The Endocrine Society Meeting

It has been a few years since I attended the Endo Society meeting, arguably the largest endo meeting (if you don't include the ADA) in North America. And unlike the AACE meetings, this has a major basic (versus clinical) track, so you get to hear about research from the leading basic/laboratory scientists.

Also, it was nice to meet up with my fellow alumni, and for a change we did not have to fret over presenting our abstracts/posters and could just relax and enjoy the meeting and the camaraderie.

Admittedly, it did make me feel aged when, in reminiscing, we realized that we began our careers in endocrinology in 2005, and graduated 6 years ago.

We were initially planning to make this a family trip, though in the end decided to spare the girls the trip to Chicago (we have another road trip coming up) and so I came alone, which made things a bit simpler. Having said that, this would be my VERY first trip without the wife and the 2 girls- so I'll admit I missed them terribly even as I was leaving home this morning at the ungodly hour of 4AM. Even now in my cosy hotel room, it seems too quiet.

Anyhow I'm not going to complain about my relative freedom, of not having to worry about 2 screaming kids, or a wife telling me to go to bed and not watch TV :P

And it will be a nice change not thinking about patients or work, but just to keep my mind open and learn about the exciting new discoveries in my specialty. The areas I'm particularly keen to find out more about are the new closed-loop continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion systems (aka 'bionic pancreas') for type 1 DM, and the new gene expression classifiers in the evaluation of thyroid nodules.

Needless to say, the food scene is always good here in Chicago!