Yay for Japan!!! I can't believe Arakawa took gold! ¶ 20:45

Today's noon conference topic: most embrassing or funniest experience in residency.
It was an hour filled with horror stories from our fellow residents :) You know, watching these medical tv shows and dramas I often wonder wehther those sorts of things REALLY happen. lol well they do! we had stories that ranged from beepers flushed down teh toilet, pornography video store owners masturbating themselves into cardiac arrest, foreign objects in not so foreign places, pranks on poor interns (big category), intern's first traumatic overnight call experiences ranging from starting CPR in a hallway for a pt being brought down for a CT, to inexperienced interns running a code and defibrillating a patient who was actually AWAKE and with a PULSE (noone seemed to notice that his head was moving back and forth as they cracked all his ribs and shocked him with 350J) to one notable resident resuscitating his patients by pounding his fist into a pt's chest like a WWF wrestler only to be yelled at later by the patient who survived the code. :) quite entertaining, but a little scary....my intern year is going to be interesting i think. ¶ 19:04

Amina

On a whim I accepted an invitation yesterday to a concert- Amina and Sigur Ros. What a fantastic evening! :) Visually and accoustically stimulating. Both groups are from iceland, apparently they play together quite a bit, both groups are unique and distinctly different. Amina is a quartet of females playing their songs with rather unique instruments- customer service bells, water glasses, and even a saw which they used as both a string and percussion instrument. Sigur Ros (thanks for the cd giffe) I had heard of them a few yrs ago, but this was my first chance to hear their new album 'Takk'. hard for me to describe the songs...they're sung in an invented language i think, not that it would matter since how much of their fan base even understands Icelandic(?) anyway. their songs have this crooning, yearning tone to them mixed with a little rock (their drummer's pretty awesome), and strange sounds made by playing an electric guitar with a bow. Their music builds in layers when I listen. Anyways :) gotta head to clinic. ¶ 07:18

GUAMANIAN BANKS and US geography knowledge
So I went to the bank to deposit a check from my dad which was drawn from a bank in guam. The tellers wouldn't let me deposit it! They kept insisting that since it was a FOREIGN check they would have to send it to collections and in 2 mo i would get hte money from it and they wanted to charge me a 150 dollar fee. I argued for about a half hour with this teller that GUAM was a US TERRITORY and the fact that the address on teh check had a US zipcode should tell them that. They didn't believe me, they kept asking me where it was in the US, i told them it's part of micronesia in the pacific, so they asked if it was part of Hawaii. lol. so i had to talk to the manager who knew that guam was a US territory, but even then didn't know if they were allowed to deposit checks directly from a Guamanian bank. So he called the National banking office who talked to collections..and FINALLY 1.5 hrs later I got my check deposited. ARRRGGHHH what a waste of time! lol. in any case. this branch of Huntington NOW knows that Guam is a US territory in the Pacific Ocean. ¶ 19:42

TADA...this is my patient tracking sheet at the hospital. I live by these sheets...so...am I anal or am I anal? ¶ 15:08

So, things are going well :) My fulbright prospects are looking up, which has me excited and gives me a renewed energy for my work. Still wondering what it will all lead to...all these goals and ambitions that i have that drive me forward towards some unseen place. SO much that I want to do, so little time, so little energy. I wonder if someday my life will slow down to a pace where I can open up a little corner coffee shop with a great reading library where I can serve internationally inclined tapas and excellent espresso all the while hosting local book readings, lectures, and discussion groups with a tad of doctoring on the side. "hello, what can I get for you? Sure..small coffee, patas bravas, and rule out acute appendicitis while you wait for your order." heheh. silly me. I am going home now, medicine is screwing with my brain. ¶ 18:40

hey dear travel buddies :) You know who you are! Just an idea but how about for our next trip/reuinion we do something other than sightsee? Anyone up for a 2 to 4 week volunteer program this summer? :) I dont care where....

here's one place http://www.cennepal.org.np/

Asia sounds like a good place to start though...what say you guys? Up for a trip to asia this summer?

It's been one of those weeks you know. Just sitting around and actually having a bit of time think about what i want to do with my life. I've gotten so buried in medical school and my fatigue and frustration that I've forgotten why I want to do this. So after my refreshing golden weekend with my group of TCK's and friends I've been doing a lot of thinking and planning. Well, my fulbright is still in the air...any day now... But besides that I've been thinking about residency. It's become clearer and clearer to me that being in the hospital for most of my life is probably not for me. I find the work interesting and challenging, but I far more enjoy my outpatient clinic experiences which gave me more time to get to know my patients. I never thought of myself as a family doctor, but I think that might be the direction I'm going. There are great family med programs out there that would allow me to simultaneous get my Masters in Public Health :) international health focus of course and I can also do fellowships in international health and integrative/alternative medicine. I hesistated quite a bit about family med b/c I thought that unless I were in a rural practice I wouldn't get the challenges and "mental" stimulation I'd like in a career...but then I realized that although cities are full of specialists, as a family physician I actually have the time and opportunity to work on community health and intercity projects with the underserved populations. All these other aspects of healthcare outside the realm of science that have always appealed to me. It all works it seems...I think I've found a residency that fits my needs. We shall see though...I have surgery, neurology, and acting internships in peds, rehab, and family med to get through first, but I'm excited :) I'm already talking with Shaghayegh about starting our own private practice with an integrated health approach and rotations overseas...maybe y'all can join me :) Ok off to bed...need to shut my brain off for awhile. ¶ 23:10

ARGH!!

I can't take the waiting anymore! ¶ 17:35