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.