It’s actually sorta pathetic how happy little toys like these make me. I’ve been looking to get a new, small flashlight to hang on my stethoscope for a while; I all of a sudden realized that my REI dividend from last year could help get me off my ass, and now both those babies are on their way to me.

In a bold — and necessary — move, the editors of four of the biggest medical journals are taking a stand and demanding the guaranteed scientific independence of researchers who publish drug company-sponsored clinical studies. It’s a tricky realm in which to tread. Big pharmaceuticals have become the largest funder of scientific research, and to lose that source of funding would be a big hit to American biomedical researc; that being said, corporate self-interest should not be able to dictate which medications make it onto the market in the U.S., and which are put on the market despite evidence of their failure.

Remember the Space Shuttle mission in February of last year, in which the Shuttle trailed a huge boom that took radar images of most of the Earth’s surface? NASA has begun releasing the images that were generated from that data; there are some amazing topographical pictures, with promises of mucho more to come.

It was a tough end to my first week in the PICU. Friday night, I left at around 8:30 PM, after spending three hours admitting a sick sick infant — manually ventilating him, getting lines into him, running big doses of blood pressure medications into him, and everything else it takes to acutely resuscitate someone as sick as he was. When I got back in yesterday morning (to take a 24-hour call in the unit), I learned that he arrested within ten minutes of me leaving; the team spent over four hours getting him back and losing him again, the surgeons opened his belly at the bedside, and he ultimately died, most likely of overwhelming sepsis. Looking through the chart yesterday, it was moderately clear that the team which had been managing the little boy on the floor could have been much more on top of him than they were, and I spent the rest of the day in a funk.

Otherwise, though, I’m still enjoying the PICU, and it’s serving to remind me that I have this life in the hospital that keeps me occupied and (most of the time) very happy, when other things don’t quite manage to do so.