Rural Rounds

Lately, I've been thinking about Tyler. His desk chair and his electric razor are two things of his that I kept (many people who knew him took items that belonged to him, to put them to use instead of going to trash and to remember him by). Sitting in what was once his chair, I can "visit" with him, in a sense. I know others who knew him are doing the same when they look at pictures, or what they kept of his. "You are the salt of the earth. Buf if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." --- Jesus, Matthew 5:13-16 This was the foundation for my fri...

It's been all about the S the last few days. On Saturday (ironic, it starts with an 'S' day), my battery in my Jeep completely died a sudden death. There was a plastic sleeve attached to the battery that contained the purchase receipt. Purchased in 2002, well that explains it. It took about 10 - 15 phone calls to actually find someone available to take me to O'Reily's (I was trying to work out in concentric circles from my house), but I finally got a new battery. The guy testing the old one simply said, "Yup, it's dead," with a total resignation telling me that there was no hope in rejuvenating it. New battery, check. Now I'm mobile again... Fast forward to where I'm headed west on Stadium. A loud thunk followed by an instantaneous loss of power steering control, coupled with a drop in battery voltage from 14 V to barely 10 V, and a slowly rising engine thermometer told me something was wrong with the Jeep. I drove to HyVee's parking lot, p...

Originally Aug, 3rd In the last week and a half, I think that I have been asked "How are you doing/feeling?" more times than I can ever recall in such a short period. I had talked with someone about how reflexive it is for me to simply say 'pretty good' and push off the question. The truth is, I have not been good, and I don't know how to answer that question. The truth is, I want to talk about how I am doing, but often don't see so simple and common a greeting as a gateway to really opening up about how I feel. The truth is, I have probably still withheld a lot of feelings and problems I have dealt with in the last twelve days than most people are even aware of, and not because I don't want to share them. I haven't shared everything that has been going on because I don't know how to share it. I don't know if I should share it. I don't know how honest I can be about how I feel. I love my church community. I can't stand my church communi...

Sometime Friday, July 21, 2006 "Hey James, it's your mother" "Hey mom." "Your dad was told by work he has to go to Conneticutt on Sunday for two weeks on business...come down this evening so you can go golfing and boating all tomorrow instead." 6:00 p.m. Friday, July 21, 2006 "Alright Tyler, I think I'm headed out. I'll be home Monday sometime." "Alright, see ya bro, have a good weekend." 12:32 p.m., Saturday, July 22, 2006 "Hey James, this is John Drage....call me back." I had been out golfing that morning with my dad and younger brother. On the way home my phone rang at least once, but I decided not to pull it from my pocket since I was driving and I thought it was likely someone from Columbia , where I wasn't currently at. Once home I listened to the message. I still didn't suspect anything beyond that John wanted to talk about something (I thought possibly fall canvas group stuff). I called him back aro...

I'm in a halt with research lately, since there are no more subjects I can currently gather data on. Why is that bad? Because I start class in the second week of August, and because I'm not even halfway to finished with this research project. Why can't my research move forward? It's because the billing department's wonderful worker who's been helping us has not been able to find subjects using the search method she is employing. Also, she's a tad slow in getting work done and to us in a timely manner. In other news, my grandparents came to visit on Friday of last week. I love my grandparents with a passion. Age has definately awarded them wisdom. It has also awarded them humor. The highlights: Grandma: "Want to go in that Lakota place and get some coffee?" Grandpa: "We can't go in there, we're not carrying laptops!" "Those fancy coffeeshops don't have senior coffee. I can get one for $.50 at McDonald's" - Grandpa...

Here we are. The very first works of James: artist, future doctor, gardener, superman (maybe that last part is an exaggeration).

I've had a $25 gift card to Wal-Mart just lying around for over a year now, so I decided to use it today. I had earlier had the idea to possibly buy a canvas and some paint, and paint my own abstract or contemporary-ish art to hang in my room or somewhere around the house, to add some color. I figured it would be cheaper than buying something, and nicer than a poster. Well, I went to Michael's first, and their painting supply is high-dollar. Disappointing. I later found some 16"x20" canvases at Wal-Mart, as well as some cheap acryllic paint. I bought primary colors and black and white in big $1.67 tubes, more than enough for the canvases (maybe I can make more art later). I also bought a candle, and a wooden box in the craft area that I thought looked nice for a dresser organizer (I put my keys, watch, cufflinks, etc., in it to take away clutter). It feels good to be able to beautify a living space, even a temporary one. Having a creative flow at times, be it art, fur...

I've been reading the book The Provocative Church lately, and must say I give it two hands up and an amen. Reading this book will jump in the face of everything you thought evangelism was. Once not long ago (as in, beginning with my entrance into college and up until just recently) I felt very guilty regarding evangelism. The book hit this to a T when it sums up that most Christians feel that evangelism is something that ought to be done, but they don't readily do because they don't know how, they don't feel good at doing it, or they don't want to subject friends to a church that they themselves are bored and unfulfilled with. I have always wished to evangelize, but have always had the principle hindrance in feeling that it does no good to talk about God to someone who isn't really curious. And, to that end, I've simply strove for Christian progress (see Justification, Sanctification, Reconciliation, in a previous entry). This book holds that just such an ap...

I went to see The Da Vinci Code last night with Thane. He wanted to see it after reading the book, to see how the movie compares. I wanted to see what the hubbub was all about without reading the book. Boy, was a silly little story. I believe it's been out a couple weeks now, and it is probably going to be pulled from theaters real soon; the Forum showing we went to had five people watching it, including Thane and me. Thane says that the movie isn't completely like the book, and that it fails to embellish certain very important parts that in the book were elaborated to no end. Afterwards, we both drove back to my place and Thane came in for a while. We had been discussing the movie, and religion, and other things. Eventually we started talking about faith and apologetics and evidence of the truth of Christianity. Thane was telling me about what the book Case for Faith is like, and his intentions to read Case for Christ later on. He made an exceptional point in an exceptionally ...

"There are two great lies I've heard: The day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die And that Jesus Christ was a white middle-class Republican And if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him" - Derek Webb, A King and a Kingdom Lately Tyler and I have had lots of discussions on the subjects mentioned in the title of this post. To use a second quote from Derek Webb (I know, two in one post!), "A lot of the songs on Christian radio are just outright misrepresentations of the character of God." I want to move that beyond radio and music, however. I think that it is far too easy to fall into the trap of putting God in a box, as they say; for someone to write a book that gives a suddenly new "insight" into who God is and what He's about. It's also a problem to assume to have correctly interpreted the Bible, which has for centuries been hotly debated as to what it means or instructs in many instances. What strikes me as ...

This past weekend I had the honor and privilege of being an usher in my friends' Joe Wallington and Liz Thorne's wedding. I was the usher on behalf of the bride, my longtime friend Liz, and was given the opportunity to take part in the wedding not merely as an attendee, but as a participant. I arrived in St. Joseph on this past Friday (May 26th), a day before the wedding. I didn't leave early enough to attend the rehearsal, assuming that as an usher, my duties were relatively straightforward. I had received an invitation to the rehearsal dinner, what I imagine was once termed the betrothal feast in a period not so long gone from the present. It was a spectacular event; the dinner was at an Italian restaurant in an older building in the slowly reforming downtown of St. Joseph. The rustic appearance of the restaurant, combined with the fantastic cousine, made me experience the event as something of a bygone age when weddings as multi-day events were the norm. Washing down the...

I stole this from Scott's blog, who got it from someone else. I found it entertaining so I decided to repost it here. Instructions : Use the picture you like best from the first (no clicking around for 44 pages) page of the search results on Google Image, and then answer the following questions. 1. The city and state of the town you grew up, no quotation marks. Ah West Plains Missouri. Small town at it's finest. 2. The town where you currently reside. Columbia, MO lies between St. Louis and Kansas City on I-70. It is the home of the University of Missouri Tigers, the famous Broadway Diner, open 11 p.m. to 11 a.m., and the recently released Quinn Snyder. 3. Your name, first and last, no quotation marks You may think that I'm a Beatles fan for posting this. I like the Beatles, but really I post this because my dad was a sargeant in the army. That's right, Sargeant Peppers. 4. Your grandmother's name Willa Ottersbach didn't turn anything up, so I went with Wil...

SERUM MARKERS OF INFLAMMATION AND ENDOTHELIAL FUNCTION ARE ELEVATED BY HORMONAL CONTRACEPTIVE USE BUT NOT BY EXERCISE-ASSOCIATED MENSTRUAL DISORDERS IN PHYSICALLY ACTIVE YOUNG WOMEN Hinton PS, Rector RS, Peppers JE, Imhoff RD, Hillman LS Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA You can index me in PubMed after June 2006.

So I've been away for a while now. Last week was our spring break (yeah, we had a week off a couple of weeks ago too. Yeah, I went to Guatemala that week with a group of Christian medical students. Yeah, it was great), and I went home to see family for the first part of the week. Once back in Columbia however, I was living it up and not studying at all. I had brought back my hunting rifle from home, so me and my friend Ben went out to Finger Lakes park to shoot. He had a stake target with spinning ping targets. It was made of ~ 1/2" steel plates. He pinged it several times with his Sig Sauer 9 mm. Unfortunately for Ben, my .308 can shoot right through 1/2" steel. Unfortunately I didn't know that before I shot a hole in his brand new target. The rest of the week was spent going running, playing basketball, making amazing homemade pizza, and building a headboard. I built this with my friend Aaron's help. Now, I've got a sweet headboard where before was plain whi...

Guatemalan girl Originally uploaded by Dr Peppers . The trip to Guatemala two weeks ago was simply amazing. For starters, the caliber and character of people I was with was of the highest quality. Their faith and encouragement kept the whole week nothing short of incredible. We got to visit the western hemisphere's largest indigenous market in Chichicastenango Sunday, and we all spent large sums of money gathering lots of exotic goods. Monday through Thursday we held clinics in three different locations; Tuesday and Wednesday were the same location. During my day to do medical consults on Thursday, I got the opportunity to do a fetal ultrasound, and I also got my digital rectal exam done (a requirement for all first year medical students). All in all, we saw approximately 350 patients, took several care packages to needy people, delivered a number of Bibles, prayed over and encouraged people, and left tons of pharmaceuticals for the permanent clinic in Chichicastenango. Some o...

It's just after 2 p.m., I've turned in my exam, but still have to wait around until 3:30 to do a 20 point section on neuroanatomy cross sections. I feel pretty good about the exam, I studied like crazy and I think it's all finally paid off. I should be studying cross sections, but I decided killing time was far more worth my while. And it lets me find really interesting stuff, such as this MC Hammer music video online. Since I'm just finishing a block on neurology, my first thought when watching Master Hammer dance was that he had bilateral hemiballismus , which is a problem caused by a lesion to the subthalamic nucleus in the brainstem. People with hemibalism tend to have wild erratic flailing movements because they've lost a part of the brainstem that helps suppress random movements. Is Hammer a medical case? You decide... In other news, I am flying out of Kansas City to head to Guatemala , for a one week medical mission. I'll spend four days working in a cli...

Lexington Square Originally uploaded by Dr Peppers . Here's a shot of the courtyard inside my townhouse complex. Just one of a few of the photos I made with my new camera . Check out my photo feed here The rest of this weekend, however, will most likely be devoted to studying and taking practice quizzes. Hopefully, at least.

Today I had the good fortune of skipping the only two lectures of the morning and sleeping until 10 am, and getting some much needed rest (I've been sick lately, so it was worth it). A little after getting up and getting dressed, I heard the door knock, and to my delight it was the FedEx man. In his hands, for me, was my new digital camera! Tonight, after reading through a case, some lecture notes, and watching a histology DVD, I decided to pursue something more exciting. Namely, taking pictures with my new toy. I bought it in hopes that when I go on some major trips (which I seem to do every year), I could take more artistic, photographer style shots, and maybe print some for hanging. To get there though, I need practice. And that's exactly what I did. Here's some of my better shots from tonight's practice run. Let me know what you think.

I think that it's time for an evaluation of my blogging. New idea, stop trying to be a novelist writing a book, and just put junk up that faraway friends can read in a minute or so. Less length, more frequent updates, better blogging. Yesterday I had a great final ACE experience at the family practice clinic I was at this block. I got to do a couple of patient interviews on my own, sans doctor, and did just great. Of particular note was a guy in for a diabetes followup, and I got to talk to him about how his medication was working, his diet, blood sugar control, and asked all the right questions according to my preceptor. In the end, we told the guy that his diabetes was under control without medication, and that he was doing just great. That's what makes me look forward to medicine, the victories.

I have a habit of not updating this thing often enough. I need to work on that whole consistency thing in the midst of the rest of life’s distractions. Class has just resumed. I’ve been back in town about a week now after driving back and forth across the state for almost a week. Being back at school is almost a relief to the constant driving. This block our focus is on neurology. From the first day it is pretty apparent that it will be a challenge; just the terminology alone makes neurology seem its own language apart from medicine as a whole. On the other hand, learning about the brain is paired with learning about behavioral sciences. Currently, we’ve been having lectures on substance abuse and sexual behavior. I was talking to a fellow classmate today about why we’re both interested in the potential medical fields we are. He plans to specialize in one of the most intensive medical fields there is, if not the most intensive field there is. I don’t doubt for one minute he will fail t...