I realized when I woke up Saturday morning that I am now closer to 40 than I am 30. I don't feel like it. I feel like I'm 26 still. it's a good thing, I have a few rough months coming up. I decided to take my (final) medical licensing exam next month instead of waiting until the spring. I just want to get it over with. I have another exam in July I need to do well on, so I need to start studying as early as possible.
OK, so what did I do this weekend? I had an awesome birthday weekend with The Boyfriend. It started Thursday Night when my family went out to dinner and then bowling. Bowling is fun, but I think what I love the most is doing something with my family altogether. Friday, The Boyfriend and I went to Dallas and stayed at the Westin at the Galleria and he took me shopping. We had so much fun. It's pretty cool dating a guy who likes to shop. To make it even more fun, I helped him pick out clothes too. I got my first pair of skinny jeans (yes, I know..I swore I would never buy any) and I love them. I must have tried on 20 pairs of jeans and the LAST pair fit perfectly.
OK so we didn't just go shopping. We slept in Saturday morning and watched a football game on TV and ordered room service for breakfast. Went to an awesome seafood restaurant that night, then Sunday visited his brother and sister-in-law pregnant with triplets.
Strange..I never heard from my dad for my birthday. ~sigh~ it isn't the first time. 3 years ago he got all pissed because my birthday was going to be celebrated at my mom's house. Since he has to control everything, he decided over his dead body would he ever set foot in my mom's house, so what did he do? He skipped my birthday. About a week later, I finally got a call from him. I don't know who he's trying to hurt more, me or mom. Grow up, Dad, Mom moved on 15 years ago.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Top 10 80's Flicks
Last night I was on call when The Breakfast Club came on. I couldn't resist it! Does it seem like the movies were better in the 80's? I think so. I mean, can anyone beat the Brat Pack, I ask you?
Here's my top 10, in no particular order:
1. The Breakfast Club
2. St. Elmo's Fire (watched it again a few months ago and it seems to have lost some luster..but still worthy of mention)
3. Pretty In Pink (a Ginger with a pink promdress?? She paved the way for many future prom going Gingers)
4. 16 Candles (Jake Ryan, you're such a babe!)
5. Tootsie
6. All the Indiana Jones movies
7. An Officer and a Gentleman
8. Poltergeist
9. Better Off Dead
10. Some Kind of Wonderfull
11. Say Anything (ooops, that's 11!)
Thursday, October 19, 2006
My own Gray's Anatomy
I sort of despise that show for its numerous inaccuracies. However, it seems so convenient on Thursday evenings just to watch it since it's on. That being said, I secretly cringe when people try to associate anything I do in residency with what the pseudo-interns do on Gray's. Like my haircut lady. She wanted to know all about the exciting things I do. Well, for starters, people don't want to hear about the guy with a potassium of 7.5 that you saw in the ICU, they want to hear about two people joined together in a freak accident involving a metal spear. Hmmm. So, I told my hairdresser about having to run codes in the middle of the night and how stressful that can be. "You mean like they do on Gray's Anatomy?" "Uh, no", I replied, "I actually work".
Today I got a glimpse of my own hospital gossip and it felt very much like G.A. One of my old sorority friends had a summer fling with an anesthesiologist at the hospital where I work. As it turns out, I graduated from high school with the anesthesiologist but never knew him. As soon as my friend slept with him, he never called her again. No explanation, no nothing. If you ask me, he's a bit old for that kind of behavior, but whatever. Well anyway, I ran into him today in the physician's cafeteria. I've never met him before but I heard him on the phone saying he was Dr. X and to give such and such medicine to the pt. After he got off the phone, I introduced myself and told him we graduated high school together. He said my name sounded familiar and asked how he knew me. I told him that I'm friends with X who he briefly dated over the summer. Without even blinking, he asked how she was and for me to say hi to her. I so wanted to ask him why he never called her back and how could he treat someone like that, doesn't he want to get married someday? But I didn't. I didn't want to make things worse for my friend. Other than that small glitch in his pesonality, he seemed quite nice. I wish he would just call her and tell her why he was a jerk. It's too late though, I'm sure she's moved on.
Today I got a glimpse of my own hospital gossip and it felt very much like G.A. One of my old sorority friends had a summer fling with an anesthesiologist at the hospital where I work. As it turns out, I graduated from high school with the anesthesiologist but never knew him. As soon as my friend slept with him, he never called her again. No explanation, no nothing. If you ask me, he's a bit old for that kind of behavior, but whatever. Well anyway, I ran into him today in the physician's cafeteria. I've never met him before but I heard him on the phone saying he was Dr. X and to give such and such medicine to the pt. After he got off the phone, I introduced myself and told him we graduated high school together. He said my name sounded familiar and asked how he knew me. I told him that I'm friends with X who he briefly dated over the summer. Without even blinking, he asked how she was and for me to say hi to her. I so wanted to ask him why he never called her back and how could he treat someone like that, doesn't he want to get married someday? But I didn't. I didn't want to make things worse for my friend. Other than that small glitch in his pesonality, he seemed quite nice. I wish he would just call her and tell her why he was a jerk. It's too late though, I'm sure she's moved on.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Sleeping Beauty
Wow, I think I slept all weekend! I was on call last Wednesday night and got about 3 hours of sleep. I was busy from 6pm until 1am admitting patients from the ER, then during the night I had 3 code blues. Everybody lived. After my shift, I had to stay and round on the PICU patients with my attending, then I had to stay for noon conference. I got home around 2pm, but promised one of the other residents that I would pick her up at 4pm from her Lasik appointment. My point is, I got little sleep. I realized as I was going to bed that night, that I had 3 hours of (poor) sleep in 41 hours. It's no wonder that I woke up Friday morning feeling lousy. I came home and slept for 3 hours that afternoon. Slept 8 hours Friday Night, took a nap on Saturday, then today I slept until 12:30pm! I even got a kiss from The Boyfriend when I woke up.
OK I agree, I'm seriously a big slacker, but now I feel really good!
On a sad note, one of my aunts died this morning. She fell on Friday and I'm assuming she hit her head and got a head bleed, but at any rate, she was in the ICU all weekend not expected to recover. I wasn't surprised she died. I got such a nice card from her at graduation. She patiently taught me how to read the summer between kindergarten and 1st grade. I never forgot that. I really hope I can attend her funeral this week. It would be nice to see all my cousins, too.
OK I agree, I'm seriously a big slacker, but now I feel really good!
On a sad note, one of my aunts died this morning. She fell on Friday and I'm assuming she hit her head and got a head bleed, but at any rate, she was in the ICU all weekend not expected to recover. I wasn't surprised she died. I got such a nice card from her at graduation. She patiently taught me how to read the summer between kindergarten and 1st grade. I never forgot that. I really hope I can attend her funeral this week. It would be nice to see all my cousins, too.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Rules for watching sports
This weekend The Boyfriend and I went out of town with some friends for a big football game. We left Thursday and came back on Sunday. It was really nice to have 3 1/2 days off but it sure made coming back to work hard! Friday we went to Humperdink's which (I guess) is the designated hang out for our team's fans. It was pretty much standing room only. We got there at 1pm and stayed until about 6pm, just drinking and hanging out with our friends. Saturday, we went to a watch party at a friend of a friend's house(tickets too expensive and who wants to sit in the endzone?). There were about 8 of us there watching the game. The guy hosting the get together invited his neighbors and their kids over to watch the game. My experience that day made me think about some general rules that should be followed when watching a sporting event on TV with friends:
1. Don't talk incessantly during the game, some of us actually want to watch it and hear the commentary
2. Don't exchange recipes with the person across the room when others are trying to watch the game
3. Don't ask for the results of a replay/review 5 minutes after the fact because you were too busy exchanging recipes to pay attention
4. Get a babysitter
5. Don't block the TV during every critical play by getting up to go into the kitchen for more food
6. When there are only 3 minutes left, and your team is losing by 18 points, don't make the announcement that "all we need is a touchdown, and interception leading to a touchdown, then another touchdown to win the game". You sound like a moron.
OK some of these may sounds harsh, but that girl was driving me absolutely crazy. I found out later she was driving a lot of people crazy, but we were all too nice to tell her to shut up and sit still, so instead, I'm blogging about it here for the world to see.
1. Don't talk incessantly during the game, some of us actually want to watch it and hear the commentary
2. Don't exchange recipes with the person across the room when others are trying to watch the game
3. Don't ask for the results of a replay/review 5 minutes after the fact because you were too busy exchanging recipes to pay attention
4. Get a babysitter
5. Don't block the TV during every critical play by getting up to go into the kitchen for more food
6. When there are only 3 minutes left, and your team is losing by 18 points, don't make the announcement that "all we need is a touchdown, and interception leading to a touchdown, then another touchdown to win the game". You sound like a moron.
OK some of these may sounds harsh, but that girl was driving me absolutely crazy. I found out later she was driving a lot of people crazy, but we were all too nice to tell her to shut up and sit still, so instead, I'm blogging about it here for the world to see.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
A 2nd Birthday
I had a patient last week that I was seeing every morning before my attending came in to see him. I'll call him Mike. His heart was failing after having a heart attack. It was so weak, he had to have an intra-aortic balloon pump placed to help blood flow inside his heart better. He was also on two IV drips just to keep his blood pressure on the low side of normal. He was already on the heart transplant list, but his weak condition moved him up to the top of the list. Everyday last week I saw him and he looked weaker each day. Thursday he was pale and depressed-to me, it seemed he was getting worse.
Friday, I came in to see him and the nurse told me that there is a chance he could get the transplant he needed that day. There was a heart available in a city 4 hours away but there were still some tests that needed to be done to see if he was a good match. I went in to see Mike and told him I'd heard the good news that he may have a heart later. His affect was flat and all he said was that he'd "been here before and it didn't work out". With that reply I knew he was losing hope. All I could thing of to say is that we could hope that this time it will happen for him. I patted his arm and left.
All day we waited to see if he would get the heart. The delays were caused by the donor having some health issues that raised some questions as to whether or not the heart should be used. The surgeon came in and told Mike what was going on. Mike called his family and talked to them for a long time, then the surgeon talked to them. Then Mike got back on the phone. When he got off the phone, he yelled, "Doc, my family says go for it!". At around 2pm, there was still one test that needed to be done, but the transplant team decided to go ahead and fly out of town to "harvest" the organ, and if it turned out that they couldn't use it, they would just fly back without it. The brain-dead donor has to be kept alive on a ventilator until the organ is removed. The shelf life of a heart is low: The surgeon has only 4 hours from the time the heart is removed from the donor to the time it goes to the recipient. I found out the hospital has a private plane always on standy-by for instances like these.
All day on Saturday I thought about Mike and hoped he got the heart. I was almost looking forward to being on call Sunday because I wanted to know if he got it. Sunday, I was up in the ICU and asked one of the nurses if he got it. She said he did! He went to surgery around 10pm Friday Night and was in surgery for 6 hours. It was almost midnight put I peeked inside his room to see if he was awake. He was watching TV and when he saw me, he smiled and said, "I got it!". I went in and talked to him for awhile. He was so animated-he had gone from this sad, sick person about to lose hope to a new person who had just been handed another chance. It really made my night better to see him so happy. He looked really good, too. His skin was pink and he seemed to be thinking more clearly.
Mike has a long road ahead of him. He will be on anti-rejection drugs the rest of his life, will probably have several future hospitalizations because just about everyone goes through bouts of acute rejection. He will probably develop diabetes from the long term prednisone use, and the anti-rejection drugs will almost certainly decrease his bone marrow production of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. He is also very weak from being bedridden. That said, I've never talked to a transplant patient who was sorry they did it-it gave them a 2nd birthday.
Last month when I was on cardiology, I found out that transplants are actually decreasing because there aren't as many organ donors as there once were. I found out most donors are young adults who make bad decisions and end up having life-ending accidents. With new safety laws in place like seat belt use, less young people are dying, therefore there are less organs available. I hate it that someone has to die for someone else to live, but what an priceless gift that is!
Friday, I came in to see him and the nurse told me that there is a chance he could get the transplant he needed that day. There was a heart available in a city 4 hours away but there were still some tests that needed to be done to see if he was a good match. I went in to see Mike and told him I'd heard the good news that he may have a heart later. His affect was flat and all he said was that he'd "been here before and it didn't work out". With that reply I knew he was losing hope. All I could thing of to say is that we could hope that this time it will happen for him. I patted his arm and left.
All day we waited to see if he would get the heart. The delays were caused by the donor having some health issues that raised some questions as to whether or not the heart should be used. The surgeon came in and told Mike what was going on. Mike called his family and talked to them for a long time, then the surgeon talked to them. Then Mike got back on the phone. When he got off the phone, he yelled, "Doc, my family says go for it!". At around 2pm, there was still one test that needed to be done, but the transplant team decided to go ahead and fly out of town to "harvest" the organ, and if it turned out that they couldn't use it, they would just fly back without it. The brain-dead donor has to be kept alive on a ventilator until the organ is removed. The shelf life of a heart is low: The surgeon has only 4 hours from the time the heart is removed from the donor to the time it goes to the recipient. I found out the hospital has a private plane always on standy-by for instances like these.
All day on Saturday I thought about Mike and hoped he got the heart. I was almost looking forward to being on call Sunday because I wanted to know if he got it. Sunday, I was up in the ICU and asked one of the nurses if he got it. She said he did! He went to surgery around 10pm Friday Night and was in surgery for 6 hours. It was almost midnight put I peeked inside his room to see if he was awake. He was watching TV and when he saw me, he smiled and said, "I got it!". I went in and talked to him for awhile. He was so animated-he had gone from this sad, sick person about to lose hope to a new person who had just been handed another chance. It really made my night better to see him so happy. He looked really good, too. His skin was pink and he seemed to be thinking more clearly.
Mike has a long road ahead of him. He will be on anti-rejection drugs the rest of his life, will probably have several future hospitalizations because just about everyone goes through bouts of acute rejection. He will probably develop diabetes from the long term prednisone use, and the anti-rejection drugs will almost certainly decrease his bone marrow production of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. He is also very weak from being bedridden. That said, I've never talked to a transplant patient who was sorry they did it-it gave them a 2nd birthday.
Last month when I was on cardiology, I found out that transplants are actually decreasing because there aren't as many organ donors as there once were. I found out most donors are young adults who make bad decisions and end up having life-ending accidents. With new safety laws in place like seat belt use, less young people are dying, therefore there are less organs available. I hate it that someone has to die for someone else to live, but what an priceless gift that is!
Monday, October 02, 2006
Zombie girl
I miss my friends. I don't talk to many people outside the hospital anymore. Being busy...well...sucks sometimes. I finished a 29 hour shift this afternoon, went home and took a shower, then went to The Boyfriend's house to sleep for a few hours. Not really quality time but I like knowing he's near.
Last night was pretty uneventful, for the most part. Except for the emergent intubation I couldn't get and had to call and ER doc to come up and rescue me (thank God for the ER docs that are around 24/7). Oh, yeah, and the central line I was trying to put in a guy's neck that I couldn't get. Everytime I hit the vein and started to put the guide wire in, he would turn his head and I would lose access. The third time I hit his carotid and I decided I'd had enough. I called the central line team to come do it. I was really pissed. It's getting late in the year for me to be having trouble with procedures. If this kind of stuff happens next year, I will probably get really chewed out.
Life is looking up though. This was my last weekend to be on call for several weeks. It's about time. It has seemed like lately I'm on call every weekend. I'm really excited about this weekend though. The Boyfriend and some of our friends are going to a certain big city to go to a certain football game. Well, we aren't actually going to the game. We decided if all we can get are nosebleed seats, we'd rather watch the game in our nice hotel room, then party with our friends after the game. It should really be a lot of fun.
So, that's life for me in a nutshell!
Last night was pretty uneventful, for the most part. Except for the emergent intubation I couldn't get and had to call and ER doc to come up and rescue me (thank God for the ER docs that are around 24/7). Oh, yeah, and the central line I was trying to put in a guy's neck that I couldn't get. Everytime I hit the vein and started to put the guide wire in, he would turn his head and I would lose access. The third time I hit his carotid and I decided I'd had enough. I called the central line team to come do it. I was really pissed. It's getting late in the year for me to be having trouble with procedures. If this kind of stuff happens next year, I will probably get really chewed out.
Life is looking up though. This was my last weekend to be on call for several weeks. It's about time. It has seemed like lately I'm on call every weekend. I'm really excited about this weekend though. The Boyfriend and some of our friends are going to a certain big city to go to a certain football game. Well, we aren't actually going to the game. We decided if all we can get are nosebleed seats, we'd rather watch the game in our nice hotel room, then party with our friends after the game. It should really be a lot of fun.
So, that's life for me in a nutshell!
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