A is for Alyson… really.

So… back when I was studying for Step 1, I had all sorts of crazy stress reactions, and even got a touch of dermatographia – I would break out in a stripe of hives whenever I got scratched or bumped.

I mentioned this to a family medicine attending who likes skin findings and really likes to take pictures of them for an online database that he uses to teach residents and students.  He told me that if I ever had it again, I should get him a picture.

This was fresh in my mind because I just finished a month-long course with another doctor who takes photos of any interesting physical finding he comes across… after 20 years of practice, he has a photo of everything.

So tonight, as I mentioned earlier, I was feeling kind of stressed out, and I started breaking out in hives.  This happens regularly, but it’s usually just a single  hive, maybe two.  But tonight I got four across my upper chest and shoulders.  I thought, oh!  Maybe my dermatographia is back!  I’ll scratch myself and take a photo. 

Dermatographia means skin writing, as classically one could use a pencil and write on the skin and it would appear as letters of red welts.  So I figured I would also use a letter for demonstration.  I figured A is the first letter, kind of the typical letter to use, and plus it’s my initial.  So I scratched myself in the shape of an A just below my collarbone and waited.

No hives.

…which, I just realized, is for the best, because I literally just attempted to emblazon my chest with a scarlet letter.

(there’s only faint scratch marks which I trust will be gone by morning… more of a pink letter.)

actually, it's me and a mountain the day before we got engaged.

:-)

Me and a mountain.

Today we went down to duPont Children's Hospital for computer training for our emergency medicine rotation. We also picked our schedule -- eight shifts for the month. I "back-loaded" my schedule, meaning I'm working five days in a row the last week. But this also means I have one shift per week for the first three weeks. Yeah, the fact that 'working five days in a row' is this ghastly fact is awesome. I did this so I could continue to study for step 2 over the next week... and then chill out for a week straight ;-) We're going to clean out the back room! Really! Seriously this time! I had come to accept that we don't have an "office" we have a "storage room" so I lost my motivation but we are going to reclaim this room by the end of October!

Then this evening I went to the wine and cheese internal medicine reception where all the fourth years interested in IM came and socialized with the big wigs of the Jeff residency program. I always walk away feeling like I couldn't have been more awkward, but I'm glad I went rather than not. At least they will remember my awkward face.

So, not much room left in today for studying. My studying has also been stifled over the past two days by some weird transient symptoms... gnawing headache, nausea, GI upset, malaise, lightheadedness. I feel sick, but it won't come on all the way. I could also attribute it not sleeping well... but when you put all that together, it really just sounds like stress, doesn't it? I can't wait for this test to be over.

This is my photo from Friday. It's a picture of our pet watermelon.

We've had it since... the first week of June I think. That was back when Glen and I were gung-ho about cleaning up the backyard and turning it into a usable space. We cut the grass, bought potted plants to hide the fact that it kind of looks like a construction zone back there, and even made a little temporary patio for our grill. We ate back there a bunch of times. And in the midst of that, Glen bought this watermelon, the perfect barbeque food!

Then, it started to rain. And it rained and rained and rained, and we didn't eat outside. Then it cleared up long enough to go on our camping trip... and we said hey! Let's bring our watermelon on our camping trip -- that will be perfect. And we forgot our watermelon at home.

Then when we came home, I'm told that it continued to rain for most of July, although I have to admit that most of the month is a blur. I do remember one walk to work where even with an umbrella I was completely soaked to above my knees by the time I walked the 5 blocks to the hospital, and it took the majority of the day for my leather shoes to dry out. (It wasn't even raining when I left the house, which is why I wore little leather dress shoes instead of my pink rainboots. Although, in that rain, my boots probably would have been full of water.)

Then August came and it was muggy. And I was on my sub-I rotation. And Glen was studying for the boards. And then when he finished, I started studying for my boards. So sadly, there haven't been many more barbeques.

And, our watermelon is still here.

It feels fine, still solid, doesn't smell bad. Somehow though I have a feeling that we're brewing watermelon liquor in there. Which could turn out to be awesome.

Or not. I'll let you know.

Hey! I just saw that the whole rest of my post got cut off! It went as follows:

It was the very deep photo of a man in short shorts with his stoagie that caught my eye, but if you'll notice to the right there is also a black fedora and beneath that a whole printer in a cardboard box.

I finished my Advanced Physical Diagnosis class today! I'm kinda sad it's over and I wish I could take it a second time and maybe soak up a little bit more of the tidal wave of information that came at me.

To celebrate, tonight Glen and I went out to the biannual movie shown out on the quad. It was "Up" which had recently been recommended to me... Man I don't think I've ever cried so much in the first five minutes of a film, let alone a cartoon!  It was vey sweet though.

Early to bed for me and back to studying tomorrow.

Of films and fedoras

This isn't my neighbor's, but I did pass this interesting pile of
trash on my way to class this morning.

(detail)

Same trip, following evening.

I'm supposed to be studying for Step 2, but I lost my motivation a few days ago.

Eight weeks until six weeks of vacation!

So my attempts at writing on here more often haven't been successful. The patient idea was good but A) I'm not currently seeing patients and B) that is really time intensive, and I haven't been able to give that much lately. The idea about documenting my neighbor's funny garbage would have been fun, but of course they stopped putting out funny garbage! (last week there was a single running shoe from the 1970s that looked like it had been keep in some sort of vacuum sealed time capsule, but it's not the first time they've thrown out odd retro running shoes, so I wasn't impressed.)

Now I'm thinking maybe I'll just try to post a picture every day of so, since I do get joy out of flipping through Picasa and playing with my photos. This is one of my favorites from our road trip through scenic western Virginia and North Carolina on our way down to Florida in August 2006. I think it came out pretty well considering it was taken out the window of a moving vehicle. I just got it printed to hang in a frame in our apartment.

study break

I’m currently studying for Step 2 of my licensing exam, so I feel like I have no time to blog.  It’s kind of interesting though, that this blog started while I was studying for Step 1.  The difference is that back then, June 2007, I had five weeks off to completely devote to studying – not only does that mean more study time but it also meant that I felt like I was going to go crazy if I didn’t pick up a side activity, but one that I could do without leaving my desk.  Now, I’m in a classroom-based rotation during the day.  Granted, it’s one of the lighter ways you could spend a rotation: I go and listen to someone talk from 9a to 3p every day.  But, nonetheless, the number of hours I can spend studying is greatly reduced.  So when I’m home I feel like I have to be productive.

I’ve been writing this entry all day – a sentence before returning to work or going out to do an errand.  I’m going to just say it’s done, so that when I take my other breaks I do some other non-work things I have lined up.  This includes getting some pictures printed at snapfish.com – they had free printing through tomorrow :-)