ED hijinks / running, part 4

the gory details
it was a busy night in the ED last night. what is it with kids coming in with various and sundry injuries in the middle of the night? shouldn’t they be, like, asleep or something? i stapled a scalp at 11 pm and then . . . oh god. so, you know how one might think that being a doctor would mean that you are immune being grossed out by your patients?

well, that is a complete lie. there are so many things in pediatrics that i find disgusting, from preemie vomit (aspirates!) to scabies to genital sores to most wounds. the only difference is that i have to smile and pretend to be unfazed by these gory spectacles. probably the highest on my gross-out list would be eyes. oh, ew — i’m cringing here just thinking about how much i hate them. however, something i didn’t know bothered me was teeth. until last night.

image from mcrad.com

a 12 year old came in — past midnight — having banged his two front teeth on the side of a bunk bed. HARD. they were halfway out and there was plenty of blood crusted around everywhere, in addition to a laceration on his gum. poor guy, and a totally sweet kid!! but ew. i touched the tooth (with gloves on, of course) and found that it was quite loose. and then i basically high-tailed it out of there to get the attending.

he wanted to manually place the tooth back into the socket, and reassured me that it wouldn’t fall out. i think i looked reluctant, because he grabbed a pair of gloves and took hold of the tooth. 5 seconds later, it was in his hand, long pointy root and all.

and that’s how i found out that teeth are right up there with eyes on my gross-out list. this patient, by the way, ended up sucking up the next few hours of my shift, causing me to leave 90 minutes later than i was supposed to! i think we should have an on-call dentist — we were not really equipped to deal with this. i think it is going to work out in the end, though — meaning the kid’s teeth will end up staying back up where they belong. just in time for him to ruin them with halloween candy . . .

a running story, part 4
i’m really dragging this one out, aren’t i! see previous installments here, here, and here. we left off at the end of college. to catch you up quickly, i had finally started running outside, but had no desire to take things further than 3-4 mile jogs for fitness and head-clearing purposes.

then i started medical school. actually, first i went to europe for a few weeks with my friend emily. we had a wonderful time walking ALL over italy, france, england, belgium, and the netherlands. i don’t think i’ve had worse blisters ever since! but we didn’t run, and we also ate lots of delicious food: pasta and gelato in italy, waffles in belgium (i still dream about these!), cheese and pastries in france, and curry in england. i didn’t gain a significant amount of weight (probably thanks to all that walking!) but remember feeling pretty out of shape by the time i returned to the USA. i was probably 5-7 pounds more than i am now.

less than a month later, i moved to NC and started medical school at duke!! it was a new beginning, and i was determined to get things started out right. in part, this meant getting back into shape and making time for workouts. there is a tiny but decently-equipped gym in the hospital parking garage, and i remember going there after class for treadmill workouts. after all, this was NC in august — it was HOT! and i didn’t know where to run outside.

i was back to my 3-miles-in-30-minutes routine — maybe 4 if i was feeling extra sassy! i had met josh on our orientation campout (well, officially we met several months earlier at second look weekend, but i don’t remember that!), and i liked him. he was older — almost intimidatingly so at the time, nearly 28 compared to my 22 — but i thought he was so cute, smart, and fascinating. (still do 🙂 ).

we started flirting over IM and email. however, there was one place i really didn’t want his attention — and that was the gym! he was very into lifting and working out at the time and would come up to me while i panted through my 3 miles. back then with my level of fitness, it was actually hard to talk, not to mention moderately embarrassing. he claims that i would ignore him after one sentence and he assumed that i wasn’t interested.

obviously, though, this wasn’t the case, and he figured it out soon enough! we went on our first date on labor day (i asked him!) and the rest is history. i learned that he was a real runner, and got to see first-hand what training for a race really meant. i think we both helped each other to keep running as part of our routines even when things got busy. i cheered him on for a couple of 5Ks, but it actually took 2 years for me to consider doing a race myself. with his encouragement, i ran my first 5K with his sister (she beat me), finishing in something like 28 minutes.

i still remember that race well! i’ll admit that i didn’t like ‘losing’ to his sister (even though i love her to death and get along with her wonderfully!), but i liked the experience of training for and running a race and i wanted to see if i could do better. picking out a training plan and working out all of the details appealed to the nerdy schedule-happy side of me.

i decided that speed wasn’t my thing . . . so perhaps i was better of with more distance. it wasn’t long before i had it in my head that i would run a half marathon! i decided to tag along on one that josh was training for, and completed my first race in charlotte in march of 2005. i believe i used the runner’s world ultimate plan — beginner to train for the race, and ran it SUPER-conservatively with a goal of 10 minute miles.

i finished it just as planned in 2 hours, 11 minutes! i was so proud of myself.

here we are just after the race:

then, both josh and i started to get more serious. i’ll leave this to be continued, but here’s a visual teaser:

badass picture of josh dominating at the 2005 charlottesville half marathon

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10.27.09

workout: rest day

doin’ time: leftovers!

reading: none — 5 hours clinic + 9.5 hour shift = sorry but no.

random update: got my H1N1 vaccine!! finally.