I arrived at work around 8:30 this morning, feeling positively guilty for sleeping in. I wandered over to the pathology department, where I’m supposed to be rotating for the next month. The secretary blinked at me. “Oh, Dr. H doesn’t usually arrive until after 10. I’ll call you when he wishes to meet with you.”

At 10, I found myself in the autopsy lab examining a brain, being asked all kinds of questions that I’m not sure I’ve studied since medical school… and certainly not in the last three months, where my focus has been on treating alcohol withdrawal, pneumonia, and acute renal failure. By 12, we were done and instructed to come back at 3–tomorrow.

*blink*

It looks like there’s about 6-8 hours a week that I’m expected to show up. The rest of it is self study. I haven’t self-studied since med school and I wasn’t very good about it then.

So, instead of studying and instead of doing the 22 clinic notes that I’m behind on and instead of writing out disability paperwork for a patient that I’m not entirely certain should be on disability, I came home and took a nap. I had a migraine from the formaldehyde fumes and it has been a very long month (I flirted very close to the over 80 hours a week limit. I’m sure I went over) and I deserved some time to myself.

Thursday I have an appointment to get my teeth cleaned, the first time in over a year. I hope to get my hair cut and get to the gym on a regular daily basis. I have a week of vacation coming up where my girlfriends are coming out for a long weekend and then my dad and grandparents are driving out to see me.

It’s shaping up to be a very good month.

My friend from medical school, a life long Republican, is making them. He’s become a hard core supporter, it amuses me.

I told him I’d advertise. Any takers?

I have had a fabulous weekend. It’s been so refreshing and relaxing that it almost feels like I had the entire weekend off, instead of just Saturday.

Friday, I came home post call and packed for the “girls only” camping trip. It was one of my friend’s 30th birthday, so to celebrate, we decided to go camping. Yay! I’ve been wanting to go camping all summer long but have been thwarted over and over again by forgetting tents, threatening rain and long work hours. The weather didn’t look promising, but I was naive enough to believe the forecast of “20% chance” of rain. It started raining before we were even on our way. There went those plans. Instead, we went to my friend’s mother’s house, and sat under her car port, grilling our tin-foil dinners (seriously, tin foil asparagus is the most incredible food ever), and basking in the glow of the fire pit (I’m more determined than ever to get one). Afterwards, we all came back to my house and had a sleep over; my upstairs room almost looks like an oversized tent and everybody fit perfectly. We stayed up late talking (well, they did. I crashed early. 2 hours of sleep in 40 hours does not a coherent Julia make) and in the morning consumed pancakes (cooking tip: the addition of vanilla, cinnamon and cardamon makes a fantastic pancake). I haven’t had so much fun in a really long time.

After they all left, I decided to take advantage of my one day off and went over to Home Depot to research more about garage doors. The contractor was busy with another customer, and I got impatient waiting, so just as I was about to decide to leave and just order the darn thing online, one of the other sales associates stopped me. He listened to my rambling complaints of what was wrong with my door and felt that the door and opener were not the problem, that likely I needed some lubrication and new wheels as they get worn out.

I attempted to install the wheels yesterday and I think I’ve figured out the whole problem. It’s doesn’t even seem to be worn out wheels. The tracks were entirely caked in about 6 layers of grease and grim and the bottom part has rusted and the wheels were in a similar state (I don’t think those wheels have made actually contact with the tract in years, hence, there is barely a sign of wear on them, once you remove some of the grime).

I spent all day yesterday getting as much off as I could with a combination of paper towels, knife, fingernails (they could angle the best. I chopped them all off afterwards), and finally, dish soap (didn’t work so well). There’s still at least one multiple layers, but it’s already running just a little bit smoother. I just need to find a really good grease solvent to cut through the rest of it (any ideas???), and then lub it up good with some WD-40, and I think I’m set! YAY! You have no idea how much of a relief this is, this possibility that I might not have to replace my garage door. Of course, I still might have to actually replace the tracks if the rust at the bottom is worse than my original glance-over, but my bishop’s wife has recommended an independent contractor who is reasonable, so I might be able to get that done for a quarter of what I originally predicted. SWEET.

Afterwards, I cleaned up and went over to my neurology program director’s home for dinner which was nice. Everybody brought their kids, there was more food than imaginable (we have a rather large mix of vegetarians, meat consumers, Muslims observing Ramadan, etc). And then after that, I went to my friend Laura’s birthday party. She decided that she wanted to do a sing-a-long party, so we all got together and sang “The Music Man.” Yep, you read that right. We are such nerds. I haven’t seen it since high school at least; I remember most of the lyrics.

This morning, I rounded on all of our patients. We’ve cut the number patients down a lot, which made for easy rounds so I actually was able to make it to church for the first time in three weeks. And then I came home, ready to make potato soup for our on-call pot luck tomorrow, but I’m missing several ingredients, so instead I’m heading to the grocery store bright and early, chopping the vegetables and bringing it all to work so that it can cook in the crockpot all afternoon. Yummy.

And, I’ve figured out most of the problems with my from-scratch blog. It should be up and running in a couple more days. I’m so excited for its unveiling.

This week will be busy. I’m on call tomorrow and Friday. Saturday, I’ve invited my entire church over for a party. *boggles* Not sure exactly what possessed me to agree to host a party when I’m post call and sleep-deprived but there it is. It’s going to be fun, with a firepit in the backyard with camping chairs around and white Christmas lights on the fence, music in the front room, games and instruments downstairs, more games upstairs and tons of food. Luckily, I have the day off on Thursday to clean and all of my friends are coming over Friday when I’m at work to set up, so I don’t have to do that; hopefully, all I’ll have to do on Saturday is nap, take a shower and put on clean clothes and greet the guests.

Okay, I’m off to bed. Gotta get those veggies in the morning. 🙂

Happy Birthday, X-Files!!

Favorite episode: without a question, “The Unnatural.” David Duchovny’s first foray into writing and directing an episode was spot on. I’ve rewatched this episode more times than I could possible count and love it all. Baseball, non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicle, a goldfish named Arthur, an alien who by day dresses in the form of (gorgeous, I might add) Jesse Martin, and a nice piece of ash, what more could you ask for?

Paranormal activity: The street lights go out overhead every time I’m parked at a red light. I thought it was just one of my magical quirks. Like how I always manage to switch on the tv to the same scene of “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” The only reason I’ve seen the whole thing is because of back-to-back showings on TBS. Maybe it’s enough to convince Mulder to come investigate me?

And now, I’m off to bed. I’m on call again tomorrow; this Q4 thing is getting wearisome. I’m hoping the 8 hours of sleep (and I’m really hoping for an early afternoon nap if things are quiet) will make the post-call exhaustion less.

I’m surprised that I haven’t gotten emails/calls/signal fires asking if I was alive, since I’ve been absent.

Never fear, I’m alive and kicking. I think if I were to die, the medicine department would not stand for it, and would be administering pressors and bagging me in the grave.

I just calculated that I’ve worked 46 of the last 62 hours and that might be an underestimate. I’m tired. I’ve had three patients who when I admitted then a week or so ago, were sick but got turned around with the right antibiotics and fluids and TLC, take a turn for the worse in the last 48 hours. One has already passed away; another is likely to go tonight, the other is holding on by his cranky teeth. The hard thing about taking care of cute but sick 80 year olds (as three fourths of my service is) is that they have a tendency to take a turn for the worse very quickly, as at 80+, they don’t have much reserve left.

We admitted more patient today. I was in clinic all morning, only three patients and I still went over time and had to rush back to the hospital so I could figure out what happened to all of my patients and was confronted by catastrophe after catastrophe. I endured the chastisement of the pulmonary critical care fellow for not getting her involved in the sick patients sooner. I had to urgently call surgery on another patient for them to tell me that it wasn’t urgent after all. Two hours spent updating family members. Another 10 minutes talking about treatment options for cancer with another patient. And so forth. I didn’t even see the patients that we admitted until almost 8 this night, luckily they aren’t too terribly sick, just needing some monitoring tonight.

I’m supposed to have the sister missionaries over for dinner tomorrow night. Luckily they called and reminded me or I would have completely stood them up. I should get done earlier tomorrow, barring any more ICU transfers. Good thing too, because I have no energy tonight for washing dishes and straightening up my living room.

And now that I’ve chugged down my evening meal of cereal, I’m off to bed. To start things all over again tomorrow…

Also, my iPod completely died yesterday morning. Or rather, it started making horrible grunting noises and now displays a sad iPod icon before dying again, which from the website sounds like the sign of ultimate demise. My computer won’t recognize it, I can’t reset it. Call nights are going to be really, really, really long without some tunes.

I’m in such a cooking mood right now, and I don’t know why. I’m in the middle of making Chicken Tikka Masala; I finally gathered up the last of the ingredients and decided at 8 tonight to whip it up so I’d have something good to eat on call tomorrow. 6 days into my rotation at the VA and I’m so sick of the food already (granted, it’s the same food that I’ve eaten there for the last two years, so I guess it’s not surprising). So the chicken is marinating and I’ve decided to share some of my favorite recipes that I’ve discovered over the last few weeks.

I have recently fallen in love with cooking with yogurt. I had used it in the past to make my famous salmon (which I have since perfected. I know, I know, it was delicious before, but I’ve made it even better), and then, thanks to this blog that I’ve linked to before, I tried out some other recipes and have been surprised at how versatile yogurt can be. Her Yogurt Cream is absolutely to die for (although, use half-and-half or milk, the extra calories from the cream just aren’t worth it. Especially when you’re cooking for one). And it is perfect for making savory, creamy sauces that are lighter on the calories and fat. Since then, all of my google searches have been for cooking with yogurt. Yogurt and rice. Yogurt and cilantro. Yogurt and cucumber. And have I found some goodies. 🙂 Here are some of my favorites.

Salmon with Chermoula Sauce