Hopkins is #1. Surprise!

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/best-hospitals/articles/2011/07/18/best-hospitals-2011-12-the-honor-roll

Johns Hopkins Hospital is #1 in the U.S. for the 21st year in a row. What does this mean to me? It means we, as employees, got free muffins on the hospital's dime.

In an email from the Dean:
Even as we acknowledge our collective delight with this long, unbroken string of top rankings, we want to give credit to those who really make Hopkins Hospital number one. No matter how historic or iconic, a building is merely bricks and mortar. It’s the dedicated people within that building who make it truly great. It’s you who provide the finest care to our patients and their families. You are at the center of our continual search for better treatment, better answers and better discoveries. Our hospital is exceptional because you are exceptional.

The bold part is really the only area I can take credit for. As researchers, we play a limited role in the day to day operations of the hospital. But some of the medical discoveries were driven by research done here.

I would like the think the phrase "Our hospital is exceptional because you are exceptional" was directed at me! Although I'm pretty sure it's directed more towards people like Dr. Patrick Walsh who pioneered work in the development of “the anatomic approach to radical prostatectomy”, which involves nerve-sparing techniques that have reduced the probability of impotence and incontinence. He just did his 4,567th and last surgery. Before him, nearly 100% of men that had a prostatectomy were impotent, so many of them decided to forego the treatment and ended up dying of metastasis that could have easily been avoided.

New Year's Resolution.. In July

I started this blog to share my adventures in Europe with with Idaho family, California family, friends, friends of friends, and family of friends located all across the US and pretty much anyone else who wants to stalk me and has nothin but time! Instead of emailing 100 people individually which would be quite slow, not to mention at the time, I wanted most of my focus to be on the friends I was making abroad and the experiences I was having, instead of being online emailing everyone all the time.

Now, back in the US, I'm no longer traveling for grad school interviews, so I saw no reason to continue writing. I now view my life as the perplexing conundrum of being extremely stressful yet boring. Normally stressful would somewhat imply excitement, but I'm learning that that is not necessarily so. Quite frankly, I have nothing to write about. Then I realized most blogs are people writing about nothing! Additionally, I quite often wrote for the benefit of my grandma, Honey, who would bug me as to why I did not put up another post if I didn't update bi-weekly. She is no longer with us so much of my motivation was gone. However, I've decided to go back to casting my thoughts and adventures out into the blogosphere if for no other reason than it's therapeutic and I like to look back and see the "road map" of sorts of my life. Plus instead of the blog being called "My Adventures in Europe" I renamed it "My Life" six months ago so I guess the topic of the blog is and will forever be relevant as long as I'm alive.

My two resolutions for the new year (which, I'm aware, is more than half way over) are to 1. eat more fiber and 2. to write a little something on my blog bi-monthly. Sadly, if I keep this up the next five months, my resolutions would have been kept longer than those who made theirs 1/1/2011. I'm just sayin.....


I went to visit my friend from Idaho, Paul, for the 4th of July weekend and we went to see the Liberty Bell! I was nothing but disappointed at it's size, upkeep, and it's failure to do what bells do, ring.