118 Days

Th July rotation was great. Dr. Wiens was awesome... I liked him a lot. The drive to Shawneee was not so great. He offered me a job at the end of the rotation- no call, mostly closing operations and doing central lines; not too shabby. I'm thinking about it.

Now I am with a kidney specialist, Dr. Carter, at Baptist in OKC. He is awesome. I love internal med docs cause they don't expect anyone to do their work, they just expect you to learn. That's no cause for complaint on my part.

In other news, there was a sailing birthday party for Meagan last night and my cat cuddles with me every morning. Tao milktea and tapioca are abundant and there are flowers on the porch. Sally is not coming back from California. I've been exhausted lately and worried but trying to remember life is good. Please be praying that the Lord will help me finish the last three and a half months of school well and show me what to do after that. Love & miss you all...

Nighttime Rambling

Last night I dreamed about Afghanistan again. A mob gathered outside our house and the Afghan National Army had surrounded us to keep them from getting in. Jirah, Julie and Kate were there and a US helicopter came to rescue us. I'm only worried because its the one time I brought my violin to that darn country and this female officer made me leave it in the house because there was no room in the helicopter. Somehow we always end up in an armored car with the windows rolled down on the Kandahar highway, headed to Kabul. Jirah is crying. I'm thinking about how the violin would have fit in the car. And it ends stopping at a little buffet-style restaurant in Ghazni to eat.. I've had that dream before.

Why was the crowd mad? Why weren't we on the helicopter? Why were the windows in the armored car rolled down? Why was there an Afghan version of Furr's in Ghazni? Most importantly, why did I ever bring my violin to Afghanistan?? I'll never make any sense of it.

Turn, Turn, Turn...

Seems like there has been a lot going on this year and a lot of change taking place in many of our lives. God knows there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew

To everything, turn turn turn
there is a season, turn turn turn
and a time for every purpose under heaven

WANTED

Have you seen this man?


He was seen last Saturday afternoon with daisies in hand, ringing a woman's doorbell in Oklahoma City.


Then later he was spotted taking her to dinner and dancing.


He has been known to frequent wooded areas where young PA students may be found.


You might also catch him hanging off the side of one of these.


Warning: THIS MAN MAY APPEAR HARMLESS.


He is wanted in Marlow, Oklahoma. If you have any information concerning his whereabouts, please contact the proper authorities immediately.

Sweet Baby Lovin'

My precious friend Keri's baby, Gracie. And below is Summer's little munchkin, Colton.



I'm thinking summer wedding. Lilac and olive tones. Something simple, without too many frills. Perhaps around, say... 2029.

Moving Back to Edmond

This rotation in Marlow is almost over. On July 2nd, I will move back to Edmond... until December! Yaaaay! I will be living with Ashlie and her other roommate, Jenny, in a little house just off Boulevard and Danforth.

I spent the night there last night before coming home to Marlow today and there were fireflies zigzagging all over our backyard at dusk. And we have a porch swing. AND it is just a 10 minute walk to the nearest sno cone stand.

I think my life is complete. And now, for a short rendition of "Ice, Ice, Baby" (lyrics modified by Meagan Labay):

Ice, ice baby
flavored ice makes me go crazy
fun in a cup and i don't mean maybe

Or, there is this version, sung to the tune of "Billy Jean":

Cold sno cones
are not my love
they're just a treat
without any vit-a-muns
so, i just eat them for fun

Vitamin K and the Faux Hawk Baby

Last Sunday, a baby was delivered. Delivered by a very small PA student (who had gotten approximately 8 hours of sleep in the last 2-3 days) to a very large and umm.... unhygienic mother. That is all I will say about that. But imagine. Delivering. An. Unhygienic. Person. Vaginally.

Ahem.

The next morning, I could not have been more relieved to see the baby was cleaned up. And, best of all, he had quite bit of hair that one of the nurses had styled up into the most awesome faux hawk ever. So. Incredibly. Cute.

Then, Dr. King let me circumcise Little Mr. Faux Hawk. This was really such an interesting procedure. There are several different methods for circumcising babies- you can use Plastibells, the Mogan, or Gomco- I got to do a Mogan. Really, to me the most interesting thing about circumcision is that in today's world, we can do them the day after a baby is born.

Why is this, you ask? Well, have you ever wondered why we give babies a shot of Vitamin K after birth? Circumcision first appeared in the BIble when God told Abraham to circumcise Isaac on the 8th day after his birth. Seems weird that he told him to wait, eh? Unless you know that babies, left to themselves, do not begin producing Vitamin K- a clotting factor necessary to clot blood- until they are about a week old. So, cutting into a baby before then without giving them Vitamin K will most likely lead to them bleeding to death. (However, if you invented babies you may have been aware of this small fact.) The End.

136 Hours in 9 days

I just finished a hellish little run of 12 to 16 hour days... oh sweet holy mother of my goodness. One more tomorrow. Then- 3 DAY WEEKEND!!

Endangered Love

"Endangered Love" is one of my favorite children's songs. Its a song about two manatees who are in love, however, one wants to go to a ball in her new manatee lipstick and the other wants to speak French, go into the world and do noble things. In the song, they even almost break up. However, luckily for them, love finds a way.

Barbara: "Bill, I've learned French."

Bill: "You have?"

Barbara: "Mais, oui. Je suis Manatee. See?"

Bill: "Oui, oui mon amie!
I always knew you could,
I really hoped you would.
Now can we go into the world and do noble things for the good of all?"

Barbara: "Yes, but first, will you take me to the ball?"

Lesson for today: Have your cake and eat it too!

Come Live With Me, and Be My Sweet Fluffy Ball of Love

Every month in my life right now is a new beginning. Every month, I start over at a new job. Every month, I get a new boss, a new workplace, a new kind of work, a new population of patients, a new boyfriend. And usually, a new place to move.

Just kidding about the boyfriend.

However, not this month! This coming weekend is, truly, a free weekend! I continue my rural rotation for another month and have only one thing to study for... a drug list for Dr. King and I'm golden.

The main priority for today is to search for an apartment. One thing has been blatantly missing from my life these last few months: my cat. For the previous year she had been my constant loving companion; the last few months, she has been living with Ashlie and Lewis as I move all around. Which she loves.. :/ But I miss her and I'm ready to cohabitate with her sweet fluffy little ball of goodness once more. And, as it seems everyone I know has a pet-free lease, it appears I'm going to have to find something by myself for at least the next 6 months.

So, the apartment search begins. Once it is completed, the job search will begin. As the Indian man on the plane said with a smile... the world is my oyster. I hope cats like oysters.

Marlow Is Busy

Apparently, Marlow isn't as slow as I'd thought it might be. All the old folks are getting sick in their nursing homes, high school girls are needing their sports physicals, everyone in the hospital has to be followed, oh then there's the free clinic; and did I forget to mention Dr. King's clinic where we work 40 hours every week?

Marlow is definitely where its at. It being the work.

Mr. Lucas Strikes Again

I'm always forgetting to put new pictures of us up. Here we are a few weekends ago at Quartz Mountain. He went for a climbing thing and I was there for a women's retreat. Here he is in action, making me breakfast. What a sweetheart!

Beautiful Marlow

Well, time is flying. The spring has come and spring in Marlow is one beautiful thing. Everything here is green and the trees lining Main Street are old. There are gorgeous multicolored wild flowers all along the drive from the hospital in Duncan to the clinic in Marlow. Bright little flowers and old, beautiful trees lining the street of your new town in the rain... I'd say its a treat.

I got here on Sunday night after a not-small detour which included me getting to visit the Wichita Mountains once again. They are beautiful at sunset if you are driving in from the north. I hope I can go out there a lot on this rotation, but we'll see. Supposedly the hours for this stint are somewhere in the 9:30am to 9:30pm area. It looks to be no lie, so far.

I think I like small towns. The people here seem almost the exact same to me as everywhere else that I have been so that's no different. The hospital I get to live at is nice. Dr. King, my preceptor for May and June, is a great person and a good doctor. More good news... there might be someplace to go horseback riding around here that lets you gallop on the horses. People in small towns seem like they might be more likely to let you gallop on their horses than just make you stick to boring old trail rides. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and looking into it.

On a more personal note: I need a break. I feel worn out.

Creep, Creep, Creep...

There is something that has been creeping up on me like a sneaky little insect. Something I have been thinking about a lot lately but trying not to. Something that is much more difficult to be rid of than brushing a bug off your leg on the Fourth of July. And that thing is... graduation.

Supposedly, we are to start looking for jobs this summer. Supposedly, I am to fill out applications and ponder salaries and paid vacation. Now I grow up and start deciding what I actually want to do. In someone's mind, I am an adult, and have even the remotest idea where I want to live and settle down. (And in some far away fairy tale land, I am also studying for our board exams.)

Reality: I am laying on the couch eating an ice cream sandwich and watching Sahar take a little spit bath.

Its kind of like having two lives. One in which I go to the hospital every day, do histories and physicals and patient care plans with some traumas thrown in; the same one in which I graduate in 8 months, settle down with a great job and have a very good life surrounding by loving family and wonderful friends.

Then there's the other life, in which I continually think of being back in dusty Kandahar, riding camels in the desert and laughing with nomads under tar-colored tents. Or Ecuador, treating brown-faced little children in a medical clinic by day and riding rusty old bikes on the beach by night. Or Haiti, sleeping on roofs, delivering babies on the clinic's dirt floor and hiking to waterfalls; petting purple sea urchins then riding to islands on ancient, patchy-sailed boats.

Ahhh... I still have no idea what to do.

Happiness. Flowers. Mountains. Lederhosen.

This is Mr. Lucas. He was pumping water while calling himself Lars in a German accent and talking about lederhosen. And so you can see why Mr. Lucas brings my heart pure joy. :) When I'm with him, I'm just about as happy as I can ever remember being. He is a genuinely thoughtful man with a cheerfully contagious disposition. You would really enjoy meeting him.

We went to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge last weekend. We did a little trail run out to a tall thin rock with two large boulders balanced on top- aptly named Crab Eyes- and climbed up on top. Its one of the most beautiful views in the whole park, or so says Mr. Lucas. Then we grilled out shishkabobs and later hiked to a waterfall with a couple of his climbing buddies. Then watched the sunset on Mount Scott- which I have concluded is THE prettiest view in the whole park. If you live in Oklahoma, and you haven't been, you have no excuse- the mountains are only an hour and a half away from the city. It is worth it.


Our delicious lunch. Yummy sweet potatoes not pictured.




He even brings me flowers.

A Lot Going On

Seems like there has been a lot going on recently. My brother had appendicitis again and a second surgery to take out his appendix again (strange, right). I went up there this past weekend to spend some time with them. Now he's still having some problems and laid up at the hospital in Des Moines so be praying for him.

The ER is still going great! I love it there so much. Its really a joy to get to go every week. This week I traded one day of ER for a clinic day Friday, so no four day weekend. That has been one of the huge blessings of this rotation- lots of free time! Which, I am finding, is very fun to spend with my architect friend. More on that later.

So, the schedule is going to be a little odd until August, so here it is one more time:

March- Oklahoma City
April- Edmond
May- Marlow, OK
June- Marlow, OK
July- Shawnee, OK

Marlow is in the middle of nowhere. About an hour and 45 minutes from the city. So, I will be a little nomad for the next four or so months. Ahh... its been nice to be settled for so long. Now its time to uproot and migrate again.

Psalm 19

The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul.
The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the Lord are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring forever.
The ordinances of the Lord are sure,
and altogether righteous.

'In his presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.' -Ps 16

Awake Late

Sometimes it is hard to sleep at night.

Especially if you stay up until 7:30am roughly 42.857% of the week. I am not complaining though, because the Job is wonderful. I couldn't be happier at the ER. Tonight at our girl's group, someone had a word for me. And the word was, concerning the Job and the hospital and the patients:

"You have been tailor-made for this."

I know that it is true. I have often thought that myself.

8 Years Is a Long Time

Yesterday, the sweetest guy in the world took me out. Its been a really long time since I went on a date on Valentine's Day... eight years to be precise. This person is just simply amazing. We went out to a place called Red Rock Canyon and he taught me to rappel. Being a mountaineer for the last 16 years he is pretty good at it; I can't believe how much fun we had.

If you have run out of ideas for dates, I suggest finding a strong, good-looking architect who loves to climb and ask him to take you to the mountains.

Saying Goodbye to Griffin

The cute Italian resident was nice enough to give me today off, so my psychiatry rotation at Griffin is officially over. I was surprised at how much fun and how enjoyable this rotation was. I'm a little sad (not because of the resident :) but because I really became attached to some of those patients. I'm going to miss them and all their crazy shenanigans which brought so many laughs over the last month!

I will miss Miss T, whose only criteria for discharge was that she take a shower. She thought there were demons in the 4th stall to the end so we were always trying to convince her to take a shower in the first stall. But, after weeks of antipsychotics and psychotherapy she told us, "Basically what I'm telling you is I'm never going to take a shower at Griffin Memorial Hospital." Okay, Miss T...

I will miss Mr. J, who left his nursing home because he was "going to follow the train tracks to Egypt."

I will miss "Wolfvy," who first thought he could predict and pinpoint anything happening anywhere, at any time, all over the world, and email the people involved to warn them. And that his wife had sextuplets that all died within 15 minutes of being born. And that he'd had hundreds of surgeries to replace all of his bones with titanium, which is the reason he now gets struck by lightening so gosh darned frequently!

One person I will not miss is Miss L, who was the most annoying patient on the face of the planet. When she came in, she saw the treatment team and we asked her if she knew why she was at Griffin. She gave us THE meanest look in the world and said, "You want me to tell you again? They... ripped... my... ARM... OFF!!" She also constantly hallucinated children and believed that her residential care facility was using them to hand out the medicines. So she definitely wasn't going to go back there until they instituted some safer distribution practices. And that the owners were castrating all the male residents and then throwing the remnants at all the other patients. And that was just completely unacceptable. She was a tortured woman... who will no longer be torturing me. :)