Long overdue, but here it is—

08/26/07

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…

Have a good week!

Reut