hard work

Well, since it has finally stopped raining long enough for the ground to harden, I mowed the lawn today. This was after a 3 hour surgery today. At first I thought it would be an easy day. Sure I had to get up early to go to morning report at 7 am but then I studied until noon when I thought I had an ethics consult team meeting. They sent an email at 11 am saying it was cancelled only I didn't get that message. Oh well, I studied more until 2 pm when I was told my surgeon's clinic would start. Turns out she was on ER call and did an emergency appendectomy without me. Oh well...The laparoscopic cases are kind of boring since all I do is hold the trocars and since my depth perception is sucky with laparoscopy, I'm not too bummed I missed it. Anyway, we saw 2 patients in clinic then got a call from the ER about an elderly woman who had a bowel perforation during a barium enema. When we opened her up, there was milky white barium everywhere. It had coated the bowel. In addition to having to find the hole in the bowel, it took forever just to get the adhesions taken down and then try to clean off the entire abdominal cavity of the barium. That stuff was everywhere.

So anyway, I came home and since the sun was still out (it was 7:30 pm but really 6:30 pm because of daylight saving time), I mowed the lawn. The grass was super high so it took forever to get it cut well. Then I sprayed this moss killer and turf booster thing that my mom bought. Since I still have to pull weeds in 2 parts of my yard, I may have to redo the lawn stuff but I'm tired. The rhodedendrons are blooming so that's pretty as well as the alyssium. I bought some plants to plant next to my mailbox. And I think one of the bigger bushes is truely dead, a victim of last september, so I'll try to dig that up this weekend and plant a new bush that does well with drought so I can opt not to water.

I also bought this really cool slipper-shaped stepping stone making kit...it takes a week to make 2 stones (2 moulds in the kit). I'm tempted to buy a second kit just so I can speed up the process of making stepping stones from the front area to the back deck. Apparently you can't even use them until they're completely cured for 28 days! Geez! I also bought a slipper shaped thermometer but I don't think it's correct because it always says it's 80 degrees in my home when it's clearly not that warm at all. Maybe I'll return it.

Oh and then I also installed a new thermostat that allows me to control the temperature at different times every day of the week. For example, i can program my furnace to heat my home to 80 degrees from 4 pm to 5 pm if I so choose. It's nicer looking than the old control and it has a digital readout. It blends into the wall better too.

Yep, I've been busy!

OB fun

Well, today when I was post call, I got home at 8:30 am and had started to relax and nearly fell asleep when I got a page that my first continuity OB pt was in labor. Now, the page came in at 10 am and we thought, the R2 and myself, that surely a person delivering her 4th child would easily pop #4 out in no time so at the most, I would be there for 3 hours. So I went back to the hospital. 3 hours later she was still pregnant and the stubborn kid was refusing to come down into her pelvis. Meanwhile I was now really tired having only slept 2.5 hours on call. I felt bad leaving and also wanted to deliver this baby but I just couldn't stay awake. So I left, had a little nap, then cleaned the house. So I missed my first opportunity to have a continuity delivery. Argh. I wonder when she delivered...well, tomorrow I'm going in to round on mom and baby so I guess I find out then as well as the sex of the baby.

Vacation!

Well, I'm finally on my vacation. I survived the ICU. My last night on was rough. 1 person trying to die, another who decided to try to die, then a third who went psycho. At the end I was so tired all I wanted to do was cry everytime someone came up to me to tell me I did great. It's like boot camp for interns I guess. It either breaks you or you make it through. I think I barely made it. I hated presenting on rounds the most though. Admits didn't bother me so much compared to rounds every morning. But it's over.

So this is what I've been doing this week:
Saturday: I thought my flight home was this day but since I realized it on friday, I slept in. Or rather I tried to sleep in. I cleaned up the house a bit, went to lunch with Christina, then finished cleaning. I was going to work in the yard but decided against it. Oh and I did laundry and packed.
Sunday: Flew home and hung out at home with mom and Jan. It rained really hard and it was hot and humid.
Monday: Went to mom's old school (and mine too) so she could pick up stuff for the school's 50th anniversary. Then we went shopping. I got the microphone to use with my spanish software. I think it must need USB 2 to use the headphones though since the microphone works fine. We also went to the furniture store so mom can look for couches for the playroom and living room. Expensive stuff. I was going to paddling with Melissa and Trisha but Trisha bailed and since Melis only went cause Trisha was going, we decided to not go afterall. Then I worked on my list of tax deductions so dad could do the taxes. That took longer than I expected.
Tuesday: slept in, read my book, read about the new computer I was getting. Dad called to tell me that I didn't spend enough on medical things to get a deduction. Lame. But I'm supposed to get a nice refund this year. It should cover my property taxes this year and house insurance and a new computer. Janine and Sherry came over for dinner. I passed out watching a dvd. I guess I was tired.
Today: Went to lunch with grandma. Got yelled at by Aunty Putt for being pasty white. So i guess I'll go outside and read. Tonight I'm going out with melissa.
Tomorrow: Not sure
The next day: Payton and Jodi get back from florida sometime
Saturday: Play with Payton
Sunday: Go home. Blah. Vacation will be over. double blah.
Monday: work...blah to the infinite power.

ICU

It's day 10 in the ICU...21 to go. Actually a little less since I do get a few days off. At any rate, it's been hectic but good. Today I was a little annoyed because the patients were divided between myself and the intern who had been on call that day at 4 each (no admits overnight, how lucky!). On friday-sunday there's a 3rd year resident who's the ICU float resident who comes in so the interns can have a day off on the weekend. And for some reason, the 3rd year who's always there said that we would divide the 4 patients that the post call intern presented between myself and the float resident. What BS!!! When I was post call, the float did all my patient notes and I had way more than 4 patients! And I actually stood up for myself and made that point. They made me feel somewhat guilty for doing so but that's her flippin job as the float resident on friday! And what annoyed me too was that the plan seemed to be for me to write my 4 notes, possibly 2 of the other intern's notes (we don't write notes post call), and then do all the admits with the senior in the morning! And this is my short call day. I don't know why this friday was being run differently than last week when I was post call because that float person told me his job that day was to write my notes and the other intern told me that's how things happened without controversy. The only thought I had was that this float person is good friends with the senior who's on. It's odd too because the senior had been so good about keeping things fair and equal so far. Yep, I was a bit pissed and you know how that makes me. And it takes me even longer because I have a 4th year med student interrupting my note writing to ask questions. She's really smart but I suppose now i know what I was like to residents as a med student. Sometimes I just want to say, stop bothering me now and we'll discuss later. The nice thing about have the subintern (as 4th year students are called) is that it's one less presentation I have to make on rounds but I still have to write a good note so it doesn't save me any time cause then I have to read her note and cosign it. Blah...

Only 21 more days...

I want to sleep

New Car

Well, today, on a whim, my mom and I went to the Toyota dealership to look at the car I would buy, if I had the funds. Mostly I wanted to look at the 2 colors I was interested in to determine which one I preferred. The cactus mica is my choice. The dealer made me drive the car around the block but first I had to drive through the gauntlet of new cars. I'm sure I had lots of space, as he kept telling me but the last thing I needed to do was ding up a bunch of new expensive cars on a day I had no plans on buying anyway. The car, by the way, is the toyota corolla LE. I'm basically going for the exact same car I have now but newer with fancier things like side and front airbags with ABS, and other stuff I'm sure I would want if I cared that much. I just wanted to see which color I liked best since I had already done my important research online. The car is about $18,500. Or almost half my yearly salary before taxes. So now I must decide which I want first, a new car or a new computer. I really want a new computer (to salivate with me go to apple.com and look at the macbook pro) but this is also probably the best time to put money down on a new car. So my plan is to see what sort of tax refund I get back this year. And if after setting aside money for property taxes and house insurance I have enough money, I may consider a new car or a new computer...or both. Or maybe I need to marry a rich guy so I can easily get both...and yes, even if I were to marry a rich guy, I would still go for the corolla cause then I could get the really fancy accessories for it. I listen to all the specialists at work complain about having to take in their fancy cars for servicing all the time. Just cause I would be rich doesn't mean I'd want to spend my money on car parts and mechanic labor times. Gotta save the imaginary richness for other more important things, like a new ipod, clothes, someone to do the ironing, cooking, and cleaning...oh wait, mom is doing those last 3 things for free. You get the idea. Time to update my pda

New Car

Well, today, on a whim, my mom and I went to the Toyota dealership to look at the car I would buy, if I had the funds. Mostly I wanted to look at the 2 colors I was interested in to determine which one I preferred. The cactus mica is my choice. The dealer made me drive the car around the block but first I had to drive through the gauntlet of new cars. I'm sure I had lots of space, as he kept telling me but the last thing I needed to do was ding up a bunch of new expensive cars on a day I had no plans on buying anyway. The car, by the way, is the toyota corolla LE. I'm basically going for the exact same car I have now but newer with fancier things like side and front airbags with ABS, and other stuff I'm sure I would want if I cared that much. I just wanted to see which color I liked best since I had already done my important research online. The car is about $18,500. Or almost half my yearly salary before taxes. So now I must decide which I want first, a new car or a new computer. I really want a new computer (to salivate with me go to apple.com and look at the macbook pro) but this is also probably the best time to put money down on a new car. So my plan is to see what sort of tax refund I get back this year. And if after setting aside money for property taxes and house insurance I have enough money, I may consider a new car or a new computer...or both. Or maybe I need to marry a rich guy so I can easily get both...and yes, even if I were to marry a rich guy, I would still go for the corolla cause then I could get the really fancy accessories for it. I listen to all the specialists at work complain about having to take in their fancy cars for servicing all the time. Just cause I would be rich doesn't mean I'd want to spend my money on car parts and mechanic labor times. Gotta save the imaginary richness for other more important things, like a new ipod, clothes, someone to do the ironing, cooking, and cleaning...oh wait, mom is doing those last 3 things for free. You get the idea. Time to update my pda

the dream

So I decided to check out the apple rumor site to see what new things have been released and are predicted in the future...the new macbook pro (still hate the name) is now available in even faster speeds! 2.16 ghz! And so now I must be patient to see how good or bad these new computers may be although it's pretty hard to be this patient. My computer still works fine but it's nice to dream...we'll have to see how much of a tax refund I get since my plans for that money are to use it to pay property taxes in november, pay off some of my credit card debt (not too much left), maybe put it in some long term savings thing that earns lots of credit, and lastly, help pay for this new computer. With the Tulane education discount, it's $2929 and without it the computer costs $3199. I suppose at those prices, getting the education discount is somewhat helpful because I can spend the extra money on product extended warranty. Not sure if it's better to get the apple warranty or compusa. The compusa plan is somewhat better since apple sometimes takes forever but still not sure.

Payton Turns 1

Tomorrow my niece will be 1 year old. I'm a little sad about not getting to be there but I sent her present on time (which is a major accomplishment for me). I went to the Build-a-Bear store and made her a monkey, dressed it in the scrubs outfit they sell, put a little pink bow on it's tail (to mark her as a girl monkey doctor), and called her "Bananas, MD." Dorky, I know, but she's a cute little monkey. And when Payton figures out how to press the left arm, Bananas will make her monkey sounds. My mom still hasn't sent me any pictures of my niece since she was about 8 or 9 months old. She told me she'll send me some but I think I'll end up waiting until she comes next month. My brother and sister-in-law aren't too great about sending photos either. Geez! What does a doting aunt have to do to get some pictures of her one and only niece!?! I'll be going home in april for my next vacation so I'll get to spend time with her then. She'll be walking by then, if she hasn't already done that (isn't it sad that I don't get ANY news of my niece? And since only dad reads this, maybe he'll send pictures.

wow

I want to cry...that's how much I'm in love with the new powerbooks...okay, it's called a macbook pro which is the most retarded name for an apple computer to date. So when I finally get the money and the 2nd rev is out, I'll still call it a powerbook. Macbook...I still can't believe that a company known for style would call their newest innovation a "MacBook Pro" Bleh. It's so hard to decide if I should work on my clinic notes or watch the replay of the presentation...choices choices choices.

snowing

So it snowed last night while I was on call so I didn't get to play in it...at least it didn't keep me from leaving post call...that blame goes to the attending who decided to do things his way rather than the protocol. So instead of seeing the sick babies first and then the kids up on the peds floor, we saw the well babies because there was a nurse who kept harassing us to see one of her patient's baby so they could leave. I told the attending that they could wait since we needed to see those who were the sickest first and he said "we need to see the discharges first." BS. No other attending runs things that way. The other complicating factor was someone who felt that moving the weekend that she made 39 weeks from her previous home in utah without any of her prenatal records would be a smart thing. You do sense the sarcasm right? Anyway, she delivered this morning around 10:30 so that kept me there longer. I did 2 deliveries on my call shift so I suppose that's not too bad. Anyway, i missed playing in the snow but I did go out and stand in the falling snow for awhile. The nurses all laughed at me. I don't care. One of the nurses slipped on the ice and whacked her head hard and got rolled over to the ED. Oh and I got some excitement when the patient who delivered when I first started out on sunday decided to have a hemorrhage at 4 pm. I was told I handled the situation well but it was with assistance from the experienced nurses who asked me if I wanted certain drugs...in other words, I just needed to say yes. I did know about 2 of the meds they were pulling out when I got to the room and ordered those doses so I suppose I needed some brain function. And in my head I kept saying "please stay alive until my attending shows up." Anyway, I'm rambling...

Oh, one more thing, I bought a snow shovel so I could shovel my steep driveway. There is the possibility that my driveway will be one ice slide in the morning and I will need to call about being late (oh darn...sarcasm again) but oh well...
I have decided that snow is pretty when it's not on the road.

crazy

well, my cousin carly and her husband just found out they were having twins. Yep, this is the younger sister of my other cousin Erinn, who just had twins in april. Hmmm...this could make getting pregnant for any member of our extended family potentially dangerous... or fun. Crazy will be if laura gets pregnant with twins at some point, their mom (my aunt) told her to just adopt. Perhaps the proud grandparents are already burnt out on helping with twins? I now have to make 2 receiving blankets instead of the one I just started. anyway, I need to shower and eat some lunch then go meet chris. we're going to see the harry potter movie.

exhilaration

I don't know what it was about today's delivery but it felt so exciting and rejuvinating. Maybe it's because I hadn't done a delivery in the past week and had kind of gotten bored after doing a month of ob and having to stay one more month - a slump. This woman wasn't any different than anyone else I had delivered and I didn't exactly feel any more connected to her but it was just a great feeling after getting that baby out. It was kind of a big kid too: 9lb 10 oz and the placenta was huge too! Thankfully she didn't tear so no stitching required. Maybe it was happiness that although I stayed late to deliver her, I didn't have to stay later to repair any tears. I predicted her delivery around 5 pm and he was born at 5:01 pm. It was fun.

I also got a thank you note from a woman who I helped deliver a couple of weeks ago (she had a c-section because her baby was breech). I had taken a picture with her son so they gave me a copy of the picture. I also circumsized him. Very much the continuity and full service a family physician provides.

shopping and salivation

Good News! Today I went shopping at my new favorite place - Bridgeport Shopping Center in Tigard (that's the place we met your airline friends, Dad). It's So Amazing it's probably better that it takes a while to get there...relative to how close Clackamas Town Center is to my house. Anyway, there's J.Crew, Banana Republic, a fun Container Store...And the best thing - APPLE STORE!!!! Yippeee! I love the apple store! Today I spent an hour in there salivating over all the things I wish I could buy and can't afford...mostly the new powerbooks. There's supposed to be a new update in january or february possibly with the new Intel chips so I think I might buy a new computer after the first batch comes out with whatever problems may arise. I don't have time to be an early adopter and deal with any little bugs the first intel powerbooks might have. My computer now still works but the screen is messed up and for a brief time, one of the usb ports didn't work and in february, it will be 4 years old. And I can still get the education discount with my tulane id...I wonder where I put that thing. Actually, I would probably order it online since I'm going to customize it with a bigger and faster harddrive and more ram. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the silver colored keys but overall it looks like a great product. Oh and I also might buy a new PDA with my $500 of CME money. I'm waiting to see any updates next spring since I have the whole year to use that money plus the $100 from Compusa cause they initally ripped me off when I had my old ipod replaced with the one I have now. So far buy.com has the cheapest price and I also have a $15 off coupon to use but it expires on Dec 15th. I wish I were rich so I could buy these things sooner.

Anyway, I got a lot of christmas shopping done today so it was a big accomplishment for me considering I was post call today (i got a decent amount of sleep in last night)

Blogthings - What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

I saw this on Robin's site so I thought I'd see what my birthday meant. I think it's pretty accurate...not so sure about the color and shape...
I should sleep. I get to sleep in tomorrow!!! Yippeee!

Your Birthdate: July 22

You tend to be understated and under appreciated. You have a hidden force to do amazing things, doing them your own way. People may see you as strange and shy, but they know little. Your unconventional ways have more power than they (and even you) know. Your strength: Standing up for what you know is true Your weakness: You tend to be picky and rigid Your power color: Silver Your power symbol: Square Your power month: April

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Bergy is Here!

Christina came in last night. It's nice to have someone around to talk with and have some fun...okay so far we haven't done much except eat out tonight and then work side by side with our powerbooks - she's studying for step 2 and I'm working on my clinic notes. I was hoping to have fun this weekend but I was essentially pressured into switching my call from monday to sunday so the other intern could go to the ALSO class because they didn't want to bother the person on jeopardy because he had a problem last year involving extra OB time or something incredibly stupid. I should have held my ground better but I didn't want to be seen as the inflexible visiting resident. It's bad enough that I'm not one of them (by that I mean a resident in their program). So I won't get to sleep in this weekend and I desperately needed that after doing q2 for 3 call shifts in a row and now I'll be doing q2 for 2 call shifts. Screwed over, yep, that's how I feel right about now. Well, speaking of needing sleep, I'm going to bed now so I can get my 7 hours in tonight. vacation is soooo far away.

tired

I'm so tired tonight. Add to that the fact that I neglected to change my clock in the living room and so now I find myself with an extra hour before needing to sleep for tomorrow. I start OB and according to one of the attendings, there are days when I don't go into the hospital (other than weekends) but I don't remember the other interns mentioning that. All I know is that it's back to getting up early so I can get from my home to vancouver by 7 am. And since it's raining now, gotta add on extra transit time since oregon drivers seem to go really really slow even though it's only drizzling. Oh well, we'll see how my first day of 2 OB months will be. Then I do 2 months of family medicine service then ICU...then I die. The fatigue I'll have at the end of these next 5 months is scary to think about. Especially when I realize I'll have all of 1 week to recapture that lost sleep.

Christina comes next week for her OHSU rotation so it will be fun to have her here. I think I wrote that already but that shows you how tired I feel right now. Time to shower then sleep I think since I need to give myself enough time in the morning to drive up there and possibly get lost trying to find the family birth center not to mention the thought of delivering babies tomorrow having not caught a baby since November 2004. I'm told it will all come back to me. Um, I didn't exactly know how to catch the baby correctly back then. I sort of grabbed the baby as it came out then pulled it into my arms and tried not to drop it. This approach makes it impossible to do the next step of suctioning out the mouth and nose and then clamping off the umbilical cord. I guess by the end I will be able to catch and hold with one arm and use the other free hand to do the necessary things. I'll also apparently be able to look into the birth canal and somehow identify where the tears are and bring together the tissue to fix it - my last memory of a tear was that it all looked like chewed up meat without any apparent landmarks. Of course, that too was greater than a year ago and my memory is probably fuzzy. It should be fun though. I need to let Renae know when I'll be on duty so she can sign up for her hospital tour. I think Laura will be there when Renae has her baby. Of course, I'm referring to Laura the intern because I'm sure Aunty Laura (renae's mom) and perhaps our cousin Laura as well will be there at some point. That could get confusing.

where was I...oh yes, bedtime.

Here's my cute little niece Payton. She's around 8 months in this photo. My mom brought up a bunch of new pictures since Payton's mommy and daddy no longer have the time to keep her site updated now that they're back home. She's getting so big! The other night I went to Aunty Debby and Uncle Chuck's for sunday dinner and saw my cousin's 3 boys. They're all getting so big. Evan put on his little show. The twins are both very talkative. Elliot is scooting around on his bum. For some reason some people think they look alike...they may need to see an eye doctor. Anyway, I need to read some stuff (aka study). I'm having fun with my piano.

I went to see if I won any money from the lottery...one ticket had 2 matching numbers but it didn't register a win. Oh well. It was worth a shot. Maybe the numbers had to be in the same order to win. Or maybe I was supposed to cash them in on sunday or saturday. My inability to understand lotteries is perhaps the reason why i don't buy the tickets.

Only a few more days on surgery. I still have issues trying to do the damn subcuticular stitches. Maybe I focus too much on finding the point where the epidermis meets the subepidermal layer. I get most of them in at the right spot but I take forever. And then when I try to take small segments, I'm told to take more cause I'm going to slow, then at the next opportunity I'm told I'm taking too big of a bite. For Crap's sake! Make up your mind! The surgeon's been very patient with me though so for that, I am truely grateful or I would have lost it by now. Certainly not the same kind of surgeons I had to work under as a med student.

Piano

Thanks to Kevin, Jodi, Mom and Dad, and perhaps Payton too, I now have a digital piano! Yea! Now I can have fun playing piano when I get home from work. Well, time to have some dessert.

Oh and finally got to intubate a couple of people. It was on my oncall night this week. They both had no teeth so no worries about breaking teeth and were both surgery patients so there was no "life or death" anxiety. I amazingly wasn't very shakey either.

Tomorrow mom and dad head home - it was a quick visit but at least I got to see them and hang out for a couple of afternoons (2 post call afternoons). THey leave super early tomorrow but I guess since I have to get up early for a 7:30 operation anyway, I can handle getting up at 4 am for a brief moment to say goodbye.

bergy comes next month so that will be fun. We can explore portland on the rare day we both have off at the same time. It will be nice if she ends up here for residency since she also kind of got tired of the late night bar scene towards the end of med school.

Surgery

Well, now I'm on my surgery rotation. And I think I have PTSD from doing general surgery with Jaffe as a med student. Anyway, I get all nervous about messing up when suturing and so I go pretty slow at it. I mean, really, the last time I sutured anything was in november of last year! And the surgeon I'm with has done this for years so I suppose I shouldn't be too concerned at how fast he can do the same task. And I have memories of interns going just as slowly as I do so I suppose I'm still on the right pace. Okay, time for breakfast then off to surgery clinic. Didactics this afternoon so hopefully that will be interesting.

Piano

Well, costco has the 88 key digital piano that I want. It costs $540 which mom was shocked at cause she thought it would only be $100 or $200 I guess but that price is VERY cheap since similar products that I had researched easily cost $1000 and that often doesn't include the bench, stand for the piano, pedal, etc. It's a steal. Well, I guess I need to save up since I'll probably be paying for at least half since I was promised this piano for christmas but the price was unexpected by mom.

My internal medicine month is coming to a close. Tomorrow I have to call the surgeon I'll be working with to find out the schedule. I'm hoping that weekends are off but we'll see.

time to eat then study a bit.