Surprises!

Some news updates which have surprised me lately...

Night float
I have now spent 6 nights on FP night float which is a 2-week block we do as an R2 or R3 (or maybe R4, too- ugh) which involves: seeing and evaluating family practice patients in OB triage (rule out labor, bleeding, etc.), admitting and managing family medicine patients in labor, admitting and taking care of their newborns, covering the inpatients on the family medicine wards service, admitting from the emergency dept., and taking "phone triage" calls when FP patients call the operator during the night wondering what they ought to do.

Although the hours aren't too bad (6 pm- 8 a.m. with post-call clinic Friday a.m but a 48-hour work-free period of a weekend!), I sort of dreaded this rotation as, when it is busy, all of that is too much for one person to handle and it can be very stressful! I think I'm helped by the fact that I enjoy and feel comfortable with OB, so that's not such a huge deal; I'd rather admit and manage 5 laboring patients than deal with 1 pt from the ED :). In any case, I have been hugely blessed. There have been nights when I have gotten 2-3 calls from floor nurses and/or phone triage, maybe 1 OB triage patient or laboring pt/delivery, and up to 6 hours of sleep (albeit not very good sleep --I feel soooooooooo guilty about sleeping while I'm at "work" [I have never slept one minute while on a night shift on OB!] and am constantly paranoid that I'm missing pages..., even resorting to paging myself at times to verify that the pager is working!). I've gotten not only to sleep, but also to read and catch up on emailing, blogs (this is the most frequently I've posted since residency started-- are you happy, Wendi? :)), bills, and all of those "little things" which add up and are tiresome to do at the end of a long day but which are very manageable when you can knock them out while at work. And I've had the time/energy to work out some days as well as run some errands, as I'm not so physically/mentally/emotionally exhausted from work that I'm a complete vegetable after the shift ends.

I have had a "no-hitter" for ED admissions thus far, which is truly some record. Although every day I go into work, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that "now I'm going to get it" since I've had good luck so far, last night was also very calm. I certainly am getting some sort of white cloud reputation :) Additionally, the chief resident informed me that since Tuesday is Veterans' Day, a holiday (holidays don't even register to me anymore while in residency, a.k.a "jail" [per Kyla]), I don't have to work Monday night and only have a 4-day workweek. Hooray! I can't believe my good fortune :) Night float has been a real treat of a surprise... I have just Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights (+ Friday a.m. clinic) to work before our rotation switch.

Yes on Prop 8 :(
Just a short note to express that I am surprised and disappointed that California, whose citizens I pride on being loving, open-minded, and with strong values supporting equal and fair rights for human beings, and who overwhelmingly elected our current democratic president, voted 52 to 48% (although they say that there are still votes to be counted) to ban on same-sex marriage, overturning the Supreme Court decision in June that declared it a "fundamental right." Hmm. Have to work on this.

The rain
It was raining in Belize and it's... rainy season in Sac-town. Unfortunately, Nov.- Feb. or so brings much precipitation (great for the Tahoe skiers!). I'm always frustrated by being thwarted in my efforts to work out or walk around outside when the weather doesn't cooperate! While the end of the week was quite nice and sunny, we had about 3 days of rain to start it off (less than 50%, although my mood took a serious nose dive!). We definitely get spoiled here with our 9 or more months of cloudless, sunny skies, and I forget that people in other states/countries have precipitation (I would not be excited about the recent Rochester snow) on a regular basis! Surprise!

Flat tires
If I am a "white cloud" when it comes to FP night float, I am a "black cloud" when it comes to tires. In the near 1.5 years I have lived in Sacramento, I have gotten 2 flats in my car, and 2 (or maybe 3) flat tires on my bike. In the less than 10 years that I've been driving, I've probably had about 5-6 flat tires. As I do not drive a whole lot, this seems disproportionately frequent! What do you think? While I think I could probably, at this point, change the car tire by myself, it is indeed nice to have a man around to do this manly stuff (Shom spent his Friday a.m. dealing w/ my rear tire). I wish even more that I could flat-proof my tires...

Publishing fame
I was slightly bored on night float last night and I realized that I've never printed out copies of the article published last year (Varicella zoster virus-associated disease in adult kidney transplant recipients: incidence and risk-factor analysis, which was my 3rd year research project in med school and on which I spent many hours and much sweat). When the paper was published in Tranplant Infectious Disease (2008; Vol 10, issue 4: pgs 260-268), there was an exorbitant fee attached to getting reprints for saving. Last night, I decided that I would try to look myself up in PubMed and/or google to see what popped up! If you google , you get a bunch of hits-- of both the article, as well as other sites and articles that quote it! How cool and surprising is that?!

Other ones on the way
Perhaps my favorite surprises, and ones which I can't help but now reveal, include that: a friend who's blog still smells like the beach around here, is expecting a little one in April. Additonally, Laura and Tony have one due June 12th. After doing this (i.e. so much OB) for "work," it is so surreal, and incredibly exciting, that people I know are having children!

Thanksgiving around the corner

In just over 2 weeks, I will be in MN visiting my grandma, Dad's family, and seeing parents for Thanksgiving, a break which was a big surprise for my November peds urgent care rotation schedule.

Those are the surprise highs to end on :)