36?!

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.

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!)

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

I have a nephew. He's 26. He's amazingly intelligent, but he lacks a bit of common sense. You see, he works at a pretty upscale restaurant, and is a really good waiter, so I hear. Well, last night, The Boyfriend and I went to eat at the "sister" restaurant of the one my nephew works at. One of the guys there who was waiting tables I knew from my former days as a waitress. He came over to me and as we were talking, mentions how sorry he was to hear about my nephews mom (My brother's ex-wife). I'm confused and asked him what he meant. He said that she had died about 3 weeks ago. Wow! How come nobody told me? So my nephew's boss walks by to say hi to me (I know him as well). I mentioned about my nephews mom dying and that I had no idea and started asking him when and what happened. This death was apparently 3 weeks ago! So by this time, I'm sort of irritated that nobody in the family mentioned this little detail to me. After dinner, I called my mom to see if she'd heard this. She hadn't. So I called my brother and asked him if he knew about it. He told me that my nephew made up the story because he didn't want to go to work. What!? Who would do that? Who would lie about their own mother dying so they wouldn't have to go to work?! Who's going to die next, me?

My brother was not happy about it either, and only found out because my nephew (his son) emailed him and told him what he'd done (my brother knows just about everyone in the restaurant business, including my nephew's boss, so I guess he needed him to cover for him). Anyway, he told me that he warned nephew that this will come back to bite him in the ass. It just may have tonight. I have a feeling his boss is going to ask him why his aunt had no idea about the death in the family.

Family drama...it never stops.

My Cool, Cosmopolitan Friends!

Sunday is finally over!

I thought it would never end. I was on call from 8am Sunday until 8am this morning, then I had to stay and see patients for my rotation, then attend our noon conference. I didn't get home until about 2pm...I was soooo tired. I did get some sleep but it was pretty staggered. I had to admit 12 patients to the hospital..which takes me about 1 1/2 hours per patient, then I had 2 codes in the middle of the night. The last one was a guy the family refused to make DNR despite the fact he's been unresponsive for several weeks in the ICU...it's that whole "futile care" thing I was talking about. He's been barely hanging on for weeks, his extremities were cold and he's had no signs of brain activity. Well, he finally flatlined and the daughter wanted us to keep trying to save him. To make matters worse, she spoke no English at all and at 3am we had to use an interpreter by phone to talk to her. After about 30 minutes of CPR and epinephrine, I put an end to it all. I still can't believe what people put their loved one's through...loved ones who really NEED to die. If someone has even the slightest chance of survival, I'm in total support of making sure all is done to save them, but in situations like the one I just mentioned, it makes me angry. People deserve to die with some amount of diginity, not the way this gentleman was forced to die.

The first code I had was a guy who should not have died. I don't exactly know what happened except that his blood pressure and heart rate dropped. The nurse called the "rapid assessment team" to see him and by the time I got there (in about 2 minutes) he had no pulses so we called a code. We worked on him a LONG time. I intubated him and we kept pushing drugs. The attending got there about 45 minutes later, we worked a bit longer and he then stopped us. We weren't going to get this guy back. The family was all out in the hall crying. I'm always amazed at how quickly family can get to the hospital in the middle of the night. So after the attending had us stop resuscitation, we all just stood there. The gentleman still had some basic brainstem function and took intermittent breaths every now and then, even though his heart was not pumping blood. We all just watched him. It was a very strange phenomenon I'd never seen before. I kept telling myself that for all practical purposes, he was already dead, but to watch him breathe.....I felt uneasy. After about 10 minutes he stopped.

I watched last night's Desperate Housewives with The Boyfriend tonight. I'd forgotten just about everything from the season finale, so I was a bit confused. Confused or not, I had a good time snuggling on the couch, getting to forget about the events of last night. My boyfriend is somewhat of a goofball. I invented a new kind of kiss...the Lizard Kiss. He didn't care for that too much and started giving me Lizard Pinches. What a copycat! : )

Bedtime.

So today we all got our asses chewed out by the program director. All the guys were complaining to her about one particular nurse who "demeans" them. Our PD got mad that they didn't mention it earlier and then started yelling at us that the whole hospital is complaining about us. Oh, really? Than why didn't YOU mention it earlier to US??? As it turns out, she's gotten a lot of complaints about how the cardiac/respiratory arrests are being handled, particularly one that occurred in the radiology department. I relaxed after I heard that. I haven't run a code in about 6 weeks, so I know it's not ME that anyone is complaining about. Plus, I heard about the respiratory arrest in radiology and it sounded like a big cluster...I'm glad I had no part of that.

So that bitch session this afternoon gave me a big ol' headache but it's gone now. Oddly, the nurse that all the guys were complaining about I happen to think is pretty nice. Hopefully they will find a way to resolve their issues with her. Today was the first I'd heard of it all.

After the bitch-fest was finally over, I returned to the ICU only to find out that one of my patients had just died in a freakish way. Too hard to explain though so I'm not even going to go there. My attending was pretty upset about it. I think he had tears in his eyes when he told me about it. Everybody was pretty visibly upset.

This blog seems depresing lately. It's not that these events are anything new...this stuff happens everyday, usually I just don't blog about it.

Well I think I'm finished mourning over the results of the now infamous football game that occurred Saturday. Time to move on.

So my 2 friends from high school and I got together over the weekend. I've decided they are both way cooler than I. We are thinking of starting an US Weekly reading club instead of a regular book club, since I don't have much extra time for reading.

A couple of hours ago in the ICU, I watched a guy in his early 20's die. He took 4 bottles of Tylenol PM yesterday and was found barely breathing last night by his mother. I didn' realize you could die from Tylenol in just one day- I thought it took 3 days, but now that I think about it, I think it was the "PM" portion of the Tylenol PM that killed him that fast. I think he fell asleep, became hypoxic, and sufferred injury to his brain from the lack of oxygen. He was found barely breathing, (something I didn't think was a common side effect of just plain ol' Tylenol overdose). Anyway, so he started seizing and his heart rate kept dropping really low. NOTHING would stop the seizures and he kept at it until he finally died. It was pretty ugly. I feel bad for any family member who has to make a loved one DNR (do not resuscitate), but his mother did the right thing. We were providing futile care.

Until today, I thought I was the dumbest resident in my group. I don't think that anymore. I initially responded to the code blue since I work in that ICU and I knew it would take a few minutes for the on-call resident to get there. The nurses were telling me what was going on when one of the other residents (not the designated on-call resident) showed up and sort of "took over". He really made an ass out of himself because he started asking them really dumb questions and telling them to shock the guy. The nurses were all rolling their eyes behind his back. I just stood back and watched in amusement. Despite what they do on Grey's Anatomy, you don't shock asystole or bradycardia (yet another reason to hate that show).

Now onto less depressing issues, like fashion:

I'm debating about these new "skinny" jeans. I think it is a lame attempt to make denim look like leggings, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to re-live that era again. On the other hand, I may end up buying a pair anyway because they are the new "it" item. I swore I would never buy low rise jeans and then one day I realized I was wearing "Mom" jeans. Now all my jeans are at least slightly low rise-definitely not up to my navel! Ok so back to skinny jeans. Maybe I'll just buy straight leg jeans. The problem I have now is all my jeans are bootcut so I can't wear flats or loafers with them, so I need at least one pair of jeans that don't require heels or boots. So which is it? Skinny or straight?

And yet another good day...!

Today was fun! Funny how you get a first impression about somebody and then later they prove you wrong. I had a really bad impression of this Dr. X, because I thought he was mean to me and hated me. This week he has been really nice and telling me I'm doing a good job. Looking back, I'm glad he's been hard on me. It's made me a better, more thorough resident. My ICU notes are much better than they were even a week ago.

This morning he had me re-intubate a guy who needed a bronchoscopy. The guy had a big neck, a huge tongue, and was coughing....3 strikes against an easy intubation. I tried twice with two different blades but just couldn't see around his tongue. I didn't want to have to let Dr. X do it, because that would be admitting defeat, so we readjusted his head so it extended better, and I got the tube right in. I was soooo relieved! He was coughing and everytime he coughed, the tube would get resistant when I tried to put it in, but I did finally get it in. I got a "good job" from Dr. X, which doesn't come easy.

I resisted the temptation to get a lovely looking piece of cake at lunch today. Then Julie joined me and what did she have on her plate? A big piece of cake, so I got up and got one too.

Did I mention I started running again? It hasn't been difficult this time. I guess walking 3 miles a day does more for my endurance than I though it did. Now if only my sore knees would cooperate.....

Please wish me an easy call night tomorrow. Thanks.

Does anyone actually read this blog? I'm not really very funny and I spend a lot of time complaining.

I've been way tired this week. I was on call 24 hours Saturday and it was the worst call shift I've had to date. I was up absolutely all night and very busy. I always had a handful of patients to admit throughout the night, plus I had a lot of problems with patients I had admitted earlier in the day. One guy was dangerously hyperkalemic and I was up in the ICU for much of the wee hours trying to get his potassium down. I had a lot of nursing calls and just miscellaneous stuff. Around 2am, I was near tears and wanting desperately to just walk out so I called The Boyfriend who gave me a loving pep talk. Around 5am I was just so tired that everytime my pager went off I just thought it was funny. Needless to say, Sunday after I got home I was a complete zombie. I'm still tired. I was going to run this morning before work, and when my alarm went off, I got up, looked out the window, and went back to bed for an hour.

I did have a good day though. I got notes written on all my ICU patients before lunch, and the attending who I thought hated me told me today that the notes I wrote were "really good". : ) We got finished early and I got to go home at 3pm.

I tried out a new Yoga for Weight Loss video I got for free last week. There's just something not right about the title of that video. I'll be the first to admit yoga can be difficult, but it's more stretching and balance than anything. At least for me, weight loss involves getting your heart rate up and sweating my butt off doing The Firm videos or running.....not yoga.

Well this weekend looks promising. I'm getting together with some friends from elementary school hopefully on Sunday. We got together over the summer, but that seems like a long time ago. Plus, last time they saw me, I was sporting a different nose. I have a new one now..not yet the final product but slowly getting there every week. So, we are trying to put together a little slumber party that night and I was able to take off Monday morning. It will seem like old times. One of the friends, Pinkstripe, had the kind of mom that bought cool snacks whenever there was a slumber party. Maybe I'll drink a suicide for old times' sake. Then there was Robyn, whose mom threw her a "pizza quick sauce" birthday party. We spent the whole time making our own mini pizzas. Old friends are the best!

What a week! I'm glad it's over, except tomorrow I start a 24 hour call.

So I started this new rotation in the transplant ICU, which consists mostly of people in liver failure. I got this one patient on Tuesday who had been in the hospital for 5 days from undiagnosed but end stage liver failure. He took a turn for the worse and came to the ICU. His story was really odd. Last week he actually went to work and was "fine". He was highly educated and had a nice white collar type job. The next day his wife thought he was acting weird so she took him to the ER. I don't know how they failed to notice he was bright yellow and had spider angiomas all over his chest, but they didn't know he had liver failure. He just got worse and worse during his stay, got infected with staph, developed sepsis, then got pneumonia and it was all downhill from there. He was ineligible for a liver transplant because he is an active alcoholic. When I came in this morning he was completely unresponsive, his blood pressure was 70/30 and that was with 4 blood pressure IV's continuously flowing. His hands and feet were cold, and his pupils were barely responsive. He was dead for all practical purposes. His wife came in later in the morning and signed the paperwork to remove care. She asked the 3 of us if we would do the same if it was our family member and we emphatically nodded our heads. We decided to leave the ventilator on but we removed all of his IV meds that were keeping his blood pressure up. He died in 10 minutes. I'm so new at this and it's really weird to think that last week he was "fine" and going to work and now he's dead. I felt so weird all day about it. I see dead people quite a bit, but this was the first that I was acutally involved in the care that turned out to be futile. I feel the worst for his wife and their 14 year old son. Maybe they had made big Christmas plans this year, or maybe the family was going to get tickets to a big game next month. Not now.

So I'm really starting to think that one doctor doesn't like me too much. This month, I'm on a rotation with him in the ICU. On Friday, my first day, I went in an hour earlier than he does so I could see some patients and get the notes written. Well, it took me an hour just to write one note because the patient had been there for awhile and I had to practically read the whole chart to get an idea of what was going on. So Dr. X gets there and starts reading my note and finally asks how long it took me to write it. "about an hour" I said. His reply: Well, it's a pretty poorly written note. Whatever. I can't win.

I was on call that night too. It was the easiest call night yet! Only 2 admits and one pronouncement. One of the admits was a diabetic hooker who decided to buy cocaine with her money instead of her diabetes supplies (which she had left in somebody's car 2 days earlier). She ended up with her 2nd case of DKA in 3 weeks. "The cocaine was only 10 dollars", she told me. "Well that's 10 dollars you don't have today, isn't it?". I don't know why I waste my breath. Her life would be so much easier if she weren't diabetic....oh yeah, and a drug addict......and a hooker.

So The Boyfriend is STILL SICK!! I thought he was getting better until this weekend when he took a turn for the worse. However, his voice has taken on a raspy sound which I find sorta sexy. The main event of the weekend was watching football. I'm so happy football season is back! For some odd reason, our team isn't wearing their names on the back of their jerseys, so The Boyfriend, always trying to stay ahead, printed off a team roster he found online-except that a lot of the numbers were wrong and included people that had been kicked off the team. I couldn't help but make fun of the list and make up names when he asked who number so-and-so was. He didn't share my amusement and I got bonked on the head several times with the list during the course of the game. Unfortunately, I'm on call Saturday so the next opportunity for head bonks won't be for 2 more weeks!

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?