MAARRRRCOOOO?!

Poloooooo! I know, I know...I've been MIA here recently. Sometimes, I just don't know how stuff like that happens! But anyways, we're back on track now. So where did I leave off? Oh ya-Great Syndromes coming to a close! Ya, it definitely came to a close alright! I survived, and that's about all I can say about that. The problem wasn't the class-I really didn't mind the class; it was just that stupid test at the end of the class that beat me up and made me say mean things. I got my grade and wasn't happy with it, but I'm also confident that no matter how much more I studied the material that was presented to us, my grade wouldn't have improved to my liking...which means that I'm perfectly pleased with myself and I know I grasped the material that was presented to me, but I'm still not pleased with that stinkin test. I'll get over it one day. I'm a little beaten up, but I passed just fine and one day hopefully the words "great syndromes" won't give me a twitch any longer.

So our 6-week minimester started pretty quickly right after great syndromes ended, and it has been keeping me busy. My research project is off the ground, and I'm getting my stuff together to submit for my IRB approval. Sounds easy, right? First, we had to come up with an idea. If you have ever had to start a research project at a Master's level, you know what I mean. That first step can seriously be the hardest. Then sometimes you find an idea, but hate it once you do all the literature reviews, so you trash everything and start anew-which I had to do this time. But now, we have an idea, a good literature review done, and am working on my proposal to convince someone else that 1-it's safe and 2-it's worth their time and mine for me to do my research. I am also now ACLS certified, which I am super proud of! That means not only am I "basic" certified to do stuff like CPR and use an AED, but now I am certified on drug administration, cardioversion, pacing, and other fancy stuff involving EKG analysis in more advanced scenarios. I told you-big kid stuff now! In the past 2 weeks, I've also been to the operating room, passed a clinical exam review, and got a briefing on catheters, wound care, IV starts, and injections. By the end of the week, I will have added some serious suture work to that list, too!

And for some reason, I was perfectly convinced that having all this on my plate was not enough, so I've been taking horseback riding lessons. For those of you who aren't familiar, I quite enjoy horseback riding and have since I was little, but it's always been an "enjoyment" thing, and I've never really had much proper instruction. It was just one of those thoughts I had (kinda like how I took the MCAT the weekend before my wedding...I get an idea and just jump on it!), so I contacted a local place and we started working pretty quickly. This was entirely new for me-horses I didn't know, horses that were trained in disciplines I'd only seen on TV, a different kind of saddle (i.e. I had to find a new balance!), different steering mechanism (direct vs neck-reining), etc. So my first day, I was really just glad that I didn't fall off. I progressed and improved on some of the basics, then my instructor upped the ante...and I realized how much I didn't know! I jumped a small fence one day. I wasn't supposed to. My goliath of a horse was supposed to step over the little rails and box, but he knew I was in foreign territory and apparently thought it would be funny to pull a fast one and just up and jump the things...but I stayed on! He and I had to have a discussion after that. My instructor is starting to get a feel for me, so we are communicating better and I'm definitely leaps and bounds ahead of where I was when we started. I'm more confident, more balanced, and stronger now. This was definitely one of my better "spur of the moment" ideas! I really want to continue working, but I'm afraid clinicals are going to keep me too busy. I'm able to take a lesson every week now, and I just don't foresee that happening once I'm in clinic for an unlimited (not really, but it will feel like that...) number of hours every week. Oh well, you never know! BTW, if anyone was wondering what to get me for my birthday, Christmas, or just a "hey, happy Tuesday" present, you can definitely get me that pony I've been wanting since I was like 2. :)

What else...?

I tried Nutella! It's basically peanut butter (only it's made with hazelnuts instead of peanuts) and chocolate...only better. You know how on the commercial, it says "with just a hint of cocoa," well unless hazelnuts taste like chocolate, they lie. I swear it's more chocolate than nuts, but that's not a problem if you ask me!

My Earth day tree is still alive! I haven't killed it yet! Yay!

My little sister completes Pre-K this week. I can't believe it...she starts Kindergarten in August. That's just absurd.

I guess that's about it for now...I'd better get back to that IRB proposal anyways...don't be too jealous of this exciting life I lead, hah!

DRIVING ME CRAZY

Ok, sorry for my soapbox, but I've about had it...Crazy may not be the right word, but I seriously just don't get some people. The topic up for discussion here is driving in this crazy place called Houston/Galveston and surrounding areas. Let's start with a few announcements to the drivers around here: 1) Please leave your ego at home. I do not care about you or your ego, and I will not be catering to either of you. We all get to play by the same rules, so don't get all grumpy when you don't play fair and you don't like the outcome. Contrary to your twisted view of things, you are not king of the road! 2) Please wake up before you hit the road. Being completely oblivious while you are operating that machine capable of killing someone is entirely unacceptable. Wake up, stay in your own lane, and pay attention. 3) Please hang up the phone. Actually, just don't get on it in the first place. I'm not saying that it's impossible to talk on the phone and drive a car well at the same time-I've done it too, but I've found that around here, most people seem incapable of such feats. If this principle is ignored, I've found that principles #1 and #2 often get ignored as well, which makes for some seriously superb drivers...insert sarcasm. 4) Just because your vehicle is bigger, doesn't mean that left lane with the shoulder is meant for you. That lane would be meant for passing. If you want to pass people in the other lanes, please use that left lane to do so. If you do not wish to pass people, please get your "too big for you to be driving" vehicle out of the passing lane. I haven't encountered this in the other cities I've lived in, but around here, vans, school buses, and big work trucks/vans just seem to flock over to that side. There are 3, sometimes 4 lanes going either direction-it's really not necessary to camp out over there! You probably think I'm just being ugly, but the drivers I've encountered here in my 9 months here have really been a different breed. I saw a lady today that really just epitomized what I see on a daily basis: this lady lives in my apartment complex, so I recognize her car. To begin with, she can't park her SUV. I see her more often than not in two parking spaces rather than one. I have actually seen her parked in the middle of the street a few times. Not in a spot-actually parked in the fire lane blocking traffic through our complex. No hazard lights...and no, she didn't move it quickly. I've seen it left in places like that for hours on end. She has a handicap license plate, and I have yet to see her in that nice, wide handicap parking spot. So there's issue one. I've seen her drive, and let's just say that I go the opposite direction she's going because it's always ugly. But today was a new low for even her. I watched her pull up to our apartment gate, then as it was opening, she drove right through the gate-breaking it and doing some nice damage to her car. Really? Just run plum through the gate with your car? I have to say that I've never seen someone do that before today...and I couldn't believe my eyes. She didn't hit it accidentally or something-she went straight through the thing and continued out to the main road like nothing ever happened. And she was not in any hurry-you can ask the cars she cut off to get onto the road to go far less than the posted speed limit. I can tell you honestly that I see stuff like this probably on a weekly basis. Whether it's this nutcase, or the prick that STOPPED to ogle a car accident scene while they put a lady on a stretcher and into an ambulance. If that was your daughter in a terrible car accident clinging to life, would you want some random stranger stopping traffic so he could stare at her? CREEP. Yup, I get the joy of witnessing the abundance of stupidity around here...and seeing stuff like this so routinely, I'm seriously terrified of my ER rotation. The people I see get to walk away from their episodes of stupidity; I don't even want to think about the people that are going to be brought in to me by the ambulances and how they got into that situation. I'm going to have to do some anger management courses before then or something. And you may be thinking, "if you hate it so much, why don't you just move somewhere else?" Well, you see, I'm in this thing called a Master's program and I can't just up and transfer to a different school. It's kind of a big deal. Even if I could do that, I love my school, my classmates, and my professors. I can honestly say I am getting the absolute best education for me here at UTMB. But after I finish-and I do literally mean AS SOON as I possibly can, don't worry, I'll be in my moving truck headed back north with Ryan, the pups, and Tig! Until then, can we please try to keep the stupidity, the egos, and the oblivious-ness to a minimum? I would really like to make it back home to my family. Thanks, I greatly appreciate it...

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

Well, Great Syndromes is over, and it went out with a bang of a final (keep in mind the final is worth 2/3 the total grade in this course!). The class itself was really not bad at all, I rather enjoyed it! Working with the med students was nice because I was working with some of the best med students ever! Other groups weren't as lucky, but my group was just awesome. A few lectures and a project here and there...it all added up to about three weeks of not being terribly stressed, then one week of panicking over the final. When you go into the class, everyone knows that it's the final that gets you-we are all forewarned. I could have studied all I wanted, but I'm not convinced that it would have helped. There was the usual: stress, progressively less sleep, and progressively more Red Bull. It was just a hard and long comprehensive final. It's entirely put together by the med school, so it's also different than we're used to. We don't know our grades yet, and probably won't for a while-that is why I say "for better or for worse." The good news is that it's over and we're moving on to our last classes of the didactic year. The bad news is...that it's over, and there's no going back, regardless of how I did on that stinkin test. At least we are all in the same boat! Time to move on...the next 6 weeks will be a bunch of hands-on stuff, a course to help prepare us for clinicals, and getting our research projects off the ground-now that's exciting! Seriously, this is "big kid" stuff now...