Finally, I've managed to create my own blog-post-thing for everyone to read! Everything here has been an adventure. Every night I go to sleep in fear of what McJohnson will do to "accidently" wake me up, and every morning she forces me wake up with her. It's so cruel. Every afternoon she only lets me watch Phineas and Ferb or Spongebob! Please, please, please someone help me. My ninja powers are too weak to escape the gleeful clutches of Amy-neezer McScrooooooge!
All of that is untrue. Actually, it's really quite a bit of fun hanging out with her all of the time. It's like hanging out with my best friend who just so happens to be a really pretty girl, too. I've made some new acquaintances here, bonded with the kitten (although I'm helping to feed her cat-nip addiction), and managed to cook every day. What some people don't realize is that I enjoy cooking because it's like some great tasting science experiment for me. What she doesn't realize is that I'm testing the food on her. BAHAHAH! Good thing she never reads her own blog... Hm, anyways, where was I? I think zombies live in the apartment above us. Redneck woman zombies-- the worst kind. They stomp around and groan and cackle. I assume they're watering their plants when water randomly spills on our balcony. If the zombie apocalypse happens, I know where it started.
Amy-neezer and I ate at Senor Rick's for dinner. She had a chimichanga and I ate crispy chile rellenos. YUM! Flippin' delicious. What?
We also have been playing the super-fly game known as Let's Dance 2. It has some great songs in it! You wouldn't believe me but Amy-neezer and I are learning how to do the Charleston. If you don't believe me then it's because you don't believe in miracles, which makes you a sad person; that, in turn, makes me sad. Now look what you've done, you've gone and hurt my feelings. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was on purpose. Now that I think about it... yeah, it was on purpose! Why are you playing with my feelings again?! You're tearing me apart!
Annnnyways... There's not much left to write about. Nanosuke (the kitten's ninja name because I'm training her in the art of ninjary... ninjastics? Ninja-ism. Yeah.) and I have developed a close bond. At one point in time, I was the big spoon and she was the little spoon. We watched movies and even stink-eyed a squirrel that was on our balcony. Some day I'll train the furry little mini-ninja to be able to show that squirrel who's boss. I am, by the way. It goes like this: Acorn < Squirrel < Nanosuke < Me.
So, uh... that's all I have. Really nothing else going on from my stand point. Um... What's going on with you? How's work?
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This is awkward. Yeah... I'll just talk to you later. Okay? Cool.
Oh, before you go. Take note at my effective use of ellipses.
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Ellipses are for chumps!
So I get busy and ninja gets bored and I figured I would accidentally let him find my blog password and write a bit about being stuck here with me. So if anatomy was the pregnancy of medical school then molecules to medicine is all the time spent watching said child nap. Seriously, it is way boring and then randomly something interesting happens and then they wake up and are a tiny bit amusing and then become annoying and then go back to sleep. Not my favorite block ever, but not really hard. I ended up getting a 75% on the first exam without actually studying even for one minute. All I did was watch the lectures I missed from the wedding which equals out to me just going to the lectures in the first place and then spending no additional time with the material. Good thing I majored in biology and chemistry. Our next test is on biostatistics and epidemiology. I was worried because I am still behind, but then I noticed the test is open book/open note/open everything (except classmates). Mostly we have to interpret data.
I would love to share a few things with you, but you have to promise to listen and not just get mad if you disagree. First, screening for any kind of cancer except cervical is statistically pointless. In fact, the harms of having a false positive far outweighs the benefits of early detection. In most cases the number of false positives is more than triple the number of true positives and so out of 100 people who test positive 25 would have the disease and 75 would not, but would have the emotional trauma and possibly some of the treatments for it. That is a rough estimate and it differs for each disease. But then you have to wonder if for the 25 who get caught is the result worth it. Not necessarily. For breast cancer, if you start screening each year in your 40s like it is recommended then out of 1000 women destined to die from breast cancer in the end only ONE of them will survive because it was caught early. Oddly enough, this is the same number that would survive if the screening was every other year starting after age 50. Once you get into your 60s and 70s there is a marked decrease in the mortality because you get up closer to saving 40 out of 1000. But after 70 you really shouldn't bother because chances are you will die of something else. What I think should be happening is conversations between physicians and patients where the statistics are mentioned and each person makes their own choice. Since I have no family history of any kind of cancer and do not take part in high risk activities I would opt to start in my 50s and probably only have one screening every 5 years and then go to every 2 years in my 60s and 70s before stopping altogether. But since ninja has a high rate of breast cancer in his family (as in every woman gets it no exceptions) I would want my daughters to get tested early and often because I know they will have it at some point. And we then learned that screening for prostate cancer is very harmful due to a phenomenon known as over-diagnosis. Over-diagnosis is where a person has a disease and it has no symptoms or detrimental effects and then it ends and they never even would have known they had it EXCEPT a test caught it and so they get treatment they never really needed. So the prostate is supposed to die in males and the natural course of its death is asymptomatic cancer. 80% of males have it and very few have any sort of symptoms or harmful side effects. But with all the screening men are getting they end up going through treatment and emotional trauma that is completely unnecessary. These are a few examples. There are many others that have nothing to do with cancers. I just would like to mention that screening for diseases before they are symptomatic is not really statistically reasonable. But then you have to wonder, what if the 1/1000 women saved by a mammogram in her 40s was your mother? It would be worth it despite all the emotional stress on the other women with false positives, right? I would ruin other people's lives to save my mother so I say a hearty YES! I just think each person should make an informed decision and no more of this scaring us into unnecessary testing junk. Not cool cancer society, not cool.
I would like to mention here just how happy I am at the moment with my life. Everything married=better than everything not married. I can still do things with my parents and brother and be a part of their family, but then I also get to do everything with ninja. Best of both worlds I say. And the food! Oh man, you wish you were me, that's all I have to say. Plus he has lately taken to spoiling my cat. A six foot Filipino cuddling a 10 pound cat is adorable. Not to mention all the toys he keeps getting her. Ah, this is the life.
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