My new friends

I'm expecting. No, not a baby. I'm expecting 2 kittens! I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself! My 2 dear kitties died 18 months ago from chronic renal failure and although the break from having pets was nice, it's time for me to have some new buddies. So here they are:

I know what you're thinking....You are thinking these are the most precious kittens you ever saw. Even if you hate cats, you are thinking you could easily love them. So, being a cat lover, you can imagine how excited I am!! You also might be wondering how I'm going to be able to tell them apart. It took me a little while too. But, the boy has white mittens and boots and the girl has dark mittens and boots. That's it. That's the only way I can tell. I'm thinking of naming the girl Chloe and the boy is going to be named either Charlie or Sam. I'm leaning toward Sam. As in Sam Bradford. As in the father of my future children who is the hunky quarterback for the Rams. First we have to meet though. As soon as he sees my kittens I'm sure he'll be hooked, right?

The kittens are only 4 weeks old so it will be a few more weeks before I get to bring them home. Until then, I just have these pictures!!

Have a great day!

how I spent my week off snowed in and unable to leave my house!

Well it appears I survived Blizzardpallooza 2011. Now it's just soooo cold! So it was kind of nice not having to worry about driving to work, since I was off this week, but it was also pretty lonely being stuck at home alone. So I did accomplish one of the tasks I planned, which was to turn my ugly formica counters into a thing of beauty. My friend Kristin showed me this stuff that she bought last week. Me, always trying to emulate everything she does, immediately went out and bought some for myself.

This is the stuff. Giani Granite Paint. It comes in many colors. I picked chocolate brown.


This is my kitchen. Very boring counters!

So on the eve of the Big Storm, I got an SOS pad and scrubbed down every inch of my counters and backsplash. The real task was getting all that blue residue from the pad off the counters. Then I had to use Frogtape to mask off the edges. This was the least fun and most time consuming part.

So after that was all done, I primed the counters with this black primer that came with the kit. (By the way, everything you need comes in the box which is great! Except I did buy an extra plastic paint tray and foam brush because I hate cleaning paint off things like this.)

About the time I got the primer on, the storm hit. So I went to bed and let all this dry overnight. The next morning was interesting because not only did I have a foot of snow outside, but I also really couldn't use my kitchen. Very poor planning on my part. My microwave and coffee maker are sitting on my kitchen floor and let's face it, I'm getting old and it's not much fun bending and stooping for that morning cup of Joe!

Since there was nothing on TV but constant news broadcasts about the snow, I started step 2 of the painting. It was fun! There are 3 colors that you sponge on the counters. At first I was wondering what I got myself into. It didn't look anything like granite! But strangely enough, as I sponged on colors #2 and #3, it was like magic! I let that dry 4 hours and then did 2 coats of clear topcoat. My counters are pretty much finished but I have to let them "set" for 3 days before I can put anything back on them. Here they are:

And a close-up:

I think it turned out really nice, don't you?

One thing I will say is that I accidentally applied the colors in the wrong order so they didn't turn out as "chocolate brown" as I originally wanted, but in the end I think this turned out better because it matches my wall color and my porcelain tile floor better.

Now my mom wants to do hers, and it was so fun I'm thinking about helping! Honestly, for about $70, this stuff can't be beat. I wish I had learned about this sooner!
Thanks, Kristin!!! You're the best!

No Pain, No Gain

I started seeing a personal trainer this week. Not because it was a New Year's Resolution, or anything, but because it just happened to be January when I was able to start doing this. You might wonder why I don't just join a gym. I've done that. And I don't go. I need someone who I am paying for his time and who will be waiting for me to show up. I also want a program tailored just for me and someone who is there 100% of the time to make sure my form is perfect. Anyway, this guy is the real deal. He owns a private gym so I'm the only person there usually when I go in for my appointment. The place is very clean. There are no distractions and the equipment is always available to use. So Tuesday was my first day to go. He said he would be easy on me the first two weeks. I believed him. Yesterday I got out of bed and Yeeeoowwww my quadriceps let me hear about it. All day! And all night, since I was on call and awake. This morning wasn't as bad and it's a good thing because appointment #2 was this morning. If telling him about my soreness was supposed to be a hint to go easier on me, he didn't bite. His reply, "good! working out will help the soreness". I sorta gave him an agonizing laugh. But he was right. The soreness really did improve! It was a somewhat painful hour but I survived. I came home and slept most of the afternoon, since my sleep was interrupted overnight. I know tomorrow I will be sore but it feels sort of good. Like I did something good for myself. You know?

Nigel

This is going to be a disgusting story. If you don't like truly gross things, just stop now. It really takes a lot to gross me out. I can handle pee, poo, vomit, blood...doesn't bother me. However, I think I have met my match. Last week I was at the parent's house of my friend Kristin's watching the Fiesta Bowl. It's always a big doggie-palooza over there. They are never without at least 4 dogs in the house. This time I think I counted 6, but I'm not sure. So I'm just happily watching the game when Nigel, a visitor, jumps up on my lap. He was particularly happy, rubbing all over me and finally settled down and let me pet him. After awhile, he jumped down and I noticed that I smelled like the worst rotten fish smell ever. I couldn't figure it out and it was starting to bug me. I could smell it all over my cashmere sweater, so I took it off. I made my friends smell the sweater. Kristin's husband agreed that it smelled like fish. I think Kristin is either crazy or her 1st cranial nerve doesn't work because she didn't think it smelled bad.

After I went home, I took off my jeans and there was a strange brown spot on the thigh. I smelled it and it was the most concentrated fishy smell ever! So I whip out my ipad and I googled "rotten fish dog". I wish I hadn't. I found out that Nigel had emptied his anal glands on my lap and I guess the smell managed to get all over me! No wonder he was so happy! I guess they were bugging him. Anyway, if I was ever considering getting a dog, I think I just took a step back. Is that grosser than gross, or what?!

2 years!?

Has it really been that long since my last post? I've had many life changes since that last post. I don't think I'm as funny now, for one. My posts had wisdom mixed with humor and a few tears. Now I feel like I'm all serious. I feel like my career in medicine stole my happy soul from me.

I finished residency 6 months ago. What an awesome thing, to have my life back, to have money to spend, to plan my financial future, to have more free time. But I'm also much more scared about complications. In residency, it's easy to be a cowboy when you're riding on your attending's shoulders. But when you're out alone, all by yourself, making decisions feels so much more...permanent. My doctor friends warned me that in my first year of private practice, I'll have "crazy shit" happen that never happened in residency. They could not be more right. Just yesterday, I had two strange yet scary events happen that I've never seen before. I was putting an epidural in a pregnant lady and instead it went into the patient's subdural space. I couldn't do that again if I tried! It all turned out ok but it scared me and the patient, only I had to fake being calm and in control. Who wants an anxious doctor? Not me!

2 hours later I'm sitting in a c-section. All is going fine. Right before delivery, my patient told me she felt nauseated. I checked her blood pressure and it was a bit low so I gave her a regular dose of ephedrine. Baby is delivered right after. Everything is fine. All of a sudden my monitors start going nuts and I look and the EKG says my patient is in wide complex V-tach! What the hell?! I turn around and look at my patient happily watching her baby get dried off and I ask her if she's feeling ok. She told me she felt fine. I'm thinking, "how the hell could you be feeling fine?! Lady, you're in V-tach!!". I was about to tell her to cough as hard as she could when all of a sudden the V-tach resolved and never came back. Good riddance, I thought to myself. It must have been the ephedrine. It had to have been the ephedrine. But I've given ephedrine a thousand times to healthy women during c-sections! Why did she do that? See? Crazy shit happens your first year out...

My job is stressful. But I love my job. But it's stressful.

"Every girl is crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man..."

No blogging for awhile. I've had a lot on my mind but can't talk about it here.

So today I was in the Neonatal ICU rounding. I'm in the NICU the entire month. It's a pretty good rotation. For one, I like babies. For another, most of them just need to eat and grow, then they can go home. One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of parents bring CD's for their baby to listen to. Most of the music is soft classical music. Very soothing and calm, right? Well, one of the nurse practitioners told me today that the parents of her patient brought some music for their baby to listen to today too. Instead of bringing nice, soft, relaxing music, they brought an array of Metallica, Rob Zombie, and ZZ Top! Who would do that?!

So I don't really have a title to this post. I just finished my month in the pediatric ICU and it was actually a lot of fun. The kids are fun and most of the time, they recover from illness so much faster than adults.

Except Saturday. Saturday morning is a day I hope to forget but probably won't. We got a 16 year old boy medi-flighted to us from a rural hospital. He had overdosed on drugs on a camping trip and had a full cardiac arrest. When he got to us, a brief neuro exam told me he was most likely brain dead. To actually declare him brain dead requires what we call a "brain death exam" and we can't do it until his body temperature and pH are normal. In other words, there can't be a metabolic reason why he has a positive brain death exam.

So how do you tell a mom that? I had an hour to contemplate this before she got to the hospital-before the whole family got to the hospital. I took a long, audible deep breath and just told them straight out. How sorry I was...his brain was without oxygen too long....he overdosed....and he was most likely brain dead. Then the worst came: His mother didn't believe me. That's the hardest part. You don't want to be mean, but you also don't want to give them ANY hope that their loved one will turn around, because they won't. Brain dead IS dead. To tell them any different would be cruel and it would only draw out their pain. My attending came in and reiterated what I said. More family showed up and a fight broke out between them, pointing fingers and blaming each other.

I drove home completely depressed and it stayed with me the whole day. I felt guilty when I enjoyed my favorite song on the radio. I felt guilty getting to watch college football later that night. People complain that doctors seem so removed from compassion and deliver bad news without emotion. It's not that they don't care. They really do. But there comes a point when you let the daily grind of other people's tragedy completely destroy you.

The next day I went in and the resident on call told me that overnight our patient stabilized enough to complete a brain death exam. He was dead, as I figured he would be. His mother wanted him to be an organ donor, but his organs were too damaged from lack of oxygen. His ventilator was turned off. And that was it.