Dunzo

Last Friday was my last day of medical school EVER.  Sadly, there was no party, no fanfare, just one last test to close out my anesthesia rotation.  And it was harder than I had expected.  Thank you, anesthesia department, for making sure that I felt stupid up to the last second of medical school.  Mission accomplished.

So now I'm done with school and I don't start residency until July 1st.  Ah vacation, glorious vacation....er....

What?  Weezy wants to get up at 6:30?

Weezy needs to be entertained every second of the day?

Weezy needs her laundry done?

Weezy needs a bath?

Weezy needs me to follow her around to make sure she doesn't choke on something/smack her head on something/knock something over/lick the floor/abuse the dogs?

Weezy doesn't understand that mommy is on vacation!

So this past week has been a crash course in stay-at-home-mommying.  I'm convinced that I stink at it.  Weezy's convinced that I stink at it and has asked, on several occasions, when I get to go back to work so Oma can come over.  We are learning together.....this will be a process.

Thankfully, GG came over on Wednesday and played with the Weez so I could try to get a few things done around the house.

GG has a way of getting Weezy to fall asleep.  Nicely done GG, nicely done.  While this was going on, I was dusting in our sunroom.  I was all proud of myself too and then Danny came home and didn't even notice.  My feelings were crushed.  I'm still recovering.  

Then Bethany and Natalie came over for a visit.  And Bethany brought Chipotle!  She is my favorite person.  

And that baby of hers is one cute little punkin.  Look at that face!  

While Bethany and I were eating, we did what any good parents would do.  Tied our children down and plopped them in front of the TV.  Ah silence :)  They were watching educational, life enriching television....of course!

Natalie was born in December and Bethany is already skinny again.  Skinnier than she was before Natalie.  It's a good thing she brought me food, otherwise I wouldn't speak to her. 

On Thursday we had coffee with our friends Nici and Maggie.  Well, Nici and I had coffee.  Weezy and Maggie practiced interacting with each other.  Maggie was very eager to play, but Weez was in a bit of a stand-offish mood.  Aloof, really.  And a bit whiney.  Not sure what that was about, but she warmed up eventually.  Nici gave me some pointers on stay-at-home-mommery.  She seems to have it mastered.  Her house (at least what I saw of it) was spotless, her hair was curled (at 8:30 in the morning), and there were fresh muffins and fresh coffee in the kitchen.  Freaking birds were chirping outside of her window.  Oh, and I'm pretty sure she makes her own baby food too.  If she didn't give me lemon-poppy seed muffins, I wouldn't have spoken to her either. 

After our playdate, The Weez and I were on our own.  She was tuckered out from being snotty, so she took a 2.5 hour nap when we got home.  During that time, I contemplated my existence, cleaned the kitchen, dusted the blinds, came to the conclusion that I need a cleaning lady, remembered that we can't afford a cleaning lady and then wept violently.  Then I watched Days of Our Lives.  

Tomorrow, Weezy and Mommy make cookies...... 

 

A Recent Conversation

(Between me and James B. Nutter Guy (JBNG))

Me: Hello Mr. JBNG!  We're thinking about buying a new house.  How much can we get approved for?

JBNG: Well, lets see here.  How much money do you make?

Me: Well....my husband is a teacher and I am getting ready to graduate from medical school, so our income will increase a bit starting in July.

JBNG:  Oh, well, that's great!  So where are you going to be working?

Me: The Med Center

JBNG:  A doctor, huh?  That's great!  I'm sure we can get you set up with a great loan.  How much are you going to be making?

Me:  I'll be making about (insert measly resident salary here).

JBNG:  Oh.....

Me:  Uh.....?

JBNG:   I thought you said you were going to be a doctor.

THE END

Anesthesia

If I had been around the anesthesia department earlier in medical school, I might have considered it as a career choice.  But, alas, my soul belongs to the Internal Medicine department.  And that's okay, I still love IM. 

In the past week, I've been hanging out in the OR with the anesthesia folks.  I show up at around 6:00 in the morning, help hang fluids, draw up drugs and do whatever else they tell me to do.  "Hey med student, go get me a 20-something-or-other-anesthesia-foreign-language-talk."  Yessiree!  And then I spend 15 minutes hunting around the supply room, for what, I have no idea....but it had the number 20 in it.

You get to see some pretty cool stuff in the OR.  We all do surgery rotations during our third year, but it's a lot of the same stuff over and over.  I saw lots of gall bladders, prostates and livers last year.  Got a little boring after a while (with the exception of the day that the attending stepped out of the room on a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection and I got to be first assist with the resident and he let me use the Bovie right up between the renal artery and the aorta....sweet!).  But in just one week of anesthesia, I've seen a brain surgery, a gunshot wound trauma, a spine surgery and a bypass surgery.  Here's a brief run down:


1. The brain - pretty cool.  And, well....it does take a neurosurgeon.  While I was in the room, the resident and I were just chillin', making sure the vitals were looking good, when all of a sudden I hear sounds reminiscent of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Oh yeah, that's the saw cutting into the skull.  No biggie.  Then the surgeon hands chunk of said skull to the scrub nurse, and there's the brain.  Hello brain!  At this point I stopped paying attention to what the anesthesiologist was doing....because there was a BRAIN - sticking out of a patient's head - and the flow of isoflurane just didn't seem very interesting anymore - because there was a BRAIN - did I mention that already? 

2. GSW (16 in the clip and one in the hole....I love Nate Dogg & Warren G) - So, some poor kid got shot in the gut.  Lost a lot of blood.  About 20 people packed into an OR with blood all over the place trying to keep him alive.  As far as I know, they did.  Didn't stay for the whole case, because I went to.....

3. Cabbage - actually CABG (coronary artery bypass graft) - it's not every day you see someone's chest cracked open (more Texas Chainsaw Massacre noises) and their beating heart right in front of you.  Well, unless you're a cardiothroacic surgeon....or Indiana Jones.  Anyhow, so there beats the heart.  Then they hook it up to the "pump," which shunts blood away from the heart and lungs and reoxygenates it and sends it back into the body, and then they STOP THE HEART.  Like, for real.  One minute it's ticking away and the next, it stops.  Flat line on the monitor and everything.  BEEEEEEEEEEP.  Then the surgeon goes to work fixing up the coronary arteries.  The surgeons usually have their iPODs playing during surgery, and this particular surgeon had one of the most appropriate surgery songs I've ever heard in the OR - I Will Try To Fix You - by Coldplay.  Cute.  I think this surgeon really likes music because as he was mucking around with the heart, he was giving a dissertation, comparing and contrasting Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.  He went on and on about how Taylor Swift is a better musician, but is still just a tall, skinny, awkward teenage girl without a lot of stage presence.  While Miley Cyrus, who doesn't necessarily have all of the musical talent in the world, is a fantastic entertainer.  This was all done with a completely straight face....like he was lecturing on some cutting-edge cardiothoracic surgery breakthrough....except he was talking about Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.  I love surgeons. 

On a super-exciting note, I got my first intubation today!  Right through the cords on the first try.  Made me feel better after the two failed attempts earlier in the week. 

Have a lovely weekend! 

Last Palliative Care Blog....I Promise.

Now that I'm done with Palliative Care and have moved on to Anesthesia, I thought I'd do a little wrap up of my month on PC. 

Here are a few things I learned......

1. The Train.  People die in hospitals every day.  Some days, however, it seems that one person after another dies....every room you walk into, the patient has either just expired, or is taking his/her final breaths.  On these days, it is common to hear talk around the PC service that "The Train" came today, or "The Train is here."  In my head, the train is much like the Polar Express, except that it takes you to Heaven....hopefully :)

2. "I see dead people."  One strange phenomenon that happens as death draws near, is that patients will tell you that they were visited by family members.  That's great....everyone should have family come by to say their goodbyes.  Except that the family members that these patients report seeing are usually people that have already died.  It's crazy how many times this happens.  And it seems to me that it only happens when people are very close to death.  It might be easy to chalk this up to delirium, but it just happens so consistently that there has to be something to it.

3. Miracles.  Most people who are dying pray for miracles.  Family members hold out hope and say that they are praying and that God can work miracles.  While this is all well and good, (and you can bet your false teeth that I'd be the first to hit my knees if myself of anyone I love was dying) sometimes I wonder if we have a teeny-tiny-in-a-very-small-box-idea of what miracles actually are.  I believe whole-heartedly that God can do anything He wants, be it cure cancer, reverse congestive heart failure, bring people back from death.  Most of us would say that these things are miracles.  And I would agree.  The longer I spend around death and dying, however, I've come to believe that death is just the beginning of the true miracle.  It's a miracle that I can't comprehend and don't understand, but a miracle that I know is greater than anything we could fathom in this life.  The miracle was set in place a couple of thousand years ago when Jesus hung on a cross and died for all of us.  And yesterday we celebrated the miracle of the resurrection and the forgiveness of sins and the eternal life that is offered to all of us.  That miracle blows curing cancer and healing brain death out of the water (although I would take either of those if offered.)  I'm not trying to make light of death, because it sucks.  It's horrible, it hurts, it leaves a hole in our hearts.  But I just have a feeling that when we die, there is something so spectacular waiting for us that, well....there really are no words.  Just the voices of hundreds of thousands of angels.

"Where O death is now thy sting?"

I hope you hear the angels someday.....but not too soon :)