Does this get any easier? Shit, I didn't think so. As I get older, I don't think things get any easier, I just get more used to it. Due to some genetic glitch, I am prone to fits of deep introspection, ie, I can't stand to be around anyone. So I sat in my room, looking out the window, drinking beer and listening to melancholy music while my wife worries if I'm going off the deep end. My UT mug is great. I figured out a trick today that I dubbed "shotgunning". Basically, I pop open two beers and pour both into the mug simulatneously. It holds two beers while accomodating the corresponding head easily. My mom is great for buying it for me. She figured I'd use it for coffee or some caffeine type drink. Alcohol is more to my liking.

I watched the bees working the vine on my window while creating an alcohol induced relaxed state. In watching their ceaseless effort, I thought, I probably should be studying........ but I just don't have their tireless work ethic. I go in too many directions. At that point, I began to consider that I need to start figuring out how to do this my way. A younger me would have tried to compete with these kids and ego would be at the front. At this point in my life, that doesn't seem quite fitting. I have nothing to prove to anyone, except myself.

Ol' Will was right - to thine own self be true. So I sit and take knowledge in the fact that I will be a good doctor, despite not being the best student in the world. So life lessons will help my patients more than knowing what fuckin' amino acid is mutated at what position to cause sickle cell anemia. That was an actual friggin' question on my biochem BRS (Board Review Series to prepare for the licensing exams). Who cares? The patient has anemia and pain in their extremities. Treat the patient and their pain. Knowing that it goes from glutamate to valine at the 6th position won't matter. I don't know how to treat the anemia, though a transfusion sounds plausible. What scares me is that I'm remembering the damned amino acid substitution that doesn't matter. It's from a polar amino acid to a hydrophobic amino acid in the beta strand and that drastically changes the tertiary structure. AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!! Now you see why I'm throwing back beers? It shuts off the grey matter (nerve bodies, white matter is the myelinated axons - oligodendrocytes in the CNS (small fried egg appearance), Schwann cells in the PNS). Damn it! I kid you not. I'm touching my wife and thinking it's the Meissner's corpuscles that are responsible for the sensations, not to be confused with the Meissner's plexus (also a mechanoreceptor) in the submucosal layer which is not to be confused with the Auerbach's plexus (also a mechanoreceptor) which is also in the gut but in between the two muscle layers (I can't remember their names and that makes me feel good! I just remember that they're perpendicular to each other and smooth muscle) which is not to be confused with the Pacinian plexus which senses deep sensations. Ever wonder why doctors are such know-it-all assholes? They have to be to get through this process. Shit. I'm going to go throw back another beer and watch The Simpsons before studying some more.