Christmas

I didn't recieve any presents
I didn't have a tree
I didn't have lights

And i don't really care
I actually prefer it this way because I generally tolerate but rarely love the things others buy for me.
i think a Christmas trees are stupid and messy
And although christmas lights can be pretty amazing and gorgeous they are usually just stupid, and wasteful.

I did spend a lot energy looking for my moms Christmas present only because she said exactly what she wanted and I bought her things like fixing her watch and buying her gas (necessary things, that's how I roll)

BUT
I did spend time thinking about God's amazing love.
About how amazing I feel regardless of my circumstances because of the confidence i have in God. I often wonder how others face the ups and downs of life without being able to trust in an almighty God.
Anyway, I love God, He loves me, I am humbled and extremely grateful.
Merry Christmas, you are loved.

 

Crisis Averted

I was trying to organise pictures on my hard drive to make sure that pictures are sorted and saved.
And then a pop up came up that said "deleting 439 files"
I was clicking, 'cancel,' 'cancel.' But it was too late and what made me the angriest is i didn't even know which 400+ pictures were deleted, I was crushed.
And especially because there were irreplaceable photos, I am significantly less depressed when I lose documents because...I can type or dounload them again.
Anyway did some googling and discovered that a deleted file doesn't actually mean it's gone and you can download programs to undelete it.
And I downloaded a couple, and they both FOUND my pictures but wanted to charge me up to 50 dollars to recover them. So I went back to google and added 'FREE' to my search criteria and found Recuva.

And my pictures are back where they should be.
Just sharing because I was utterly crushed when I lost them, annoyed when they other programs were trying to charge me and then elated when I found Recuva. Just wanted to share the drug free elation :D

Life's good!

Surgery Placement

I did one week with a surgery team as a placement.
Not an official placement more of an experience placement, without really having any specific things I HAVE to learn from it. It was just an opportunity to follow them around and learn a few things

Things you can do to make your placement the best

1. Do push ups, you will spend lot of times holding things, holding legs and tubes, and this could get painful so strengthen your arms
2. You will spend a lot of time standing, do squats
1. To reduced feet pain, invest in good shoes. I know my mother believes in me because she bought me shoes for medicine long before I got into medicine. To be honest I never really like them, I don't think they look very good on me because my foot is so large and I think they just look giant. She bought a pair for herself as well and they look cute because she is a smaller size. Anyway, I have not really worn them, BUT, after a couple of days of surgery coming home with painful throbbing feet, I dragged them out and they were amazing.
1. My mom bought me these shoes, and I highly recommend them if you have to do a lot of standing, an absolutely tangible difference. They are so soft and they remain soft all day, just feels amazing and even pressure through out the foot!
2. Tights, if you are a girl, wear control tights (again mom comes to the rescue) since mome is a nurse this is something I saw her do. After a few days I realised that standing for long causes excruciating pain in the thighs and calves, and control tights really help with that pain, definitely saw a tangible difference.
1. Unfortunately it took a few days for me to figure out all these things, BUT on the last day I had on my amazing shoes, I had control tights and it was a practically painless day even though I was there for over 12 hours.

Things I noticed during my placement

1. I don't want to be a surgeon because
1. walking into a surgery the patient is covered except for the location of the surgery to take place, literally reducing them to an arm or knee or stomach, etc
2. Everyone's face is covered except for their eyes, which reduces everyone you are working with into functional parts
3. as a very social person who enjoys the 'whole-patient' aspect of medicine, I really did not like this.  I think I will enjoy teh process of diagnosing and trying to work out what is wrong with a patient, as well as treating and following them through, even sending them to surgery but later having to check how their surgery works in the context of their overall well-being. I will also enjoy participating in preventative medicine, dealing with making good health decisions and helping the patient through difficult medical decisions where I cannot provide an answer but only the available information.
2. Sterile gloves smell like kapenta, probably not, but to me it was the most familiar label I could associate the strongly latex smell
3. The smell of burning flesh was something I didn't expect, I don't think I like it...
4. Most surgeons are quite nice and nothing like on tv, but orthopaedic surgeons are surprisingly like on TV (nice...but TV like)
5. There is flexibility in their schedule and they get to go away for weekends and have dinner at home, but it is incredibly inconsistent, maybe spend three days straight at the hospital, and then three days getting to go home before 3pm, and then a day where you are at the hospital until 2am, it's just super erratic, I don't like that. I think I want a little more consistency.

Overall, an amazing learning experience. even though I knew before hand I didn't want to do surgery, I still found the experience extremely useful. I think it will be important later on to understand what my patients may be going through but also to understand my surgery colleagues.
Amazing
I am now reading Gray Matter (about a neurosurgeon who prays for his patients). And it's really helping my understanding of the setting and culture he is talking about.
The surgery culture is definitely distinct and it is important to understand it becuase I will be sending my patients there and in a rural area who knows what surgeries I will be doing.

Rest

I am on holidays.
I am resting.
It is an amazing concept
I considered working while visiting my mom but I have changed my mind. Atleast for the next three weeks I will just rest.

It is something I never really appreciated until my semesters were filled with actual work and stress.
The more work med school is the more I am appreciating my break, plus I hear the work will increase while the breaks reduce...gotta appreciate them while I have them.

If you don't like me it's your fault

I spent a week with someone, very long hours, we were both in an unfamiliar setting and the other person was the most familiar thing in the whole week.
I deal with people by asking lots and lots of surprisingly personal questions, so after about 2 days we had learned an incredible amount about each other.

Something I already know about myself
- When I spend a long time with someone and know a lot about them, I start to entertain the idea of living together happily ever after.
- This is something I know, but something I didn't expect was the thought that followed these ideas

..."He probably wouldn't look at me in that way becuase I am not his type"

Now, this (for me) is an improvement because it's the understanding I have come to recently that I am a beautiful, strong, and interesting person and when the time is right, the right person will see that. And these other people in my life will not see it not because I am ugly and boring, but because they are just not the right person to see who God made me to be.


so I felt really grown up!
Yay, me for not having my value determined by how I feel others see me (although it was a fleeting moment of maturity...)