My month in a netshell

1. Went to NYC for an anesthesia conference
2. came back and had no power for 5 days due to Ice Storm 2007
3. came back sick with a cold that I am STILL recovering from
4. Had an altercation with a male attending who shoved me in the OR. It's turned into a big mess and now I (yes, ME!) have to apologize in order to save face and not make it difficult to get a job in 2 years (even though I did nothing wrong!)
5. Lost my voice for 2 days while I was sick. No fun talking to patients with no voice
6. went to dad's for Christmas celebration
7. had another Christmas celebration at my house
8. got drunk and danced at at fellow residents' Christmas party
9. looking forward to the college football bowl games
10. dreading next month working in the trauma ICU where I'll get to work 100 hours a week!
11. I'm not kidding about the 100 hours-thing
12. being jealous of Pastor's Bride who gets to go to Israel while I'm working 100 hours a week
13. Not being jealous of Pink who keeps taking trips to Iowa

Crazy week

Late last week I went to NYC for an anesthesia conference. I had a great time but I'll save that story for another time. I came home and found that my power was out due to Big Ice Storm 2007. My house was so cold that you could see my breath. Yikes. I shacked up at my friend Julie's until Friday when it came back on. Friday! 5 days without any electricity! My poor kitties survivied it though. None of the food in my fridge did. And my yard was a mess of branches that had broken off from the weight of the ice.

It's just been a crazy week. I came home from the conference with a bad cold, and as soon as I got back, it's back to the daily grind of 13 hour days at work, then I was on call until 7am this morning. I'm worn out. One day was particularly bad. I think it was Thursday. I developed a migraine and it just went on and on forever. I was at work and could not leave. (doctors don't get sick). I felt so nauseated that I had to put an alcohol swab inside my surgery mask. (little known fact that sniffing alcohol helps with nausea.I learned this from one of our nurses). I finally got off work that night at 7:30.

I surprised myself. I always wondered what would happen when I got a migraine at work and couldn't leave. I survived.

Well the Dog Silencer appears to be working like a charm. The dogs absolutely will not bark anywhere near my house. Even when a random cat walks by, they won't bark at it. They do, however, bark when they get out of range which makes me think I should buy another one for the back of my yard. It wouldn't be so bad, except those two dogs start barking at two other dogs nearby and between the 4 of them, it gets really loud! Especially at 2am.

So, tomorrow I am traveling to an anesthesia conference in NYC. I'm actually staying in Newark and will take a train to NYC everyday, due to the cost of all the hotels in NYC being $500 a night. Tonight I've been trying to devise a plan of travel from my hotel to Times Square. I'm confused. My hotel is adjacent to Penn Station which has two different trains, a bus, and a subway. They all go to NYC. Why are there 3 different rail systems? Which one should I take? Where will I end up? How late do they run?

Sigh. God help me. Anyone out there who knows me, knows I am going to get hopelessly lost. All by myself.

And don't even get me started on the NYC subway system. I pulled up a map of that tonight and thought I was reading some ancient hierogyphics. Why can't they all be like the D.C. rail system? That was easy to figure out!

Life is weird. I am really, really good at a lot of things. But the things I'm not good at-I'm horrible at.

Well, at least my hotel has a Starbucks. Coffee makes everything better.

Woof!

I have a problem. His name is Bentley. He is my neighbor's new dog and he barks ALL THE TIME! I can't even go into how much sleep I have lost over that dog barking right outside my bedroom window at all hours of the day and night. Talking to the neighbors about it only helped marginally. I mean, come ON! Would you want your anesthesiologist to be sleep deprived?

One night last week I absolutely had enough. I tucked a benedryl into a piece of cheese and gave it to the dog. I felt a little guilty, especially when I didn't see the dog for a few days. Benedryl is harmless, but what if he had some weird reaction? Well, he didn't. He woke me up one morning when I was post-call. He's fine.

Since I really don't want to resort to drugging the neighbor's dog everytime I want to get some sleep, I bought a new gadget called the Dog Silencer Pro. It's kind of like a dog whistle that goes off everytime the dog barks. I got it tonight and I am cautiously excited. While I was setting it up, the dog freaked out and started barking at me. The gadget sent it's ultrasonic noise (people can't hear it) to the dog and the dog actually quit barking! Could it be? Oh if only it's true!

Sleep, here I come!!