The most glorious thing happened today! I got up early to go on my 3 mile walk, and I had to wear a light jacket!!! Yay!!! The summer of having 38 days of over 100 degrees is cooling off! I can't believe how fast it happened. Just last week it was 105, and this morning it was 62. Now, I realize that is not cold, but just before sunrise it's enough to make the air a bit cool. I was more than happy to wear a jacket. My whole day was good, too.

The Boyfriend brought home an unwanted guest from his 10 day trip: a virus. He's coughing and in general feels bad. We snuggled on the couch to watch tv and he was complaining he was cold. Poor thing. I gave him the world's best medicine: M&M's (not to be confused with S&M's) and head grickles. I hope he feels better soon. He never gets sick, so when he does, I feel bad too.

Did anyone watch that gloom and doom show on 20/20 tonight about 8 different ways the world could end? Geez, talk about a downer! I'll probably have nightmares all night about a giant meteor hitting my house now. Thanks Elizabeth Vargas.

So, I decided to start doing my hour walks in the morning instead of at night. I just don't have enough time after work to do everything I want to do, and spend time with The Boyfriend. And lately, I've been working until 6-6:30pm which makes it really tough. I was so good about getting exercise everyday before I started residency, but now it's become my nemesis. I feel guilty and fat. I know it's been awhile since I've worked this much, but honestly I don't remember having so little free time! To top things off, band starts next week, like I have any leftover time for that! I suppose I will make it work. I just hate feeling stretched thin. And I think this is supposed to be the easy year!

What an irritating week. I had to give one of those presentations on Monday. I thought I was really prepared and had researched every possible thing I thought I would be asked. The one thing I forgot, the patient's EKG, was the one thing they asked for. It turned out to be a big deal. One of the doctors got mad and told me (in front of everyone) that my presentation was poorly put together and that they could not ask me any questions because I didn't have the EKG. Now, that wasn't really true, there was plenty they could ask, but I didn't argue with him. I just stood there in front of the room not saying anything. It was really embarassing. If that wasn't bad enough, he then REPEATED the fact that my presentation was poor, like I wasn't already humiliated by his previous comments. I finally got to go back to my seat. Then the worst happened: My eyes filled with tears. So, not only was I reduced to nothing in front of my peers and attendings, but then I have to top it off by crying. I just looked down and got the tears to stop before they broke free and ran down my face, which would be a dead giveaway.

I found out later from a nurse that same doctor then bitched about my presentation up in the ICU to all of them. Great. Let's just call the page operator and have her get on the intercom and tell everyone in the hospital how horrible my presentation was. What a jerk!

Well today was better. Through a fortunate turn of events, I managed to get the day off except I had to go to noon conference. I actually got close to 9 hours of sleep. It was wonderful! After conference I went to The Boyfriend's house to turn on his lawn sprinklers (he's out of town). While waiting for the sprinkler to quit cycling, I polished off a pint a vanilla Haagan-Daz he had in the freezer. That may have just been the best moment of my week. I felt so content sitting there all by myself eating the ice-cream. I had no where to be and no responsibility to anyone. I should definitely buy more ice cream!

My political rant

It's election time again! Tuesday is the day we have a run-off for various offices such as Lt. Gov. (who cares?), and state senate. I know it's election time again because I am being inundated with garbage mail, recordings on my voice mail, and of course, all the stupid TV ads. They all say the same thing: I believe in faith and family, making flag burning against the law, making abortion a crime, and yadda yadda yadda. Although I do care about faith and family, I don't think it really matters if my congressman thinks so. I also don't think flag burning or abortion should ever be anyone's top priority. However, those are the big platforms in my state, which makes me think anyone who listens to these knuckleheads is simple minded. I wish somebody would run who would like to eliminate pork spending in government, would guarantee they would strive to protect our constitution and ALL its amendments (even that pesky flag burning amendment protected under the 1st Amendment. Two and Four are good ones to protect, too), and initiate some REAL medical malpractice tort reform. I'm also concerned about the war, but then, who isn't? I'd also like someone to propose we abolish property tax.

Let's talk about property taxes for a moment. It is completely insane that we have to pay a yearly tax on something we already own! Even when you have your mortgage paid off, you still have to pay the property tax. If you don't, the government will steal your house from you. In essence, it comes down to this: Even though you think you own your house, you are really just renting it from the government. That's what property taxes assure us, and it stinks. Sorry to break the bad news to everyone who thought they were homeowners.

Anyone care to wager what political party I affiliate myself with? That's right. Libertarian. That is, if my county election board would let people register as such.

I just want to close with this comment. I am so fortunate to live in this great country, created by brave men who were searching for a different way of running a country. However, if our forefathers could see what was happening to the constitution they fought so hard for, they would be ashamed of us. We are slowly allowing our government to pick apart the Bill of Rights and take away our freedoms. Think about that. Long and hard. Is that what YOU really want?

I'm a bit irritated. I got my call schedule for September and I am on call 2 Fridays, one Saturday and one Sunday. That means every single weekend of September is screwed up for me. I complained. Only mildly though. Our elected schedule maker is going to change one of my Fridays to a Thursday. I have a better idea: change the Saturday to a Thursday! I have to remember, what comes around goes around. We are all going to end up working the same number of weekends, I'll just get all mine in sooner. It is football season though. I really don't want to miss any games.

I saw one of the nurses today in the doctor's lounge and I thanked her profusely for "rescuing" me during my case presentation 2 weeks ago. Remember? It's that thing I have to do where I present an interesting patient and then get pimped to death (questioned) by a handful of attendings. I'm used to getting pimped, but not the way some of them do it. It's really frustrating. Anyway, I was really getting hammered with questions and this nurse happened to be there. The last question for me was the echo results on this patient, and while digging through my mounds of paperwork looking for it, the nurse answered my question for me (I think she works in the lab). So I thanked her today for saving me. She told me she gets irritated at how the doctors treat the residents during these case presentations, particularly the women. She enjoys going to the presentations but has noticed over the years that the female residents really get treated badly and it makes her mad, so she feels the need to help out when she can. She told me to hang in there. I started thinking about that today and I'm not sure if she's right or not. I bring hard, unusual cases to the meetings, so I figured that's why I was getting all the difficult questions, but it's the way I'm questioned that I don't like. They interrupt me before I can give them the information they want, they don't listen when I go over labwork so I end up repeating most of it, and in general it's a very adversarial environment. Sometimes I can't even say one sentence without being pelted by questions from everyone. The guys don't really get that too much, but then, they also bring mostly lame, boring cases. I don't know if it's a sex thing or not. What difference does it make? It doesn't change the fact I have to give these presentations twice a month.

On a lighter note, one of our residents switched the M and N keys on our computer in the call room. It was really messing up my typing the other day. So to get even, I put a huge, black, fake bug between the sheets in the call room. He's on call tonight. Hee hee.

Well my call shift wasn't too bad the other night. I got paged to a code 5 minutes after I got there. She needed to be reintubated which was no small task. I failed twice, then got the tube in on the third try, but somehow it came out. Then the attending showed up and couldn't get her intubated. It was pretty frustrating. The lady ended up dying about an hour later. Her family was unprepared for the news and understandably, did not take it well.

After that I got 4 admits. One of them was a guy I had admitted last month, so I already knew his story. He had hepatic encephalopathy and was pretty out of it from that. When I tried to examine him, he started hitting me and then grabbed my arms. Needless to say, that exam didn't last long.

I went to sleep around 4am then woke up at 6:30am to my pager going off. A nursing question. Then I got paged again to go pronounce someone who had died. In the middle of that I got paged to the ICU for another code. We worked on him for an hour. The family was watching us and wanted him kept alive until one more relative could get there. The problem was, he wasn't alive. We just had to keep going until the attending or the family told us to stop. So there we were, pushing epinephrine and doing chest compressions on a guy who was already dead. One of the family members, who I suspect was a doctor by the questions he was asking, finally asked us to stop. The family was all there crying and the nurses were all crying and hugging the family. One of the nurses explained to me that they had all formed a bond with the family and how nice they were. I was touched. I left around 8am and took a brief nap before I went to The Boyfriend's house. We had a great weekend hanging out. Last night I made shrimp boil for dinner and then we had vanilla ice cream with fresh blueberries and rasberries. Yum!!

Grown up boys

I am so, so thankful that there is another female in my residency class. For 3 years, there haven't been any women and now there are 2 of us. The rest are all men...or boys, I should say. One on one, they are fine, well spoken gentlemen who are fun to talk to. When they get in a pack of about 3 or more, they start acting like 3 year olds! I've never seen anything like it. They talk about their bowel movements, they call each other names, and they hit and kick each other. I grew up with two older brothers, but I don't remember any of this ever happening. I have lots of guy friends. In fact, my boyfriend is a guy, and he doesn't act like that. But, Julie, the other female resident, informed me this is normal boy behavior. She calls it "flirting". I never realized guys flirt with each other, but these guys certainly do! It sounds really funny, but it can get pretty annoying, especially when you are sleep deprived and/or cranky. You just want them to shut up and go away. That's how I felt today. Lucky me, my attending sent me home early so I got to come home for a few hours before my on call shift starts. Time for a nap!

My residency is causing kitty stress

I'm a bad kitty owner. For 3 days, one of my kitties quit using the litter box. I thought she was doing it to annoy me because I'm gone all the time. Then yesterday I realized she was sick. She started being less social, she was constantly licking her bottom (gross, I know) and she was having urinary urgency. I found a 24 hour vet yesterday by my house that doesn't charge a higher fee until 10pm so I took her there. I had to leave her there for a few hours because she couldn't produce a urine sample. When they finally got one, it was full of blood, but not infection. I felt really bad. I bet it really hurt when she had to pee. The vet told me this bladder inflammation is caused by the cat being under a lot of stress, and he asked if anything in her life had changed. Hmm...well I went from working 0 hours per week to working 60-75, does that count? It counts. Poor Sarah. The vet gave her a steroid shot and sent her home with 2 weeks of prednisone pills to get rid of the inflammation. Oh boy. Ever try to give a cat a pill? To facilitate the process, I bought a "pill popper" which is a little rod that holds the pill on one end. You put the rod in her mouth, push the button on the other end, and the pill gets shot in her mouth. In theory, it's a great idea. In reality, Sarah was having no part of that. She kept spitting the pill out. I finally got her to swallow one before I went to work. Tonight's pill went easier, but I'm not sure if I can keep this up for 2 weeks. She may be fooled now, but soon she'll know to hide when I come around.

She's feeling better. She's perked up and she's using the litter again, thank God. Fortunately I have wood floors, but I'll have to clean my throw rugs pretty well which will be no easy task.

Nothing else is new. I'm on call tomorrow night. I'm not looking forward to it.

Expensive T-shirts

Does anybody ever buy clothes from Anthropologie? I've heard all these great things about their stuff, and if anybody cares, the beautiful chef Giada de Laurantiis is married to a man who designs clothes for them. She wears their stuff all the time and looks awesome. So, since there's not a store within 300 miles of my house, I checked out their website and ordered a catalogue. Here's what I think: most of their clothes are weird. Really weird. Especially the catalogue. I went to their website looking for the shirts Giada wears, and I can't find any of them, but I can sure find all the strange stuff. The few t-shirts I've seen on their website that I like are usually sold out. Oh yeah, and did I mention their clothes are really expensive? $58 for a t-shirt! Now, as far as fashion goes, my life is divided into 2 halves: before The Boyfriend and now. My old self would have never bought a $58 piece of cotton, but now that I've become more fashion conscious, I don't even blink an eye, which is why the other day, I bought 2 shirts from Anthropologie. I had to. It was my lucky day, for I actually found some shirts I liked that weren't sold out!!! God wanted me to have them.

I had a fun weekend. Went for Mexican food Friday Night with The Boyfriend, ran errands with him on Saturday, made pizza for us that night and we watched TV, then today slept until noon, had a late lunch, then went to Barnes and Noble for a couple of hours. I'm home now. I need to work in my yard BUT IT'S TOO HOT!! Today we hit our 24th day this summer of being over 100. Today we're a balmy 103. I've had it. I'm taking this issue up with God tonight. His land is turning brown and I think he needs to hear about it. I spent 4 hours one night last week sprinkling my lawn, and did it make one difference? No! Still I have brown prickly grass.

Well I suppose I should do some reading. My cardiology doc gave me a book about pacemakers I should take a look at before tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and thanks Rhett Bomar for nearly ruining my week!!

Last night's call wasn't near as bad as last week's (which I haven't mentioned here because I'm still recovering from it!) I only had 3 patients to admit, one "prounouncement" and a cardiac arrest at 5:30am. Not bad at all. I got 4 consecutive hours of sleep, which meant today I wasn't dead tired and too dangerous to run errands. I left the hospital around 8am, went to the grocery store, went to lunch with a friend of mine, got a pedicure (and thought about my friend Robyn who is probably in dire need of one about now while she is trouncing around Europe), and had my air conditioner cleaned. Funny how when it's 105 degrees everyday, your air conditioner doesn't seem to run as well. I've never had it cleaned before and tonight my house is nice and cool. I guess next time I won't wait 4 years to have it serviced.

Tomorrow I have to give a presentation at noon on a patient that I have seen. I picked a guy who came into the ER with acute mental status changes and ended up having hyponatremia due to congestive heart failure. It's not really a hard case, but the doctors that attend these presentations get a sick thrill out of pelting the presenter with a bunch of questions. They loved the last case I presented, so now I feel like I've set the bar too high and will have a tough time meeting their expectations.

Tomorrow night I'm going to fill in and play my oboe in my old woodwind quintet. I'm looking forward to it, but I haven't played this summer so I'm sure I'll sounds pretty bad. It's Better than not having an oboe player though. I'm actually looking forward to playing. I had my oboe overhauled this summer so it will be fun to see how it plays. It looks brand spankin' new!