Glee

I am knitting a sweater. Here is my progress thus far:



And here is what it is supposed to look like:



This is a sweater that you knit from the top down. The pattern is Glee from Zephyr Style; I have heard it is simple and easy to follow which is good because this is my first sweater. The yarn is Knit Picks Shine Sport (color: grass) knit using size 2's for the ribbing and size 3 needles for the body of the sweater. The only modification I have planned is to make the sleeves longer, so they'll end just before the elbows. I am anticipating that Glee will take me a while - right now my knitting time consists of the 45 minutes I get everyday at the Internal Medicine residents' noon conferences. Aah med school, I love how you suck away all my time.

As a side note, I am home alone this weekend. Sad, yes. Husband E-C has traveled to Ann Arbor, MI to do some research. I plan to catch up on some work, tidy up the large pile of clothes on my floor (though I maintain that large clothes piles are a time saving strategy - you waste no time hanging up your clothes, and they are quickly accessible on the floor when you awake early the morning), lay on the couch for significant periods of time and sleep. Should any of you decide to call me this weekend, I will likely be available. Good times for me.

Happy weekend to all!

Growth

I have seedlings!

Operation seedling might be a success! Over half the seedlings have sprouted. For those of you with some experience - do you know when I should thin them? I dropped multiple seeds into the cells, so now I have multiple seedlings in each cell. Should I wait for them to get a little bigger before thinning? Very exciting. It seems that the weather has finally decided that it is springtime - a welcome change after the couple inches of snow we received earlier this week. I am ready for some warmer days.

More good news - I have both Saturday and Sunday off this weekend! Three weeks down, and three weeks to go on this Internal Medicine rotation. Here, Internal Medicine is a 6 week rotation, and you spend 3 weeks at the university hospital and 3 weeks at the Veterans Administration hospital. So, on Friday, I finished my 3 weeks at the U and my senior resident was kind enough to give me the weekend off. On Monday, I start 3 weeks at the VA. I have heard that the patient population is drastically different between the two hospitals. I foresee lots of older men with interesting histories and cardiopulmonary disease in my future.

I have learned so much during the past three weeks. And I also feel this experience has really aged me - these three weeks feel like years. I have to remind myself that I am lucky - I am tired, and I have to work long hours and oftentimes life is stressful, but I am very lucky to be having these experiences. Medicine is fascinating, and the staff physician on my team at the university hospital is an exceptional teacher. It is inspiring to work with someone with such brilliance and such passion for teaching. And so kind to patients. And to his colleagues and residents and students. Physicians/residents are not always kind to patients or to each other. I have observed and been on the receiving end of unkind actions from people in positions superior to mine, and I suppose that these are good learning experiences as well. A classmate remarked that you can see the quality of a person in how they treat those that they are able to abuse.

For those of you wanting clinical details re: my patient care experiences, your wait is over. I participated in the management of a patient with diabetic ketoacidosis - these patients are typically severely volume depleted and require 4-5 liters of fluid IV as well as insulin and other electrolytes. I had the opportunity to care for another patient with a metabolic alkalosis due to spells of intractable vomiting associated with binge drinking - these patients are also very volume depleted and require a significant amount of IV fluids. It is a funny perspective to see a patient as a learning experience rather than a person. But I must say that in treating these patients (and a few others), kidney physiology has finally become my friend. I also saw a very interesting case of gallstone pancreatitis (where a stone from your gallbladder moves down through your bile duct and occludes the opening of your pancreatic duct. Ouch!) I still have so far to go and so much yet to learn, but it is exciting to have some understanding of the pathophysiology and management of complicated disease states.

And how could I almost forget! I did my first procedure last week. Albeit only an arterial blood gas (and given the low reported oxygenation level, I likely pulled the sample from a vein rather than the artery) it was my first procedure nonetheless. Here is a graphic photo:

And here's what I did:

Getting ready for spring

Another day off today. My team has long call on Saturday, which means no days off Saturday or Sunday, so today is my weekend. All is well with school. The residents on my team changed last week - they rotate monthly, so the residents I started with all moved onto new rotations, and different residents came to the team. The residents I started with were all women, and they were wonderful - very kind and supportive and everyone always seemed to be laughing. The new residents are all men, and honestly, I miss Team Estrogen. Fortunately, the new senior resident is very nice - Raul worked with him on his Internal Medicine rotation and they really hit it off. Raul considers the senior to be a slightly older version of himself, and the senior said that the residents on Raul's team all wore black ribbons to mourn the day that Raul completed the rotation and left the team. Aahh, love.

Last weekend, I spent some time getting ready for spring. After several calls to Grandma L and a consultation from one of her horticulturally inclined friends, I decided to attempt to start seedlings indoors and plant them in the spring. Should this work, I shall be planting impatiens, marigolds, pansies, sweet william, basil, eggplant and zucchini into the ground in 6-8 weeks. If I am unsuccessful, I shall be buying all the aforementioned plants from a local farmers market and planting them around my house in 6-8 weeks. Here is a picture of the seedlings. Raul initially thought it was a photo of brownies in front of an old stereo. No, only trays of soon to be seedlings on top of the stove.



Ryan - who is Frank Grimes, and why would we name a puppy after him?

Ribbons Baby Blanket

Finished!
Here are the specs:
Pattern - Fiber Trends Ribbons Baby Blanket purchased at LYS (local yarn shop).
Needles - Size 8 circular, brand Denise Interchangeables - these are great needles. As your project grows, you can add length to your circular needles.
Yarn - worsted weight acrylic blends (in variegated pink, solid pink and burgundy) all obtained from Grandma L's stash.

So, completing this blanket was really a battle against boredom. It seemed to drag on forever. However, I am happy with the finished project, and I was able to use several balls from the stash on this project. Mom, Dad and Myriam - no need to make any immediate plans to move near us, there are no grandchildren on the immediate horizon. Sorry to disappoint. If and when we do ever get to have kids, I really hope they like pink.

Happy Belated Dr. Day!

So, many of you may not know this (I had no idea), but March 30th is National Doctor's Day. A quick web search just revealed to me that this whole Dr's Day business is the work of George H. W. Bush, Sr. Good work, sir! This more than makes up for all mistakes of the past (including the one presently in office.) No offense meant to gentle readers with more conservative sensibilities (esp. my parents, who are moments away from being hit up for gifts. Love ya Mom and Dad!) So, the point to this whole story is that some of my residents actually received presents from their parents - like large fruit baskets with wine and easy cheese and Dansko clogs! So, Mom and Dad and anyone else that would like to buy me presents (size 41, color: cordovan cabrio) when I finally become a doctor - mark your calenders!

Life is much improved from my previous post! The long hours remain, but I am really learning quite a bit. As a medical student, you get to help with the admission of new patients, and then you follow the patients your team admitted throughout the hospital stay and manage all of their care- you see them every morning, report on how they're doing, discuss their labs and any physical exam findings, and then the staff and residents explain what their plan for the patient is and the rationale behind that plan. So far, I've followed patients with severe liver disease (with a huge liver stretching into the pelvis!), acute angina (cardiac chest pain), acute renal failure and a renal artery thrombosis with kidney infarction (a fancy way of saying a clot in the artery going to the kidney which cut off the blood supply to the kidney and caused the kidney to fail)

During my six weeks on this rotation, I get to do 2 overnight calls (30 hours of nonstop fun in the hospital). I did my first on Friday night, and it was really busy - my team received a total of 8 admissions. They all seemed to come at once, too, and that made everything a little stressful. Plus, one patient was coming down off cocaine and was a tad irritable--I saw my first code green (security and pysch had to be called to help manage a patient.) Anyways, it was very interesting and exhausting, and I spent a good part of yesterday sleeping. Though I was awake for enough of the day to go meet and play with a dog named Slim Jim. Raul and I are in talks re: getting a dog sometime in the next year, though that would definitely complicate the move after med school, so we'll see. And today is my day off! Woohoo!

Happy weekend!