Are you ready for some action?

Tonight's my first night as a doctor; I'm so nervous and yet a little excited at the same time! I've been reading all sorts of articles for the last two days trying to refresh my memory on how to care for kids (it's been a year since I've seen one as a patient), but I'm sure that I will still have a blank look of fear on my face about 6:55 PM when I'm getting the checkout list from the intern who's going home. I don't know much about how the computer systems work, I have no idea where to put the chart after I write orders, I don't know how to admit the kids to the hospital (I've always received them after they've already been admitted), and I'm doing pretty well just to know where to park tonight. I don't even know how to get into the ER! The chief badged us in before, but will my badge work? We'll find out tonight! :) I feel like I need a scarlet "I" on my white coat to let everyone know that I'm one of the dreaded fresh interns who will need to be told 100 times, "We do it a different way at this hospital." At least everyone I met in the ER last week was extremely friendly and appeared to be very patient; I'm hoping that carries over to the night shift people as well.

In spite of the nerves, I really am excited. There's no better way to learn than to get in there and get my hands dirty (followed by a good washing, of course). I can read about a case 10 times and not remember 1/2 of what I read, but seeing a patient imbeds that knowledge in me better than simple reading could ever do.

Bring it on.

I'm already tired

This frightens me. I haven't taken my first call or really done anything other than be at the hospital for orientation from 7 AM until 4 PM with almost-nightly dinners with the crew, but I'm tired. Most of the interns officially start on Saturday, but because I'm working in the ER where we do 12 hour shifts, I don't start until next Wednesday at 7 PM. It is a total God-send; I'm going to use Monday and Tuesday to do some reading and review things that I haven't considered since my peds rotation almost two years ago. It's terrifying how much I feel that I've forgotten; I'm praying it all comes back when it really counts.

It's my blog, and I'll ramble if I want to.

I'm still working on syncing my new PDA. I'm used to my old Palm, but the program has provided us with Pocket PCs. They're great and will be essential to all the life saving that I'll be doing (can't give the wrong drug dosage to a kiddo!), but I'm having a little bit of a rough time getting it set up. At least my program has loaded most of the applications for me; I don't think I could stand doing it all alone.

I miss my husband. He's been staffed on a project out in California this week and will actually be out there every week until at least October. I'm thankful that we both have jobs that we love, but it's hard being apart. I was seriously blessed to be placed in the ER for this month; I only work 1 full weekend (one 7a-7p shift on Saturday and one on Sunday) and 1 extra Saturday, so I will get to see him quite a bit when he is home. He was also able to take off for a week when I was given one of my two vacation weeks (the next isn't til April), so I'm excited about that.

I'm scared. I'm terrified everyone's going to figure out how little I really know. I'm nearly immobilized at the thought of hurting a child by not knowing the right treatment. Everyone keeps telling us that we know much more than we realize; I hope that's true. I want to be good at this. I want to help my patients. I want to make a difference.

I love my new phone. My old phone refused to work last weekend, and with the hubby out of town most of the week, we decided it was a safety issue for me not to have a reliable cell phone. I live 15 minutes from the hospital, and for my first five shifts, I'll be working 7 PM til 7 AM. After that, I'll work two shifts from noon til midnight. (Never fear -- these shifts are not back-to-back; I have plenty of time for sleep between them.) My beloved '96 4Runner has been acting a little weird lately, and I would hate for it not to start or to die on my ride home and have me stranded somewhere. I have a very tall male relative who lives 10 minutes away from me, so if anything ever happens when my husband is gone, I have my back-up ready. :) My new phone is amazing. Unlike the old one, I actually get decent reception almost everywhere, it doesn't take 5 minutes to send a single text message anymore, and the battery lasts more than 6 hours. It's fabulous!

Tomorrow I get to wear my long white coat for the first time ever. At many medical schools (including mine), students wear short white coats, and we all long for the day when our coat grows and we join the ranks of the graduated. My coat grew about a foot and even got my name embroidered in it. I just hope I remember to answer when they call me "Doctor." I still haven't gotten used to that. For my 3 readers, I won't be wearing the bonnet and mask very often; I was on a surgical rotation when I took this picture. It's just the only picture I have of me in scrubs.

I think I may go relax and soak in a hot bath for a while. It truly is one of the best ways to end the day.

It's not a habit. It's cool. I feel alive.

Unpacking has helped me to realize that I have several prominent addictions in my life and several that I have overcome (or maybe just replaced with new ones). With all the expenses of setting up our home, moving, and preparing to start my new job, I haven't been able to feed many of these addictions lately. Fortunately for me, I have a wonderful family on both sides who have made sure that my withdrawals aren't too bad.

For my birthday, my wonderful husband went wild and crazy at Lush. Our new apartment has two wonderfully deep tubs without those nasty drains in the side. I was a microbiology major in college; seriously, you don't want to know what grows in those pipes, or you would never take a bath in them again. Now that our new tubs don't have the portals to filth, I really enjoy taking baths, and I was blessed enough to get quite a few wonderful bath bombs, melts, and soaps. I was so stressed out last week in our rush to prepare our place for a wonderful weekend guest (who happens to read this blog -- hi guest!) that I swear I was about to spontaneously combust (don't rag on me for the split infinitive -- "combust spontaneously" just didn't sound the same). I popped a Happy Pill into a hot bath and relaxed so much that I dozed off for a few minutes. I just found out today that my husband's job will be taking him to California Monday through Friday until at least October, and my schedule is going to be very busy during the week with no guarantee of weekends off. My only vacation until next April comes up in July, so I already know that I'm going to be using my Lush products to help me wind down from the craziness of life! Maybe I should start a fund to support this habit; it won't be cheap.

Something I've known for a while but have just recently admitted is that I have a purse addiction as well. Most girls have hundreds of pairs of shoes; while I do have quite a few, it's probably significantly less than the amount possessed by other women. I prefer to have my classic staples with a few fun options thrown in. My accent of choice is my purse and lately one style in particular. I love the Liz Claiborne croc purses; I now own two small ones, one medium one, and (this is so embarrassing) five large ones. The large ones are PERFECT for me to carry to the hospital (just big enough to hold all my papers without wrinkling them), and since three of them were gifts and I got the other two on huge sales, I don't have to feel as guilty about it. My mom and sister knew that I liked them so much that they each got me one of these types of purses for my birthday. Now that is love.

My final addiction is the one that I really can't afford to feed right now -- both for lack of money and lack of space. When I was a little girl, I remember looking through the home section in department stores and thinking that I would never be interested by this kind of thing. Ha ha. Now I can't walk through a department store without stopping to look at the home section! I have now been introduced to the wonders of Fiestaware. Through the generosity of my husband's home town, we got all the placesettings for which we registered and lots of Fiestaware we never picked out. There were a few pieces off our Foley's registry that we didn't get, but what we have is far more than enough. My problem is that now that I've used it daily, I love it so much and am starting to think about the other colors that I don't have. Sure I have some outrageous number of dinner plates in cinnabar, sunflower, cobalt, and white (I think the final count is in around 18), but oooooh, the peacock is so pretty! Maybe when we have a house and I have a hutch, I can get more. In the meantime, my mantra when I walk through Foley's is "Just say no!"

Pizza Hut, the cable guy, and the Taj Ma-Triple B

We're heeee-re! We arrived in Dallas 1 week ago, and we're finally getting settled in. This morning was the first day that I've gotten up and felt at home since we moved into the apartment. I'm sure it had something to do with our mad dash to put things into place before my sister-in-law and her husband came over for dinner last night; there's not a box to be seen in our living room, kitchen, or bedroom! Of course, this simply means that all the unpacked boxes are hiding in our study right now. We still have a good amount of work to do this weekend! Even with more unpacking in sight, I'm still glad to be here.

We've had some really interesting things happen since we arrived. The first night that we were here, we left the boxes in the apartment to hunt for a washer and dryer and also for bedroom furniture, so we had dinner out. The next night, we were in hardcore unpacking mode and didn't want to leave, so we decided to order pizza. I'd actually looked up 2 nearby Pizza Huts before leaving Houston and decided to call the closer one (less than 2.5 miles away). Apparently this Pizza Hut has entered the 21st century; when I called a local Dallas number, I was redirected to a national Pizza Hut hotline. The nice lady on the other end of the phone took all my information and proceeded to tell me the nearest Pizza Hut was about 20 miles away. Lady, this is America, and I'm living in a major city; I know there are more Pizza Huts than that. I gave her the street of the closest store, and she tried to enter my order with them. For some reason, she couldn't do it, so I got passed to Customer Service. Yes, the Pizza Hut hotline has a Customer Service department! At this point, I'd been on the phone for nine minutes trying to order a large pepperoni pizza -- and nothing else. Seriously? The rep with whom I spoke next was nice but tried to tell me that I'd ordered from them before because my phone number was in the system. When I told him I'd been in Dallas for 24 hours, he shut up and changed the info so that I could get my pizza. All in all, it took over 12 minutes to order a single pizza. Insanity.

The same day (last Friday), we had the cable guy coming out to install cable and bring us the cable modem (oh happy day!). He was scheduled to come between 12 and 5 PM, so we made sure we were home the entire time. As it got closer to 3 and we hadn't heard anything from the company, we called to verify the appointment. They assured us that he was on his way and would be there this afternoon. At 5:15, we called again, and they informed us that he wasn't coming because he had not been able to get ahold of us all afternoon. When we asked why he couldn't reach us, it turned out that he'd been using my husband's old work number (which has been disconnected) as a contact number. They didn't give him our new home number which came from the same company or either of our cell phone numbers. They told us that they'd give us a call back to reschedule his appointment time. At this point we decided to give up and order the pizza (which brought about the above story), and after dinner we left to run more errands around 7 PM. We were getting into the car when I realized I'd forgotten something in the apartment. As I was walking up to the door, I saw this guy knock on the door. The cable man had finally arrived! Forgetting that last item turned out to be a God-send; if I hadn't gone back for it, we would have missed him entirely.

The next day was spent taking furniture to my in-laws' place for which we simply don't have room right now and doing more shopping. We found bedroom furniture Friday morning, and now we needed new pillows and a few finishing touches for our bedroom and bathroom. Yes, Saturday was the day that I was introduced to the mother of all Bed, Bath, and Beyond stores (affectionately referred to by my husband and his family as the Taj Ma-Triple B). This place has TWO stories! They had everything we came to buy -- and more. They even had my Betty Crocker Big Red Cookbook that I have seen only online til this point. The workers at this store were incredibly friendly and very willing to help two dressed down twenty-somethings who were looking for pillow covers and other such boring items. Seriously, it was so much fun. I don't know how I'll ever shop at another BBB again. Best of all, we still had gift cards, so we got everything we needed without breaking the bank!

Life is good. I'm going to take a break from sitting in front of the computer in my PJs to sitting in front of the TV with my PJs. I have just about a week til I start my job, and I'm milking the last of my vacation for all it is worth. I may even go eat something terribly bad yet delicious for a late breakfast or early lunch. After all, if you can't splurge on your birthday, when can you? :)