Sometimes, it helps to remember....

Today, on the whole, was not a bad day. First day on the consult service. It was decent, if anxious. Gonna be an anxious week, I think.

But I slept so poorly last night. Not super sure why. Which is why I'm going to be a little early tonight...

Sunday, in bullet points

* Went to work this morning. Not horrible. Finished up at Starbucks around 11:30.

* Came home. Ate lunch. Tried to nap. Didn't so much work. See above, re:Starbucks.

* My dad's in the hospital. Probably pneumonia, unless it isn't. Either way, he's feeling pretty good. Stress echo tomorrow. And probably an upcoming post about why you shouldn't sit around for a few hours waiting for chest pain to get better (Yeah, Dad, that one was aimed at you).

* I did something else this afternoon. I so no longer remember what the hell it was.

* Went to State Hospital with Maggie. Hung out with Peng and Matt, who were both moonlighting there today. Peng and one of the interns were hitting golf balls on the side lawn when I pulled up. Matt and I had a nice chat. Maggie was REALLYEXCITED about pretty much everything and ate more than a few acorns.

* Had a pre-interview gathering tonight with Sparrow, Rene, and Julius. Also five candidates. Several dog people. Much showing of phone pictures of various pups. Good time. Too much food = good leftovers. Four words: Guinness Stout Chocolate Cake.

* Talked to Sparrow for a little while afterwards. Miss seeing her as much as I perpetually seem to think I used to, even if I think that was really only in like the one month we were neighbors.

* Talked to my mom. Also my dad. Status quo.

* Damn, I'm tired...

Technical Difficulties

We're having some inconsistent connection nonsense over here tonight. So I'll just give you this fun story (if I can): I flopped on my bed tonight to read my email, etc, and Maggie jumps up on the bed with me. She snuggles up for a while, and then gets up and starts rearranging the blankets, like she does when she hides stuff. I wondered what it was she was trying to bury...and then I realized...I think she was trying to bury me. I cracked up. A lot. Which interfered with the burying....

Friday!! Oh, wait...

Today has been weird. It's Friday, but, I'm still going to work tomorrow. And it feels like Sunday. So, in the spirit of disconnectedness, we'll commence with Friday Fragments...
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I was done with rounds and notes by NINE AM today. It effing ROCKED. It's been a light load over the holiday. But I'm quite certain the rest of the weekend will suck. We'll be out of beds by the morning.
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I was reading everyone's Facebook updates this morning before I went to work, and read the details of my crazy friends who had been shopping all night or were sitting for hours out in the cold, and I thought, hmm. I wonder how many suicidal Black Friday shoppers we'll get today...
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I took the opportunity of the early dismissal to finally get my knee checked out. Damn thing started hurting last Tuesday (so, like, ten days ago), and for the LIFE of me I cannot figure out what the hell I did to it. I was sick Monday, and the next morning I woke up and my knee was all swollen. So, fine, I finally went to the Family Medicine urgent care clinic today. And I have a very distinct clicking in my left knee that says I presumptively have a torn meniscus. I kind of already knew that. Which is part of why I put off going to the doctor. But, she said it'll probably heal itself. So motrin, no gym, watchful waiting for two weeks. If it still hurts, then we'll let the orthopods get involved.
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Read this. I stumbled upon it today. I'd love to hear more of her story. Except, I think it might make me want to vomit.
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I got home around noon after work/doc/Walgreens, and my dog wasn't home. I thought that was a little weird. But then I noticed her leash was gone, and I figured that she probably didn't take herself for a walk. Sure enough, the dog walker returned her about ten minutes later.
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Immediately prior to that, I got pulled over by the local constabulary. Who was like, your plate is expired, ma'am. I said, no, see, they transferred my plates. But then they sent me this other plate in the mail, which, I don't quite get...and then I handed him the license plate. He didn't quite know what to do with that. He didn't write me up. It's a long story that probably has something to do with someone at the dealership checking the wrong box when I bought Joe, but I'll try to get it straightened out next week. Sigh.
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From the Ralphie May comedy special I'm watching right now: "But in Hollywood, they won't call her white trash. They call her bipolar."
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I'm hoping to find my Christmas decorations tomorrow. We'll see how that turns out.

Gratitude

It's Thanksgiving.

AND it's Thursday. (I know, I know, Thanksgiving always is.)

So in the spirit of both, here are ten things I'm very grateful for.

1. The amazing and awesome people in my life. Some are near, some are close only in spirit but I really do count a lot of very, very wonderful people among my friends and family.

2. Although I've spent holidays with Maggie before and find that to be generally fine, I'm incredibly grateful for the good company I had tonight. Eva and her family welcomed me into their home today, along with Sparrow, Bernie, and Liam (who were also orphans today). We had a wonderful time. And look, there were favors:

Cute, huh?

3. As annoying as working the holiday weekend may be, I'm glad I got this one, because I'm going to be able to go home for both Christmas and New Year's, I think.

4. White chocolate peppermint mochas, and the best friend who introduced me to them.

5. The amazingness and wonder of children. I'm really looking forward to seeing my assorted nieces and nephews in a month.

6. Being a third year resident. Because you know I never thought I'd make it to second year.

7. Warm sun. Brisk fall days and rustling leaves. Softly falling snow. The smell of spring.

8. That there are things in the south that bloom this time of year. It's very cool.

9. The world's most adorable, most wonderful, smartest, cutest dog.

10. This crazy, messed-up, hilarious, dysfunctional, totally amazing life that I lead.

What dreams may come

Good night out

Peng and Chef fed us well tonight. It was sort of an impulsive thing - Chef had pork belly and needed people to help eat it. Cleo, Mike, and Matt rose to the challenge. I came along and ate salad (really freaking good salad). And butternut squash. And - wait for it - brussel sprouts.

It was a long ass, exhausting day. So the evening of good company, good food, and good wine was a welcome nightcap.

I really like my friends. I know that's kind of an obvious statement, but it often strikes me...I have good people around me (literally and in spirit). And that's pretty awesome.

More good advice

Get comfy. Put your feet up. Snuggle in under a light blanket.

Then? Read this.

I love this little article so much.

I absolutely think this is the way our society should work. Or maybe I'm really a displaced European. But I think I would do much better day to day (and maybe, someday, I will) with a diurnal sleep cycle. Or at least a little nap in the afternoon.

Then again, maybe it's my totally exhausting 70 hour a week job and a culture of residency that doesn't value sleep much at all (although, I concede, my program is better than most).

So, given that? I'm going to go knit a little longer...and then I'm going to bed early...

(Thanks, robin, for sharing.)

Doggone funny

So, today, I spent the day knitting (I have one blanket done, and the other halfway done, that need to be done Thursday) and fussing and frittering. I got an oil change. I got some groceries. I rearranged the furniture in my room and putzed around in there for a while. While I was doing this, I found a Jumbone, still wrapped and waiting for puppy love. So I offered it to Mags, and she giddily grabbed it and ran downstairs with it. Happy dog.

Fine, okay, so I finished the square I was knitting, and we went out for a walk. We come back in, I give her the obligatory treat, I wander off into the kitchen to reheat some leftovers and load the dishwasher. And after a while I peek in on my doggie, and she's passed out in the middle of the living room floor. But behind her, I see something...peculiar.

It's a very dirty Jumbone.

Now, this makes no sense to me. Because, I know she didn't bring anything in from outside. We no longer have a dog door. How in the world could it have gotten so much dirt on it? I started to worry that the "dirt" was actually ants or something equally icky. So I walk over, and look at it, and I think to myself, hmm, that looks kind of like....potting soil. What in the world...

And then it hits me.

So I walk back into the dining room, where the plants I just brought in from outside are lined up by the window.

Maggie had buried her Jumbone in the potted lemon tree.

I laughed really, really hard.

And then I rinsed it off and gave it back to her. She immediately took it back to her crate and started gnawing on it. She wasn't about to make that mistake again...

Good advice.

Be nice to those around you.



Because one day, you might not be the big dog anymore, you might just be the old dog.

Turred.

(Apparently that means "tired" in Southern)

I'm so freakin' tired. It's been a long effing day, and I can't even thing straight enough to come up with something clever to say.

(Except I do find it notable that I originally wrote that as "strait". As in, jacket....clearly a sign that I need one...)

So, here's something to amuse you, care of Barb. A little gross, kind of juvenile, and really, really freakin' funny.

Long ass week

So, I sit down at my computer tonight to write something bloggy, and I find yesterday's post...still waiting....hadn't published. Guess it decided not to. Bleh.

So, there it is.

Meanwhile, read this story.

This case has been in my periphery for a while, although I didn't know it. I'm glad they found her and the families involved can have closure. And I hope her husband gets a really big, really sadistic cellmate.

And did you hear Oprah's retiring her talk show in 2011? That might actually be a sign of the apocalypse. Maybe we should be worried about 2012....

I've gotten a fair amount of bad news in the past couple of days. And did I mention, Monday I was sick with this URI thing. Tuesday, my left knee gets all swollen and sore. I don't think the two are related, but I'm really annoyed by both. I don't actually remember doing anything to said knee...

So....here's something a little happier...



Also happy? Tomorrow's Friday!!

Whoosh....

Tuesday, Tuesday...

One day closer to Friday.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling a little better.

And, I need to go to bed.

So, here's a fun link, courtesy of robin...

Blehhhh, Monday.

Today, itself, wasn't too bad. However...I woke up at 3am, and was a little stuffier than usual. Went back to sleep a half hour later or so, woke up again when my alarm went off, started sneezing. And on the way to work, I couldn't stop sneezing. And by mid-morning, started to feel pretty darn crappy, had a little fever, etc. I got summarily dismissed from afternoon clinic, so I came home and slept after lecture. Had a milkshake for dinner. Missed Peng's housewarming party (I owe you a Riesling, hon). And am now going back to bed. I'm still holding on to the delusion that it's just a big allergy attack, but...

I did find this, though, that I think kind of sums things up:

Sunday night

I'm up way too late on a school night again.

I had SUCH a productive day today (finally!). Mags and I got up this morning, bummed around for a bit, and then I went to Starbucks and spent more time on paperwork. Which I finished. Seriously!! I'm totally caught up!! You know, until tomorrow, when I get behind on my notes again... Anyway. Then I made it back to the gym for the first time in almost 2 weeks. I picked up some lunch, came home, and then....wait for it...I cleaned. No, like, I unpacked and stuff! You know, it's only been six months since I moved back here. And this morning, if you'd come to my house, I would've made you stand on the step, unless you already knew me well enough that you were at this point required to love me. Now? The first floor still isn't awesome, but it's clean enough that I'd let you in my house. I'd even invite you to sit down.

Crazy, I tell you, crazy.

This evening we had a dinner for the prospectives who are interviewing tomorrow (it's recruiting season again...). It was at a pretty nice place down the way from the hospital. We had six prospectives, two spouses, and four of us. It was a pretty good time actually. And I have leftovers easily for two days. I had a really interesting time talking to one of the gals and her husband, who's a high school teacher and had some great stories to tell about his students (his wife was like, "When I was on the Adolescent unit, we discovered that we do the same job"). Plus there was chocolate. And then I went to Whole Paycheck and picked up a couple of things I needed and spent the whole time being "that person" on the phone with Veronica, who has nearly convinced me that I need to write a book called Queen Nut in the Nuthouse. Don't steal that, it's mine.

Anyhow, y'all, it's been a good day. And now I'm hoping for a good night. Because I have an early patient tomorrow, and then? It's gonna be a long week....the only night this week I expect to be home at any reasonable hour is Friday. Oy...

Saturday amusement

So, you know how, when you go to Google, and you start typing in whatever it is you're searching for, Google tries to be all helpful and suggest things you might be looking for.

Sometimes, it goes very, very wrong. Sometimes? It just gets weird. But often, it's pretty darn funny.

I stumbled across this site today, possibly as a link from FailBlog, but I can't really remember. It was some moment of time-wasting in between writing clinic notes at Starbucks. Read. Laugh. Enjoy. And then, go to Google and try it for yourself. And if you're feeling really adventurous? Find out why exactly it is that you can't own a Canadian. And let me know.

Fr d ay fra ent s

Because I wasn't fragmented enough by the end of the week....
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Apparently there's a nationwide shortage of propofol. The company is blaming a manufacturing error, but personally? I had no idea Michael Jackson's habit was that bad...
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The end result of the above is that this morning in the ECT suite we had to use sevoflurane, an inhaled anesthetic. I...I can't stand that stuff. I've had it a couple of times when I was under the knife, and I had a hell of a time coming out of it, I was nauseated; it's good stuff for most people, but I'm just not a big fan. And I remember when I was in GYN, when we'd have a long day of cases, I'd occasionally be quite woozy and wacky from inhaling that stuff all day. So when I smelled that this morning, I was not super pleased to be standing at the head of the bed.

One of my inpatients, however, came back up to the floor after his morning ECT treatment all like, "wow, they used this different anesthesia today, and man, that stuff was great! I feel so much better!!" I relayed this to the team downstairs between cases, and they all cracked up. Apparently he was one of the few people that had a pretty profound activation reaction to the anesthetic, and got rather giggly and was flirting with the nurses.
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My dog is sleeping with her back feet up by her head. She is the cutest thing ever.
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Here's a funny story I'm stealing from my cousin Danielle - her daughter, who's 2, came up and told her that the dog had nipped her. Danielle asked, why did he do that? Her too-smart-for-her-own-good kid says, "Because I pissed him off."
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I'm watching this week's SVU while I write this. All the major players are bickering at each other. That kind of makes me queasy, like watching your friends' parents fight.
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I do appreciate that Alex Cabot is back - again - though. And when the hell did Dickie Stabler grow up and get adorable?
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So things get a little loose in the psychiatry department on Friday afternoons. This evening, Eva comes into my office and convinces me and Betty to accompany her down the ER for a brief little thing she had to do down there. So we're on our way down, and we were contemplating what you would call a group of psychiatrists? A herd? A gaggle? Eva says, nah, I'm pretty sure it would be a murder, like crows. A murder of psychiatrists. I said, hmm....do you think we're really a murder? Or just, like, a homicidal ideation? So we start giggling about this. And relate the story to Sparrow, who looks at us, deadpan, shakes her head and says, "Word salad." Which lead to a lot of cackling (shrink humor. Not to mention that at this point, Eva, Betty, Peng and I were sitting in an office that belonged to none of us) and Betty howling, "We're a homicidal word ideation salad!" I, of course, couldn't leave that alone, and finally caught enough breath to yelp, "We're a homicidal salad!!!"

Heh. And our patients think we're sane....

Oops.

Once upon a time, in my first year of medical school, two of my friends and I decided to go to South Carolina for spring break. It was February in Chicago, which equals cold, grey, and dismal. We were grumpy, we were tired, we were all contemplating making excuses to not go and to hole up in our respective houses for the week. But, we piled into my Jeep, and we headed for sunnier, beachier pastures.

And something really, really interesting happened.

Within two days of being there, I was feeling SO MUCH BETTER. I kind of overshot "better" a little, actually. I was up, and going, and focused. We stayed up late and I was still up way before my friends. I was sleeping like three hours a night and was just fine. Yeah, I was hypomanic. Which was mild, and productive, and actually kind of delightful. And started to wear off after a couple of days.

I don't know if what I "have" is technically Seasonal Affective Disorder. I tend to think of it more as light responsiveness. But the point is, I do way better with sunshine, less well with lack of sunshine (this is one of the many reasons I'm not a radiologist...). I've always sort of know that about myself, I often underrepresent it in the day to day.

But this morning...I woke up at three. I was up for a half hour or so. I went back to sleep. I woke up at ten to 5. None of this is all too unusual for my insomniac self, frankly. But then my alarm went off at 5:10. And after three whacks at the snooze bar...I was like...why is it so damn hard for me to get out of bed? Why has it been so hard since I got back from Hawaii? I wasn't even jet-lagged. I mean, I...um......oh.

So I rolled over and started Googling dawn simulators.

We had a lecture last week (on a grey, rainy day) about Seasonal Affective Disorder. And our attending spent a while extolling the virtue of light boxes and dawn simulators (Sparrow says to me today, what, can't you just open your blinds in the morning? Brat). And so I did a little research this morning...I did a little research later this evening...and one of the options I found on Amazon was this:

This gives a whole new meaning to "light on your feet."

"Nana's ready to have her picture taken."