Stand your ground, don't back down. Sometimes you have no choice.  Sure, you have to pick your fights, or you will just burn out.  But sometimes you have to fight.  You have to push, pull, coerce and convince.  Sometimes it just ain't right that the patient stays another day.  Case in point: a patient we admitted just the other day. She was a trauma.  Accident on the slopes.  No major injuries, just some bumps and bruises.  But the head CT showed a v...

Rolling over and playing dead. It is a survival mechanism that has been around for centuries.  Convince the predator you are dead, no longer a threat, and there is a chance they will leave you alone.  It ain't survival of the fittest.  It's survival of the limpest.  It's no different in medicine.  With some patients, all you can do is play dead.  Case in point: a patient I had this week.  She had a pretty minor surgery.  It was a procedure that,...

Years ago I wrote a blog about Audioscrobbler.  It went so completely unnoticed that I am not even going to bother digging it up.  But, with all the advancements in the idea and the site, I just had to come and share again.  Plus, perhaps some of you will sign up and add me as a friend.  I only have one so far. To make things nice and easy, Last.fm is a website that allows you to share your musical tastes with the world.  You, the user, create an account, download the...

Years ago, Epic Games released the demo for Unreal Tournament 2003. I had never played the original Unreal Tournament (UT), as I just wasn't really a fan of shooters. But the demo for UT2003 hooked me. It was my first year of medical school, and we used to play LAN matches during our lunch break. It was awesome. I immediately went out and found a copy of the original UT and proceeded to play it like crazy. I was hooked. Fast forward a year or two and Epic released the demo for UT2004. Desp...

This is a shameless plug.  My brother, San Chonino, and I put together an article on some of the musical highlights of 2006.  Honestly, we worked pretty hard on it, and would hate to see it sink into complete oblivion.  Hence, an article with a slightly salacious title in hopes to point people in the right direction  if they are interested.  Thanks.

San Chonino and I were discussing which albums we would place in our top ten albums of the year article.  However, we both were having a difficult time really selecting a stand out track, unlike last year .  That isn't to say that there weren't some great albums in 2006.  There really were.  But nothing that grabbed us.  Plus, when there are so many albums that slip under your radar, making a top ten list seems presumptuous.  For example, Deadsoul Tribe's...

I have previously pondered the subject of pimping in medical education.  As much as I may not like it, I recognize that it is a time honored tradition in medical education.  As such, I expect it, and even respect it just a bit (that is the masochist in me speaking). However, lately I have experienced an aspect of pimping I could do without.  Let me set the stage. I present a patient.  On trauma, many of our patients can be rather complex, as they often have injuries a...

Some days the you control the chaos.  Others, the chaos controls you.  You just sort of ride the waves, hoping to keep your head above the surface.  Around the Jones home, we are still sort of reeling from the chaos of last week.  Alive and well, but our heads are spinning just a bit. I am currently on my second tour of the Trauma service here at the hospital.  It is a crazy service in that we get all the traumas that come in, as well as any general surgical consults ...

Just over a year ago, after I finished all my residency interviews, I decided to grow my goatee.  Over years, I have had a beard, here and there, for a few weeks at a time.  I thought this would be the same.  But after a while, my goatee grew on me (pun intended). The next thing I knew, it was months later and I still had my little red beard.  Now, over a year later, it was still there, having metamorphosized from a Van Dyck to most recently a pure goatee, with no associat...

Not quite a year ago, I penned some thoughts on being in the ICU, and what it was like to walk with death .  This article is the natural evolution of that. "Dr. Jones, what was the time of death?" There is no need to look at the clock.  I already did.  And at that moment, I firmly fixed in my mind that hour and minute.  I know what time she died.  I was there.  In fact, I was the one who told the nurse to turn off her levophed, vasopressin, and dopamine (th...

With the recent launch of the Playstation 3, Sony has been under a lot of scrutiny.  Rightfully so in my opinion.  Their incredibly arrogant smack talking right up to launch really bothered many consumers, myself included.  I mean, having the nerve to state that (and I'm paraphrasing here) "The next generation of gaming starts when we (Sony) say it does" is just stupid. Add to that manufacturing problems, a hugely delayed and underwhelming "global launch" (oh, I guess Europe is...

His cell phone blared in his pocket, the custom ringtone more irritating than entertaining.  But he liked it that way.  Stupid people and their stupid trendy ringtones.  He hated them.  He pulled it out and flipped it open, only to hear a dialtone. Dammit, he thought to himself.  "If you dial a wrong number, at least have the balls to let me know!" he muttered under his breath to the empty room.  What pissed him off even more was the fact that this was the fourth time in a row it had happ...

Exactly one month ago I wrote a blog about closed doors and open windows.  Well that open window I mentioned?  It's closing. In fact, Friday afternoon, it closes officially, and we will walk away with the keys to our own (first!) house. I am thrilled.  I sat on the couch tonight, looking around our current apartment with such excitement.  It hasn't been a bad place to live, and honestly was exactly what we needed.  Close to the hospital, close to good friends, an...

Fate, destiny, luck.  Call it whatever you want, but I believe they all boil down to one thing: absolving oneself of personal responsibility.   Sure, random things do happen.  Entropy is just a law of the universe.  However, under it all I believe that we are agents of our own will.  We are free to act or be acted upon, and reap the consequences and repercussions of our actions.  This does not annul my belief in a divine creator.  I believe in a just creator...

Fascinated, she watched the pool of red liquid continue to spread until she realized the dead don't drink.