Island Medicine, Part 2

Of course it wasn't all work while we were in St. Lucia. Our group managed to stay at a resort for 2 nights/3 days to relax.

One night, we went to dinner at an old sugarcane plantation called Balenbouche (French for bullet-in-mouth--apparently named for a duel that took place that didn't end well for someone!). The grounds were very pretty, and there was a small, black sand beach on the property.

Old still:

Black sand beach:

Same spot, minutes later:

We stayed at the Almond Smuggler's Cove Resort, which is on the north part of the island. It was three days of eating, which made up for all of the peanut butter and frozen lamb neck at the cafeteria during the weeks before!

The Brig Unicorn (apparently was in "The Pirates of the Caribbean"):

One of many lounging spots:

There are two prominent peaks in St. Lucia. Gros Piton is the taller of the two, but the climb is slightly easier (very steep, but you don't need ropes to pull yourself up). Petit Piton is not quite as high, but is a much more difficult trail.

View of Gros Piton from the bottom:

This hermit crab was found halfway up the mountain trail!

View of Petit Piton:

Strange-looking breadfruit tree:

It was a great two weeks. Unlike my experiences in a rural hospital in Alaska, here I felt like I was able to do more for people because although we had less medications to treat people with, we had access to surgeons. It was more what I think practicing medicine was like 20-30 years ago rather than just being a pit stop hospital, where pretty much everything and anything is flown out for a higher level of care. As for the vacation aspect, I would have liked more time to explore the island and to have gotten in some scuba diving, but it just didn't work out. The island itself is pretty small- something like less than 20 x 20 miles, so I don't know that I'll be returning.

Um, yeah...

It's been a while since I've written anything here, and it is not for lack of activity. Today is day 14 since I have worked a shift in the Emergency Department. Two weeks ago, Army Guy and I packed up my Saturn and drove off to Ohio to spend a week with his family and high school friends. (AG's car threw a fit and decided to throw a piston while he was driving down the other weekend, which ultimately led to selling it to an "auto recycler" and the decision to rent a car until he deploys.) I had never met any of them before, and was nervous-- although mostly about if I would make a good first impression with the family's 20 year-old Sheltie. The week flew by though, and it turns out that AG and I actually like each other enough to survive long car rides!

This past week, we went to Chicago to attend the American College of Emergency Physician's annual assembly. It is basically four days of death-by-powerpoint followed by late-night drinking/dining with one's co-workers. My program pays for each senior resident to attend because it is also a good networking opportunity for residents to look for job openings across the country. AG was also able to go with me, so he spent the days exploring Chicago and then we would meet up each evening. The last night we managed to squeeze in a date night and went to see "The Brothers Karamosov" at Looking Glass Theatre. The stage itself was pretty small, but the performance blew us away, as we usually go to local community/college theater.

Halloween ended up being pretty quiet. We passed out candy to the local trick-or-treaters, and then went to see a local production of "Dracula", which turned out to be in a church basement of all places! It didn't quite compare with the professional theater company, but it still was a fun way to spend the evening.

So, it's been a busy couple of weeks, and I am not exactly looking forward to my shift tomorrow!

Ketchup and Caulk Fighting

So, tonight I go back to work after having had the past week off. I didn't do anything exciting with my vacation, just stayed put. I had all sorts of productive plans for the week, including organizing all of my digital photos, doing my taxes, cleaning the entire house, doing tons of educational reading like a good little resident, and updating this thing regularly.

Um, none of that happened. The house is somehow actually messier than it was before I went on vacation. I still can't do my taxes as I am missing a few things, so that one's not technically my fault. I did run over 20 miles this week, and my body is now reminding me why it's better to build up miles gradually rather than triple one's mileage out of the middle of nowhere.

I did get quite a bit of painting done. One of the living room walls is now a very bold blue, as is part of the eat-in area of the kitchen. The dining room is in disarray though. I was able to strip the wallpaper, plaster and sand parts of the walls, but now it is even uglier with painter's tape and 3/4 of one layer of primer. The primer boasted of its ability to cover up just about anything, but the half burgandy portion of the walls is still glaring through. I also filled in the gaps between the baseboard and the walls with paintable caulking and found it much easier process with the use of a caulking gun, having learned from last year's debacle. I'll post some before and after pictures once I get things picked up a little around here.

Other activities this week included the recruiting dinner, a social at my program director's house, another intramural soccer game, interview dinner for applicants to our program, and on Saturday a bunch of spent the whole day on a wine tour. I did also get a chance to talk to Army Guy, and he sounded tired, but was in good spirits.

Winter Doldrums

I can't wait for tonight's shift to be over and done with. During this four-week block, there are too many residents in the department. This means that as soon as patients get brought back into a room, they get seen immediately. It also means that I haven't been having to stay late to finish dictations. Last night we all walked down to a local pub and nursed a couple of beers. It sounds like a little slice of heaven, right?

The problem is that I am bored. I don't know what to do with myself when I have less than four patients at a time. I just end up pacing from computer to computer, checking and re-checking lab results. I had a stabbing that promised to be somewhat involved last night, but he was completely stable. The acuity was good: I had an acute stroke, and another one with hypovolemic shock, but when those are your only patients it still gets boring.

Starting tomorrow, I have a week off. This time I am not going anywhere, just planning on sleeping, reading, maybe taking a skiing lesson or two, and doing some projects around the house.

Turks and Caicos Islands

For our vacation, "The Phoenix" and I stayed at Beaches, Turks and Caicos Resort. It was great. The company is the same as Sandals, but it caters to families with small children. Being two single girls, we figured it would be better to be around families than honeymooning couples. The resort was all-inclusive, including two scuba dives per day.

I was really impressed with how responsible the resort was with the diving. Before they would let us go, we had to demonstrate basic skillis in the pool first. Every morning, resort guests could choose to go on either a one-dive or a two-dive trip. Being basic Open Water level divers, we are not supposed to go below a depth of 60 feet, and the resort was really good about adhering to this. They also made sure that there was an hour surface interval between dives.

I had been a little concerned about diving at a resort. I don't know that I mentioned it here, but over the summer a resident in a different program at my hospital died while scuba diving in Belize. Apparently, he took a short resort course, and then went on too many dives. The first couple of days that we were there, I mapped things out on the dive table and found that they were being pretty cautious, despite the fact that our guides were all equipped with dive computers (which keep more precise depth measurements and allow divers to extend the time of their dives).

As for diving in October, the temperature was perfect. It was 85, and probably about 75-80 in the water. We didn't use wetsuits, and with it being off-season, the beaches and the swimming pools were never crowded, and our room prices were 40% off!

The diving was also much easier than my certification dives. The resort supplied all of the equipment, but we brought our own masks, snorkels and fins. The tanks were lined up along the side of the boat, so that all you had to do was set up your stuff, and walk just a few steps off the end of the boat. I think the buoyancy of the salt water made it a lot easier as well.

The water was really clear, and the numbers of tropical fish that we saw were amazing. On one day we descended to the bottom with two black-tipped sharks circling around us. We also saw barracudas, lobster, and my favorite-- a sea turtle. At the end of one of our dives, a dolphin followed the boat back, jumping out of the water and showing off.

Another great thing was that there was a protected coral reef about a ten-minute walk down the beach from the resort. In the afternoons, we snorkeled there several times and got a great look at many more fish.

On Thursday, we went on a night dive. It was fun. At one point, we all turned off our flashlights, and by waving your arms around you could see little sparks of light, or bioluminescence underwater. We had hoped to see an octopus on the night dive, but it didn't work out. I'm glad that I did it, because everything did look a little different, but I much more prefer daytime dives as you can see so much more. Plus there's something kind of creepy about only being able to see the 5-foot diameter beacon of light from your flashlight while other, bigger things are able to spot you from a distance away.

Unfortunately, as our flight left early Saturday morning, we weren't allowed to dive on Friday. Instead, we went on what was supposed to be a 3-hour kayak tour. The tour was fun and included more snorkeling, a stop at an iguana preserve, and "The Phoenix" found a huge beautifully colored conch shell right there on the beach. Unfortunately, it was quite windy that day and our 3-hour tour ended up being 5 hours of difficult paddling.

The food at the resort was delicious. I think I ate some sort of fish every day for lunch and dinner. There wasn't much of a night life there as it was more set up for families, but with waking up at 6 am to get ready, it didn't really matter. I would highly recommend this place for new divers. They did allow more experienced divers to buddy-dive away from the group.

Vacation!

Off to a warmer climate for a week! Hopefully there will be plenty of sun, lounging, and diving.

Certifiable

I spent this past weekend in "Nearly Canada" finishing up my Open Water Diver Certification course. The last part of the course involves completing four dives over a two-day period. The water was cold enough that we had to wear wetsuits, hoods, and gloves. While wearing all of that equipment made performing our basic technical tasks awkward, I am also confident that I will have a much easier time in warmer water.

To my surprise, we did shore entries on all four dives. I think that shore entries are much more physicially exhausting because you have to strap on all of your weights, tank, BCD (buoyancy control device) and clambor down a plank while holding onto your fins and mask and hoping that you don't fall on your rubber-encased butt. In a boat, you can just gear up and jump off.

The bay where we were diving was pretty cool because there was an old ship that had sunk right there off the shore many years ago. Although visibility wasn't more than about 20 feet, I did get to see a few fish and some interesting wreckage. However, most of my time was spent trying to focus on my breathing, not dropping to the bottom or bursting to the surface.

Saturday night I spent in a roadside motel. While the staff was extremely friendly, I was more than thankful that I hadn't seen that recent slasher film about motels in the middle of nowhere. I guess it was actually kind of quaint... if you like wood paneling, shag carpet, and red lighting in the bathroom! There wasn't even a deadbolt on the door. Yikes.

Today, I am surprisingly sore. My calves ache, despite all of my running this past summer. My shoulders hurt... which I kind of expected given that I have the upper body strength of your average 7 year-old girl. However, when I take a deep breath, my entire rib cage hurts. I think I pulled every single one of my intercostals!

The reason that I pushed to get the course finished is that I have another adventurous vacation with "The Phoenix" coming up in a couple of weeks. With being at opposite ends of the country for residency, we decided that the best way to stay close friends would be to vacation together. So after suriving our crazy Grand Canyon hike, we decided that SCUBA would be the next adventure.

Vegas, Baby

The rest of my vacation was pretty much spent recovering from our hike. I met up with an old college roommate and we flew to Las Vegas to see "Mamma Mia". It was a fun show, and after losing a few bucks quickly at the tables, we decided to spend the rest of our time there lounging by the pool and at the spa, which was good for my sore muscles.

I was in Phoenix long enough to witness a car accident in which someone plowed through a red light right smack into another vehicle. My friend and I left our names and numbers with the officer on scene, but as there were 2 other witnesses, I don't expect to be contacted to provide more details. Luckily, no one appeared seriously hurt.

I won't say that getting away fixed everything, but I do think that I have at least had a better attitude at work this past week. And, while the annoying people are still annoying, there's just nothing much that I can do about them, so there's not much point in worrying about stuff.

The Short of It

On Saturday I ran a 5K. This one was for breast cancer and there were about 7000 participants. No medals for me this time! This one was much fancier, with bands playing at a few intervals along the sidelines. And there was a chip for runners to tie to their shoelaces, so that they could get their times. However, the time was when the gun fired at the start to when one crossed the finish line. There were so many people ahead of us and the walkers were mixed in with the runners that it took several minutes to get away from the crowd. I came in 839th if I recall properly, with a time of 33:41 minutes. I think I probably did better and was under a 10:30 mile but the slow start messed me up.

My friends, who are much more seasoned runners, said that usually there is a starting strip and an ending strip when one runs with a chip so that the times are more accurate. The guy that came in first ran a 15:40 time. I thought they were being over ambitious when there was a starting point for people averaging a 5-minute mile, but I guess not!

After that, I took a quick nap and then joined the gang for a barbeque before working the 5pm-2am shift. I pushed it a bit too much, as I just felt feverish and out of it the whole night.

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On Sunday, a group of us met up for a game of Ultimate Frisbee. I thought I would be much better at it than last fall, given all of the running. However, it's more of a sprinting game. There was a med student there that kept smoking me, so I ended up just doggedly running after him the whole game. One of the other residents sprained her knee, but other than that there were no casualties.

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On Monday, a group of movers came and removed the playhouse from my backyard. I have been wanting to get rid of this thing because it sits right in the middle of my grass since I moved in. Fortunately, one of the other interns has a 4 year-old that wanted it desperately, so she was willing to pay a crew to come pick it up. It took 6 men over an hour to maneuver it down my driveway, and they still ended up banging into the roof over the side door!

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Today, I met up with a friend to start studying for boards. I will be taking the last part of my licensing exam in July (hopefully only once), and I am trying to make myself just do a little bit every night. Step 3 is not supposed to be as bad as the first two parts, but I have a friend who failed it, and the stupid thing costs over $600, so I am not at all interested in repeating it!

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Only 8 more days left until my vacation! I haven't had time off since September, so I can't wait! A lot of the impetus behind all of this running is for a big upcoming hike with "The Phoenix". Just the thought of not setting foot in the hospital for 9 days has me excited.

...and Another Thing

On my flight out, my tube of toothpaste got confiscated! I know there's the whole 4 oz limit on liquids, but the tube was nearly empty, so I figured they would count the amount of substance present. Apparently, they are more concerned with the size of the container? I don't know how having an 8 oz tube with 1 oz of toothpaste is more of a threat than 4 oz in a smaller tube, but whatever. I didn't even know that toothpaste was officially a liquid, but apparently it is quite the dangerous substance! I also got chastized because my clear plastic bag was not the quart size, but the half-gallon size. I only had about 4 items in there, so they didn't give me too hard of a time about it.

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Also, on another street in Manhattan, there were several firetrucks stopped in front of a high rise. As I passed a woman on the street, she asked me for money for food. I was in a hurry, and she was dressed better than I was, so I said "No." Along the way, she said hello to several bystanders as if she knew them personally, and I noticed that she wasn't asking just anyone for money. When I stopped at the next corner to wait for the light, she caught up to me and asked me again for money. I said, "You just asked me for money a minute ago!"

"Well hey, that's good luck!" she replied.

I've never heard of it being good to be hit up by the same panhandler in a few minutes' time, but I sure must look like a sucker. Not only did she select me out as being an easy target once, but twice!

Mini-Break

I went out of town for a few days earlier in the week and met up with some friends from back home who were visiting family in New Jersey. It took a plane, a subway, and a metro train to get there. Their sons are now ages 2 and 4 and have grown so much since I lived with them last year. It was a noisy two-day visit and I was quickly reminded of all of the noise that goes along with living with toddlers. We did not do anything special, just visited for a couple of days.

J and I went to college together, both on pre-med tracks. Somewhere along the way she got married, went into nursing, and started raising a family of her own. I think that there's always a bit of awkwardness between us now. When she looks at me, she wonders what it would be like to still be single and going through residency training. She sees me struggle and I think that she's happy with her decision for the most part.

When I look at her, I think of the people I pushed away to get to this point, always afraid of getting attached to someone. Most of the time I think that I am happy with my decision, but every now and then she makes me question it. Overall, I guess I feel like all of this education and training has kind of put my life on hold. I'm at the point where I can finally start having more say in what I do, and where I'm going as far as this whole career thing goes. I think that the present and the future look good, but much of the time I am not sure whether or I would choose the same path if I had to do it all over again. I suppose that doesn't really matter, and I should just quit looking back.

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On the way home, I hit Manhattan at rush hour. As I walked up the stairway to the street at Penn Station, commuters were streaming down the stairs in the opposite direction. There was a nonstop flow of people, like ants swarming out of a nest once it has been stepped on. They were lined up, tightly shoulder to shoulder, like the Greeks with their war formations, but instead of working together for the greater good, it was every man for himself.

On 34th street, crowds were gathered on either side of the street. There was the sharp sounds of a police officer's whistle and lots of honking. From within the crowd I heard someone say there had been an accident and a person had been hit by a taxi. I strained to get a better look. I couldn't see anything. I didn't know if I could be of any help, but I knew if I just kept walking away I would feel guilty about it for the rest of the night.

It must have taken me a few minutes to work my way across the street and through the crowd. Finally, I got close enough to see what appeared to be a teenager laying on her back, with her arms folded across her chest. She was talking to woman crouched by her side and seemed fairly calm. There didn't look like there was any bleeding or gross deformity. By this time, the sirens had become louder. An ambulance turned the corner. My plan had been just to ask if they needed any help, but she looked pretty stable, and other than keeping her still until she could be checked out further, there was nothing to do. Then, I left.

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I took a long subway ride to the airport after first stopping at a pricey soap/cosmetic store that one of my friends has raved about. If you have a smelly subway ride in your near future, I highly recommend traveling with a bagful of bath products. There's nothing quite like a mixed bag of "bath bombs" to wipe out that gross sweaty smell of the train car.

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Since I had given myself generous amounts of time to not only get back to the city, but get to the airport, I arrived at JFK 3 hours before my flight. This, of course, ensured that my flight was delayed yet another hour. On the plus side, I had plenty of time to get all of my journal articles read for conference the next day! This was my first trip flying on Jet Blue. While it's true that there is more leg room, and free personal cable TV for each seat, I would have gladly traded these amenities had I been able to avoid the turbulence and near-death experience I had just prior to landing!

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I think it is quite possible that I need a vacation from my vacation!