Steady hands are a beautiful thing

They are good for surgeons. I certainly would not want someone with shaking hands doing my cardiac surgery. They're good for mechanics, seamstresses, chefs, etc. They would be good for me if I had them. Instead, my hands shake. The have a minimal shake when I'm not doing anything. The beautiful thing, the more still I need to be, the more they shake. Great isn't it?

I have medical examples or times when I shake. It makes me appear really nervous. It makes me feel nervous. However, I've found ways to work with it and still be able to succeed at procedures such as intubations. So instead of a medical example, I thought I'd give an example from my apartment, that happened today.

It was dinner time, and I was getting hungry. So, I decided on macaroni and cheese. I boiled the water, put in the macaroni, and waited for 8 minutes. So far so good. Then I was ready to drain the water. Now I live in a small apartment, and the smallest part is the kitchen. As such, I have opted not to have some of the items that I would consider standard kitchen supplies, in this case a colander. So instead of draining out the water with a colander I grabbed the lid for the pot and held it so that I could drain out the water. I've done this many times before without problems. Today, however, was not such a day. Instead while holding the pot full of recently boiling water with macaroni in it, I was unable to simply keep the lid on the pot. Instead I managed to, while holding the pot and lid by their handles, each intentionally out of the way of the flowing boiling water, spill the water on my right wrist. I don't especially recommend that action as it is followed by a significant amount of pain that I have been limiting with an ice pack.

I'd love to have steady hands, wouldn't you?

Good to be the Chief?

I don't know for certain yet, but I'm sure going to find out. On Tuesday Dr. Hopkins, our program director, paged me and told me I was selected to be one of the Chief Residents for next year. Subsequently I will be spending another year at Albany Medical Center. Then she told me I had to keep quiet about it until after the faculty meeting on Thursday and since at least 2 of the residents know about my blog, I couldn't even post it here.

Then on Thursday they announced it at the Faculty meeting and over the course of the day people were coming up to me and congratulating me. Dr. Comber from pulmonary was the first person to say something, and he told me "it's a thankless job but someone has to do it." Not quite the words of encouragement I was looking for, but I'm still excited.

Then Friday at noon, when I was post-call, I had a meeting scheduled with one of my attendings. I forgot it, went to sleep, woke up at 5, and then remembered. So one thing's for certain about being chief, I need to do a better job of keeping on top of my schedule and not forget meetings. Actually, I've been realizing I need to be significantly more organized to do this job well and have been working on it. After all, I have another 9 months before I'm formally chief, so I should use it well.

All the negatives aside, I am pretty excited about next year. It'll certainly be interesting.

Back to PICU

Tomorrow I start my second month in the PICU. It's a pretty intense month that has me on call every third night. I am lucky, however, because our switch day for September was later and subsequently this ends up being a shorter month. I have 9 calls, where in August they did 11 calls each. I'm also somewhat looking forward to it as last time I was there the attendings thought I did a really good job and I was comfortable there, and that's always encouraging.

My first call is this coming Thursday, which will unfortunately make me miss game night for the third straight week. I will however be able to join in for the 2 weeks after that.

Aspen

After spending a few days in Colorado Springs Becca and I went to stay at a friend of hers apartment in Basalt near Aspen. On Wednesday we went whitewater rafting which was a lot of fun. Neither of us had gone rafting before so we did a relatively easy trip (level 2) that included some decent rapids at first then a lot of calm water for the second half. If we ever go rafting again we’d want to do a more challenging segment of river, maybe level 3. However, no regrets, as a first time trip this was fun. I don’t have pictures because we only took a disposable waterproof camera with us and haven’t gotten the pictures developed yet. There was a cute family on the raft with us, Mom, Dad and daughters (around 8 and 6.) The girls were fun. The best part was when the mom was in the water and the little 6 year old girl tried to pull her up. We didn’t let her do it, but it was funny watching her lean over the boat and grab her mom’s life jacket knowing she’d never be able to pull her up.

On Thursday we went into Aspen. First up the gondola to the top of Aspen Mountain, which is also used for skiing in the winter. We spent a few hours on top of the mountain playing disc (aka Frisbee) golf, which I highly enjoyed. Some of the same fun of regular golf but not nearly as frustrating.

After coming back down the gondola we walked around downtown Aspen and saw some of the shops. There are a lot of designer brand shops throughout Aspen that could make for some good shopping if so inclined. The highlight for me however was when I noticed someone pull into a parking lot driving a Lotus. Those are nice cars. For the evening we went to Snowmass, another small skiing based community nearby, which has a summer concert series on Thursday nights and we saw Salvadore Santana perform. I’m not sure what exact genre they fit into, they had some reggae, jazz and Latin combination I couldn’t quite put my finger on. They were however quite enjoyable.

Friday we slept in, didn’t go up a mountain as we’d planned, but did drive back to Denver where we went to the Zoo and then the Denver Art Museum, both very nice.

Saturday we went for a hike up to Devil’s Head where there is a functioning fire tower. The view was beautiful. It may not have been as nice as you get from the top of a 14,000 ft mountain, but it was still worth it.

Now I’m back to Albany, and back to the ever so interesting world of Allergy consultation for another week. J Actually, I have learned some and there have been interesting patients, but I think 2 weeks instead of 3 would have been plenty.

Colorado Springs

Becca and I are in Colorado for the week. Saturday we flew into Denver, got our rental car, then drove down to Colorado Springs. On the way down from Denver we found ourselves in the middle of a pretty heavy storm with balls of hail that slowed traffic and resulted in another shopping spree at Kohls to pass the time. But then we got down to my grandparents' house and had dinner with the two of them and Amy. After dinner we went to Amy's house, met her roommate Amy, and got Becca situated in her room. Then I was back to Granmom and Grandad's for the night. Sunday we went to church with Amy then went to pick up my grandparents and go to lunch. Grandad, who is on a special diet and doesn't eat out much, had been dressed and ready to go to the restaurant hours before we got there and was headed out the door as soon as we arrived but we managed to sneak a few pictures in first. Here is a picture that he grudgingly allowed us to take. For lunch we went to Texas Roadhouse where we met with Aunt Sarah, Uncle Jim, Aunt Lori and Uncle Tom. After lunch Becca and I went to Garden of the Gods where there are many pretty large rocks. Sort of like Sedona in Arizona but not as nice. There is one rock called the Balancing Rock, which is really cool until you realize it is cemented in place. Next was Manitou Springs, a fun old town nearby that had an old school arcade. We finished off the day at Seven Falls, which is a beautiful waterfall with seven parts that would have been much nicer if it wasn't highly commercialized and cost $10.25 each person to see.

On Monday we went Pikes Peak on the cog railway which was beautiful. The view from a mountain top is breathtaking, at is the air considering that we were at 14,110 feet above sea level. On the way up we sat across from a couple, Sherry and Kurt, who are motor homers from Indiana that drove all around the country. In fact they had been through Albany where they unfortunately took a wrong exit and got into a bad part of town. They were spending a month on the road but needed to get back home in time for the Michigan-Notre Dame football game. Great people except for being Michigan fans.... While talking to them Sherry noted a person behind us wearing a Michigan hat, so we started talking to them too. That was a friendly family, again with unfortunately misguided loyalties. However, the family dad asked me where I was from and I told him Albany. So he proceeded to tell me that he had done his radiology residency at AMC where I am now and had worked with some of my attendings when they were residents 20 years ago. Small world.

After Pikes Peak we drove down to the Royal Gorge, the highest suspension bridge in the world just over 1000 feet above the bottom of the gorge. People have bungi-jumped off of that, can you believe it? Not for me. The gorge was great though.

Then we had dinner with the grandparents again at Mimi's Cafe, which was really good. Grandad again followed his low salt-low fat diet by ordering Fish and Chips. Hmmmm, probably not what the doctor intended. I stole the bill and paid for the meal, which I'm not sure they were too happy with but made Becca and me happy. On the way home we let them treat ut to desert at McDonalds which further improved Grandad's diet with a milkshake. After returning Granmom and Grandad to their house and chatting with them some more, we went back to Amy's and the 3 of us went to see Hairspray. A manly movie? No. But hey, John Travolta was in it, that counts for something right? No, he played a woman. But he did get highly flattered when his character (a woman) was told by her husband "You are old and fat, but you're never boring." That was funny. Actually I really enjoyed the movie and laughed to whole time. Not manly, but enjoyable non the less.

Tuesday we went to the Olympic Training facility and took a tour of the grounds. The funny part was when we were at the part of the tour looking at the pool, 2 of the male swimmers got out of the pool, flexed their muscles and posed.

Slightly off topic, I borrowed a GPS device for my computer from a classmate at AMC, at it's been pretty fun. We get into the car and can easily get directions to wherever we want to go. I highly recommend it. The main problem we've had with it is that when Becca was navigating with it she got car sick. So if you're prone to motion sickness that may not be the best bet.

OK, we're off to Basalt, near Aspen, where tomorrow we are going whitewater rafting. Very exciting.

Sweet on Geeks

Becca just introduced me to a website I'd never seen, sweetongeeks.com. Apparently it was set up by a geeky couple who wanted to help other geeks meet each other. How romantic. :)

It has cool stuff on it including links to places like thinkgeek.com, from which Jenna has a shirt. There is also their blog, which among other things includes a list of reasons to date geek girls.

1. They are generally available
2. Other men will tend not to steal them
3. They can fix things
4. Your computer will love them
5. They're smart

Now seriously, are the first 2 items (aka she's undesirable to most people) really a selling point?

Too Fat to Fly?

Today at 1 pm I got a page from Dennis, one of my chief residents. I called him back and he asked me how heavy I was. I told him 160 pounds, to which he responded "Good, you're flying to New York City." There was a child with severe cardiomyopathy (heart muscle not working) who needed to be flown to New York and Dennis was too heavy for the flight so I was going to get to go. I was pretty excited as I've been looking forward to flying in a helicopter at some point this year. Additionally, I would be flying over the Catskill Mountains and over New York City which would both be incredible views on a clear day. So I went over to the PICU, only to be told the helicopter crew had said now that the resident had to be 147 pounds or less. Apparently this was an extremely heavy child, who was needing heaving equipment to help him stay alive, and thus did not leave much room for extra weight. Very disappointing. Maybe next time.....