ScrappyDoc

Last day on Pediatrics

I can't believe it's the end of October. This year is FLYING by! Check out these super cute pics of Kassi that Jenny and Rob sent, don't you just want to bite her??

The end of the month brings the end of a service for me, and I'll change over to Anesthesia/Ultrasound tomorrow. It will be nice to be back in the department, at least part of the time, but I'm worried that I've forgotten all of my intubation skills. Good thing it will be in a controlled environment (e.g. the OR) and there will be plenty of back up.

Well, with November comes the holiday season, and also my first week of vacation. And that also means that I get to go home and meet Kassi in person. Yippee!!! I can't wait. It's been so hard watching her grow up in pictures, but at least she'll only be about 2 months old, and hopefully won't remember that when she's older. It will be a nice break for Jennifer too, since she's been doing this on her own most hours of the day. Rob is still in the early months of his new job at UPS and it's very demanding. As a result, he works super long hours and a lot of Saturdays. Hopefully the trip will also help me get more wedding stuff accomplished. The first few days will be spent working on things in NYC, and then I'll head down to Jenny and Rob's for the rest of the time... It will be a great week, I can't wait!

Exhausted

I can't believe I'm just getting home. It is after 7pm and I was in this morning at 5:30. All I can say right now is that I have no idea how my pediatrician friends do this... Andrea and Naomi, you are both saints! Today was just ridiculous in a variety of ways. We had 8 admissions in the span of 4 hours, and our team is on call tonight too! Usually, the team that isn't on call tries to take the bulk of the admissions so the on call folks aren't slammed all day, but it just didn't work out that way today.

In between discharges and admissions and hordes of crazy family members, all I could think to myself is how hard this job is. Not only do you have to take care of the patients, who, by the way, are tiny, difficult to examine and terrible historians, if they can talk at all; but then you have to deal with the families and all of their ridiculousness. And that doesn't just mean Mom and Dad and kiddo, there are extended families, Godfathers named "Tiny" and Great Aunts who wind up with sole custody of the kids. What a mess! And of course, everyone wants to tell their side of the story and have their voice heard, and what should be a ten minute encounter can turn in to 30 minute in the blink of an eye.

OK, enough venting. This is a salute to you, Naomi and Andrea, for your hard work and kindness that persists unwavering even in the face of adversity (or insanity, you pick). You guys ROCK!

Raining and loving it

It is FINALLY raining in NC!! We had more than a month straight without any rain, and it was looking pretty dismal. We were under water restriction and headed towards a full blown drought. That was certainly no fun. Well, it started raining yesterday and it isn't supposed to stop until Sunday. It's funny, because usually rain makes people sad or depressed, but everyone here is cheering. It has made me want to grab a book and cup of coffee or tea and just curl up and read, which isn't an option right now, maybe this weekend though.

Speaking of weekends, this is my last one Peds, which means one more call night on Friday. Thank goodness. Then back to the ED for a month of Ultrasound and intubating in the morning. I can't wait for regular hours and no more call.

No better reason for a post

than a picture of my super cute niece who I can't wait to meet. Jenny just sent these and I almost "fell out" they were so cute (translation, "fainted," for those of you not from the south). I can't wait to meet this little pumpkin, just a few more weeks to go.

In other news, work is still going well. I got out at 3:45 today, Holy Crap!!! I about fell out again! We've got a ton of kiddos on our team (around 30) and the other team has 3 (doesn't that sound fair), but a bunch of them are longterm folks who are just sitting, lovingly know as our "rocks" either waiting to grow, waiting for surgery or waiting for some other random thing. One of my little rocks had a birthday today, she turned 10, the sad part is that she's been in the hospital for some reason or another for her last 4 birthdays. Her mom and I have become pretty close through this month, and she's pretty darn amazing.

On a lighter note, the house in general is coming together slowly but surely. They've finally carted the old office off of the property and it looks so much better. That was one amazing site, seeing that whole building carted off on a flat bed. We're also getting ready to have our street and driveways paved. This means we will finally be able to park in our driveway/carpark. Can't wait for that, especially before the bad weather hits.

Not quite a month...

...away from blogging, but a good break nonetheless. I think I started 10 posts during my month on Peds, but was always way too tired to finish any of them. This has been a tough month! Not so much because the actual work is hard (which it is, but not worse than any other specialty), but because there is a lot of rounding and downtime that add up to 12 hour days. Not to mention all of the social issues, which are mentally and emotionally exhausting. Thank goodness there are only 9 more days left, then I head to an easy month doing Anesthesia/Ultrasound, where I'll spend the morning doing intubations in the OR and then the afternoons doing ultrasound and procedures in the ED. It will be nice to be back in the department, since that is certainly where I feel at home. OK, time to head to work, hopefully more later!