|
| This week has been amazing! Considering it's only been 2 days (Monday and Tuesday), that is! I'm on my OB/GYN rotation right now, and I got to scrub in on 2 C-sections that were twin births! On another C-section, the attending let me do a tubal ligation (female sterilization, or getting your 'tubes tied') all by my lonesome! And to top it off, I got to do my first delivery today on a Down's baby! I have had the opportunity to help out on a few vaginal deliveries, but the midwife let me take the reigns today...doing the maneuvers to "expel" the baby & minimize moms's trauma and the #1 obstacle of NOT DROPPING the baby, suctioning baby's mouth and nose, cutting and clamping the cord + sending baby blood out to lab, and delivering the placenta without inverting the uterus... and the best part, there were NO LACERATIONS (ie rips "down there")! Then, I got to examine the baby! The last thrill of the day was when one of my patients that I had seen in clinic was admitted to the hospital, and I got to scrub in on her C-section, found and stopped me in the hallway to introduce me to her entire family and to personally thank me for my service. (I think she thought I was a real doctor... lol) But either way, it was very very sweet! (Did I mention I also got to see the birth of an anencephalic - ie baby with no skull and leaking rudimentary brain tissue?)
I have gotten some crappy evaluations from my preceptors (my perfectionism always aims for 100%), but that's OK. I'm here to learn and experience something I may never get another chance to do, and -- so what if I suck! I barely made it into medical school, but I'm here. Loving it. Living my dream. Having no regrets despite all the many who told me to stop trying.
I'm scared though, I don't want to like doing surgeries and procedures. The lifestyle (residency and beyond) will mean the end of all life and future family hopes as I know it! I still haven't had Neuro yet, so we'll see. But what a thrill this has been!
I know, I promised my bath bomb entry, but I doubt anyone even reads this so I'm probably not letting anyone down. Since I have 2 finals (one which requires me sitting alone in a room with 4-5 faculty members grilling the hell out of me), I'd best be going! Wish me luck this week & I'll be flying out to California on Saturday before I have the time to catch my breath!!! :) :) :)
| | |
|  Hard Candy Cosmetics
Remember a few years back when this company graced their higher-than-thou booth at Sephora? (And who else should remember but I, as Sephora is/was my home away from home!)
Well, thanks to the horrible economy, I'm happy to announce that they decided to go mass-market & are currently being sold at Wal-mart! Wahoo! I am personally thrilled to have purchased a gold glitter liquid liner that I have been eyeing for some time now - for a whopping $6! From what I have read, their product quality is great, although I could see their packaging has taken a little setback. Combined with my La Dolce Vita Vincent Longo faux lashes (which are, by the way, THE best flirty, natural-looking tail-end lashes you could sport ANY day) and some gold earrings, my holiday look is set!
Yep, all the cosmetics are extremely affordable (under $12), and includes crazy teal mascara, funky body glitters, and my fave: Eye Tattoos! Although I do think eye tattoos are cheating and real MUAs (makeup artists) would be able to pull off the look solo with a brush, some high-impact powders, and yes -- glycerin!
My next entry will be on DIY bath bombs with pictures! I have been having an absolute blast making (and using) these wonderful fizzy bombs for your bathtub. They are sooo fun, girly, and indulgent and the closest thing to a jacuzzi a regular tub can get. After a long hard day of being yelled at and stressing out, this has been my #1 sure way to relax, well, apart from a massage and being fed grapes by a gorgeous manslave. Lush Handmade Cosmetics first created them, and as wonderful as they are, I hardly think they are worth the $5-7 EACH. Plus they are fairly simple to make... Yes, I am giving every girl (and possibly guy) I know a bath bomb for Christmas, so don't be surprised when you get one! Dad, this includes you!
| | |
| I understand that, and my heart goes out to all those who have taken shop elsewhere. However, two-thousand five hundred and thirty six = the number of days I have been with you, Xanga. And fad or not, some of my best and worst times were spent on this silly thing. Since I hardly ever find the time to do actual pen/paper journaling anymore, this will have to suffice. I remember the good ol' days that I would be journaling on Memorial Glade or Ramona's Cafe with my enormous DJ headphones on, sometimes up to several times a day. I am thrilled to have recorded those memories (literally a decade ago) and all the fun I've had in days past.
This year has been a surprisingly good one. Sure it sucks that I'm a million miles from home and things like family death scares or weddings make me feel all the more *away*. 99% of my meals are eaten in my car, in front of my computer, or over the kitchen sink. The other 1% consists of doing take-out, because I never have anyone to eat with. But apart from that, I am enjoying medical school, crazy hours and being b*tched at all day and all. I am unbelievably TIRED. At any point in the day, I probably could fall asleep at a snap of a finger. But I love being able to learn such a skilled trade. It really is glamorous, and you really do have the opportunity to SAVE LIVES. Whether it's actively cutting out a fungating breast tumor or making small changes in medications to keep someone's blood pressure within normal range, you're helping. As a medical student, you have absolutely NO responsibility. That short coat is the emblem for no malpractice lawsuits. And once you get sick of working with that particularly gunnerish colleague or hate the specialty as a whole, you MOVE ON to your next rotation. How lovely is that.
This year, I've already done my Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Primary Care rotations. I'm halfway through & 1.5 years away from getting an M.D.! On Monday, I start working nights in Labor & Delivery. A couple of things to note:
1) Please, ladies, wash your crotch before going to the GYN. It seems obvious, but I just simply don't understand some (by some I mean, most) of the ladies I've seen. Perhaps it's my bloodhound nose, but I felt a little like those holocaust victims who were crammed in little rooms and sprayed with teargas, desperately trying to escape the vag. <Insert flashback of me gagging over the sink by the patient, sorry> P.S. Never let a male medical student see you in GYN. The things I have heard from my male colleagues will make me shudder for eternity!!!
2) Your doctor wants to have a relationship with you, but your 15 minutes spent in the office is usually a time to bring up your health-related complaints. Not necessarily the time to be complaining about your husband not picking up his socks or a trip down memory lane replete with WWII stories. The main complaint patients have is that their doctors don't listen. But would you go to a salesperson at Macy's and start complaining for 30 minutes on how your 38 year-old son won't move out of the house? People have jobs that need to get done. Listening is important, and I do believe doctors have a hard time with it due to their crammed schedules, but everyone has a small attention span for listening to boring & non-pertinent things.
3) There is no reason not to get a vaccine. People who are afraid of autism, mercury poisoning, bad reactions, etc etc --> RIDIC. So what if you get a little fever from a flu shot? It's not a contraindication unless you have anaphylactic shock from egg allergy. And NO, the government is not conspiring to get everyone ill through mass-immunizations.
4) Don't complain about the wait to see a doctor if you're going to be the very same patient that takes up all the doctor's time. It's so selfish that the very same patients that complain about having to wait an extra 30 minutes to see the Dr will also be the one that needs a 1 hour session and further delays the practitioner's schedule for others.
5) If you would like a timely appointment, schedule it for 8am or 1pm, when the clinic opens in the morning and when it resumes after lunch. This is before the providers have a chance to get behind on their schedules. Trust me, you do NOT want to be the patient seen at 5pm on Friday evening, especially if you have a long list of problems!!!
6) The "open sesame" words for the Emergency Room is "I have chest pain" ... use it wisely.
7) Don't go to a teaching hospital and then refuse to see medical students/interns. There are plenty of other hospitals out there!
8) (Most) doctors don't make a lot of money. It was actually really sad to see most of my attendings driving crappy old Honda civics & Hyundais, wearing wedding rings with a microscopic carat, and completely ripped up shoes everyday (no seriously, worse than homeless ppl's shoes!!!). In my experience, they are still wonderfully generous though and offer to donate funds or buy the office lunch. But with the rising costs of malpractice insurance, overhead, (paying off medical school debt), and getting very little compensation, I guess this is more common than you'd think. For surgeons, they get paid pretty well but you have to understand that they are working the same amt of hours as 3 full-time employees, so it probably breaks down to minimum wage hahaha...
9) 1 in 4 girls were sexually abused as a child. Can you believe that?! I've even heard statistics as high as 70%!!! If I ever have kids, I'm definitely having the "Good touch, Bad touch" talk with them every week! It's really sad but all the seriously messed up people (girls that are 5'7" and 70 lbs, chronic pain patients, psychiatric disorders up the wazoo) were sexually abused. My heart really goes out to them, as well as domestically abused women who have nowhere to turn. What a messed up world.
Anyway, hopefully I'll be updating this thing more often... I leave you with some random pics of me with crazy makeup on. Can you even tell they are me?
 
| | |
| Well, I've been too busy to call up Coach Customer Service, but Daniel called them up for me while I was on my 34-hour shift @ the hospital. Apparently, they are going to take "another look" at my purse and see if there isn't anything to repair. I just don't understand why they didn't do that in the first place...?!!! Next time, I am buying a different brand, one w/a reputation for good Customer Service and non-breakage.
So, I also had a pair of La Cross manicuring clippers that broke on me after a few uses (realize that during the 4 days off I had this summer, I decided to do all my yearly errands at once; I'm not the type to just complain over every little thing). I sent it to Customer Service, and they just mailed me a brand-new pair of clippers (I did NOT have to pay a CENT unlike Coach), a letter of apology, and 3 coupons for ($5, $3, and $1) their products. I am definitely a fan of this company - they do it RIGHT! They didn't make me pay a handling fee and say it was irreparable and give me 40% off my next purchase. For your info, they are the same company as Coty, Sally Hansen, NYC cosmetics, & Miss Kiss. I love them!
Anyway, my newest rotation is going swell. The only problem is the SEVERE lack of sleep, as in averaging 3-4 hours a night, consistently. I should have my blinkers on my car every time I drive just to warn my highway neighbors! I feel like I'm DROWNING in work, learning/studying, presentations, assignments/homework, and then exams on top of that. Plus, all the standing has given me spider veins up the wazoo (I know, it sounds "vain" - no pun intended - but it's really noticeable). I'd have to say the worst was my night on-call (the 34-hr shift), when I was battling a nasty viral respiratory infection and then starting my period -- then after my shift, I had CLASS!!! I almost died, but apparently am doing much better. This coming week, I have 2 more of those shifts ("Q5" or every 5 days, I have to pull an all-nighter basically).
I'm arriving at work at 6am (and this is 1 hr commute away), and this is STILL TOO LATE! I don't know how this is possible. I already wake up at 4am, should I start waking up at midnight? But that's when I go to bed! Oh well. 3 months more of this rotation, and maybe I'll be able to recover then...
| | |
| Recently, my Coach bag broke. It looks terrible, with the plastic handle skeleton sticking out, ripped leather, and all. It's unusable, functionally and aesthetically.
Thankfully (or so I thought), there is a Coach "lifetime warranty" so I sent them my purse (~$15 for shipping, and I didn't even include the insurance they mandated) as well as a $20 check for their "handling fee"... so what, I'm rescuing a couple-hundred-dollar bag, right?
WRONG! I just got back my Coach purse, untouched. It still looked horrible. The letter that came with it explained that it was irreparable, and that they would offer me a 40% discount on any FULL-PRICE item in their stores (not outlet stores). What?! So, I looked back at my bank records, and they actually DID cash my $20 check.
So basically, I had to pay $35 to have them tell me they couldn't do anything about it, other than to ask me to buy another Coach product and put in MORE of my money, for a product and company that has proven to be ill.
| | |
|
