November update

This month I've been doing a month of radiology at the Cleveland Clinic. I've been staying with Julie's parents while I'm up there. I'm up in Cleveland during the week and in Columbus on the weekends. It's been fun learning about radiology again and the Clinic is huge. It's cool to be at such a world-renowned hospital. Being away from Kip for up to a week at a time has made me realize how much I love him and miss him when I'm not around him. It definitely makes me want to be able to match in the same place for both my prelim year and radiology residencies because I don't know how I'd handle living apart from him for that long.

Interview season is in full swing. I have 15 radiology interviews lined up so that's a good number. I've had my interviews at Case Western and OSU so far. I'll find out on March 20th where I'll end up for residency.

After this week I only have 3 months of rotations left so graduation is rapidly approaching! It will be sad to say goodbye to my roommates and other friends that I've made since I've been here.

What AMSA thinks of the surgeon general nomination

I read this in an American Medical Student Association(AMSA) newsletter and it reminded me why I'm proud to be a member.

As the nation's largest, independent medical student organization, AMSA felt the need to stand up and oppose the United States Senate's nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to be the next U.S. Surgeon General. A report, "The Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality," prepared by Dr. Holsinger in January 1991, regards the sexual practices of homosexual men as biologically pathological that inherently lead to, "a diverse and expanded concept of sexually transmitted disease and associated trauma." The paper continues to state that men and women have a sexual "complementarity" that speaks for itself, comparing male and female reproductive organs to pipe fittings.

"It is unacceptable to permit a physician who furthers a position that runs so contrary to contemporary medical practice to serve as Surgeon General," says Daniel Murphy, AMSA legislative affairs director. "Even in 1991, Dr. Holsinger's paper was unscientific and decades out of date."

My Birthday Week 2007

This week my birthday was on a Wednesday and also happened to be opening day for the latest Harry Potter movie, which is exciting because I am a big Harry Potter fan. I only have to work 4 days a week on my rotation, so the day I didn't go in this week was Wednesday. It was nice not having to work on my birthday. I didn't do much during the day except run some errands. I did meet with the researcher I'm going to do research with in September, though, and it was great to meet him and hear some ideas of what I might be working on. I'll be doing abdominal MRI studies which is awesome because that's one of my areas of interest. It sounds like I'll at least have an abstract done by the time I'm done which would be awesome. I went to 7/11 to get a free Slurpee. Also of note, I went to Giant Eagle and my bill came to 7 dollars and 11 cents, so that was exciting. Kip, Lindsey, Ryan, Julie, Chris and I went to Pesto for dinner and then to see Harry Potter. The movie was good but the third one is still my favorite. Afterwards we went home and ate yellow cake and ice cream.

My family was again good with wishing me a happy birthday. My Dad called and sent me a card with some money. Tom and Emily emailed me. Andy called and sent a gift card to Best Buy which is nice of him. Amy and Katie called. Matt sent a package with Winger's sauce and some other stuff. So the only ones that didn't acknowledge me was Brad and Darla(like last year). I do miss my family, and it looks like I'll go a full year without seeing them since I don't really have a chance to until November/December.

Dave forgot my birthday but he's not the best at remembering stuff like that. I did talk to him the day before though and he moved to New York so I'm going to try to go see him in August.

On Saturday I went to Union with Chris and Julie to celebrate my birthday. It was good times. Then Chris and I went to his friend Ben's housewarming party.

Tonight Kip is taking me to Barcelona for my birthday dinner. Kip gave me my presents after dinner. He gave me a book of pictures of Columbus, a scented oil thing from Pottery Barn and some clothes from Ruehl. They were very thoughtful.

Marion, OH

This month for my first rotation of 4th year I am in an internal medicine outpatient clinic in the small town of Marion, OH. My preceptor is an awesome lady who reminds me of my mom(they even share the same birthday, weird). I don't love the 2-hour round trip commute, though. One cool thing though is that the 29th President of the Unites States, Warren G. Harding lived in Marion and there's a nice memorial there. An since I love history I visited it one morning and was surprised by how beautiful it is. Here's some pics:

I'm now a Med 4

Well it's hard to believe but I am done with my third year of med school. It was a really tough year and I'm glad it's over. We only had 3 weeks off the whole year. I never missed a day of a rotation! I even went the day that school was cancelled because of the snow storm! There were rotations with long hours and some rotations with easy schedules. I did OB/Gyn at OSU, I did two busy inpatient months at Children's and I did two hard services at OSU in medicine. I can't really complain about my surgery services though waking up at 4:15 AM every day for a month wasn't my favorite thing to do. I am proud of my accomplishments this year and proud of what I've learned about myself and about medicine over the past year. I learned for certain that I want to be a radiologist. I entertained the thought of maybe being an anesthesiologist or a pediatrician but I just enjoyed radiology more than anything else. Now to start the application process all over again!

Mitt "Romney's Disappointing Campaign"-article from Time

I came across this article in Time magazine today and I thought it was a great description of Mitt Romney, so I wanted to post it on my blog.

Here it is:Romney

My surgery rotation

Just wanted to post something really quick about my last rotation of third year-surgery. Last month I was on cardiothoracic surgery so i saw a lot of cool surgeries like CABG's, valve replacements, VAD placements, aneurysn repairs and even a cardiac tumor excision. The hours weren't bad at all for a surgery service.

Now I'm on Surg 2 which is a lot of colorectal, anal and bariatric surgeries. I have a lot more responsibilities on this service now so I'm a little stressed but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I have to wake up at 4:40 AM tomorrow to get to the hospital in time to round onmy patients and be ready for rounding with my residents. Really the only thing keeping me going is the fact that 3 weeks from tomorrow is my last day!

Well it's 8:30 PM which means it's bedtime for me. Wish me luck that I'll survive these next 3 weeks.

Easter

I had a good Easter this year. I woke up to find that Kip had left me an Easter basket to find with candy, a stuffed animal and a cute card so that was really nice of him. It reminded me of when I was back home and the "Easter bunny" would hide easter baskets for all of us kids to find on Easter morning.

I went to Kip's church which is the United Methodist church on King Avenue for their Easter service. I had been to that church once before around Christmas and I told Kip I'd go back with him on Easter. The first thing I noticed was how friendly everyone was. There were greeters at all the doors to welcome everyone and ushers to help you find a seat. The whole church smelled really good with the Easter flowers that everyone had bought. The opening hymn was "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today" which is also a hymn that Mormons sing so it was good that I knew it and was able to sing along. They had an opening prayer and had the new babies be brought up by the parents for the congregation to see. There were two baptisms and it was interesting to see how they were done. They brought the kids up to the front where there was a basin of water and the pastor and assistant pastor(a woman) each baptized one child with a few drops of water. Then the pastors took the children around the room to introduce them to the congregation. The pastor gave a short talk on the resurrection and then there was a closing prayer.

I'll have to say I did like it especially the feeling of inclusiveness that exists in that church. There are a lot of gay people that go to the church and one in front of us had his arm around his partner and whispered periodically in his ear. It's nice to know that Kip and I wouldn't be judged there as we would be in the Mormon church. Also men and women have equal rights in the Methodist church as proven by the fact that women can be pastors as well as men. In church I always loked the songs the best and always "felt the Spirit" when I listened to Church music. Well the Methodist church has a lot of the same hymns as in the Mormon church with a lot more as well and I felt the same good feeling when I sang them there. They also had a band playing with the music which was nice to listen to. One thing I did feel a little uncomfortable about was when the collection plate came around but still when you think about it that's a lot better to have a voluntary collection plate than requiring everyone to pay 10% of their earnings.

I have to admit I think I could get used to going to a Methodist church and raising my child(ren) in that church because I think it would be a good way to teach them about God while at the same time teaching them to love and accept all kinds of people no matter their race, sexual orientation, etc.

Back to blogging

Sorry for not posting for such a long time. One deterrent to blogging is the fact that one of my administrators reads this blog, but maybe he's forgotten about it by now and if he hasn't, I won't be writing anything too personal on here anyways so it'll be fine.

So to update you all on my life, I am about to start my fifth rotation of third year which is my ambulatory rotation. I have one month in a family practice clinic and one month of radiology. I'm excited for ambulatory because the hours are a lot better than my last rotation and I finally get to do radiology which is what I'm planning on specializing in. After ambulatory I only have one more rotation which is surgery. Third year has been going well and I've learned a lot. One of the most exciting things of the year happened to me on the last rotation-I got to do my first chest compressions. It was a very touching experience.

Things are going well in my personal life as well. I'm still dating Kip, so it's been close to a year and a half that we've been dating. My family is doing well and I have 15 nieces and nephews with two more on the way. I haven't really been keeping in touch with them too much but I have talked to my Dad a couple of times since Christmas as well as a couple of my siblings. My brother called me last week to talk about one of his friends who recently had brain surgery to remove a tangerine-shaped tumor. I told my brother that the prognosis depended a lot on what type of tumor it was and where it was located but I didn't really have that much to offer him since he didn't know the specifics of the case. It makes me a little overwhelmed that my older brother is calling me for medical advice but it feels good that I could help him a little to talk out what he was going through.

We're soon scheduling for fourth year and things are a little nervous among my fellow classmates regarding matching next year and what needs to be done to make sure everyone matches in what they want to do. I'm definitely feeling nervous about that as well. I have a lot to worry about because I want to match in a competitive specialty and because I also want to do couples match with Kip. I have to worry about interviews for radiology and transition year and ending up at the same place for both so that I won't be without Kip for a year while he's doing his residency somewhere else while I'm doing my transition year. I'm also worried because I haven't gotten honors in any of my rotations despite doing well on some of the exams, so I won't be loking very good as an applicant. Well we'll see how this all works out.

I will try to post more often so stay tuned for more....