and now we are 6

7.27.2004
true clairvoyance, or self-fulfilling prophecy?

tomorrow i start an outpatient pediatrics rotation at a rural health center out here. i really do like working with children, and i’m thinking about it for a career, but probably not primary care. partly because i find it overwhelming. i would much rather have a small field to be expert in, and that way i can be like, “oh, well i’m an endocrinologist, why would you expect me to know anything about x or y?” and it will be acceptable.

by the way: i am starting this blog not because i really have anything to say, but because i don’t have much better to do and i think it would be interesting to document this lonely month in lumberton. i have a feeling it is going to be one of those mundane blogs, like “today i had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. then i took a shower . . .” rather than a very exciting one. however, for those people who think being a medical student sounds glamorous and fun, i suppose this thing would at least be educational. not that anyone is going to read it.

summer, 2005
small (albeit nerdy) victories:

finally! for the love of god, it finally worked. i ran a PCR screen where i get a 1600 bp band for an ‘insert containing’ clone (ie, what i want!) and a 1200 bp band for any negatives. and i got . . . like 20 positives!! my negative controls worked, too, so i’m not just wishfully pretending to read the ladder wrong, or something. i almost posted a picture of the gel (it was a rather attractive one, too, a double-decker with 20 lanes on each tier for 40 total!), but i realized that it would bring my blog up to a new level of dorkiness that i never really want to reach.

and a bigger, slightly more important announcement:

i could try to be all cute and put the fact that josh just proposed (well, 4 hours ago) as a side note at the end of this entry, but I CAN’T BECAUSE I AM WAY TOO EXCITED. WAYYYYYYY too excited. so excited, in fact, that this is really all i can handle writing right now. i’ll write more later, but the main points are:

1) i’m excited

2) we’re getting married!

3) my ring is very sparkly and pretty and josh designed it himself

4) i am so happy

5) obviously, i said yes

!

3.21.2006
a year for tough career decisions . . .

i don’t exactly know what’s happening right now. i can honestly say i never considered leaving the phD part of my md/phD until, like, 2 days ago, and now it seems like the only thing to do. i keep wondering if i have gone crazy without realizing it — who just throws something like this AWAY, for one? i can’t figure out what i like, what i want, where my career should go. i thought i liked science, but now i’m worried that i just *wanted* to like it, and i’m very good at convincing myself (and others) that i’m all pumped up about something

when really . . .

and later, much easier choices:

7.7.2007
ahh, intern year. not the most exciting year for this blog. i am bored and getting tired just skimming through summaries of what day-to-day life was like:

6:12: print out list o’babies, and walk around collecting vitals (respiratory rate, pulse oximetry readings, heart rate, feeding details down to the millileter and temperature) on all of them. sometimes have territorial squabbles with the nurses over the charts (not really, actually they are almost all incredibly nice). talk to nurses to find out if anything significant (ie, stops in breathing, heart rate dips, etc) went down overnight. all of this essential info goes onto sheets which i have pre-made the night before for each baby and which will later serve as their daily notes.

wow. that’s just the very beginning of quite the epic narrative post. i’m sorry!

7.14.2008
quite an important milestone: my first list post!

above: close-up (click to enlarge if necessary) showing what intern year did to me. actually, i admit i have always been a list-maker but the check-boxes are something new that i am now stuck with likely for the rest of my days. because checking stuff off is SO EFFING SATISFYING! and for the record, i got it all done except for ‘clean BR’, which means bathroom. oh well.

and cooking picture —

not quite up to martha standards yet . . .

summer 2009
blogging becomes social . . . and i write not one, not two, but three recaps of the 2009 HLS! can’t wait to go back . . .

later that year, a bunch of (formerly) local bloggers invaded a local wine bar:

left to right: caroline, jessica, me, meg, april, reader margaret, and allie
and the line between “blog-friends” and “real-friends” truly became blurred.

january 2010
began with a blogging bang. awww, remember this?

name and url change! i’m not exactly taking over bandwidth over here, but i’d say the switch was at least a modest success.

so that’s where this blog has been! who knows where it’s headed? i guess we’ll just have to see . . .

thank you to everyone who has ever read or commented —
you all make this rewarding and fun!

here’s to another 6 years!