Author Archives: beangirl

Lunch

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AJ and I had lunch at Applebee’s today – I had the grilled steak ceasar salad and AJ had the grilled chicken ceasar salad.  Afterwards we went to one of those car washing places and washed the Jeep – and I think we’re going to try and do my truck next weekend because it really could use a wash.  I only have 1 week left at the VA now, which is a little sad since I’ve actually been enjoying myself there.  I head over to SLU hospital next for 4 weeks.  Hopefully I’ll be lucky there and get a good team of residents and a nice attending.

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Next Steps…

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… toward doing an away rotation in Seattle

#1 Complete the UW visiting student application and send it off (check)
#2 Be sure UW actually receives the application (check)
#3 Complete very thorough online interactive UW HIPAA training module (check)
                         (HIPAA = Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
#4 Send certificate of completion of #3 to UW (not check – have to do that this weekend)
#5 Wait
 – then hopefully –
#6 Get word that I have been accepted
#7 Do an away rotation in Seattle 🙂

… toward taking the USMLE Step 2 CK and CS

#1 Complete online portion of application (check)
#2 Pay approximately $1300 for the privilige of taking the exams (check)
#3 Complete paper portion of application complete with photos, signatures, and official school seals (not check, I hope I can do this tomorrow)
#4 Send all paper materials (not check, I should do it this weekend)
#5 Receive confirmation of registration in the mail with my super secret registration numbers
#6 Go online and register for the specific dates/locations I want to take the exams
#7 Study
#8 Take exams
#9 Wait
#10 Receive score reports
 – then hopefully –
#11 Smile and do the dance of joy for I have  done exceedingly well! 🙂

TV Shows I Like

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So I admit that with the evolution of the PVR (personal video recorder) I have gone a little – or totally – hog wild on my TV watching.  The PVR just makes it so easy to search for and record anything that might strike my fancy.  I started with just recording my "must-see" shows… but now I’ve gone down the path of recording so much more.  Here is a sample week for my trusty PVR:

 Sunday  Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy
 Monday How’d They Do That?, 7th Heaven, Las Vegas, 24
 Tuesday  Scrubs, The Office, Committed, American Idol, House
 Wednesday  Lost, Alias, American Idol Results Show
 Thursday  Joey, The Apprentice 3, Without a Trace, Tru Calling
 Friday  Medical Investigation, What I Like About You, Stargate, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica
 Saturday  Enterprise, SNL
 Random Tonight Show (every night), random episodes of Sliders, Trading Spaces, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Forensic Files, The Office (BBC version) and any SciFi or Lifetime made-for-TV movies that may have struck my fancy 

So – I think that’s about it for a week. 🙂  I must say it is nice to be able to skip commercials and to always have something to watch when I want to veg out for a few minutes or before I fall asleep at night.  There were even some other shows that I wanted to watch this season – but (believe it or not) even with 2 PVRs I still get some conflicting time slots – which all in all is not really a bad thing.  I really don’t need MORE television in my life.

UW Got my App!

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I just got an e-mail from UW saying that they received my Visiting Student Application! 🙂  This still doesn’t mean anything except that my $100 application fee is now theirs (ie: I don’t know if I got a rotation there yet) but it’s the first step!

Big smiles!!  🙂

Long day, stiff neck, glazed eyes….

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I am currently sitting in the Med 2 conference room at the VA hospital.  I am on call today and so far I have had NO patients.  Believe me, I’m not complaining since it gives me time to get my "homework" done (I have to write out my History and Physicals to turn in to my Attending this week) but I have been sitting at this computer since 10:00AM (it’s now 5:00PM) with only about 1 hour break total (a few minutes at a time each).  That’s because I’m working onthat H&P – but now I’m finished with that.  Whoopee.  But now I also have a stiff neck and a little headache.  It’s because I don’t pay attention to how long I’ve sat here and hours and hours go by without me really moving at all…

But now I will.  Move that is.  Perhaps go get a snack.  Or go to the bathroom.  Or just walk up and down the stairs and watch my pedometer rack up the steps. 🙂  Yeah, that might be fun.

Only 4 more hours on call!  Then tomorrow’s a short day and I think AJ and I might go see a matinee movie since our weekend was cut short by this call day of mine.

Applications are in

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So I got my away elective applications all sent off today – I printed and collated and signed many many papers last night and AJ helped me get them all set for Fed-Ex-ing to the West coast.  And now they are out of my hands and all I have to do is wait.  And wait – because I definitely won’t hear anything from them until mid-May at the soonest.

On a pleasant note, I got results of my 4th year scheduling and it all turned out pretty good.  I have July off, so I can go back to Seattle and study for and take my boards (Step 2) and have some vacation time.  I also have August and Septmeber free, and this is when I hope to do my electives in Portland and at the UW.  Then I’ll head back to St. Louis at the end of Septmeber and do my month of Subinternship in Pediatrics here, followed by a month of Child Psychiatry and then a month of Developmental Pediatrics.  Then I have about 6 weeks off for vacation (including Christmas break time).  I’m doing a month of Pediatric Infectious Diseases in February, followed by a month of a "Capstone" course in primary care (discussion/classroom based) and finally a month of Pediatric Spine and Orthopedic surgery.  Which puts me finishing the school year in mid-April, with graduation in mid-May.

Yay!

And as far as Internal Medicine goes, I’m currently finishing up week 1 of 4 at the VA medical center.  It’s going well so far – I have a lot of responsibility for my patients and so far they have all been really nice and talkative and not grumpy at all (which you can get a lot of at the VA, so I’ve heard).  After these 4 weeks, I have 4 weeks of inpatient medicine at SLU Hospital, followed by 4 weeks of outpatient medicine with a private doc.  Then I’m done with my 3rd year.  Wow.  So so fast. And next year should be so so good.  And it will go fast too, I’m sure.

This is CNN

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Here is a photo in the front of the CNN Center building.  This is where we took the Studio Tour and hung out for a while (while waiting for the tour to begin).  There was a huge (HUGE) volleyball tournament of some kind going on this weekend and it was being held at the Georgia World Congress Center, which is right next to the CNN Center and is a HUGE, HUGE building.  Anyway, AJ read that there were something like 21,000 participants (which would equal out to approximately 1500 different teams) from around the US – so the CNN Center was overrun with small-shorted girls all weekend.  And we saw one girl yesterday who was about 6’5" tall – her legs alone were almost as tall as my whole body.  It was crazy.

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After our CNN Studio Tour, we hopped in the truck and decided to drive around and see what there was to see.  We ended up driving for probably a couple of hours and we saw a lot of the surrounding areas.  It was really fun and relaxing.  We stopped for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and brought home a piece of Lemon Raspberry cheesecake which we ate while watching "Spanglish".  All in all a fun day and a nice way to end our trip here in Atlanta.  Tomorrow we leave to drive back to St. Louis – back to weird fluctuating weather – back to school.

World of Coca-cola!

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After 3 months back at school (since Christmas break) it was definitely time for a mini-vacation, especially since I got an extra day off this weekend for Easter.  AJ and I looked at a map to figure out where we could drive in a day.  Unlike in Seattle, where there are limited options, St. Louis has many.  Last year we drove to New Orleans for q weekend trip, this year we chose Atlanta.  We got a great deal on a hotel (a Marriott for $67/night!) and so we headed out yesterday.

Today, we explored some of downtown: Underground Atlanta which is basically a shopping mall, but it’s under the roads.  It seemed like it could be cool, but it was so packed with people that it just wasn’t as much fun as we would have liked.  We has lunch there in the food court, then headed over to the World of Coca-Cola.  See, Coke has it’s roots in Atlanta so they built a nice tourist-trap museum with lots of historical tidbits, paraphenilia, videos, and ads from around the world.  They had a old-fashioned soda fountain where a soda jerk demonstrated how a Coca-Cola was prepared back in the old days.  There was also a tasting room with coke products sold around the world.  Sadly, there were no Australian products (so no Lift 🙁 ), but there was a really disgusting one from Italy called "Beverly".  I heard from a tour guide guy that it is flavored with quinine, which is a plant used to make malaria medication.  It definitely had a medicinal taste. Ugh.  After we were done at the World of Coca-Cola (complete with a T-shirt purchase) we walked over to the CNN Center, which by the way has a much awesomer food court and is where we will be heading for lunch tomorrow I think.  Anyway, we plan to take the studio tour on Saturday, so we just took a quick look around the building then crossed the street to the Centennial Olympic Park.  There was a fountain show in the middle of the park, which really is the only thing there.  I played in the water a bit to cool off 9it was 82 degrees!).  Then we came back to the hotel for a swim and a soak in the hot tub before heading to the Outback for dinner.  Then we finished off the evening with room service dessert (creme brulee and Haagen Daas Chocolate ice cream) and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason".

Tomorrow is the CNN Studio Tour and who knows what else… we’ll have to see what strikes our fancy.

Sci-Fi

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Sci-Fi is cool.  The Sci-Fi channel on TV is probably my favorite channel ever – Star Trek, Sliders, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Roswell – these are great shows and the Sci-Fi channel has them all.  I love that I love sci-fi and that AJ loves sci-fi too.  Because that could really be a deal-breaker for some people.  You know, things are going along fine and then she finds out that you’re a trekkie… or you’ve had a nice couple of dates and then he notices your extensive collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs.  Those kinds of things could send people running for the hills.

I remember when Jill2 and I realized we had a love of Buffy in common.  Since it is not something I often bring up as small talk, Jill2 didn’t know anything about my DVDs or my traditional "Buffy Nights" back in Seattle.  But when she (and some other friends) came over one night for dinner and a movie, she saw my DVDs.  From there it was only a "Do you like Buffy?" "Yeah, do you?" "Yeah" before we had decided to watch all of the episodes (all 7 seasons of them) in order.  That was almost 2 years ago and we have about 10 episodes left until the series finale.  🙂  Then we’ve decided to start with Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There is no way we’ll get anywhere close to done with all of those shows, but it’ll be fun to see how far we can get.