Pediatrics at Texas Childrens Hospital

Today I began the 2nd month of my pediatrics rotation at Texas Childrens Hospital here in Houston. I had spent the last month doing neonatology and clinic pediatrics at Ben Taub, the local county hospital. First days are always hard, especially when you're orienting to a hospital that you've never previously done any work in. Up until now, I have done most of my work in either the VA Medical Center here, or in Ben Taub County, with brief stints in both The Methodist Hospitals and the MD Anderson Cancer Center. The morning didn't exactly go perfectly, I wasn't on Security's list for a namebadge and passcodes, so I wasn't able to get either of those. Also, the other med student on my team for this month was the one who dropped out a month ago from the rotation, so I'm currently the only student assigned to a very busy team. That team being 9th floor Hematology/Oncology, or in other words the cancer floor. It should be a rewarding experience, but will probably be a lot of work as well. I wish there was another student to help with call schedules and such, but it should still be ok.

In other news, I got a confirmation from my away rotation at Scott and White hospital in Temple, Texas for Emergency Medicine. I am scheduled to start there on July 31st, and return August 25th, barring any complications with my UT Houston rotation which is supposed to end on the 31st. I'm still working out the issues with the overlap on the schedule.

New Furniture

With my parents moving to St. Louis within the next couple of months, they've been needing to get rid of a little extra stuff they no longer have room for. This of course only means good news for me. I got to "inherit" a really nice sofa and love seat from them, as well as the table and chairs that we've had as our dinner table for the last 15 years or so. They came this morning and dropped everything off in exchange for my futon, rocker, and table and chairs, most of which will go to Kristi's new apartment. Upgrades are always nice. :-)

One of the last big events each year at Texas A&M is the Senior's annual "Ring Dance". It's a formal occasion to celebrate all of the accomplishments of college, and especially of getting your class ring. Of course my class's was several years ago, but this past Saturday was the Ring Dance for the Class of 2006, Kristi's class. So it had been something that we had been looking forward to for a long time, getting dressed up, eating at a nice restaurant, dancing, the works!

Kristi got a really beautiful cream white gown to wear, and while I had a suit and everything to wear, she suggested that I go with a solid white tie to match her dress. I didn't really know what to think about it at first, but all in all I think it turned out really well and I ended up liking it afterall. We had made plans to go along with Chad and Allison, two really good friends of ours who are also getting married this summer. So in the early afternoon, we met up and took lots of pictures on campus. The weather worked out in our favor, it was sunny but not as hot as it could have been. There were lots of other people around all dressed up doing the same thing. We took more pictures than I could possible put on here, but i put them up on snapfish if anyone else wants to see them all. Here's a few of the ones we took....












(this is apparently my "tux rental ad" pic)







(I like these past three, they kind of tell a story)


We then met up with Ryan Reddy and Christina Wallace for dinner at Christopher's World Grill inBryan, which is an amazing place to go if you ever get the chance, and of course the dinner and lagniappe was unbelievable. We all left absolutely stuffed and miserable, but it was well worth it.



After that, we went on to the dance at the Memorial Student Center which lasted until midnight. They usually have several different theme rooms with various styles of music. This year they had a "kind of" classic rock room, but that's not all that they played, a Country and Western room, a Latin salsa dancing room, and a Hip-Hop room. They also had a casino to win raffle tickets and a room where Freudian Slip (a local comedy improv group) was performing. All in all, we had a really good time, but it was definitely time for a good night's sleep afterwards...