PS – You should be proud of the job you did in the MICU. You were
outstanding! Feel free to ask me any career questions you may have. We
would love to see you stay in Internal Medicine, either general or a
subspecialty.

From an email I received from one of the residents I worked with this past month. I got excellent evaluations from my residents–the best I’ve received all year long. Now, you know me, I’m not saying that to boast. Oh no, Julia’s never satisfied with a compliment.

Since around October, I’ve been planning on doing Neurology as a residency. Of course, I always prefaced it, even in my head, that “I’m keeping an open mind so another specialty might sway me,” but I didn’t think that anything would. I mean, if you had asked me when I was starting medical school what I wanted to do, I would have told you pediatrics (genetics) or family practice. I certainly never thought that I’d want to do something with the complex, “way too many blood vessels and did they have to name every bony bump a different name?” brain. But the neurological science block second year fascinated me, and I absolutely loved every minute that we spent studying about Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis and how to do a neuro exam–and better yet, be able to locate where in the brain the injury occurred. I spent hours studying, because I loved it. And in the rest of second year, while there were classes that were interesting, there was never that all-encompassing passion for them. And nothing clicked in the same way, nothing made as much intuitive sense like Neurology did.

The year in review…

I thought this summer would be as most summers. Bereft of new episodes of my favorite shows, my only other option of shows to watch would be old reruns of M*A*S*H. And then, I switched to the USA channel for some good L&O: SVU, and within minutes was hooked on “The 4400”. I had seen it advertised last year, and thought that it was some show about Jehovah’s Witnesses and the religious Armageddon (*blush* What? 4400 is pretty to 144,000!) and it just didn’t seem like my kind of show.

Boy was I wrong! My sister filled me in on the premise and what happened last season, and I’ve become completely absorbed. The acting is incredible–really well done from everybody, the storyline’s great, and it feels like old time X-Files–without the monsters-of-the-week. I’m so excited!

*******
Tagged by eponine119!

Fandom meme

Work is boring me to death right now. After the excitement and bustle of the ICU, working in the outpatient clinics, seeing a patient an hour, and finding out way too much information about people’s bowel movements is driving me nuts. On the plus side, I’m only working about 3 hours a day. On the minus side, I’m only working about 3 hours a day, and am not in the slightest motivated to put the other hours of the day to good use, ie, studying for the exam that I hafta do really well on. And I’m really piling on the miles on my poor widdle car.

Big clinical exam (ie, practical, hands on with practice patients) on Monday. 8 “patients”, 4 hours. 15 minute visits, 10 minutes to write it up. My kind of fun. Yeah. Not looking forward to that one.

But the time off has left me time to do meme’s like this one…

Tagged by Becka!

Snagged from bjorks_defender, ’cause she made it up just for me! 🙂

10 random, amazing questions

I usually try to keep my poor attempts at making icons off of my flist, but I know that some of you are Everwood fans and might want one. Inspired by last week’s awesome finale (*dreamy sigh*), I’ve spent a good portion of my little bits of free time playing around with different textures/coloring/styles.

Sample:

Bright/Hannah loveliness

It’s been one of those days/weeks. I got a parking ticket today. I was late for rounds this morning–rounds that I had to present at, and decided to risk parking in visitor parking, and got caught. *sigh* My wallet was already looking very pitiful….

It’s also been one of those weeks where I’ve been doing a lot of thinking–not a good combination with little sleep. But it’s something that I need to get down on paper, so *gestures*. Three things happened this weekend–and for being on call on Saturday and Sunday, and not one of them being work related, that’s pretty impressive–three things that started this rumination. I guess to have a better understanding, a little back history is needed.

The Plethora, Chris, and The Boy

Conversation with Chris walking home (yes, he made sick me walk to dinner, said it would clear out my lungs… and he accuses me of believing old wives tales!) from dinner tonight:

After seeing the husband of a classmate–“I didn’t know that many people knew about my engagement.”
“I have people coming up to me all the time, going ‘Did you know that your friend Chris is engaged’ and it’s all I can do to say, ‘yes, well, I really hope that I wasn’t finding out from you.'”
“You mean, you’re not acting upset that’s it’s not you, like all the stupid rumors?”
“Oo, I should do that next time! ‘What??? He didn’t propose to me!!'”
*With a big grin* “That’s a good one. I think Candice might finally hate me a little less now–I actually had a decent conversation with her.”
“I know. I saw her and we talked for a few minutes too–”
“–About rotations?”
“Yep. And then I saw her a day later in the halls and not even a smile.”
“It’s absolutely crazy. I mean, we were friends for a year and then all of a sudden, she can’t stand me.*continues rant and forgets that Julia was there for the whole saga and remembers it quite well*”
“I know. But hey, *slugs shoulder* you got a better deal with me, anyway.”
“Yeah, yeah, I did.”

It’s been so long since we had an actually conversation outside of how we studied for a particular rotation or how our residents were treating us. It’s almost … surprising to discover that he really does consider me his friend. We had such a great time tonight, despite my frequent cough and the two Kenyan students who are finally going home tomorrow and the looming tests of this Friday…

…when they come around with flu shots, remind me:

–that there is always a flu shot shortage, but because I work in a hospital, I’m one of those “high risk” people and shouldn’t feel guilty for taking it away from an elderly feeble woman–most likely, she’ll manage to get her shot too.

–that because I work in hospitals, the likelihood of being exposed is much higher–even if it is from your lowlife classmate *grumbles at fellow student who should not have come to work!*

–that I don’t want to be a vector and pass on the flu to the poor, elderly, feeble woman, whose shot I stole.

–that even though my arm goes numb and weak and hurts like nothing else after the shot, that only lasts a day, and this flu has last five and I’m not getting much better.

–that trying to study for the hardest test of the year is difficult enough without adding in fevers and head congestion.

–that I make one of the lousiest patients around and really, really, really hate being sick.

*crawls back into bed*

Am miserably sick. Fever. Muscle aches. Shaking chills. Sweating. Sore throat. Ear aches…

At least I know why I’ve been getting headaches all week.

And the worst is? I have to be to work early tomorrow–and medical students really don’t get sick days.

*crawls into bed*

Taken from donnazita. It’s all her fault!

If you could say something to ten guys in your past, what would you say?

The guys in Julia’s life

Yes, if I was a lemming, I’d jump off the cliff too–we’d have such a great time on the fall down!

Comment and I’ll tell you something I adore about you.
Afterwards, copy and paste this into your own journal.

Anybody, even if you feel like we don’t know much about each other yet… There are reasons that you’re on my flist.

ETA: Ran out of time tonight. Will continue tomorrow, so if I haven’t gotten to you, be patient!

Well, since I keep getting asked to do this!

Book Meme!

Heart, don’t fail me now. Courage, don’t desert me.

*picks up phone*

ETA: Negative, Ghostrider, that pattern’s full.

He has to work.

Yet another movie that is impossible to find caps from!

Samples and links

Maybe it was the National Geographic on the coffee table about the solar system. Or pretty pictures like this from the Hubble spacecraft that make my mouth gape in wonder. Or the fact that I’ve rediscovered my love for ST:Voyager and it’s making me nostalgic (how much nostalgia can one of 26 really have before it become pathological?) and I’m exposing that geeky side…

But I really really want a telescope. Not a big fancy one (yet), but one that if I squinted, I could pretend that I was seeing the rings around Saturn.

I don’t suppose any of my illustrious friends out there know anything about telescopes? *wistful* Yeah, it’s a long shot.

****

Started a new rotation today. Psychiatry. I’m still a little too disturbed to start sharing the funny stories. When my attending starting telling me about our patients–the one that they had to so heavily sedate because he attacks everybody, or the one who wouldn’t eat anything because she was convinced that we were feeding her our children, or the one, in for a suicidal attempt and talks about how she watched her mother raped and murdered in front of her eyes and then was raped by her uncle at 6… Not to mention those with the sexual disinhibitions. And on and on. Within minutes, I was wide-eyed and twelve again, the small-town girl caught in big-city traffic.

It might be a long six weeks.

****

On a good note–I did *finally* mange to meet up with the Neurology guy who I’ve wanted to be my advisor! We got a schedule for fourth year cobbled together (I may not have ruined my chances for residency after all!) and right after, I ran into the other doctor that I’m hoping to get a letter of recommendation from (yes, I ended the sentence with a preposition–whatcha going to do about it?!). After weeks of not getting ahold of anybody, everything is starting to come together. Whee!

P.S. A big big welcome and hug to my latest friend donnazita who ironically, is my oldest e-friend. We met 6 (no way!) years ago because of a a just-becoming known actor, Ewan McGregor, and our love for him was the building bridge to our friendship.

Well, instead of studying and writing the paper that was due on Friday, I made icons. 😉

Voyager – P/T, Belanna, Seven