Today I'm enjoying a day off.  I really wish you could have smelled my kitchen this afternoon!  I cooked up a storm!  I had homemade chicken stock simmering on one stove eye, while spicy and smoky chana masala cooked up on the next... all the while zucchini bread was rising in the oven.  It's really nice to have an off day where I can just be quiet and slow-paced and do what I love doing.

That's definitely the opposite of what I do the 6 other days of the week.  Right now I'm in the middle of a month-long rotation in the Emergency Department.  It's the opposite of calm down there.  I think I've actually been a bit more stressed doing this than I was on my in-patient month last block.  There are days when I've eaten lunch at 6pm, and even one day when I didnt go to the bathroom on my entire 10 hour shift!  Patients just keep coming in from everywhere and if you get behind on seeing them it gets even more stressful.

Since it's busy the time goes by fast.  And I've seen some interesting stuff (heart attacks requiring electric shock, strokes, ruptured esophagus) ... but I've also see the not-urgent, weird stuff that comes in that doesn't get admitted to the hospital.  And that's not very exciting.

Whenever a patient gets put back in a room, they pop up on my computer screen.  And the first thing I see is their "chief complaint", or, the primary reason they came to the hospital that day.  Some of the stranger ones I've seen have been:

"I feel like my leg is stopped up"
"I accidentally took one Vicodin"
"I was dizzy, now I'm better"
"I have headaches, dizziness, pelvic pain, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, muscle aches and joint pains"

Unfortunately some people (like that last one I mentioned) don't have a primary care provider and decide to come to the emergency room for all their aches and pains, and they also would like you to cure them in one afternoon.

It really seems like some of my patient encounters go a bit like this:
(warning ... there's a few expletives.  Picture me as the one in the tie.)

It's hard to not get a bit cynical down there, but there definitely are some rewarding moments too!  For instance, yesterday a super cute 87 year old lady asked me if she could come home with me!  And another lady told me I was the best doctor she'd ever seen (guess she hasn't been to many)!

I'll be done with this rotation on Sept 10th, then I'll be flying to Oklahoma by way of Gadsden to see a friend's wedding and my best friend's baby!

Hiatus

So, really not much has happened since I blogged last.

Just kidding.

I've:
- been working 80 hours/week
- moved into a new apartment
- been adjusting to life without my husband in the same house
- made some new friends
- been learning my way around a new town

I've either been busy, too tired, or missing the hubs.  Hence the lack of blogs.  I've been (happily) surprised that about 30 people still check the blog daily to look for posts!  So since you still want to read I'll still make the effort to write.  Just can't promise it will be as frequent as before the 80 hour work week   =)

More to come ...

Deep in the Heart of Texas

A week or so before starting residency, I decided to make use of my last remaining free hours before intern year and travel out to Texas to visit my friend Meredith (who I hadn't seen since our wedding!  Too long!).  I've driven long distances before, but this particular 1300 mile round-trip was pretty taxing.  I think because once you pass Houston there's really nothing to look at but grass?  I was really hoping for some cowboys and ranches and tumbleweeds, but all I got was heat and no shade turning my car into an oven.

Anyway, I finally arrived and Mere, her husband Alan, and I enjoyed a great few days visiting together.  We ate (a lot), did some touristy things, and had great much-needed friend time!  I'll actually (hopefully) get to see her again in September when I have a vacation week and a mutual friend's wedding to attend!

Here are some pictures from the trip.

Hmmm ... welcome to Texas

The Lone Star State

 We decided to tour the Alamo one day .. it was a really interesting historic site.  Unfortunately none of us remembered our history too well, and made it through the entire museum not knowing if Texas beat Mexico, or vice versa?!  We were too afraid to ask a guide in the case we might injure their ginormous Texas pride, so we just enjoyed the walk-through.  Later, though, we found out Texas actually lost the Alamo, then got real mad and with the help of some other folks around the country, turned around and beat Mexico in a later battle.  Hmm.  I probably learned that in fourth grade?

The Alamo

Cute little baby ducks on the downtown "river walk"

The San Antonio "river" runs right through the middle of downtown.  Sorry for the bad photo.

Ben and Jerry's!

 We had the week pretty well planned out, but had some time to hang around downtown before our dinner reservations one night.  We happened upon a Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum, and decided to be super touristy and check it out.  Well, it was actually pretty entertaining (and a little bit creepy)!

Alan checking out something in the museum

 On the last full day of the trip, Mere and I decided to check out Austin.  On the way we passed through this teeny town called Driftwood which just so happens to have a restaurant talked up on the Food Network.  Bobby Flay said they had the best BBQ in the country, so we decided we'd see what we thought!  We split two combo plates so that we could try every meat they offered.  Yes, I think the waiter was a bit surprised to see two skinny girls eating that much meat, but eat it we did!  Let me tell you folks, I think Bobby Flay may be onto something!  The food was SO delicious!  We ate almost every bit of it, and then stopped over at their cute little vineyard to do a wine tasting (PS, Texas wine isn't too delicious.  Must be the heat).

Brisket, sausage, ribs, turkey, baked beans, vinegar slaw, and potato salad!

Cutesy picnic area

We also took a tour of the Texas State capitol.  Pretty interesting stuff!

Their dome is actually bigger than the national capitol.  Texas pride again?

Cool lights in the House chambers

Burritos, Deer, and Bears, Oh My!

I GOT TO SEE MY HUSBAND THIS WEEKEND!

Yes friends, Stuart flew in all the way from Pascagoula, Mississippi to spend the weekend with me and meet my newly acquired UVA friends.  I couldn't have been more ecstatic!

Stu didn't get here until Saturday, so to pass some time on Friday night I went out with some new intern friends!  There is a high likelihood that you'll hear me rant and rave about how awesome this town is in many blogs to come.  One of the reasons for that is that every Friday night from April to October, the downtown (which is already traffic-free and pedestrian-only) is used for FREE CONCERTS!  Yes.  Free.  There are food trucks scattered about and literally thousands of people just hang out at the amphitheater at the end of downtown and listen to local artists play really good music.  This was all the idea of a certain Mr Dave Matthews who hails from C'ville and thought that music was pretty important to the town!

Sorry, I realize this is really too small to see.  These are some of my new intern friends!

I'm so thankful I've already made a group of friends in my intern class!  I anticipate many more Friday after Five events!

Stuart flew into Richmond at noon on Saturday.  If you know me well enough, you would likely (correctly) guess that I had planned out every detail of the weekend to maximize our fun times together!  We started off with paving the way to Stuart's heart with a huge Chipotle burrito.  As a wife, you always strive to please your husband.  I'm just so thankful that mine is easy to please!

"Mmmmm ... meat and tortilla"

After Stuart was satisfied we drove in to Charlottesville to tour our new apartment!!!  Since there's still construction going on, we had to sign waivers and wear hard hats.  Pretty exciting stuff if you ask me!  The complex is close to being finished and our actual apartment is done!  We're just waiting on landscaping and paving of the driveway.  That's slated to be finished on July 15th!  Depending on my work schedule (more on that later), we'll either move in that weekend or the next.

Please note how freakishly small my head is.

While touring the new place, Stu and I realized "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".  Going from 1680 square feet to 1085 square feet may not look like a lot on paper ... but it sure is a lot in person!  When it comes down to it, we really don't need that much space anyway.  It'll just be a fun challenge to figure out how to fit in our furniture! I'll post pictures when we're actually in.  I don't want to jinx anything - ha!

After getting excited over the proximity of parks, churches, shopping, and deer to our apartment, we headed 15 minutes across town to a place called Carter Mountain.  This orchard and vineyard is perched atop a mountain right next to historic Monticello.  They grow peaches, apples, cherries, and grapes seasonally, and let the locals come pick to their hearts' content!  Stu and I went with the intention of picking enough ripe peaches to make a cobbler for dessert the next night.  Turns out all the ripe ones had already been picked; instead, we ate a ripe one in the orchard, bought a few for ripening at home, and bought a doughnut in the bakery shop. We ate our delicious treat while overlooking the city of Charlottesville.

Road to the apple orchards.  Yes, Virginia is a beautiful state.

My favorite fuzzy fruit

Stuart hunting super hard for a ripe one!

Devouring the only one we found.  Not to worry.  I gave Stu a bite, too.

Peach donuts and peach cider?  Yes, please!

View of C'ville over the donut

After our produce-picking and view-enjoying, we headed downtown to meet a new couple-friend for dinner.  There's a guy named Sam in my intern class, who just so happens to be from Mississippi and know one of mine and Stuart's good friends!  So over burgers we played the "do you know so-and-so" game with Sam and his fiance.  Again - I can NOT say how happy I am to have the intern class that I do!  So many great people are starting out on this journey with me!

Sunday we woke up and headed out to one of the churches close to our new apartment.  We really liked the church but want to visit several more before we decide on one.  Fortunately for us, this church had an early service, so afterwards we packed a picnic and headed out to the GORGEOUS Shenandoah Valley National Park.  There's a road that runs through the middle of the park called Skyline Drive.  You can drive that road over 100 miles until you reach the end.  All along the drive are overlooks and short day-hikes.  You have to pay to get in, but $30 gets you a years-worth of access.  Not bad!

Moorman's River Overlook

Stu being king of the world

About 15 miles into the drive, we decided to pull off and eat our picnic.  Well what did we see as soon as we pulled off the road but a deer!!  She was literally standing in the middle of the little road we drove to get to the picnic tables.  I was able to snap a picture just as she walked into the woods.  Beautiful!  And on a related note, I guess people up here aren't big into hunting, because there are deer EVERYWHERE!  Like, walking through my apartment complex. I am not kidding.

Then, as we parked the car, we came up on another nature surprise:  A BLACK BEAR!!!  It was a cute little baby one and I was so excited!  Of course where there's a baby bear, there's a momma bear not far behind.  So we walked the other way.  Maybe if you look really hard you can see a black spot in the trees.  I promise it's there!

Picnic lunch, compliments of Kroger

After filling our bellies we headed out on a 3.5 mile hike to Jones Run Falls.  I have to be honest, I was pretty excited to (1) get out in nature without having a heat stroke, and (2) wear my awesome Scarpa hiking boots I haven't worn since the Inca Trail.  We so enjoyed the scenery, and while we didn't see any more wildlife, we had some great conversations and were rewarded by a lovely waterfall after our hard work!

I'd like to impress you and say our hike was on the App Trail, but alas we just crossed it once.  Maybe next time!

Stu's such a gentleman.  Held up that rock for me as I passed under!

Signposts on the trails

Bad lighting, but pretty 42' falls!

And some VA scenery for you

We were basically pooped after our hike.  Let's just say these deep-South folks aren't used to hills!  But we mustered enough strength to cook dinner!  It's been ... literally months since I have cooked a real dinner.  That makes me so sad.  But armed with just 1 skillet and a few pots and pans, I cooked a balsamic and garlic crusted pork tenderloin with roasted Brussels Sprouts in my temporary kitchen!  Since we didn't have the peach cobbler to make, we headed out to the local Ben and Jerry's parlor for a few scoops.  Definitely don't mind having one of those in town!

Whew!  It was an action packed weekend for sure!  I am so thankful that my sweet husband safely made the trip up and now back to Pascagoula.  I was so sad to see him go this morning, but know he'll be back soon! And I'm so glad for the memories we made exploring our new town!

Patients and Sponges

Today I sat through ten hours of UVA Graduate Medical Education Orientation.  Basically that means I sat in an auditorium while lots of people talked at me and the 200 other incoming interns about rules and regulations to follow during the next 3 years.  But we also got some motivating speeches too!  From that exhausting 10 hours, these were the two main points I was left with:

Patients sacrifice of themselves for my education.  This was stated by the CEO of the UVA Health Systems in a very inspiring speech on how UVA is one of, if not the, best hospitals in the country (though I'm sure he's biased a bit) and how they picked us to work here and we should feel very special, yada yada.  He mentioned how most our patients come from the Commonwealth of Virginia and West Virginia, which are mostly rural states.  The amount of people that walk through the doors at UVA in any given day is more than the amount of people that live in their city.  They come to our huge hospital sick and scared, because their doctors can't diagnose or treat their illnesses.  They then have nurses and staff tell them when to wake up, sleep, and eat; people take their blood and other bodily fluids; residents poke and prod them in other personal places.  Yet they do all this willingly, because they know this is a teaching hospital and because they are here they will get the best care possible.  And because this is a teaching hospital, the primary goal (aside from treating patients), is to teach future doctors.  To teach me.  That's a pretty humbling thought.  And a good one to keep in mind as I know I will be stressed and tired when I enter those patients' rooms; I always should be mindful of what they've gone through so they can teach me.

Be a paranoid sponge.  This was stated by a trauma surgeon who also happens to be the head honcho over patient safety.  He had a (pretty frightening) talk on how accidents happen in the hospital ... because people get cocky, or tired, etc.  He basically said our first year, he doesn't expect us to be experts or to diagnose rare diseases on our own ... he expects us to be paranoid sponges.  To be nervous to the point that we're afraid of our own shadows so that we make as few mistakes as possible, and when we make mistakes (which will happen), we learn everything we can from them.  I think I will have no problem with the paranoid part, and hopefully the sponge part won't be too bad, either!

More orientation over the next few days ... Stu is coming in town for the weekend ... and soon I will post on my favorite things about Virginia!

I'm Here!

After a few weeks and 2,800 miles on my Prius, I arrived safely in Charlottesville, Virginia on Monday afternoon.  Over the past couple of weeks as Stuart and I transitioned out of our house in Daphne, I was able to visit with his family, my family, and some of my very best friends.  The Prius and I traveled from Gadsden all the way to San Antonio and back!  More posts and pictures to come on that eventually.

I can't remember if I posted about this or not, but our apartment/condo we planned on leasing isn't quite ready yet.  So I am "in-between" in a furnished apartment a few miles down the road.  It was kind of nice to "move-in" with just my clothes and some pots and pans.  It definitely was a quick move!  But of course it's weird to be living in a place where the furniture isn't mine.  We're keeping our fingers crossed that the new place will be finished sometime between July 5-15.  The sooner the better!  I'm so ready to feel settled in!  Not having Stuart here with me is hard enough, so it will be nice to have some semblance of normalcy when I'm living in my own place with my own stuff!

In other news, work starts tomorrow!  Not real work, mind you, but 1.5 weeks of orientation.  BUT tomorrow will be the first day I get PAID for being a DOCTOR!  Whoop whoop!  I'll be learning the ins-and-outs of the UVA Health System, as well as legal things about being a resident.  Then the real fun starts on Monday June 23rd as I begin my first "real work" in a private clinic in town!  I have mixed emotions about my schedule ... I start out with an easy first few months, and then get absolutely slammed at the end.  On the positive side, it will be a nice transition in.  On the negative side, come next June I will be very tired!

Please be praying for me and Stu during this new phase in our lives.  We are hoping to be living together real soon, and hoping even more so for a job that will allow Stuart to move up here!  Pray for me to be a strong independent woman during this stressful time, but also to be a loving wife while I'm away from my husband!

More updates to come soon ... Thanks for reading =)

The In-Between

Boxing up our house and preparing for the move really began over a month ago with a class-wide yard sale. Some friends and I organized a yard sale for our graduating class and held it at a local church parking lot.  While Stu was working (and I was "working" on rather light rotations), I went through the house purging stuff that we originally should have gotten rid of when we got married.  Alongside those random items, we even dared to sell some furniture we didn't want to move, and both our televisions!*  All this purging and selling really didn't make a dent in our 1680 square feet, though.

The prius - loaded up with, well, junk

My expert packing/shoving into every nook and cranny

We had a huge turnout thanks to Craigslist and the newspaper!  Everyone did really well ... Stu and I brought home about $150!

A couple of weeks later, our property manager called to let us know we got a renter!  As I eluded to in a recent post he unfortunately wanted to move in well before we wanted to move out!  Not feeling in a good place to negotiate, we agreed.  Conveniently our parents came down the weekend of Honors Convocation/Graduation, so we put them to work!  Bless their hearts, I don't think we could have worked more activities into a weekend.  We had Honors, boxed up the kitchen, had graduation, boxed up the guest room, had a graduation dinner, took a trip to Stu's grandmother's house in Prentiss where we're storing all our stuff, then celebrated Mothers' Day and did some more packing!  Whew!  Glad our families are flexible and want to help us out!  They are a blessing and we couldn't have done it without them!

Stu and Mr Johnny boxing up some stuff.  Those liquor store boxes sure do the trick!

3 trucks, 1 trailer, and a Prius convoyed 3 hours to Prentiss, MS to store our home

After our families left we definitely had made a ton of progress, but still had a long way to go.  Not to mention I also had to deep clean our house before our renter moved in.  Stuart has been working really hard to build up some vacation days, and so I have spent the majority of my hours scrubbing baseboards, cleaning windows, taking Goodwill trips, and boxing up all the leftovers.  FINALLY, weeks later, our house is looking really empty.  Winston and Mardi really don't know what to do with themselves.  I think they're both a bit nervous that they won't get to go where all our furniture is going.  They don't want to be left behind!

Winston, curled up on the lid of Mardi's cat carrier (out for her to get used to seeing it)

They've worked hard too

Now, that's exhausting enough.  But here comes the real crazy part:

The original plan was for me to move to C'ville on June 8th.  Stuart and both our parents would come to help, then Stuart would come back to stay with family in Pascagoula and continue working for Chevron until a job overseas or in the C'ville area worked out.

Well, yesterday, I got a phone call from the condo in C'ville.  Apparently construction, which was scheduled to be done around June 1st, is basically finished.  However, there is some inspection problem with the wiring!  Because of this, I now have a tentative move-in date of MID-JULY!  That's a month after I start work!  Hopefully I'll get a call today saying they can move me into an "in-between" furnished apartment at another location until all the bugs get worked out at our new place.  I'll start work while living there with just the bare minimum of my stuff.  Then when the new place is ready, we'll have Stu and the families come up to move the rest.

Pray with me that Stuart can find a job by mid-July and that he can move along with the furniture!

As of Friday, we will be out of our Bay House in Daphne, and on to new adventures.  Stu will still be working overtime in Pascagoula, and I'm going to try to take some time to travel and see family and one of my best friends out in Texas.  We're going to have to get creative about places to stay during this "homeless" period in our lives!  The last few months have been emotionally overwhelming with both joy, sadness, excitement and worry.  But we are making it through with God's help!  While all this is exhausting and confusing, He still has the greater plan in mind.  Please be praying for us during this transition time.  I will post as much as I can to keep you updated on the house situation, and Stuart's job situation, as well as the FUN things we do in the meantime!

Love you all!

* Not having television has really been a blessing!  It forces me to stay productive all day, and when Stuart comes home from work we interact rather than vegging out in front of the tube.  I think losing the TV may be a permanent decision!