Me? on a Rollercoaster?

Last Friday, Kristi came in for her medical school interview at UT Houston and I'm sure it went great. So the next day she decided to call in a debt which had been building for quite some time apparently. Over a year ago I made a deal with her that I would ride a rollercoaster with her if she would come snow skiing with us over winter. Those of you who me pretty well, know about how much I despise, or rather flat out hate rollercoasters. Ever since I was little when my parents put me on the Excalibur at Astroworld when I was 7 or 8, I've had this horrible aversion to getting on them. I pretty much had the crap scared out of me by that experience, and I pretty much made sure my parents were aware of how I felt. They never made me get on another ride like that since. Since then I've done a pretty good job of avoiding thrill rides altogether, which of course made school trips to Amusement park rides not so much fun, since everyone wanted to ride rollercoasters and thrill rides, and I never could bring myself to want to. It was always the g-force, or drop sensation that I hated and could never understand what people thought was so fun about it. Well in later years, I had begun to believe that it was more of a psychological phenomenon and that I really needed to branch out and try them again, but I wasn't about to just go out and test this new theory. Which brings us to this Saturday, and repaying this debt. This past Saturday we decided to go to Astroworld since we had the day to mess around with, I didn't really go willingly either cause I didn't quite have the nerve built up, but the tickets were bought and off we went. She didn't start me out with baby steps either. The first coaster she took me down was the new blue and green Ultra twister that has a very steep initial drop off then hurls you through barrel turns..... I was not very happy with her after this first experience and part of me actually wanted to leave and go home right then! haha. But I stayed, and we ended up going down almost all of the coasters in the park, and by midday I was having fun and enjoying myself. Two of them, the Batman and the Cyclone gave me headaches though from all the shaking around. I have to say that overall it turned out to be a pretty fun day, and I think my fear of rollercoasters is in the past.

It was a very fast weekend, and a very fun one at that! Now I'm back to the hospitals for my final month of Internal Medicine, this time back at the VA. I think it will be a good month though and I'm excited to move on to another team and see what follows.
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Last Week at the Taub

So this is my last week on internal medicine at Ben Taub, the county's hospital. It's been an interesting experience, and I'm sure I'll miss some of the craziness when I move back to the VA. I certainly won't miss the 6-10 page handwritten H&P's. Or the nice whiffs of who know's what as you're walking down the halls. Overall, I've had a good experience with it though. Good teams, interesting patients, and people who are mostly grateful for the help that you're able to give them. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be coming in 2 months ago. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the VA system of doing things. I'm certainly looking forward to being back on their computer systems and all. The daily parking will also be pretty nice again.

Halfway through Internal Medicine

"My God man. Do you want an acute case on your hands? This woman has immediate post-parandial, upper-abdominal distention." (or in other words, cramps) Bones Mccoy

So yeah, it's been awhile since I last posted, but Medicine has been keeping me pretty busy as of late. I'm on my 2nd month of Internal Medicine and still living it up at the Taub, as much as that's possible. Things are going well though, I have a good team and it hasn't been nearly as crazy as I was led to expect. This has actually been a fairly slow month in general at the county hospital. Lots of beds on differently floors are actually vacant. It's pretty strange. Sadly, it seems that the patients that we do have all have one form of cancer or another. One of my patients has a type of bone marrow cancer called myeloma, another has severe throat cancer, and we admitted a patient today with leukemia. It's been kind of depressing. Why can't it be more run of the mill stuff that you treat and send home? I guess it's good experience though. Two more weeks here and I'll finally be changing hospitals and going back to the VA. I'm ready to be writing notes on computers again finally. My life has pretty much been hospital work lately so that pretty much covers it as far as updates go. I did manage to get away and see the Lord of the Rings movie exhibit this weekend at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. It was cool to see all the movie props, buildings and costumes that they used in the filming of the trilogy. Other than that, yeah, I guess my life has been pretty boring lately. ..