March 2005

Sunday, March 27, 2005
Eizeh Keif Sheba Aviv!!!
3-20--> 3-27-05

How in the world am I going to go back to school??? I just love being home. This is such a teaser vacation; it really ought to be a month long and not just a week long. Agggg! Next week is going to be very difficult, because I will be home-sick and out of school mode. Hopefully it will only take a few days for studying mode to kick in…

So, I bet you all want to know what I did on my vacation… here is a short account:

I came in on Friday night and slept until late the next morning!!! Very needed sleep. I felt much better afterwards.

On Saturday, I got a hair cut. Now that’s a major thing for me! The only way I cut my hair is when I do it by myself (chop chop chop! Very fun to do, but always dangerous results). But… mom found the sweetest person to cut hair! Hurrah!!! So now I’ll just keep going to her. My hair was long overdue for a haircut, and now it looks very cute. It is right above my shoulders and is layered at the back. I feel very girly-girl with this hairdo. Maybe I’ll start wearing a dress under the scrubs! (just kidding!) ;o)

This whole week mom and I have been walking 6 miles everyday at approximately the speed of light. Mom is so in shape that I basically had to run the whole way to keep up with her. Good news though-- I am now officially back in shape! Mom has a way of doing that to you-- one week with her and you reach new levels with your physical activity (… that, and I wasn’t sitting on my butt studying all day long!)

Movies I have watched:

The pacifier-- Okay… so this one was a movie for 9 year olds, but it was so funny!!! I just loved it!

Miss congeniality 2-- cute, but very much a chick-flick. Mom fell asleep at the end--but I enjoyed it.

What else? I worked in the garden, did house work, talked to old friends, enjoyed just being with mom, Omer and Midnight-- I hope I get to see dad tomorrow (crossing fingers!), also-- I ate like a pig this whole week! It’s great!!! I think I put on 5 lbs just yesterday :o) We had ice-cream in cold stone creamery--those things are just heavenly! Yum!!!

OH, we got me some new scrubs-- they are so COOL! One is a set of camouflage scrubs, and the other is a set of Orange- bell-bottom scrubs and a top of horses pattern!!! I don’t think my school will allow me to wear it, but I am going to try and get away with it :o) What can I do… I am a wild kind of a person! I can’t wait to hear the guys’ comments on the camouflage scrubs-- I am expecting them to say something on the lines of: “Be all that you can be in the A-a-ar-my!” Or-- “Atten-hut!” :o)

Highlight of today-- I was cleaning the screens from the outside, and just as I started hosing down the first screen I heard a “pshhhhhhhhhzt!” I stopped moving and just looked frankly to where the sound was coming from. Finally I spotted it-- a rattle snake 1.5 m away from me (about 4.5 feet). It was curling up into the defensive mode that they get in when they are scared, and so did I… I slowly backed away (straight into a cactus. OUCH!) and shut the water down. Then I screamed at a very high pitched tone: “MOM!!! There is a big rattle snake here!!! EEEEEEPPP!!!” Anyways, a few minutes later the snake relaxed and crawled to a hole under the air-conditioning unit. I too relaxed and went home to find the number for the snake removal people.

The first company I called wanted 100 bucks to remove Mr. Snake. I said thanks-but-no-thanks to them and searched the internet for the free removal that I knew existed in phoenix. Finally I found them-- Arizona Herpetological association!

They sent a guy named Kevin to come and help us. He called me and told me I had to watch the snake and make sure I see him until he gets to our house to catch the snake. I told him that that’s asking a lot out of a big chicken like me. He still made me do it. Uggg..

When Kevin got here, he tried grabbing the snake with the special stick that they have, but the snake was pretty fast and dove under the big AC unit. So a new plan had to be made-- if the snake doesn’t want to come up, we’ll just flood it out!!! We got the water hose and stuck it in the hole and just let it run for 5 minutes. The hole was HUGE, and so it took a little bit longer than 5 minutes to get the snake convinced that it wasn’t a good idea to stay in the wet hole. There we were-- and all of the sudden Kevin signals me with 2 fingers-- so I whisper (as to not alert the snake) two what??? The response: “Two snakes!”

AAAAHHHH!

2 beautiful Diamond-back snakes! A female and a male!

So-- The first one was caught and it was really docile-- didn’t rattle or anything. The second one was the aggressive one, and it was pissed that it was being bothered, and just showed the whole world who is the boss.

After the snakes were caught, we got a short snake-education. How interesting! I didn’t know that rattle snakes don’t hatch out of eggs!

It is a little bit early in the year for rattle snakes to be roaming the streets, but obviously, we are in the desert, and when in Arizona, you got to look out for snakes!

Fate of the snakes-- normally they are released into the regional desert (1 mile radius from where they were found). But our guys are going out for educational display. In about 3 months they will be released back into the wild in the local desert.

Please look at the pictures page for the snake adventure!



Good night everyone, I had a long day and have to get some sleep--
Love and kisses,

Reut

27 mar 05 @ 10:14 am

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Sunday, March 20, 2005
Spring break!
03-13-05--> 03-19-05

Hi everyone!

Wow… this week was the busiest it has ever been. We had a quiz on Monday, an anatomy and a pathology practicals on Thursday and a Final examination on Friday. I can sum it up in one word: Hectic.

My friend Tala and I ended up studying together. It worked really well, because each one of us has different strengths, and we just quizzed one another over and over again until we got it down. It was a nice change to study together with a friend than just by myself. Definitely effective.

On Tuesday we had the greatest class with Dr. Boyajian. She basically went through different cases with us and showed us how to analyze them. I found it to be so wonderfully useful. I am going to make it a point to go through 3 cases every week. The benefits of doing just that are tremendous! I will be starting that during the GI section.

Many many thanks to Savta Adina sent me amazing Mandel-bread. YUM! I am such a sucker for goodies :o) Thanks grandma! Also, I got a really nice letter from Aunt Sue, it totally made my day! (and Susie, I am feeling much much better now, thanks!)

Want to hear the sweetest thing ever? For the past week, my friend James has been trying to get me to his place to show me something-- and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Anyways, due to lack of time, I only managed to visit him very late Thursday night. I walked in, and he gave me the sweetest present!!! 2 episodes of “once upon a time-life” (in Hebrew, the cartoon is called: “Hachaim”) This used to be one of my favorite shows as a kid, and after I told him about it, he looked it up for me. It took him a MONTH (!) to download these shows for me!!! I was very touched. I really have some wonderful friends up here :o) Anyways, I have a comeback for his sweetness. I am planning a lovely surprise for him-- I won’t tell you what it is, just in case he comes up here and read my page. I’ll tell you all about it in about 2 weeks!

Well, yesterday I flew back to Arizona, which is where I am at the moment. I am so happy to be back home. I missed everyone so much, and I just needed a little bit of home. Today I went walking with mom (she is in such a good shape that I had to keep running in order to keep up with her), washed Midnight, rested, ate tons of mandel-bread and tons of mom’s food, and just had a lovely free day. This week was going to be dedicated all for resting, but I have a pathology assignment that I need to finish… bummer.

That’s about it,

I’d love to hear from all of you, so drop me a line,
Love! XOXO,

Reut
PS-- I got a haircut!!!

20 mar 05 @ 12:14 am

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Sunday, March 13, 2005
One more week until spring break!
Week of 03-05-05-->03-12-05

Hi guys!

One more week till spring break!!! Hurrah! I really miss everyone, and I can’t wait to go home already. This section went by quick, it seems like we just started it and now…we have a quiz on Monday and then practicals and the final. Wow.

You know, med-school time is an interesting natural phenomenon. Each day at school goes by at the speed of light, yet, the rest of the world time seems to be much slower. Meaning—even though I talked to mom and dad yesterday it seems like 2 weeks since the last time I talked to them… Anyways… that’s just what I think.

Well, for the most part the week was interesting. We had an awesome surgery lecture at the beginning of the week—it is quite astonishing to see the astronomical numbers of vascular disease we have in the US. The American fast food culture is bad. We have to change it—our collective health is at risk here!

We had a trillion pharmacology lectures this week, or at least it felt like it. Statins, Beta blockers, Calcium blockers, Diuretics, ACE inhibitors and many more took center stage. Pshew… that was just exhausting!

Somewhere around Thursday, I was very grouchy. I am not exactly sure why, but I just was. The good thing is that by Friday night I felt like myself again. It is much easier to do work when I’m in a good mood.

Well gang, I better get going to bed, I have to wake up fairly early tomorrow, as one of my friends and I are going to the anatomy lab to review some materials.

Hugs and kisses, I miss you all!

Reut

13 mar 05 @ 12:06 am

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Sunday, March 6, 2005
It's almost spring!
Week of 2-28--> 03-05-05


Hi Everyone,

This past week was kind of fun. The first few days of it I was sick, so that wasn’t any fun, but then by the end of the week I was feeling most excellent, and thus having plenty of fun!

On Monday we had our quiz, and I took it while having a high fever. I did pretty well, but it was really hard to study for the quiz when I was sick. I took Tuesday off, as I woke up with 103.8F (39.9C ahhhh!) By that point I went back to the doctor at the student clinic and got antibiotics.

Wednesday was a loooooooong day—I was still feeling very iffy, and it was just a really long (and boring) day. By Thursday I was feeling better, and I started enjoying class again. We had 2 pharm, internal medicine and microbiology. I really missed Dr. Buxton—she teaches the virology part of microbiology. It was nice to have a lecture from her! Then we had path lab— I diagnosed both cases that our classmates presented correctly, and one of ERF’s cases right!!! YES!

Friday was awesome... school was nice and short, then I had a make up session for the lab I missed on Tuesday, and then… I went home and got ready for…. FOLLIES!!!

“Follies” is this big formal event that our school has every spring. It is composed of a nice dinner/bar, entertainment (funny movies by the students- and boy, was it funny!), and then a dance. This year it was done in Union Station, a beautifully old train station that was renovated into a museum/hall.

We got there at about 7, mingled around a bit, found our table, sat and had dinner. Then they started the movies, and I thought I was going to pee in my pants (Dress, actually) from laughing so much! Let me give you some of the titles I remember—“Napoleon Dynamite in KCUMB”, The milk challenge (drink 1 gallon of milk in ½ an hour…. Watch out for projectile vomiting soon thereafter…), “Gunners, just DO it (but don’t over DO it)”, “Fight or Flight”—(in this one they dressed up stupidly as a gorilla and scared people out of their wits in the middle of the night), and many others. It was very clever and very funny. Anyways, overall, this night was just wonderful. It was so much fun, and I think all of us needed a night where we’d dress up beautifully and just have fun.

Well, as I am still behind on school work (is that the new motto?) so I am going to continue the quest of “catching up.”

Hope everyone is doing well—drop me a line, I miss you guys!

Re

6 mar 05 @ 9:31 am