Thoughts on Laziness

I love being lazy.... in the moment, that is. It was so nice to spend the whole day yesterday in my pyjamas, never leaving the house, sitting on the couch playing board games and watching baseball and brainless movies (Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson being very silly) and working on a crochet project. But I always pay for my laziness later. I wish I'd gotten up at some point and gone to the gym and/or the grocery store, or done laundry, or cleaned, or studied, or done any one of those things that I had meant to spend all weekend doing!

So I loved being lazy yesterday, but today I hate that I was lazy yesterday. I think it's mostly because I still have to do all the cleaning/laundry/studying/errands/etc., as unfortunately the laundry didn't do itself, surprise surprise, nor did any of those other things get done without my putting the energy into the doing of them. But, I think that a large part of me wants to be a go-go-go kind of person, always on top of things, always with lots of energy to get everything done & learned on time, and so I hate it when the real me comes through and turns out to be just a lazy slug!

By the Numbers: Oregon

19: hours spent in airports or planes while travelling to & from Portland, Oregon last weekend.

50: pound limit on each piece of luggage, which I overshot both going & coming home... oops.

3: full days on the west coast.

4: rowers in a boat that beat an eight!

7,000: feet elevation of Timberline Lodge, on Mt. Hood, otherwise known as Brian & Ginny's wedding location.

16: approximate number of times my ears popped (between flights & travelling up & down the mountain...).

130: wedding favors (packages of s'more supplies) made by the bridesmaids the night before the wedding. (We had waaaaaaay too much fun with this, by the way.)

1: husband I missed very much while I was gone!

Vacation!

I have worked exactly 12 days. (Not including orientation.)

And now I'm on vacation.

Woo-hoo!

(I can't get used to this!)

A Day in the Life - July Edition

I know at least a few of you are wondering what it is I do all day, so here is the first of a monthly series on that subject - it will change monthly as I move through different rotations. Enjoy!

6:00am. Alarm goes off - hit snooze.
6:09. Dang that alarm clock -there it goes again. Snooze.
6:30-6:40-ish. Finally get up after hitting snooze (and thus aggravating my sweet husband) a few more times. Stumble toward shower.
7:00-ish. Running late for quiet time (my goal is 30 minutes every morning), but sit down for a few minutes for QT & prayer, accompained by breakfast (usually cereal).
7:15. Final touches before heading out the door.
7:25. Leave house; drive to Children's. If really running late - eat breakfast in car.
7:45-8:15. Morning report.
8:15-noon. Attend one of the clinics - mostly different types of pediatric surgery (general, ENT, Orthopedics, Urology, Neurosurgery, etc.). Sometimes I just shadow the attending surgeon; sometimes I see a patient on my own, then present the patient to the attending and accompany him/her while s/he sees the patient and makes all the decisions.
Noon. Noon conference - a lecture (usually) on some pediatric topic, aimed at educating the residents and medical students. They feed us lunch, too, which is great.
1:00-4:30/5:00-ish. Afternoon clinic - something different from the morning clinic, but my role is similar.
5:00ish. Drive home.
Evening. Various activities - e.g. attending Matt's softball game; going to Bible study; running errands; fixing dinner. (It's nice to actually have time & energy to do these things in the evenings.... though I need to start incorporating a bit more exercise into these possibilites, especially given the lunches they feed us at Children's!)
9:00. Start thinking about going to bed soon. Keep watching the Braves with Matt.
9:30. I really should go to bed.
10:00. Drag self off sofa and to bed. Read for a few minutes - then sleep...

Firsts

First week of intern year.

First time being addressed as a doctor by a nurse who actually thought I knew what I was doing.

First time being addressed as a medical student - despite actually being a doctor - by a parent who recognized that I didn't know what I was doing.

First hug from a patient - in orthopedics clinic, a 4 year old girl who loved the stickers I pulled out of my pocket.

First hug from a parent, too - while checking on her daughter, a 4 year old oncology patient whose pain I helped control.

First call to a code as a doctor - and I was the first one there! - fortunately, it wasn't really a code after all.

First time to take call as a doctor.

First notes and orders written without someone approving them before they were officially put in place.

First call from pharmacy (of many to come, I am sure!) about a medication order I had written incorrectly.

First intern class event missed because I was at the hospital, on call.

Bugs Bunny Band-Aids and Other Orientation Tidbits

Bugs Bunny band-aids just make life better. All of the new Peds residents had to get their blood drawn this afternoon "to get titers checked" - I'm still not sure exactly what they were checking for, but oh well - and at a children's hospital, the band-aids are fun. (One of my fellow interns even got stickers! He deserved it though..... he had to get stuck twice.)

We started orientation & various types of training last Wednesday (CPR training, pediatric advanced life support training, neonatal resuscitation training, computer training, suturing and splinting and Dermabond training, HIPAA training, paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork, etc.........), and I think we're all a bit worn out at this point! Thankfully, tomorrow morning we finish the last of the computer training, and then I actually ended up with the weekend off. Returning to a schedule (after being on vacation for so long) has been difficult! I'm glad I start with one of the easier rotations; I think it will help to adjust gradually to a more grueling schedule, rather than getting hit with it all at once.

Speaking of schedule - we did get our schedules for the year; I start with Community Pediatrics (a clinic month - mostly in a general peds clinic somewhere around the city, specific location to be determined, and also some subspecialty clinics at the hospital). I'll do a month of Hematology & Oncology in August, and then a month in the neonatal ICU (when I'll be on call every 4th night) in September. I also got the time off that I had asked for to attend weddings (Ginny's in July, and Eli and Lee's in December), so that was terrific news!!


I promised triathlon pictures, so here they are:

on the bike.....
still happy

crossing the finish line!

life is better with Powerade and water

I did it!

Triathlon....... I Did It!

Hooray... my first triathlon in 4 years is done! My overwhelming thought is - I'm glad I did it, and had fun; but I'm not planning on doing another one anytime soon!

I've been sort-of training for it over the past few months, but I knew that I wasn't doing as much as I should have. I only rode my bike about once a week, and really should have gone at least 2 or 3 times a week; I ran more regularly than that, but still not enough; and I only swam once (though I wasn't at all worried about the swimming part!). So I knew going into Saturday's race that it wasn't going to be comfortable, but I knew I could do it - my goal was just to finish and not worry about racing hard. That turned out to be a good thing.........

This particular triathlon was a 400 yard swim, 13 mile bike, and 3 mile run. The swim went great......... no surprise that was my strongest leg, despite really not training for it at all! (I don't know the breakdown of the other legs, but on the swim leg I placed 72nd overall out of over 400 racers!) It was fun passing a lot of people, too, but that didn't last long.... I started getting passed as I was running out of the water up to the transition area, and that uphill run after the swim was much harder than I had though it would be! I had a hard time getting my shoes clipped into my bike to start off the ride, but after I got that figured out, the bike went fairly well. Of course I got passed a lot, but I passed a few people too, especially going downhill! The 3 mile run was quite a challenge though. I can run that distance just fine ordinarily, but doing it after the swim & bike was a different story. My legs felt like rubber coming out of the transition, but I was determined to keep running & not walk - until I got a terrible stitch in my side that just would not go away. At that point I was really glad I could remind myself that I was doing this to finish, not to win or anything, so I was totally okay with walking when I needed to, simply to keep moving forward! So I did it - in less than two hours, which was one of my goals - it wasn't comfortable, but crossing that finish line was a great feeling!

Matt came with me and was so helpful and encouraging. He was a great cheerleader! I saw him several times over the course of the race - at the beginning & end of the bike, and also at the beginning & end of the run, and of course at the finish. (He took pictures, which I'll add later if anything came out.) I am so thankful to have such a loving husband!!

Next time, I'm going to look for a team that needs a good swimmer, and let some other people train for & do the bike & run!!