All posts by ravenguild08

Medicine

Magical to Medicinal Memory

“Quick, somebody help!!” A man rushes out of a room and looks about the hospital hallway in a panic. He spots me standing there in my white coat and races toward me. “She’s having trouble breathing! Please, come do something!”

After relaying the message, I hurry into the room to see if I can help. There she is, a woman is lying there on the bed, barely conscious. Her heart is racing, and she is so short of breath that she couldn’t get any words out even if she wanted to.

The panicked man glances back and forth between her, lying there helpless, and me, standing there unhelpfully. “She just came in for some heart problems! Why can’t she breathe?”

I glance around while my mind races to connect the dots. The pulse is 133. Tachycardia. The EKG looks a little funny, irregularly irregular. Atrial fibrillation. Oxygen saturation: 91%. Hypoxemia. I bring stethoscope straight to the mid-sternal line listen. “Heart failure,” I say. “Her heart is struggling to pump, so blood pressure is starting to back up into her lungs, causing fluid to leak into the airspace.”

He looks at me, apparently confused by the lingo. “Well, can’t you give her some drugs to help?”

The question catches me off guard, and my heart skips. What can I give her? Continue reading Magical to Medicinal Memory →

Photography

NYC “Blizzard”

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There was talk that the blizzard that was going to hit New York City on Tuesday, January 27th, 2015, was going to be historic. Forecasts were predicting anywhere from 24-36 inches of snow overnight. Social media was going nuts. Governor Cuomo haphazardly implemented a travel ban, closing all roads and shutting down the entire MTA. The entire thing.

(But as we all know now, Juno blew by and spared NYC this time. Still, I’m just going to talk about my photographic adventures, okay? Okay.)

Continue reading NYC “Blizzard” →

Medicine

2014: Med School Reflection

“Some days feel like years and some years feel like days.”

That’s a saying my PBL leader Dr. Meyer told us that is invoked in medicine, describing the bizarre time warp that consumes us. Yes, there are days, patient after patient, that never seem like they never end, but there are also entire years and projects that rush by in a blink of an eye.

The beginning of medical school has felt precisely like that. Every day — chock full of classes and labs back-to-back, interest group meetings sprinkled in, shadowing opportunities if I can manage, then hard-core studying too, and somewhere in there things like eating, sleeping, running, and attempting to do normal life things. Yet, somehow, 3 full months have already gone on by?! We’ve almost completed our basic science curriculum and all of gross anatomy?!

Why yes. Yes we have. Continue reading 2014: Med School Reflection →

Design

Can you always win 2048?

My intuition and experience tells me that, with optimal play, you can almost always — but not always — win 2048.

2048 is a wonderful puzzle game that I’ve spent far too much time playing (although probably not as much as what it’s based on, Threes.) 
I’ve never done real proofs in my life, but I know that to prove that you can always win, I need to prove that a malicious and omnipotent computer cannot defeat you.

I’ll assume you know how the game works. The rules that are most likely to end your game are: Continue reading Can you always win 2048? →