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| I understand its use in recipes, but as for eating or drinking sweetened condensed milk straight, I'm not sure I'd wish it on Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer. One would think it would be slimy and would just sort of crawl down one's throat much as an under-cooked egg might. |
I should have been back at work by now but I'm experiencing minor complications related to not being able to tolerate any food other than clear liquids. I'm on a new medication that is making me fairly sick but should heal the internal wound. The worst drug I take only twice a day. I couldn't keep it down so I'm now being injected. It still makes me sick for two hours or so, but I cannot throw it up because it's not in my stomach.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting around and not getting a whole lot smarter. I've taken and passed the bench exam. Practical experience is the hangup here. I probably have had more deliveries thn I'm required to have had by them time I've been present for several in the E.r., a few in the O.R., one in the hospital entryway, and one in the parking lot. that is probably covered. I've yet to perform a pelvic exam on a conscious patient, though. (I'm not exactly looking forward to it.) when we're in on a relatively routine scheduled abdominal surgery, they have us practice internal exams. There's something to be said to working the kinks out of probing body cavities on unconscious patients. Now that I know that, I will put in writing that NO medical students or anyone else will ever use me as a crash test dummy while I'm knocked out for any future procedures.
All things consideed, all i really need to do is a few internal exams on conscious patients. I should have everything else in this specialty covered. i'm a bit bummed because quadruplets were delivered (via c-section) yesterday, and i didn't get to scrub in because i'm not yet cleared to return. i got to hear all about it, which almost made it work. I did get to help with a triplet delivery in early December, but quads would have been even cooler. I don't think the quads fared quite as well as my triplets, though. They were quite small, and I'm not sure about their prognosis. Every baby added to the mix in a given pregnancy complicates things and increases the odds of mortality and of complications for all the rest. My supervising OBGYN wasn't the surgeon of record for the quads, but she assisted in the surgery. I haven't talked to her about it yet. I'm interested in hearing her take on the procedure. She usually calls a couple of times a week and stops by here about once a week because she lives in my complex.
I'm getting bored, but I'm trying to enjoy the boredom when I'm not puking my insides out, because I know that there will be a time in the not-so-distant future when i will wish that I had the luxury of being bored. I'm reading up on my present and future specialties.
I don't know if this is routine at all and would like to consult an attorney, but the doctor whose shoddy scoping technique punctured my colon sent a paralegal to my condo with a document for me to sign which would, if I read it correctly, waive my right to seek any compensation for the injury to my colon caused by him. I have no intention of suing him, but I think it's positively cheeky of him to ask me to sign a document stating that I waive my right to do so. The action almost seemed threatening. I would like to show it to my surgeon and to my preceptor, though it makes no difference; I have no intention of signing it. I found the action very bizarre. If he's trying to intimidate me because i'll do a gastro rotation next year, he's out of luck. I've been assured he'll have nothing to do with my gastro rotation. If it looks like his colleagues will be in any way prejudiced against me, I'll petition to do my gastro rotation elsewhere. Since I'm likely going into pediatric general surgery, there would be some justification for doing the gastro rotation at least partly in a pediatric setting. There's a really good pediatric gastro program near my parent' home, and the adult gastro program is good there as well. For that matter, I could petition to go somewhere exciting like Scotland or Catalonia. It's possible to be granted up to two visiting clerkships. I'll probably take advantage of that opportunity whether it's for gastroenterology or for something else.
In any event, I'm not intimidated by the guy. If he leaves me alone, I will leave him alone. He would be wise to do so.
There were two Mormons fighting it out on Dr. Phil today (technically yesterday). It was rather amusing (what I caught of it, anyway) and is supposed to be continued tomorrow. I will record it because it comes on at a time when I'm usually tossing my cookies.
On a totally unrelated note, I have a theory that of the neurotypical population with intelligence above the "intellectually disabled" range (the 'mentally retarded' before Rosa's parents became irked and challenged the clinical use of the designation "mentally retarded" in court; I personally don't see what that accomplished, as once the youth of today or tomorrow realize that "i.d." is the new "m.r." they'll begin taunting each other on the playground with that, and then we'll be back to square one) children who are picky eaters tend to have higher IQs than do children who are not picky eaters. I think it's somehow related to greater cerebral density and increased synapses coexisting with a larger number of taste buds on a person's tongue. Who knows if there's anything to it? If I were going to be stuck at home much longer, I'd write a grant and conduct a study, but I hope to be paroled from this state of disability sooner rather than later, at which time I will be far too busy to trifle with such matters.
Among my multitude of readers, has anyone eaten flan? did you like it? Has anyone ever eaten or drunk sweetened condensed milk straight? Was it a near-death experience for you?
I've had flan. I liked it.
ReplyDeleteYou're smart not to sign the waiver.
Regarding the taste buds, from an evolutionary perspective wouldn't picky eating serve to lessen the availability of food that an individual would judge as "safe" to consume -- since taste (in pre-modern terms) was used as a mechanism for determining what was safe to eat and what was not? Someone with greater aversion would then, hypothetically, limit the number of foods that they were willing to eat even if they were nutritionally beneficial, based on taste alone. Obviously in the world of today (at least by American standards, putting aside socioeconomic constraints), this isn't nearly as problematic, though for our ancestors who were eating to survive, having aversion to a more readily available safe healthful food, could lead to malnutrition, depending on how severe the aversion was (in instances where the aversion was so strong vomiting was induced, thus avoidance of the offending food which could then cause nutritional issues if this food was in high availability, with low/no access to other more tolerable resources). I'm not sure if this makes sense as I have written it out here, and I am resisting the urge to write about various different possible scenarios, but this was my original idea. We discussed this in Neuroanatomy, and even though we did not talk about taste as it relates to cognition and intelligence, the survival/evolutionary basis is a pretty overwhelming basis for how we understand brain function today.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your observation, however, that picky eating does seem to be more prevalent among the educated. Or, at least "selective" eating. I have a friend who is a fairly picky eater for a grown man in his 40's. He's just not a typically hungry person. He's been known to take the meat, cheese, and tomatoes from a sandwich, and only eat the bread and the lettuce. However, he likes vegetables that people typically do not like -- he loves Brussel sprouts, asparagus. He's incredibly intelligent and can speak several different languages. He's well traveled and well read. I'm a super taster, and I wanted to test him ... though his liking more bitter/acidic vegetables makes me question whether or not he is. And, I suppose that if there are super tasters, the opposite exists. I guess that would lead those individuals to food aversion and favor towards foods that are a lot stronger tasting.
I don't ... lots of different things to consider. But, I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in as food for thought!
Sorry you're still mending! Hand in there :)
I wanted to clarify, "And, I suppose that if there are super tasters, the opposite exists. I guess that would lead those individuals to food aversion and favor towards foods that are a lot stronger tasting." By food aversion, I mean that those individuals would not take as much pleasure in eating just due to the fact that they do not perceive taste as strongly, and would hence find more foods to be bland, and not feel drawn to consumption.
DeleteAlso, HANG in there ... not hand.
My suspicion regarding super-tasters, evolutionarily speaking, is that back in the day, it kept them from eating things that shouldn't be eaten. Others may have noticed that certain people seemed less likely to die or become violently ill from what they ingested when experimentation was necessary, and others emulated them. Then when food became abundant, the trait became about as obsolete as the appendix. One thing that has helped picky eaters through more modern famines is that what's available in many modern famines (think "The Long Winter" of the Little House series) is that the type of food available in famines is usually stuff like potatoes or flour - not greasy stuff that would be inedible to super-tasters. Any given situation could differ, though, and place a picky eater in a troublesome spot. And I can say all I want about my Donner Party list, but I have to wonder how much of that stuff I might find a way to keep down if my survival depended on it. I suspect there are things I couldn't get down no matter what, but I could be wrong.
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