Anniversary and the ICU

I am gearing up for my big push through 12 straight days of work, including 3 calls, one of which is whole house. So let me explain that. Normally there are three residents that cover the hospital. Typically its two first years and a second year. One of the first years and the second year cover the hospital. So any patients of our clinic, of other FMS clinics around the area, and any patients without doctors or who are from out of town are taken care of overnight by those two. The other first year (or sometimes a second year) covers the OB department by him/herself.

Now, I prefer FMS call. I am just not an Obstetrics kind of guy. Not my thing. And I think that FMS call is usually paced a little better. You get called more often, but its more consistent, and even though you have to run about through the hospital, you don't feel terribly hurried most of the time.

OB call however, there is oftentimes way more work to do than one person can do in a night, and its a common occurrence for certain things not to get done, in favor of C-Sections and Deliveries (you know, the important stuff).

Well, on a whole house call night, its just the two FMS covering residents, and there is no OB resident. Which means that two have to do the work of 3. As well, that extra one that we are covering is often too much work for one.

Basically, it sucks. And I have to do it on Thanksgiving. The nice part is we only have to do one of these an academic year, typically. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, 4 retreats, and a few random days. At most we do three in our 2 years doing in house call.

On top of this, I am on ICU. Which means before and after call I have to round on my patients. So I will be covering the whole hospital for 24 hours, likely without sleep, only to have to go and try and fix the sickest patients in the hospital. Don't tell me I'm not a badass ;)

And I am not necessarily complaining, just sharing. I knew I signed up for this. This isn't really a surprise. But its not fun either. I will be missing turkey and pumpkin pie this year :( But thats the way it goes sometime. Hopefully this is the last time.

On a much more fun note, Mandi and I are celebrating our 2nd anniversary tomorrow. I can't believe it has been 2 years already. Time sure does fly. She's the love of my life, she is God's joy for me incarnate. And she is my greatest earthly blessing. I love my wife. A lot.

So happy anniversary to us.

Been a while.

As usual, I have been slacking off on my blog posts. I have been doing better with the Awesome blog, but this one seems to always take last place on my list of things to do. Its now November, over halfway done with November, and I am just finishing up my Surgery rotation. Not going to lie, Surgery was pretty sweet. Hours were a lot more regular, and there was less call than when I am on service. One would think that I would have the chance to update my blog a little more. But nope, instead I filled my time with as much fun as possible.

Work is definitely going well, being off service does make it seem better, but even considering that I would say that it is going well. I am finding that despite call, and the paperwork, I am still getting to spend time with my wife, and my friends. Just this weekend I had Mark and Wes over for a night, and that was fun. Got to have some nerd fun, which was a welcome relapse into the times before the party-house era.

It is also ramping up to Christmas time, which is exciting for me. I have actually managed to get my Christmas shopping almost 100% done! I am pretty proud of myself, as this is about as early as I have ever gotten it done before the week of Christmas. Mandi and I have taken our new income status and gone a little crazy on our family. All of my siblings will be getting something this year, which is fun. All of Mandi's sibs as well, including Vanilla Bean and Kati. It is wonderful that God has afforded us the blessing of income, with which we can be generous to those that we love. Nothing is more fun than giving gifts.

Well... getting gifts is pretty fun too. And I'll be honest, I already ruined two of my gifts. My wife, in her amazingness, bought me a Bears polo, and after much convincing she gave it to me early, seeing as how the Bears are unlikely to make the playoffs it would be nice to have the polo before their season is over :). The other ruining was a little worse, because it involved me being a jerk and assuming that my wife would never actually get me the PS3 she had said forever I would never have. Well, I'll shorten the story and just say that I got the PS3, but there were hurt feelings involved, Mandi wasn't given the chance to be super generous like she wanted to be, and now I feel like a jerk. But we've mended, as we do everytime. And now we have both gotten our big gifts out of the way. Who am I kidding though, Christmas is going to be ridiculous as it always is. We are spoiled every year.

ICU rotation is coming up, it should be interesting. I have worked in the ICU a bit on call, and I have already had my medicine rotation so I am hoping for no huge surprises, but one never knows. I do know that its in-service, and that means I only get two weekends. It also means that I am going to have to work the weekend of Thanksgiving, which is a bummer. All day and night on Thanksgiving day... whole house call. Bummer. And then again on that Sunday, regular call. All the while in between I will be rounding. Its especially a bummer as I have sort of become the go-to guy to shop early on the day after thanksgiving.

Hopefully I get the chance to update before then though.