Adventures in Compounding (and other things)

Today was another one of the compounding Saturdays of doom. I went into work (running on very few hours of sleep, thanks to the inane urge to watch Watchmen at midnight last night) and was presented with twelve IVs, 50 syringes to put 0.1 mL of a drug into, and a stack of things that needed to be made. I spent two hours in the hood -which is pleasant enough at first, but soon it becomes a sweltering nightmare in which you're focusing so hard on tiny details that you start to forget big picture things. Like the fact that I still have one more exam coming up, or that you should probably remove surgical booties when out of the hood so you don't walk around looking like an escaped mental patient the rest of the day.

It wouldn't have been such a bad day except that we finally got the H1N1 vaccine in and another shipment of the seasonal flu vaccine. The other intern essentially had to spend the entire day in the blood draw room sticking needles in people while I ran back and forth from the compounding room to help the pharmacist out during rushes, usually whilst covered in whatever cream I'd just spilled. An observation of note: wearing a surgical mask, even if it's just to prevent yourself from breathing in hormone dust, freaks patients out. Moreso when you burst flailing from the room and trip over the rug while trying to wipe a concoction of testosterone off your arm before it absorbs enough to cause some rather unpleasant changes.

I ended up making something like 600 mL of a stock cream and filled well over fifty syringes with the stuff. The true trial of the day, though, came in the form of a thyroid capsule that for some unfathomable reason contains olive oil. I have no idea why anyone would put olive oil in a gelatin capsule, but I valiantly attempted it with the assurances of the lead compounding tech that she'd done it before and it works pretty well.

I don't know to which dark gods she has been sacrificing sheep to be able to make that work, because I spent two hours trying to coax the oil/pig thyroid/silica gel mess into those capsules. It smelled terribly, looked like death, and refused to cooperate. I gave up when the syringe I was using exploded the vile mixture all over the window and wall, and vowed to steal the dark secrets from her on Monday.





Also, I recently gave in to a two-year wish and bought myself a squishable. It's amazing. That's him above. I dubbed it Worthington and promptly spent the afternoon taking pictures of him attacking various things and being quite the intellectual. The afternoon would probably have been better spent studying for the dosage form and design final I had Friday, but everybody needs a break, right? And that particular final turned out to be ridiculously easy.



The aforementioned projects are still in the works - one of them involves setting up a program that would allow a group of people to see what their friends are reading and connect to other people who read the same things. I can't do it by myself, so the ever-awesome Cody will hopefully be helping me iron it out when we both have some actual time. I got the idea from him, as he has been talking about keeping track of everything he reads, and I think it'd be a neat way to connect with your friends and with other people.

There may be another post up tomorrow. I, in a lapse of judgment, agreed to let the techs take me out to the bars tonight for a few hours. If some other less-than-suave "gentleman" tries to shove his hand in my drink his time, he's going down.

Short Update

Well, it's been a while since I've updated. Again, it's been a very busy few weeks - I went to Moscow, got an accordion from a favorite professor, took a few exams, had a very eventful Thanksgiving break, wrote 50,000 words . . .

It's been a long month. I'm not particularly pleased with the NaNo, though near the end it started turning into something that has actual potential. I'm more eager to work on last year's - as in, actually finish it, polish it up, and give it to people to seriously read. A few people are reading it and seem to really enjoy it, which is always quite affirming.

Another thing of note: I am no longer dating ze dutchman. It was a very difficult decision to make, but right now I need to be able to focus on school and not worry about other stresses - it was getting to the point where I was so stressed I was having problems eating. School stress will not change so this was the only thing that could, as regrettable as it is. I'm hoping that, at some point when both of us are a little more stable, we can try again. He's really one of my best friends.

This is going to stay a short, not very amusing update post because I have a final on Friday (the first cardiovascular module final, blech) and need to reread a few papers on drugs that alter metabolism in cardiac cells. I'm pretty wiped from working all break and pounding 15,000 words out in the span of a few days to finish the NaNo. I've got a few projects I'm working on that I'll mention next post - hopefully they're something that will interest people, as I imagine it'll be more fun if others participate as well.

-SqueezeBox

Minor Delays and Spidercake

There was supposed to be a post coming up last week, but I had a big exam and then the flu, so it didn't happen. Priority was given to lying in bed feeling sick and miserable. I'm feeling better now, for the most part.

The day before Halloween was the pharmacy school's Halloween party, and I entered the dessert contest with this delightful gem:

Oh yes, that's a spidercake. Not shown are the innards that ooze out when the body is cut. It's very simple to make and hilarious to watch people eat, because they have this look of abject horror when the guts come pouring out.
Make four round cakes, two large and two small. Cut the middle out of one of the big ones and fill it with green jello. Frost over the top, put the second big cake on, then frost over both. If you're feeling particularly morbid, you can do the same with the small cake and have a spider leaking brains and visceral organs.
I used licorice for the legs and found some gummy eyeballs that worked out nicely.
The spidercake won the contest, but the prize was a big bowl of candy. I probably spent more on the ingredients . . .

In other quick news, I won a free Dell Netbook from Shopko . . . it's much nicer than I expected, and has better specs than expected. I'm pretty pleased, as this means I can keep my electrical hazard of a power cord belonging to the Toshiba safely strung up on my desk and not risk electrocuting myself/classmates during lecture. The netbook is also named Tartarus.

Also! It's November and thus time for NaNoWriMo. I was going to do a historically accurate analysis of the social mores of opera (following a castrati, composer, nobleman financier, soprano, and stage hand - and I promise it wouldn't be boring), but I really don't have the time this year to make sure it is, well, historically accurate. Instead I'm doing a fairly random urban fantasy that involves whales and a surprising number of nosebleeds. It's much easier to just spit out, and I think the opera story really deserves to be done properly.

There may be another accordion video coming up this weekend, but I have to work tomorrow and study for a positively delightful exam over medications for high cholesterol and ischemia that I'll be taking on Thursday . . . in all probability, it won't happen.

- Squeezebox

It's About Time

I have here, for your listening enjoyment, the first recording of me playing the accordion. I did have a video, but my internet connection is currently the butt of a terrible joke and thus cannot handle the 30 second webcam vid. Typical. Everyone should laud much praise upon my friend Cody for fixing the video into a workable format for me. He's amazing.

The song is Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen, which I'm assuming means something about love in German. According to my lovely book, it's a German folk song. My phrasing is less than perfect and there are a few mistakes in here, but this was probably close to the thirtieth attempt at recording it and my patience was wearing thin . . .



I'm hoping to post a video each week, to both force myself to practice and to see if I'm actually improving. I do feel rather awkward as there's not much in the way of volume control on accordions and this apartment complex has walls that are best politely described as 'thin'. There haven't yet been any angry stompings or agitated people trying to bash my door down, so I'm going to keep assuming my fellow apartmentians are connoisseurs of fine accordion music.

Hey, it's possible.


In other news, pharmacy fair was yesterday and today. It went off well, and I'm excited to chair the committee for next year. I had two interviews today, one with Shopko and the other with CVS. They were marginally awkward as I've got a job I adore and am not really looking for a summer internship, but the interviewers were polite and I made some decent contacts.

Swag from the pharmacy fair was also awesome this year. Shopko was giving out their brochures on 2 gig flash drives, and entering all of us in for a laptop drawing. Big Box Retail, my opinion of you is shifting slightly upward. The rest of it was the standard pens, first aid kits, and the like, but I did manage to snag an epic post-it organizer and five decks of cards - the Walgreens reps kept dumping stuff in my bag as I walked by.

Albertson's took us all out to one of the local bars last night to relax and interact with the recruiters in an informal setting. I enjoyed a gin & tonic, vodka cranberry, and a lemon drop, then stuck with water for the rest of the evening (in the interest of self-preservation).

It was great fun until some random bar-goer decided I was grade-A meat and needed to be picked up. Let me paint a picture of this positively delightful example of why I need to get the hell out of SE Idaho: long greasy hair, scruffy beard, filthy jeans, a grey sweater, and a mardi gras necklace. Yes. In October. Somehow I doubt he was celebrating Fat Tuesday. This less-than-appealing example of masculinity came sauntering over and put his hand in my drink.

Slimeball: Heeeeey, what're you drinking? (as his filthy hands violate the sanctity of my delicious hangover-preventing H2O)
Me: Water . . . (as I stare in abject horror at the dirt now floating in my once pure refreshing beverage)
Sleazy McJerkFace: Hey, that won't get you drunk, let me buy you a beer! (while removing his grimy hands from the plastic cup now holding only despair and broken dreams)
Me: (more abject horror)
Wonderful Fellow Female Students: Objection! Interception! Rejection!

I am eternally grateful to them for getting rid of the water defiler, and for getting me a new cup. The rest of the evening was fun, until Phil decided he hadn't had enough and spilled beer all over my nice boots.

Conclusion: I need to find out some way to make myself completely unattractive so I can go to the bar and enjoy drinks with friends without needing to bathe in lye afterward.

Also, accordions are awesome.

- SqueezeBox

Sum o' the Week

We had our first module final on Friday - over everything we've learned on the kidneys and lungs. It's a great deal of information to learn, and very odd to have one question per lecture on things we're supposed to retain for essentially the rest of our careers.

I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but studying got a bit waylaid this week as I kept getting in fights on the internet and that's always a major point of anxiety for me. I realize I'll never change anyone's mind, that it's the internet and doesn't matter, but I get quite worked up when something is wrong and I know it's wrong. Luckily I've managed to cease contact with the major people/forums that get me worked up, so let's hope that continues. Judicious reading of Don Quixote in the bath and realizing that I've essentially been jousting at windmills (and not even fun ones) as well as a lecture from a good friend are steeling my resolve to not get involved.

Anyway, back on school - now we're wading through coagulation cascades and all of the drugs therein (many of which sound like awesome name for dinosaurs. Seriously. Ticagrelor, anyone?). I may have spent the better portion of Friday's lecture drawing a drug dinosaur stomping on platelets and yelling about P2Y12 receptors . . . pictures may be forthcoming. I'm finding this much easier to study than the pulmonary/renal stuff as it interests me more. It's also rather surreal to go into work and suddenly know so much more about what's actually wrong with the patients as I'm giving them their medication.

As we had that exam and won't have another for two weeks, I decided to relax this weekend and worked some on my blanket. I've been knitting a blanket all summer and it's almost finished. It'll be a big, lovely blue throw for my couch. I'm only a mere 25 rows away! After that, I'll be starting a gorgeous sweater - can't work on it now because I only have one set of circular needles and the blanket is freaking huge. It'll be really pretty when it's finished though.

A side note: I realize that I was asking for trouble when I came to school in southeastern Idaho, but I am getting really, really tired of the general way men treat women around here. Listen, old men in the pharmacy, I do not appreciate random comments about how relatively small my chest is. I do not appreciate the winks and dirty jokes. Listen, my boobs are not here for your perusal, least of all when you interrupt a conversation I'm having to take your fill.

A friend told me to cut them some slack because "it's not like they ever get to see boobs". Last time I checked, I was not the keeper of the boobie zoo for all those poor souls who can't get a girlfriend. Were I in a bar or some other situation generally intended to be set up for attracting the opposite sex, I wouldn't be protesting as much, but this was at school from a colleague. And not the first time it's happened with this particular piece of work. I realize that to most men around here I'm not much more than a prop because, let's face it, I'm not married or popping out babies, and we all know women have no place in professional fields, but a bit of common decency would be nice.

Don't get me wrong - this really is an excellent pharmacy school and I absolutely feel that what I'm learning is of the highest standards. I love my classes and the professors. I'm just tired of the area and the inherent attitudes toward the relative worth of women.

I was going to end this here, but a cricket somehow made its way onto my bed and is now crawling down the side nearest the wall. As it's relatively small for a cricket and black, I may have initially thought it was a hobo and thrown a book on opera at it. I'm feeling merciful, as I haven't the slightest idea how this little guy found his way here, so I shall name him Magellan and not murder him. If he's on me when I wake up, though, Magellan dies.

- SqueezeBox

Pressure

I currently work in a family owned community pharmacy that does a few extra things like compounding on the side. On Saturdays I'm the compounder and thus get to spend an enjoyable eight hour shift making capsules, creams, IVs, and whatever else anyone needs. If there are no current prescriptions, I make an endless supply of Domperidone capsules. And I truly mean endless waves upon waves of orange capsule shells and powder that needs to be mixed and packed into each one perfectly . . . I have nightmares about the stuff, honestly.

Today I spent a few hours making eighteen ceftazidime (an antibiotic) IVs. When making an IV, the powdered medicine needs to be reconstituted, mixed, and then put into a bag to be put into the patient. It sounds simple enough, but I found out the hard way that too much positive pressure is a bad thing. In order to be able to get the mixed up medicine back into a needle from the vial, there needs to be higher pressure inside the bottle than outside. Usually it's easiest to squeeze some air into the vial and allow the fluid to fill the needle because of the pressure.

Unfortunately, ceftazidime produces gases of its own when mixed, and needs to be vented before putting the liquid in the needle. I thought I would be clever and put more air into the vial before withdrawing the fluid . . . which ended up being a mistake. Turns out fluid under pressure can and will squirt through holes in vial lids made by needles.

It also turns out that ceftazidime looks and smells very much like cat urine.

I managed to remove most of the smell from my lab coat, and then went about making some solutions for dogs. We use beef flavoring to get the dogs to think the medicine is a treat, but it's kept on a relatively high shelf along with every other kind of flavor oil we possess. (Side note: Graceful is not an adjective that will ever be used to describe me.) I reached up for the beef oil and pulled it down, catching the bottle of bacon flavor on the way. The syringe fell out of the top of the bacon vial, thus allowing the concentrated oil to cover the counter, me, the capsule machine I'd just emptied of Domperidone, and the tools I had just set to dry.

Concentrated bacon oil does not clean up well.

Now smelling of cat urine and bacon, I went on a hunt for our bottle of odor neutralizer (which we picked up after the unfortunate tuna incident). The bottle had gone missing, and the only thing I could find was a test bottle of candy cane scented spray. I didn't think the combination of smells could get any worse, so I used it on the bacon affected area.

Minty bacon and cat urine is, surprisingly, not an appealing scent combination.

The smell may have also seeped out of the compounding room and may be sinking into the carpet.

I might be needing to make and bring in cheesecake to appease the head compounding tech for this one.

- SqueezeBox

Intro

I'm a 21 year-old second year pharmacy student who is learning to play the accordion - hence the blog name. I actually enjoy studying, medicinal chemistry in particular. I'm hoping to specialize in infectious disease and obtain a PhD in Pharmacology when I'm finished with pharmacy school. I've been kicking this blog idea around for a while, largely because my writing skills have seen a sharp decline since forgoing creative education in favor of heavy science, and that's not something I'd like to have continue. I can certainly describe various receptors and drug systems in more detail than anyone could ever want to know, but that's not exactly useful when trying to connect with anyone who hasn't spent four years pouring over pharmacology textbooks.

I play more than just the accordion - clarinet, piano, violin, and guitar, among others. I'm currently teaching myself the accordion, which is easier said than done. At this point, my skills are pretty limited to polka and bad imitations of Lawrence Welk, but my goal is to be able to play Yann Tiersen and do him justice. I read whatever I can get my hands on and fit around studying. My music tastes run from sea chanties and polkas (my family immigrated from Norway, it's in my blood) to opera and everything in between.

I love terrible jokes and pun competitions, video games and literature, bad movies, and general expressions of geekery. Finally being out of dorms means I have more than a shared oven with a building full of less-than-culinarily-adept engineers, so I'm teaching myself to bake. I knit and crochet, wear too much black, and have a final next Friday (pulmonary and renal, *hork*).

- SqueezeBox