Happy 2012!

Wingman

Last night we went out in Coconut Grove. At one point in the evening L and I had the "pleasure" of talking to a guy while his friend hit on the other girl in our group. This was a classic wingman situation.
Why do guys feel the need to play wingman in the first place? It's not like L and I were lost without our friend. We also were totally fine with letting her talk to this new guy. It's not like we were going to take her away from the interested guy.
But whatever, this wingman was kinda cute and seemed nice enough so L and I decided to play along.
You guys!! This wingman was the WORST! First of all, he hated everything. Everything. For no reason. He hated LA. He hated pediatrics (he's a lawyer, but thought about medicine first). L told him she does research on birds and he immediately asked her the best way to kill the parrots that wake him up every morning. Because he hates them. He also hates old people, Miami, vaginas, the Westchester Country Club, the Palace (an apartment building near L in Miami). He likely also hated his friend for making him play wingman.
Don't worry guys, he did love one thing: UFC. Which I hate.
Worst wingman ever.

LAMe goes to Miami!

Big news, you guys! I'm on vacation in Miami visiting my friend, L!! So obviously I'm going to blog to keep you all updated on the excitement of my trip.
Here's what's happened so far:
- I was hypnotized by the Cuban Trifecta. In case you're not aware of such a trifecta, it includes a Cuban sandwich with 2 forms of pork (aka pork squared), coffee, and tres leches. Be careful, it is quite powerful.
- We took 2 trips the Miami International Airport... Because one trips was not enough.
- L introduced me to the south with her shrimp and grits recipe for dinner. Yummy!

Arts & Crafts

Killing it at Medieval Times

I'm on break, you guys!  FINALLY!  I haven't had a real vacation since May, so this is pretty exciting.  I'm about a week in and so far, I'm pretty much killing it at being on vacation.  So much relaxing happening here.  So much.

Ugh.  Who am I kidding? I'm super bored.  Within 48 hours of break, I had read a book, caught up on all my DVR'd shows, cleaned my house, went to the gym and 2 yoga classes, threw a birthday party, and hung out with my cats for kind of a weird amount of time. This week, I've helped my sister pick out a wedding dress, gotten a bikini wax, hitch-hiked to In-N-Out, gone to the Aquarium of Pacific, the dentist, AND Medieval Times.  Today, I was so bored that I literally ordered Showtime because regular TV couldn't even entertain me.

What is wrong with me?  Is it possible that I'm no longer capable of relaxing?  I knew things were getting bad when I started thinking about arts and crafts projects that I could do while on break.  You see, I'm pretty terrible at arts and crafts, mostly because I never finish the projects.  Here are a few of my top arts and crafts projects and how they turned out:

• Seasonal greeting cards. Earlier this week, I thought, "I should make hand-made Christmas

  

  Possible Xmas card

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Cards!" And then I felt exhausted and quit before the project even began. I haven't even motivated to send out regular Christmas Cards. That I bought last year. In my defense, I had an awesome 2-year run of homemade valentines back in the "Good Old Days" before med school, so this Christmas card idea isn't that ridiculous.
• Knitting. Technically, I've been "knitting" the same scarf and hat since 2000.  They made it through college with me (unfinished) and now sit in a brown paper bag in my closet at my parents' house.
• Quilting.  Speaking of things chilling in my closet at my parents' house. Years ago, I decided I was going to sew a quilt.  I even bought the pattern and fabric - it was going to be a glorious pink and green quilt - and then I placed them in a bag in my closet and haven't looked back.
• Friendship bracelets. You guys, I kind of destroyed at making friendship bracelets back in the day.  In fact, this might be one arts and crafts project that I actually consistently managed to complete (these were in high demand - as a camp counselor at Farm Camp, I had a lot of friends).*

OMG, you guys.  This whole never finishing art projects may be contagious... I can barely finish this post. But seriously, time for me to get back to relaxing.  Even writing this was exhausting.

*Recently, this skill has come in handy, since it turns out friendship bracelet knots are the same as surgical knots.  So yeah. Thanks to my extensive arts and crafts skills, I was pretty good at knot tying during my surgery clerkship.

Celebration: the End of Movember

November 30 marks a glorious day: the end of Movember. 

For those of you who don't know what Movember is (my mom), here is the description from the official Movember website, "During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men."

You guys, I effing hate Movember. Sorry, "men's health," but moustaches are gross and make almost any guy look creepy.  Yet, for some reason, guys LOVE Movember. It's like finally they have an excuse to grow out their facial hair and style it in "fancy" ways (and by "fancy" I mean like a child molester) and then take ridiculous pictures of themselves "being men." 

My favorite is how by the end of the month, even the boys are sick of their Mo's. Yet they still "tough it out" and keep them 'til the end, even though I'm pretty sure a lot of them barely even did any fundraising.* So really, they're just doing it for "awareness," which is kinda good, I guess.  But remember when girls were posting their bra colors of fb for "breast cancer awareness?" That was dumb.  Okay, now I'm just sounding like a bitch.  I know: Movember is not the same as posting bra colors on fb.

But back to Movember.  I guess prostate cancer is a "good cause" (and I'm pretty sure you can still donate if you're interested, even though the month is over, hallelujah) and Movember is a fun idea.  It's just that moustaches are so gross.

Boys, seriously.  Nobody wants to make out with you when your face looks like that.


*This reminds me a lot of how my little sister used to scream, "Stop it! I love it!" when she was being tickled as a child.  It also reminds me of how my mom complains about decorating for Christmas every year and then willingly transforms her entire home into Santa's workshop extravaganza, loving every minute of it.

Scary Voice

I know. It's been a while. And no, it's not because I was on my surgery rotation or a little sicky or hanging out with my cats (these things are all true). It's because I needed an issue that I am pretty fired up about to inspire me to blog.

Well, my friends, I've found one: I effing hate commercials on the radio that use scary voices. I pretty much dread the month of October, because all you hear on the radio are commercials for various haunted houses, mazes, or theme parks. The Scary Voices they use pretty much make me feel sick to my stomach. Every time I hear them. Even the fairly benign Halloween Time at Disneyland commercial kind of grosses me out. For those of you who don't really know what I'm talking about (which, I pretty much think is impossible, since these commercials play non-stop on the radio during the month of October, but anyway), here is the audio for the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, which uses the same creepy voice.



You guys! I love the Haunted Mansion! It's one of my favorite rides at Disneyland (I'm actually listening to the audio now, and while the Voice creeps me out, I pretty much have the entire ride memorized). But that voice!! Without the context of being on the ride, it really gets under my skin. As do all of those gross commercials for various spooky Halloween activities.

"Hey, J!" You may be thinking, "Way to be timely with this post, since it's mid-November and Halloween was several weeks ago!" I know, you guys. I'm so on top of the issues!

Here's the thing: I was so excited that Halloween was over and I didn't have to listen to that Voice for a whole year, until KROQ announced this year's line-up for Almost Acoustic Christmas and the Voice reappeared.




Are you effing kidding me, KROQ?! I get that you are trying to be all "hardcore" and "rock station-y" but Christmas is no time for that Voice! How dare you.

MS3

Oh, hey guys! Yeah, I know. It's been a couple of months since I've written anything. Sorry. It's just that things are kind of busy during third year! And stressful! Plus, up until last week, I was elbow deep in vaginas (okay, sorry. That was gross. And only partially true).

I had meant to write at least one post during each of my rotations, but that failed after R1 (pediatrics). Now, I've completely missed OB/GYN (R2) and I'm onto Family Medicine (R3).

Here are some general thoughts about being a third year medical student:

• My new name is "Medical Student." As in, "Medical Student! Shred this document." Or "Medical Student! There is a chart in the hall and someone needs to see that patient." Or "Medical Student, you are sitting in my chair... Now, you're standing too close behind me." I've realized that I'm pretty much interchangeable with any other person in a short white coat. The other day a resident (who I had worked closely with for a couple of weeks) mistook me for my classmate, who is blonde. The best part was that he just walked over and started listing off tasks I should do while I shook my head in defiance (I was on a completely different service at that point). In his defense, he felt pretty bad about it.
• I feel like an idiot 90% of the time. Simple tasks, like cutting a suture or making a phone call, are suddenly incredibly difficult. You guys! "Cutting a suture" sounds fancy, but it is literally cutting a string with scissors. But you have to hold the scissors a certain way. And you don't want to cut the string too long/short. Sometimes the string is thicker and more difficult to cut. And you have to use the tip of the scissors so as not to risk cutting tissue. AH! STRESS. Don't even get me started on phone calls...
• I live in a constant state of anxiety/discomfort. This is because we are constantly changing services or clinic locations; just last week, I worked at 3 different clinics, each one totally different in the way things were done from the other. Every time we are in a new place, we need to figure out our roles and expectations for us. For example, at one clinic I was simply shadowing (lame) while earlier that morning I had been independently seeing patients, writing notes, and presenting my findings to the attending physician who did very little to double check what I had done. Of course, nobody explicitly says what we're supposed to be doing; we just have to figure it out. This can be on a even more basic level. Once a fellow med student and I awkwardly hovered in the residents' room with our lunches for 10 minutes, waiting for the residents to give us permission to eat/tell us where the lunch room was. We would have asked them, but they were in deep conversation (basically gossiping) and it was not our place to interrupt.

Despite these things (and I'm sure there are more - feel free to add your own experiences in the comments), Third Year is fun! Yup, you heard me. Even though I feel like an idiot and I'm constantly nervous about screwing up, I finally get to talk to patients and do doctory things. For example, a couple of weeks ago I delivered a baby. You guys, I delivered an effing baby! So what I'm saying is even though I'm kind of a stressed out mess, I'm also kind of loving it.