|
|
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
| |
5:38 pm
|
Due to car logistics issues, I rode my bike home from the hospital. This is the first exercise I've electively undertaken since the little nugget in my uterus stole my desire to do anything other than lie in bed and eat things. I celebrated with a bowl of melted ice cream mixed with peanut butter and chocolate sauce and three quarters of a (full size) bag of cool ranch doritos. (That will be an entire bag of cool ranch doritos by the time I finish typing this).
Residency has started to lose some of its "holy cow I'm a doctor" shimmer. It's still a pretty neat-o job as day jobs go with all the saving lives and cutting holes in people and such. But it has sunk in that even when I do manage to stay within the 80 hour a week we're supposed to be working that comes out to more than 11 hours a day. Add in my one hour commute daily and the overnight call every four nights and I spend 65% of my life in the hospital. Which equals 98.7% of my awake life since I spend essentially every hour I'm home in bed trying to catch up on sleep before my next call.
If you calculate out my salary divided by the hours I actually work I'm paid approximately minimum wage.
I imagine when there's an actual external baby in the house I will look back on the four hours of sleep I'm currently getting with nostalgia and envy. :-)
I shouldn't look preggers yet but my digestive system is not working as fast as it used to so I have developed a suspicious little tummy poof. It's not baby though, just bloatedness and doritos mostly. I haven't told my classmates yet because I want to wait until the second trimester, but I can feel them looking at my tummy and trying to figure out if it's rude to say anything because I could just be getting fat starting with my uterus. I may just never announce it and act really surprised when people notice. Or deny it. I imagine I'll be one of those pregnant woman whose torsos expand in all directions and who generally look like a puff'd marshmallow version of themselves. I'll post pictures at some point.
If I sound moderately ambivalent, I am. Kristen and I decided my general attitude is "bemused detachment." I am excited. And I do love babies. Especially chubby ones. And I've always theoretically wanted one some day. But I was never one of those girls who endlessly dreamed of being a mother, and certainly not during my intern year of residency. And really it feels entirely surreal at this point. I'm not sure what the moment will be that makes me realize there is an actually mini human being inside me composed of my DNA, maybe when we find out the gender? Or when it kicks? When I impulsively spend $50 on Baby Einstein "my first Mozart" cd's to play to it in utero? I don't know. At this point I just feel chubbsy and exhausted and queasy and hungry. Mostly exhausted.
Well, everyone who has a baby seems to be pretty into them and I imagine it will happen to me. And I do keep having anxiety dreams that I lose the thing (like literally misplace my uterus with the baby in it and can't find it and I run around looking for it) and I'm super relieved when I wake up and it's still in there.
I'm doing adult medicine now. It's relatively uneventful. We're only on call every six nights so I'm enjoying the luxurious five days in a row of sleep. :-)
You're all welcome to drop by and play with the bb next summer if it comes out cute.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
| |
10:27 pm
|
Now I generally think it's lame when people show off their fuzzy initial ultrasound that looks like a blob of static. But I thought you all might get a kick out of it.
Yup! Creepy little parasite-like bun in the oven. It's 1.5cm long, about 8 weeks old, moves around a bunch (takes after Eldad), looks a bit like a slug (my contribution?), and is stealing my vitamins.
The little blob up towards the top of the thing is supposedly an arm bud.
Due date June 6. I'll be back in MD around April if you'd like to partake in some tummy-petting.
Most noticable symptoms at this point i that my bra size seems to increase roughly a letter and a half a day and the only food I'm even remotely interested in eating is bagels and cream cheese.
|
|
(10 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, October 19th, 2009
| |
2:46 pm - Yup
|
I have H1N1. I can now officially say, it's just the flu. Yes it's a bad flu and lots of people are getting it and we all need something to panic about all the time. But still, it's the flu. Let's all get over it. Good.
I tried to act healthy and go into work today since the rest of my team is already out sick and we're covering 20 some patients (90% of which are in with the flu anyway so how much damage can I do really?). One of the nurses heard me cough and I got sent out of the hospital to work from home. Which of course means the computer system instantly crashed so I have no idea how my patients are doing.
I have some other interesting news, but you'll have to wait for Thursday. . .
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Friday, August 21st, 2009
| |
9:45 am
|
Now I'm a doctor apparently. And I know that there is absolutely zero actual proof that raw or vegan or even vegetarian diets are any healthier than a sensible normal omnivorous diet, except by their inherent exclusion of a huge source of cholesterol and saturated fat.
But I have been feeling more and more skeezy about processed foods, especially with the past month I've spent witnessing the horrible end-stage complications of diabetes and obesity.
Dairy and soy and wheat? I don't even know what to think about them.
But I have an easy month next month in outpatient pediatrics and I think if there was every time for a lifestyle change, this would be it. So I'm contemplating a 3 week raw vegan trial. Just as an experiment. I know it's silliness, and that there's no physiologic truth to detoxifying, but I just feel a need to detox after spending my days essentially drinking coffee, eating cookies and pizza, and absorbing antibiotic resistant bacteria and tragedy.
So I think I'm going to give it a shot. I will almost definitely cheat constantly and probably will give up in far less that 21 days, but hey, worth a try.
Anyone want to join me?
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
| |
8:40 pm
|
I'm fully entrenched in 80 hour work weeks plus 10 hours of "strongly recommended" reading. As in "we strongly recommend that you read this 300 page packet of articles on commonly misdiagnosed emergency department presentations by tomorrow so that you don't literally kill people on your shift tomorrow night."
We got tours of the two hospitals this afternoon and the emergency departments are like nothing I've ever seen. One is a community hospital that serves about 90% uninsured patients, a large chunk of whom are homeless or psychiatric patients with no where else to go. The other hospital is the big ER for the entire city that gets a pretty good mix of just about everything. Both hospitals have about 50 patient rooms/beds divided into clusters by acuity. The sections are loosely: "not so sick," "not sick plus drunk, actively psychotic, belligerent, or all the above," "umm. . .could be pretty sick," "sick and sent over from your friendly local maximum security prison," and "holy shit, actively trying to die."
Categories 1, 3, and 5 get private or semiprivate rooms. The other sectors are like the military hospitals you see in movies about world war one. Basically just a large oval of beds radiating around a central nursing station. And always full of various and sundry human beings in various and sundry states of disrepair. The inmates are handcuffed to their stretchers in a special cement holding cell room.
Today the hospital was entirely full so there were also patients from all categories randomly strewn in beds in all the hallways.
There are enough police officers, nurses, technicians, radiographers, and secretaries to essentially qualify us as a mini society.
Despite all this, the atmosphere is astonishingly calm and collegial. The doctors are truly nice to the patients, in a non-condescending, non-judgemental way. And despite the fact that they may literally be in the process of caring for 12-20 sick patients an hour, they all stop to say hi and smile and welcome us. It's incredible.
I'm alternately terrified and excited to get started. My first shift as an actual doctor is Friday afternoon.
Today was an auspicious start. I got hopelessly lost on the way to the hospital and then tried to go into the parking garage via the exit, diagnosed my husband with an ear infection (really? what 30 year old gets ear infections?) and got lapped three times by a power-walking elderly women while jogging at the gym.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
| |
8:06 pm - First of all
|
|
| Thursday, May 21st, 2009
| |
3:47 pm - All dressed up
|
I'm standing at a computer terminal on campus at Ben Gurion University for the last time. . .
Official MD in one hour and 15 minutes.
As usual the school coerced me into singing, scheduled a rehearsal (one hour before the ceremony), and didn't show up. So I'm stuck on campus in 100 degree heat in my black dress and heels. Super duper.
This marks, happily, my last medical school obligation. Ever.
:-)
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
| |
5:24 pm - I won!
|
I've been entering the Women's Health daily contests pretty much every day since I got back from Peru. And today I won a Steripen water purifier! (and a travel blanket). Kind of mean given that I won't be doing half as much traveling over the next five years as I would like but it gives me a good excuse to run off in the woods and drink cupfulls of river water.
As I tend to believe that good luck comes in threes or produces more good luck or something like that I feel that I should enter lots and lots of contests right now and capitalize.
I only have two more weeks of medical school ever. I'm still deep down in a rut of absolute motivationlessness (not a word, I know). E and I are going up to the north for a triathlon next weekend. I've trained not at all. I'm singing at graduation, don't really feel like it.
I calculated out our budget for next year, after taxes we're spending close to half my monthly salary on our house. Worth it I think, but we'll not be going out to dinner a lot for the next five years.
My residency just surprised me with the announcement that instead of June 29th, we're actually starting June 14th. This gives me about two days to move in before I start and also gives me way less time in MD to hang out. I'll still be back May 24th through at least June 7th or 8th. Eldad wants to meet you all and I want to take in some yummy food and delicious theater while I'm still getting some $$ from the parents.
Sorry it's all so hopelessly boring. I'm just in this weird holding pattern until graduation. Come next month I'm sure there will be lots lots more to tell.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
| |
10:56 am
|
I'm on spring break now. Before you get too exciting, it's not exactly Spring Break Cancun.
Tonight is a very Moroccan passover with the giant Israeli family, in which I will sit and awkwardly smile and occasionally say something grammatically inappropriate. Tomorrow I take off to Tel Aviv to see some old friends and snag some alone-time on the beach. Next week a few of Eldad's friends from the Navy and our best-friend-couple are coming down to visit. My plan was to throw them a good old American-style barbecue but Eldad's shopping list already includes hummus, tehina, babaganoush, and kebabs, so we may have to compromise a bit.
I've been feeling super off these past few days. Possibly oncology has something to do with it. Maybe just too much unstructured down time. Or maybe living in the suburbs where there's just nowhere to go and nothing to do.
But yes, off. No motivation for anything. I've been sleeping a little late and having these awful long late-morning dreams that almost feel real and are absolutely endless and I wake up wanting to kick things.
Probably mostly it's going from the time in the states and in Peru where I was so useful every day. Where every day I had my patients, my paperwork, something important to do. These last few months of medical school are just to garner enough credits for graduation so we sit in clinics and lectures and do nothing. Which was nice for like the first five minutes. It's driving me a little crayzee ahorita.
Yeah, most probably that.
We got a new juicer so today's project is cutting up lots of fruits and vegetables and putting them in the freezer and then producing a kosher for passover dessert to bring to the family. It's a glamorous and exciting life, indeed. At least there's always Tel Aviv.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, April 6th, 2009
| |
12:53 pm - We got the house!
|
|
| |
10:30 am
|
News, most already posted on facebook and stethoscopesandsneakers, some not.
-As of July 1st, and for the next 5 years, I am an official pediatrics/emergency medicine double resident at Indiana University, Indianapolis.
-Indy is only a one hour flight from DC so you'd better all come visit me. I can get you discount Indy500 tickets. Yay cars going fast! (No, I don't get it.)
-I only have 4 more weeks of medical school ever. Two weeks of old people and two weeks of people with rashes. Only one more month of medical school. Ever.
-I'll be home from May 24th till mid-June sometime. Dinner party perhaps?? Hike at great falls? Some theater? Something?
-We may have found an actual house in Indy to rent (for less than 1,000 a month, yay economy!). It has yards and a fireplace and full basement and is just too terribly adult and suburban. We'll make sure to exotic it up with my (oh-so-exotic) Israeli husband and scattered pictures of Peruvian babies. I'll post pictures later in the week if we get it.
-In a related note the hub made me watch Revolutionary Road last week. I read the book in Peru and had some issues with it, thought the movie was better actually, which never happens when I read the book first. Based on previews I was worried that the movie would hit too close to home and make me rue my tied-down-ness and panic at the looming approach of adult settled-down midwestern life. But really, for us I think the problem is going to be exactly the opposite. By the nature of us and the career I've chosen, we're going to spend large amounts of time apart or traveling so I imagine that we'll actually long for the few weeks we get of having a routine and being in the same place at the same time every day. On a side note, something about Kate Winslet's acting just doesn't do it for me. I keep trying to get it, but it feels just a bit too perfectly sculpted or planned or distant or something, every time. I feel sacreligious somehow typing that, but so it goes. I'll try The Reader and see if that sways me.
-Whenever I'm debating between two dishes in a restaurant, I end up immediately regretting and wishing I'd gotten the other one the second the order is leaving my mouth. I'm having similar residency regret. All I wanted was Indianapolis, for a million reasons, and I got my first choice, a lot of medical students didn't, I should sit back and be happy.
But the second I opened the envelope my mind was flooded with images of the mountains in Utah, the ice cream place I love in New Mexico, the cute orthopedics residents in New York, the cafeteria and gym at Mayo Clinic. . . all the other residencies that could have been. It's not true regret, but it's a bit tough to get excited about Indianapolis next to all the other fantastic cities I could have chosen to spend the next five years in. The program however. . . I get more excited about it every day. I really do believe I am entering just about the best residency program possible. And in lots of ways it feels fated so I may as well just roll with it.
-I had to request a clinic assignment this morning so that IndyU can start finding patients for me. In two months, I am going to have my own peds patients. For whom I will be their doctor (copy editor brother, fix that sentence please!). That's a teeny bit insane. In fun news, I get to go to the newborn nursery and pick babies to be my patients too. Weeeeee!
Day to day, nothing much is new. I'm in oncology, I like it, and would like it more if I weren't suffering from a monumental crisis of motivation. I have no motivation for just about anything, I wake up 5 minutes before I need to get in the car, do the absolute minimum amount of clinic hours I can get away with, I daydream through the lectures or study other stuff under the table. The afternoons I mostly spend cooking, eating, clicking around the internet aimlessly, lying on my yoga mat thinking about maybe doing yoga, and playing with the dogs. I imagine the approaching 22 months of being on call and in charge of sick children every 3 nights will restore my motivation pretty fast.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Friday, March 20th, 2009
| |
2:04 am - Yay!!!
|
Since Peru, life's been pretty uneventful from the underlying current of panic surrounding my job prospects for next year.
I'm back in Israel for 2 more months of electives and then graduation. Eldad and I are living in his brother's apartment in a suburb about 20 minutes outside of Beer Sheva. We have a little backyard and two dogs: a short little mutt that's half hot dog and half rat, and a mentally delayed pekingese who spends most of her day eating dirt. It's the first time in our brief sacred union that we've actually been living together alone, and it's relatively dreamy.
And, most exciting, I finally found out where I'll be next year! (Yes, someone's actually decided to hire me to be a real live doctor). I ended up at my first choice, Indiana University, specializing in both pediatrics and emergency medicine. It's a super-competitive program at one of the biggest and busiest ERs in the country, and I can get pretty much any job I want coming out of there, so even though it's not my ideal dream location I'm super thrilled. And, they'll even fly me home to DC a few times a year if I join the political activism committee.
So for the next 5 years you know where to find me. While I wouldn't want to subject anyone to Indianapolis, if you do happen to find yourself out that way, please come by and visit. And now that I'm back in the same time zone, I'll do my best to be a better email and phone buddy and to update this and the other blog as much as I can.
E and I are taking a celebration trip to Tel Aviv this weekend to visit friends and frolic on the beach (by frolic I mean sleep) and next week I'm back in the hospital in orthopedics. I can't wait to see you all in June!!
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Friday, March 6th, 2009
| |
12:50 pm - funny
|
|
| Friday, February 27th, 2009
| |
1:09 pm - I´m over here
|
|
| Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
| |
1:45 pm
|
I witnessed a motorcycle vs. dog accident on my way to a night shift at the ER yesterday. It's only suprising that I haven't seem more accidents at this point. There are no discerible lanes, driving seems to be an enormous high-stakes game of chicken, with scooters, motocabs (like rickshaws with a scooter pulling a two wheeled open cabin for passengers; this is how everyone gets around), dogs, and pedestrians.
Something about it though, in the rain, at 10pm, I don't know, something about it was just terrifying. Maybe it's having such an intimate knowlege of the hospital and the ordeal that awaits the passengers should they make it there. A shortage of anesthesiologists and resources means that they could have to wait up to three weeks for surgery, being fitted with casts, any kind of procedure they might need. It could take 24 or more hours to even have their wounds cleaned. They'll be in a rusting, sheetless bed in a room of 4 to 6 other patients, most likely infectious. Even if their roommates are not contagious, odds are against their leaving without at least one hospital-acquired infection as there's usually only one sink per floor which 9 times out of 10 is out of soap and paper towels.
It spooked me.
I spent the rest of the night carrying around a weighty sense of rapidly impending doom.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the shift, a febrile seizure, lots of abdominal pain, headaches, and Dengue, but for the very first time ever I found the ED depressing. I love ER with such a passion because no matter how bad things are as the patient comes in, they come into a place of warmth, light, calm. We can make them feel better, maybe even fix them.
And here, it's about 99 degrees inside, crawling with bugs, no pain medication to be found other than tylenol and a stronger form of advil, the patients have to go buy their own medicines, needles, and bandages before receiving treatment and have to make 5 - 10 trips from doctor to insurance counter to pharmacy and back during the course of their stay. Nothing speaks of comfort, safety, cleanliness. It's a refuge of last resort and I can't say that I would go there myself, no matter how dire my medical condition.
It's not only a resource issue, there's sort of a culture of resignation. Kind of "eh, we'll do pretty much the best we can maybe. But wow, it's hot in here, maybe I'll see if I can just send them home with some tylenol and go get a soda."
At night the entrance is staffed by two interns who see all the patients and then spend obscene amounts of time tracking down the senior doctor, who must stamp and sign the orders before they go through. Patients are seen for maybe 5 or 10 minutes and 99% are sent home with orders for a blood test or x-ray the next day and maybe some IV antibiotics or a shot of pain medication.
None of it surprising, I've been in underresourced hospitals before. It was just strange how dismal and dangerous it all seemed last night. I've not felt that before.
This morning was better, but I still feel uneasy (on top of the gastrointestinal unrest that is a constant companion on journey). And not excited about the rest of this week. I'm ready to get out of hospitals for a little bit.
p.s. Why does this video break me?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcWX70wL0z0
(from Latin American Idol)
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, February 1st, 2009
| |
11:57 am - Lay a whisper on my pillow
|
Internet cafe is playing "it must have been love" over and over. First in English, then in Spanish, on a loop. We´re on play 5.
There are no dumpsters in Iquitos. You just pile the trash up on the curb and in the mornings the garbage truck rolls by and two guys run out, scoop up all the trash in their arms, throw it into the back, and then run ahead and grab the next pile.
I got some terrible coffee at "Amazon Cafe" and then wandered around for a while. No matter how I dress, what I do with my hair, I am a liveing, breathing spectacle of whiteness. Literally little children point, giggle, and stare as I walk by. A toddler playing on the sidewalk this morning jumped up, ran inside, and got his mom to look at me. "Gringa, mama! Una Gringa!"
At least it seems to amuse them.
We went to the local market as a group two nights ago to buy some vegetables. We learned very quickly that if you look too long at a chicken, fish, or turtle, the vendor will snap its neck, bang its head on the ground, and then offer it to you. By the end of our shopping trip, we had a pack of about 12 kids following us. I felt like they were waiting for us to do something terribly entertaining, but they seemed relatively content just to follow us around and stare. One of the little ones attached herself to my skirt and kept rubbing at my arm. Others would come up and sort of touch my hand and then run off.
The hospital has been interesting. They use electricity pretty sparingly during the day and it´s been hot this week so the ants and mosquitos are out in full force. We´re seeing lots of Dengue fever and malaria. A few cases of appendicitis which are doomed to become ruptured and necrotic by the time they finally get into surgery in one to two weeks, if they´re lucky.
There´s not much to do here. The gym´s closed on Sunday and that´s about the only entertainment in town. I imagine I´ll do some more wandering if it doesn´t rain, maybe practice spanish a bit so I´m not stuck using only present tense punctuated with dramatic¨"In the past"s and "in the future"s. (In the past I am living in the united states. In the future I am a doctor.) accompanied by dramatic hand gesture, waving back over my shoulder for the past and making a rolling motion with both hands for future. I actually know present and future tense but seem to lose them entirely under the pressure of conversation. Worth working on I suppose.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Thursday, January 29th, 2009
| |
3:21 pm - assorted peru pictures
|
www.photobucket.com/tereziperu
(the "n" didn't work when I made the album)
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
| |
4:48 pm - this is a post from Peru
|
Lest you think I´d abandoned you entirely.
I´m in Iquitos, a medium sized city on the Amazon. It´s hot and humid and brightly colored and absolutely overrun with people and bananas and scooters and motorized rickshaws.
My four classmates and I are staying with a Peruvian/Israeli family, who are arguably the loudest human beings possible. (Although you need to be loud to be heard over the 24 hour salsa party/motorcycle race taking place outside. The house is a typical cement floored, unroofed large room with essentially an outdoor living room/courtyard in the center and partially covered small bedrooms along the periphery. It would be pleasant if Iquitos wasn´t a nonstop noise violation.
The food is interesting, lots of fish, yucca, and plantains, tropical juices, and very little else. And we all have roundworm. Apparently there´s an 100% prevalence of intestinal worms here, we were not spared. It´s kind of fun, I´ve given them names and we have an agreement that they´ll basically leave me alone for the next two months and I won´t kill them with albendazole until I´m back in the states.
We work in the ¨hospital regional¨ which is the tertiary referal center for the entire region of Peru. I try to withhold judgement but even compared with other third world hospitals I´ve spent time in, it´s a disaster. A patient in my ward pooped on the floor in the hallway this morning and no one bothered to clean it up until about 5 hours later. Gloves are strictly optional. Vaginal infections are diagnosed by a doctor inserting his finger and then smelling it (and then making the residents do the same for a second opinion). The beds are all infested with ants and almost rusted apart.
And these aren´t a problem of not having resources, it´s a problem of not caring about cleanliness or personal protection. Fair enough it´s hard to worry about hygeine when patients are dying at a rate of about one every six hours, but basic things like washing hands, cleaning the floors, wearing gloves cost almost no money and save lives. And even in Kenya where there was no running water they tried their best to keep it clean and sterile. It´s tough for me. This is the best hospital for miles and it feels to me like they´ve just given up on doing good medicine, even within the resources that are available. All the residents are just going through the motions until they can get out and practice in private clinics or the teaching hospital in Lima.
Anyway, I´m here two more weeks then we take off for small clinics further out in the rainforest. I´m looking forward to getting out of the city.
I´ve finished all my residency interviews. My list is 11 hospitals but I´m hoping to match within my top 3 and I can´t for my life decide on my first choice. It´s down to Indiana, the 5 year double peds-emergency program or emergency only at Vanderbilt. I´m drawn to Indiana for the peds piece even though I realize I´d like living in Nashville a million times better than Indianapolis, Vanderbilt has a better reputation, and at Vandy I´d be earning twice as much in 4 or 5 years as I would if I´m still a resident at Indiana. But something is pulling me towards the Indiana program despite all those things. And even if I put Indy first they only take 2 residents a year so odds are I´ll end up at Vanderbilt anyway. It´s a disaster, I change my mind literally 5 times a day.
Allright, the internet cafe is playing "I´m a slave for you," my cue to get back to the hospital.
Adios. . .
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, January 4th, 2009
| |
8:53 pm - Most overdue update ever
|
I know. Sorry.
So I've been on the interview trail for the past month, which is not nearly as exciting as the Appalachian trail or the Inca trail or really any other trail at all. So far United, US Air, Soutwest, Northwest, and Delta have oh so kindly carried me to New York, DC, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Hartford, New Orleans, and Denver. Only two left: Regions Hospital in St. Paul, MN and Vanderbilt (which I accompany by trumpets and a chorus of angels every time I say it in my head for some reason).
The boy is back in Israel. Our conversations are punctuated by "hold on, the bomb siren is going off again." Woohoo.
He told me the most heartbreaking story on the day he flew home. He was driving back from the airport to our house when the first siren went off. This couple was walking by the side of the road about a mile or so out of town. There was nowhere for them to hide or run to so they just sat down on the ground and held each other. Luckily the rockets haven't hit any people yet but one landed on a daycare center near our old house and one landed about a km from Eldad's brother's house. This does not make me happy. School has been canceled for a week, the entire city is shut down (which never happens in Israel), it sucks. The good news is that Eldad's position in the navy isn't combat related so he probably won't get called this time. My best Israeli friend was called, but she usually does office work, so I imagine she'll be away from Gaza. I'm nervous about going to Peru and being away from internet and telephones. For some reason I feel better as long as I know what's going on while it happens. Well, hopefully it will blow over fast like last summer's war.
Some highlights from the interview trail:
-Mayo Clinic: First of all, free hotel and $900 dinner. And they generate their own electricity and heat the sidewalks around the clinic so yes, Rochester, MN is actually warmer in the vicinity of Mayo clinic. And they have a giant gym that offers 20 yoga classes a day and is equipped with special UV lights so no one gets seasonal affective disorder (they call them grow lights for people). The gym starts at $7 per paycheck, gets cheaper the more often you go, and offers free "relaxation chairs" with pretty lights and music, massages, and salt water swimming pools (more sterile and less damaging than chlorine, of course). The entire hospital is made of Italian marble and there is real art like Picasso and Da Vinci real art hanging on the walls. If you work for Mayo and you get sick on vacation they will fly you back to the hospital in their private Mayo jet. Oh, and they manufacture their own special, more comfortable, Mayo speculums (I thought Gwen might appreciate that).
Unfortunately, the best thing the residents (who by the way were the absolute most boring group of human beings even theoretically possible) could say about Rochester was "and it's all connected by tunnels with stores in them so you never ever have to go outside!" It would be like living in a giant cold underground mall in the middle of nowhere. For three years. I don't think I can do it. Although I do love the Minnesota accents.
-Indiana's dinner: The food choices were filet mignon, lobster, and pasta primavera with truffles. Yup, we were not allowed to order an entree under $26.
-I creepily started running into the same people at multiple interviews. This was fun sometimes, but most were people I didn't particularly want to ever see again. (Hey! it's annoying-arrogant-freakishly-tall-guy-with-a-hair-gel-addiction-who-only-talks-about-sports again! Great to see you!) One girl who annoyed the poop out of me in Arizona made me very happy when she showed up to Denver in a wildly inappropriate way-too-casual mismatched bright pink suit. With a flannel scarf. For an interview. I win! (Lord, I hope I don't end up in residency with her).
-Hotwire.com: For a good two week run, the hubbie and I stayed only in 4 star hotels for $65 a night or less. The one in New Orleans had a canopy bed, drew a bath for me (okay, actually a little creepy) and offered free peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hot chocolate with marshmallows every night.
The overall interview trail has been a story of great programs in places I don't want to live and crappy programs in the best cities ever. Or programs with 99 out of the 10things I'm looking for but missing one thing that's a total deal breaker. The three programs I've "clicked" with are Indianapolis (double emergency/pediatrics program), Denver Health center (Denver! and the program director is dreamy), and Georgetown. Roughly in that order although University of Utah and University of New Mexico are also bouncing around in my top five. I don't know how to even begin to make my final decision. And I wish times a million that my dream program wasn't located in Indianapolis. I feel an irresistible urge to rank it first which just kills me when I could just as easily choose to spend the next four years frolicking in the mountains and learning how to ski.
So there it goes, we'll see how it all shakes down after my last two interviews.
I get home from Nashville on Friday afternoon and then leave for Peru Saturday morning. If anyone wants to grab some food Friday night I'd love to say bye before I take off again.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, November 27th, 2008
| |
7:45 am
|
Coming off my 6th overnight in my three weeks of inpatient pediatrics. I love kids and it's fun to get to know my patients (in contrast to the past four months in the emergency department) but I am done with this rotation. I drive 2-3 hours a day to work for 12 hours, four hours of which is charting, and five hours of which is a groundhog-day-like endless cycle of rounding on the same patients over and over and over again. I'm happy to be post-call though, I get to leave by 1pm skip the three rush hours I usually get to drive through on my scenic Rockville to Baltimore commute of joy.
This is my last elective and then I dive headfirst into interview season. I'm interviewing at 10-12 emergency medicine residencies and one emergency,pediatrics double residency. Thanks to my genius travel agent I've managed to squeeze all 12 interviews into a four week period but it's a logistical operation that approaches the level of a moderately sized covert military operation. And while I only interview in 12 states, I essentially fly through (read: frantically run through the airport to catch my connection) every single state in the country, including Minneapolis three times.
More on that later. . . morning report time!
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kayakgirl's journal
