everything's coming up chrysanthemums...

Today was my last day of enforced dysfunctionality. It's been a heck of a ride. In case you're wondering, yes, my grade did stink (I wasn't getting my hopes up), but so did the other student's and we have addressed the powers that be to appeal and try to fight the woooaahhh...man.
The good news is, I got to sleep for SEVEN hours last night even though I was on call, I got finished today at around 10 AM, and then I got to go home. Then I went to Lowe's and bought some terra cotta pots and a bunch of plants to make myself a container garden in front of my front door. I of course called my sister to ask her what I should plant (and by that what I really meant was what can't I kill?) and she told me to get something tall, something short, and something viney that droops/spreads. I took her advice, and this was the result:


Charming, no? of course after I finished I read the back of my bag of dirt and it said "NOT FOR POTTED PLANTS!!! KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. ALWAYS WEAR GARDEN GLOVES WHEN HANDLING THIS SOIL"... after I had happily been digging my hands into it for like twenty minutes. Oh well, my hands aren't burning just yet so I think I'm probably safe.
My sister told me I should be careful about what I'm bitching about on this blog... looking back, I haven't used any names, and I haven't said anything that I didn't also tell to my course director, resident, and other classmates.
This weekend is for fun only. Next Monday I start at the VA... on a team by myself. I'm already dreading the undivided scut!

Have you ever wondered how Donna Mills, the star of the hit 1980s TV show Knott's Landing, got her signature wonderful look? well you're in luck, because in 1986 she put out a video series called "The Eyes Have It". I'm sharing with you.

Basic skin care with yogurt and cucumbers


Don't forget, you want to look natural... not BE natural.


Don't forget to feather your eyeliner!


Fabulous work makeup. lavish on the mascara.


For those special evenings when you really want to shine, turn heads... be that special woman! give yourself over to romance and glamor.


This may look like it will hurt, but it won't.


you're welcome.

awkward turtle

On Friday I went back to the private practice pediatrician's office. As a refresher, this is the same Doc who was concerned about my single status and who recommended that I be engaged or at least in a long term relationship by the time I graduate Med school. During one of the breaks between patients, she and her staff begin to slyly ask me questions about what my ideal man would be like. As she is involved in grading me, I play along with her, thinking this question to be completely theoretical. I say he has to be 6'3" or above, clean cut, smart and well-educated, reasonably athletic, well-mannered, and most importantly completely infatuated with me. He also can't whine too much or be an ass. This is why I'm still single (the standards against whining and/or being an ass cut down the potential field by around 75%).
Her medical assistants start chatting rapidly in Spanish, not knowing that I can understand just about everything they're saying (because I've only been speaking English to them all week). Basically they're saying "ooh, I bet she's going to like him! I hope he comes today!" The Doctor then tells me that they had a sales rep come by on Wednesday who was 6'7" and that she had somehow in his five minute office visit found out that he was single and told him to come back on Friday to meet her tall medical student. And he did. AWKWARD! He seemed pleasant and was certainly very tall, but really?

When he left, the entire staff started asking me if I thought he was good looking, if I liked him, if I would go on a date with him, etc. I tried explaining that it didn't matter because he was in the office for five minutes and I'm not going back there anymore. The Doctor then told me that she would email me when he was coming and bringing lunch so that I could make the 15 mile drive to her office and be there whenever he was. I told her politely that that was ridiculous. Her entire staff began to say that he had come that day just to meet me, and that he must have really liked me because he stayed for seven minutes instead of the usual five. And in case you were wondering what our children would look like, don't worry because they figured that out too (tall, beautiful, and athletic).
Before I left, the Doc made me give her my phone number just in case. Why the hell not? Who knows? one of these days I may get a phone call from a mysterious number saying "hi, I'm Joe Pharm... remember? The really tall Allegra rep from Dr. S's office"

this is my life.

An update on what I'm doing these days:
4:30 or 5:00 wake up and get ready
5:30ish At work; once there, I start collecting information on how my patients have done overnight, look up their new labs, see if any of the values are abnormal, think of a way to correct whatever is abnormal, and calculate how much the patient ate, drank, and peed. Then I go look at the patient and hope that I can understand whatever I'm seeing (I asked for backup the other morning because I didn't know if a baby had an abnormal heart beat or was just hiccuping. Thank God it was hiccups). Then I write all the things I discovered on a sheet of paper that will go in the chart.
7:00 my Senior Resident comes in and I tell him what I found and what I think, and he tells me whether I'm being reasonable or being an idiot (luckily I'm on pediatrics and the people are too nice to ever actually tell me I'm an idiot even when I am one).
8:30 lecture one some educational topic. Bagels are provided (yay!)
9:30 rounds are scheduled to begin
10:15 rounds actually begin. Try and sound competent while presenting my patient. Pretend not to be thinking "WTF?" when asked if I think that my patient is on an adequate dose of a drug that I memorized for a test I took last October (I have no idea, but I can tell you that its side effects include loss of taste, cough and a rash!)
12:15 meeting re: Medical Ethics. Ethics training in one hour. Lunch and cookies are provided.
1:15 lecture about some pediatric problem. The last one was about UTIs and the resident brought us candy.
2:30 see interesting patients and try to absorb some drops of knowledge from the attending physician.
3:45 hope that I don't have enough experience/authority/power to do anything else useful for the day, so that I can go home. (I'm willing to stay and do stuff if I can actually DO stuff, but more often the medical students are forgotten because everyone is busy with patients and we wait around for a while until someone notices that we're there and then dismisses us)
Afternoon/evening: attempt to get my life together, study for the shelf exam, write a 10 page report about a patient, etc.
8:30 go to bed pooped.

Highlights: I figured out why I don't have any financial aid, and it should be coming in later this week. I also diagnosed a patient with milk-alkali syndrome this week (you get it from eating lots and lots of Tums while drinking lots and lots of milk) proving that the hours I spent looking up random useless info on Wikipedia last year weren't completely wasted!
Lowlights: my hand hurts really bad and I'm about to start writing aforementioned 10 page report. booo.

silly donuts

When Shannon and Ben were here we went to a place called "yummy donuts" on Lovers. I was hesitant to try the donuts because the inside of the store didn't smell like grease (which to me means that the donuts can't be that fresh). Then I saw the selection and was FLABBERGASTED. They had donuts with fruity pebbles on top, donuts with pop-tarts on top(!), with Oreos on top, and donuts dressed up as moon-pies, s'mores, éclairs, and other such nonsense. What on earth is the point of having a donut that is trying to be a moonpie?
First of all, moonpies are officially the most random thing that anyone can ever eat. I've only seen one person eat a moonpie ever. I got one for my birthday as a joke because I think they're so weird... it's still in my pantry unopened. It's a banana-flavored moonpie and I'm saving it for some occasion when I feel self-destructive.
Anyways, about the donut experience. I was overwhelmed by the choices and decided to go with a simple apple cider donut. This type of donut is supposed to be sweet (but not sickeningly so) and dense, with a good amount of chewiness. The donut I ate was fluffy like a birthday cake-not the proper texture for a good apple cider donut at all. My sister got a thing that was like the lovechild of a long john and a cream-filled donut which they were calling a donut éclair. She said it was good, but I still think that they're serving too much flash and not enough substance. I'm going to stick with June at Maple Donuts from now on. Besided the fact that it's less expensive, I have actually seen donuts go from the dough phase to the in my mouth phase while waiting for a large order to be filled. Super Fresh. Plus she always gives me extra donuts as a perk. Their simple glazed variety is solid, but the standout donuts are the blueberry cake and the old-fashioned buttermilk. I really don't think you can go wrong with anything from Maple Donuts because they put love in the batter.
Another place I like for sweet breakfasts is Aston's bakery on Lovers Lane near the tollway. I had the cinnamon roll and Erin had a cherry danish when she came and both were excellent. They also had a good-looking supply of cookies and petit fours (however, their muffin selection was limited).

Crustacean Sensacean!

that kind of sounds like the name of a Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor. It would probably be the worst flavor ever created. Unless they did one of their creative things where they just made chocolate bits in the shape of crustaceans...but if they made, say, vanilla ice cream with a crawfish-flavored swirl and cajun seasoning sprinkles, that would be sick.
we had an all-medschool crawfist boil on Saturday. It was a great way to end the school year and I got to meet some people and catch up with friends from the other years. I accidentally made one friend by hugging a stranger after I had mistaken him for someone in my class. he was very polite and acted as if this were a completely normal thing for me to be doing. I may do this on purpose in the future as a way to meet strangers in awkward social situations--just pretend that I already know them, give them a big hug, and enter into the middle of a conversation. Here's a picture of the banquet table.

This was my first crawfish boil, but I was told that it was ABSOLUTELY necessary to suck the juice out of the crawfish's head. tasty!

Here's a picture of the mudbugs dying. But they gave their lives for a noble cause.

My friend Jeff with a crawfish that may actually be half lobster. look at that thing! Also, please note his handlebar moustache.
It is my dream to have a party themed "Mustachio Bashio" and I will require that every man who attends grow a mustache. If they can't grow one, then they have to have one drawn on at the door with sharpie.
I am now finished with second year. I don't have much planned for the summer, mostly 10+ hour days of studying for my USMLE. Here's hoping I don't get any more insane than I currently am. wheeee!