Difficult day today-- I was really tired, which made everything even worse than it already is. Work was fine, and after I took a short nap, studying was fine. I don't know. Reading about the different type of brain herniations doesn't help one bit.
In anycase, I went throught some of the pictures I have on the computer and this one made me laugh a bit. Mom would KILL me for posting it here, but it's going to make dad laugh also when he sees it, so... I'm posting it. I guess she'll kill me when we meet again. I'll deal with that then.
Emergency Medicine is now complete. I actually ended up enjoying it a lot… I liked the fast pace, the action, and the fact that I learned some great skills—putting IV’s (I still got to do like 700 more to be really good at it), suturing—I absolutely LOVE that!, tons of vaginal and rectal examination (not as bad as it sounds, really!), EKGs, reading x-rays. All in all it was a great rotation!
Tomorrow morning I start cardiology. This is the rotation I feel I need most. I am not very good in reading EKG’s— my goal for this rotation is to read EKG’s better than I do now, and understand the medications in this field.
Tomorrow I’m also starting my intense board studying… I am actually excited to finally really put the effort into it. Up to this point I studied, but I also gave myself some (okay, A LOT of) rest, and thus it wasn’t as effective as I originally intended it to be. But no fear, intense board study time is here!
Over the past week and during this weekend I worked on writing my personal statement. When I write, I like a ‘quick cut’—it is so nice when thoughts come out easily to the paper and then I can fiddle and fix it later. This time I had a difficult time with it—it was a slow process, and only yesterday I actually was able to put the first draft on paper… Funky (my dear friend and editor), would you mind taking a look at it sometime—it’s not too long, and your opinion is important to me. Same question for Omer... and thank you dad for reading it too!
Somewhere between the last time I wrote and now, we had about a week’s worth of rain and cold weather…It felt like winter in Arizona! It finally cleared up, and today and yesterday it was actually hot!!! Guess who went on a lot of walks this weekend :o)
I’ve been having a lot of dreams with mom in them, talking to dad, Omer and myself. I’ve actually developed a habit of waking myself up after the dream and jotting it down in a notebook next to my bed. Yes, most dreams make no sense, but this is the only way I know of where I’m actually making new memories with mom. I know that these are not actual memories, but my dreams are pretty darn real to me. I miss mom, not just because she is mom and I was kind of counting on her to be here for the next, oh… 20 years or so, but rather because she was so much fun, and more full of life than many people I know. During her hikes in the trails she saw 4 Gila Monsters—these are quite rare, and normally people see them out in nature only once in a lifetime… well, mom always did things with extra gusto!
This next week I’m watching over Addie—Matt and Erica’s cat. She is SO cute, but such a scardy-cat :o) I think that by the end of the week she’ll get used to me. If I’ll remember I’ll take a picture of her and post it here… she is just so tiny and soft! My cats are doing well. I’ve made some green and yellow (do they have an actual name?) beans tonight (all from the farm!!!), and KC followed me like a little puppy… he loves vegetables, it’s so funny! I gave him some in his bowl. Naturally, this food was way beneath Vega’s class…
So I had the weekend shift, which really wasn’t too bad. Part of it is that on the first day it was so dead in the morning that they told me to go home and come back later on… so it made it easier (I got a lot of stuff done during that morning). Yesterday was really dead in the morning again, but incredibly busy in the afternoon.
Emergency Medicine is busy. I’m getting better at my presentation. I’m also getting better at really listening to the patients… I still go in with a piece of paper to help me note stuff so I don’t forget when I present the case to the resident or the attending, but I would like to eventually use only my ears and brain. It’s hard though—with so many patients, and similar medical conditions there is that danger of mishmash…
Guess what… My car is back!!!! Bobby is finally with me. It’s driving fine so far—I didn’t notice any major problems with it, but when dad comes to visit me next he can drive it and give me his opinion. The PT cruiser I was driving for over a month kind of grew on me… :o) LOL!!! It’s so ugly on the outside and so very comfortable on the inside!!! If I had to buy a new car and had the mullah, I would have gone for a PT cruiser.
I’m still in the process of working on the rest of my 4th year schedule. Everything is up in the air, but there is a chance it will work out (… it kind of has to…). I’m going to start working on my residency and internship application very shortly. It has to be done soon—it’s a good thing dad keeps reminding me of that. Phew.
Speaking of dad, remember that pink bowl of beet? Well… dad decided we would enjoy eating at Panera much more, and thus I ate the whole thing by myself. Oh well. It was very good and I’ll probably make it again sometime.
During dad’s very short visit we drove to that farm market and dad agreed that mom would have loved it. We ate at a diner—I enjoyed it more than dad I think, but it was his request… :o) We came home and dad slept and then when he woke up we went to see that Disney-Pixar Rat movie. Ratatouille. Yes, it’s a kids’ movie, but who cares. It was funny and cute and made me very hungry by the end… Too bad this movie didn’t come out last year, because mom would have laughed (and made everyone else in the same theater laugh with her) from the ‘French-ness’ of this film :o)
Omer is in Ireland at the moment—I think it’s wonderful! I hope he took a lot of photos so I could vicariously enjoy it :o) My friend Lori is planning a trip to Australia in 2008, and how I wish I could say “Yes, count me in!” but with not knowing where I’ll be and what my schedule will be like, there is no way I could even entertain that thought. Oh yes, and the monetary part of it too… Guess I’ll have to visit Australia later on in life. My friend Ofri lives there (in Melbourne)— when the time will be right to visit Australia, I’ll ask for her opinion about where to go and what to see.
And now to a different topic: About a year ago I sign up to receive a “word of the day” from the Webster dictionary website. It’s really cute, their choices are often grandiose and very amusing, but…there are quite a few words that are so full of wit that I end up adopting. Last week, one of the words was: Scaramouch. If you don’t know the definition, go look it up (it’s your assignment). Anyways, being the Queen fan that I am, I had a huge smile plaster to my face after receiving this… Bohemian Rhapsody will live forever. It’s that simple. So as a result of that word of the day, I had Bohemian Rhapsody running in my head for over a week now. “I see a little silhouetto of a man, Scaramouch,scaramouch will you do the fandango- Thunderbolt and lightning-very very frightening me- …” etc. etc.
I found another song from A Night at the Opera which I actually never heard before (shame on me!!!) and absolutely loved it, so I’ll share it with you below—
Seaside rendezvous Words and music by Freddie Mercury
Seaside whenever you stroll along with me I'm merely contemplating what you feel inside Meanwhile I ask you to be my Clementine You say you will if you could but you can't I love you madly Let my imagination run away with you gladly A brand new angle highly commendable Seaside rendezvous
I feel so romantic can we do it again? Can we do it again sometime I'd like that Fantastic c'est la vie mesdames et messieurs And at the peak of the season The Mediterranean This time of year it's so fashionable
I feel like dancing in the rain Can I have a volunteer? Just keep right on dancing What a damn jolly good idea It's such a jollification as a matter of fact So 'tres charmant' my dear
Underneath the moonlight Together we'll sail across the sea Reminiscing every night Meantime I ask you to be my Valentine You say you'd have to tell your daddy if you can I'll be your Valentino We'll ride upon an omnibus and then the casino Get a new facial start a sensational Seaside rendezvous so adorable Seaside rendezvous ooh Seaside rendezvous Give us a kiss
…I have a feeling mom would have loved this song—it’s beatle-ish of sort… full of British Nostalgia… LOL!
And more Queen—dad told me that the side bar wasn’t playing… well, I fixed it, so if you are like me and want to cry a bit while listening to “No One But You (only the good die young)”, it’s all ready for you. Just grab a box of tissues.
Well… that was a huge tangent right there… but I think I’m done for today.
This is taken right before mom and I went to Ikea back when she visited me in the fall of last year.
I was going through some online pictures and even though she hated this (and others I took on the same day) picture, I absolutely love it. When I took this picture, I thought she looked stunning, but she didn't want to listen. I love this picture, becase the hair was coming back in and because mom and I were having such a wonderful time together!!! I love it because of the sunglasses and the very sunny apartment. I love it because we were together.
The thing that truly sucks is that we can't make new memories together. I have more wonderful memories of mom than others have in a life time, but it still difficult to accept it.
I’ve just finished the 1st week of Emergency Medicine on Friday. To be honest, I don’t particularly like it. There are many things I am learning from it, so it’s not worthless, it’s just... I’m not enjoying it too much.
Car update… uggg! My car is completely ready but because of paperwork that should have been (but wasn’t) done by the independent adjuster, and my own insurance, I can’t get my car back yet. How much longer can we stretch this? This is aggravating. Honestly. My own insurance has extended the rental for a few more days, but it’s still a major pain.
I LOVE summer!!! I wish summer lasted all year long!!! I hate it that some of the trees have started shedding their leaves. But… it is boiling hot now, just the way I like it, so no complaints from me… This morning after talking to dad I decided to go to the local Farmer’s Market. I’ve been here for a year and never gone to it. Well, it was about a 10 minute drive… it was very small, but… oh boy, they had some great tomatoes! You do know that I’m a tomato addict, right? I love tomatoes and can eat several of them per day. When I came back from that Farmers’ Market, I remembered that there was another market I never visited, so I decided that I should go there too. I absolutely loved that place! It’s not actually a Farmers’ market, but rather one farm that sells its produce around here. I bought some locally grown corn (Jersey corn is suppose to be the best in the country… it must be the pollution, right?), and beets, garlic and a cucumber. It was very cheap and fresh. For a moment there I almost picked the phone up to tell mom about it. She would have LOVED it! Too bad I didn’t know about this place when she came to visit last year. We could have gone there. On my way out of the store, there was a huge black and blue butterfly flying around— whenever mom saw butterflies, she used to say that Saba Ramiro is visiting us. Maybe mom was visiting me today at the farm store.
When I came home I decided to try a new recipe for the beets. It’s from Beit-Herut’s 70th anniversary cookbook—A expected (or I should say, as usual), I didn’t have all the ingredients, but it still turned out good. It looks horrible, like a big bright bowel of pink puke, but I do like the flavor (non-emesis like flavor). We’ll see if dad likes it (or brave enough to try it)…
My cats are doing great—Vega constantly begs to go outside. I wish I lived on a big farm so she could go in and out as much as she wanted to.
Have a good weekend,
Reut
???? :o) This is the beet dish. Quite tasty, actually, but looks horrid!
