D-day

Do. Not. Get. Sick.

Today is July 1. Beginning today, everyone in training at the hospital is officially new to their post. Medical students just became interns. Interns just became Residents. Chiefs just became attendings. Everybody is new. Especially the interns. Often, they are new to being an MD, new to this hospital, maybe even new to this time zone.

It's a little intense. To quote many of my peers, coworkers, and observers in the vicinity, today was just "one big clusterfuck."*

*clusterfuck (plural clusterfucks) (vulgar) A chaotic mess that might be compared to group sex, in which participants are so intertwined and intermingled that they might penetrate each other rather than their intended target. Its more precise usage describes a particular kind of Catch-22, in which multiple complicated problems mutually interfere with each other's solution. The looser usage, referring to any chaotic situation, probably prevails. Thanks, wikitionary. You learn something new every day, huh?

Here's an example: Everyone switched on to VA service today (except the two students, including myself), but no one could find our census (with our patients' info on it), only one of the interns (and no residents) could log into the electronic medical record, and Jacob and I still don't have half the access we need either. We just rounded and scrawled everything on scrap paper until we could access the records.

Another example (and one I find particularly entertaining): Two of my classmates are on UK medicine wards. Interns on medicine typically split up the patients between themselves and write a SOAP note on every patient. SOAP stands for Subjective (what the patient says), Objective (what the data/labs say), and Assessment/Plan (what your assessment of the problems are and what you're going to do about it). One intern today said "What goes in the assessment and plan?" then followed up by asking "Do I have to write one of these every day?"

I think dumb questions are okay sometimes, but sometimes I think you should just figure it out yourself, or at least err on the side of caution until you figure something out.

Oh dear.

I repeat: Don't get sick.

oh, dear.

There is just so much to say.

And neither the time nor the words to say it!

midterms

Unfortunately, the super awesome long post I was planning to write is unavailable until I get some more work done. This should hold me over for now:

Only one more month of 3rd year! Woohoo! And...less than a year until MD! I can't even believe it. It's exciting but scary. Probably more scary right now.

Speaking of scary, surgery midterm is Monday. Shouldn't be that scary except that I haven't studied for it almost at all yet. I say "yet" because that's the plan for today. That, and about two hundred other things. Did you know that I'm getting married in less than four months? Holy Cow!

And with marriage comes...engagement pictures! We finally got them back from the photographers and are SO happy with how they turned out. They put some up on their blog which you can find here:
http://www.varlandphotography.com/blog/2009/06/chris-and-katie-engaged-part-i/
and most of my favorites are found here:
http://www.varlandphotography.com/blog/2009/06/chris-and-katie-engaged-part-ii/

Chris is in Trinidad this weekend shooting Kateri and Karl's wedding. Technically their third wedding, hopefully after this they can consider themselves really married. Chris also has our engagement proofs that he's been tinkering with during his long flights/layovers on his way to Trinidad. He promised me he would try to post some of them today while he's staying at the fancy wedding resort, and I will direct you to them as soon as I can! Get ready!

Anyway, not much is going on here on the homefront except for my to-do list that keeps growing bigger by the minute. Studying needs to take precedence, but there's a ton of cleaning that needs to be done and working out so I can still fit in that dress I tried on months ago and numerous other things but I'm so tempted to go enjoy this sunny weather! I'm also obsessed with checking my email because that's the only way I can get in touch with Chris, so that's also a bit of a problem...

Well I suppose I'll try to go finish reading the outline of the book (before reading the book and the First Aid and the questions and the answers...and then reviewing it all before Monday morning! eep!) and maybe if I can finish that I can take my book outside and read a little. I need to get my daily (more like weekly) dose of Vitamin D, anyway.

Notes

I just wanted to say:
1) I'm not dead
2) My yellow hair is still nice.
3) Surgery isn't as bad as I thought.
4) I'll probably write more this weekend because Chris is going to TRINIDAD and I will be here and lonely! I will also be studying for the midterm (on Monday) so there will definitely be some procrastination in there.

Love,
Katie

My Hair Story

I was born with "peach fuzz" and it was all I had for more than two years, so ever since my hair began to grow my hair has played an important role in my life. My name is Katie, and this is my hair's story.

Bald and beautiful

I bought my first box of "sun-in" in 7th grade. It turned my hair a nice brassy orange-yellow and definitely didn't help with the awkwardness that is also known as middle school. (Thankfully, most of the photographic evidence from that time in my life has been properly disposed of.) As I entered high school and continued through college, I did a few highlighting kits and dying kits just because, you know, blondes have more fun, and $7 for a new look wasn't too bad.

Nuclear yellow after the white coat ceremony (after vacationing in FL!)

Studying for biochem with long blonde locks

Dolled up for Caduceus Dance ("Med school prom")

After starting med school (and unfortunately experiencing the lack of sleep associated with it) I decided it was time to become more serious and go dark. Besides, people should take me more seriously that way, and maybe (hopefully!) I would stop getting asked what high school I go to. I know that's supposed to be a compliment but it gets old after a while (Ha- no pun intended!). After becoming brunette I would occasionally play around with different colors - reddish brown, light brown, dark brown, I sampled the spectrum of brown-ness and had some fun.

sitting in the bathroom posing for a photo :)

Redhead at Keeneland

For almost a year now, though, I have kept my hair natural...I was sick of dealing with roots and split ends, and it has been awesome! I literally have not cut my hair since 1 year ago today when I chopped it all off.

May 31, 2008

However, after looking online at hundreds upon hundreds of "wedding hair" photos, I decided that I want to lighten up a bit. So today, after searching tons of hair photos I have come full circle and am now back to the tow-headed kid I used to be. It's still growing on me (HA...I just can't help myself) but I like it a lot. And Chris does, too, which is great. He's never dated blonde-Katie (I went brown a few months before we started going out) so he was probably more excited about it than I was! Anyway, here's the old- and new-hair Katie, with curls!

Before:




After!

Yummy

Chris makes the most delicious and amazing vanilla soy chai latte, especially when I need "study juice."

I love him. :)

surgery

Surgery orientation was today, and I have to be in the surgery ICU at 6am tomorrow morning where I can be swept up in a whirlwind of sutures and suction and scrubbing. You're probably not going to be hearing a lot from me for a while. Or maybe you'll hear a lot. You'll just have to check back and find out.

Bye!
Katie