Random bits

I'm going to Texas at the end of February to work on the campaign for a tall, skinny man with a plan. Yes we CAN.

I love my mother to bits.

I want to grow up to be just like this:

story about a very old lady doctor

The unbelievable green house in Bradenton that cost $224k? Now it costs $209k. If Bradenton calls me I'm immediately getting on a plane. Restraint is for the WEAK.

Moving

Google maps says that I can get from Seattle to Bradenton in about 2 days!

3193 miles, 1 day 22 hours, that's 85 miles per hour, nonstop! Go Google! And what's with traversing South Dakota while looking askance at Nebraska?!? Does this route skirt the really steep parts of the Rockies? Can I visit The Farm while I'm in Tennessee and help birth some natural babies? If I pay extra can I skip Missouri? Oooh, can I cross the country by only going through blue states? (Hmm, only if Canada counts. Which, really, it does.)

So let's say it's 6 days, 10 with a heavy load. I have lots of good furniture, a car, a dog, little patience, and good credit. Options?

1. U-Haul or Budget will rent me a truck and an auto trailer for about $2000. Then I'd hire muscles to load and unload, pay for fuel/food/lodging on the road, and spend about 10 days driving. Which, in my family, means Mom and a kitchen timer come too.

2. The next option up is to pay for space on a commercial truck, which is probably about $3500. This saves me driving and fuel, travel costs, and a lot of time. I'd still hire load/unload muscles. I can have my car moved on a car trailer for about $650 - I think that's going to be cheaper than driving myself, all things considered.

3. The cush option, where I write a check and everything happens by magic, boxes are filled, armoires are disabused of their drawers, burly former NFL players carry it all out the door while I do my nails, then it all happens in reverse at the destination? That's about $10k.

I figured out a few things for sure while I was looking all this up.

A.) I'm not driving Clifford across country. I mean, look at him. This dog is a princess. Princesses fly. First class, preferably. Warm cookie? Oh yes, that would make him verrrrry happy.

B.) I'm not selling my furniture, not any of the good stuff. It's pretty much all I have to show for 15 soul-sucking years in software. It's lovely, useful, easy to clean, and dog-compatible. At one point in my life it was completely reasonable to buy a $6000 dining room set, and in all honesty, my ego can't handle selling it for $600. Plus if I buy that insanely cute Bradenton house, there will be no Ikea products allowed in it. Not even those big neato shelves.

C.) I am seriously considering getting all my stuff moved early, say, in April, and storing it in Florida until I show up in late July. That way it's done, gone, not to be worried about until I'm back from Rwanda or Cuba or Bolivia or wherever I decide to spend the last significant chunk of free time I'll have until I'm over 50.

Practical as it may be to research moving costs and efforts now, I still have some major issues between me and moving:
1. Bradenton or Fort Lauderdale? And then...
2. What exact building am I moving into?

Meanwhile, how about this for $139k, down the street from the other one in Bradenton. Built in 1939, 1 bed/1 bath, 7500 sf lot. Brick & central air, that's how to do it.

I was wrong, so very WRONG!!!

Remember back in December, when I was highly critical of the residential architectural style around LECOM-Bradenton? I called it cookie-cutter, planned, character-free, and 5 minutes old, if you recall.

Sure, in the immediate vicinity of the school, every house looks exactly like every other house and was built within 45 seconds of every other house. (It looks like about 90% of these perfect brand new houses are for sale right now - short sales & foreclosures, mostly.)

Oh, but if one wanders about 5-10 miles westward, one finds such loveliness as this:

2 bed, 2 bath, 16,000 square foot lot, all kinds of tasteful charm-preserving yumminess. Guess how much?

$224,000. (link)

Clearly this is another sign from God. While this house is not exactly IN Cedar Hammock, it's only about 1000 yards north.

Don't get me wrong, I love Nova, LOVE Nova, but now Bradenton needs to accept me so that I CAN BUY THIS HOUSE.

I mean just look at this kitchen.

Still grinding, new old UW grind

I'm currently taking two classes at UW, and one long distance Spanish class. UW is not what I'd call the most supportive, happy environment - more like a penitentiary. Every time I tell somebody that I'm still taking classes at UW, with a med school acceptance in hand, they think I'm nuts. Apparently I'm supposed to find a beach and just hang out for the next six months. The beach can wait.

I'm in molecular virology this quarter, with a veteran researcher who just LOVES viruses, is insanely organized, and teaches the living daylights out of these buggers. Engineers should take this class, to better appreciate the elegance, the sneakiness, the economy, and the innate tinkertoyness of viruses. Every single class I learn something that makes me say "you're kidding me." Nobody designed viruses, not even Mike Huckabee's Lord and Savior. They represent a tiny minority of random events that result in a prolonged existence. And it hurts the head to avoid saying "why?" and to avoid insinuating that a virus has an intention. It's more realistic to think of them as bazillions of miniature Mr. Smiths from the Matrix. "You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson..."

I'm also in medical microbiology this quarter, with a new researcher presenting his or her specialty organism each day. Today we covered spirochetes, which give you syphilis and Lyme disease. I love this class, because I finally, finally, get to see pictures of clinical presentations. Bullseye rash for Lyme disease. Sores on the bottom of the feet? Secondary syphilis. The projector puts a big image at the front of the room, and there are also high resolution screens above the class that the lecturer can see. I always turn around to look at the high resolution image, at which point I can usually confirm that I'm THE ONLY ONE IN THE ROOM getting excited about rashes.

Mostly what I've learned at UW is that I'm ordinary. I was mistaken to believe that I had special (or at least marketable) superpowers, as I was told in the software industry. Sure, I can nail a $100 million product release, but the 19 year old sitting next to me in class is going to clean my clock on the next exam, and he's going to get into one of the 30 med schools that rejected me. That's been the story for about three years now. So these classes I'm in this quarter, these last few weeks of my UW career, feel like UW forgot to put the kryptonite under my seat, and I get to think I can fly again.

Top 10 things I like about Nova

To review: Bradenton, my dream school, has me on the waitlist for Class of 2012. I sent a Letter of Intent last week, humbly expressing my gratitude and devotion, which brought the brown-nosing down to shoulder level. So we'll see what happens with Bradenton.

Meanwhile, Nova accepted me, and Nova looks fine. There's lots to like. Top ten great things, in no particular order.

1. Dress code: scrubs
Florida seems pretty gung-ho about enforcing a dress code on professional school students, as well as enforcing no-eating-in-class and mandatory-attendance policies. My Birks and Uggs will be so sad.

But Nova allows students to wear scrubs as professional dress, which means I get to go to school in pajamas. The med students wear light blue (specifically, "Ciel Blue"). Pharm, dental and the other disciplines wear teal, maroon, navy, etc. Kind of like the social stratification in high school on game days when the football players had to wear suits, the cheerleaders wore their cheering outfits, and band geeks like me wore homemade t-shirts saying "Clarinets Rock!!!" Except now I get to be on the football team.

I won't be allowed to wear my Curious George scrubs though. I'll save them for my peds rotation.

2. Dolphins, Sharks and the RecPlex
The Miami Dolphins practice adjacent to Nova's campus. They have an air-conditioned field that's covered with a big white balloon that looks like a slug. I was told to expect to have opportunities to work with the team's orthopedists, who are DOs.

Nova sports teams are called the Sharks. Which is cool.

The brand-spanking-new RecPlex (see left) is stunning, with an outdoor Olympic-sized swimming pool.

3. I can live across the street
I bitched about Fort Lauderdale's traffic earlier, but the good news is that there are decent places to live adjacent to Nova's campus, and most are dog-friendly. I'm not likely to land in a house with a yard, but there's hope that I could at least be in a townhouse with entrenched retiree neighbors. Who cook me dinner and walk Clifford on exam days, maybe.

4. OPP fellowship == free tuition
This might be the coolest part. OPP is Osteopathic Principles and Practice, which is part of the DO curriculum: it's the two years and 300-600 hours of training that separates DOs from MDs. At Nova I have the option to apply for a fellowship which would add a year to my schooling, during which I would work in the clinic, do research, and teach. The fellowship year is tuition free, and then my 3rd and 4th years of tuition are waived. Plus I get to pick first when rotation sites are being assigned.

Bradenton's tuition is about $25k per year, and Nova's is about $34k. With the OPP fellowship, Nova saves me a nice chunk of debt.

5. Free MPH
Nova also offers its med students a free Masters of Public Health, which can be completed during the OPP fellowship year. This is a good thing for me to have for future work with Doctors Without Borders or Partners in Health.

I met a few Nova students who are doing the OPP fellowship, and one who is also doing the free MPH. She seemed tired but happy.

6. established school == established rotations == access to good residencies
Nova started its med school in 1979, Bradenton in 2004. (Bradenton's mothership school in Erie, PA started in 1992.) Nova's been putting med students in southern hospitals for 30 years, and Nova graduates have been infiltrating "MD" residency programs around the country for about 25 years. About 60% of osteopathic physicians train in "MD" residency programs instead of "DO" residency programs. DO residencies are fine, but arguably offer less rigorous training and are available in fewer locations. To get into an "MD" residency as a DO, I have to do an audition rotation at the residency site, take the MD board exams as well as the DO board exams, and skip the DO residency match. It's complicated, and I'll get into it more later.

Point being, Nova keeps doors open for me. Bradenton will too, but with Bradenton I'd likely be the first graduate a residency program director has met, vs. maybe the 100th Nova grad.

7. Admin is on the ball when it matters
Nova's admissions office is notoriously bad, as I've mentioned. If the forums on studentdoctor.net are to be believed, there's no point in calling or emailing the school for information. A candidate should not expect to receive an information packet before the interview, and may or may not be expected at Nova on the assigned interview day. I flew to Miami without any confirmation of my interview date. By contrast, my other 5 interview invitations were confirmed by postal mail with clear instructions and personalized agendas. In this regard, Nova is nerve-wracking.

But last week I had reason to contact Nova's admissions office, and I won't go into the situation here, but I got an immediate personal email response. I'm not worried about this office anymore.

8. Famous foul-mouthed faculty
This is Elaine Wallace, D.O., Nova's chair of OPP. Nova was smart enough to keep her from accepting an offer to head OPP at the new DO school in Colorado. If I do an OPP fellowship, she'd be my boss.

The Nova students I met said she's a character, and that she curses like a sailor. I asked if that meant she generated innovative curse words, but no, she's a creative artist at curse combinations, such as giving Our Lord interesting middle names. I love her already.



9. New big fat research center opening '09
The field of Osteopathic Medicine is infamous for weak, underfunded research efforts. Only within the last dozen years have the "P's" in OPP (principles and practice) been studied with any rigor. Several schools are trying to get research funding up over $1 million a year, as compared to the University of Washington which brings in about $600 million a year, just in NIH funds.

So, Nova is on the bandwagon. This is a picture of the research center that's being built next to the Health Sciences School, and all of Nova's Health Sciences departments are under the gun to pursue funding and publish in peer-reviewed journals. Nova expects to offer research fellowships with the same benefits as the OPP fellowship.

The niggling "oh what have I done, why am I doing DO instead of MD" thoughts that I have quiet down a bit when DO schools are hard core like this. Nova is a big, big school and its capability to aggressively pursue research is a big, big positive.

10. They love me
Oh, sweet Nova. Nova invited me to interview within minutes of receiving my application. Nova overlooked my 23 years of transcripts, mostly littered with indiscretions and poor judgment. Nova gushed over my engineering and management background. Nova threw me the ball. Gotta love Nova.