Just running the bridges

They say it's a marathon and not a sprint, and I partly agree; we all spend time just running up and down those bridges. Sometimes it's a nice, even jog, and other times it is, in fact, a mad sprint. The finish line isn't a line perse, but a solidification of the bridge, such that crossing it is second nature. Maybe the bridges also get shorter; the longer I run them, the less time it takes. The bridges scattered everywhere throughout this mental landscape - some of them are parallel and have nothing to do with each other, and some of them are in series, connecting a winding pathway of clusters of information, ripe for an academic pilgrimmage.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and one can't run all the bridges in a day either - part of making sure they're all strong enough come test day is balancing them out. You can't spend all your time running the bridges that provide the prettiest scenery - you've got to cover them all, otherwise, the ones you've neglected will fall through and, come that inexorable, imminent day of reckoning, you won't reach one cluster from another. They don't last forever; if you don't run them, they'll fade from existence. At the very worst, though, they'll just crumble to the bottom of the mental chasm. At least you'll be able to rebuild. So I spread them out and jog them all. Yesterday, I ran a circuit of the bridges between parasites, those connecting the clusters of antiparasitic and antifungal drugs, the bridges spanning the chasms between hypersensitivity, and those connecting bacterial genetics. I also revisted some bridges I'd built for the first test - those connecting autacoids (headache medication, serotonin blockers, etc), and those spanning NSAIDS ( basic, non-opiate pain meds). I hadn't been throug those bridges in a while, and they'd faded more than I'm comfortable with - they weren't entirely gone, but I'll have to run them a few more times and make sure they're sturdy.

You know what's funny? Pathologists have the most interesting sense of humor. First, they always liken things to food - nutmeg liver, cheesy tuberculous necrosis, cafe-au-lait spots, banana-shaped ventricles, etc. Also, they like to take beautiful sounding words, and describe something absolutely wretched. If I hear necrotizing fasciitis, I know it's bad. But if I hear Anasarca, I think of an attractive woman - not edema all over your body. What about Melena? Lovely sounding name, right? Not bloody stools. Those pathologists must have had very strange romantic lives...