"Ladies and gentlemen, if there's a physician on the flight, if you could alert the crew by pressing your call button..."

"we have a passenger in need of your assistance."

That was the announcement that awoke me thirty minutes into my flight from boston to minneapolis this morning. Apparently, one of the passengers had fallen quite ill, and a doctor was needed. I figured with three hundred people on the flight, there was probably one...

And there were none... and sometimes they ask for med students next, but not this time, and i was pretty thankful for that... I was actually pretty nervous considering i was probably the most medically trained person on the flight, but we put down in syracuse within minutes, and i didn't say anything...

after all, what's three months of med school anyway... clearly a little bit of knowledge is dangerous in this situation...

anyway, look forward to a barrage of photos and stories from my weekend sojourn in boston and some shots from rochester, as well as the namesake photo, finally, for this blog, diagnosis: penguin...

it's been a long time coming...

(and if he doesn't start reading the blog, there will be a picture of rome for all of you h.j. portlock fans)

cheers,

"Love that dirty water... ahhh-ahh-ah... boston you're my home..."

omg...

it's so good to be back in beantown and to see everyone...

i won't go into detail now... but photos and stories are to come...

hope everyone is well...

love this town...

cheers,

from family weekend... a stunning success....

dive into family weekend...

i can't believe i've been gone for three full months, but it's true, and i find myself staring headlong into family weekend (in fact, my mom, grandmother, and steve {mom's boyfriend)) are already in town...

it'll be extremely nice to see everyone--really, it's quite difficult to believe how long it's actually been--but the weekend will be tricky, as the medical school has scheduled a number of events which i'm not sure how interesting will be to anyone... waning attention spans and all... we'll see how the relatives and rents fare in a mini-medschool offered on saturday morning...

as for me, well, i'm disappointed at the lackluster end of the baseball season, but i guess if they were going to be drag out awful, i'd rather them get it over with and lose, so i wouldn't have to invest all that time in following them... should be an interesting off season...

in school, we've been doing head and neck in anatomy, and it's just wonderfully complicated... i've really enjoyed these dissections as there's so much room for teasing fine structures apart--very interesting stuff... all those Ear-Nose-Throat guys must have quite the hands... and not to continue the train of disbelief, but I can't believe we've covered more than half of the body's anatomy... it doesn't feel like we've covered half, but we have... maybe it's just surprising how much we know about this stuff already... just knowing the geography of the body enables you to participate in so many more discussions in the medical realm...

and by far the most shocking development in life:

i cleaned the apartment...

anyway, gotta run...

cheers,

kudos to karau...

i forgot to mention it, but many, many kudos to young karau, who has set this blog up with an additional feature:

you may now reach the blog via the link www.diagnosispenguin.com or www.diagnosispenguin.net

wow!

thanks for the completely unsolicited contribution to the website--i've been meaning to mention it for awhile now...

so, given readers are putting so much effort into improving the site, i'll pick up the pace and try to do a better job keeping posting current, brief, and interesting...

cheers,

40th post...

anyway, this post is a long-time coming... I guess I'll have to try to ease myself back into posting, but life has been pretty "blah" late with exams and following the baseball season...

well, this link is worth checking out--courtesy of j. rob--very funny... give it a minute to load up...

other than that, i can't believe i watched the whole sox blowout today... what a waste of my time...

hope everyone is doing well--i'm looking forward to a family visit next week and a trip back to boston at the end of next week...

cheers,