Wednesday, December 30, 2009

OCD

You know you're OCD when your favorite part of New Year's is not the celebration, but rather the anticipation of scribbling lots of engagements and to dos in a brand new blank planner.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Holiday Highlights

We've already celebrated 3 out of 4 times for the season. Here are some of my favorite moments:

*My mother cluing me in on Lady Gaga after I claimed I didn't get her.

*Kris's father lecturing me and my sis-in-law on the merits of pearl earrings and how you can wear them with jeans or "dressy clothes."

*Getting not one, but two digital picture frames at two separate dirty Christmases.

*The Speedy One and I trying to survive lots of socialite ladies and oohs and ahhs at the Christmas shower I hosted for my bestie J. (It was a success I think!)

I'm sure there's many more that I'm forgetting, but these were all I could think of right now. I'm about to head out into the rain and crowds to pick up a few last minute goodies. Merry Christmas everyone!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Lucky?

Anybody who knows me and my medicine partner, A, knows that we like to gripe. It's mostly out of habit and we're never 100% serious. I feel like on most other rotations we've had it a little harder than some others or either we feel compelled to do more and not be lazy (I'm not talking about anyone who reads this blog, obvs; those girls WORK). So we do our stuff, but we gripe about it the whole time - and afterwards :)

Why am I saying all this? Because I feel like we've gotten pretty lucky on Medicine so far and I just wanted to put it out there. Don't want to ALWAYS be a griper for no reason at all. Here's where we've lucked out that I want to acknowledge:

1. We've only had to take 2 nights of call (since our very 1st day on medicine was our team's post call day), even though we did work our little tails off during them. Other classmates have had 3 or 4 and some of them will be post-call during our midterm on Friday [sorry Ewok :(]

2. Our residents and attending are very nice, maybe a little organizationally challenged at times, but very very nice. I'll take a good attitude over OCD organizational skills any day of the week.

3. We both only see 2 pts daily and that's all our residents/attendings want.

4. We've gotten 30 minutes to 1 hr for lunch every day. Have never gotten a chance to eat dinner while on call, but this is supposed to be a positive post so pretend you didn't hear that.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but oh well. I should be studying anyway. Hope everyone's had a good week so far. 3 more days of waking up early for those of us on Medicine!!!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Ice Ice Baby

Remember how it snowed this weekend? I don't think I'll ever forget it - not because of how pretty it was though. There was lots of ice all over I-55. Fast forward to 5:30 am on Saturday morning and guess who had a run in with the ice on the way to the hospital? You guessed it - yours truly. Here's what happened:

Driving along, not too fast, when I notice 2 sets of blue lights in the left 2 lanes of the highway. What does everyone do when they see blue lights? They SLAM on their brakes. I did not, because I knew there was ice on the road. The people in front of me decided it was a great idea though. So in order not to hit them, I had to slam on my brakes too. Then my brakes completely locked up and my car slid a little to the left - directly towards the cop car. I thought I was going to take it out. Then my instincts made me jerk the wheel to the right, so I went veering across 3 lanes of traffic towards the right. Then I jerked left again. Then right. The last time I veered right I must have really done it good because my car decided to do no less than 3 complete 360 degree circles across 3 lanes of traffic. I was screaming at the top of my lungs. It was NOT FUN.

Then, miraculously, my car stopped. I ended up with my rear left tire slammed against the concrete side wall and facing oncoming traffic. From the sound of it, I thought my whole back end was totaled. I actually braced myself right before I hit the wall and thought I'd be headed to the hospital in an ambulance. Then I realized the police men 3 lanes over from me WEREN'T coming to help me. What was the deal??? I clearly just had a massive wreck!!! So after calling my friend and partner for Internal Medicine, A, and letting her know what had gone down I went outside to survey the damage.

It was insane. The only thing that was messed up was my hubcab. It was wedged in between my tire and the concrete wall. No scratches - no dents. Craziness. So what did I do? I threw that hubcab in the back seat and made it to the hospital only 15 minutes later than I intended to get there. I was pretty shaken up and I'm still convinced that the police actually CAUSED more wrecks than they prevented that morning. But overall I'm thankful. It was very scary, but at least I made it. I guess God wanted me to live that day!

Since med school started this car has not been the luckiest for me. I've gotten 2 speeding tickets (M1 year), sideswiped by a lady and her son during our 1st test week of M2 year, and now sent on the icecapades M3 year. I think I better get rid of the thing before next year. Not sure if I can survive the next one!

Quotable Quotes

Just got off the phone with my dear grandmother who turned 81 a few days ago. I was calling to wish her a belated happy birthday and we got to discussing my cousin A who recently ran her first marathon. Here's how it went:

Mam-Maw: You know C (another cousin of mine) ran that same race A ran in?
Me: Yeah, and M and D ran the 1/2 marathon. (M and D are C's parents.)
Mam-Maw: We've got some nuts in this family!!!
Me: Yeah, I know :)
Mam-Maw: I'd be bitching and complaining the whole time if I had to run that!
(This is the first time I've heard my grandmother say the "b-word" and I almost can't contain my laughter. Who am I kidding - I never contain my laughter.)
Me: Yeah, I imagine so.
Mam-Maw: I think A was sore for a whole day afterwards. I would have been sore for a whole year!

Gotta love it. I'm very proud of all of my running cousins. Not sure if I ever want to do a marathon. We've been studying a bit of nephrology on Medicine and knowing that bits of muscle that have broken down get all clogged in your kidneys is really not making me want to do it.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Catch Up Post

Runner's Log: ran/walked ~15 miles in the last week in 2.5 hours. No clue of calories.

Now for the revelation:

I DON'T hate Medicine so far. What's wrong with me? Everything I've ever said or thought goes against this. Maybe it's because our team is really nice. We just have an intern, upper level resident, and then the attending. I was expecting really "anal" people but they're nice. They give us actual responsibilities which I enjoy because I don't feel my day has been wasted and it makes the time go by faster. Then, after we do our work - they are APPRECIATIVE. It's the first time this has happened this year I think. At least I know it's the first time residents have ever vocalized gratitude so often.

What I like about medicine:
1. It's organized. Patient presents with problem. You acknowledge problem, determine BEST treatment plan based on evidence, and then treat them. They get better (usually).
2. Our residents and attendings have been nice so far.

What I don't like:
1. Early hours - alarm goes off at 4:30 most days and I still haven't gotten in the habit of going to bed before 10:00.
2. I hated rounding multiple times a day at first, but since then we've mostly just run the list a once or twice daily and then had attending rounds once daily. It's not bad if your team is efficient and it keeps everyone up to date.
3. Lack of procedures. I like working with my hands.
4. Lack of time off. We are supposed to get 1 day a week off "on average" which means you can potentially work 26 days in a row, then have 4 off at once. Shoot me.

Another exciting tidbit - on our very first day of rounds at 6:30 we were walking by a room just as the nurse happened to shout "CODE!!!" Turns out our team was the code team that month. It was a little chaotic, but long story short both me and my partner got to do chest compressions multiple times and our patient survived. Pretty exciting stuff.