here's what I got:2 sets of cupcakes, 1 cake in the shape of a baby seal (long story-> short = there's an ongoing "joke" that I get off on baby seal porn), 3 bottles of wine, wood chopping board, and then an awesome package from a bunch of people of a silicon rolling pin, gift certificate to Kathmandu, and 5 movie passes to a decent cinema. Cleaned up quite well, I must admit. Let's see, what else. Oh yeah, dinners. Monday night I had a nice dinner at a friends place, Thursday had a friend over for dinner, and then the following Monday I went to another mate's place where they cooked up a sweet feast. All this culminated... or at least fruitioned... at a BBQ/picnic thing at the everglorious New Farm Park. It was a beautiful day... blue skies, lots of sun, lots of people, sitting by the river. Everyone brought so much food and I made a kickass salad + lentil burgers + roastded chickpeas. It was one of the lovelier days I've had, I must say.
So what else has happened... on Wednesday a couple of us in our clinical-coaching group when to a psychiatric hospital to get a bit of experience in taking a mental health interview. 4 of us plus a psychiatrist took turns and time interviewing 2 patients, one with schizophrenia and one with severe depression. It was very interesting and really sad. I think that, like with a lot of kinds of medicine, you must build a callus to protect yourself in order to not get too despondent with sick people. I think these ones being physically well but with these debilitating mental problems is even sadder. The schizophrenic guy didn't even know why he was in hospital; he gets brought in by the cops every couple months for doing something weird. He was valedictorian of his highschool up until 11th grade and then the condition just snapped and that is that. The woman with depression has had a number of failed suicide attempts, is ostracised from her whole family, and was sexually abused as a child. I think maybe dealing with kidneys would be easier...Last night a friend came over for dinner and then we walked into the city to put to use my movie passes. We saw Waltz with Dashir, a nice and stylistically-cool movie about the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. However it was the wrong movie to come drunk to and drink a bottle of wine in.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
We recently have been learning a bit about the commercialization of medicine. This is not really much of an issue in the US because, like most things there, commercializing is fair game. Here there are some pretty stringent rules as to how to advertise for a medical business (drugs are not even mentioned since it's illegal to advertise prescription medicine); stuff like making outlandish claims or guarantees, offering pro-bono things or inducements are all bad... just like claiming expertise in something you're not or bashing other doctors. We had a speaker from an organisation that deals with advertising and communication and he discussed a suit against the company that sold those ab-electric-belt-stimulator-things as a weight loss device. Apparently, according to witness testimony, those belts, in 10 minutes, burn as many calories as walking 1km/hr for 1 second. Lolicans. Anyway it's been interesting to think about, though apparently not to write about...
In addition to commercialisation of medicine, last week we were studying sexual dysfunction and that kind of fun stuff (the context was clinics advertising guaranteed erections etc). One funny example about lame companies and sexual dysfunction was the fruition of a relatively new diagnosis hypoactive desire disorder. Something like 20-30% of women (and 10% of men) suffer from a reduced sexual desire (reduced compared to what? I dunno). And so a company developed a testosterone patch that may increase libido but in order to make it approachable/necessary/desired/acceptable first had to medicalise this condition. So they released data compiled in cohoots with doctors and released information etc and essentially invented a market for their drug. Bastardos.
Speaking of sexual dysfunction, it was interesting to read about all the ways to treat erectile dysfunction. 1st line treatment is viagra and similar drugs, as most people know, and then it goes downhill from there. The next treatment is called alprostadil and it needs to be given locally in order to function which means either a "urethral suppository" or an injection straight into it. For some reason people don't like those that much... What's funny/scary about it is that if you aren't careful with dosing (your first injection has to be done at the doctor's) then you can develop priaprism: an erection that just won't subside. If it's around for several hours, then the first thing doctors try to do is give a decent amount of pseudoephedrine (the ingredient in Sudafed that's closely monitored and used to make meth) and wait around. If that doesn't work, then you get to physically drain it. Yay!
Medical word of the post:tumescence - a protruding or swelling; specifically used to describe the penis in the pre-fully-erect phase.
3 comments:
What did you season your roasted chickpeas with? I usually use red pepper and lawery salt but I'm sure that are other things I could use. Did you just coat the chickpeas with olive oil then add spices and cooked them in the oven or did you do something different?
I coated them in olive oil and then added salt, pepper, cajun spices, cayanne pepper, and some cumin and then cooked them in the oven.
They were good... not great though.
As soon as you administer Viagra to the system, its chief chemical component sildenafil citrate springs into action and starts inhibiting the PDE 5 enzyme. Alongside the inhibition of PDE 5 enzyme, the administration of Viagra also accelerates the effect of nitric oxide and leads to the smooth flow of blood to the penis; as a consequence, the person becomes capable of facilitating erections necessary for sexual intercourse.
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