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Friday, February 26, 2010

I've gotten lazy

Yes, I've been incredibly lazy when it comes to updating this thing...its just that every time I sit down to write, I go blank, despite the many things I have to share. Well here goes.

First things first - my mom is done with all her treatments! She's been through surgery, lots of blood work and x-rays, several rounds of chemo, and a week of radiation treatments twice a day. She spent countless hours in various doctor's offices over the last 6 months. All to kick the breast cancer and make sure it never comes back. Thank you to everyone for your thoughts, prayers and words of encouragement for her and our family.

This year's Valentine's Day with Corey was exceptional! He decided he wanted to have Valentine's day on Friday instead of Sunday because I wouldn't be home during the day and he could work his magic. So, long story short, I get a couple phone calls while I'm running errands on Friday asking me where various food products could be found in our house. If you know Corey at all you know he's not a top notch chef...he can make pasta and rice, and that's about it. I get a little curious and worried after his questions because I'm wondering what it is he's trying to make. Well, I get home to find the apartment practically spotless (score!), purple and white tulips on the table (double score!) and Corey standing in the kitchen with 4 chicken breasts pounded flat, a bowl full of flour, bowl of eggs and bowl of bread crumbs. He also has a pan with oil sitting on the stove. Turns out he was ready to cook up some chicken parmigiana using a recipe he found on foodnetwork.com but got nervous so he decided to wait til I got home. We cooked it together and it turned out fantastic. It was my first time frying anything and it was pretty easy! We never cook together, and we had a blast. After dinner we went to see Valentine's Day (the movie) which was pretty cute. It was such a simple night, but it was one of the best nights we've had together.

On Sunday he had flowers, chocolates and a teddy bear delivered to our door. I sent him on a scavenger hunt around the apartment for his V-day gifts and made some dinner. It was such a fantastic weekend!

This week I finished my surgery rotation. It was extremely interesting, a lot of fun and an overall positive experience. Sometimes the drama around the staff could get to be a bit much, but I was able to avoid it for the most part. I got to see a ton of different surgeries, from colon resections to lung lobectomies to fracture fixations (pins and screws) and much much more. They also let me do a ton of suturing so I got lots of practice! I liked it much more than I ever thought I would...possibly enough to do it as a job. They actually offered me a position, and asked for Corey's phone number so they could convince him that we should stay in the area after I graduate. I told them that it wasn't going to happen, but it was extremely flattering to be courted like that. I did tell them that I would be okay with giving me contacts in TX, but they didn't have any. Oh well.

Now I'm onto outpatient medicine for the next 8 weeks. I'll be working at a community clinic in MD that takes mostly patients without insurance. It should be an interesting experience because this isn't a patient population I'm used to. After that its inpatient medicine for 8 weeks, 2 weeks of didactic stuff on campus and 4 weeks in my Final Clinical Preceptorship. Before you know it I'll be done and graduating! I can't believe its so close! Now I just have to decide what I want to do....

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

More Snow?!?


Say it ain't so...we were already buried in snow!

So my story starts about a week ago. The local weathermen were forecasting a large snowstorm for the weekend - starting Friday morning lasting through til Saturday night. They were predicting it could be as large as our huge dump just before Christmas (which netted us almost 2 feet of snow and paralyzed the entire DC area for a couple days). Well - they were wrong - it was bigger than the December storm! We got over 27" in our neighborhood, while other towns got almost 3 feet. Absolutely crazy, let me tell you. It was so bad that I couldn't get out of the neighborhood to get to work on Monday (mind you the storm ended Saturday night). Well, during the weekend storm there was some talk among the weathermen again that we could get some more snow Tuesday-Wednesday, but nothing compared to what was happening at the time. Then Tuesday morning they were predicting 10-20" of snow across the DC area with larger amounts expected in the Baltimore area. This threw the entire area into a bigger frenzy! Schools shut down - some for the remainder of the week. City governments closed. Corey's office even closed - and they don't close for anything usually. I was told not to go into the hospital because of the driving conditions and they canceled all elective procedures for Wednesday.



This morning we woke up to snow covering what few spots had been plowed/shoveled in the previous couple days. And to blizzard-like conditions. At one point we could barely see the outline of the building across our parking lot from us. Talk about a sight to see!


I took Lacey out last night and today and threw some snowballs around for her to chase. Turns out she thinks that is quite the fun activity! She even tried to carry some of the more solid snowballs around in her mouth for a short while. I only wish we had a yard so she could run around off-leash chasing the snow.



Turns out we have surpassed all previous records for winter snowfall totals in DC - and its only mid-February! Last year we got our largest snowfall in early March. Let's just hope we are winding down with all the snowstorms! Oh and they are forecasting more snow for next Monday!




Sunday, February 7, 2010

My mind is blank

So lately I've been trying to think of something exciting and interesting to blog about...as you can probably tell from my lack of posting, not much has come up in my brain. Despite my lack of posting, life has been pretty busy as of late. I'm still on my surgery rotation - some days I love it, other days I can't wait for the end of my shift. I really like that they let me do so much - like suturing on almost every case and I'm seeing tons of great anatomy. But I'm also tired of assisting on total joint replacements for the 20th time in the last 6 weeks. I did get to watch a craniotomy and brain tumor resection this past week which was pretty cool. I forgot how long neurosurgery cases can last! I'm hoping this week to observe a coronary artery bypass graft (heart bypass surgery) and possibly take trauma call with one of the PA's. Who knows - maybe I'll get to see a really cool case that I wouldn't have otherwise seen.

Just about 2 weeks ago I found out I was assigned to travel to West Virginia for my 2 month outpatient rotation to start the first week of March. This wouldn't be so upsetting to me, except for the fact that I am scheduled to do my 2 month inpatient rotation 2 hours away from home immediately following. My advisor is "working" on getting me a rotation in town so I don't have to be away from Corey and Lacey for 4 months straight, but I haven't heard anything from her recently, so I'm not getting my hopes up. I've come to terms with the fact that I may have to be gone for quite some time. I know I will make the best of whatever site I end up rotating through, but would definitely prefer to see my husband on a regular basis :)

On other good news, I was able to set up my final preceptorship in TX which means I'll be back there in July rather than August - hooray! Corey has been in contact with some managers from his previous job and is trying to set up interviews for his ideal position. Unfortunately there are no positions open at this time and they don't know when they will hire any new people. He is okay with taking another position if one opens up in other departments, though, so he's keeping his options open.

I've started looking ahead to getting a job and taking my certifying exams. Although it's pretty far off, I have a feeling it will sneak up on me. It's been pretty stressful for me, so I think I'm going to take some time away from looking for jobs and try to focus on deciding what it is I really want to do when I graduate. I've had a lot of questions about this and its really hard to decide what I like best. I really really enjoyed peds and think I want to work in a pediatric specialty, but what that specialty would be - I don't know. I do like surgery, but some of the environment in surgery can be pretty frustrating. I like (and have some experience in) ER, but haven't worked much with children in an ER setting. I haven't yet done inpatient medicine, but think it might be something I'd like - who knows. I've also heard getting jobs in peds right out of school can be tough, so that adds more stress to my decision-making process. But all this reminds me of one of the great things about the PA profession - whatever I decide to do as my first job doesn't have to be my career. There is a flexibility in the PA world that allows us to change specialties with relative ease.

Oh and we got absolutely dumped on by a huge snowstorm this weekend! We got about 27" in our neighborhood while other cities nearby got up to 34"! It's crazy! This morning I went out to shovel my car out of its snowy parking spot and it took me 1.5 exhausting hours. Corey's car is going to have to wait (he's been sick all day with a stomach bug, so its up to me to do the heavy labor around here). And to top it all off, there is another storm headed our direction which is supposed to dump multiple more inches on us Tuesday night through Wednesday morning. It's kinda cool to be living here at time with all this record snowfall, but its hard when we are not well equipped! We don't own snow gear (other than a ski jacket I have from many years ago) like shovels, waterproof gloves, good boots/shoes. Luckily we have great neighbors who are more than happy to lend us their snow shovels! I've made a decision after all the cleanup this morning -- if we ever live in an environment that gets more than a few inches of snow a year, we are buying a snowblower, period.

Okay, so maybe my mind wasn't all that blank after all :)