WILTIMS #137: Oooo Doc's got game!

Amusingly, just two days ago I thought I had such a busy day that I would share my impressive schedule with you all. Everything, it seems, is relative. So here is a truly busy day:

• Give cancer awareness club presentation at local middle school
• Attend captains' meeting for a spring kickball league
• Sit on lunch panel for interviewees to our med school
• Don white coat and take part in a small group patient interview at the nearby behavioral health center
• with a real life patient!
• Play touch football for half an hour
• Play ultimate frisbee for two hours
• Volunteer at the juvenile detention facility
• which today turned out to be playing basketball
• Work on neuroscience presentation for tomorrow

The highlight? There are too many to choose. But one of the better moments was at the detention center. I volunteer there nearly every week and we usually play goofy mental games or do arts and crafts. Every once and a while, we spend the hour playing a sport like kickball or basketball in the gym. It's a lot of fun for everyone and the kids often kick our butts.

Knowing that we were playing basketball this week and that the kids are far better than our usual crew of med students, we brought in some ringers. We invited the best basketball players in our class and a good 6-7 of them actually came.

The kids were waiting in the gym for us with their basketball gear on. As the regular from the club stream in, they look very cocky - as they should be. But then the ringers come in. The looks on the kids' faces were priceless. And the last person through the door is a 6'5 tall guy who was a good foot taller than everyone on the home team.

The game was first to 21, win by two and it was a brutal. Fouls went uncalled and boy were there fouls. Med students barely won 22-20. Everyone had so much fun that, for the first time ever, the guards extended the kids' free time so that we could play a second game. The second game was a little less intense which meant we got some of the girls to play. Everyone had a blast, including our players from the med school. Several of them were interested in coming back to play basketball on their own with the kids.

I love that we get to make the kids' day a little more exciting and that they get to see role models as great as my colleagues.

TIL: A Chiari malformation is a defect of the brain whereby the cerebellum and brain stem are squished through the foramen magnum (literally: great hole) at the bottom of the skull. This can cause all sorts of problems including hydrocephalus and syringomyelia (increased cerebral spinal fluid around the brain or in the spinal cord, respectively).