A few days ago I scrapped a scabies mite from a patients hand.  This however being a couple days before Christmas was a very special mite.  This was acually an ovum and if you look close you will see the legs of the scabies mite moving on the inside.  Click it to play the video.  I apologize in advance to all the non-medical people.

[youtubehq rbN2qxGYQTY Scabies Mite]

I think we all had a great time at Pam’s Christmas Party. There was plenty of good food and beer and the company was naturally top notch. Enjoy the photos, and click the photo to be taken to the gallery.

Don't eat too much ice cream Josh.

I am mainly writing this to entertain my fellow dermatology residents, but also to share some cultural knowledge that I think is a great idea.  The picture is of Jessica on the left feeding Tricia (the birthday girl) on the right a piece of birthday cake.  Jessica’s family has an interesting tradition. Her husband is Indian, and it is an Indian tradition for every birthday party, that everyone present gets to feed the birthday person a bite of cake and the last person to go gets to smear the cake on their face.  Now that sounds like a great birthday tradition to me, as if we need any excuse to eat a little more cake on our birthdays. Fortunately for Tricia, only Jessica felt obligated to feed her and did not smear her with cake.  Here is another interesting tidbit from Wikipedia about birthday candles.  Enjoy.

Though the exact origin and significance of the candle blowing ritual is unknown, the history of placing candles on top of the cake is well documented. This tradition can be traced to Kinderfest (Kinder is the German word for ‘children’), an 18^th century German birthday celebration for children. A letter written in 1799 by Goethe recounts: “…when it was time for dessert, the prince’s entire livery…carried a generous-size torte with colorful flaming candles – amounting to some fifty candles – that began to melt and threatened to burn down, instead of there being enough room for candles indicating upcoming years, as is the case with children’s festivities of this kind…”. As the excerpt indicates, the tradition at the time was to place candles for each of the individual’s life with some added candles ‘indicating upcoming years’. Candles, being slow-burning, are believed to be symbolic of the passage of time. In fact, they were often used as timekeepers. The origin of birthday cake candles can be further traced back to the 16^th century German tradition of placing tapers on Christmas trees.  This tradition was then brought to North America by German immigrants. By 1927, the Sears Roebuck catalogue offered birthday candles and holders for sale.

9/6/08 – The first annual Dermatology golf outing and BBQ. Dr. Eilers won the round with a 41. A pretty good showing. Dr. Eilers also took closest to the pin on the first par 3, then on the sixth, I took longest drive, just a tad shy of 300, and Katie finished strong taking longest put on the last hole. Not a better way to spend a Saturday morning. I stole Tricia’s photos from golfing and posted those as well. After golfing we headed over to Katie’s house to have a little BBQ. The party started off nice with some good home cookin’ but rapidly degraded with a few beers into some pretty competitive rounds of corn hole. A good showing by residents and faculty. Video and photos are below.

8/2/08 – The summer AAD meeting was in Chicago this year. I learned a lot about dermatology and the future of the field. But far more interesting was the number of vendors present. Since I lived in the area and didn’t have to pack a suitcase, I took full advantage of their samples. I think I definitely have enough sunscreen, lotion, soap, and various other magic wrinkle reducing creams to at least make it until the next meeting.