Welcome back… Welcome back… Welcome back…

It’s always nice to go on vacation. I love seeing my family, taking “family pictures” with 10/13 of them, and getting one more test out of the way.

However, no good deed goes unpunished (not sure if that’s even applicable… I may not even understand that phrase), but the point is that I got back to work this week. Without getting into the numbers, I worked a TON. Not that it was all paperwork and minutia designed by some pencil-pusher to make my life miserable. I got to do things that I’ve never done before, and was allowed to do most of the surgeries I participated in. And honestly, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have done it any differently… Not sure if it’s possible to write a more cryptic paragraph than the one I just did, but you get what you get…

Being back at work, I realize that there are a lot of different characters in the hospital. I form opinions about them quickly, usually based on very short interactions. Who knows, maybe they aren’t really characters at all. Maybe it's just that my interactions with them are limited so I only have enough time to notice their character flaws. Take me, for instance, I wouldn’t ever call myself patient. However, the people who interact with me on a limited basis may never see that occasionally, I’m... ummm... more patient?... I think this applies to more than just the hospital...

Take for instance the annual softball game that we played this week against the surgery residents at the hospital on the other side of the town. Granted it was a limited interaction, but when you show up for a “fun” softball game against the cross-town rivals, you expect it to be a pretty laid-back atmosphere. You think to yourself, how seriously can antibiotic-joke-telling-out-of-shape nerds take an athletic event? You throw on an old t-shirt, some gym shorts and running shoes. You drive across town, show up a few minutes late, find your team already engaged in the consumption of pre-game “adult beverages.” You smile, tell a few jokes, and look across the diamond to see what the other team is working with. Across the diamond, you see multiple players with sweat bands on both arms, high knee baseball socks, batting gloves on both hands, and cleats (like this). Again, it’s a limited interaction but you can’t help but draw conclusions from it... including, but not limited to, “Man! Someone is taking this more serious than we are!!”

Well, let's just say that at the end of the seven innings it made our 10-6 winner that much sweeter...

A Moment of Clarity

Ever have one of those moments in life, where you take a look at your life and wonder how you got to a particular point… or where things went wrong? I have these moments from time to time, a couple from this week went like this…

I was doing an inguinal hernia repair with one of my attendings (hospital code for physician in charge of a teaching service), and I thought to myself, “How exactly did I get to this point?...”

The other was more pronounced, more poignant as well. It’s kind of a long story, and the details only make the conclusion more impressive, but it happened during ICU Rounds. Where the team, that I am currently on, goes to the ICU and discusses an ICU patient and their care. A great opportunity for teaching, and learning but it’s spontaneous as well so sometimes things get a little punchy… and jokes start to roll. Without worsening your opinion of me let’s just say that I found myself involved in a large group of people laughing at a joke whose punch line was, “Ancef*? That covers that right?...” As I stared at the jubilant faces of the crowd, I had my moment of clarity. And I realized, “Man! I’m a huge nerd!”



*Ancef is an antibiotic

Cleaning out my closet...

Lot's ground to cover so let's get going.

-When I was home I went snowboarding with my brother, brother's friend, sister, sister's friend (who insists that I shout at her, but I refuse), and my friend. It was fantastic. Not only was the weather perfect, but there were fireworks and we finished the night with a trip to La Frontera. Really a Tour de Force. I just don't know if there's a better way to slam one's body, face, or butt into a hard surface than snowboarding. I mean if I slammed my face into anything else that hard, I would stop immediately. But I guess because you're stuck at the top of the mountain, you insist on getting back on the board... good times...

- After my trip, I flew back to NC. Sadly, I came home missing my family, but with more questions than answers. Specifically, there's a place in the Raleigh Airport Terminal (you know the place you can't get without a boarding pass) with a neon sign above it that says, "Shop, Dine, Relax." Ummmm, so let me get this straight? I can't get to your particular business unless I have another place to go... and you want me to not only shop and dine... but also relax?... When?... How?...

- Now that I'm home, I'm really busy. It's good to be back in the groove, but it's taxing at times. For instance, 2 nights ago I was on call. A sweet old woman admitted to the hospital for dehydration, started telling me about how her back hurt. All the tests were normal... it was definitely muscle pain. She asked if the IV fluid we were giving her for dehydration could be causing the muscle pain. I reassured her (with the nurse present) that, if anything, the dehydrated muscles would be made better by the IV fluid. 20 minutes later, I got a call from the patient's nurse, asking me if I would write an order to stop the IV fluid, because the patient thought it was causing her pain. Really?... stop the IV fluid?... really?

Obviously, it's been a scattered but enjoyable couple of months....

So this is Christmas

One of the not-so-glamorous parts of my job is the hours (well that and giving people rectal exams, but the hours are bad too). It doesn’t leave you with a lot of options, especially for things that happen from 9-5 or on holidays. For example, I got 4 days off for Christmas, and while it's nice, it wasn’t enough time to go home. So what do you do in Chapel Hill (a college town) on Christmas? Well if you think dinner is on the agenda, you may be disappointed. Here’s how the night went down.

One of the other residents and I decide to hang out. He’s an Italian kid from Jersey. He’s Jersey enough to know people like those recently seen on “The Jersey Shore,” but normal enough to be embarrassed by them. Naturally, I call him “The Situation,” and mostly because it drives him crazy when I do. Around 5 o’clock TS and I try to hammer out some dinner plans. We start to call around for a reservation at the upscale restaurants in town (I mean it is Christmas right?). We find precisely 2 restaurants that are open, 1) has a dress code (not a big deal if you have time to change), and their last reservation is for a seating in about 10 minutes and 2) does not have any reservations the rest of the night. We’re beside ourselves, scouring the internet in search of new options, and cursing the fact that only 2/45 restaurants are open. We come up with a plan that goes like this, get ready and drive 25 minutes to Raleigh in search of an open restaurant. At this point we’re 1.5 hours into this thing, and we’re not going home without dinner. We drive around, but Raleigh looks like a scene from I Am Legend (i.e. we are alone on the streets). Finally, we find an Italian restaurant in a hotel in Raleigh. TS and I head in and get on the list. They tell us that the wait is about 40 minutes (again, we have too much invested at this point to give up now). So we head to the bar and grab drinks (I’m working on like my fifth Diet Coke of the night and at this point my I’m down-right jittery). 40 minutes later, we finally get a table.

As previously stated, TS has a strong Italian heritage and suggests that, “We should make this like a traditional Italian meal, with appetizer, pasta course, then an entrée.” To which I responded, “Why the hell not?! I mean it’s Christmas!” I get shrimp risotto, we split an order of spaghetti, and I finish with steak (an amateur’s version of rare). Dinner’s great and me and my buddy are chatting up the waiter about things to do in Raleigh. At which point, the waiter asks us where we’re from. I say, “Utah;” and TS replies “New Jersey.” To which the waiter responds, “Oh yeah? I love Jersey! I go up to Asbury Park all the time… I have a bunch of gay friends up there.” TS and I shoot each other a quick look, which we both immediately interpret as “Did he really just imply that WE might be gay?” The waiter wraps up his schmoozing, and TS and I start dying. I guess two guys can’t get dressed up, share a plate of pasta on a traditionally family oriented holiday without there being something sexual attached to it! I mean what’s the world coming to?!?

The Winter Storm of 2009...

So apparently winters in North Carolina are what most people would call mild. Usually 40's-50's with dips way down into the 20's and 30's. Infrequently, it "snows." Meaning a few inches of slushy, non-stick snow. When things get "bad," people panic. Bread, milk, and beer (the essentials I guess?) go flying off the shelves like New Moon posters in Santa's Secret Shoppe in Junior Highs around the country. This last weekend, we had several severe weather warnings for the weekend. The Meteorologists billed it as a disaster, even going so far as to call it "The Winter Storm of 2009." With this sort of reporting, it's no wonder that the storm was all anyone was talking about. People were saying things like, "We're getting snow this weekend", "I'm not going outside that," and "It's getting so bad that we may have to reinact The Lord of the Flies or the Donner Party and what-not." I mean I was worried...

I got off of work around 8PM on Friday, and headed out to a friend's house for a little Christmas socializing. There were about 1-2 inches of slushy snow on the ground, and half of the people cancelled their RSVPs for the party because of it. When I got to the hospital on Saturday morning, this "storm" had people terrified. Doctors, nurses, janitors and anyone else who worked in the hospital were making plans like, "I'm probably going to spend the entire weekend in the hospital," "I should have gone to the store last night to get bread and milk," or "I may have to sell everything I own to buy a gun to shoot myself... it's really my only option."

So when I got off of work on Sunday (after ~30 hours of work), I was terrified about what might await me on the outside. I figured even if all the predictions were overestimations, I was still going to be walking into Santa's front yard. And this is what terribleness awaited me as I walked out of the hospital...


You can imagine how cold I felt...

My Front Porch Looking In....

I have had a lot of ideas in my lifetime. Some good, some bad, and some terrible. One of my more recent terrible ideas was to sell all of my furniture prior to moving to NC from WI. It all made sense at the time. I would sell my stuff for about what I paid for it in Utah, take that money and spend it on new stuff in NC. Thus recouping some of the money I had spent in the first place and saving the moving expenses that I would need to get the aforementioned possessions to NC.

This sounds great on paper, but that’s where the greatness ended for me. Things went south, well, right at the beginning. So early, in fact, that I am not sure I ever actually headed north. The problem started with my underestimation of the WI-used-furniture market. To say that I underestimated the robust nature of the furniture market in WI, is like saying the Grand Canyon is big, War and Peace is long, or my dad is argumentative. None of these analogies comes close to adequately describing the epic failure that was my underestimation, the massive nature of the Grand Canyon, the effort required to read War and Peace, or the frequency and intensity with which my dad likes to give me the business.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Well since that epic failure, I have been replacing my old furniture bit by bit while at the same time paying down my credit cards. The precarious position in which I find myself, reminds me a lot of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. You know, finding a little something here and a little something there (I know it’s a stretch but bare with me… it’s the closest I’ll probably ever get to feeling like my mountain man older brother). So, bit by bit, I have been adding my collection. I started with a couch; and, through the suggestion of my sister, added the rug. The ottoman was my own, most recent, decision. To make a long story short, it’s started to make my living room feel like home. I realize that I still have a long way to go, but even the little additions have helped me feel much more at home. Which as far away as I am from my family at this time of year… means a lot.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

A lot to be grateful for this year! Including the fantastic vacation I just got back from here’s the highlights in “I’m-rushing-to-a-friends-house-to-gorge-myself” mode. I just got back from a vacation to Utah which included: visiting family friends in St. George, The Pizza Factory with my Currently-Cougar Siblings (and their families), fantastic seats at a Jazz game with high school friends, mini-Thanksgiving with the family, tour of my brother’s Castle, quick hunting trip into the same brother’s backyard (whose only interesting event was keeping an eye on my brothers and making sure they didn’t shoot me or each other), the BYU-Air Force game (reminded me of both the pros and cons of my BYU experience… fantastic overall, but easily downgraded at least one notch by a few tools who act as the proverbial turds in the punch bowl of Cougardom), and of course the cherry on top…. Seeing New Moon with my mom and sister! Seeing this movie with my mom and sister was like eating manicotti, super cheesy and soft in the middle but a great overall experience!