My Tom Kha Gai soup was a success. I made it much more mild than you’ll ever find in any self respecting Thai restaurant, but even that was enough to open up my sinuses. Yummy! It’s been a long time since I had any and I can’t wait to have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

The recipe, fyi, can be found here, I’d recommend just tearing the kaffir leaves, but leaving them attached to the central stem–they really aren’t edible, and I made the mistake of shredding them into tiny bits. And since you really aren’t eating the lemongrass AND the galangal, it makes a lot that you are removing in your mouth. I also used lemongrass powder as well, I think it made the flavor stronger.

The Pork Larb Moo on the other hand was an utter failure. I’ve never tasted anything so foul in my entire life and my house still reeks of the combination of fish sauce and lime juice. Ugh. I think I bought the wrong fish sauce as well. Fish sauce isn’t the most tasty stuff in the world, but this is down right nasty.

Tomorrow I’m trying out the Indian food. I’m really looking forward to the Chicken Saab, as it’s one of my favorite Indian dishes.

I feel 130% better than yesterday. Woke up this am with barely a cough, the sore throat decreased to a slight nag and no ear ache! No need for antibiotics after all. Life is sweet again.

Or at least, until I started going through the licensing paperwork again so that I can become a RealDoc™. I started working on it back in April, got overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork and let it sit and mold. Oops. Paperwork is still there, and now there’s all the pressure to get it done and get it done now. It’s so confusing, so expensive (I’m out $1000, just looking at the application), and the amount of stuff that I need notarized is crazy. I guess it’s good that I have to go through this, to prevent any Joe Blow from pretending that he’s a physician, but ugh. I have to have it all done by December, and it take “30-60 days for processing” which, I’ve already learned the hard way, is Wisconsin 60 days: 60 days plus 30 days to decide if we need to audit and 10 more days to tell you that we’ve audited and 30 days to audit and another 30 to tell you that we’re done auditing and 3-4 weeks for shipping (stupid Wisconsin Tax Revenue. Still waiting for my tax refund here). So that doesn’t leave me with a lot of time.

Off to the grocery store. I’m finally feeling up to making all of my Indian and Thai food so I need to get the rest of the ingredients. Ta!

Thanks again to all for the good, healthy wishes!

I’ve finally decided that after 8 days, I am really, truly sick and most likely have either strep throat (my throat developed plaques today. Nice!) and an ear infection and need antibiotics. Of course, I make this decision at 10 pm, after all of the walk in clinics and pharmacies are closed, so I can’t do anything about it until tomorrow. Where I still have to go to work and won’t be able to see a doctor/get those antibiotics until sometime tomorrow evening. The thought of dealing with this ear/throat pain all day tomorrow is making me cry…

This folks, is why doctors need doctors of their own. Because while we take excellent care of our own patients, we’re pretty lousy about taking care of ourselves. I’ve tried to convince myself all week that it was just a cold and ignored that voice inside that said “maybe not” when my symptoms didn’t quite match up.

*BIG HUGS* to those out there in friendsland who are going through difficulties. I’m sorry that I haven’t been there for you as I should have, but you have been in my thoughts and prayers.

I’m so tired of being sick. I’m on day 7 of the Killer Virus and it really hasn’t gotten much better. The fevers/chills/hallucinations are thankfully gone but I’ve still got the burning throat, aching ears and hacking cough and the Dayquill aint’ doing nothing. If I didn’t know in my little doctor heart since I don’t have a fever, exudate, lymphadepathy I don’t have a serious infection, I’d seriously be considering writing myself some antibiotics. And possibly some guaifenesin with codeine. I splurged on NyQuil since I finally will be able to sleep in tomorrow. Hopefully, a full night of sleep will turn me into a new person. But I swear, if it doesn’t improve by morning, I’m going to be one of those awful people and drop by the ER for a nonemergency, to get a rapid strep done.

Chris call this morning with the offer of visiting. I looked around at my pile of used kleenex (a word to the snifflers. Splurge on lotioned, brand name Kleenex. Your nose will thank you), dishes and dirty clothes and begged off. 🙁 Hopefully he’ll have the entire weekend off next weekend and we’ll find a festival or something to experience.

I lurched myself off the couch at some point and tracked down a Oriental market, where I have bought supplies so that I can make Tom Kha Gai soup, Larb, Chicken Saab, and Chicken Masala and fresh spring rolls over the next several days. So excited. Why the sudden urge for Thai/Indian food?? While I’ve been convalescing, I’ve gotten pretty involved in reading this blog: Six in the World, which is about a fix who took a year off and travelled around the world, which sounded pretty amazing. As in, I almost started planning my trip, until reality set in again. Yeah, won’t be doing that for many more years to come. I started getting really hungry when they were talking about all of the great Thai food and the Thai cooking classes, which caused me to remember the spices that Chris had brought back for me from Thailand and the recipes from his cooking lessons… so now I’ll be making Thai food and experimenting with Indian. Yummy!

And the last thing, before I drift off (hopefully) in drug-induced sleep. I have an infestation of fruit flies. Darn things are smaller than the holes in my screens. Any ideas of how to get rid of them??

Finally getting to do some procedures (after 3 months in various ICUs, it’s about freakin’ time!!). I got my first arterial line on the first poke… and have missed all three since then. But then… my fellow has missed on those ones as well, so I don’t feel so bad. I slid the needle right into the internal jugular with gorgeous flow back on the central line placement today, and only required a little bit of assistance to get all of the wires, scapels, and catheters in. No major bleeding and NO pneumothorax, a double plus. Hopefully, the ICU will start picking up a little more and I’ll have more procedures to do. I hope to get proficient enough that I can actually move to the teaching part of the “see one, do one, teach one” model. I’m excited.

I woke up this morning to my pager going off around 6:45, telling me that I had 2 patients to see this morning. As they were patients I was already familiar with, I paged my SMS and rolled over and fell back to sleep, intending to get up in time so I could be to work about an hour later. Of course, I overslept a little and was heading out the door right at 8 o’clock, when my pager started going off. Stat admission. Patient intubated. Patient coding… and I’m at least 15 minutes away. Luckily the cards resident was there and covered me while I raced into work, but my day was rather flustered.

Attending and I are getting along better, although I still don’t know how to read him. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to keep my other SMS from breaking down entirely, as she’s convinced that he hates her and it makes her more flustered than she ever is when she’s presenting the same stuff to me. Being a resident in some ways is so much more difficult than being a intern, which I knew it was going to be so, but I thought more in terms of “I have to know more”, not so much of “I have to know more, and teach, and manage every patient, and direct a team, and tell attendings how to treat others and fix problems, and run codes, and…” I miss being an intern. I probably won’t be saying that come October when I’m the junior resident on Neurology again. 🙂

Think I’m making it an early night. I’ve been living on six or so hours for the last week and it’s starting to wear me down. Not good.

I am the proud owner of The Book.

Which is currently in the front seat of my car, locked, so that I’m not tempted to stay up all night and read. I have to be at the hospital in the morning, and even though I have no patients, I have to be alert enough that if one came in, I wouldn’t kill them.

Went to the local bookstore with some of the other neuro residents and one of my attendings, met up with his family. So much fun oohing over the kids and their costumes and how excited they were. Of course, the first thing they all did when they got the book was open it up and read the last word. I succeeded in not listening to carefully, so I’m still not spoiled. 🙂

Kinda sad that it’s all over now.

I think this is the first time since third year that I’ve had an attending dislike me. I’ve had ones who were difficult to read and who I disagreed with, but we had a pretty cordial relationship in the end. But I can’t seem to impress this one at all. I’m still struggling on how to be a resident–how to give my medical students autonomy and yet make sure that nothing major is missed; and things have been overlooked, pretty substantial things that luckily did not harm any patients. All of this has not been impressing me to my attending.

Can’t believe I’m actually looking forward to my rotation in the ICU to end.

Venting is a very good thing. Can’t say that it made the troubles go away, but I do feel like I may have a little bit of a game plan (yes, I’m being vague, perhaps more details in the future).

Have to give a presentation on a paper tomorrow. Haven’t found the paper yet. Plus I have clinic. Gosh, I love Tuesdays.

Still loving the ICU (for real, no sarcasm here), but it’s freaking me out. Starting to sink in that I’m the one “in charge.” Even though I have a fellow as backup, he’s not always there, and if something goes wrong, I’m expected to step up and direct and manage until he gets there. Plus I have 2 fourth year students that I’m responsible for… and they’re making decisions that I have to constantly evaluate to make sure they are appropriate. Plus, I have to know about every patient on the team, which even though it’s a small team right now (3 patients. 1 consult. 2 of the patients are palliative. All that equals no fun, no procedures for Julia), these patients have been here a long time and that’s a lot of reviewing that I have to do. I’ve already “messed” up once, where my student wrote an order that I should have questioned more closely and didn’t, leading to extra invansive procedures on an already sick guy.

And now, I really have to go track down an article to talk about.

The Dark Is Rising movie looks as awful as I feared. A LOTR ripoff and completely missing the point of the novels (I’ve been horrified ever since I heard that they were Americanizing it). I try really really hard not to be a literary snob, where I sniff at every change that they make from book to movie, but. But. *sigh*

Trailers can be found here

There’s a reason that they only give me three weeks of vacation a year and four days off a month…

Any more and the taste of freedom would be so alluring that there would be no way any of us would return.

(Moving over to the ICU for the rest of the month, which I love, but it’s so hard saying goodbye to the days of freedom).

My holiday was excellent. I now have new light fixtures downstairs, a spider free basement, vacuumed floors, a draining tub, sparkling clean gutters, a weed free garden, watered and trimmed raspberries and bridalveil bush and a (mostly) working garage door. And a year after moving in, I’ve officially, completely, totally unpacked! Plus I spent two days up in the Upper Peninsula (which, except for the license plates, the locals refused to admit was actually part of Michigan), where I wandered around lighthouses and drove through forests and saw the cliffs of Lake Superior. And I spent yesterday with Chris, getting sunburnt exploring an art festival, eating burritos and sushi, and watching Harry Potter. A very busy and somewhat exhausting vacation, I think I need another one, especially since I’m heading into a stretch of 13 days straight. 🙂

My parents and sister will be arriving either early this morning or sometime tomorrow. I have my entire house to clean and arrange and basically unpack (it takes some of us a while… like a year).

Am I?

Nope. Instead, I’m doing fun memes like this. I did this one two years ago, but my friendslist has changed enough that nobody is recognizable anymore. And I must say, even though I went on a friending spree and added a whole bunch of lovely Dr. Who enthusiasts *waves*, they didn’t overwhelm it quite as much as I thought they were going to.

Pictures of my LiveJournal Friends

Tonight, I realized that I am not 20 years old anymore and screaming at the top of my lungs, listening to loud music, being pushed and shoved by drunken slobs are not my ideas of fun anymore. (Not that they really ever were).

And that’s okay.

Because that was a fun part of my life, but growing is ok too

(Let’s see if I’m still saying this when I hit 30 in a year and a half)

But Dashboard Confessional is pretty awesome live and I still love “Vindicated” as much as I did when it represented the dark haired rebel boy who had a thing for paperback novels in his back pocket.

And I think I have filled my lifetime quota of Summerfest.

And the most important news of my life?

One more day of work and then a week of vacation. 8 days completely off. I cannot wait to turn my pager off and chuck it far far away.

🙂 Life will be sweet, my friends.

Stupid YouTube.

I’ve never gotten tv this year (no bunny ears, no cable, no nothing), so i’m always a bit behind on what everybody else is watching. But after Becka starting posting clips, well then, that made me want to go out and watch all of the clips of SYTYCD as I could. I had forgotten how much I love this show.

And YouTube took them all down today. 🙁 So I haven’t even gotten properly caught up. I’m sure they’ll crop up again soon.

But I did get to see some of last year’s stuff and I had forgotten how much I loved Benji. It’s funny, Becka always goes for the lyrical, interpretation dances, and I’m always impressed with the formal. And I had forgotten how much I LOVE the West Coast Swing. It’s been so long since I danced; I’d look like a clumsy buffoon if I tried now. I miss it. There are so many of my college, early adult years that are tied in memories of dancing.

Work is incredibly dull right now. Incredibly. I’m completely bored. I have 1 patient that I’m covering. One. We get about 1 consult a day, usually someone with pneumonia and the primary team refuses to take our advice so it makes me feel extremely frustrated; I hate wasting my time, and if you had already decided on a treatment plan, then why did you ask for a second opinion??? Grrr. Also, I’m at the VA which blocks most of the sites that I want to visit (like LJ), so it leaves me with a lot of time to do nothing. I’m studying right now, for Step 3 which I’ll be taking sometime in the next six weeks, but that gets very dull as well (I don’t wantto learn any more about pediatric rashes! I’m done with that forever!). So right now, I know basically everything that’s going on in the world, as I have literally read just about every single article in the BBC.

Ewan and Charley, btw, were in Eldoret today. *sniff* I miss the place, well, not so much the stench and the mice, but everything else. The pineapple. I definitely miss the pineapple. They’re leaving Kenya, going into Uganda and I’ll probably lose track of their trip, but it was so awesome to hear and see pictures of the areas that I was at just a year and a half ago.

So Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley have been traveling the continent of Africa on their motor bikes. They did a similar sort of trip where they travelled across Europe, Asia, Alaska and Canada on their bikes 3 years ago (as documented in the DVD Long Way Round). I’ve been intrigued and somewhat following their trip this time because it’s Africa, and it’s really dangerous too, more so than the first time.

They’re now in Nakuru, Kenya, and I laughed when I read this on their blog:

‘We’re finding misery on the roads. Very difficult to ride.’ The Kenyan roads – and the police – prove unpredictable.

Ah, the roads. I had almost forgotten about the massive pits that would swallow Jeeps whole. And the roads at Nakuru were some of the worst. The government had finally decided that the roads in Nakuru were so bad that they were willing to put the money to getting them fixed – plowed, paved, the works. So in their infinite wisdom, they tore up all of the pavement and then stopped. Completely. That was at least five years ago when they started the project, and I’ve never experienced such pits and dust storms. The dust storms rivaled blizzards, because at least with those, people actually try to slow down. Those were the times. I should have taken pictures, there is just no way to believe the road conditions.

(I’m really just posting so I can use my pretty pretty icon. Carry on, carry on.)

There. I feel better.

ETA: I should clarify (option #2) that this isn’t about texting in general, more about texting while driving, no matter what conditions (highway speeds, stop and go traffic, construction, etc). I text (occasionally). I’m painfully slow at it and it probably causes great amusement to those around me, but it’s nice in the way that an email is nice–when you just want to say something nice and quick and not get caught in pleasantries.

This went through about three days ago. Yeah, I’m slow like that.

When you see this post a quote from Doctor Who on your LJ

“Doctor, they’ve got guns.”

“And I haven’t. Which makes me the better person, don’t ya think? They can shoot me dead, but the moral high ground is mine.”
~ Army of Ghosts

I rewatched Army of Ghosts, Doomsday and then Fear Her this evening. And it’s still such a sucker punch. I still cry. 🙁

Found one of the best ever reviews/exploration of season three and the finale, (which I liked, btw, flaws and all) here. I disagree with some of the premises, but it’s really well written and literature based and it almost, almost redeems everything that was weak about this season. Really. Go read (but only if you’ve seen this season, because I will not be responsible for spoiling you!)

My brother-in-law suffered a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung) this week. He’s fine, just has a nice chest tube sticking out. The funny part? My sister didn’t tell me (okay, this is my sister, who didn’t tell me she was dating someone. To be fair, I was the first to hear about the engagment, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised). Apparently, I won’t have to worry about needing to give too much medical advice to family members. 🙂

My family (sans Laura and Josh) will be coming out and visiting me in about a week. I’m so excited. Not only do I get to show off my place and my home (and boy do I have a ton to do before they get here!!), but I get a week of vacation. We’re going to go up north, around Minnesota and Michigan and maybe catch some of Canada in those few days and I’m so excited to get away from the city. In my heart of hearts, I belong in the rural, backwoods country, where there isn’t more than a dozen people around me. The influence of living in a town of 250 in the formative years. 🙂

And I am now officially a Resident, a PGY2. Snap. Just like that. Things aren’t really that different. I have an intern, who’s much like a medical student at this point, and there’s a fellow (a freshly graduated resident who I worked with on call a few times last year). As always, freak out was a little overwrought. But that’s nothing new. It still has the potential of being very scary in the future, when I won’t have a fellow backing me up, but it’ll be a little bit of time before I have to face that.

Snagged from ravenmoon:

Go to the Simpsons’ Movie site to make your own!

The hair shade isn’t quite right and I’m a few pounds heavier and the hair is not that cute right now, but not a bad representation. 🙂

Kinda wanting to go and make the Doctor and Rose. Or better yet, Simpsons!Mulder. He was my favorite.