brrrr... it's cold here.

11-24-07

Hello hello!

Well, I haven’t written for about twenty days or so… I was a bit preoccupied and didn’t have the time or patience to sit down and write my thoughts down. I hope everyone is well and happy.

I’ll start where I left off—my second rotation in the hospital away from home… I loved it! It was a combination of adolescent medicine and sports medicine and the doctor I worked with was so eager to teach me and loved having me there, and I absolutely enjoyed that rotation, and learned quite a lot. It was interesting to see that I actually remembered some stuff from my anatomy course in 1st year! It came in handy :o) I read a lot of x-rays and performed/viewed quite a lot of physical examinations that mainly involved the musculoskeletal system. It was a great rotation. During this rotation I had two interviews—one was at the city and the second one was at the hospital I was in. They both went well, I thought. The whole process of matching is a bit complicated, but I’ll try and explain it:

The idea is that after the interviews, the candidate (me in this case) makes a list of the places she would like to go to, the top being the hospital she would like to work at, and the ones below it those are the 2nd, 3rd, 4th to nth choice. The hospitals also have to provide a similar list of candidate choices, starting with their top choice and going down. The idea is to match between the program and the candidate—this is a computerized system, and I am not sure how exactly it works... In any case, the end results for the candidate is either matching into a program, or not; thus being either “matched” or “unmatched.” It’s a bit more complicated than that because there are actually two match systems I can participate in… and if you haven’t match you can still find an open spot.

The interviews themselves are quite fun, actually, but having to worry about the match is not fun at all. My 3rd interview is on Tuesday, and it is in the hospital I am at now.

Okay, so after my first week in adolescent medicine I came back home and met up with my friend Tala who came for an interview at two local hospitals. We ate a small something and then Tala just crashed. I fell asleep a bit afterwards and was woken up shortly after (or at least that’s what it felt like) by my cute and hungry kitties.

The weekend with Tala was filled with fun. On Saturday it was very gray and cold outside that I managed to convince Tala that she really didn’t want to go to NYC. She agreed, thank goodness! Instead we saw a movie-- “Martian Child.” It was quite an okay movie. It was fun to sit in the warm theatre, drink some hot chocolate and watch the movie. Sunday was a beautifully cold sunny day, and Tala and I got on the train to go to NYC. We visited her cousins for a bit, ate lunch with them, and then walked all the way from 19th St. to 79st to the American Museum of Natural History. When we finally got there all the shows were sold out, and so we just walked around in the general area of the museum, which was interesting but not amazing. We then walked back to the train station, stopping for coffee on the way, and getting back to my cozy apartment. I didn’t have to start until 1pm on Monday, and so Tala stayed until the morning, at which point we went out for breakfast at a local diner, where I had a really good waffle (dad, you should try it!). Anyways, then we both went on our merry ways, Tala to the interview, and I to the hospital.



The next week at the hospital was very enjoyable, and it flew by in what appeared to be the span of about a second… On Friday I returned back to my place, and had my new friend Karen from Florida stay over. She was taking an examination in the local area and needed a place to stay, so I offered her a futon and a warm blanket. I had a lot of stuff I needed to get done around the house, so we didn’t do anything too fun or extravagant, but we did watch two episodes of “Ugly Betty” on Karen’s computer. I never seen this show before, and I thought it was just hysterical! I loved it!

Well, on Monday I started my new rotation—Peds Rheumatology. So far it is very interesting, and I get to do a bit more than I did at my other rotations. I like it a lot. The only thing that’s a bit of a pain is the drive there. It is about 40-75min drive, depending on traffic. It’s not bad; it is just a bit boring. I listen to books on tape on the way there (fun books mind you, not educational ones,) and I found that the drive is a bit better that way.

As I didn’t know the schedule for my rotation, I didn’t plan on having a vacation on Thanksgiving, but it happened that way, and I was very very very very very very VERY happy about it! But the best thing was that Abba was in New York, and I got to spend Thursday, Friday and a big chunk of Saturday with him!!! I haven’t seen him in about a month and it was so nice to finally see him.

Before I get to what we did together, I have to tell you about the little gray kitty…

So, I picked some movies in the local public library on Wednesday evening. I was on my way out when I saw a little gray kitty. She looked to be about 6 months, gray, adorable and a bit dirty. She was very friendly, so I petted her, picked her up and put her right down when she started to wiggle. I didn’t know what to do—I have 2 cats at home, I cannot have another one at the moment, but I felt very bad about leaving this kitty outside. I think she might have belonged to someone at one point or another because she was friendly, but I didn’t think she had a home now. Anyways, I made up my mind to pick her up and take her to the shelter I volunteer at, but at that point the little gray kitty decided she had enough of me and walked away.

Phew! one less thing to worry about. The cat made her choice, and I didn’t have to worry about it.

We’ll come back to that story a bit later, okay?

So I picked dad up at the train station on Thursday. We came home and talked for a bit. I made ‘Banana’s Grandmother’s famous secret family recipe for Cranberry Sauce,’ and Dad made his famous salad. :o) Then dad and I went outside for a walk, because it was just gorgeous outside (about 74 degrees or so). We went all around the soccer field, around the neighborhoods, around the mall, around the library (where I looked for the kitty who wasn’t there, and told dad the story about her, and how she chose to leave and not come with me). Then we walked around another neighborhood, ran (I AM out of shape) and made it back home. Then we had a small Thanksgiving dinner (minus the turkey), and went to bed early.

The next day we decided to go to a movie-- “Dan in Real Life.” Because the show started at noon time we went to my small farm market (they don’t have any more local tomatoes. I am very sad the season is over.) and Target. The weather turned really cold overnight, and instead of the amazing 74 we had the day before, it was about 40F. We got to the movie a bit early and enjoyed some hot drinks from the coffee bar (we have a cool theatre like that) and some amazing cookies we smuggled in (Kashi oat cookies with dark chocolate bits). The movie was a really good movie. It made me laugh so hard at several points I couldn’t stop laughing, and dad tried to get me to stop but not very successfully, and it made me sad at times, and even brought a few tears to both my eyes and dad’s. All in all, this was a good movie, a definite chick flick. I say worth seeing for fun.

We came home, had a little something, and then decided to go to Costco. I love going with dad to Costco!!! He gets excited about the coats and the TV screens and the watches and… he rarely buys any of that stuff for himself, but it is just fun. We got some necessities, but also got me a COOL water filter!!! No more ‘Brita’ (that’s a big water can with a filter for those who have no idea what I’m talking about.) Anyways, we came back home, unloaded, ate and talked some more and attempted to watch some movies on DVD. The first one is “The Family Stone.” About 10 minutes into it, I knew it would involve the mom being sick and sadness in the movie, and to be honest, I just didn’t feel like shedding tears over a movie with Diane Keaton… so I switched it to “My Cousin Vinny,” but I fell asleep :o) Oh well.

Today we took it easy and tried to fix my bed’s headboard. We realized quite quickly that this was not going to happen, and so we just positioned the bed a bit differently but needed to get some pillows, so back to Target we went for a good deal for the pillows. We came back and ate some lunch, and then organized some papers and stuff in my car.

It always makes me so sad when dad leaves. I would love to live close to him and Omer one day. Anyways, dad had to fly today and so I took him back to the station. We had tons of fun this weekend, but didn’t manage to get too many pictures, but here are a few pictures of the beautiful trees at the train station!




After dad left, I drove back home and realized that I promised dad to take one old book we found in the car when we organized it and donate it to the local public library. So I did. And remember the kitty? Well, she was still there, and she came meowing to me. I petted it for a while and was planning to try and put her in the cat carrier I had with me in the back seat. While I was contemplating this, a really tall men carrying his daughter accidentally walked into me. I smashed my knee on the ground, and managed to scare the kitty away. The men and his daughter were fine, and beside my knee hurting, I was fine as well. I learned my lesson though… when you hear a person behind you, always make sure they see you so they don’t walk into you. Stupid way to get hurt.

Anyways, the cat chose not to come with me, which is fine. I am not going to make it, but… one of my friends whom I just picked up from the airport, volunteered to give the kitty a room (if it decides it wants a nice warm place instead of the cold outside) until either the shelter has a place for it, or until she’ll take it to her folks because they want a cat. We’ll see. It is getting very cold around here, and I do hope it finds a warm nook to sleep in at night. Dr. Cole once told me that she helps the animals who want to be helped… I have got to integrate that motto into my mind.

Well, E-ma used to fetch all sort of kitties and doggies… Abba fetched Chaver (mom and dad’s 2nd dog, my first). I think I get it from both of them.

That’s about it… tomorrow I’ll write some thank you letters and study the program in the next hospital I will be interviewing at.

Night y’all!

Reut