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!

Rolling, rolling, rollling

Yesterday was my brother's birthday. They were supposed to go to the lake so we didn't plan anything. For whatever reason they didn't go, so I had everyone over to my house at the last minute for hot dogs and then we went bowling. I haven't bowled in 3 years. The Boyfriend, who wasn't too excited about the opportunity to roll a heavy ball on the floor to knock down pins, informed me he hadn't bowled since 1971. Ouch. So my nieces, ages 9 and 7, like to bowl with the bumper guards up so they don't gutter every ball. A crisis ensued when the bumper guards weren't in place right away. They had to bowl a couple of turns guttering the ball, each time sulking with their arms crossed across telling my brother, "I want the bumpers". Then The Boyfriend took his turn. He guttered both balls. My 9 year old niece, still trying to make a case for getting the bumper guards, went up to him and said, "You need the bumpers!". He took the news well. Imagine, a grown adult, bowling with bumper guards. The thought just made me laugh!

I've never broken 100. My 3rd game last night I bowled a 130 and beat everyone! Maybe it was all the beer I drank, or maybe it was I decided to try a new strategy: keep my eyes on the pins instead of the floor. It seemed to work really well. I can't wait to go bowling again. The Boyfriend got his groove on too and managed to beat my nieces.

Back to work tomorrow. It is my last day of being on the hospitalist team. I can't contain my smiles enough. The hours were long and I got so sick of doing nothing but writing history and physicals all day. I'll still have to do it on call, but in much smaller doses.

I heard a good joke on The Tonight Show: What is the largest export of Cuba?

Answer: Cubans. I guess you could expand that to include Mexico. If I was the leader of either country, I think I would be really embarrassed that so many people want to leave. Perhaps they should do something about that....

Has it been over a week? All my friends are WAY ahead of me on blogging, so, even though I need to go to bed because I will be up for 24+ hours tomorrow (stay off the road around 8am Thursday) I will blog.

The Boyfriend and I went to Dallas last weekend and stayed at the Westin at the Galleria. His brother and sister-in-law are about to move to Dallas so we met them there and got to see the new house they are building. I'd never met them before so that was fun too. The wife is 14 weeks pregnant with triplets so things are getting exciting for them. Now that I've seen this humongous house they are building, I want to buy a bigger house. There was a gang shooting at the 7-11 two blocks from my house recently and it has me wanting to move about 10 miles North. I love my little house though. I planted trees, crepe myrtles, refinished the wood floors, had porcelain tile put in the kitchen, painted...and now I want to move. All that work I put in is being ruined by a bunch of stupid gang bangers who have no respect for human life.

So, getting back to Dallas. I managed to spend $377 on 2 pairs of jeans and a t-shirt. it's my best work yet. Perhaps if I didn't spend so much on clothes I could afford a larger house payment!!

Now for my rant. What is it with voters?? I'm not even talking about people not in my party. I'm talking about people WITHIN my party. Today we had a primary election for governer, Lt governer, and a bunch of other stuff. Somehow I managed to vote for the candidates who lost. I'm convinced that most voters don't care about the issues and they vote by name recognition. I'm ready to get rid of career politicians and elect some new blood, but no, we have to keep voting for the same old boring people because most people who vote are not very smart. I've decided that voting should only be a priviledge to those who pay taxes. Why should somebody on welfare be allowed to vote on what to do with MY tax money?? Seems a bit like theft to me....

Well now I'm sure I've managed to piss people off with my opinions. Just so you know, I make no apologies. I worked as a social worker for 6 years and saw how great entitlement programs work. Just so you know.

I put in 75 hours last week..close to the 80 work week restriction, but I can't complain. I have friends who put in WAY more than 80 hours a week, despite the law...

I was on call all day Saturday until 8am Sunday morning, which pretty much ruined my weekend. I was trashed all day yesteray but it was my only day off all week. The Boyfriend and I went to see The Devil Loves Prada. He came along to earn what he calls "chick flick points". It was a great movie and he actually like it too...that is, the first 2/3 of it. The last 1/3 got a bit touchy-feely and I was just happy he didn't throw up in the theater. We were going to make a non-cash bet over whether or not it would be #1 in the box office for the weekend. I was willing to make the bet, but apparently the stakes were too high for him, so we didn't make the bet. He shoulda, because he woulda won the bet.

Tonight we're going out to dinner and then I'm going to walk. Granted, it's 104 degrees outside right now, so if it doesn't cool off before 8pm, the walk may not happen. I'm not on call again until Thursday night. Friday I will get to leave after noon conference since I'll be post-call, then The Boyfriend and I are taking his M6 to Dallas for a fun weekend. I'll get to meet his brother and sister-in law who is pregnant with triplets. They live in LA but are moving to Dallas soon.

"That's all." -Miranda

The Residency Diet Plan

I've been on a diet since January. I want to lose 15 pounds. I started counting Weight Watchers points and had pretty good luck, but I hit a plateau after I lost 7 pounds. I've been walking 3 miles 5 times a week for almost 1 1/2 years. During my vacation I added The Firm twice a week thinking that I needed to supplement my exercise with weights. Still, my weight didn't budge. Then I started residency. I thought I was going to gain the 7 pounds back because I don't get to walk my 3 miles as often. Granted, I am on my feet ALL DAY at the hospital but it's not really aerobic. I've also noticed I've had a ravenous appetite and have been eating like a big pig lately. Well, I guess all that doesn't matter because I weighed today and Eureka!! I lost 2 pounds in 1 1/2 weeks! The elusive 2 pounds I have been struggling with for 2 months have finally come off! Could residency be the secret potion for weight loss?

I was on call last night. I was busy until 4am admitting patients. Everytime I would get finished with one, the ER would page me with another one. It was crazy. These people were really sick, too. One lady close to my age gorked her liver with chronic alcoholism and was as yellow as an Oompa Loompa. Another elderly gentleman was so demented that he cursed me when I tried to examine him. It was endearing. I felt bad for him. Confused and angry, he didn't know where he was, and he didn't know who the family members were that had come to see him. So when he cursed at me, I just smiled. Another lady has meningitis. One guy had a liver trasplant a few months ago and was complaining of a big belly. I can't remember what was wrong with one admission, and then there's my last one. Some goon who overdosed on Soma and was a real pain in the ass. By then it was 4am and I was losing my patience with him. I enjoyed listening to him holler while the nurse put in his foley catheter. I felt like the evil witch doctor for that.

Fussbudget Love

I had a fun weekend, except for the first part. I had to take what was supposed to be the 8 hour board certification exam for anesthesiology. Since I only knew about 1/8 of the answers, it only took me 4 hours to complete. For now, the test is only used to gauge my progress through the next four years, so this year's score really doesn't matter. However, when I'm taking the exam to become board certified in 4 years, the score really matters a lot.

After the test was over, The Boyfriend and I drove my car to Wichita, KS to pick up a new car he ordered...a BMW M6! We stayed the night at the Hotel at Olde Town and enjoyed a mediocre dinner of sushi at a nearby restaurant. The waitress kept bringing us other people's food, and she tried to give our appetizer to somebody else. There was also some sort of festival in Olde Town so the streets were noisy and crowded with people. The Boyfriend said the street noise lasted until 3am. I wouldn't know. I crashed early at midnight and didn't hear a thing. That's been happening a lot these days. I can't get my book read because everytime I settle down to read at night, I end up getting sleepy and going to sleep.

So, back to the weekend. This morning we went to the dealership and picked up his car. Like. Wow. It was in the center of their showroom and the guy said it had received quite a lot of attention since they put it out. It's the first time The Boyfriend and I have ever seen an M6 (they are really, really hard to get) and I just fell in love.

After that, we went to our favorite restaurant in Wichita- Yai-Yai's. I've been looking forward to eating there for about 2 weeks. We got there we noticed there's some sort of Sunday brunch buffet going on. I asked Teeny Bopper Hostess if we could have a menu. She tells me, "they don't like to do that during brunch". Hmm. Well, that's nice and all, but I didn't really ask if "they" liked to do anything. I mean, I don't really like doing rectal exams, but I've had to do them a time or two. So I asked her again, "So can we order lunch from the menu?" Teeny Bopper Hostess says I can but they aren't really ready to cook anything. Whatever. I am truly annoyed. So we ate the brunch buffet. Sadly, it was not the same. We were both a little more than slightly disappointed. Teeny Bopper Hostess really pissed me off with her attitude. The Boyfriend thought that part was pretty funny. Apparently being a fuss-budget is one of my good qualities!

So me, The Boyfriend, and the new M6 are safely back home tonight. I have to say, the M6 got a lot of stares from people today. I got to drive it a bit tonight. I'm not sure what was more amazing, the drive itself or the fact that The Boyfriend let me drive it! If that ain't love, then what is?

My first code

Ask any resident where the worst place in a hospital to have a code is, and they'll tell you in radiology on the CT scanner. Guess where my first code was? Radiology at the CT scanner. When my pager went off, Hell, I didn't even know where radiology was! So I get there, along with my 7 other colleague-residents who came along, and there are no less than 25 people there watching the show. The lady had sort of been brought back by the time I got there, so she was quickly transported back up to ICU (without getting the CT). No sooner do we get to her room and she codes again. Fortunately for me, ICU nurses can run codes without me but I have to be there anyway so I ordered some lab work. I tried to run through my head what could be wrong, but she was so sick, it could have been anything and there comes a point where a loved one needs to decide enough is enough. Her doctor came in and then went out to talk to the family. They decided not to have her resuscitated anymore, so the nurses cleaned the patient up and the family came in to spend the last few hours with her. She died about 3 hours later.

Tomorrow I am not a house officer. I don't have to admit patients or respond to codes. I can relax. I'm glad my first week is almost over.

My first night on call...

wasn't so bad other than the face it was a holiday and I wanted to watch fireworks and eat junk food rather than hang out in a lonely hospital for 24 hours with no one to talk to.

My day started at 8am on the 4th. I did a history and physical on a new patient in the morning and was finished by noon. I sat around on edge all day just waiting for my pager to go off. Finally, at 5pm, I started to get paranoid that maybe the hospital operator had the wrong pager number down for me so I called her to make sure. Everything was fine. I tried to take a nap, but it's hard to sleep when you know you could get paged with a crisis at any moment. At 10pm I finally got paged to go see a new patient. That took a couple of hours. Then I got paged to see a guy whose family was anxious about him. I basically just took a look at him and reassured the family that he is stable.

I finally fell asleep and woke up at 2:30 this morning to my pager going off. It was an ICU nurse who needed me to come up and check a breathing tube of a patient. I didn't really understand what she was saying on the phone. So I get up there, and there's a bit of excitement because this patient was restless all night and had managed to dislodge his breathing tube and wasn't getting any oxygen from the ventilator. One of the nurses was manually "bagging" him so he could get air. I started putting gloves on and went to the head of the bed to get ready to replace his breathing tube. He was really squirming and fighting me (I don't blame him). A nurse asked me if I wanted to paralyze him. I really don't have much experience with that yet and told her I didn't want to do that because if I can't get the breathing tube in, I'll have to bag him for 15 minutes while the drugs wear off, so, I ordered etomidate to sedate him to go along with the versed they had already tried. It worked great and I was sort of able to get the tube back in. I couldn't really tell if it was in the right place, but I could hear breath sounds over both lungs and the ventilator indicated that he was getting oxygen again. I ordered a chest xray to confirm placement of the tube and then waited around for the radiologist to call me with the results. As it turned out, the tube was a little high and I briefly considered retrying and then I stopped: why fix something that isn't broken? He's oxygenating fine now, and he quit fighting the tube because we sedated him, so I decided to leave it where it was. I was so relieved that ended fine without any catastrophe. I was also glad I didn't have to call one of the ER docs to come help me with him. I managed it by myself with the help of some awesome nurses.

So by then it was 3:30am. I went back to my room, finally fell asleep and got paged at 6am. That call was just settled on the phone, but I was so excited to know my shift was almost over that I couldn't get back to sleep. I went home at 8:30am and slept for 2 hours before I had to be back at the hospital for noon teaching conference. By then I felt like a train wreck but the conferences are mandatory-even if we have been up all night. I came home at 2pm and slept another 1 1/2 hours and then got up. I felt a lot better after my 3 mile walk. I haven't walked since Sunday and I really missed it so I was glad to get to do that today. Hung out with my boyfriend tonight and now I'm going to bed early.

In all it wasn't a bad night. I'm starting to feel better about all this. What I'm really glad about is that I stayed calm during that whole ICU incident. I didn't even have to think about staying calm, I just was calm on my own.

I'm starting to think things won't be so bad after all. It's not like I'm the first person to ever be an intern. Everyone else gets through it, so will I. I talked to some of the other guys I'm with and they admitted to kinda feeling freaked out last week like I was.

Our program director took Julie and me around the hospital so we could get a taste for how each floor is organized. We met some of the nurses and they all seemed really nice. They were also pretty excited to have 2 female residents this year, since it's been 3 years since they have had any. That really made me feel good.

I met one of the docs I'll be rotating with. I asked him what time and where he would like to meet Monday morning. He actually asked me if 7:30am was too early for me. Too early? Hell no! Not when most interns have to be at the hospital at 6am! I think I'm gonna like him....

>: (

Today I got a glimpse of what my life is going to be like for awhile....and I hated it. I really don't know what to do. I can't quit because I'm in too much debt, but I really really REALLY do not want to start my residency. I don't know what is wrong with me. Today at orientation it was nothing but 8 continuous hours of "do this, do that", none of which I know how to do. It was so overwhelming that I just wanted to leave screaming. The only good thing that came out of today (and I use the term "good" loosely) is that I got assigned to the internal medicine team for my first month, which means I am responsible for running codes every other day. Why am I glad about that? Insanity, maybe? No, actually, it will get me comfortable with running codes much faster. I'll also get better at writing up admit orders, history and physicals, and discharge orders. I also found out I get every weekend this month off, unless I'm on call. The part that really made me mad though is that I'm on 24 hour call on July 4th. I love July 4th. This year I'm going to hate it. At least now I can say that I've worked an official holiday and that is it for me for the year (there are 6 holidays and 8 residents). I think that's only fair.

But in all, today really sucked. I don't want to be a doctor anymore. When we were finally freed today from orientation, the first thing I did when I got in my car was start crying. It's been off and on ever since. I picked up my diploma today from the framing store and I wanted nothing more than to fling it across the room and let it shatter into pieces. I don't think the other interns feel like this. They all seemed hideously perky and chipper today.

And I get to go back for more tomorrow.....

My last day of vacation : (

Today was my last day of freedom for a really long time. I've had 12 weeks off and have developed some pretty lazy habits. Staying up late watching The Tonight Show, Seinfeld, and Craig Ferguson, sleeping until 11am, gradually starting my day, eating breakfast at noon at Mimi's Restaurant with my boyfriend, playing online...you get the idea. Well that all ends tomorrow. I have 3 days of orientation then BAM!, my first call night I will be guaranteed to be running at least 1 or 2 codes. What have I gotten myself into?? I really hope I don't seriously hurt somebody.

One of my buddies asked me today what kind of shoes I wear to the hospital. The black ones are Clarks and the khaki ones are Merrells. I like both of them. The Clarks squeak when I walk but the Merrells are a little too tight with my Thorlo running socks. Pick your poison. Squeaky or tight. The main thought is that they both slip on and require no shoelaces.

Well I think I'll go sit on my porch and lament the end of my freedom some more.