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19th April 2008

Protected: let’s just cap off this week

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17th April 2008

See, I told you I could do happy!

Didn’t I promise you polar bears? Baby polar bears at that? I have no idea why I’m such a sucker for these little bears, but they make me gooey inside and I just want to hold her paw. juno_magic have you had a chance to meet her yet?


more pictures of Flocke

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16th April 2008

Happy news #1

The Department of Regulation and Licensing has finally, finally processed my application for licensure. I’m missing two papers (one that I discovered when I was searching for tax documents. Oops) and I need to take an open book test, and that’s it. Yay! Such a relief! I should will be employed come July!

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15th April 2008

more than the blues

I’m starting to wonder if I’m clinically depressed. Funny, me as a doctor, not knowing whether I should diagnose myself.

I went to a dinner tonight for women in med school and sat on a panel, listening to the other residents give advice such as: “it’s easy to exercise in residency, you just have to make it a priority,” “dating and socializing in residency is essential, you just have to make it a priority,” and “you can easily be married, have kids, spend quality time with family, you just have to make it a priority.” I think I was the only one who was rolling eyes, I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Then it was advice on interviewing and selecting programs. Most of the panel suggested that trying to interview for two different specialties was “not wise” and it made you appear indecisive. I chimed in about how I had applied for three different specialties (medicine, neurology and med/neuro) and how it didn’t hurt me. Then there was the advice of what to ask the programs. One woman stated that she asked the residents if they were happy “and if there was a pause, she thought again about the program.” At this point, another resident looked over at me and started snickering because I had been ranting about my awful day of painfully long rounding wards, my whole slew of whiny, crazy patients, the difficulties of being a scut intern again and how much I hated dictating, etc. etc. So I piped up again, and stated that all residents have bad days and if they state with a Pollyanna smile of how overjoyed they were, they were lying (okay, I didn’t say it that strongly).

I’m having a rough time right now. I’m a little bit sleep deprived because I’m not sleeping well. I’m frustrated at work, because the majority of our patient lists have nothing wrong with them, besides what’s going on in their heads and are thwarting my every effort to get them home or to rehab or to wherever. My attending collects patients, so we can dawdle at every bedside. I’ve been arguing blatantly with my attending so we can make some progress. We round FOREVER. I’m going to be with this same attending for the next 10 days (kill me, please). The ER staff is driving me nuts with their inability to perform even a simple neuro exam. I’m tired of admitting patients every single day. There has been some nice moments, like today when I spent over a half an hour, explaining a procedure to a patient and her husband, really getting the chance to explain the risks and benefits and answer all of their questions. I like that. I just wish that I could convince somebody to rediagnose her and figure out what’s really going on, because I hate that I’m not doing anything to make her get better.

I’m lonely. I do have my friends from church, but I only get to see the once a week… if I’m lucky enough to make it to church. I haven’t talked to my best friend from med school–the guy I saw every day for nearly two years, the guy I talked to every week for our last two years of med school and my intern year–for more than 10 minutes for 4 months. I haven’t seen him in 4 months. I have no idea what’s going on with him. And let’s not even mention the last time I talked to Liz or Sam. The visit to see Susan and her beautiful family seems so long ago now. I think that this disconnect is what’s bothering me the most; I need to pick up the phone and just call… but I haven’t been able to. In this funk, all of my insecurities have been wrecking havoc to my brain…. they haven’t call me, obviously, they don’t care as much as you thought they did.

I was going to mope more, but I need sleep. The next post is going to be happy. I swear. Even if I have to go digging for pictures of baby polar bears again, it’ll be happy.

I’m disabling comments. I don’t want anybody to feel obliged to try to cheer me up; this is what they call catharsis. I think.

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12th April 2008

I swear I did not fudge the results


In a Past Life…


You Were: A Redhead Warrior.

Where You Lived: Central Africa.

How You Died: Consumption.

I like this meme. It only asks one question. I can do those. 🙂

(The song was a random iTunes choice as well)

I went out to dinner with my friend Erika, who is having a much worse time (and for more legitimate issues) than I, which helped getting me out of my funk. We had Indian food, which I swear, makes everything better. I, of course, had the chicken tikka masala, which is the perfect comfort food, creamy and savory. Afterwards, we came back and watched Enchanted which was almost enough to get me out of my cynical mood. I am supremely jealous of Amy Adams’ long, gorgeous, vibrant red hair. *frowns at hair that’s becoming more strawberry blond every day* I loved all of her dresses, except for her ball gown, which was a lovely shade of purple, but the bodice was all kinds of ugh.

I then finished my day by watching Doctor Who that featured another gorgeous red head (I didn’t like Donna’s hair the past episode, the bangs and style made her face seem square; today’s was perfect), and she was wearing a toga in that same shade of purple! I loved this episode. cut for mild spoilers

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12th April 2008

yesterday i died tomorrow’s bleeding and i’ve lost who i am

In the midst of the gigantic pity party and sobfest that I held yesterday (being post-call really sucks when you’re trying to control your emotions), I opened my front door to find a big box with a quilt inside, sewn and quilted by my mom, my aunts and my grandma.

I love you too. Thank you. *hugs*

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11th April 2008

done with this

Dear life

Message received loud and clear. I get it. I do. I’m a slow learner, but believe me,you have reinforce the message sufficiently. Boys don’t see me as the dateable type, the marriageable type. I do know my billion of physical flaws, social ineptitudes, genetic imperfections, spiritual weaknesses that keep boys away. I keep thinking that someone going to prove that wrong, but over 15 years of waiting and watching and hoping, well it’s pretty foolish to keep holding on to that pipe dream.

But next time, I respectfully ask that you not prove me with opportunities to foster hope. It’s cruel and unneeded. I thought for a moment… Some things were different, you know. And as you have so helpfully demonstrated, I’ve not the time to nurse a broken heart and broken dreams. Plus tears post-call tend to be more headache inducing than cathartic. So let’s just call it a truce.

Thanks

Oh haha.

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10th April 2008

sundry

Another night on call. It’s been a blue-soul kind of day. I’ve pretty much been cranky since I walked in this morning. We changed attendings today, to one that I’ve worked with in the past. Nice guy, but he’s getting older (at least 5 years past the age of retirement, if not 10) and is becoming forgetful and very, very slow to round. I’ve got one patient that I’m convinced that has been misdiagnosed, and I’d love to have an attending that I could brainstorm with, so that we could provide the right diagnosis, but that’s not going to happen with this attending. Instead we’ll wait for the acute illness to pass and send [the patient] home without no additional answers. It’s just frustrating. Neurology, I’ve discovered is 50% crazy people with all types of somatization and conversion disorders, and of the 50% who have real disease, the majority of those, we still can’t do much more than just throw up our hands and say “dunno what you’ve got, but sucks for you.” Even those we think we give diagnoses to explain things, someone follows in the footsteps and doubt even those.

I almost got to give IV tPA for the first time my last call night for an apparent acute stroke. So close. I was so excited, because I was going to do it. I called the attending, he approved it and told me to do it. Unfortunately (or luckily for the patient’s sake), the patient woke up from the self-induced chemical high just prior to me pushing the medication into the waiting veins. Ah, well, I really wasn’t wanting to deal with all of the complications that would have arisen if I had done so.

I got my schedule for neurology next year (the medicine portion is still pending). Two months of NICU (woohoo!), a couple of consult months and a couple of electives. No general ward months. SWEET! At least I’ll have another year to perfect some of my differential diagnoses before I have to be in charge of interns and junior residents. Next year, I’ll have to solidify my plans for my Real Career and actually decide what I want to do with my life and then start making steps to get there by doing research or whatever.

I think I’m running into problems with my licensure application. I submitted it weeks ago, and in typical Wisconsin fashion, I haven’t heard one word from them. There’s a website where you can check the status of your application…. it hasn’t even been listed there. And of course, attempting to email gets silence and calling gets on a merry go round of automated messages and nobody real to talk to. I know that they received it; they deposited the application fee almost immediately, so at least I don’t have to worry about it getting lost in the mail, but it’s starting to get ridiculous. I’m giving them until Monday, before I start calling every day and harassing them. Since I submitted things in pieces, I want to know what they have and what I might need to go back and recollect (my med school verification for example). I have to have the entire process completed by June. I honestly thought that 4 months would be more than enough time, but I’m starting to get nervous now. I think I’ll be saving my tax refund just in case the unthinkable happens and the paperwork doesn’t get processed by June and I’m suspended for a month. I don’t like thinking that, and I’ll be fighting with claws to prevent it, but I’d rather not find myself with no savings and no employment.

My semiannual review is tomorrow, I swear I just went through that. I haven’t seen any of the reviews I’ve gotten from the interns and medical students from when I was the senior resident back in February/March. I’m a little bit nervous about that.

My med students should be done seeing our ER consult, so I’d better get back to work. Ta for now!

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1st April 2008

Stand up and be counted!

Hi family members!

Welcome to my blog! I think some of you have been reading this for a while now (and not commenting), but if not, glad to have you around. I’ve kept an online journal for the past 4 years, so if you are interested, there’s plenty of old archives to waste your time reading.

I am curious, of who exactly is reading my journal. So, family, friends, countrymen singe men, wanna just click on that little link that says “free your tongue” and tell me who you are. Consider this your guestbook. 🙂

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1st April 2008

transitions

This month is going to be painfully ssllllllloooooooowwwwww. Attending today rounded for 6 hours on our 6 patients (I never thought I’d say this, but wow, I’m glad I had clinic this morning). He’s on for 1 more day, then I get the “round for 10 hours” attending for 2 weeks and finish the month with the “round for 12 hours” attending. Why did I ever complain about the private hospital??

So much for the trying desperately to have a social life. Blah.

On call tonight. Haven’t gotten my three pagers yet, but they are coming.

By the way, going back to being the junior resident, where I have to write notes and orders and actually have to ask all of the review of system questions–painful. Being a senior resident definitely has its perks!

Coming attractions: a blow by blow account of my weekend away (it was fabulous), a icon meme and who knows what else. Let’s hope it’s a slow night. 🙂

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      My goal was to read 120 books this year. I just finished number 129. (Some of these I reviewed as part of my WWW posts). October: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I had high expectations for this book, as it had been so praised, and I felt let down by it. Still enjoyable, […]