Here goes...

Reading through Schaefer’s, Farris’s and Boyd’s blogs have inspired me to put my own life and experiences in medical school out onto the internet. I have decided to do this so you all can get a glimpse of my path through medical school and everything that goes along with it and so I can look back on this stuff further down the road. Hopefully this will be somewhat entertaining and slightly educational, but most importantly I want it to answer the questions everyone asks me when I’m home, “How’s it going in medical school?” and “Do you know what you want to go into?” My usual answers are “Good” and “I dunno yet.” I never know what else to say, there is always so much but I just cant spontaneously put it into words and I’ll be honest, for the most part I don’t have the time and when I do I tend to forget and leave a lot of things out. So here it will all be, my life, tracked from here on out: externship/rotations to my internship year through residency and finally becomming doctor.

Right now though, I'm in Flint, MI about 40 minutes northwest of Detroit. I'm spending Thanksgiving here with Tricia, a friend from school. She is out here doing her rotations for her third year and is doing surgery right now. I'm glad my schedule isn't quite this bad yet, I had to get up this morning at 4:00 to drive her to the hospital so I could borrow her car for the day. Not like it mattered much, I went back to the apartment and slept until 12:30.

I finally did get up and was in charge of the thanksgiving grocery shopping. Note to self...never go to a grocery store the day before thanksgiving to buy what you need for dinner. I was there for over an hour dodging full shopping carts driven by blind old ladies. How is it that when they hit you with a grocery cart, they look at you like it was your fault? I'm sorry, I'm not the one with the cataracts. Also, bad idea to buy a meat thermometer the day before thanksgiving; three stores, and a no go. So it looks like I will have to guestimate the temperature of the turkey. It will be my first attempt at preparing my own thanksgiving dinner, so if I can survive not burning down her apartment or giving ourselves food poisoning, it will be an accomplishment. First medical tip of the blog: if after thanksgiving you are puking or shitting out green clumps of doo...chances are you have food poisoning.

I hope you all have a good thanksgiving, I know at this point in my life I have lots to be thankful for. For everyone one I saw when I was back home in Seattle, It was great to hang out and be somewhat normal again.