Fallin

When the weather turned frigid, and the jackets and hats were sought from storage, we made our pilgrimage to the mountains. This weekend, Alvis and I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast near Woodstock with incredible views of the Catskills. It was a short weekend--we left after my night shift was over Friday morning (I napped in the car) and sadly returned Sunday morning for work. But while we were there we packed in as much as we could. With as much folk music packed on our iPods as is legally allowed, we drove through the most exquisite, truly peak foliage I have ever seen. It warms the soul. We headed to a nearby apple farm where we picked enough apples to sustain a family of 4 for weeks on end. We drank warm apple cider and walked through pumpkin patches. Mmmm. Mountains=Good.






ps. I made homemade apple pie with our pickins. It was awesome. (as I've said before, I'm very modest).

Very posh

This summer, I lived the dream. I summered. I summered in The Hamptons. It was a beautiful thing. After work one night, me, Alvis, and three other friends got in our Zip Car and took a three day weekend out to The Hamptons. Our friend is a personal trainer to the rich and got an offer to use one of his client's beach houses (yes, he has multiple houses in the Hamptons, totally unfair) for a long weekend. Umm, not a tough decision. So we played croquet, bocce, corn hole, frisbee, grilled out, beached out, and made s'mores. But I couldn't find P Diddy's house---strange that my invitation for his big blowout party got lost in the mail...

I secretly love my white coat

So far, 2nd year has been treating me fairly well. It's the year that we are considered the "critical care resident", meaning we are handed all the patients that are most critical in the ED. Usually, there is only one 2nd year scheduled per shift, so, it can be a bit overwhelming at times. However, it just confirms that I really do love this job. Ok, sometimes I hate it. But usually I love it. Yesterday,I was sewing up a guy's face who was handcuffed to the stretcher and accompanied by NYPD, and I told him that if he didn't stop hitting on me, I would sew his lips shut. I think he believed me. This job is fun. I did a lumbar punture (spinal tap) on a woman the other day who, mid procedure, with me holding a very long spinal needle in her back, started saying "I'm going to turn up my amp to 11...it's one louder". I love that my patient quoted Spinal Tap while I was giving her a spinal tap. Classic. And just the other day, when I told my little 90 year old patient (who has no medical problems, and is more mentally alert than most 20 year olds) that she needed to be admitted to the hospital she exclaimed with surprising force "son of a bitch"! I couldn't stop laughing. (Don't worry, she was fine, just pulled a muscle and couldn't make it up to her 2nd floor apartment).

I also realized how much I loved ER after doing inpatient medicine for a month. I had my ICU rotation recently, which was probably the most traumatizing experience of my life...I am not meant for call. I am a very non-confrontational, easy to get along with person (yes, I am also very modest...), but when you have been up for 30 hours and the only doctor in charge of 15 of the sickest patients in the hospital, all alone and exhausted, and a nurse pages you every 2 minutes to put in an order for tylenol, the nasty in me comes out. And when you have to tell a woman that her 35 year old sister just died and there was nothing you could do to stop it, things get rough. The only good thing about the ICU was that I got to wear my white coat (the official, long white coat with my name and title inscribed on it, that I longed for as a med student when I was stuck wearing the required stupid short white coat.) In the ER, we are far too cool to wear a white coat. It's basically just scrub tops and cargo pants/scrub bottoms for us. We take pride in not wanting to look too polished. Secretly, I love my white coat...but the ICU is not worth it...