End of the Month

Tomorrow is switch day. I'll be starting in the Pediatric ICU in the morning. I will miss the slack pace of this month, but at the same time am looking forward to using my brain a bit more. Should be a good month for learning...

Roller coaster and forbidden fruit...

The past week has been a series of ups and downs, regarding one issue. Where I live. I am going to go on record and finally just plain admit that I do not love living here. It's not bad, well all that bad. In fact, many people are happy living here. The forbidden fruit was my trip to Seattle, where I spent the past four or five days for a friend's wedding, and also to visit another friend. Seattle, Ahhh. Coffee- everywhere! Healthy people running! CULTURE! Open and welcoming people! Fashion. Shopping. Everything that I seem to be missing from here, I was able to find in Seattle. It was heaven, but also painful cause I realized what I miss...

I'm not sure where I would be happy living right now. Maybe a big city. Maybe a smaller city with good mountains at my doorstep. Definitely somewhere with places to hang out-chilling having coffee.

I've come up with various strategies to keep me happy for the duration of my time here, or at least for the meantime. One strategy has been a bit of a make-over of the apartment. Bought some plants today, a few odds and ends (courtesy of a pottery barn gift certificate-thanks J&N), and some photo frames to mount on the wall. Part of this is philosophical, getting myself to believe that I will, in fact, be living here for 3 more years, and that actually coming to terms with the fact that my apartment is way more comfortable to hang out in than the lame-ass coffee places around hear, so am taking some time to make this a Home. Big "H" noted.

September and October are going to fly by, I start in the Pedi ICU on Friday, call on Sunday. It's going to be time to get back to the books, and I'm going to be ready for it.

Ok-time to hit the gym.
B

Tea Time & Driving

One of the things that I realized tonight that I miss about living in Dublin is having people over for tea. Pretty simple. Come over, brew some tea, and chat. It was easy in Dublin because people lived so close to one another. There was no need to spend half an hour driving to get to someone's flat. That brings up the other issue: Driving. I dropped off the liberty to the auto body shop this morning (to fix the dent that I made while four wheeling back in May). So, I've been without a car for the whole day, which has actually been kind of liberating. Liberating not having the liberty-pun kind of intended. I'm kind of sick a driving everywhere. Want to know what's gross, I have almost 21000 miles on the liberty, ALREADY. Where to feck have I driven? Sure, some long trips here and there, but most of that driving has been just driving around finding places to have coffee or to meet up with friends. When really,I am sure it would be more pleasurable to hang out in my own flat, drinking my own coffee with friends, and saving a few bob here and there... Just a passing thought.

Vacation starts Saturday morning. Thank God!

The Speed of Trees and Johnny K

The Speed of Trees: Ellis Paul is a musician that I have been recently listening to. I highly recommend that you check out his CD “The Speed of Trees .” It was suggested to me by a friend who lives in a small Colorado mountain in town. Johnny K is a through hiker on the Appalachian Trail (AT), That I met a little over a week ago during an overnight backpack trip.

How do these two things relate? I decided that I desperately needed to get into the mountains for a little down time. I was still trying to recover from the insanity of July. So I took a Friday afternoon off, packed up my backpack, and hit the AT. I hiked 9 miles (a fucking tough 9 miles I might add) and camped at a backcountry campground that was populated with AT through hikers. I was listening to Ellis Paul on the way to the trailhead and as I was hiking along I kept thinking of the title of the CD, “The Speed of Trees,” and how I have been so caught up in my daily resident life that I was missing out on the speed of the trees. Meaning, that in the blink of an eye, I realize that it was already mid August and I had yet to go backpacking/camping or even hiking. And that if I didn't make it a priority to spend some more time outdoors, before I know it, I would miss seeing the trees change colors in the fall. And let me tell you about Johnny K. 45, ex-Marine, decided he would hike the entire Appalachian trail this summer. Johnny K didn't just give me pieces of lightweight backpacking advice, but also suggested I slow down and spend more time hiking. Of course I gave him some advice to basically to take care of the healing wound on his ankle.

Daily Grind: it has taken me a bit of time to recover from July. Looking back, I think that July was much more difficult than I had anticipated it would be. The transition from intern to “senior” resident was a bit of a bigger jump than I thought it would be. So I was responsible for supervising both an intern and a medical student. It was pleasurable teaching for the first few weeks but when things were busy teaching was the first thing that was dropped, and it probably should not have it. Also, I realized that I am not good at delegating. I often found it easier to just to do the work myself than to delegate it to the intern or medical student. When my team was on call, I was also the pediatric admit resident which meant that all pediatric patients admitted to the wards came through me. Which means that more than once I found myself stuck on the phone for insane periods of time trying to coordinate admissions to the hospital. This month, I am doing pediatric outpatient surgery clinic. It is fairly relaxed. I have a week of vacation starting Saturday and am looking forward to my time off, as well as looking forward to seeing dad and Janice. September and October will be fairly busy as I am in the pediatric ICU in September and then the adult ICU in October.

My Home: I don't think that I am settling in here as well as I thought I would. I find that I really wish there were better (taller, more mountanous) mountains close by (part of why I don't go hiking as much as I could/should). At this point, I feel fairly certain that I will be leaving this area after residency.

After Residency… kind of the million-dollar question, or the future job du jour. Some days I see myself spending a year or two in the Indian health service, some days I see myself settling down in a bigger city (Denver, Chicago, New York, Seattle, San Francisco), some days I see myself doing three month locum tenems jobs. All I know at this point is that I am fairly certain I will be staying in primary care, providing care for both children and adults (and the occasional geriatric patients, ie, dad and Janice).

So, there you have it for now. I leave you with this quote to think about:

“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."-Susan Sontag-