I dream of Don Chilito's

Do you ever kinda-sorta wake up in the middle of the night, knowing you're dreaming, but understanding that you are talking in your sleep? This happens to me every once in a while, but I usually forget what I've said. Well, the other night, I woke up about 3:00am and said, "Regular combination burrito, red sauce, no lettuce." I looked around, realized I was in my dark bedroom, shrugged and went back to sleep. Danny was able to verify this episode the following day.

In other, semi-Don Chilito's, related news: my mom bought me some body cream a few weeks ago. It's by Burt's Bees and it's called Honey Shea Butter. Well, it smells just like honey, and when I use it, I smell like a big sopapilla who has been rolling around in a vat of honey. This, of course smells....well....delicious, but I'm not sure it's appropriate to smell like a honey-drenched sopapilla. I remember my friend Rachel's mom commenting that we were too old to smell like fruit (Country Apple, anyone?), does this apply to pastries as well? Any thoughts?

The best thing I've heard lately....

"He's really cute, but he's so schizophrenic!"
- anonymous attending

This stinks

After much denial and misguided rationalization, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am allergic to my very favorite candle - the Applewood scented Woodwick. In the beginning it was easy to contribute my sneezing and watery eyes to "just something in the air" or "maybe I'm getting a little cold". But it has become quite obvious that the culprit of my symptoms is, in fact, my dear friend the Woodwick.





Because I have 1 and 3/4 of these large (and somewhat pricey) candles left, I will continue to burn them until my symptoms become unbearable or I go into anaphylactic shock....whichever comes first.



Does anyone have an extra epi-pen?

resurfacing

Ah, it's been a while. For the past 2 months I've been a slave to surgery. First Urology and then Transplant. My shelf was Friday and now I'm on spring break (wait...is it snowing?). Urology was a lot of fun and I got to participate in a lot of cool cases. I got to use a scalpel to open someone up. They let me cauterize between the aorta and the renal artery (I think the resident was more nervous than I was), and I got to do pretty much an entire cystoscopy and hydrodistention by myself. As far as I know, all of these patients are still alive and well :) Oh, and I learned how to do a pretty wicked awesome running subcuticular suture.

Transplant wasn't as much fun, but the hours were a little better. I worked between 12-15 hour days on urology, and then 10-12 hour days on transplant. Unfortunately I didn't get to see an actual transplant while I was on transplant, just a lot of cholecystectomies and liver resections. I did get to take care of some pretty interesting/sick patients though. It's pretty cool to see someone on the brink of death who gets a whole new life after receiving a new organ. By the way, if you're not an organ donor, you should do it....and make sure your family knows!

So yeah, that's what I've been up to for the past 2 months. What else is new? Um....oh yeah....having a baby. But don't expect me to be all ooey gooey annoying about it, because that's just annoying. And to be quite honest, I don't really have time to think about it and get all sentimental and introspective. And I won't be posting any belly pictures on facebook, so you can just forget about that.

More updates to come over the next week. My next adventure is trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Apparently it gets a little more complicated than just being "a doctor."

I delivered my third placenta today.

Immediately following, I resumed eating my cherry cobbler.

Resemblance?

Peds Wrap Up

Today was my last day on pediatrics. I'm kind of glad it's over, but it wasn't as bad as I had imagined.

I actually had a few cool/new experiences on peds:
1. Call - essentially means spending the night in the hospital in case anything exciting happens over night. The two times I took call....nothing exciting happened, so I slept from midnight to 5am, and went to rounds greasy and with bad breath. It's never a good thing when you drink coffee to try to hide your morning breath. Next time I'll bring a toothbrush.

2. Drawing blood - I didn't do this to a patient, but one of the interns decided that I should learn how to do this.....on HIM. Crazy person. (For a little background, I hate needles. I passed out in the parking garage at KU after getting my immunizations before starting med school.) It turned out to be okay though and I think I did a fairly decent job. I got the vein on the first try and Dr. Crazy Man said that it didn't hurt.

3. Scalpel Please - we had a patient with a deep abscess that we decided should be drained and cultured. You couldn't really see it just by looking, but you could definitely feel it. The attending and the resident decided that I should be the one to weild the scalpel. This made me a wee bit nervous. Expecially after they both pointed out that the abscess was near the spinal cord, you know, so as to remind me that one slip of the hand could cause some serious neurological problems. I managed though. We got enough goo to get a good culture and I'm pretty sure the kid walked out okay.

So, those were my cool peds experiences. I also got to spend some time in peds cardiology which was way cool. If I had to pick a specialty right now, it would be at the top of my list. I might have to do adult cardiology though because I don't know if I could make it through 3 years of general peds residency.

I'm starting on OB/GYN next week. I think it will be exciting delivering babies and all, but I've heard that the schedule is pretty demanding. If I'm reading the schedule right, I'll be on the night shift for the first week - which means I'll get to the floor at 6:30pm and stay until 8:00 the next morning. I might not see Danny for a while :(

In other news....the elections happened. Not the outcome I had hoped for, but I'm trying to remain optimistic. Obama won a few brownie points with me today when he said that they wanted to adopt a shelter dog for their new pet. For a moment I imagined a one eyed, shaggy dog like Charlie running rampant through the White House....it made me smile.

Differential Update

I had previously diagnosed myself with prinzmetal angina - I have now changed the diagnosis to precordial catch syndrome. This means that I'm not going to die of an MI any time soon.

My spot that looked like a basal cell has spontaneously regressed. I would have preferred the spot that looks like squamous cell to have regressed, but I'll take what I can get.

I briefly diagnosed myself with meningitis, then I drank some coffee and my symptoms went away. I am DEPENDENT!!!!