About hearts (part 2)

I promised yesterday to overwhelm you with photos. Get your scrolling finger ready, because here we go!

I arrived yesterday at the ACC.10 conference in time to meet up with Lori and Kirk, get coffee, meet Ed Susman (formerly of the National Inquirer and now a medical journalist/editor - how cool is that?) and attend a late-breaking clinical trials press conference packed with reporters.

The first few photos are from the press conference:

 Dr. Ralph Brindis moderating. I also got to sit in on one of his sessions later.

Where's Kirk?

 Dr. Van Gelder. She spoke about individualizing care for high heart rates to the individual patients. "We should treat the patients and not the heart rate," she said. "...Being comfortable having a patient with a higher resting heart rate is huge. We have permission not to be that aggressive." I'm sure the drug companies cringed.

 In line at the mic.

Kirk and Lori, waiting to ask questions after the press conference.

With their game faces on.

The Expo. The EXPO. They had a sign about no cameras, so I tried to comply. Mostly.

At the poster sessions. It was lunchtime, so the place was abandoned. We learned then that those scheduled times for the poster sessions actually meant something - that that was when a person would be there to talk about his/her research.

I was hoping to talk to this invisible guy. Then I checked my printout again and realized he left at 10:30. It was noon.

Lori and I got to play doctor for about two minutes. And then the media police busted us. This particular drug company was making posters for doctors who stopped by. I guess this is a new type of gimmick since they can no longer give them pens, cups and clocks (my dad, a pharmacist, brought home the coolest stuff when I was a kid). We were happy, and then we were sad. Life smacked us in the face.

Last moments as a doctor...

To recover, we headed back to the press room, where the free food was yummy. On the way, we passed a TV broadcast - being shown on the conference's closed circuit system. TV for cardiologists. I'm guessing they were also streaming the interviews online.

In case you were wondering, I did not use a flash.

Pat talking to Ed Susman back in the press food room. The work room was next door.

Contemplating our next moves.

Deciding was hard.

The AWESOME press room. Most of the spots were claimed by stressed, sleepy-eyed journalists clacking away at their computers. It was INTENSE in there.

The crowd flow was pretty smooth.

Random guy posing. I think I startled him.

The Murphy Ballroom. Empty. That should have been a sign. We sat down anyway.

Kirk getting ready to write.

Dr. Jack Lewin looks like a certain TV personality. I think it's his mustache.

My handy-dandy audio recorder. It also doubles as a tazer - and a space ship.

Me and a sea of empty chairs.

They had carpets made for the event. I am still in amazement of how the other side lives and the money poured into it (can't you tell?). On the same note, medical writing seems to also be a lucrative profession. Interesting how they work hand-in-hand, right?

At the afternoon poster session. People were there. The posters I ended up hanging around had to do with vitamin D deficiencies. According to Ed, it's a hot topic. I like hot topics. I can usually understand them a little better because the researchers have, by now, learned to translate their work a little more smoothly for the general public, of which I am a part.

I like this photo. It's not completely in focus, like my eyes at the end of the day. The lady in the white jacket is a reporter talking to Dr. Joseph Muhlestein. She had some great questions.

And now, congratulations! You've reached the end of my very long photo post on my first day at a medical conference. Oh, what fun!

About hearts (part 1)

It was an afternoon session. And my writing brain started working. So, instead of contemplating electronic records and their advantages - which the speaker quite brilliantly described - I started writing more than quotes (on paper, which in itself is unusual).

These are my initial thoughts from today's American College of Cardiology (ACC.10) meeting held at the Georgia World Congress Center, written during an afternoon session:

I think I've hurt my shoulder. Between American Heart Association books, thick programs, a bound stack of late breaking press releases, cocoa powder full of flavonoids, squishy stress toys (2 to be exact), my Canon 30D, a reporter's notebook, a steno pad and an audio recorder 10 times the size of most iPods, I've hauled around a lot today. Thank goodness I left the laptop in the car this morning.

The stress is squashing my knees. All this is a good reminder of why it's important to stay active and relatively thin. That and the 20 or so hearts I saw on display at the expo that listed their former owners' age, weight, medical issues (including extreme obesity) and cause of death (I would have taken a picture, but they weren't allowing that. And I didn't want anybody to hurl on their computers). Yep, I want to be the normal heart among the bunch if it ever comes to that.

I've never seen a naked human heart on display. I think in a jar or while dissecting a pig or a cat is as close as I've gotten. It was pretty cool. And gross. Hearts wrapped in fat look pretty icky.

Something else I realized once again is that cardiology is a very well-paid career. The size and structure and effort of some of the displays at the Expo cost more than my yearly salary at UGA. Seriously.

I also realized I don't ever want to be a cardiologist (not that I'm ready for any kind of medical school, but, you know). Looking at all that information - from both the vendors and the researchers - it's like jumping into a murky pool of info, with so much to know, so many techniques to perfect, so many drug makers/machine manufacturers/etc. vying for their attention.

I did like meeting and talking to several medical journalists - including a stare-down pep talk with Trends-in-Medicine editor Lynne Peterson (a really awesome stare-down pep talk, I might add). I'd like to be one of those intense medical/health writers - that, or an epidemiologist who studies the strange culture of cardiologists.

That's Lynne in the blond hair, typing furiously away at a late-breaking clinical trials press conference. I took this photo before I met her.

Tomorrow, Part 2: A photo essay of the day. I plan to overwhelm with pictures.

Thinking about rural

I started this post a few weeks ago, but I thought I'd go ahead and finish it. So, here goes:

I played phone tag last week with Oglethorpe County's EMS director. And I'm glad I did. If he hadn't taken an extra long lunch, I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to talk to his secretary. And I would still be struggling to remember what it was that makes small towns different than large ones.

What, you ask, is the difference? In small towns, people will usually talk to you - about so much different stuff. She knew I was a journalism student, but she still talked about the six-person wreck that happened that day, how many people went to the hospital and which driver probably caused the wreck. No names mentioned, so no HIPPA violations.

I'd forgotten what it was like to live in Cordele, to TALK to people. As a news writer for UGA's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, it's my job to get people talking. And that job's not always easy. I work in a world now of getting the message out - whether it's about a scientist's research, a gardening how-to, an event announcement or something random someone in the college needed an article about. I miss the stories and relationship-building that comes from working in a small-town newspaper.

Now, to be fair, I know people in larger towns will sit down for a chat now and again. But it seems like in a larger city like Athens, we're so much busier, and, while we're so socially and virtually networked, we tend to be so personally disconnected.

Maybe I just miss being nosy. That could be it.