I'll admit, I was just inspired by

alimallama

I know, it's been a while since I last posted.  Forgive me, I was quite busy while I was down in Connecticut.  I was in the hospital between 70 and 110 hours per week, sometimes for 36 hours straight.  Why they think it's a good idea for students who are still learning how to do different procedures to be in the OR for emergency surgical cases all night long and then all day the next day is beyond me.  But, hey, I guess I surprised myself that I could do it.  I really like the hands-on stuff.  It's rewarding to end the day knowing that today I helped remove 2 infected gallbladders, did a breast biopsy, and sutured a few incisions.  I remember feeling the same way during my OB rotation - today I helped deliver three babies, helped coach 3 women through labor, said good-bye and congrats to several new families being discharged.

I've been home for about 2 weeks now, and my current rotation - not nearly as rewarding.  It's inpatient medicine, so basically just managing patients that have been admitted to the hospital for various things - most commonly pneumonia, chest pain, general weakness.  It really would be better if it was set up better.  I'm assigned to a resident and an intern, and they're really more interested in training the intern than in training me.  So I pretty much get the cases that aren't interesing enough for them.  Most of the time I just follow them around while they mostly ignore me.  Occasionally they send me to the library and I check my email and print out articles for my research paper.  There are some pluses, though - most days there are drug rep lunches, and most days I get to leave before 3 o'clock.

Only three weeks left, then a week off.  Then my next rotation is emergency medicine, which I'm already looking forward to.  The doctor there already mailed me a huge packet of information, including a copy of the form I'll have to fill out on every patient and a text book that one of the docs there wrote.  And they want to know my schedule requests ahead of time -sweet!  Most rotations expect me to be at their beck and call, so the fact that they respect the fact that I have a life outside of school is very nice indeed.  They also told me that I'll be there for four 10-12 hour shifts per week; each week will alternate between days and evenings, and I'll have to work one weekend.  Not bad at all.

In other news, we're back into wedding planning.  The biggest thing we've done lately?  Booked our honeymoon!  We leave on Monday after the wedding (flight leaves at 5:35 AM -oy!) for Curacao.  We're staying at Breezes for a week - all-inclusive, huge beach, lots of pools, bars open from 10 AM - 4 AM everyday - they even have a trapeze!  We're planning on going to the Curacao liquer distillery, swimming with dolphins and sea lions (well, I am, Adam not so much), visiting the oldest Jewish synangogue in the western hemisphere, and bringing home Dutch chocolate and Gouda cheese (can you tell the island is Dutch?).  So excited!

Quote of the evening:

Adam: "You know what you could do to make a fancy meal?  Take a bunch of spaghetti and knit it together."

I don't even know how to respond to that.......

I was just looking online for inspiration for my wedding tiara - I'm crazy-crafty enough that in addition to making my own jewelry, veil, invitations, favors, and bouquets, I'm also attempting to make my own tiara.  So, anyway, I found this website that has tiaras named after the Seven Sisters schools.  Apparently the owner of this company went to Vassar.  But they have a Mount Holyoke tiara!  Granted, it's definitely the simplest of the bunch, and the designer appears to know less about MHC than the other schools, but I kinda like it.  I thought some of you fellow MHCers might be interested too:  Tradewind Tiaras.

When I got home today, it was 87 degrees. In the house. Thank god our house is small enough that one window AC cools off the whole house!

I learned to suture this morning. It was actually really cool. We were seated around long tables in a conference room at Faulkner Hospital, with a plastic pad as a placemat, a paper plate, a pair of gloves, tweezer, forceps, suture material, and needle grabbers set almost as if we were having some kind of strange dinner party. We we each given a square of pigskin and pretty much just started suturing. Once I got the hang of making a square knot with a pair of needle grabbers and forceps, it wasn't too hard at all.

I picked up my grandmother's engagement ring and wedding band at the jewellers today. I don't know if I mentioned it here (I did in weddingplans), but I'm going to wear my grandmother's wedding band when we get married. It's platinum set with diamonds that line up pretty well with my engagement ring. I'm going to wear her engagement ring on my right hand. The rings are still in really good shape considering they're 60 years old, but they were caked with dirt and needed to be polished. They look so good now! Really sparkly. And it only cost $12 to polish them up....not bad for thousands of dollars worth of prettiness!

I now have less than three weeks left in the semester. All I can say is Holy Crap! I can't believe it. And starting in September, I'm going to be treated as if I know what I'm doing. My first rotation is Ob-Gyn at Cambridge Hospital. I'm pretty much jumping in with both feet. From what I've heard about this rotation, it'll be me and 2 or 3 med students there, but I'll be there for a week before they start. I don't know exactly what hours I'll be there, but I'll have to take call every 3-4 nights. Needless to say, I won't be around much! And I'll probably be pretty sleep-deprived, although that's nothing new after working in EMS so long.

The bulk of my rotations are around Boston, but sometime in the winter, I'll be commuting to Spencer for my pediatrics rotation. Spencer's west of Worcester, so it'll be a pretty long commute. Then I'll be living in Norwalk, CT for five weeks for my surgery rotation. Luckily, they provide us with housing for that one, and I've heard that Norwalk is a rotation site that med students and PA students travel to from all over the country because it's such a great learning experience. And the good thing for me is that surgery is notoriously a rotation that involves very early hours (think being at the hospital at 5:30 morning) and call, so at least I don't have to commute into Boston starting at 4:30 AM, and if I have to do call, it doesn't really matter if I'm pretty much living away from home. Hopefully I'll at least get weekends off so I can come home for a couple days.

Pepper's really settling in now. She and Moose seem to like each other; they play together a lot, but it usually turns into fighting too - I think Moose plays a little too rough for her liking. But she's very cuddly, which is a nice change of pace since Moose is pretty much only cuddly when we first get home at night or when he first wakes up.

I listed two textbooks for sale on half.com on Sunday, and they both sold already. Woo-hoo! And I was even able to sell them for $40 and $50, so I'll get a nice profit off of them. If you have any textbooks to sell, I think this is a good time to list them, because when I've listed things before, nothing has ever sold this quickly. I'm going to rummage for more books to sell - I can use the dough at this point!

We officially have a date and a place for the wedding! We're getting married on September 8, 2007 at the Shirley Meetinghouse and having our reception at the Leominster Elks.  We're very excited. :)

Okay, time to go make dinner......my belly's hungry. :)