SNMMI 2013 Annual Meeting Vancouver is now over. (That’s Society for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, btw.) Oh how I enjoyed those few days of meeting new people and NOT having to explain what I’m studying.

I thought it was a pretty decent conference. I went to A LOT of different talks. Luckily Victor is about as nerdy as me so I had a friend to hang around with most of the time.

This half dude in the Siemens display freaked me out!! He had stubble! And arm hair! And his eye even twitched a little bit. AHHH! Lesley and I stared at it for quite a long time. First I thought it was a dude lying on his side half in the bed, with his head turned. Lesley thought it was an optical illusion. Then I thought it was actually a corpse (and was quite disturbed). Eventually a Siemens rep said that it was a very expensive model. SO CREEPY!!!!!!!!

Highlights of the conference included:

• a talk about the effects of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident on the population and food (apparently they are getting fat from being afraid of going outside, and the food is fine)
• a really smart lady talking about dental uptake of I-131, which I had never heard about before
• a session where we got to interpret diuretic renograms with doctors and vote with clickers (the doctors did terribly!!)

• free dinner out on the patio at Canada Place
• getting a free dinner from Phillips
• a lecture about choosing to use or not use CCK in liver studies (aka a lecture that was relevant and not too complex)
• getting free stuff in the exhibit hall (Lesley even won $50)
• seeing new camera designs like a chair camera

Lowlights included:

• hearing that 45% of people will get cancer
• a talk where the presenter was pretty much eating the microphone
• some overly technical talks that I couldn’t understand a single word
• getting depressed because most of the stuff is not available in Canada and probably won’t ever be

It was also cool to bump into lots of techs that I hadn’t seen since being at their hospital for clinical. It was nice to catch up and hopefully they remember me a bit better now come September.

I am so grateful that the conference happened to come to Vancouver, and that it happened when we were still students (so we could go for free!). That was really lucky.

i take this as a sign that i am in the right field