Friday, July 25, 2008

This One's For You Amy!

This blog post is dedicated to my cousin Amy because she harassed me about not posting since April 6th when I met her for lunch today. I suppose that is quite a while, but I've had a little bit going on! Let's see, what's changed since April 6th...

1. I completed (and passed, thank you Jesus) all my M1 classes.
2. Kris and I got married.
3. We honeymooned in West Palm Beach, FL.
4. We found and bought a house in Ridgeland.
5. I worked in the UMC Emergency Department for a few weeks shadowing doctors.
6. I worked at the Lakeland Family Medicine Clinic shadowing/learning for the past month.
7. We got a puppy named Woodrow and have since lost our cat.
8. Oh yeah, 2 of my good friends got married and Jennifer & Andrew are engaged!

That's about it in a nutshell. I've been trying to catch up on all the sleep I lost in the past year, but since I've had to be at work at 8am every morning it hasn't really happened. I've got to start going to bed before midnight. Tomorrow is my last day of work at the Family Medicine Clinic and we have 1 week off before school starts so I'm planning on sleeping 'til at least 10:00 every day next week. No phone calls please.

Married life is going great so far. It's pretty much the same except you always know where the other one is since you're living in the same house. It's much more convenient for the most part. I also enjoy the fact that Kris takes out the garbage and mows the yard. (I really suck at taking out the trash.) For some reason he's also learned how to use a hamper and is actually much better than I am about not leaving clothes everywhere. It's miraculous. I don't remember that being in the vows anywhere, but the preacher must have snuck that in at some point.

I'm also in the process of learning how to cook a few things. So far I've had a few successes and a few terrible failures.
Successes = turkey sausage and rice casserole, applesauce spice cake with cream cheese frosting (I ate 1/2 of it and have since decided I'm not allowed to ever make it again), baked pork chops (yes Amy, I used Oven Fry and they were delicious!!!), and turkey burgers (not exactly difficult, but they were yummy.)
Failures = homemade caramel cake. The cake was actually okay, but the caramel frosting was a complete disaster. It had a wonderful flavor but had the consistency of an ice cream topping. Another failure was chicken, broccoli, and rice casserole (and you thought that was impossible to screw up). The rice was crunchy and the broccoli was soggy. Yuck. Must learn to cook more. The only problem is that I refuse to cook anything that's loaded with cream cheese, full fat sour cream, butter, and full fat cheeses. What's the point of cooking a chicken breast when you put all that crap on it? I could just as well eat a Big Mac! Therefore since we live in Mississippi, my options are very limited. Oh yeah, did I mention Kris doesn't eat onions? That cuts out the few recipes that are left. Any good ideas (healthy, easy, or cheap) are welcome!

As for our pup Woodrow, we were told he's a Yellowcreek beagle. I think that's just a really fancy way to say he's white with yellow spots instead of black and brown. He's 8 weeks old and we're in the midst of potty training. It sucks - especially since neither Kris nor I are morning people and if you have an inside dog you must be a morning person. I don't like being woken up at 5 am to whincing and having to go find my robe and sit outside with the puppy while I wait for him to tinkle. So I usually just make Kris do it. Did I mention I love being married?

Working this summer has been AWESOME. It does suck to have to wake up at 6:30 during the summer, but it's worth it. They're paying us a good amount and we get to pretty much do what we want. I've enjoyed family medicine more than the ER surprisingly. The family medicine docs let you do more hands-on stuff since the patients aren't as critical. We get to go in and see the patients, ask them what meds they're taking, get a history, do a physical, look in their ears, and listen to their hearts and lungs. I've also gotten to do 4 Pap smears, a bimanual pelvic exam, and removed about 60 skin tags using lidocaine injection, cutting them with Iris scissors, and cauterizing them. I've also learned how to tell when a patient just wants pain meds and when to get a psych consult, which will be very useful in a year or so.

School starts August 4th so I'll be back in action as an M2 (hooray!). I am planning on blogging more regularly then once I'll be attached to my computer at least 12 hours a day.

Love y'all!