Attached at the hip...

to my pager that is. Ah the joy of sitting here at work doing not much of anything except wondering if I'm going to be able to go home soon, or if my evil pager is going to go off any second meaning that I have to stay late tonight. Here at MD Anderson, I'm on a consult and liason service in the branch of Psychiatry. That pretty much means that other doctors, services, or whatever call on us when they have a patient that they think might need psych. And when that happens, our little pagers go off alerting us that we have a new patient that needs to be seen somewhere in the hospital. Usually this is all fine and very educational, but not all that welcome when the pager goes off at say.. 4:45 when we're almost about to close the office. That usually means staying til 7 or so at night until all the paperwork and dictations are done.
I'm not really all that bothered by it in the end, it just makes everyone really anxious during the 4 o'clock hour because we're doing everything we can to hope that that stupid pager doesn't go off. Thankfully, a lot of the time it doesn't. Which is ultimately great since that means that someone doesn't need us. Usually in this hospital it's a bad thing when they get to the point that they do.

Now at M.D. Anderson

Last month, I spent my time on Psychiatry at the Ben Taub Inpatient ward, where the daily business is schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and just plain everything under the sun. Lots of people having bizarre behavior and hallucinations, or if you're anything my most of my patients were, you had a whole lot of things to talk about, but very little of it made any sense. It was a very interesting month.

Now I've been reassigned to do a month of consult and liason Psychiatry at M.D. Anderson, the country's (and some say the world's) largest and most prestiegous cancer center. It's definitely large! I spent a lot of my dad walking across skybridges connecting all the different buildings, centers, and towers of the place, and that was after I had to initially find out where I had to go. It is a pretty confusing place, but I will say that it's a very beautiful hospital. They've gone out of their way to make it as comfortable and "resort" like as possible. They want to take the cancer hospital feel out of it as much as possible and they've done a pretty good job. The hospital lobby feels more like a hotel lobby, with large water fountain, musicians playing a piano or violin, lots of windows and sunlight. There's also an indoor forum with shops, that resembles a small mall for patients and families to shop, art galleries, garden areas and lots more. It's pretty impressive when you take it in for the first time. But it also never escapes you that as nice as it is, it's also a place that you hope you never have to spend time in other than working.

Today was my first real day there, as yesterday was mainly doing paperwork and getting badges. Since it's a consult service, people refer their patients to us for whatever needs they might have. So actually a lot of the day was spent waiting for my pager to go off. We did see 3 patients today though, with various needs, so all in all it turned out to be a pretty good day.
The different setting will probably take some getting used to (MD Anderson is a University of Texas Houston Hospital, not a Baylor hospital), but I think it will turn out to be a pretty good month, and I'm looking forward to getting to know this new team and the patients I'll have. 

Off to the Faire

One of the large Fall attractions for South Central Texas is the annual Texas Renaissance Festival held two months out of the year near Plantersville, Texas. It's one of the largest of it's kind and is always a fun place to go for period shows, atmosphere and to just plain see people in some very crazy costumes. Some very nice and classical, others just down right creepy and scandalous, haha (chain mail bikini's by people who should not be wearing them). I've been several times before, but never before in costume. This year, Kristi and her roommate Suzie really wanted to go dressed up with a group, which of course meant me and Suzie's boyfriend Paul in costume as well. I was just hoping she didn't want me in tights! It turned out to be pretty fun. We picked out the patterns and the fabric and K used her great sewing skills to whip up some pretty nice looking outfits, and all in all it turned out to be a really fun day, and it was different than just going in street clothes.

Of course we ended up doing a lot of walking as usual (the place is like a Disneyland in the woods, pretty big!). We took in a lot of the sights and shops, saw the Ded Bob Sho again which is always hilarious, and caught the joust too. Our knight was of course the first to die. At least the French guy didn't win. We filled ourselves with turkey legs and beer of course too. You can't go to the faire without partaking in those. And we also managed to take a lot of pictures too, most of which there's no way I could post on here, but I'll probably manage to get up somewhere.



Me and Kristi in our costumes.


Suzie and her Monk (Paul), with K and me


This Pirate tried very hard to get me to buy this hat and sword, ahem, or rather trying to take my money like any good pirate would do.



I came pretty close to buying them too, especially after all the compliments the Kristi and Suzie gave me with my new additions.


One of K's favorites



Paul and Suzie



The girls being silly in front of a statue



The friar does love his brew.



The knights of the Joust





Some more of Me and Kristi

Weekend in Lubbock

So it was that time of year again... and no I don't mean the annual roasting of Rob Schneider for his career dropping performance as a stapler (inside joke, ask sometime, or watch Southpark). It was the time of the annual college football game of Texas A&M and Texas Tech, which several of my best friends and I from High School have attended religiously since 1998. This year, it was my turn again to travel up to the Llano Estacado--or to Lubbock--to see the game. Not very fond memories have been had up there. I've almost been crushed by a torn down goal post as it was being carried out of the stands by a crazed mob, I was sprayed with beer, and many other rather things that I wouldn't mind forgetting about. Nevermind the fact that I've never seen the Aggies win in Lubbock, but despite that, the A&M/Tech weekends are always fun and this was no exception.

I wasn't driving this weekend and out of cheapness I flew into Amarillo rather than Lubbock. Wes picked me up and then we headed on down and met up with Sam. We had some fun out on the town, had a horrible dinner at Denny's after the game, and enjoyed our usual highjinks. It made for another memorable weekend. It's just sad that more people aren't able to make them anymore. We did see Saul so that was good. It was over all too quickly and back to Psychiatry but such is life.



Me, Wes, and Sam taken from a friends wedding over a year ago.