Well, folks.  The deed is done.  Granted, it can be changed an unlimited number of times until 9pm on February 23rd.  But there's still a sense of finality.  I've ranked 8 programs, but will hopefully end up at my number 1!  I'd be happy at any of my top 3, though!  I thought now would be a good time to explain the whole Match process.  It's a foreign concept to most of the world.  Here's how it works:

First of all, the Match is the process by which 4th year medical students apply for and are placed into residency programs in their desired specialty.

During the third and beginning of fourth year of medical school, you decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.  Sounds easy, right?  Right... I talked about how I ended up deciding to go into Family Medicine in the post, "Battle Royale: Ortho v. Family".  Once you decide what specialty you're going to apply to, you start collecting necessary information for the online application (called ERAS).  This involved collecting licensing test scores (Step 1, Step 2 CK, and Step 2 CS), three letters of recommendation, a personal statement, transcript, and deans letter.  This mostly happens during the summer of your 4th years.

On September 1st, ERAS opens to programs, and students can send their application information to the programs they wish to apply to.  The number of programs people apply to varies greatly depending on specialty, location, future plans for fellowship, and whether or not you are "couples matching" (trying to end up the same place as a spouse).  I applied to 10 programs. 

In general, your applications should be sent to all desired programs by November 1st, which is when Dean's Letters are released from your school to the programs you applied to.  The dean's letter comes from the dean's office, and basically highlights everything in the rest of your application. 

Once the applications are sent to programs, you will (ideally) start to get interview invitations.  There can come in anywhere from September through November, and into December for some specialities (not family though).  Then you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to fit in all the interviews in different places.  It's good fun.

November - January is spent interviewing.  Interview days generally consist of dinner with residency the night before, a couple interviews with faculty members and residents, a tour of the clinic and hospital, explanation of the program and it's benefits, and lunch with residents and faculty.  Most of mine lasted from about 7:30-2:30. 

Once interviews are done, you decide how you want to rank programs.  Here's the tricky part.  The Match.  Why is it called The Match?  Well, because some computer somewhere MATCHES you and a program.  Basically, you rank the programs in the order of where you'd like to be.  Programs do the same with applicants they've interviewed.  A computer goes through the applicants list, and puts them into the program they rank #1.  This applicant is only bumped out of that program when there are enough people the program ranked higher than them to bump them out.  Confused yet?  I thought so.

Basically, it's an applicant system.  There is NO benefit to ranking in any order other than where you want to be.  Just because you think you have a higher chance of getting in somewhere doesn't mean you should rank it higher.  If you do, you may never get the chance to be put in the program you REALLY want to go to.

So, we have until February 23rd to submit a finalized rank list (officially, "Rank Order List").  After that date, computer magic happens.  On March 14th (Monday), everyone finds out IF they matched.  Yes, it's possible not to match.  This happens at noon.  At my school, if you didn't match, you receive a page at noon asking you to come to Student Services.  God forbid this happen to anyone, you enter something called the Scramble.  This involves calling all the programs who didn't fill their spots and begging to be let it.  It's stressful and anxiety provoking and terrifying.  I'm getting anxious just talking about it.  Shutter.  Given that DOESN"T happen, Monday at noon you are relieved to know you will be going to residency SOMEWHERE on July 1st.  Then, you wait until Thursday.  Thursday, March 17th is Match Day.  At noon, everyone finds out where they matched.  At my school, everyone gathers in one room, and then we countdown to noon, and then everyone goes to a table and gets their envelope and opens it.  Some families come.  Some people hide in the corner.  The is much joy and many tears. 

And that, my friends, is how the Match works. 

I hope that clarified the system for you...

Ha.

It was BEAUTIFUL outside today (for January...), and I decided to take the new Blue out for it's inaugural ride.  When I pulled up to the parking lot at the lake, I thought to myself, "hmmm, I thought there would be more people here, it being Saturday and nice outside..."  I should have realized that meant something...

The trails was a wet mudpit.  Some areas were easy to get through, but others were deep and slippery.  I almost bit it a couple times, but managed to avoid faceplanting!  The backside of the lake was not as bad, but the damage was done in the first 4 miles... 

Blue will never look the same again.
My legs were a lot muddier until I went over a flooded bridge and got soaked.  Brrrrr.

Don't worry too much though!  Blue got hosed off at the car wash, and then wiped down inside.  ALMOST good as new.  But not quite...

I got home from a bike ride (which I will tell you about later), and was famished.  I made my own version of chicken tikka masala, which involved simmering.  In the simmering process, I created a large yellow splattery mess all over my stove.  No worries, I have 409.  Remember how 409 is one of the things that makes me happy?  Well, now it makes me even happier! 

First, lets review what 409 looks like when you spray it on the counter.
So, when I sprayed 409 on the yellow splatter mess, I figured it would look like yellow splatter mess with spray.

Oh no, no no.  It was magic!  409 MAGIC!!!!!

Eight brand new Subaru Outbacks


32 Trek Madone 6.9 bikes

875 KitchenAid mixers... about 75 of each color...

3840 Le Creuset Ogive teakettles

48,000 Chipotle burritos

or 576,000 Krispy Kreme donuts

I thought we'd have some good ole' fashion ethical fun tonight.  In class today, as a launching point for conversation about the purpose of punishment, we read the case below.  It's a true story, but don't ruin the fun by googling it and spoiling the ending.  I've paraphrased a bit to shorten the story, but haven't changed any details.

______________________

In 1985, Roswell Gilbert, a former electrical engineer, killed his 73-year-old wife to end her long suffering from Alzheimer's disease and osteoporosis, a degenerative bone disease.
It was on March 4, 1985 that Gilbert loaded a 9-mm Luger, part of his extensive gun collection, entered the living room of his Fort Lauderdale condo and quietly walked up behind his wife, Emily. He shot her in the temple, then, after feeling her pulse, reloaded the gun and fired again.
"I just could not allow my lovely lady of 51 years to descend into a hell of suffering and degradation," he wrote in a note he pinned to the bulletin board before he summoned the police.
Everyone who knew the couple, including their daughter, insists that Roswell was a devoted husband. During their first decades together he happily spent the bulk of his comfortable income to indulge Emily's taste for the good life. Later, as she steadily deteriorated, he went to extraordinary lengths to maintain a semblance of normal life for her. "Daddy used to put on her makeup," said Moran.
Emily and I were madly in love for 51 years. We had a nice life, a big house in Montclair, N.J. Emily didn't like to cook and I didn't care. We ate in restaurants and had a housekeeper who helped raise Skipper [daughter Martha's nickname] before she went to Vassar. We belonged to country clubs, traveled extensively.
It was in the early '60s, shortly after we'd bought a condo in Manhattan, that Emily demonstrated the first sign of Alzheimer's -- though no one knew it at the time.  Time passed, and in we wanted to live abroad, and in 1972 we moved to a waterfront condo in Majorca, Spain. In the five and half years we were there I had to fly back to America 27 times to be an expert witness in electrical engineering lawsuits. Fortunately I was back when Emily suffered her first fracture. She fell down in my lab, screaming in pain. We found out it was osteoporosis, which eventually led to multiple fractures of the spine. Soon we decided to move back to the States, and I suggested Fort Lauderdale.
We loved our Florida condo from the day we bought it in 1978. Emily was gregarious and made friends in the building, but her memory was starting to fail. She had a hard time remembering simple things like where she was going or what happened yesterday, and after tests, they diagnosed Alzheimer's.

I kept all this quiet. Didn't even discuss it with Skipper or my friends. It's not my way. I kept it all inside.

I set up a shop in the apartment and consulted to companies up North, but Emily became more and more dependent. If she saw me leave on a business trip, she'd throw a tantrum. I tried to make day trips or leave at 2 or 3 a.m. so it wouldn't seem as if I was gone overnight. That went on for a couple of years. But her fear complex grew worse by the day. Friends tried to help out, but she only wanted me. In 1984 Emily woke up and had a fit because I was gone. She remembered nothing. She ran to the neighbors demanding to know where I was. "Did he leave me? I can't make it without him. Find my husband." When neighbors reached me by phone and she heard my voice, she calmed down. But I came home at once.

For months leading up to the end, our living ritual was virtually the same. I would get up at dawn and get us two glasses of orange juice. She slept on the couch because it was more comfortable for her back. I'd sit down in front of her, sip my juice and wait for her eyes to open. Usually she didn't know me. She would ask, "Where are we? Are we in Spain?" It was pathetic. I'd talk to her and try to bring her around.

I'd pick her up and carry her into the bathroom. I'd bathe her, brush her teeth, perform her feminine hygiene for her. We would go out for lunch and she would pick at her food. She had no appetite. She weighed less than 80 pounds. There wasn't much I could do except make sure she took her daily medication. I asked the doctors for help, but they had little experience with this condition.

The weekend before the end was awful. She was in such pain from new fractures I took her to the hospital; the doctor said she needed to be x-rayed. But she got recalcitrant and carried on like a sick baby. She refused to take her clothes off for the x-ray, and when they tried to take a blood test, she yanked the needle out of her vein. Blood flowed all over the bedclothes and her already soiled dress.

I stayed in the hospital all night with her, but she refused to stay in bed. The pain was so bad she screamed and cried. She went out in the hall looking for elevators and pushed all the buttons, which caused an uproar. The nurse said, "We can't handle her; we're not used to this disease." She echoed the words of three nursing homes in the area, which said they were not equipped to take her in.

So we left on Sunday. I put her back on the couch, and she hadn't eaten for 36 hours. I gave her Percodan. What else could I do?

The next day I had to go down to the manager's office and sign some checks for the condo association. After a few minutes she must have noticed I was gone. She hobbled onto the elevator and came down into the lobby. She was dressed in the same bloody dress that she'd worn in the hospital. She looked a mess. She was crying. She brightened up when she saw me, but then I started crying. And the office secretary started crying.

I took her back to the couch. I just looked at her and cried and asked myself over and over, "What the hell can I do?" She said, "Ros, I love you dearly. God, I want to die." It wasn't the first time she had said this. I even thought about killing her a year before. Had she not asked me in those last few hours, I wouldn't have gone through with it.

I walked into my lab and fetched the Luger. I shot her on the side of the head. Then I did something foolish. I felt the arteries in her neck. I realized she was still alive. So I reloaded the gun. I was shaking like I'd never shaken. I shot her again. Her chin dropped. Her mouth just opened. Her right hand shook. No other movement. She was dead.
I felt grief. Not regret. I stood there and cried thinking my wife was dead. But the fact that she was no longer suffering gave me relief.

_______________________
 
In Florida, the sentence for murder is life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
 
Knowing this, should the prosecutor try Mr. Gilbert for murder?  Why or why not?
 
Should he be charged with something other than murder?
 
Should he be punished at all?

I've mentioned this one before, but I recently discovered a blog called "1000 Awesome Things".  Every day, there is a new awesome thing.  They are hysterical. 

Today's awesome thing is Atoms.