Bad blogger

Life has, unfortunately and fortunately, been too busy for me to blog.

I'll summarize the last two months...

1. Move to Connecticut, apartment couldn't be smaller, but here I am
2. Back to Philadelphia to enjoy two weeks with N before she moves
3. N's movers fuck up and arrive 4 hours late. Insanity follows. We move out of our beautiful Philadelphia apartment and bid farewell to our friends with an amazing dinner at Tria
4. Two days later N starts work and I start work. Things are positively insanely crazy. N's family helps move her in. My classmates seem nice
5. I go to Pittsburgh to visit N for the first time, and we find out her mother has found out N is gay. Shit. More drama follows. We can't go to WA for vacation anymore.
(N throughout all of this is studying for her anesthesia boards. Stress levels are at an all-time high.)
6. I go back to CT and finish my orientation and start working. Anesthesia is great! I visit Pittsburgh a few times for moral support.
7. N takes anesthesiology boards. It's finally, finally over.
8. We spend most of vacation in Pittsburgh. It's amazing to be with N again, and the week is all-too short.
9. I go to Portland, OR for the weekend to see my mother, grandmother, and dog who is dying of cancer. I may never see her again. Cancer sucks.

That about catches us up to this week. I may back-track and make a few posts, but only if I have time...it's been a really, really crazy summer and so much of what happened was so emotional I really don't want to re-live it all just now.

Today is pretty much my first weekend day in CT alone. I used it to sleep in and get work done...finally registered my car and got my new driver's license. Can you believe they charge property tax on your car in this town? Insanity. I've also been tidying the shoebox.

Now that N is done with her test and we were spoiled by a week together, I'm really missing her and feeling the unfairness of this whole thing. It's hard to hear other people talking about their home lives, see posts on F.acebook...I want her with me!!! I know we'll make it through this year, but it just makes me feel ill that I don't know the next time we'll see each other. Her job only creates the schedule once per month, so there's no telling what her calls will be like until very short notice. Sigh.

On the work front, things are mostly going well. I seem to be pretty good at the technical procedures (IV, arterial line, intubation) and the basics of maintaining an anesthetic and coming up with a plan. It's still sometimes hard for me to know how to approach a "hiccup" in my plan or wake a patient up from anesthesia. Waking up is harder! Figuring out the timing of when to give what medicine, and when not to, will come in time, but so far...I think I'm okay for my level of training. Tomorrow is my first weekend call, so we'll see how that goes when there's not a a lot of supervision to go around.

I had a rotten morning yesterday, which has been the exception to my otherwise great week. The attending I was working with for a cardiac case was really uninterested in me being there and nothing I did was right. I placed a 16 g IV in the hallway in seconds, intubated smoothly on my first DL, placed an arterial line with the total process taking less than 5 minutes, and placed a 14 g IV without blowing the vein, but all I heard was..."You're making that look too hard, anesthesia is all about how you look," "why are you touching that you're being filthy! You may as well shove your hand in the surgical wound!" "You're not always going to have a handmaiden around to help you." Great. Way to make me proud of the fact that we were ready for incision on a CABG by 0800 with a 0730 start time, patient in the room 4 minutes early. She didn't even arrive at the damn hospital until after 0720. Sigh. Can't win sometimes.

That night was hard to come home alone. It was so amazing to have N there before because she totally understands all this nonsense and makes me feel so much better when I talk to her. Talking on the phone just isn't the same. My alternative was kickboxing.

When we were off work in Pittsburgh, we went with N's sister-in-law to a cardio kickboxing class which ended up being pretty fun and N joined up, so I thought I would find a place around here that offered lessons. I ended up going for the first time last night and it was pretty much as cool as the one in Pittsburgh, so I signed up. Barring the availability of N for support, punching the crap out of a bag was a good way to take out my frustrations. And I slouched out of there like I'd run a marathon...it's an extremely rigorous workout that I can't quite keep up with yet, but at least there's room to grow. And I'll definitely still fit in my shorts next summer if I keep it up ;)

I guess that's all for now...I should study. May as well take advantage of silent solitude.