A few months ago, when Milwaukee weather had performed its usual trick of warming up to 35 degree thereby melting and then snowing 6-10 inches that evening, I came home from work and … slid into my garage doorway, knocking off my side-view mirror (me and my garage do not get along very well, as the scrape along my front headlines will attest). *sigh*

Anyway, having learned from previous experience (*ahem*) that the mirror can be replaced by taking apart the car door, rather than going to an auto shop, I purchased the part and today, in a misguided effort to flirt (um, I don’t seem to be learning from those past experiences), persuaded my friend to assist me in installing it. I went over to his apartment and we took apart the car door in his parking lot (where I discovered that it’s a freaking small world after all). He had to pick up a friend, I got into my car, attempted to roll the window back up… and it wouldn’t move more than halfway. I fussed with it a bit but couldn’t figure out my screwdriver (it’s one of those that ratchets around and switches directions and I couldn’t figure it out how). By then my friend had long left, so I drove home, found other screwdriver and took apart my door, took off the mirror, found the problem and fixed it and then reassembled the door, after figuring out how the screwdriver works as well. Yay for me!

I had to get it fixed today because tomorrow, I’m driving down to Urbana Illinois to spend a couple of days with Susan and her family. I’m so excited! It’s a long drive, however, and I’m already exhausted today from being post call and not getting a chance to nap (laundry and dishes and chatting on the phone), so I’m headed to bed soon. I live such an exciting life.

I finished another month of rotations this morning. It was a busy call, we capped (admitted the maximum # of patients) by 4:30 yesterday, so the rest of the day was spent tucking everybody in and checking on my interns. I got to “talk” to the Pleth during our monthly book club meeting, which was lovely. And then I got sleep. I like sleep.

Overall, it was good month. I learned to trust my instincts and training. I learned how to be a “hands off” resident, which after my month in February where I fretted over my interns all of the time was something that I needed to perfect. I gave a kickbutt presentation on examining comatose patients and didn’t even let the fact that my pictures didn’t load stop me (I just pointed at the blue screen and said “here you would have seen a picture of me and my giraffe friend, Daisy. We were so close, that here in this next picture, you would have seen me make out with Daisy”, etc. I amuse myself). I had fun complaining about our lack of responsibility (which was frustrating at the same time as being enjoyable) with the other residents, who are some of my favoritest people ever. I liked my interns and medical students and more importantly, I liked working with them because they were competent and diligent and made my life easier. I enjoy every afternoon that I had off, basking in the sun (and snow) and catching up on some little things that I needed to do (haven’t gotten to the taxes yet. Must do taxes on Monday!!).

I’m always a little sad at the end of a month, even during the hardest and most exhausting, because I hate leaving the people behind. And it is harder when I’m changing from the internal medicine department to neurology as I am this month… not just because I’ll be going from being the senior and being semi-in-charge to the “junior” resident (intern-in-everything-but-name) and taking orders and writing daily notes and long H&Ps and all of the scut work, but also because neurology is ten times harder than medicine and I’ve gotten used to sleeping on call, having only one pager that I have to answer, etc. *sigh* It’ll be a long 3-6 months, but it’ll be good for me. I hope.