Found during a midday walk. One has to wonder why the need for a tea party for a porcelain cat, but you have to admit, it’s a rather pretty setting.

It was general conference this weekend and for once, I had the whole weekend off. My bishop (equivalent of a priest or pastor) invites the ward (congregation/parish) to his house on Sunday morning for breakfast and lunch, in between the 2-2 hour blocks of talks. It’s one of my favorite traditions. His house is about 30 miles away from Milwaukee, in tree blanketed hills, so this time of year is just absolutely gorgeous. After the first block, we ate lunch and took a walk around the hills. For the first time in months, I could hear birds and squirrels and nothing else. I miss silence, sometimes.

All of the rest of the pictures can be found here on my facebook. I think you should be able to see it without being my friend or signing into fb.

Mt. Olympus hamburger: artichoke and spinach dip, feta cheese and a garlic mayo. Incredibly yum.

It’s October (how can it be October already??). I’m trying to resurrect this journal. I’ve had too many thoughts and emotions that have crowded my head that I have not been able to get down on paper; they fade in significance once words are applied. So I haven’t written. Maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to get them down. But for now, posting a photo a day seems like a good start into blogging again.

I just got home from a birthday dinner/movie, and I’m exhausted, so I’ll have to wait to upload the pics from night, but here’s some recent pictures from a very short visit to San Francisco. I went for a neurology conference; I’m not sure that the combined cost of the registration, air fare, hotel, transportation was really worth it for 3 days, but I did get to spend some time with my new boss, which was excellent. She’s as fabulous as I remember and we really connected. I also got fingerprinted for the FBI and the DOJ, so that the state of California will sometime in the next year grant me a license. All in all, it was a fulfilling trip.

I didn’t get a lot of time to see the city: I flew in Wednesday night, was in lectures most of Thursday and Friday, and then left Saturday morning. I had really wanted to explore the city, find neighborhoods where I wanted to live, but I guess that’ll have to wait for another visit. I did sneak away to go to a baseball game. The SF Giants were playing the Brewers; one of my friends had bought tickets and was not able to go. As I have not seen the Brewers play this year, I jumped at the chance. I couldn’t find anybody to go with me, and I was thoroughly annoyed with most of my colleagues by that point (I was annoyed with them before the trip, but that’s another story), so I went by myself: navigating the bus and subway system and sitting alone in a midst of orange, cheering for the team in blue. Brewers won, 3-1. I do like the stadium; I can see myself adopting the Giants for a few years.

I woke early the next day. My motel was just on the edge of Union Square, so I rode one of the streetcars to Fisherman’s Wharf and wandered around for a little while, before coming back for the long journey home.

I have 37 blog “drafts” that I have started and not finished over the last several months. I’ve been a really bad blogger. Since I was grumbling to my mom tonight that my sister does not post nearly often enough to her blog with pictures and stories about my darling nephew, I realized that I needed to recognize my kettle-blackness. Of course, my life doesn’t change nearly as much as my nephew’s who has gone from creeping to crawling in a matter of minutes, but still.

Gratuitous piccy of nephew:

His first steps! His red hair!

Of course, just when I think about crawling back to blogging, LJ (Livejournal)’s overlords start making bizarre decisions again that make Facebook’s privacy woes look like frolicking in dandelions. Oh LJ. I’m not sure I entirely understand the situation about the Facebook/Twitter crossposting and how exactly it works and really, why you would want to share comments. I already cross-post to LJ from my primary blog, which I’ve done for a year now because I had planned on moving it over to my private site and then friends-locking LJ (still will, eventually). I keep my blogs completely separate from Facebook. My privacy settings on Facebook are iron-clad: only friends can see personal information and even that is kept from groups that I don’t want to follow me. My boss friended me on FB a couple of weeks ago; you can bet that I made sure that he could not follow me here as this is a venue where I can express frustations in a HIPAA compliant manner. My blogs are not linked to my FB and they never will be. Consider your comments/posts safe.

So I have basement problems. Water coming into my basement problems.

I’ve known about this since 2008, when I first had water coming in through the windows, and then the floor drain stopped draining and it all backed up. I spent two days, pulling up glued carpet squares and cleaning and mopping floors (and putting my couch and washer/dryer up on cinder blocks). That summer, my church came over and dug a drain to help with some of the drainage and I bought new window well covers and caulked the windows and that seemed to take care of it for a while. Until the next big storm a year later, when it flooded again. My little portable sump pump tried its best to keep up with it and it wasn’t quite as bad. I had real hopes when in April, I got notification that I couldn’t use my plumping for two days because they were revising and rewiring the sewer system: I hoped that that would mean the end of backup problems.

But I started noticing more “leakage”, especially in the bathroom, and with less intense rainstorms. I was somewhat worried that my foundation floor had cracks and I wasn’t sure where the water was coming from. So, my dad and I pulled up the tile; the foundation floor looks fine, it’s leaking from the foundation “joints” where the walls and the floor meet. A big problem, one that to completely fix will require complete excavation of the foundation and the drain tiles. But I brainstormed with knowledgeable friends and came up with a few more reasonable suggestions to help alleviate some of the symptoms. And after I fixed some of the downspouts, things seemed better for a rain storm or two.

It rained hard a couple of weeks ago; and I had quite a bit of water collection. I moved up my plans to convince friends that they wanted to spend their afternoons shoving clay-based dirt to form a better gradient around the perimeter.

And then it rained again last night.

Some of you might have seen some of the pictures, especially this one:

I came home, after a 40 minute commute home, avoiding the flooded roads to find this:



I think it was about 8 inches deep at the location of the drain. I can’t know for certain, because I couldn’t check: the water was deep enough to submerge some electrical equipment that made stepping into the puddle somewhat dangerous. (I think my video cassette rewinder has seen its last day). It took about an hour for it to drain, leaving me with a mud/probable sewage covered floor.

Luckily, my church is still fantastic and I was able to call my home teacher who came over with a friend and we mopped and mopped and got it cleaned. It continued to rain off and on last night and I still had my leakage problems, but those feel almost manageable at this point.

I researched how to fix the problems all day today (thankfully a quiet day, as I didn’t want to deal with anything). It’s probably telling that all of the articles that discussed sanitary water backup in basements mentioned Milwaukee and its terrible sewer drain system. It’s unfortunately, however, a problem that I might not be able to fix; most solutions were to bother the officials until they redid the sewer system. Grrr. I could improve things and make flooding much less likely if I install a sump pump, which may not be too horribly expensive. I’m still exploring options and talking to people. I’ve got some numbers for a basement consultant and I’m going to talk to my real estate agent about people she might recommend; and how much of it I should try to get fixed before I try to sell it.

I’m lucky, there were 7 houses up north were the basements washed completely out and collapsed. And I was supposed to be on call last night, but switched at the last minute. Hooray for small graces.

I have pretty much made up my mind, that even after I finish training and am finally settled, that it’s going to be a long time before I buy a house again.

Oh, and it’s supposed to rain again tonight.

(more pics of the flood and Milwaukee can be found here)

Random thoughts for random people
1. Longest week ever. Seriously. I had heard tales and legends about the attending that I worked with, but since the first day had gone well and I had managed to keep her on task and we were done by 4:30, I thought that it was all exaggeration.

Oh silly mortal!

Hours of rounding. HOURS of telling and retelling families of what’s going on. None of my opinions mattered. She kept changing her mind as to what was going on. One minute she was harassing the primary teams about consulting us without a properly formulated question; the next, she was condescendingly putting me in my place for “refusing” a consult. I’ve never been so openly snarky before, because I was so tired and frustrated of the endless circles. And did I mention tired?

It also confirmed why specialists SHOULD NOT EVER try to do anything besides their specialty. Hello contributors to the rising cost of health care! Of course, I’m the one who getting the lectures from radiology as why a particular test wasn’t warranted; I knew that perfectly well, thank you, I just couldn’t convince my attending to listen to me. Ugh.

I get a new attending tomorrow, one who I’ve worked with before and adore.

2. I hate non-accidental trauma. Number 1 reason why I decided not to do peds. Heartbreaking.

3. I miss my friends who recently graduated. Some of them are still around for fellowships, but it’s not the same. One who moved accidentally called me on Thursday and I was so excited thinking she was in town. But she wasn’t. So instead I entertained myself looking at pictures from Neurobowl:
Read the rest of this entry »

One year from today, I will officially be finished with residency. Four years ago, I was an intern, freshly minted from medical school, nervous about prescribing tylenol to my patients without double checking their med list and past medical history and making sure that they were awake enough to take it without aspirating and are you sure they don’t have to be NPO in the morning???

Time flies, it’s true, but it also feels like I’ve been a resident forever. It’s been hard. There have been times, particularly my entire second year, where I wanted to quit. There were times when I was fighting depression and anxiety and hated my life, but I was too tired to do anything more than just sit on my couch. Times when I wanted to stage a mutiny. Times when the thought of dealing with particular patients would make me cry in frustration.

There have been patients who have died on my watch. Most died because of inevitability of mortality and their disease processes. There are a few who sit on my conscious, a worry that I might have through action or inaction contributed to their demise. I’ve fretted, I’ve worried. I’ve cried during rounds. I’ve told patients and family members about inescapable death and not cried. I’ve held hands with patients. I’ve stood in doors, impatient with the endless questioning, ready to move on to the next patient.

Over the last four years, I have had approximately 300 call nights, where I spent 24-30+ hours in the hospital. The majority of those, I had less than 4 hours of sleep. I can do 24 hours without a problem. It’s the remaining 6+ that kill me still. On call nights, I hate the pagers and I loath the ER. I think I always will.

I’ve written hundreds of histories, listened to a thousand stories of illness. I’ve auscultated over a thousand hearts and still could not tell you what a S3 gallop sounds like. I still hate gaping wounds and eye infections. I’m still terrible with names of muscles and their innervation, and well as anything related to heme-onc and rheumatology. I’m bad at daily studying (I still haven’t lost my natural tendency of procrastination), but love to find little bits of data and explore how to put a challenging puzzle together for a particular patient.

I’ve loved being a doctor. I’ve hated being a doctor. I’ve hated being a resident, treated like a high schooler, with the responsibilities of an adult. I’ve loved having support and backup in making decisions. I’m dreading the moment, a few years from now, when all decisions end with me.

One year more. Another year, another destiny, this never-ending road to Calvary. Or something like that. 😉

(And now off to study before bed… I’m trying to do better!)

I submitted my match list last night, while I waited in my basement to see if a tornado would land on my house (it didn’t but it touched down a few miles southeast – first time I have heard the tornado sirens). I had submitted it last week, when I was “experimenting” with the site and discovered that contrary to the advertisement, you could not easily edit the list. In fact, in order to edit, I had to contact the match organization and demand that they delete the list and then start all over again.

I double and triple checked my rank order before submitting it last night, thereby sealing my fate. I then wrote my top 3 places last night, confirming that they had the necessary information to rank me, should they wish. The director of my top place emailed me back this morning stating that they had “ranked [me] quite high,” which could mean something or not. I hate that we have to use this stilted language to communicate, so we don’t break match rules.

So now begins the waiting game. Just one week, I keep reminding myself, but this week feels like it’s going to last an eternity.

From fileg:

I love this band!

Have you seen their other music video?

Things I’m looking forward to this month:

1. Going to Michigan to see my friends Michelle and Kelly and their little family. Interviews #2 & 3 on Monday and Tuesday

2. Weekend trip and interview in Portland. I looked online and determined that it was roughly the same price to fly in Friday as it was to fly in Monday. I’ve never been to Portland and it’s been high on my list (along with Seattle and Vancouver) and I haven’t been on a vacation to just see a new place in a long time. I’m already drooling over the photographing potential. Mountains!

3. Following weekend in Boston, visiting Chris and Gretchen. I’m interviewing in Philadelphia, so it made a good excuse to jump over and see them. As I’m still waiting for the itinerary from Philly, I haven’t gotten tickets yet, which is making me anxious. Boston in late winter is probably not as awesome as Boston in the fall, but it’ll do. Any must see sights?

So for those who are keeping score at home, by the end of this month, I’ll have interviewed at 5 places (I may be able to squeeze one more in), I have 2 scheduled in April, 4 other programs have contacted me and stated that they “would decide soon” about interviews (that was about a month ago), and I haven’t heard anything from 3, including the program here (still!!!). Of the 6 unknowns, I really only want to interview at 2-3 (really only one, but the others I have to because of connections), so I should be able to squeeze them in. I do love when things start sliding into place.

Forgive me for my absence here during February. I actually had a pretty good month with weekends free and no call. I was doing palliative care consults in the hospital, which translates to lots of family meetings and talking about goals and how people want to spend their last days, weeks or months. As this is something that I need to perfect, as well as intrigues me (I don’t get excited about new techniques and drug trials, but talk to me about how we as doctors can communicate better with our patients and families and I’ll gab your ear off for hours), I found the month informative and moving rather depressing. I really do love it when the patients and the families work towards a “good death”: whether that means stopping the treatments and focusing on comfort or continuing to hold on for the next treatment, because life is what’s important to them, as long as we’re doing what the patient and family wants.

One of the residents died in a car crash earlier in the month too, which sent me reeling. We worked closely together, shared many a sleepless nights and many a crashing patient. It was only after her death that I realized that I didn’t know her at all and that we could have been really good friends outside of work. Her memorial was beautiful, full of hope and celebration, although I sobbed through most of it (especially when my neurosurgery boys gave their eulogies. I’ve never seen them cry before). She left a gaping hole and I think I’m still grieving.

Yeah, aren’t you glad you didn’t have to read a month of this pathos?

My friend emailed me a couple of weeks ago and asked me to cover a call for him. As he had stepped in when I was overwhelmed and needed extra help, I really couldn’t say no. He’s also offered to make up for it and cover for me when I’m on call in April, so that I can add an extra interview to my schedule, so I shouldn’t complain.

So instead of my first completely free weekend in a long time, I’m on call. We’ve already capped and tucked in the patients, the intern and senior med student have been watching the super bowl (crappy ads, somewhat entertaining game (and I don’t really like football)), and I’ve been researching how to make my own swiffer-jet pads and produce bags and making a 101 things in 1001 days list. So far, making a cathedral quilt and cook dinner every night for a month have made the list. What would you add to your list?

I had my first interview on Friday at Rush University. I drove down early that morning to miss Chicago traffic, but it meant that I only had about 5 hours of sleep (nerves, kept thinking of everything that I needed, cold feet kept me awake) and that made for a really long day. Especially since 3.5 hours of it was being on rounds, listening about patients that I didn’t know and trying to look as if it was the most fascinating thing ever. I managed not to yawn too much AND not fall asleep during noon lecture (something I never manage usually. Dark room during lunch, lecturer droning = instant sleep), which was impressive. And did I mention that I didn’t get breakfast and only had a half slice of thin crust pizza for lunch?

The interview went well, I think. Apparently my letters from my attendings were really strong and full of praise, which I was glad to hear. Especially since one of the writers is the director of the neurocritical care program here and he hasn’t offered me an interview yet and since I waive my rights to read them, it was a little nerve wracking.

For my own benefit, when I’m looking back and needing to submit a rank list, here’s my (nicely cut) impressions of the program.

1. Procedure wise: strong. A month of anesthesia and procedures, so I can learn to intubate. Working with neurosurgery, so I can place EVDs and burr holes. Fellows do central lines and art lines.
2. Minimal TBI (traumatic brain injuries) and traumas in general. They may be allowing us to rotate at Cook County Medical Hospital, which is the trauma center of the entire country, I think, so that would be improved. Most of the patients are transfer patients, so they can be quite sick.
3. Closed ICU. All patients are neurology primary patients with neurosurgery consult. There’s still the drama and clashes between the two departments (evident even just in a half day rounding), but maybe a little less?
4. Potentially willing to work with me to create a combo program. Dr. Temmes was a med-neuro back in 2006, so he understands and Dr. Bleck established a combo in Virginia several years ago, so they seem willing. The fellowship director, Dr. John was not so eager and thought that there would be snags, but was willing to consider doing it with an additional 6 months. In any case, I get at least 4 months of MICU.
5. Dr. Bleck is the founder of neurocritical care. The guy who started the entire movement.
6. All of the attendings come for different, but very strong programs in neurocritical care. Dr. Temmes is from Columbia, Dr. John from Mass General, Dr. Patel from UCSF and Dr. Bleck is from all over.
7. It’s downtown Chicago. Downtown Chicago. Horrible traffic. Expensive housing. I’d have to sell my house. 🙁
8. It’s Chicago. The opera, the art museum, awesome concerts. Closer to Susan and Michelle to visit. Still manageable to see Chris regularly. Two years might not so bad.
9. Similar sort of program as my own. Second year fellow seemed relaxed and comfortable managing the team/patient.
10. There’s not a fellow in 2010. Meaning it’d just be me for the first year. I’d don’t know if it would affect me.
11. Q4 call in house the first six months with the neuro resident. Home call afterwards, come in for procedures and sickie patients after that.
12. Teams consist of 1 neuro resident, 3-4 anesthesia, occasional neurosurgery and nurse practitioners. MICU fellows rotate through.
13. Schedule may consist of working every Sunday??? Not certain about that.
14. Stipend basically the same as here (but higher costs of living). Rest of benefits comparable.
15. … I could be happy here. Definitely on the rank list.

So far, I’ve got an interview scheduled at Henry Ford (Detroit) in March. I’m trying to schedule an interview with Cleveland Clinic the day before so that I could drive out (and maybe spend the weekend with Michelle and Kelly … ?) and save some money. Both programs are being rather difficult however. And that’s it so far. Oregon offered me an interview, then didn’t respond when I suggested some dates. UCSF can’t seem to find my letters of recommendation (even though I confirmed that they were sent). And another 4 programs have emailed back, saying that they had received my application and would be letting me know. I’m getting a little impatient. I have very little free time to interview, and February would have been a good month to interview: I’m on a consult month and can miss some time. Now, tickets anywhere would be so expensive.

I had church friends over for dinner after the interview (I managed to avoid most of the traffic going home too! Yay!). I really should stop hosting friends when I’m sleep deprived. I think I put my foot in my mouth more times than once and embarrassed myself (I can’t really remember the particulars anymore, I guess that’s the good thing about exhaustion). The salmon was excellent as always (have I shared my recipe before?) and the company was good. I just wish I could have appreciated it more.

And thus ends the weekly update. 🙂

This is why I’ve been limping around:

My feet hate winter. If I don’t keep them slathered in cream, they develop cracks which bleed, making for very painful times. I haven’t quite gotten to the bleeding point yet, but we’re laying on the cream before bed tonight.

I spent a good portion of my free time this morning browsing around this site. I do get rather frustrated at the princess marketing for little girls, but there are some amazing braids on that blog. I’ve been growing my hair out for the last year going from this:

to hair like this:

(I’m desperately in need of a trim.)
My hair style for the past year has consisted of washing hair, combing it and letting it dry straightish. The next day, I pull it back into a low lying ponytail, and the following day the cycle repeats. But my hair is finally long enough to braid. I love braids. I’m usually a two french braid, straight down the back with the ends tucked under, so it was awesome to get some new ideas. This is the braiding style that I wanted to try today, unfortunately I discovered that I am not dexterous enough to braid my own hair sideways. Instead, I went for 2 french braids that ended 2/3rd of the way down and then brought together and braided the rest of the way. I then took the remaining hair, twisted it into 2 ropes and wrapped everything together. I loved the result:

The twisted ropes were super easy to make; I think that I’m going to head to the pharmacy and stock up on clear little elastics so I can do it more often.

I’m submitting the last round of secondary applications and supplemental stuff early tomorrow morning. I’ve heard back from about 4 programs with definite offers to interview (nothing from my own home program, natch). All of my letters of recommendation were finally sent out (although a couple may still be missing, have to check on that tomorrow too); that took forever. Now I just have to set up the interviews so I can cluster trips together (and hopefully save some money in airfare) to minimize time off. I’ll be doing a couple of interviews in February and April, but the majority will be in March, I think.

I finally updated my pictures on Picasa. You can go there and see all of the beautiful pictures of my handsome little nephew who’s now an entire month older and is a prodigy in every way. Laura B, I also put up some of the pics of your cute kids too. If you want the full size images, let me know. 🙂

And I think you’re all caught up in the life of Julia!

From PBS’s “Bachelors of Highbury Quiz, I got:

Quite right, too.

I’m apparently not a Mr. Elton kinda girl at all: only 1% of the vote.

You should all take the quiz too! It can be found here, but remember, Mr. Knightley is mine. 🙂

I celebrated finishing my applications (I’ve heard back from 8 of the 14 programs) by finally watching Cranford. Overall I enjoyed it a lot, although I’m starting to see why people compare Elizabeth Gaskell with Dickens. It’s available on PBS until Jan 10th, if anyone is interested. The Return to Cranford christmas special will be playing on your local PBS station the next two Sundays.

Speaking of costume dramas and Elizabeth Gaskell, have you seen this?

I sent off my applications this morning. Two of the programs who had the 12/31 deadline listed have already contacted me, stating that the information on the Match website was false. They either had no deadline or it was later this month. And two have bounced back as “delivery failure,” so I’ve got to do some more searching. One program just hired one of our fellows here and stated that he was “looking forward to meeting” me. So I may already have an interview. Downside is that I strongly dislike working with this particular fellow and I’m not sure that I’d want to go to a program where he would be in charge of me and my education for 2 years.

I need to contact my letter writers and make sure they are on target for sending out letters by Friday/Monday. And then fill out any secondary applications.

I’m mailing off the request for my board scores today. I’m sending a copy to myself and another to my neurology program, which they will copy and then give back to me. Hopefully, this will mean that I won’t lose it again (of course, I’ll go to all of this trouble and never need it again. But you never know).

And after all that, I think I can sit back for a little while and wait for the invitations. What a relief!

And a big thank you to all of you for your support and words of encouragement. When I’m overwhelmed, I don’t get a chance to respond, but I really appreciated your suggestions.

1. The note cards for my speech that I gave for Academic Decathlon my senior year of high school. It was a grand, patriotic speech. I had the timing perfect and everything. My second cousin beat my score by 2 points and won the bronze medal.
2. The movie ticket from when I first saw Serenity.
3. My MCATs scores. Yeah, nobody’s asking for those anymore.
4. Heating bills from 1999-2000.
5. My birth certificate (yay! I had wondered where that had gone!).
6. My Lord of the Rings map that I got with the first extended DVDs. It’s now rather discolored in spots.
7. Essays I wrote in high school.
8. A really ugly Jesus figurine that Sam gave me for Christmas one year. “You can’t throw away Jesus!” she said. So I haven’t. But I think I’ve found her Christmas present for next year.

Just no Step 3 scores. Step 1, Step 2 CK & CS, yep, got those, but Step 3 are missing. I’ve gone through every piece of paper that I own and I can’t find them. I’m pretty sure that they were accidentally thrown away when I was cleaning through things. I just wish I could remember what they were. I know that I passed, obviously, and I have a rough idea of what my score was, but I have no way of confirming. To request my score, I have to fill out a form, have it notarized that I am me, mail it in for 5 business days of processing and then my scores will be sent back to me. So if I’m lucky, I’ll have them by the end of next week. It’s not cheap either. But since I need those scores, I have to cough up the money.

I’m going ahead with the applications. I’ve spent way too much time and effort coordinating all of this. I can’t imagine that I’m the only one who thought to wait to send in applications until the Match registry was open. And it’s not my fault that the process was so horribly arranged. Seriously, I hunted on all of the universities websites looking for application information and there wasn’t anything mentioned about deadlines anywhere. The only program that had a deadline listed on their website was Columbia University who recommended that “applicants submit their information 2 years prior to the starting date” (ie July), which I had already missed by the time I even made up my mind. I’m sure that there are going to be programs that are not going to offer me interviews because of this. But here’s what I’ve got going in my favor:

From last year’s match:

Of the 49 programs last year, only half matched. The three programs that I’m most interested in at the moment (Virginia, San Francisco and here) did not match. I’ve still got a chance.

Thanks again to platypus and bjorks_defender for their help with my letter. It was so appreciated.

Every time I apply for something, it goes wrong. Medical school, the many board tests, residency. And now this fellowship.

So I get on to register for the match. There has been absolutely no information at all about what is needed for the registration. Just how much it costs. You can’t find out information about the programs until you register.

Registration opened today.I get on, and they need my USMLE scores. And I can’t find my Step 3 score. I don’t throw anything away without double and triple checking that it’s not needed. I have paystubs from when I was a tutor my sophomore year of college. But I can’t find this. It’s not available online. To request a copy will take 5 business days and I can’t actually send a copy to myself without even more time being involved.

So I fudge the results, I’ll fill in details later and finally can pull up the programs’ information and see this:

Application Deadline: 12/31/09.

12/31/09.

As in 5 days ago.

How am I supposed to know about an application deadline when I can’t register until 4 days after its already passed?????

I give up. Life, I take the hint. I guess I’ll try again next year or apply for open position after the match is over. I don’t know. I don’t know.

From The Writer’s Almanac:

“It’s the birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien, born John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in Bloemfontein, South Africa (1892). His father, a banker, had moved to South Africa for work, but he died when Tolkien was four years old, and his mother moved the family back to England. They lived in a rural village outside the city of Birmingham. Train tracks went right beyond their house and young Tolkien was drawn to the Welsh names on the sides of coal cars, names like Nantyglo and Senghenydd. And his mom tutored him in Latin, and as a young child he was fascinated by the way that language worked. When he was eight years old, his mom converted to Catholicism, and her family was so upset that they disowned her. Now the family, which hadn’t had much money anyway, had even less.

“And then, when Tolkien was 12 years old, his mother died from complications of diabetes, and he and his younger brother were put in the care of a Catholic priest. He went to a good school, started inventing his own languages, and formed a literary group called the T.C.B.S., friends who exchanged ideas and critiqued each other’s work. He graduated, got into Oxford. But before he started, he took a summer trip with friends hiking in the Swiss Alps, and much later when he wrote about Bilbo Baggins hiking the Misty Mountains, he used his memory of that summer in the Alps.

“But as a teenager starting at Oxford, he had no desire to write fantasy novels. Instead, he was interested in language. He studied Classics, Old English, Finnish, Welsh, and the Germanic languages. He went to fight in WWI, spent four months on the Western Front and then got trench fever and was sent home to recover. All but one of his friends from the T.C.B.S. literary group were killed in the war, and to honor them and also to help work through his own awful war experiences, he decided to write down some stories. They were stories about elves and gnomes, but they were not cheery fairy tales — they were filled with war and violence and trenches dug under battlefields.”

I raise my glass (orange juice tonight). Happy Birthday, Professor.

I ended up not having to go into the hospital last night after all. It took the transport SIX HOURS to bring the child from the fringes of civilization to the hospital. My attending went in and saw the child, ordered everything and then called me to confirm that I didn’t need to go in. By that time, I had missed dinner with my friends and the dance was winding down (my friends stated that it was not a swing dance after all) and I really do make it a point to avoid highways after midnight on NYE, so I ended up making hot cocoa, putting on Star Trek and falling asleep 10 minutes into it. Happy New Year to me. Oh well.

I did meet up with my friends this afternoon for lunch and catch-up. I do have wonderful friends. They complain that I never mention them in this blog. Which is true. So consider this your shout-out: Laura, Laura and Sarah! We stayed at the restaurant for hours and then saw Where the Wild Things Are. I’ve been wanting to see it for a while, and I found it supremely disappointing. The whole thing was depressing with very little whimsical happiness that I had expected.

And then I got to top it off with Dr. Who. It was wonderful and lovely and heartbreaking all at the same time. I cried. No wonder I have a headache!

I have pictures to share and end of the year/decade (okay, I do know it’s not really the end of the decade, since there wasn’t a year 0 BC/AD/CE, but everybody else is doing it!) reflection memes to post and that freaking personal statement to finish (I loath it. Passionately), but right now, I’m tired and a little bruised in the soul and headed to bed.

ETA: And, of course, I forget to publish this. I was tired!

Happy New Year’s Eve, my friends! How glad I am that all of you are part of my life! I hope this continues through next year and the next and the next… *hugs*

I’m on home call tonight, which means I have to carry a pager all of the time. My last call on Tuesday went really well. I got sleep and a minimal number of calls. My friends are having a small New Years Party and my church is having a swing dance (!!!) tonight, and I so hoped that it would be quiet enough that I could go for a couple of hours, with pager and cell phone close on hand. Alas, shortly after I got home, the pager went off. Some outside physician was asking me how to control status epilepticus (uhhh…) and that they were transferring the patient to my hospital here. So I’m waiting for the call that the patient has arrived. Hopefully once the child has been tucked in, I can grab my saddle shoes and skirt and get in a few dances.

I’m at the children’s hospital this month. It’s been a month that I’ve been dreading. Home call every other night (which means that even if I get a lot of calls and little sleep, I still have to show up for the entire day the next day. By the end of the month, pretty much everybody is hallucinating from the s. Lots of consults. Lots of patients to see every day. Lots of floppy, fragile babies to examine and figure out what weird two or three name syndrome they have. It’s all diseases that I’ve never heard of: the kids either outgrow them or they die of complications.

So far (it’s only been 4 days), I’ve enjoyed my month. It helps that I really like my attending. She’s funny and we get along really well. Of course, the attending switch on Monday, so I’ll have somebody else to deal with, but I haven’t had to deal with the rounding until 9 pm horror stories that I heard about. I’ve learned more than what my feeble brain can absorb. And the kids are precious. I get to hold brand new babies all the time.

Argh, the kid is still not here. It’s been two hours!! Maybe there won’t be dancing after all. 🙁

• I have asked the last person needed for a letter of recommendation. He was gracious enough to agree. So I’ve got the neurology chair, the program director, the ICU director and my favorite stroke/intensivist writing letters for me.
• My CV is completed. I think that I managed to play up my strengths of teaching and leadership, while minimizing my deficiencies in research. We’ll see.
• Finalized the list of places that I’m applying. All over the country, I think 15 places in total. I may add one or two more to the list.
• Have half-way finished my “statement of intent.” I know, I know, it should be done, but I’m having a hard time verbalizing (I guess writing is the more proper gerund) my ideals of blending the neuro and medical critical care worlds together and how my empathy and interest in doctor-patient communications also fit. I have a few more days to play with it and hopefully will have a workable draft by Thursday/Friday for editing this weekend.

I have Friday/Saturday to finish any secondary applications and get ready to register for the SF Match on January 4th. I’ll submit all of the letters of intent and secondary applications by that Wednesday (mst likely that day). Letters of recommendation should be sent out that week, completely the application and just leaving me with waiting to hear from those who are willing to interview me. I’m not planning on interviewing at 15 places, but do hope to get 5-6 interviews. There are various and sundry other little things that I have to do, but I’ve gotten most of the big ones done. Hooray!

And that’s the update!