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Our director of trauma surgery at Penn died in Irag this week.

He was pretty rad. I will miss him…a lot.

This is an article he wrote about philly and the war outside our front doors.

The War in West Philadelphia

By John P. Pryor
Sunday, August 5, 2007

I didn’t hear the cars screech to a halt, but one of the trauma nurses did. He ran outside with two emergency department medics to find several people in a car, all of their clothes soaked with blood. The passengers were screaming for someone to help the young man in the front seat, who was unresponsive. The team threw the limp victim onto a gurney, one of several that stand waiting for these types of scenarios, which occur almost nightly at our trauma center.

As the gurney rolled in, I saw a lifeless young man with more gunshot wounds than I could count. I was poised to start a resuscitation effort when a voice behind me announced that three more were coming in. As the team started CPR and checked for cardiac activity, the second and third victims were wheeled in.

A young girl had a gunshot wound to the abdomen that made her writhe in pain. Her movements were slow and her mental functioning was impaired, signaling to me that she was in profound shock — she was dying. I caught only a passing glance of the third patient, who had a gunshot wound to the neck and was coughing up blood. Those brief images were enough for me to sum up a desperate situation; I pronounced the first patient dead to concentrate resources on the other critically injured.

The nursing staff rolled the dead man’s body into a bed and readied the stall for the fourth patient, who had three gunshot wounds to his right arm and two to his left. With the emergency medicine physicians, surgery residents and medics working on the two critical patients, I assigned the fourth patient to a capable medical student who courageously accepted the battlefield promotion to intern.

In the swirl of screams and moving figures, my mind drifted to my recent experience in Iraq as an Army surgeon. There we dealt regularly with “mascals,” or mass-casualty situations. In Iraq, ironically, I found myself drawing on my experience as a civilian trauma surgeon each time mascals would overrun the combat hospital. As nine or 10 patients from a firefight rolled in, I sometimes caught myself saying “just like another Friday night in West Philadelphia.”

The wounds and nationalities of the patients are different, but the feelings of helplessness, despair and loss are the same. In Iraq, soldiers die for freedom, for honor, for their country and for their buddies. Here in Philadelphia, they die without honor, without purpose, for no country, for no one.

More young men are killed each day on the streets of America than on the worst days of carnage and loss in Iraq. There is a war at home raging every day, filling our trauma centers with so many wounded children that it sometimes makes Baghdad seem like a quiet city in Iowa.

Unlike the Iraq conflict, this war is not on the front pages of The Post or on CNN. You have heard of the Washington area sniper shootings and the massacre at Virginia Tech. I am sure you have not heard about the “Lex Street massacre,” in which 10 people ages 15 to 56 were lined up and shot, execution-style, in the winter of 2000. Seven were killed, three critically injured.

You haven’t heard about this tragedy because it happened to inner-city poor people in a crack house in Philadelphia. Imagine, for a moment, if this had occurred in a suburban shopping mall or if a Marine unit in Iraq had been involved. There would be shock, outrage, 24-hour news coverage, Senate hearings and a new color of ribbon to wear. That double standard, that triage of compassion and empathy, is why the war on the streets continues unabated.

I am on call Wednesday night. The statistics indicate that then I will once again walk with the chaplain to a small room off the emergency room. I will open a heavy brown door and make eye contact with a room full of people; a mother, perhaps a father or a grandmother. They will look at me with tears welling up, their knees weak, and lean forward while watching my lips, bracing for news about their loved one. I will remain standing and reach out to hold the mother’s hand. My announcement will be short and firm, the intonation polished from years of practice. The words will be simple for me to say, but sharp as a sword for them to hear; “I am sorry, your son has died.”

The writer directs the trauma program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He served at a combat hospital in Abu Ghraib Iraq.

This is a link to his memorial site:

DR. JOHN PRYOR

John:

* as a soldier, we respect and salute you.
* as a teacher, we seek to emulate you.
* as a visionary, we support you.
* as a surgeon, we recognize your master skills
* as a human, we applaud and memorialize your unique and lasting contributions.

If they weren’t sold out through 2010 and I had a couple 100,000 dollar bills around…I would buy one in a second!

So amazing and the movie/marketing/ad design is even brilliant. BRAVO!

BUS

I love giraffe’s. This is a little nuts.

We went to Wendy and Ramon’s wedding rehersal dinner in China town. lots of insane food, alcohol and unbelievable karaoke! Whew. Korea is going to be insane if this night was any indication of how they party!!

Man these vineyards have no idea what they are in store for tomorrow. It’s gonna get ugly quick and I have a feeling we may even be the first crew thrown out of a wine tasting event for this season. WOOT. Bring on the iron-on Boones Farm T-shirts.

Yep. Bring on the crowds. He’s back in the dating pool. Look out ladies… Ha

A Middlebury college student has gone missing. Vermont is such a small and safe state that when things like this happen it seems so unreal. Just thought I would post it since it really hasn’t made any major headlines yet and he has been missing for almost a month.

This is Nick Garza and here is the website his parents have set up:

NICK

anyone wanting to come around me should be wearing one of these. chuck got real sick all weekend and I inherited it late Sunday and now feel like someone is sitting on my head and is squeezing me so tight I can’t get a good breath in. Oh to be sick. Oh yeah and if you didn’t know - nurses are the worst patients on earth. At least I was able to get out of work for today and sit in bed staring at the ceiling. ugh. mommy.

So in between finals and work I managed to find a few hours to sneak up to NYC for a few hours and go to the Tyra Banks show….

I know, I know….boring. She isn’t the most popular day time host, but I figured I would go because the topic of the show was women in uniform. Since I qualify for that - I grabbed my friend Lisa and we headed in. We got there and they made us give up our phones and cameras and pretty much everything else. We went through metal detectors and then waited in this little lobby area. The studios are in chelsea right next to FIT.

The building wasn’t impressive at all but then they took us to this big service elevator and we went up to the 3rd floor where it turned out to be an amazing set. Everything was decorated for the holiday. White trees everywhere and snowflakes and all that stuff. They seated us strategically by our professions. There were cops, fire fighters, chefs, nurses, correctional officers, stewardess’, and military. It was awesome. Then this little guy came out and started to explain to us that this was her big holiday show. Which meant we were going to be getting some really nice things. I couldn’t believe it. This stuff never happens to me and I almost didn’t come at all…so crazy. Rocco Disperito was there cooking, Warren Tricome was there doing hair and Mally was doing make-up. It was just overall an amazing day.
The picture below was just a few of the things they gave us to take home and the rest was in the form of gift cards so that we could order our sizes correctly. 4 GRAND worth of stuff. NUTS!!!

Now the important stuff..the show will air on DECEMBER 18th on FOX..around the Philly area it’s on at 10am. You can see the results of all the editing and all the lovely stuff we got.

Christmas def. came early this year!!

Best night of the year to go out by far. We met up with Bird, Josh, Mary, Jill and Bobby and his lady in Manyunk. It was ugly..lots of headaches the next morning.

Me and Bird

Bird dressed like Josh to be funny. Ironed button down shirt and creased khaki’s. The standard Josh uniform. He even pulled off the loafers on his feet. Impressive…very impressive.

Bobby cut a rug hard. Spilled drinks all over him and almost got in no less then 5 fights. awesome.

Bird got real real drunk. The progression was epic. Most of it with the quotes…”I’m not even close to being drunk” It concluded with some up close views with the trash can. Infamous!

I thought they thought we sucked…but now Travel and Leisure thinks we are the coolest city in the US. SO - now we have won the uggliest and the coolest. Sweeeeeeet

“(Travel + Leisure) — Thanks to the opening of fashionable shops around North Third Street, Old City in Philadelphia is finding a new groove. Travel + Leisure gives you the highlights of this city votest “coolest shopping city”.”

Whatever. I still think they suck.

Philly gets such a bad wrap…and rightly so some times, because people are shooting each other left and right. But, it’’s always fun to get stories like this one below thrown in the nightly news between the shootings and stabbings.

The Holidays tend to bring out all the crazy people and somehow they always manage to get drunk on top of being crazy…this actually happened on I95..huge highway.

enjoy:

“police rushed to a major highway following reports of a nude man running in traffic on Monday night and said they found a naked 26-year-old disrupting traffic on a major highway when they got there.

When officers arrived, they said Ardonas Gilbert, 26, of Chester, had assaulted two people who tried to help him get off the road and had caused three separate traffic crashes as people swerved to try to avoid him.

Investigators were finally able to capture Gilbert on Interstate 95 South at Marsh Road.

No serious injuries reported. Police later determined that Gilbert was drunk.

Gilbert was formally charged with two counts of third-degree assault and a single count of being drunk on the highway.

Gilbert was taken to the Howard Young Correctional Institute in lieu of $400 secured bail.”

This one is for Megs…

Super bad car crash on 202 today had it shut down most of the day. Our heli went out and brought back a mess of a patient. 2 people died and another got injured - but crazy thing is the guy that was driving the car in the median got out on his own the Medic said and only had minor injuries. Someone was looking out for him because the driver of the van on its side was ejected and in pieces on the highway. Life is so short.

ugh. A freakin’ exam every single Monday until the 3rd week in December and then it’s finals. Throw in an occasional Tuesday night exam here or there and it makes for one pissed off, tired, over worked, grumpy girl. I’m hating it right now. Can’t really think of anything worse…Oh yeah maybe watching anything that has to do about the state of our economy/country or the joke of a political race (or so they would like to call it politics) for president …I am ready to move out of this place ASAP. Next flight to anywhere Scandinavian please. They pay NP’s well there so I’m gonna look into it. Everyone is welcome to visit me in my own private paradise…ha. I’m such a dreamer.

They even have cute gift shops…maybe I could work here.

FINLAND

SWEDEN

NORWAY

I wish…

Keep in mind this was done by Travel and Leisure magazine. ugh..yeah…their opinion on best places kind of sucks anyway…but I think this is funny. Maybe it’ll make the people that read that magazine stay away…fine by me. no offense of course.

“Mon Oct 22, 10:55 AM ET

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday.

The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the “America’s Favorite Cities” survey by Travel & Leisure magazine.

About 60,000 people responded to the online survey — at www.travelandleisure.com — which ranked 25 cities in categories including shopping, food, culture, and cityscape, said Amy Farley, senior editor at the magazine.

For unattractiveness, Philadelphia just beat out Washington DC and Dallas/Fort Worth for the bottom spot. Miami and San Diego are home to the most attractive people, the poll found.

But Farley pointed out the results don’t mean people in Philadelphia are ugly or the city is a bad place to visit.

“We were asking people to vote on attractiveness, not unattractiveness. Travel & Leisure editors believe there are a lot of attractive people in Philadelphia,” she said.

“The relative attractiveness of its residents is only a minuscule factor in evaluating a city’s merit.”

Gotta love people that actually sit around and collect this data. Do you think that’s what they wanted to be when they grew up… a collector of survey information full of useless facts and information. hmmm

So we had a blast down at the shore house this year. First year we had it for 6 weeks and it was well worth it. Def. gonna do it again next year. not much can be said about the waves but we did plenty of other stuff during the non-surfing hours…

Like Bird did a lot of sea gull chasing.

I fed this one because he stayed quiet and didn’t call in his troops…they don’t eat sour patch kids by the way.

We pretty much sat in these 3 chairs every weekend and did absolutely nothing. With the exception of the following photos of bird and his hottie he made all by himself…loving it.

Chuck is back down there now and I’m heading back down tom. It’s gonna be in the 80’s this weekend which will be perfect..

Dirty Jersey has been good to us this year. ‘07 was epic.

Maybe this time around they’ll actually give him the sentence he deserves. Loser.

It was amazing. A full day of shopping in Philly and it was off to the shore.

FAZ and his first legit Philly Steak. Old School from Ish’s on South.

We got up Saturday and had an amazing breakfast in Avalon. Bird showed up just in time for an afternoon drinking challenge. Slightly after noon we began the six pack race. Any six pack you choose. Last one done buys them all. I — being the smart girl that I am — chose the 6 pack of shorty bud cans. I won. Bird came in second with his pack of Coors lights and Faz was DQ’d after throwing up after 5 coronas. Faz bought. Bird took his clothes off and I started to slurr my speech.

We all went to the beach to sober up and get ready for the night.

Phil showed up late night and dragged Bird out to the OD. All that was left in the Am was a few fuzzy memories and Phil’s “filk” pillow left behind in the mad rush to drive home in the AM. The house sleeps 12 people and Phil and Bird both slept on the couch.

gotta love the Jersey shore!

This guy does too and he has a great sense of humor. He wrapped everything in his roommates room in pink paper. I love it.

…from the blog. Sorry. I am going to do a huge update tonight when I get home from the hospital. We have been traveling the last 3 weekends and I just haven’t had any time to invest in this thing. Promises promises…

This is an article that came out this week about obesity and the staggering rates that exist in the US. It’s ironic that the number one state is Mississippi being that this is the anniversary week of Katrina. 30% of the population in that state are obese. 70% never even came back after the storm. We are in a bad way down there still and no one seems to notice. The obesity epidemic is just one example of the things people just don’t notice until it affects them personally. Here is a snip of the article:

“According to the fourth annual report prepared by the research group Trust for America’s Health and released Monday, adult obesity rates rose in 31 states last year, 22 states experienced an increase for the second year in a row, and no state had a rate decrease.

A related public opinion survey found that 85 percent of Americans now believe that obesity is an epidemic.

For the third year in a row, Mississippi topped the scales with the highest rate of adult obesity in the country. It also has the dubious distinction of being the first state to record a rate higher than 30 percent (30.6 percent), according to the report,F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America, 2007.

Colorado was again the thinnest state, but even its adult obesity rate increased over the past year, from 16.9 percent to 17.6 percent.

“We find this report to be a devastating indictment. We’re in the middle of a public health crisis that is still deteriorating rapidly, and we’re treating it like a mere inconvenience rather than the emergency it is. Over the past year, obesity rates got worse in nearly two-thirds of states and got better in zero. That is not progress. The number of states with obesity rates greater than 25 percent has more than doubled in just two years. That’s not sending a wake-up call. We’re ringing the disaster alarm,” he said.

The rates of overweight children ranged from a high of 22.8 percent in Washington, D.C., to a low of 8.5 percent in Utah. Overall, about 25 million U.S. children are overweight or obese, the report found

“Diseases that used to be considered adult illnesses like type 2 and high blood pressure are becoming increasingly common among children,” Marks said. “If we fail to reverse this epidemic, the current generation may be the first in American history to live sicker and die younger than their parents’ generation.”

Among the study’s other findings:

Only 17 states require that school meals and snacks meet higher nutritional standards than the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires (six states enacted new laws in 2006-07). Only 22 states have mandated nutritional standards for foods sold in vending machines, a la carte, in school stores or at bake sales, and only 26 states limit where and when such foods can be sold on school property beyond federal requirements. Many physical education requirements in schools are limited in scope or not enforced.

Brooklyn in the news…It was an especially violent weather day in and around Philly. Summer thunderstorms are the best, but not when they take the roof of your house off! Sounds like NYC had is pretty bad:

CBS) NEW YORK: What was thought to be a violently windy thunderstorm that plowed through Brooklyn Wednesday turned out to be a weather event of historical proportions.

The National Weather Service confirmed that the storm brought with it Brooklyn’s first ever tornado since such weather events were recorded. Officials measured it to be an EF2 twister, characterized by winds of anywhere from 111 to 135 miles per hour.

Buildings damaged by the storm in Bay Ridge Brooklyn.

A portion of the Long Island Expressway is turned into a small lake.

A house was torn apart by the storm in Brooklyn.

This one is for Draplin:

Ut-Oh

The pint-sized pop on the TLC reality show “Little People, Big World” has been hiding a pretty big secret — he was busted for DUI last month.

According to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, 45-year-old Matthew Roloff was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of intoxicants, around midnight on June 19 after cops claim that Roloff’s van had been swerving on the road.

Roloff, who then failed a field sobriety test, was taken to Washington County Jail, where he was cited and released.The recent DUI arrest of “Little People, Big World” star Matthew Roloff isn’t his first — he was popped back in 2003, too!

Roloff was arrested on March 21, 2003 in Multnomah County, Ore. for driving under the influence of intoxicants and reckless driving. He successfully completed a 16-week diversion program and the charges were eventually dismissed.

The 45-year-old reality star was cited and released on June 21 of this year, after cops say he failed a field sobriety test and refused a breath test.

This watch is amazing. Perfect design in my book. And to top it off totally unattainable…to the rookie on the web. Perfect!

WATCH

Yeah. This deserves the MEGA ramp title for sure. The Staples Center has stepped it up this year for the X-games. Crap. This thing looks insane! It even has its own blog about building it…

MEGA RAMP

A good end to a perfect day. Much more mellow then last year. Ehren didn’t make it and Coulter was MIA. Chuck held his own and Brandon was a great sidekick…no accidents and only 1 close call that made the crowd scatter…