Back, but still on vacation

Because this is technically a knitting blog, I will do the knitting update first. Look! New project! Colorwork! These are Eunny Jang's Anemoi mittens. They are presumptively for me. For a moment, I thought about giving them to my cousin because they happen to be her wedding colors, but I think her hands are larger than mine. And I want them. I love the corrugated ribbing on the cuff. Love it.

Look! Old project! Done! Remember the Embossed Leaves socks that I started because I was going stir crazy with all the stockinette on the robe? Yeah, I finally finished them months later. That's how it goes with me and socks. Of course, my aunt suggested that she would be most appreciative if I managed to knock out another pair in a slightly larger size, so we'll see if I can find the fortitude for more socks (and the same pattern twice...) somewhere within me.

For a more full description of my Christmas festivities, see Twinset. This is a blog maintained by both my mother and my aunt (identical twins, get it?) and it's quite good. They also are better at posting than I am. I am lazy, so my Christmas rundown will be brief and picture based. For those of you with slow internet connections who don't like pictures, go away. This is my blog and I like pictures. So there.

My parents flew into Cleveland, rented a car, and drove me and the cats to my grandparents' house in Huntington, WV. Ganymede rocked the whole new house, lots of people thing. He likes attention. And power. Also being on top of tall things.

Biscuit did not love the new house, lots of people concept. She pretty much stayed in the basement, so she did not partake in Christmas morning.

But Grandpa did. Look! It's a dog! I think Grandpa got a balloon and instructions in his stocking.

Jon got duct tape in many colors. This is a very appropriate 13 year old boy present. I gave him Settlers of Catan, which also went over well but was not photographed.

Mom got roving from my aunt. Mmmmmmm... I forget exactly what fibers were involved, but I know silk was one of them. The roving was very, very soft. My aunt spins, so she is taking the roving home with her and then mailing it to Mom in yarn form later.
Overall, it was a pretty knitterly Christmas. Mom got the roving and some yak yarn (from me). I'm still working on a scarf for Dad. And remember the wimple I talked about a while back? Mom knit it for me, beads and all. So soft and pretty. See her blog for a picture, because I am lazy and also getting hungry.


The best presents are furry. Also, more proof that somebody likes to be the center of attention.

Happy New Year!

Not so much as planned

Instead of catching babies last night, I decided to have food poisoning instead.

I went in for a few hours. I was grumpy to begin with, because I found that one of the residents who kind of made my week miserable was also on call. I've worked 5 shifts with her, and I don't think she's ever made eye contact with me or the other med student on. Unless she's ridiculously high functioning autistic, that is not cool.

Anyway, after missing a chance to deliver a baby because it was coming out OP (occiput posterior - face up, the position that often causes "back labor") and needed to be vacuum assisted, I started feeling not so great. I had a small amount of "sentinel emesis" (the warning before it gets really bad) an got sent home. I thought I was in the clear. But no. I don't know that I got much sleep between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. I've never had food poisoning before. This was a new level of aggressiveness of GI irritation for me. And the pain was pretty intense too.

B kept trying to do something to help, but I couldn't keep down any of the liquids he wanted to provide. At one point, he asked if there was anything at all he could do. I said, "No, not unless you have a secret stash of Zofran I don't know about." Forget stealing Fentanyl, Zofran is the med that I'd be in danger of stealing if I were an anesthesiologist. We entertained going to the ER, but decided that I like the comfort of my own bathroom. Also, we're med students, and we don't like going to the doctor.

In conclusion, no solstice baby catching, more sleep than I originally planned on, and I'm left with weakness, dehydration and a day to watch TV and knit while I recover.

Tomorrow I go to West Virginia. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Not dead yet

Sorry I've been slacking. As you know, I'm on OB/GYN. I love it, but part of being a med student is coming in before the residents. Guess what time I have to get up tomorrow?

3:00 a.m.

It's kind of a good thing, because it means that I have a lot of post-partum patients to round on. Which means I did a lot of deliveries and had some good OR time in the last few days. But I'm still not thrilled with the prospect of going to bed earlier than I have since I was about 9 in order to get 6 hours of sleep.

Also, I'm on overnight call Friday. On the way home, I realized that I'm on call on Solstice. Somehow it seems appropriate that it will be the longest night of the year.

Oh, OB/GYN, you had me at hello

Today I did two endometrial biopsies. This means I am awesome.

No, what this really means is I was lucky enough to get paired with a really great chief resident in clinic today, who caught on that I like to do procedures and let me do the biopsies. For those who are curious (the queasy should skip to the next paragraph), doing an endometrial biopsy (or "EMB") entails inserting a speculum, grabbing the anterior section of the cervix with a tenaculum (pointy edged cervix grabber thing), inserting a small but long catheter through the cervical os into the uterus, creating suction by pulling out the stylus in the catheter, and moving the catheter around to suck up some endometrial tissue. You do it two or three times and get enough tissue to analyze.

Basically, it reminded me why I love this field. I mean, I'd been enjoying clinic, but I hadn't been able to do that much. Clinic is very busy, so the residents usually want to do a lot themselves. I'd done a few paps, measured a lot of funduses and listened to a lot of fetal heart rates, but I wasn't given that much responsibility. But biopsy! Whoo! This is why I wake up in the morning.

No. Really.

As far as knitting goes, I did finish the robe. But, the robe is short and it's cold. I don't wanna take pictures. I promise I will at some point. In lieu of robe pictures, I have pictures stolen from Knitty!

I don't actually like knitting lace all that well. Or knitting with mohair. But I covet this wimple. Covet. When would I wear it? I don't know. When I'm posing for modelesque pictures with snowflakes on my eyelashes. Yes.














Also, I rarely wear shawls. But I need this one. Cableydropstitchgoodness.

Why I will never be a pediatrician

I finished peds on Friday. My last patient, a 3 year old boy, gave me one of his drawings on my last day. "Put it on your wall?" he said. "On your wall?" I told him I would. "You has a house?" he asked. I told him I had half a house (a duplex), which was a little confusing for him. He then wanted to know more about my house. Who lives there, are there kids, are there pets? Then, he wanted to know about the student nurse's house, also in detail.

See, he's obsessed with houses, with homes, because he knows on some level that he no longer has one.

He was admitted for child abuse. A relative had been suspicious for a while, but when she saw the burn he recently sustained, she grabbed him and his brother and went to the ER to start a case. His injuries are such that he will recover, physically. However, they are also the sort of injuries that could only have been inflicted by someone else. We're pretty sure we know who, but I obviously can't go into detail here. Right now, the concerned relative has custody, but who knows what that means in the long run?

The night he was admitted, I was on call. He screamed and cried and shook, but let us examine him. We didn't want to, really, but we had to document his injuries. But he was so afraid. By the next morning, he seemed to realize that he was safe. People here might insist on taking his blood pressure and temperature every 8 hours, but he got used to that pretty quickly. When I came in to round on him in the morning, he started automatically rousing himself from sleep and sitting up so I could listen to his heart and lungs. He knew the drill.

On my last day, he sat on my lap and played with his cars and trucks for a while. There was a construction site outside his window, so we matched toy backhoe to real backhoe, toy bulldozer to real bulldozer.

When I told him I finally had to go, he looked at me and said, "I come too?"