ScrappyDoc

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.

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!

I think...

...I was back at work today, but I can't say for sure.

Well, actually that's a fib, because I have charts with my name on them that I have to finish now that I am home, so that must mean that I went in and actually saw some patients. Good thing no one was too sick today, because the entire day was a foggy mess. I don't know what's worse, the icky medicine-head feeling you get when you take Day-quil or the gross stuffy sinus-y feeling you get without the medicine. Either way I felt out of it, but there was no way that I was missing another day of work. I was already mortified that I had to miss 2 days this week, grrr...

Not helping my mood at all is the fact that the Yanks are currently losing to the Red Sox, and Nick is on call, so I'm home moping by myself. I think I might as well just pack it in and call it a night, I don't think I can stomach another inning full of errors and missed opportunities. For once let's root for the Twins and hope they pull out a win tonight against the Tigers. OK, enough about baseball, time for bed!

Grrr... sick as snot

Working on a nasty sinus infection for the past couple of days. I thought it was just allergies about 10 days ago, but things never really got better, and everything started spiraling downhill over the last 48 hours. Sort of felt like I died yesterday, which wasn't great, considering I was supposed to be at work at 4pm. Thank goodness we have a jeopardy system (where someone is on backup call just for these cases) so it wasn't a huge deal, but I still felt like a huge schlump having to do that. But I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to run around and see patients when I couldn't even stand up for more than a few seconds. Finally went to the doctor today and got some antibiotics which will hopefully help kick this thing to the curb. Otherwise, nothing else to report, I'm probably going to hit the hay soon since I do have to work in the morning.

Elusive sleep but memories of silliness at the coast

So last night was not meant for sleep, I guess, considering I was up every hour pretty much. What a pain in the neck! One good thing though, I did get to edit the pictures from this weekend in Beaufort. The photo below should give you an idea of the level of maturity that Nicholas and I function at on a day to day basis...

I'm sure these photos would inspire confidence in our patients, don't you think? Who said being "crabby" couldn't be fun???

The rest of the pictures from the NC Aquarium are posted on Flickr. Hope they make you laugh too...

 

Back by popular demand (again)...

So this time my break was somewhat intentional, in that I didn't actually forget to blog, I was just super boring over the past couple of weeks. The third week of orthopaedics was super busy again, about 95 hours. The fourth week was more relaxed but I felt like crap. My seasonal allergies have been ridiculous here... I felt like I had the flu all week. Damn my new insurance for not covering Zyrtec. I just couldn't bring myself to pay 40 bucks a month for Zyrtec when I can get 3 months of Allegra for $9.00. It took a while to kick in though and I walked around for about 3 or 4 days in a total histamine fog (OK, that was super nerdy, sorry...)

In other news, my sister is getting ready to pop, poor thing. Her due date is officially Friday, but at her last appointment her OB said that she was just hanging out in limbo land, so it might be a little while longer. Hopefully she can hang in there. She looked great when I saw her a few weeks ago at her shower. Here are a couple of pictures from the day. The rest are on Flickr if you want to check them out, you can click here, or just type in www.flickr.com/photos/scrappydoc/ at any time.

As far as the house goes, things are coming along. Once things are more organized, I'll post some pics. We finally got most of our closets installed yesterday, but as a result, everything is all over the place because the random mess was all hidden away in the empty closets. Our bedroom furniture is in and now we just have to coordinate delivery. We decided (or rather, I mandated... poor Nick) that we need to change to color in our bedroom (again). The second brown looked almost as bad as the first once it was all dry and other stuff was in place. So I think we played it safe and chose a neutral gray. Fingers crossed it looks good.

Back from my unintentional break

So I'm sure all of you have been wondering where the heck I've been over the last 2 weeks (or maybe no one cares and I'm just being narcissistic). Either way, things just got super hectic after my trip home that all I've really done is go to work and sleep. Wow, what an exciting existence. Despite my boringness, some fairly exciting things have happened, including...

I found and ordered my wedding dress, which was a huge relief. I went to a bunch of places in the city while I was home and tried on a ton of dresses, most of which I hated. But when I tried this one on, I just knew it. I wound up putting it on 2 more times that day, now I can't wait until it gets here (12 weeks from now).

My dad and I made our way up to Manhattan Penthouse, which is lovely, and did a tasting. The food was out of this world, way better than I was expecting from a caterer. I hope it tastes that good when they're cooking for 125 people, but at least we're starting out with something high quality. We also went out Friday night and listened to a band that my parents have been going to see for years. Their wedding prices are reasonable, and we really thought they sounded fantastic. The singer is just amazing, and they sing in something like four different languages.

The trip home was also fun because I got to hang out with Rob and Jenny, who is super cute and super pregnant. She has a little less than a month to go, hopefully the time will go by quickly because I know she's getting more uncomfortable by the minute. The baby shower was on Sunday and everyone had a great time. They got a ton of wonderful gifts including a bunch of travel-friendly baby stuff so they can come and visit Uncle Nick and Aunt Cari down in NC. I'll post the pics up on Flickr in a bit.

Rested after a day off

Yesterday was my day off, and even though I had to be at conference from 8-12, I don't have to be in today until 4, so I really did have a whole day off (and a little more). I got some errands done yesterday and then Nick and I went out and had a nice dinner. We also stopped by the house to check on the progress. Unfortunately, there are still a few things standing in our way, most of them related to the city and the inspection. There is still a chance that we will close on Friday, but there's no guarantee. We've been in the hotel for more than a month now, and while we've certainly established a routine, it will be great, great, great to be in our house. And Beth (Nick's mom) has generously offered to come visit us and help us unpack and get settled during the first week of August. That will be SUCH a huge help. Nick starts in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) on the first, and I switch to Orthopaedics, which will be busy for both of us (although probably more for him then for me). It will be nice to have family around and help us make our house feel like a home.

Oh and I've been talking to a few people about looking at pictures on the new site where I've posted my photos, Flickr, and some of you were wondering what the best way to look at them was. I've found that clicking on the slideshow tab, and then once the show starts, you can hover over the picture and the letter i should appear, and if you click on that, it will display the information about each picture while you're looking at it. You can also change the speed of the slideshow by clicking on the slow, medium or fast on the bottom left. Or you can scroll through at your own speed by using the arrows to the right and left of the pictures. I did post some new pics from our last visit, if you're interested.

Lost in the shuffle

I apologize for neglecting my blog for the last several days, but I've been so tired after working that when I come home all I want to do is sleep!! It is amazing how much more work takes out of you when you have to think carefully about each decision and patient, and be able to justify all of your actions, not only to your attending physicians but also legally. My brain just feels fried when I'm done, and the last few days have been particularly hectic. I just got off of my 6-2 shift and I'm trying to wind down a little before hitting the hay. I did stop by the house briefly today and there is progress being made, although not as much as I had hoped for. The city inspectors were out today and that certainly stood in the way of getting meaningful work done. Nick and I are going to go back on Saturday and see where we stand with our move in date. It's looking doubtful that we will be closing on Monday (certainly not tomorrow), but hopefully it won't be too many days past that. I have some new pics to post, and I'll put those up tomorrow. I'm going to hit the sack because my eyelids are closing.

Happy Sunday

Nothing terribly interesting to report today, I've just been super busy at work. Had some frustrating patients yesterday, people who have chronic generalized complaints and decide to come to the Emergency Department because they're either tired of waiting to see their doctor or they're unhappy or unsatisfied with the diagnosis they've been given. I know this is something that is an issue in EDs everywhere, but we actually have a pretty good safety net here in Winston-Salem. We'll see what it's like today. I'm curious to know how things go on Sunday in a city where there seems to be a baptist church on every other corner. I'll keep you posted. Have a happy Sunday!