Almost done!

This 4-week block of outpatient medicine is quickly coming to an end and tomorrow morning is my last half day of clinic. That means tomorrow afternoon I start the long and horrible journey back to CA! I'm extremely excited to be heading home for a few weeks, but getting there will be less than ideal for a few reason. First, because I'm gone so long I am taking a bus with a bunch of undergrads to the airport. It's only $7 dollars, and I have to take a bus just to catch the bus. At least I will get to the airport without having to park my car for tons of money. Second, I am taking Spirit Airlines. For those of you who have never flown Spirit for a longish flight, don't. I booked this flight before I knew how much I disliked the experience, which I found out in September when I went to SoCal for the weekend. Every flight was delayed, the seats don't recline, everything costs extra, and I mean EVERYTHING. I didn't want to pay $10-20 per flight (I have a layover in Vegas) to choose my seat, so despite checking in almost exactly 24 hours prior to my flight and there being an abundance of aisle and window seats available, I will be stuck in a middle seat for a 4.5 hour flight and then again for another 1.5 hour flight. Lucky me. Pretty sure they don't really give a shit about their customers and just want to squeeze as much money as possible out of everyone who can't afford to fly on a better airline. I am so not looking forward to that. Lastly, my flight is not scheduled to get in until 11:30pm in CA, so inevitably I will get home well after midnight, probably much later since the flight is almost sure to be delayed for one reason or another. At least I'll be snuggling with the puppies and hanging out with family soon.

As for now, I need to start packing! I also have quite a lot of Christmas shopping to do still, which means it's an Amazon kind of night. See you all soon!

Tag Days

This weekend was our annual Galen's Tag Days, where med students brave the cold in Ann Arbor to stand outside and raise money for Mott Children's Hospital as well as various children's organizations within Washtenaw County. I tagged in the hospital, on Main Street during Midnight Madness (the yearly night when everything downtown is open until midnight for shopping), and at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube during the synchronized skating competition. We made a good amount of money, but we won't know the final count for a while. Last year we made over $75k, so hopefully we get up there again this year. Luckily it wasn't nearly as cold as it was last year during Tag Days, so while it was still chilly, I wasn't frozen solid.

In other news, I am trying to re-learn how to play the oboe to maybe play in the Smoker band, which is essentially the pit orchestra for our annual musical faculty roast. Could be fun, but it's been a very very long time since I've played anything for real. Ten and a half years!!! Wow. I can't believe it's been that long since high school. Anyways, that's all really. Tomorrow it's back to more outpatient medicine. We are halfway through this month already, and only two weeks until I am home for Christmas! I should probably start Christmas shopping soon!

A Glorious Thanksgiving Weekend in CA

The last five days have been wonderful! I got to go home for Thanksgiving to be with my family. I think this is the hardest it has been to come back to Michigan since it is about to be so cold, no family is around, and I have to go back to clinic after 5 days off, which is by far the most off time I have had since the first week of May. Luckily this is not my most time intensive month of medical school and in just three short weeks I will be heading back to California yet again for the most magical time of the year. My trip included my 10 year high school reunion, which was actually really awesome, Thanksgiving, hanging out with family, going to the Cal football game (sadly they lost), and so much relaxing with my puppies. I can't wait for Christmas!

I took the red eye home last night and got a little sleep, but since the flight is not that long (maybe 4 hours) I clearly did not get a sufficient amount to function. I immediately got in bed upon arrival at my condo and slept for almost 5 hours and was still tired when I got up! I did force myself to go to Jazzercise to work out, but didn't get much else done today. I fell asleep on my couch for a long time before forcing myself to shower, unpack, and prepare to be in the real world again and not in the magical state of being home and always with family.

VA: Check

I have now completed my month of general medicine inpatient at the VA Hospital. It was a very interesting month, and a stark departure from outpatient pediatrics, where I saw mostly healthy little kiddos all day long. I think it was a good experience, but I am excited to get a little more sleep over the next month. Tomorrow I start outpatient and I have a variety of clinics. I start with Med/Peds clinic and Endocrine clinic tomorrow, and then General Medicine on Tuesday and then its time for Thanksgiving break in California where it's WARM! Can't wait!

This weekend was pretty fun too. I went to the last home game of the season at the Big House, but sadly, we lost. It kinda sucked and our chances of being bowl bound are slim with just Ohio State left on the schedule. Stanford, however, beat Cal which was awesome except for my mom complaining about the refs over text all night long :-P Stanford is for sure bowl bound and Cal has a shot next weekend. Heres to hoping Cal can beat BYU!!

Still snowing

So apparently the first snow of the year was just the beginning of the crazy snowy winter that is to come. It's been snowing more and it's still snowing outside. Only 11/19 and I've already lost count of days of snow. Thankfully next week is Thanksgiving and I'm off to CA for some much needed warmth!

Is Winter Over yet?

Okay, it's official. I am over the winter and it's only barely just begun. It is cold and snowy and I miss the sun and warmth! Tomorrow our wind chill is -5ºF! OMG! So cold so soon. This is going to be a very very long winter. Thank goodness I am off to California in a little over a week, and then again three weeks later! January-April is going to be a rough time in the cold without any breaks!

On the upside at least there was one beautiful sunset last week. Heres that picture, if only to make me happier!

First snow

Today is the third time I've seen snow flurries this winter season (first was on Halloween), but this morning was the first time of the season that it actually stuck on the ground at all. It didn't last long and it's already all melted just a few short hours later, but it's officially happened. Winter has come and I'm in for many months of freezing cold! Look out for the first real snow storm of the season in the coming months! I'll be sure to post about it. Luckily it's not in the forcast quite yet!

UPDATE! I got to go home early today and I took some time to get some much needed rest and relaxed on the couch. When I looked up it was snowing like crazy. It didn't last long again, but more is sticking now.  It's supposed to snow more over night too. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOLLY!

Happy happy 26th birthday to my most wonderful and absolute favoritest (and only) sister!! I hope you have an absolutely wonderful day and I can't wait to celebrate with you in only a few more weeks when I make it home for Thanksgiving! Enjoy your day!! Love you lots and lots!

Happy Birthday Christine!

Happiest of birthdays to my wonderful and fabulous cousin Christine today as she turns 27 years old! Wish we got to celebrate together, but Christmas time will have to made up for the rest of the year in which we never get to hang out! Hope you had a wonderful day galavanting around Glasgow (after that thing you didn't want to go to this morning at least!). Love you!

Passed the Peds Shelf!

Today I found out that I passed my Peds shelf exam and I actually did well on it, yay!! I am so relieved. It was by far my best shelf exam of the year, so I am hopeful for at least getting more than a Pass in the rotation. About a month until I will likely get my grade, but until then I am feeling happy that I did well on that stinking exam.

Otherwise nothing too exciting happening out here. This weekend I worked Saturday, but made it out in time to make the football game where I froze my toes, but Michigan won! Yay. Stanford was not so lucky against Oregon, but Cal beat Oregon State so yay for Cal being so close to bowl eligible. The Niners sadly also lost so once again I'm batting 0.500. I don't know that I've had a 100% W weekend this season, which stinks.

Other than football I studied some and got some much needed sleep in. Daylight savings ending made up for the fact that I stayed up so gosh darn late watching football! Now I'm back in the thick of Internal Medicine again, trying to learn some stuffs. Fun times.

GO BLUE!

The VA

So far working at the VA has been great. We have a lot of autonomy to act as almost the intern, which is nice because I feel like I actually know what is going on in all aspects of my patients' care. I also have been getting my work done fairly early, so I've had lots of time to study and have gotten to be home at reasonable hours every day, which I very much appreciate. The team I'm working on is great and the vets are an interesting patient population that I appreciate more than I anticipated. They are a very appreciative bunch, and much more laid back than some of the more uptight parents I came across at Mott which is a tertiary care center. The VA here is a good mix of bread and butter medicine and tertiary care since we get people from all over the state. Anyways, thats really all I'm doing right now.

Also, THE GIANTS WON THE WORLD SERIES LAST NIGHT!!! WOO HOO GO GIANTS! Third time in 5 years and I couldn't be more thrilled for my home team.

Switch Weekend

Ah the gloriousness of the switch weekend. Nothing to study, no commitments. Why can't it always be switch weekend!! I didn't do too much, but definitely got some quality downtime. I hung out with some friends on Friday night and then didn't leave my condo until tonight when I went to see The Best of Me at the movie theater with Stephanie. I cried through the entire movie (hard core cried) event though I read the book a while back and knew what I was getting myself into. It was a good movie. Other than that I really did very little besides spending too much time on the phone with Comcast not getting my internet problems resolved. Oh well. Onto Internal Medicine rotation tomorrow and I start at the VA Hospital. Hope it's an okay rotation, cause it's the next 4 weeks of my life!

Didn't make it

Seven weeks I made it through Peds without getting sick, so of course my body decided the weekend before the exam was the most opportune time to finally succumb to the viruses I've come in contact with recently. I spent my weekend with a ridiculously runny nose and congestion and dreams of well-child exams. No really, for some reason I have been tossing and turning and not getting good sleep because my head keeps repeating patient encounters and it's weirdly stressful.

Anyways, I stayed at home mostly this weekend since I wasn't at full strength, which meant I needed a few distractions. After doing two easy shifts (and a third one today actually) I had been to Target and Whole Foods and actually had some things to eat for once. I spent yesterday afternoon making dehydrated apples and bananas, and even made a pumpkin pie from scratch (aka from an actual pie pumpkin). This years pie worked out better than last years because I pouring the filling into the crust when it was already in the oven, which meant no spills! It was crazy beautiful if I do say so myself. I am pretty bomb at making pumpkin pie from scratch. I also recently discovered you can do the recipe with carrots instead of pumpkin and it is potentially even better, so I will have to try it sometime.

Today it was back to clinic. I have one more day of general clinic now and then one day of specialty clinics (Infection Disease and Coagulation) and then a study day and then the shelf. This weekend is the only weekend the entire M3 class has off together, so it should be fun! We are having a get together at Shea and Marcus's, and those are always good times. I also got a cryptic email today that was sent to a small group of people that said we should expect to go to a lecture at the VA next Thursday given by the chief of medicine, so some of us are guessing that means we have our VA month first for our internal med rotation. I guess I will find that all out soon enough since we start next week. Medicine is notorious for not giving much notice about your schedule. Anyways, I'm cold and hungry so I'm going to eat (probably some pie with it too!). 

Viruses

Today I had to reassure a parent that her child was very unlikely to contract Ebola. The media has made everyone so crazy! Everyone is super concerned they are going to get ebola or enterovirus and it has made parents paranoid and terrified beyond belief. People are just going nuts. Luckily the big enterovirus outbreak is on the downswing in Michigan now, but the media has people really freaked out. And while everyone is freaking out about ebola people are still declining flu vaccines that can help prevent their kids from getting a virus that they are actually likely to come across. Such is the life of peds clinic in the fall.

Outpatient life

This week and next week I am doing Peds outpatient clinic. It has actually been pretty good so far. I work with a different attending every half day, so my expectations and the way I interact with patients changes often, but I've been managing well I think. Ive seen one week olds all the way up to 17 year olds; mostly for well child visits, but also for some sick visits. I get to sleep in a little bit since clinic doesn't start until 8:30 or 9, and sometimes driving to and from clinic is a nice way to relax. Overall not so bad :)

Restful weekend

As usual I have been a bad blogger. It's hard to keep up when most of what I do each day I can't write about due to HIPPA. I have just finished a week on the newborn service, which was great. So many cute babies everyday! Best of all it was inpatient work, but all the patients are healthy and adorable! Other than that life has been much the same. Michigan played Penn State last night and actually won, so that was awesome! We spent the first half sitting near three group of people playing seat police and kept bringing ticket people to kick people out of their seats. I get it, but 90% of the student section is not in the exact seat they were assigned, so a group of 10 people shouldn't expect to have all their seats free when they arrive in the second quarter. It was ridiculous. We got annoyed and moved at halftime and enjoyed the second half much more. I also got a lot of rest this weekend, cleaned, did laundry, and actually made some food. Next up on the agenda is cleaning the fridge out and possibly going to the grocery store. Tomorrow starts two weeks of Peds outpatient clinic and then the rotation is over and I will be half way done with 3rd year! 

So Much Rain!

Yesterday was a bit crazy and super exhausting. I started work at 6am and did the usual. We finished all our work pretty early, so I got to go home at noon, which means I made it to the football game! I rested for a bit before the game and then met up with my friend Evie to head to the Big House. The game was really fun, until the 4th quarter. We had our ups and downs, but we were still generally in the game through the third. The best moment was a sweet defensive pick sick! The fourth was rough and was filled with many interceptions. Then the rain came. Man oh man it was WET! It was dumping and there was lightening and the game was suspended. We did not wait out the multi hour suspension since everyone was getting kicked out of the Big House and there was no where to wait really. Instead we got soaking wet as we walked the roughly two miles home. Luckily I was smart and had brought my hat and rain coat, so my legs were soaked, but the rest of me wasn't so bad. Once I got home I ordered a pizza since the traffic was nuts and I didn't want to drive to get dinner, and then I fell asleep on the couch! I was so tired. I tried to watch part of the Cal game, which was going great, but fell asleep before half time. Then I woke up to a dreadful 4th quarter. Sucks. My football teams just love to be disappointing! Oh well. Today I am getting some much needed rest. I am utterly exhausted!! 

New Peds Service

Today was my first day on the Blue team at the hospital and so far its been really good. Our attending is wonderful and the team seems like they will be good to work with, so overall I am very happy with how the next two weeks are looking. In other news, I finally got to a football game over the weekend. Michigan played Miami University (OH) and we won fairly easily. I sat up in the box area with one of the OB/GYN docs since I won the ticket at a charity auction last year, and it was really fun. Other than that I didn't do all that much this weekend. Caught up on some sleep, did some laundry, finally got back to Jazzercise, and relaxed. 

Quick Peds Update

This is now my second week on Peds and I am crazy busy. I get to the hospital at either 6am or 6:30am every morning and have never left before 5pm, but I usually end up staying later. It's great to be with the kids and I actually enjoy talking to parents as well. They really want what's best for their children and I've found working with the parents to be incredibly reasonable for the most part. They know their children better than we do! Besides the hours and exhaustion everything else is good. Since  at the hospital most of my waking hours I really haven't done much lately. I tried to ride my bike today, but when I got on the bike I found my tires were flat (ugh!) so now I have to wait until I'm off during business hours so I can go get my air at one of the two bike shops near my place. This weekend I am completely off and I can't wait for two days of rest! That's all for now. Tomorrow is an early day so I'm off to bed!

Denver

This weekend I went to Denver and met up with my mom to see Molly. It was a great weekend! We went to Red Rocks, Boulder, Cherry Creek, Taste of Colorado Festival, and explored downtown Denver a bit. I also got to see David Cook preform for free at Taste of Denver and I was really close, which was really fun! I definitely need more off time to re-organize my life as I need to clean a bunch, but that will have to wait again as more important things prevail on the list of priorities.

In other news I started Pediatrics this morning. I am spending these first two weeks on a team that includes General Peds, Peds Neuro, and Genetics. Seems like it should be good, but the days have definitely returned to mornings I deem too early (6:30am with the occasional 6am start). Hopefully it's a great two months though. My second two week block is on General Peds, Rheumatology, Nephrology, followed by a week of nights and an emergency department shift, then a week of newborn nursery, and finally two weeks of outpatient clinics. Lots of switching, but at least that should keep things interesting.

View from our hotel room at night

Panorama of University of Colorado Boulder

David Cook preforming

David Cook preforming

Clip of David Cook signing Light On (I missed the very beginning of the chorus)

Halfway through Neuro

I am now halfway through Neuro and done with my 2 weeks of inpatient service. It was actually quite a good two weeks with some very interesting patients. I saw some pretty bad diagnoses given, which was tough, but the specialty overall much more interesting than I ever anticipated. The next two weeks I will be on Neuro consults, so I will likely see much more acute issues (I saw some acute issues inpatient, but some more chronic issues for neurologic malignancies, seizures, etc.). Also, I got my surgery grade back and I did fairly well! Yay! Tomorrow is my day off so hopefully I get some good rest and recuperation!

Like Christine, I have run out of titles...

There are only so many times I can call a post Rotation Name, Rotation Name Week 1, Week 2, Finished with X Rotation, haha. Anyways, this week was fairly typical. It has been fairly slow, except for Thursday when the stroke pager went off 5 times within about an hour and things got crazy. I got to go to the ER, radiology, and Neuro IR which was pretty interesting. Besides that everything this week was just rounding in the morning, and learning stuff in the afternoons.

Today is my day off, so I slept in until 10am and now I am going to go out and do things. Fun times.

Neurology

I am now two days into my neurology rotation and it is going well so far. I don't have too much to say thus far, but rounds take much longer than surgery and I have more down time during the day to get things done. I am actually liking the rotation better than I expected, though still not clamoring to become a neurologist quite yet. I think I've mostly continued to solidify that I am not destined for an outpatient clinic based career. I definitely have preferred the inpatient stuff more so far. There still lots of time left to figure it all out though!

In other news I cleaned today! I finally put away all the clothes I have accumulated next to my bed during my family med rotation. Hopefully I can keep it that way for a while. Hope the fam is having fun at the beach this week! I am super jealous I can't be there this year!

Glorious Switch Weekend

This weekend was my second switch weekend. What is a switch weekend, you ask? Its the glorious time between two rotations when we have no responsibilities and do not have any pressures to be anywhere or to study anything. These infrequent weekends are so necessary and wonderful. I took the Family Medicine shelf Friday morning, and hopefully that went well. It takes a long time to get grades for anything which is weird after two years of instantly getting our scores for everything. Anyways, after the shelf I finally got my haircut, only eight months later than I meant to, and after that I went downtown with some classmates to catch up. It was a really fun night that ended with Snickers Ice Cream bars and My Big Fat Greek Wedding while laying down on my friend's floor. Good times.

Saturday was a day I had been planning for quite some time. I slept in and got some stuff done around the house and then met up with Lindsay and Stephanie and went to the International Champions Cup game to see Manchester United and Real Madrid play in a fantastic soccer (or should I say football) match. It was my first professional soccer game and it was also the most people attending a soccer game in US history! I have now been at the record setting soccer and football games in the US, all in the last year! The Big House is really cool for that. The Big House also holds the record for the largest crowd at a hockey game. Yay. Anyways, the game was super fun and we had a really great time! When I got home I made a Plated (which was AMAZING) and just relaxed at home.

Sunday I slept in again and didn't do a whole lot. I went to Jazzercise, got a new pair of lulu lemon pants, and rode m bike some. My bike ride was strange and somehow I ended up going in a circle and all of a sudden I was basically home and I didn't even realize it! So needless to say my ride was shorter than expected, but still nice. Besides being outside I did some cleaning and watched some Lifetime movies (why are they always so bizarre?!) and made some ravioli with a homemade mix of cipollini onions, fennel, and heirloom tomatoes with fresh basil from my balcony. Fun times!

Tomorrow it is off to Neurology for one month of localizing lesions and working everything up to no end. Should be an interesting month, though I hear there is a LOT of down time. We shall see. Also, I added some pics below of the new floors in the condo :)

The new coffee table

New hardwood 

New carpet 

My little balcony garden

A different kind of football in the Big House. We'll let all the red slide for Man U :)

Awesome flag in the shape of the country. Stephanie was sad there was no Alaska (her home state). There really wasn't a Michigan either though.

Manchester United in Red, Real Madrid in White

The halftime show with The Fray

Goat cheese and cherry tomato galette with herb salad from Plated

Still on Family Med

So, it's been two weeks since my last post. My parents visited for a week during that time and we were very busy with the condo and enjoying spending some time together. The new carpet and flooring is all in and finished and the place looks great! I still think the hardwood is a tad dark, but it's still better than the ugly white tile. I also got some flowers and herbs for the balcony, which instantly made it homier and much prettier to look at in general. Other than that I've just been going to clinic in Manchester to see patients and such. It's roughly 55 miles a day, so my car is getting to that oil change point much quicker than it had been. Nothing too exciting is going on otherwise. This weekend I need to study a ton. The coming week is my final week on Family Med before changing to Neurology for the month of August.

Oh, and when my parents were here we went to the Oakland County Fair where we got to see a ton of awesome animals including TWO Highland Cows!! Yay, so exciting!

Tiny little baby goat munchin' on mama

HIGHLAND COW

Super awesome chicken

BABY HIGHLAND COW

Family Medicine

The last week I have been on Family Medicine, and boy is it a change from surgery. The hours are 9am-5pm (well more like until were done, the latest I have left is 6:45pm) and the atmosphere is much more relaxed. The types of patients I am seeing vary much more widely from toddlers to the elderly, and they have just about any medical issue under the sun. It is very interesting, though I do not think I can see myself doing this for my future career. Who knows though, there are still three weeks left. My clinic is in an old church in Manchester, MI, which is a very small town about 35ish minutes from Ann Arbor. It's been good overall.

In other news the demo on our floors began this week. We no longer have any tile in the kitchen or entry, and the carpet has been changed in the dining and living rooms. Next week the rest of the carpet gets changed and the hardwood goes in! So exciting! Everything is beyond dusty now though, and our stuff is everywhere, so there is a lot of cleaning in my future. Mom and Dad also arrive in about 6 hours, so I should go to sleep since I am picking them up at the airport. Goodnight!

The clinic in Manchester

The kitchen without a floor

Fun on the lake

Yesterday was a really fun day! Shea, Stephanie, Marcus, and I went to the lakes in the Pinckney area for a day of wake boarding and general fun. We took turns wake boarding, stopped at a pizza place on the lake for lunch, and then wake boarded some more! It had been a really long time since I last wake boarded, but I eventually got more comfortable with it all again. I'm no where near as good as Marcus and Shea, but at least I got some runs in. Needless to say my entire body hurts today, especially my back. I haven't been this sore in a very very long time! After wake boarding we went back into the dock to grab the BBQ, strapped it on the the back of the boat, and headed back out onto the lake. We hung out for a bit and then fired it up and BBQ-ed right off the back of the ski boat! It was awesome. We had an awesome meal and then watched fireworks on the lake before heading back in to go home. It was a long day, but totally awesome!

Surgery: CHECK

I am officially done with my surgery rotation as of yesterday at 3pm. My oral exam went really well, but the shelf (aka written exam) was incredibly difficult. Luckily everyone felt that way. Hopefully that went well, but I won't know for at least a few weeks I think. I really enjoyed my time in the OR and on the services I worked on, but I will not miss waking up before the sun. I prefer to not see the hour 4:30am on the clock again for as long as I can manage it. This weekend is a nice and long four day weekend that I am using to catch up on sleep, see friends, and do fun things that I wasn't able to do for the last two months. Fun times! 

It's Thursday

Nothing exciting happened today. We had review lectures all day long, but at least we got to see the world cup game during lunch. Tomorrow I have no clinic and no OR time so it is bound to be another very uneventful day. That's all really.

Amazing and guiltless pancakes!

I found these pancakes on the internet a few months back and they are amazing! I don't remember exactly where I got them from, but thought I would share in case anyone else wanted to try them!

Banana-Almond Butter Pancakes
1 banana
1 egg
1 tablespoon almond butter

THAT'S IT!! It is amazing how easy they are to make. I also sometimes like to add some mini dark chocolate chips too. Making sure the pan is greased is key as they stick otherwise. So make them and enjoy!

Start with everything you need, just three ingredients!

Mash the banana

Add the egg and almond butter to the banana. I actually like to add the almond butter first now and combine before adding the egg.

Mix well!

Grease that pan

Pour half the batter into the pan (the recipe should make two pancakes)

Flip when browned

ENJOY!

Sleeping in!

Today is my day off (actually I have this whole weekend off woo hoo!) so I got to sleep in!! I still woke up around 7:50am, but sadly that is three and a half hours later than usual. I did go to sleep a bit later though, so ultimately I didn't get that much more sleep, but the more normal hours make it feel so much better. Last night I went to Gandy Dancer with some friends for their happy hour and had some sliders for dinner there. I also watched Selena while in bed and it was just as wonderful as ever. I hate Yolanda so much! Now I'm just doing some studying and doing some of the required work for my rotation. Only one more full week on surgery, followed by two more working days after that before its shelf time. It's amazing that its almost over. I will soon get almost normal sleep hours so much more often and I am so excited for that!

Crossing something off the list

After a long day filled with five colonoscopies I have pretty much confirmed that I do not want to spend my  future career doing colonoscopies. It was a good learning experience, but not really my cup of tea. I think this year will be more about ruling out specialties than ruling things in. In other news I started falling asleep around 5:30pm this evening. Somehow I have made it to 8:30pm now. I was too tired to even eat dinner! I'm ready to pass out now for the night. I get a tiny bit of extra sleep tomorrow since we are doing quicker rounds according to our chief and therefore only have to pre-round on one patient. Alarm set for 4:30am, so, goodnight! 

Keep On Keeping' On

This week is more of the same. A little OR time, a little clinic, and the new added bonus of a day of colonoscopies! How fun! This morning rounds started extra early and I had three patients to pre-round for so I got to arrive a little after 4:30am. So many fun things. Luckily I actually enjoy surgery for the most part. I do not enjoy contemplating setting my alarm for 3:45am though. Rounds are a little later tomorrow so I can "sleep in" until around 4:30am woo hoo! This is really going to make every other service I'm on for the rest of the M3 year feel like a piece of cake. Next week we have a review day that begins at 6am and instead of being sad that it's so early I literally said that I get to sleep in. Wow, how times change oh so very quickly.

Today in clinic I worked with some undergrads/recent grads who are in a summer program here that includes some shadowing. It was weird to be the one who "knew more" since I am so used to being the absolute bottom of the knowledge totem pole. It was interesting though. Hopefully they didn't think I was an idiot, ha!

Anyways, time for a little bit of studying now that I've had time to wash my hair and do laundry (ahh the luxury, and actually I asked Molly to do my laundry so there's that). Got to get my sleep for those colonoscopies tomorrow. I'm actually interested to see all that they entail. 

Onto the Adults

This week was my first week on my new service, and I was finally forced to see a patient who was allowed to drive, vote, drink, etc. I miss seeing the kids because they are definitely cuter and have a lot fewer problems to juggle, but I know it will be a good experience and I'm pretty sure there is no way through medical school without seeing adults. I spent a day in the main University Hospital OR, three days at the outpatients surgery center, and one day in the Surgical Oncology clinic at the Cancer Center. Most of the cases I saw were for melanoma or breast cancer this week with a few other things here and there. It's weird to think about the fact that almost all of the patients I will be seeing this month have or have had cancer since I'm on the surgical oncology team. Luckily people usually only get surgery if they have a somewhat favorable or potentially favorable prognosis. My day in clinic went quite well too and both notes that I wrote were entered into the patients medical record and signed by the physician without any edits which is great. I am still very exhausted and can basically do nothing other than sit around today because I don't have the energy to do anything. Oh well, just a little over two weeks of clinical responsibilities on surgery and then I'm free to get a normal amount of sleep again! Yay!

Peds Surg Recap

I have been a terrible blogger as of late and I fully acknowledge that. This blog has massively dropped to the wayside as I have had to choose between eating, sleeping, and showering each night for the last four weeks while beginning my journey as an M3. Surgery is a crazy service to start on, thats for sure! Setting my alarm for around 4:10am has become normal (though never easy), and I've been spending almost all of my waking moments in the hospital. I never thought it would be possible to actually get close to an 80 hour work week, but I was oh so wrong. I desperately miss my nights of eight hours of sleep and waking up to sunlight instead of pitch back darkness. Such is the life of a third year med student on the most time intensive rotation we've got. Luckily these past four months were filled with some of the cutest little patients, who make being there a little bit better. Even though most of them are quite sick, I am very glad to have started in the Pediatric Surgery department. The surgeons were great and it was a wonderful experience to learn about all the surgeries necessary for kids that I will never have a chance to see in any other setting.

Some of the patients I have been seeing have had very routine maladies like appendicitis, while others have had some of the rarest disease processes there are. Being at an academic medical center really skews your idea of what people see most often all over the country. For example, I have seen two patients already who are unrelated and who both have a syndrome where there are less than 300 documented cases in the medical literature. That is nuts! Who would've though the rarities could seem so unassumingly common. It is all very interesting and very exhausting at the same time.

So now after the first four weeks I have arrived at our "mini-switch weekend" where we all get two days off in a row before we change surgery services. I will start on Surgical Oncology and Colorectal Surgery on Monday morning, which means I have to venture to the main university hospital and leave the children's hospital behind for now. My walk will at least be a few minutes shorter at least, but I will miss seeing kids all day. For now I am just enjoying getting some sleep and rest for once! Hopefully I can refuel so I am ready to go for another four weeks (well actually only a little more than three due to 4th of July and exams that have been bumped up two days so there are surgeons available to give our oral exam!).


Oh, to update on a comment I made in one of my last posts almost three weeks ago: I did end up getting my wisdom tooth out two weeks ago yesterday. It kind of sucked, but I avoided dry socket completely so I count that as a win. There is still a bit of a weird feeling in my mouth, so thank goodness I only had one to remove!! I don't know how people deal with four. I only had local and a bit of nitrous so there was no post procedure loopiness. There was, however, a lot of fear in eating for a while. I'm past that now and almost back to normal chewing. Hopefully it just continues to get better and better.

Anesthesia Week, Day 1

Today I did my first day of my Anesthesia week. I can't write too much about it due to HIPAA, but it was pretty cool. I got to see some new procedures and I even got to do an intubation. I have a feeling this week will be more shadowing than actually doing things, but it's still very interesting and I'm enjoying it. I'm also enjoying that there are no morning rounds and I get an extra hour of sleep! I even had some daylight when I walked to the hospital this morning, which is a far cry from the utter darkness at 4:45am when I'm walking to surgery rounds. Hard to believe I have to go back to that in just one week! At least surgery is interesting, just very exhausting. I don't think I have a surgeons mentality, but it's neat to get exposed to it all. I'm rambling so I'm signing off now :)

Surgery Week One

I have now finished my first week on Peds Surgery. Needless to say I am absolutely and completely exhausted. On Friday I fell asleep on Molly's floor while talking to her and yesterday I got home a little earlier and took a three hour nap! I'm seeing some interesting procedures and the kids are great, but I am definitely missing my sleep! Today was my day off so I went to Jazzercise this morning and now I get to do laundry, clean, shower, and all that fun stuff I have been neglecting all week. This week I'm on Anesthesia and I get to go in so much later! My schedule may be better but I also need to try to get my wisdom tooth out on Friday, so fun things to look forward to, ugh! 

The end of Japan and M3 Orientation

Okay, so I've been a bad blogger. I am usually very good about updating when I am abroad, but thanks to my dad's "go, go, go" traveling attitude I literally could not do anything other than go to sleep when I got back to the hotel every night! Heres a quick recap of the rest of the trip:

We saw the Japanese macaques on our last morning in Kyoto. It was quite a hike up a mountain, but the views at the end were worth it along with the cuteness of the little monkeys. We took the bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo, but unfortunately couldn't see Mt. Fuji due to weather. We drug my dad to DisneySea (the second Disney park in Toyko) and went on Tower of Terror and other fun Disney rides. We took a walking tour of the Harajuku district and the Shinjuku district in Tokyo and saw a ton of cool buildings and areas. We had sushi at Sushi Yasuda, which is one of the highest rated restaurants in all of Tokyo! We explored a few other districts of Tokyo, including going to a mega-electronics store! We went to the Robot Restaurant (OMG this was weird). We went to a cat cafe and pet/fed many adorable cats. I went to Disneyland on a national holiday (this timing was a big mistake, who wants to stand in line for Winnie the Pooh for 2.5 hours?). Disney was great, but I had to miss a handful of rides like Thunder Mansion, the Haunted Mansion, and everything in Fantasyland because there was no way I was waiting in line that long. I waited 80 mins for Space Mountain and doing that once was my limit. Thank goodness there were a few rides with a bit shorter lines and Splash Mountain has a single rider line so I got to bypass the 150 minute line there.

On Monday morning in Tokyo I was awoken to two earthquakes about 15 minutes apart of magnitude 4.6 and 6.0. Thank goodness nothing happened and I somewhat used to earthquakes! I took the airport limousine (aka a bus) to the Narita airport and had a pretty uneventful time. I asked the woman at the gate if there were any empty rows, and lucky for me there were! She moved me there and I got a whole row to myself to lay down and sleep. So lucky of me to have that going both directions! It makes international flights so easy. When I arrived in Chicago I went straight through customs thanks to Global Entry (didn't even have to stop at a person!) and got to my gate without problems. The flight to Detroit was also uneventful. When I arrived in Detroit I had to wait over an hour for my sister to get there because she got lost somehow.

Transitioning to Michigan time was not a problem. If anything I want to go to bed early and am waking up a little earlier than normal which is great considering I soon have to wake up at absurd times. We started orientation for M3 year on Tuesday and it went pretty well. It's a bit scary to think that as of Tuesday I will be a part of a patient care team, but I'm sure it will go fine. This weekend is for getting everything in order and catching up on sleep before surgery begins!

Nara

Today was our day to explore the city of Nara, Japan. Nara was briefly the capital of Japan before Kyoto and later Tokyo. It is a smaller city in Japan, but it was a great experience. We began with a delicious breakfast at the Ryokan again and then got ready to leave for the day. Had I known the amount of walking would be so much more than yesterday I would have worn my more comfortable shoes, but I did not, so now my knees and feet are all killing me. Oh well, live and learn. Anyways, back to Nara.

We took the subway train to meet Kazue and then the four of us took a different train for the 40 minutes out to Nara. The train ride was easy and nothing too exciting. We got there without any problems and set off to explore all of the sites within Nara Park. The coolest thing about Nara is that there are literally deer everywhere, and I really mean everywhere. They are very calm and used to people and you can buy deer crackers to feed them straight out of your hand. It was awesome. While at Nara we went to a bunch more temples and shrines and they were all beautiful. The wisteria also happen to be in bloom this week, and they were absolutely amazing to see. I have never seen wisteria before, but I definitely love them already. We wandered around Nara for hours and had a great time seeing the beautiful structures and even saw the biggest Buddha in Japan standing (or sitting rather) around 4 stories tall! The Buddah also sits in the biggest wooden structure in the world. It was all quite impressive. After the shrines and temples we saw a beautiful garden that reminded me of the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco a bit. All in all it was a really nice day, but I was exhausted by the end of it.

After seeing Nara we took the train back to Kyoto and went to the shopping area. They had a ton of bizarre stores along with stores I recognize like Gap, Starbucks, Clarks, etc. It was fun to browse even though we didn't buy anything. We also walked through the market area which was fun to see. My dad and I got fresh squeezed grapefruit juice that was juiced right in the rind with a special machine and served inside the rind with a straw. It was so ridiculous cool and so so yummy! Definitely a highlight even though it was such a small thing.

After strolling through the market we walked home to the Ryokan and had a light snack and chatted/rested for a bit before dinner. Tonight we had dinner here at the Ryokan again and it was very good. A few courses, starting with a sushi style course, then a fish course, a tempura course, and finally dessert. The tempura was my favorite for sure, tough it was all pretty good. Now that dinner is over I am so ready for bed. It may be just 9pm, but I am ready to sleep! It doesn't help that I took a Benadryl just before dinner due to my ritual traveling abroad rash that reared its head today. So its off to sleep! Hope I don't wake up too early. I'm in need of some deep sleeping time!

Wisterias

Largest wooden structure in the world

Enormous Buddha

Garden

In the Garden

Drinking my grapefruit juice