13.5 hr plane ride to Osaka, Japan

I am currently on a thirteen hour flight to Osaka, Japan-- in the smallest international plane known to man. It is RIDICULOUSLY tiny. I swear the coach seats would not have been able to accommodate a slightly overweight grown man. I’m already hunched over trying to type this—so you get the picture. Anyways, I figure my mom couldn’t really get me on an “asian” airline, e.g. Eva Air, China Air, Korean Air, or Singapore Air flight from Detroit, Mi so I had to fly Northwest. Northwest doesn’t even have personal monitors on its international flights. I thought that those babies were the standard protocol after 2005 or something. I was all stoked about watching “Bolt” or some other new film for free on the flight too.

Anyways, I keep feeling these kicks coming from behind me. Being EC, I turn around and attempt to use my best grown- up voice to ask the kid to cease and desist. But surprisingly enough, it’s not a kid. It’s an elderly Japanese man. I don’t have the heart at all to tell him to stop. I am just so soft for senior citizens. (He might not be a citizen because there are about a gajillion alien residents and visitors on this flight. It’s definitely a sea of black hair in Coach). My M2 expert opinion says that the patient has Restless Leg Syndrome.

AK and OMP tell me that I am silly for thinking that I will get a deep vein thrombosis and a subsequent, pulmonary embolism from this 17 hour flight. For those of you in the happy world outside of medicine, a deep vein thrombosis is a clot that forms in your deep veins (usually in your legs) due to staying in one position for too long. The lack of movement results in stasis and subsequent clotting of your blood. And all of a sudden, the clot from your legs may travel to your lungs. In your lungs, the clot can get stuck on block off one of your vessesls. With the blockage, blood cannot become oxygenated and you, my friend, can get a stroke or an MI or something wonderful like that. Granted, I am not sixty eight years old and have not been stuck in bed for more than 48 hours, but I am still flexing my calves and quads to make sure that I don’t keel over at the fresh age of 23. I think my fear of a pullmonary emobolism is more of the fear of stasis. I cannot sit still for more than four hours. Even the red light, green light game in elementary school had me fidgeting like crazy. And anyone, I mean anyone that I study with, can vouch for my hyperactivity during studying. I like to spin highlighters, play with ear plugs, stand and study, sit and study, and walk around the halls with sheets of paper. It really is a blessing I am not in a office job. I think I would live in fear of a pulmonary embolism every day.

Speaking of blood clotting and hemostasis, I have a huge bruise on my arm. Not giganic, but deep. It is around 4 cm in diameter and is dark purple in the center with blue-green edges. It’s smack dab in the middle of my left arm—so its location makes it seem like somebody tried to grab me in an inappropriate manner. I mean it. If I saw my bruise on some girl during a physical exam, I would IMMEDIATELY ask, “Do you feel safe and comfortable at home? How about at work?”

I don’t remember getting it, but I am pretty sure it’s from Sniffles McGee. McGee and I just met yesterday at the gym, but just one run-in with him gave me such a beating. I just hope the bruise wasn’t too obvious at OS last night. It would have been capital A-W-K-W-A-R-D for me to walk around a bar with a huge bruise on my arm, looking all beaten and blue.

In case you haven’t figured it out, Sniffles McGee is a rock climbing route that I’m trying out. I must have hit my arm against the wall a dozen or so times last night. It was pretty bad. I think I look like a big sea cow shimmying up a beach at 2 cm/ hour when I try to climb. I know that all my friends disagree, but until you catch me on film, I refuse to believe that I look like a competent climber.