On the events which have caused us to be so silent

After a long hiatus, I’ve decided it’s time to buck up and finally get back to blogging. I’ve found that unless I blog, I keep no track of events that have gone on in our lives, and how sad would it be to lose memories of these very important years? Plus, we’re such horrible correspondents and we’re terrified of Facebook so there is no other way we really keep people updated.

I have no excuse except that we really have had a lot of things going on. This year, my last year in residency, has been very busy. I was in the ICU in September; then Frank and I went to Ireland in October to visit our dear, dear friend Marion and her husband Dave. Ireland is such a beautiful, green, amazing place with so much history as well as modern-ness. It was also unfortunately very expensive since it was in the midst of American’s plunging currency drop; so though we had fun, it was a rather pricey trip. Still, you all need to go visit Giant’s Causeway on the north coast, Beara Peninsula on the west coast, and the castles. Wow!

So why did we do such a pricey thing, you may ask, seeing as how I’ve got 5 digit loans to pay and I’m still a rather poor resident? Well, we decided it was soon time to settle down and do the family thing and thought hiking the Irish wilderness was a bit hard with a child, so we did it first. And quicker than we ever expected, we found ourselves indeed pregnant. So most of the fall was spent half in terror, half in amazement at this crazy event. It’s one thing to try to imagine being pregnant, another thing to be pregnant. I’m not talking about symptoms. Overall, I’ve had the easiest pregnancy ever. I’ve never had morning sickness, I didn’t show until about week 16, I gained 1 lb up till week 17, I don’t have weird cravings, I’m still running (Though it’s now more of an old woman crawl and it’s not exactly comfortable anymore). No, it’s more the wonder that there is a living creature growing inside of me; that even when I looked and felt exactly the same, there was a new life developing. I thought it might be a little creepy, to imagine this independently squirmy thing inside of me. But the first time we saw the baby move on the ultrasound last week at our 20 week check, and the time I felt the baby move, about 5 days ago, was really just the most joyful experience. Hormones are really a great thing because I can’t imagine how else I could be so protective of and excited by having a parasite making me fat and hungry, yet unable to eat much at one sitting, and unable to sleep on my tummy anymore. But really. If I didn’t already believe in God, I would now, as I can’t imagine how anyone can explain how this amazing process came to be in any other way.

So, as you can imagine, baby has taken lots of time and energy. I was pretty tired most of my first trimester. It’s better now. As my cousin says, making a placenta is hard work! I spent most of October working on a poster presentation for a national research competition while I was working overnight. That wasn’t so fun. But it was so great, because I did my topic on spirituality, which was incredibly different from what people usually do. I chose that topic because I can’t tell you how many patients have had breakdowns in my office visits and obviously had spiritual distress, and I had NO idea how to respond. “there, there”, never seems good enough. So I decided to educate myself on what research has been done on spirituality’s impact on health care and the physician’s response, and then decided what the heck, everyone else should be educated about it too. Hence, my presentation. It was great. Flabbergasted a lot of people, but also raised some awareness of it.

We also went to visit Frank’s family in Amsterdam for New Year’s. My parents came as well, as did my sister-in-law’s parents. It was a big reunion to celebrate Frank’s brother’s 12.5 year wedding anniversary. No, really. Apparently they celebrate that there. It was fun but exhausting. I wasn’t showing much then but everyone kept looking me over and looking very disappointed that I didn’t look any different. I’ve never had so many people ogle my shape so openly before. It’s weird. The other thing everyone scrutinizes is everything that goes into my mouth. If I didn’t eat enough for two sumo wrestlers, I’d get urged to eat more. When I tell people I’m not REALLY eating for two full grown people and in fact in the first trimester, you’re only supposed to eat 300 calories more per day, everyone looked horrified, like I told them I was anorexic and wondered where I got such a stupid idea?? My family forgets that I AM a doctor, I do know SOMETHING about how to eat healthy, even if I do enjoy chocolate a lot! My mom of course spent the whole time telling me not to do everything from opening the drapes to carrying a jug of milk.

Now, I’m just trying to prepare for next year. The baby is due in early July, about a week and a half after I finish residency. It’s hard to believe I’m going to finish soon. I’ve loved my residency program, and I’m feeling very nostalgic already. I can’t imagine the day I don’t start everyday meeting with the other residents and attendings in AM conference. I’m going to miss the intensity of ICU care, the comraderie of being up at 2AM to take care of a very sick patient, the multiple educational lectures and talks and presentations I’ve been privileged to be a part of. I’ve spent 3 very intense years with this program and hospital, experiencing life and death situations that no one else can really understand. At times it’s very isolating. I’ve often felt that it’s harder and harder for me to relate to people not in my profession, as there are no words to express the myriad of feelings I go through when a patient dies under my care and I’m fraught with guilt, regret, sadness or relief, wondering if I did something wrong, wondering if there’s something wrong with me that patients die and 5 minutes later I’ve moved on to admitting the next patient.

I’m terrified of being independent, and not having an attending to help me when I’m torn between two decisions. I always know that if I have a question, I can page my attending or the specialist on call and they have no problems giving me advice; they expect me not to know, and to teach me. But when I’m done here, it’s not as easy. It’s hard to feel like three years is enough! I’m the process of just beginning to interview for outpatient jobs. I’m not going to work till probably 2010, since the baby is due so close to when I finish and I need to take my licensing exam in August. But clinics are so desperate for outpatient doctors, I’ve had multiple clinics contact me and somehow, I keep finding myself with interviews. It’s a nice place to be, but overwhelming. It’s hard to prepare for interviewing when I’ve worked every weekend for 5 weeks, including two 30 hours shifts in the last three weeks. I think I’ll ultimately work for the county clinic, as I still want to serve underserved communities; but we’ll see.

Finally, what is Frank doing? Well, conveniently, he is now working for my hospital system. He is one of their IT specialists, working with systems to monitor how well the hospital programs are working. He loves it there. The people he works with are nice, his hours are flexible, his job interesting, even if it isn’t robotics. Getting hired in this economy late last year was quite the accomplishment, I think. So things are well. I can even page him when I get bored (which I do) (He never pages me). We’ll be in Chicago and Madison in early March as our last travel before baby comes; hope we see some of you!