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