Prepping the Car

Today was a much longer day than expected. I got up and Molly and I headed to Ferndale to get my car ready for the drive to Oregon one month from tomorrow. I got a hitch installed for my bake rack, cross bar for a roof box, and an oil change and general tune up. I also finally figured out how to put on a front license plate and put on my sparkly M plate until I get an actual front plate in Oregon. While we were waiting the Subaru dealership drove us to the nice mall in Troy and we shopped around for a while, probably too long as we got quite bored by the end and took an Uber back so we didn't have to wait for the guy to come get us.

The drive home was easy and we stopped to feed the cat on the way home as well. He was nice to Molly until he spotted my legs, at which point he attacked me and turned on everyone. That was the last time I had to feed him though. When I got home I fell asleep by accident, and now I am doing some more packing. We will see how much I can fit in my bags, but turns out it isn't as much as I previously though, uh oh!

Car all deck out in the Michigan Block M

DONE WITH MEDICAL SCHOOL

Today was a crazy day! I officially finished my very last class of medical school. While I still have two week until my official graduation, there is nothing I can do now that would make me not pass and become Dr. Knight. That is so weird! This morning we started by helping our course coordinator perfect her Jeopardy game for next year's M1 class to do in their Doctoring groups. It was pretty fun, and we were able to give some good feedback as to how she should switch around the questions and their point values. We then all gave our short procedure presentations, and I went first with my axillary nerve block presentation. We all kept to the 10-15 minute time mark, which was great, and then we had a class lunch with Indian food order by Dr. Klein. It was an amazing class, and I am so glad that is how I ended my medical school career.

After class I turned in my scrubs (at least the two paris I needed to turn in since I only had to make sure the two credits I started with went back on the card), then ran into Shea and went with her to the cafeteria while she picked up lunch, and then we walked home together. She just finished Emergency Med today too. Lindsey was in my class and finished with me, and Stephanie will finish tomorrow on her Outpatient ENT rotation. Tomorrow is the last official day for all clinical student for the year, we just got lucky in finishing a day early, but from Facebook it seems like a lot of people finished today (and a lot of people finished 4 weeks ago and took vacation this month too).

At home I watched TV for a bit and took a nap, and then started packing. I eventually went to feed the cat I'm taking care of and got some dinner at Zoup! and a frozen yogurt at Orange Leaf since I have a lot of free money on my card and I won't have one of them in Portland (so I got my froyo for free yay). I then came home and now I'm packing more and watching the draft. I have the entirety of my dresser packed and I'm starting on my closet now. We will see how much I end up fitting!

Out class on the last day of Med School!

PowerPoint Complete

Tonight I finished my PowerPoint presentation for my class! I even finished it at a reasonable hour, which is awesome for me! Tomorrow I present it to my class (there are five of us and one course director, so it's pretty low key), and then I am done with medical school! Oh man that is so crazy!

I am also cat sitting right now for a friend. Her cat is very cute and sometimes sweet, but has decided I am the enemy while feeding him and attacking my leg is the appropriate response. I will be wearing thicker pants from now on!

Chicago

Hello there! As promised, here is an update on my trip to Chicago this weekend. I left Thursday night and took the Amtrak into Union station. I stayed at a hostel called Freehand Chicago, which was overall great except there was someone in the bed I was supposed to be in every night, which was frustrating because I had to keep moving. The bed was comfortable though and as far as hostels go it was definitely among the better ones in terms of sleeping arrangements. Since I got in after midnight thanks to the infamous Amtrak delays, I pretty much just arrived and went to sleep.

Friday morning I woke up and got ready for the day. I walked around the area my hostel was in initially and went in a few stores for fun until it was time to hop on the Red Line up to the TSNY for my trampoline class. The class was great, except for the fact that I left with low back pain, probably from arching too much. I did however get my cradle (a trampoline move when you do a back drop with a 180º turn to another back drop, which is important for trapeze landing in the net as you get more advanced). After trampoline I went back to the hostel to pick up my flash drive, and then had lunch at Shake Shack, yum! I then took the bus to Uptown to get a quick 30 minute massage to help my back, which was wonderful. Thirty minutes is definitely NOT enough time for a massage, but is still great. I really liked the spa I went to and would definitely go back again if I lived anywhere near it.

After the massage I headed back to TSNY for my trapeze class. There were only 6 people in the class, which is my favorite size class as you get enough turns, but there is still enough rest. I worked on my swing, did a few back end splits, worked on my layout (very much still in the learning process), caught my gazelle, and did a shooting star. Overall a great class with a lot of turns. I also did an unassisted takeoff for the whole class very consistently, which was great! Progress definitely happening despite my three month break due to not living anywhere near a rig.

After class I headed back on the El and ordered takeout from Pizzeria Uno, which I ate in the hostel kitchen. I decided to grab a Coldstone for dessert, but they didn't have banana ice cream, so I got mint with oreo and banana and it was great, just no banana ice cream with brownie and peanut butter! I then headed to bed and watched an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix.

Yesterday morning I got up and packed up everything (I really didn't bring that much so it was easy), and headed out. The nice thing about traveling with a small backpack is that I can bring it with me all day and not have to go back to get my bags! I hopped on the bus and went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free and open every day of the year. It was actually a really great zoo. Not huge, but has a ton of really cool animals, some of which I had never even heard of before like the Sichuan Takin, which is a large member of the goat family, but looks more like it should be in the antelope family. There were some very stupid people at the zoo as well, such as the adult who proudly exclaimed to her friend after seeing the pygmy hippos that, "regular hippos are carnivorous." First of all, why use the term regular hippos? As Christine said, as opposed to irregular hippos? Second of all, that is just blatantly wrong. They may be dangerous when provoked, but they most certainly are not carnivores. I can attest to that, having watched the hippo come to my campsite to graze every night when I was in Uganda and was blocked from getting to the bathroom so as not to become a hippo fatality. Anyways, the zoo was great and I had a lovely time.

After the zoo I walked to meet Katie for brunch at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reba. It was a nice little tapas style place that has delicious food. I had the shrimp and grits and citrus french toast with goat cheese butter and a waffle battered chicken sausage bite. Delicious. After brunch we walked around Lincoln Park and did a little mattress shopping and looking at Crate and Barrel and CB2. We also stopped in the Apple Store since her charger was broken. We then went to her studio and hung out briefly before I caught an Uber back to Union Station. Once there I grabbed some hummus and pretzels, a Oats n Honey bar, and a banana and then hopped on my train. It left only 1 minute late, but due to those lovely delays, arrived in Ann Arbor 40 minutes behind schedule. I will be shocked the day the Ann Arbor-Chicago route in either direction runs on time! I got home safely and went right to bed since it was very late. It was overall a fun weekend.

Enjoy the zoo pictures below!

Sichuan Takin

Mama and baby sloth! I missed the moment you could see their faces, but the sloths were as magical as usual!

Beautiful Jaguar

One of the African Painted Dogs

Francois Langurs playing. The baby was SO cute and small!

Monkey cuddles

Monkey lounging'

So obsessed with this monkey. All the monkeys here were having a blast playing around the enclosure.

This gorilla kept turning around and sticking his fingers under the fence so the zoo workers would play with his fingers. He also licked one of their phones through the fence.

Gorillas playing

Meerkat keeping watch

Giraffe

Giraffe tongues are pretty cool

Tawny Frogmouth. I'm kind of in love with this bird.

Red Panda, LOVE!

One Week Closer

We just finished our third week of Anatomy Meets Radiology, meaning I only have FOUR days of class left in medical school!! Since I have a three day weekend I am going to head to Chicago soon until Saturday night, which should be a fun mini-trip away, and I'll get to trapeze for the first time since January when I was interviewing in NYC! I'm really excited. I'm also going to meet up with a teammate from college who lives in Chicago now, so I'm hoping for a nice weekend. I'm coming back Saturday night so I can get together with my medical school friends on Sunday to do a Paint and Pour thing like what Christine and I did in Walnut Creek over Christmas, and also to work on my presentation for next Thursday on axillary nerve blocks. Anyways, I'll update on my adventures as they happen this weekend. Now I'm just downloading some movies and books for the train ride there and back! Yay for fun! 

Halfway to the End

I am half way done with my last rotation of medical school. This rotation has been really great and very useful. It is a perfect mix of radiology, anatomy, pathology, etc that is relevant to our jobs as interns in a few months time, and allows ample free time to enjoy our last days in Ann Arbor, get things done that need to get done, and see our friends that we won't live near anymore all too soon. I have also spent a lot of time looking at refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, blinds, and all the things I need to have to be able to live in my new home in Portland. Its fun to look at everything, but there are definitely too many choices!!

This weekend was also Second Look Weekend (SLW) for the medical school, and Big Tens for the women's club water polo team and this year Big Tens was held here in Ann Arbor! On Friday night I hosted a dinner for SLW for Galens, the student group I was the VP for during this past year. There were a bunch of admitted students initially, but they then rotated to another dinner and no one rotated to us, so we just spent time hanging out as old and new exec in the common room of my building. On Saturday morning I was on a student panel for the new admitted students, and then we had a booth for Galens at the activities fair so they admitted students could learn about all the student group offerings here.

After the SLW stuff I went home for a bit and then headed to the pool to watch Big Tens! I didn't have much to do, so I went early and watched some of the other games before the Michigan game. The games weren't too close, but they were fun to watch. Michigan beat Purdue to head into the top half of the bracket for Sunday's games. I also got to catch up with a friend from NYC, which was fun since she was there helping out with Michigan State's team. Today I went back to the pool for the final two games of the tournament. The first game was against Ohio State, and it was a nail biter. They were up by a bunch, but OSU came back and went up by 1 with less than 2 minutes in the game. Luckily Michigan was able to score twice more and won the game by one! It was a little too exciting for me. After the game I went with one of my old teammates and her mom to grab lunch and then came back to eat it at the pool. I managed to spill a bunch of it all over the place, but it was fine in the end, just messy! We hung out until the next game, which was the Big Ten Championship game against Michigan State. The last time the two teams played this season MSU won by one goal, so it was heated going in and a trip to Nationals was on the line. The game started great for Michigan, and we went up 5-1 initially. MSU managed to come back in the 4th and eventually tied it up, which was nerve wracking, but Michigan eventually scored and won their bid to play in Nationals at UC Santa Cruz next month! It was so fun to see my old teammates, but I must say I really wished I was in the pool with them, and had a little regret that I didn't try to come back and play in the month and a half since I got back from South America.

So now I have two weeks left of school, two weeks until graduation, and then two more weeks of vacation and a friends wedding before starting my journey westward to my new adventure in Oregon. Time is definitely not slowing down, that's for sure!

Home!

Today we bought a home in Portland! I absolutely love it (at least from the pictures I've seen since I haven't actually seen it in person yet and won't for three more weeks plus a few day). I think it is going to be an amazing place to live during residency and I couldn't be happier!

Anatomy Meets Radiology

Today I started my FINAL course in medical school. OMG, that is so crazy to write down. Four more weeks and I will be done with classes, and just under six weeks from now I will be and MD. That is so so so so weird. I can't believe how real all of it is becoming. Anyways, this last class I am taking is called Anatomy Meets Radiology, and we are doing, you guessed it, a mix of anatomy and radiology with a mix of procedures as well. It sounds like it is going to be a really great course, with lots of practice knowledge for intern year and beyond. It also is very relaxed and I have time to start packing, see friends, enjoy my last few weeks living in Michigan before I become a resident of the great state of Oregon.

Speaking of Oregon, I just arrived home this morning from a weekend trip to Portland for house hunting! It was pretty fun to drive all around and see what the real estate market has to offer out there. It is definitely a crazy market, but I'm hopeful I will end up in a place that I love!

Back to my course. Today we had an intro lecture, a basic radiology lecture, and a lecture on the anatomy of the thorax. It was an overview/review, so it was quick, but really good to start remembering important things that we haven't actually seen since M1 year. After lunch we started our dissection. There are five of us in the class and we are all sharing one cadaver for the dissection part of the course. We did the thorax today, so mostly getting to the heart and lungs and identifying other structures along the way. Much better than M1 year, because the big picture is the goal, and not all the little tiny things that aren't necessarily relevant to our future careers. It was overall a great day, and I think I am going to enjoy this month despite the fact that my hands now reek of anatomy lab!

That's all for now. Hoping I don't take an accidental nap so I can fall asleep early and get a good nights rest tonight!

Off to Portland

Im am officially DONE with my pulmonary consults rotation, and now it's off to Portland for some house hunting! We lost the house we put an offer in on already, so I'm guessing this is going to be a tough weekend, but hopefully fun. Just four more weeks of med school! Crazy!