Caffeine Free in Med 3

Addicted to Yahoo.

The Matrix and

the Muppets! I guess it isn't just Yahoo. I recently watched She-Ra princess of power on youtube.com as well.

posted by Allie @ 4:27 PM 0 comments

Not post call

So my friend Amy had an apartment-warming party which I went to after getting out of the hospital after 7:30 pm. I tried to take a cat nap but ended up staring at the ceiling in my room for about 20 minutes. Eventually I headed to the party and stayed till about 2 am. It wasn't that I was drinking (I had one and a half drink); I was happy to have some hospital related freedom.

That might have been a bad plan since I had to be back at the hospital at 6am. I rolled out of bed, twisted my hair back, put on my glasses, and headed over. My resident looked at me and asked me if I was post-call. I told her I was building up a sleep debt from all my hard work.

I went home and got 2 hours of sleep before the OSU game. Then the fun continued.

posted by Allie @ 4:50 PM 0 comments

Robots and surgery

So on my first day of gyn-onc I was offered the chance to be bored or do surgery. I decided to go with surgery. I didn't get any random surgery; I got the robot surgery. While some people would find this an amazing opportunity; I wasn't sure how I felt.

But seriously, it wasn't that exciting, and they really didn't use robots. The 'robot' isn't so much a robot so much as an extension of the surgeon's hands to perform surgery. (I was hoping for something along the lines of Threepioor at least HAL)I spent the first two hours watching the monitors during a lymph node dissection. Maybe it was three hours, but either way, I think the anesthesia doctors had a good time watching me stretch and exercise in place.

I eventually was given stuff to do - I even got to put in and take out my first foley. Not in that order. I don't see doctors in any danger of getting replaced by robots. No chance.

In brief and unrelated news, my Diab group met for dinner. We are extremely nerdy and spent a great deal of our meal discussing Star Trek and the meaning of Science Fiction, especially Raj. It was hilarious. And very very very geeky. Yay for geek love.

The new season of Grey's Anatomy starts tomorrow. I wonder if those crazy kids will ever graduated past intern to first year resident?

posted by Allie @ 6:42 PM 0 comments

Quality weekend w/my soulmates

Any girl who has watched Sex and the City will remember the episode about soulmates which are actually your closest girlfriends.

My two soulmates, SarahRori, came to Columbus on Friday night for Rori's 24th birthday party. Since Rori and I graduated in 2004, the three of us have been together exactly 4 times. We met for Rori's graduation party in 2004, last October w/our ex's, Christmas 2005, and this Friday.

It was so great to see my two best friends at the same time. We were three single gals having our own celebration and hitting the town. We went to 4 bars, ran into two other birthday parties, discovered B Hamptons doesn't make great drinks, and danced a while at Spice. While my low respect for drunk males has been unchanged, I didn't have to use any of my judo skills to send the not so subtle 'back the h3ll off' messages. The only bloodshed that night was on Sarah who cut her head on a step - don't ask.

Looking back to how much my life has changed since I graduated from college, I find it remarkable that I still have these two amazing people in my life. We figured out that between the three of us, we probably talk every other day. I might only get to see them both every other month, but I know they are there for me. It often takes me a few seconds to wrap my head around the idea that I have known Rori for 6 years and Sarah for 4.

While guys in our live have come and gone, and we've made other friends, some of whom have stayed, some of who have not, it's feels good to be sure the other two are always going to be there. Happy weekend to all three of us!

posted by Allie @ 4:08 PM 0 comments

5 years ago

5 years ago:
I was a sophomore in college and attending my Tuesday morning molecular and cellular biology lab. At 7:30 am, Lorriane and I were dripping reactant onto denaturing proteins every three minutes, and right before nine, our lecture professor came by and told us that something had happened. He wanted us to know so we weren’t confused when we saw people upset outside. Planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. We didn’t have a TV in the lab so they dug up the dinky little Bio Department radio to listen to news broadcasts as it happened. I’m pretty sure by the time we got the radio, the second tower had fallen. It’s all a blur of just standing there listening to the voices on the radio, hearing what was the end of the world as we knew it, punctuated every once in a while by Lorriane tapping me on the shoulder, ‘It’s been three minutes. Allie, it’s been three minutes.’

It’s hard to count three minutes when you are wondering if there will be another one minute at all.

This year:
At 8:30 I scrubbed into a hysterectomy on my OB rotation. It was partway through when I got there, and I was immediately put to work holding retractors. I was focusing on trying to see what I was not at any angle to see and following a procedure that I could not follow because I came late. My attending was cutting things and suturing away when he checked the clock and said, ‘it’s not quite time for the moment of silence.’ I looked at him blankly, asking myself if there was normally a moment of silence during this operation or if this was a pre-pimping ritual. Then I remembered and saw we still had about five more minutes till it was time. The operation continued and was lengthened by aforementioned surgeon dropping several instruments on the floor and needing replacements. The next time I looked at the clock it was 9:15.

Amazing how time moves when you are clueless as to what is coming next.

posted by Allie @ 1:54 PM 0 comments

Break time

I had a lovely break from med school. After pouring my brain onto a piece of paper for my shelf exam, I went to my apartment and cleaned. When it was clean (almost uncomfortably so) my best friend Rori came buy and we played some quality med school soccer, which was everything Kalki said it would be. After randomly meeting more med students at Giant Eagle, Rori and I had bonding night over movies and picking out my new hair color.

The next morning I drove home and hopped a flight to Vegas. It was 110 degrees there. Not humid so much as just extremely hot and sunny. Over the next 2.5 days, which is all the vacation time my family could get together, I got to tourist my way across Vegas - the Luxor, the Dancing fountains of the Bellagio, the Pirate Show at Treasure Island, the amusement park at CircusCircus, shopping at Caesars Palace, gambling at Casino Royale, and the light show at Fremont Street. We had a bumpy flight home where I got my hair cut and attended the final Gary and Carol's Labor Day party.

As a final note. On my trip, I purchased my very own tribble, which I have been told "It's trilling seems to have a tranquilizing effect on the human nervous system." Now the question is - do you, reader of this blog, know what a tribble is?

Tribbles!

posted by Allie @ 5:02 PM 0 comments