My Current Mania

There are so many gosh-dang things to look forward to over the next couple of days, weeks, months, years...I can't even stop myself from being excited right now! I'm having a fabulous time at work...every day is full of compassion and intrigue...and my dancing life couldn't be happier either. Tonight for example, there's a whole slew of participants coming out...and furthermore I've convinced my parents to come out on Saturday night at Century... And then there's the whole issue of being insanely excited about travel to Barcelona and Guatemala...and then the whole concept of knowing, for the first time in my life, what I want to do after med school....I feel maniacally blissful. :) I can't wait for life to go on...

Crystal, Tina, Crank, Ice, Tweak and Yaba

It's a snow day here in Seattle (at least so far, the clinic is closed due to icy roads), so I'm working on my presentation for the end of this rotation. My proposed topic? Current strategies for helping patients with methamphetamine addiction. I did a Google Search for related websites and came across this interesting article. Before this rotation, I had no idea about the co-morbidities between Crystal use and HIV infection. Check out the below link...

http://www.positivenation.co.uk/issue110/features/feature3/feature3.htm

[Oh yeah, and don't forget that World AIDS Day is this Friday, Dec. 1st! Show your support by going to http://www.lighttounite.org/ You can light a virtual candle there, and for each candle lit, Bristol-Myers Squibb will donate $1 (up to $100,000) to the National AIDS fund. You can also read testimonies when you click on the candles on that site. Pretty cool.]

Delightful Thanksgiving...

...this place setting is evidence of the central role my three little cousins played in making this a Thanksgiving to remember. The Turkey Trot on Thursday morning was a blast. My parents and I traded off the role of pushing one of the two strollers with my cousins inside. The best part was watching my mom exhibit her crazy driving as she darted between slower runners... :) Fortunately there were no fatalities this year.

And now only a few short weeks and it's off to Barcelona!

Chlorophytum comosum 'Variegatum'

THIS is the Spider Plant that I have been waiting over three years to see. Back in my Denver days (see the CVV link on the side of this blog), when I was a case manager, my co-workers and I had the sensible idea of giving each new family a tiny spider plant as a symbol of a new start and new growth. It quickly became my job (and specialty) to take cuttings from the one spider plant in the 300-bed shelter, get them to grow roots in water, and then plant them in little styrafoam cups in the windowsill of my office. I LOVED seeing them grow right along with me as the year of service went on...and hoped that someday I would be given a cutting from someone else's spider plant to keep for myself. I was recently given this lovely plant by an unnamed angel who was able to read deeply into the spiritual draught I must've been portraying. Fortunately for me I now have a spider plant of my very own...(I hope I don't kill it!)

First people to speak up can have a cutting of their very own... :)

Back to Seattle

Ohhhh how nice it is to be back in Seattle. Already have a few fun nights under my belt, too. Exhibit A: A pic from the evening of what I'll call the "Bender Bash." This is post-dinner, post-guitar game, and pre-HaLo for a group of over 10 of us. Pretty hilarious crowd of us making our way down Broadway. Here, Crystal is feeling a bit chilly, and the good boys alongside her have given up their jackets.... :) :) A wonderful evening indeed!

One can't learn much...

I'm starting a book which begins with the following oh-so-appropriate quote: "One can't learn much and also be comfortable. One can't learn much and let anybody else be comfortable." ~Charles Fort, Wild Talents
The quote has many levels of meaning in my life...but most recently it applies to the Peds rotation I just finished. I didn't have a single day at work in the past six weeks that I felt mildly at ease. I was constantly on edge, always being asked to do something I wasn't wholly comfortable with. But I learned a whole heck of a lot of pediatric medicine in the process. It's funny that it wasn't until I was driving away from Pocatello yesterday that I realized that the rotation was actually a GOOD one. Most days I was plain miserable! And now with it behind me, I can begin to see its merits.
On a different note, here's a picture of my Dad's tomato plant...he uprooted it when it began to freeze, and now he's brilliantly letting the remaining fruits ripen "on the vine." :)