Back to Medicine

Today I started another 4 week block of medicine, but this time at the VA. I hear this is a much less crazy rotation as compared to the ward rotations at the university hospital. I hope that is true because I don't think I could take coming off my favorite rotation of the year thus far to one of the hardest months I have had on an emotional and life-balance level. Today was good so far, and I had some time to get to know the service a bit and do my work slowly, which was nice. I like my team so far, however they all switch over the next three days, so we will see how everything goes with the new team. I'm just hoping for a smooth four weeks with my sanity intact at the end. Also hoping the ED decides to give me my December schedule soon cause I'm getting super anxious to know it!

Weekend in Seattle

This weekend I drove up to Seattle to explore. I had a rough Friday night in the unit, so I wasn't able to drive up until Saturday morning, but I still had a nice time for the most part. Saturday was a little rougher than Sunday, and you will see why.

Saturday started with a roughly 3 hour drive from my house to the Westin in downtown Seattle. I checked in and got my room, which was lovely, and then set out the the Pikes Place Market. The market was not what I expected, but was still interesting to explore. I couldn't find much in the way of food like I was expecting (I thought there was going to be MUCH more), but I got a char siu bun and then attempted to get a BBQ brisket slider. Prior to my first bite of the slider I dropped the whole thing on the ground via my jeans. Keep in mind these are the only pants I brought with me and they were now covered in BBQ sauce. I went to buy another slider because I still wanted to try it, and the guy gave me two, which was nice. I didn't actually need to eat two, so I gave the second to a homeless man on the street to eat. After the market I rested for a bit and then took public transit down to the flying trapeze rig in the SoDo neighborhood. I was horrible at trapeze after so much time off, but still had a good time. Only issue was I slammed my toe on the trapeze bar and may have broken my pinky toe. Will never know cause there was no way I was paying for an X-ray since there would be nothing to do about it, but it was very bruised and hurt a lot and thats all it took. On the way home I stopped in Nordstrom and got a new phone case which I really like (Kate Spade and sparkly with roses on it). I then ordered room service for way too much money since it was painful to walk too much and went to sleep with my foot propped nice and high.

On Sunday morning I met two friends from med school for breakfast, which was really nice. I then went with one of them the the Chihuly Gardens and Glass museum, which was actually super awesome. The glass sculptures are amazing and it was one of the coolest exhibits I have ever seen I think. After that we walked around a bit and saw the Ghery designed EDM museum. I then said goodbye and went up to the top of the Space Needle, which was AWESOME. The views were spectacular and the weather was really nice. I could see Mount Rainier, which was great as I have grown to love the views of the solitary mountains. After the Space Needle I walked back to my hotel to grab a shirt I needed to return that I had bought in Portland in the wrong size, and then walked to Banana Republic to exchange said shirt for the correct size. I also managed to come out with a pair of work pants at the same time. I then checked out and started the drive home, but with a planned stop in Olympia to have dinner with Greg and Sue, which was so nice. Dinner was great, and it is always nice to connect with family I don't see nearly often enough. I then drove the rest of the way home, mostly in the pouring rain, and my two day weekend (scary that that is now a rare and exciting thing in my life) was officially complete. 

Hello again

Wow, it has been quite a while since my last post. Not too much has changed, other than a few switching of services. I finished 4 very grueling and exhausting weeks of general medicine, and now I'm in the cardiovascular ICU, which is actually quite interesting and has much more humane hours. Intern year is still hard and exhausting, but overall things are good right now. Can't believe we are already into block 5! Not doing much outside of working, but hopefully I'll plan something good for my weekend off soon, especially since its my only weekend off I know of until February!

Block 3 Complete!

And just like that my third block of intern year is done. Overall this block was awesome. Cardiology is definitely an interesting subset of medicine, and it undoubtedly incredibly relevant to anesthesia. It also didn't hurt that I had vacation and a couple of weekends off during the block, so I finally had the ability to feel a little refreshed!

Other than finishing cards, I also spent last weekend at the beach in Manzanita, OR. One of the anesthesia attending a offered her beach home to the residents, and I went with one other intern and a few CA3s with their significant others and a couple of their kids who were adorable and fun the play with. The house was right next to the first tee of the local golf course, and a 5 minute walk to the beach, which was really beautiful despite the crazy winds! We had a few breakfasts at a local restaurant and barbecued Saturday night together. It was fun to meet some people in the anesthesia department and have a weekend away with some new friends. Definitely needed! 

On the way home we stopped to shop a bit in Cannon Beach. It's such a fun and adorable town! I bought a weird soda called Fungal Fruit that was supposed to be passion fruit and lime, but tasted more like odd bubblegum. Overall not horrible, and definitely an experience. I also let myself have an ice cream cone to celebrate the end of summer. So nice 😊 

Up next is general medicine inpatient wards. It should be a tough month, but hopefully all goes well. Fingers crossed at least. 

Back From Vacation

Today was my first day back at work after taking Step 3 and going on a much needed vacation. I spent some lovely time in the Bay and then had a great time with friends up in Northstar at my friends wedding. If only vacation could last forever... I'm definitely feeling more refreshed and I'm extra glad I still have a week on cardiology left before hitting the hard stuff again next Wednesday when I start general medicine wards and go back to long hours, lots of pages, and lots of notes.

Tonight was wonderful. After work I went and met up with some childhood friends mothers for dinner and it was so nice to catch up and get out of the house. I'm feeling happy tonight, which I needed. That's all for now, here are some recent pics for your viewing pleasure. 

Flying over San Francisco Bay

Sailing on the Bay

I got to see Laura :)

Lovely day to watch some Stanford Football

Ready to celebrate Court and Evan at #thattahoewedding

This squirrel was carrying a pinecone the size of its whole body!

This picture doesn't do the wedding location justice. It was so beautiful!

Sunset at the top of the mountain at Northstar

Yummy pizza on my last day in WC

The beautiful sunset while flying back into PDX

Since I Got Yelled at for Not Blogging...

Hello all! Residency is going ok, and this month things are looking up. Cardiology consults is really awesome and the team is great. The happiness level is much higher than previous, although in 3 weeks this will be over and I'll have to go to inpatient medicine. Other than work Im studying for Step 3 next week, but then its vacation time! Thats all for now. You are welcome. 

Starting Nights

I survived the entire first week of residency, and now only 51 weeks stand between me and the end of intern year! Tonight I start a week of night shifts. Other than working, I had my first day off yesterday. I went to the new gym I joined, had lunch at a Peruvian place called Paiche that was delicious, cleaned Lemon and Blue's cage and the house, and had dinner with Amanda, who just finished residency on Thursday! I also picked my friend up from the airport and attempted to stay up really late so I can transition to being awake all night. 

Survived Day One

I survived my first day of intern year. I was lucky that there weren't too many patients on the service, so I got to dip my toes in slowly. The anxiety this morning was high, but once rounds were over and I got my bearings everything was just fine. Only a year left to go!

Orientation Complete

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of new friends, administrative tasks, learning new computer systems, and lot of fun times. My intern class is great, and I think they will become wonderful friends very quickly. Today, we had our last day of orientation, and now I only have one day off before starting the grind of intern year. My final furniture will arrive tomorrow (at least that I have ordered; I still need a dining room table and chairs), and we have the anesthesiology department graduation tomorrow night with a nice dinner. Tonight I plan on getting some good rest since tomorrow is my last day to get a good long sleep in for a while! I can't believe everything starts so soon!

Arrival of the Stuff

Today I was able to go to U-Haul and pick up my box of stuff! I woke up this morning and apparently missed the plumber who was supposed to come, because he came way before he was supposed to. I sat around waiting for him for a while until I found out what it happened around 9am. After that, the movers called and said they were ready early if I was ready to unpack my stuff, but I hadn't picked up my Ubox yet. I drove down to U-Haul to try and get my box, and the line was insane. I eventually got to the front of the line, and was told that they didn't have my box ready yet, and it could be hours before they had it ready. I sat around in hopes that maybe they would feel bad and get me my box, and it worked! I got my box, brought it home, and the two movers we hired to help to unpack everything were there as I pulled into my driveway. I'm so glad we had the movers help, it made everything so nice for me.

After unpacking I returned the truck and the Ubox and then bought a cheap tv antenna so I wouldn't be bored anymore! It took a while for me to figure out how to make it work, but I now have a fully functional television, yay! No more boring home without any form of entertainment. Now I have a lot of unpacking to do, but I'll get through that slowly. Just happy for all that to be done and to officially have everything with me. 

Day 8: Wyoming --> Idaho --> Oregon

Today I packed up my tent and headed out of Yellowstone with the intention to head south towards Grand Teton National Park and then onto Jackson. From there I thought I may stay in Jackson, or maybe head a little into Idaho so I could make it home by tomorrow. I entered the Tetons and decided I was just ready to head west, and decided to skip that stop. I did however get to see parts of the national park and it was very beautiful. I kept driving towards Jackson, which was a cute town that looked a lot like you expect the old west to look like. I decided not to stop and kept going. Somewhere around there I started thinking that it would be nice just to get all the way to Portland, but it was still a good 12 hours away and I didn't think it was actually possible. So I continued west.

The Tetons

I made it to Idaho Falls, ID around lunch and decided I needed some potatoes. The last time I tried to get a potato in Idaho I failed to acquire one, so I figured I'd try again. I went to a restaurant my mom googled, but the wait was too long, so once again my potato plot was foiled. I ended up just getting to the freeway and stopping at a Subway to grab a sandwich instead, which was fine. 

So I just kept driving, planning to stop when I got tired. I listened to some podcasts, talked to my parents and my sister on the phone (us all crying a little as we talked about Koa, who I continue to kiss dearly), and just kept progressing. Somehow I ended up definitively deciding I was going to make it home tonight, and that's just what I did! I drove through more national forests, state parks, along the Columbia river, and finally made it home around 11 something. It's so nice to be in my own bed! I made it here in a week, and drove over 900 miles today alone! I'll post the exact mileage tomorrow when I look at my odometer. For now it's finally time to get some rest!

Day 7: Yellowstone

Today was my day to explore the first ever national park, Yellowstone! This morning it was super cold, which woke me up really early. I used it as an opportunity to see some early morning wildlife, so some time around 5:30am I got out of my tent, made breakfast (oatmeal and tea), got dressed, and headed out! It was nice to be on the roads early since not too many people are out that early. The worst part was the angle of the sun that shined at just the right angle to hit all the big guys and now frozen windshield wiper fluid so that I couldn't see out of it at all. That was remedied by the defroster and the slight turn of the road. The plan was to do the north loop today and the south loop tomorrow on my way out of the park, but since I finished the north loop just a little after lunch I powered through both today.

The day started with a nice scenic point and of course some bison on the road. There was no lack of bison today either. They kind of feel like the elephants on my safari in Africa; really cool the first few times, and not so noteworthy after that. They are still pretty majestic animals. For the rest of the day my strategy was to find groups of people looking at something, pull over, and ask what they were looking at. It serves me very well. The first stop I made with this method was right at a beautiful black bear. I must say, today was the first true time I was so unbelievably thankful to have a 300x zoom lens and a tripod. They too serves me well, like my animal spotting method. I even wish I had binoculars and/or a lens that zoomed even more. If I ever come back here I will have to remember that! Anways, the black bear was super cool.

My first black bear sighting!

After the bear I saw a couple more scenic spots, and then came across another black bear sleeping under a tree not too far from the road! She was really neat to see. Apparently she had two cubs, but no one could find them in the tree, it was just hearsay from people who'd seen her before. Speaking of that, there are people who literally come here for weeks at a time and just sit around photographing wildlife. They will sit in one spot all day watching the same animal of they can, it's nuts! What a life. While see the bear I also saw a falcon (or hawk I don't really know). 

Mama black bear

After seeing supposedly mama bear I made it to the road leading towards the Lamar Valley since I had heard you could see wolves there. I saw some pronghorns, and obviously more bison, and then came across a huge group of people! It seemed exciting, so I parked and went over. Apparently there were some wolf pups and they had chased a baby pronghorn. I didn't see that, and really tried to find them but couldn't for the life of me. I did see more bison though, woo hoo! I did capture their blurry image it looks like when I was looking through my pictures, but it was too far away to get anything good. 

After that bummer miss I kept driving into the valley. I stopped where some people showed me some baby owls in the rock face (once again, thank you 300x zoom). I then saw more bison and then came upon another somewhat gather group. They had spotted a lone wolf. I got out and set up my tripod. This time I could actually see him! He was howling at the pack on the far side of the valley and river, and they were all howling back at him! It was so cool! They other side had a pack of around six, which I again only knew thanks to my zoom, and even then they were kind of blurry and small, but without it I could barely see them as dots unless they were actively moving. I watched the wolves for quite a long time, maybe almost an hour. We were hoping the lone wolf would cross the road, but I got sick of watching. One of the pack wolves came into the middle of the bison herd and they all charged at him, which was cool to see. 

There are owls in the crack, trust me!

So many bison!

The black dot is a wolf, promise.

After the wolves I drove back to the main loop. Not far from where I joined back up to the main loop I spotted a grizzly bear (don't worry, there was a gorge of sorts between us)! It was actually pretty close, so that was pretty cool. Someone there told me a black bear was out with her cubs a bit back, so I backtracked to see that. Turned out to be the same mama black bear from before and her two cubs were playing in a tree. They were so small and so cute! I missed when they were frolicking in the meadow, but could still see them. It was hard to capture on camera though because of the shadows. 

Grizzly bear!

After the little bears I continued on my journey in the right direction. The beginning of the loops took forever since I kept stopping for wildlife, but it was worth it. I hit some weird traffic that turned out to be because a bison hers was in the road, and eventually made it to some hot springs. From there on out I didn't see much more wild life. A few bison, a bear that wasn't actually a bear, but another bison and the people there before me were mistaken, and two sandhill cranes. Most of the rest of my drive was full of some beautiful scenery and stop to see thermal elements around the park. I even stopped to see Old Faithful! I got a pulled pork sandwich there, which I immediately regretted as I felt so gross afterwards, and then went to see when the geyser would go. Turned out it wasn't happening for an hour so I killed some time and eventually got to see it go. Pretty cool, but not as exciting as seeing the animals. 

Thermal springs

Old Faithful!

By the time I got back to the Canyon Village area I had been for almost 12 hours! I bought some pasta sauce at the general store and made myself some very simple pasta for dinner. It was good but nothing too special.

Overall I had a pretty long and tiring day, but it was only about to get harder. First of all my service here sucks. It's so spotty and nothing will load and I can't even make a phone call. Occasionally there is a bright moment when I can send one text or post this blog, but sometimes even that can't happen. I texted my mom to say I was still alive (since we usually talk during my trip and I haven't been able to here), and I amazed how Koa was doing since he's been sick. She asked if I could make phone calls and I knew something was wrong. My heart started racing and I felt bad so I went to the lodge at the village and called using the pay phone (I don't even remember the last time I used one of those!). After some difficulty I was able to place my call and I found out that Koa passed away this morning. Obviously I was devastated and it pretty much dominated the rest of my night. We had a really close bond and I truly don't think there is any other dog like him out there now, or ever. I will miss him forever and always. I didn't know what to do so I sat in my car for a bit and then decided I needed to talk to anyone, so I drove 5 miles to near where the cell tower is (luckily they show where the cell towers are on the maps) and was able to talk to mom for a while. This will never be easy, but there's nothing I could do. He was well loved and I only wish I could have cuddled him one last time. RIP my sweet Koa, I'll miss you muffin!

Day 6: Driving through Wyoming

Today wasn't super exciting, mostly just driving. I left my hotel after breakfast and set out on my journey across Wyoming. I passed through the Bighorn National Forest, went 12 miles at a 10% grade downhill (my brakes definitely smelled by the end of that, but don't worry they still function great), drove through Cody where Buffalo Bill thing reign supreme, drove through the Shoshone National Forest, and finally entered Yellowstone National Park. The 40 miles or so from the entrance to the park to the campground was really pretty. Within a few minutes there was a bison walking on the road. Little did I know bison were everywhere once I got further in the park. I saw some lakes, including Yellowstone Lake, lots of bison, some elk, some ground squirrels (I think), and some just generally beautiful views.

When I got to the area of the campsite I went to the visitor center and rented some bear spray for while I'm here just in case, and then checked in at the campground. I set up my tent and read the paper they give you when you enter a national park. I then decided I needed to kill some time or I would get too bored, so I went to the village area and got my magnet that I am now apparently collecting. Too bad I didn't start collecting when I first started traveling instead of just the last year. Oh well. After that drove the North Rim Loop and hiked down to the top of the lower falls and saw the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. It was beautiful! The road was one was so I went to the lookout points along the way and got some pictures. I also saw a beating osprey, though it was a bit far away. 

My campsite in Cedar Pass

After driving the North Rim I came back to the campsite and made myself a Cup of Noodles (okay, an Instant Lunch) and  an apple for dinner. I'll probably make myself a smore soon and then maybe read until it's dark. There's no evening program here until Sunday night (bad timing for me), so I plan to hopefully fall asleep early and then wake up early to start driving the park. This will not be the no driving day I anticipated, but I think it will be worth it!