Oyyy, I'm still an intern....

Fuck. Somewhere over the holiday weekend I forgot how much work this was.

The new med students are cute, though. They're all super-eager and green. One of them, today, was like, "Can I watch you put in that order?" Aww.

Today was loooooooooong. Which wasn't helped by the fact that I was running on 5 1/2 hours of sleep. Oh, holy shit, was I cranky when I left.

Looooooooooong.

Yesterday, when everyone else was running around being all jittery and anxious and whatnot about their first day, I'll confess, I was sort of glad to be up to my old routine. Today? Today I was a little jealous. *I* wanna be in clinic, too...

I will be soon enough. I cherry picked my first patient today. She's this woman I inherited on the unit who has all of this totally amazing art in our gallery (the coolest thing ever). It was like meeting a celebrity. I saw her name on my patient roster and was like, oh! Oh my God! I can't afford her stuff! And wouldn't you know she needs a new outpatient psychiatrist. So, I flipped open my appointment book and called our scheduler and ta-da! She's my patient now. I'm so excited.

Oy. But I was there a solid 12 hours today, and only left when I did because I had an appointment with my shrink. Tomorrow, we start this "academic half day" thing, where we're in lecture all afternoon. So I have to get all my orders done and patients seen and notes written (HA!) by noon. Yeah, it's going to be another late night. But I'll probably come home and work, at least. My goal is to be OTD at 5 on the nose.

And now, of course, I'm still totally wiped and it's 11:15 because, you know, I came home, and had to talk to my folks (Happy Birthday, Dad!!), and then to my friend who called from California, and then I had to go next door and have a glass of high-quality Riesling with Sparrow and bitch about work (I'm mostly through this post, and she calls and is like "Oh, I see out the window that you're still up. Want wine?" Of course I do). So I foresee that tomorrow's also going to be a highly caffeinated day...

Another one bites the dust

I am HOME. Call is OVER. Only 5 more intern calls to go.

Call was not bad. It was Mike and me tonight, and we're a good team. Which was so helpful, because I had some serious moments of "rhymes with Bluster Duck" tonight. People? People make me crazy. And it wasn't so much the patients tonight as much as it was, say, our NP who didn't bother to see the patient I'd asked her to and then left when her "shift" was over without actually telling anyone she hadn't seen the patient.

You know....I defended her for a long time, when she first started, and everyone else was all "she's horrible!" And there was a moment in there where she was starting to get better. And I said, oh, you know, there's a learning curve to this job, etc, etc, she's all anxious, we need to be empathetic, blah blah blah. You know what? She's just fucking incompetent. I'm so done. She needs to get her act together or just get the hell out of my way.

And then there was this whole fiasco on the child unit I can't even begin to describe. And I did my best to iron out the situation and get things taken care of, all the while speaking in soft, calm, soothing, dulcet tones. And I call downstairs at one point, and I say to Tyler, still in my low, syrupy, "fussy infant" voice, "Could you tube those papers up to me? Thank you, that'd be wonderful. Because I? I'm going to kick someone in the shins very, very soon."

Tyler. I do not know how we function in the 16 hours a day he's not there.

And he and Mike are a good combo. They play off each other and they're just funny together. Between the two of them, the evening ended up being downright enjoyable. And it was really nice, I have to say, because Mike? Totally understood the advantage of having me there, without actually taking advantage of having me there. Like, he saw two people in the ER, I did a direct admission and a clinic admit (also the ER patient the dumbass NP didn't see), we spent much of the last two hours of call trading pagers because one of ours would go off when we were on the phone so the other would answer it. It was just seamless, it was good teamwork, and it was wonderful. And then Benny came on at 10, and she's just generally delightful as well. All in all, not a bad night, and I got to leave at 10.

Maggie was excited that I came home. That's the best part of any call.

I'm on Saturday with Sparrow. Which is awesome, except, we have to actually find someone to take care of our dogs! But I think one of the interns has us covered.

Today was long, yo. I had nine new patients this morning when I walked on to the unit. And you know something? Nine acute psych patients? They're a lot to deal with. Really rather draining. But I actually have a reasonably pleasant bunch this go around. And possibly two ECT candidates.

I've got to go to bed. Because, I still have nine patients to deal with in the morning, it's 11:30, and oh, the new med students start tomorrow. Which could be awesome, but invariably adds work. I never really appreciated that in medical school, just how much more work med students create for the residents. Gosh, I thought we were so helpful...ah well. It was a useful delusion.

Day of rest...

PFFT! Can't even type that with a straight face....

I was productive today. Actually, this weekend.

My hair is red again.



My roots were frighteningly long...

I went to no less than four grocery stores today and spent about 3/4 of the monthly grocery budget (like I have a budget... "recommendation"). Now, admittedly, the last two trips were minimally costly efforts to pick up things I forgot the first two (three) times.

But when I left, my refrigerator contained exactly this: a bag of onions, mustard, lemon juice (actually, I probably ought to throw that out), toasted flaxseeds, an as-yet unopened container of protein powder, and one can of Starbucks Doubleshot. Oh, and that little single-serving contain of salad dressing.

After my hours of grocery shopping, the fridge looked like this (isn't this just the classic Cribs shot?):


Hmm. You'd expect more for the amount of money I shelled out today...there's a few things in the pantry, too, obviously. And I finally found Pyrex tupperware. And I bought a cactus for our office. It's very cute.

I did two loads of laundry and a crapload of dishes and tried to fix the coffeemaker, but I think it's shot. Every time I run water through it, it does this:


Ew, frankly.

I got a little work done on my Tolerance Socks yesterday while at the tire store (wouldn't you know it? My car doesn't pull to the right anymore!). Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's enough yarn left...and I realized that oh, right, I'm knitting these toe-up, which is why the ribbing I did on the top of the foot...probably should've continued through the gusset shaping....argh. I want to frog them and just start the heck over again (because, among other things, I think they're too big) but I can't find my yarn winder. Again I say, argh.


Maggie still hasn't rendered an opinion...


Peng and I also loaded up the kickass $20 fridge she found on Craigslist and took it to our office. And then I came home and helped Sparrow pick out her outfit for the first day of second year. And then I made homemade mac and cheese for dinner, with enough left over to take for the call crew tomorrow (of which I am part).

I got a ton of other things done this weekend, too, despite the 24 hours without power. I swapped out the screens so now I can actually open a window in my bedroom. I got my calendar all laid out (hey - this is exciting in my world). I at least have a list of all my patients (hopefully I can get in early enough to print out all their stuff and organize it before rounds). Sparrow and I went out for dinner last night (since we, um, had no power) and spent some time exploring downtown. I tied up a lot of little stuff.

It was a good weekend.

Let there be light!

Our power's back on! Our power's back on!

It was out for about 24 hours...in other words...just long enough for everything in my fridge and freezer to spoil. Oh well.

And just in time for a new wave of storms. Here's hoping it stays on...

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging...

So, I'm at Starbucks. Big shocker, right? I know, it's unusual. But the power's out, and there's internet here. Free, now, for registered Starbucks Card holders.

I'll confess, it's not my first trip of the day. The mutts and I headed out early this morning for the one in Durham that has a drive-through. Obviously, Maxine needed her coffee...



Sparrow was on call yesterday, so Maxine spent the day (and night) with us. She was terrified during the storm last night and stuck to me like velcro. After she tried to burrow far enough under the blankets to maybe hide under the mattress, I'm thinking. Poor thing. Maggie was our valiant protector, but if Maxine hadn't been there, I suspect she would've been holding nearly as tight.

Maxine felt better this morning when we went out to get coffee. She'd never been in my car before, and it was exciting. My car is, of course, a mess, so there was lots to explore.



Poor girls, they had a rough night. Mine was more along the lines of amusing. Like, I own something like six flashlights (don't ask) but could only find one, which would of course be the one with the dying batteries. And when I moved, I threw out all but one of my candles. Which, I finally found, but then couldn't find a match to save my damn life. On the bright side, though, I did solve a problem that I've been trying to figure out since they turned the gas on, which is how to shut off the pilot light for my gas log. Unfortunately, I figured this out while I was trying to light a birthday candle with it (as a spillikin for the bigger candle).

Crap.

Ultimately, though I did find the fancy Zippo candle lighter (it's just a lighter, but it's long and thin). In a suitcase. Where else would one keep it?

Last night was one of the few times that I'm sorry I don't smoke...anyway, though, I got the candle lit, and then promptly found myself sitting on my bed with the dogs thinking, it's 10pm. What exactly am I going to do, now? Why don't I just go to bed, already?

Ah well. Apparently there's a 70% chance of storms tonight, too, so it still might come in handy.

Like I said, things were fine this morning. I was going to get the girls up a little earlier but I figured it was best to just let sleeping dogs lie (aren't I funny?).



We tried to go for a walk this morning and canvass the neighborhood, but, it ended up being a giant disaster of knotted leashes. Which is particularly funny, considering they started out on the double leash. Maybe some other time, when there isn't as much chaos to sniff at.

So we went to Starbucks instead.

Maggie was not pleased when I decided to go back after Sparrow came home and Little Bit went with her. I actually closed the door to her crate on her feet before she'd move them.



She does this in the mornings sometimes, too. Or at the old place, she'd stay in bed and refuse to come downstairs if she knew I was getting ready for work.

I did get a lot done yesterday, though, which was nice. Because I'm not sure how productive today's going to be.

So to catch y'all up...this week has been weird. Wednesday was my last day at State Hospital. I was there for the morning so I could disorient the heck out of my poor intern (Oh! And here's this. Oh! And don't forget that. Oh! And then there's this. And this patient's crazy. And this one's a pain in the ass. And this one, well, don't get within striking distance of her. Oh, and...). The staff did a good job of scaring them for me ("Think of our patients as a female prison population." No....), so I could cross that off my to-do list.

And then I dashed back to the big house for the first half of Second Year orientation. Which was less disorienting and just total information overload than last year was. But then, it was also four days shorter.

I'm excited about this year, in general. Because y'all know what a therapy junkie I am. And I'm looking forward to clinic. And I'm glad I got to go to orientation with the rest of my class, even though I'm not starting for a month. We've been so scattered, that it was nice to be together for a while. Ruthie, who's starting in September, and Faye, who starts in November, unfortunately weren't able to join us, because they get their own little orientation later.

One thing that's going to be anxiety-provoking about this year, though is that we start applying for Child and Adolescent fellowships. And there's only 5 spots. And I think there's more than 5 of us who are interested. I'm considering one, maybe two other programs (the only one I'm likely to seriously look into is University of Maryland, because it's possible I would LOVE to go work at Sheppard-Pratt, where they have a whole unit devoted to trauma patients). But I'd rather just rotate up there for a month, because when you get right down to it, I really want to stay here for fellowship. I like the people. I could keep my therapy patients. I like where I'm living (a LOT). But I'm really unhappy to be competing against my classmates, primarily because a few of those going into child happen to also be a few of my closest friends. That's uncomfortable, unless we suddenly pare ourselves down to five or less. But, that's my own neurosis to manage.

Call, this week, was also weird. So, the way weekday call works here, there's a second year on overnight who has worked all day, an intern on until 10 who has worked all day, and another second year who comes in at 10 to relieve the intern who's on Night Float, which means they work 10p-8:30a Sunday night through Thursday night. So it's like shift work. But typically, after the intern leaves, it's you and one of your classmates.

But I'm still in the intern call pool. Which means I was on with Curly until 10, who was doing her very fist second year call (the typical division of labor is that the intern/NF resident covers the ER and the crisis pager, the second year covers direct admissions to the floor and consults. So it's different, although, sometimes when it's busy you just get shit done no matter what you're assigned to). Which, was nice for her, because she didn't have to train her intern. And then Fang came on at 10, which was also nice for him, because I'd seen five people and had one patient left to be seen in the ER and a minor task to sign out to him. And they were both fine, but it's weird to be the "underling", and you know...and I know they'll get this the next time they're on call and have one of the real interns...but I don't think some of our classmates get what it means to have Faye and me - who, you know, generally know what we're doing - in the intern call pool in July. I'm just sayin'. I'm on call Monday with Mike, with Benny as my relief. We'll see how it goes. I'm thinking it should be better - I've worked with both of them a lot.

But, I do love me a three day weekend. I think I'm going to blow this pop stand and maybe go get some new tires and a bag of dog food before I go home and see if the power's back on. Here's hoping I'm posting from home tomorrow!!

Blackout

So I'm in the middle of this big Fourth of July post last night, when this huge thunderstorm broke - thunder, lightning, high winds, hail, the whole nine yards - and just as it was starting to abate, the wind kicked up again, and *boom* - the power went out.

It's still out this morning. I think this could be why:


(Sorry about the crappy Treo photography there. Fortunately, when I went back to take a picture of it with the real camera, there was a crew there replacing the utility pole that you may or may not be able to see is cracked in half. Egh.)

Or, it could have something to do with this:


That's about a block behind our house. Fortunately, Sparrow and I did a full survey when she got home (she was on call last night), and both our houses and the landlord's seem to be fine. Can't say as much for the house down the street:


Of course, it could be worse. This is left over from one of the last big storms....


Yeah, that sucks....

Morpheus

Turns out he and I have a date tonight...I think I fell asleep at 7:45...and am going back to bed...more tomorrow, honest.

Distraction

I'm home. I just finished my last note from call. And oh holy shit am I cranky.

So, here, here's a funny picture of my dog...because you know what they say about, if you can't say anything positive....


See? Isn't that better?