One Month Out (...or "what I did on my summer vacation")

     Today officially marks one month since I graduated from medical school.  It seems like it was just last week that I was up in Maine with all of my classmates, unable to believe that we had made it that far, survived the four years, and that someone was going to give us our diploma and unleash us on our unsuspecting victims (um...patients).

    Kind of made me think...where did the last month go?!  Well, since I owned next to no furniture (read: a rug, a small dresser, and a trunk/ ottoman), I had to decide on and buy an entire living room set, and bedroom furniture.  Thanks to a loan from the good old "bank of mom and dad" I was able to find some stuff at a discount furniture store to at least take care of the essentials.  Note - a dining room table was not considered an essential right off (especially since the one I want from Crate and Barrel costs about $900), so if you come to my house for dinner we can eat on folding chairs on my front porch, or picnic-style on a towel on my living room floor like I've been doing (I definitely don't trust myself to eat on my nice new light beige sofa!).  It's fancy around here, what can I say?

   I was lucky enough to find a nice apartment close to the hospital down here and to have two fellow residents (both of whom graduated from my school as well - one with me, and one last year) as my upstairs neighbors.  I really felt like I needed to live on my own, but it's nice to know that if I need anything, they're right upstairs.

  The apartment is in an older home, and definitely needs/ needed some work.  Some things I won't be tackling since I'm only going to be here for 3 years and I don't own the place - ie refinishing hardwood floors, upgrading from oil heat, replacing kitchen appliances with the stainless ones I really want; But other things clearly HAD to go - ie the mustard/ lemon yellow kitchen.  And I don't mean just some unfortunate wall paint, whoever lived here before apparently didn't do anything halfway... the walls, cabinets, trim, door, window casings, and counters were all the same disgusting shade.  See for yourself:

      Hurt my retinas!  There's my awesome dad helping me out with the sanding, and taping, and removing cabinet doors.  Thankfully he was able to take a few days off to drive down with me and help get me started on the kitchen transformation.  Unfortunately everything takes longer than you think it will, and one weekend was just not enough time to get it all done, so I had to tackle the final coat(s) on the cabinets, as well as painting the walls and counter tops (praise whoever it was at Rustoleum that invented counter top paint) by myself.  But I think all the hours (days) of hard work and inhaling paint fumes (that counter top paint is awesome, but it definitely kills a few brain cells... I just hope they weren't the ones holding on to the last traces of my medical knowledge!)  were definitely worth it.  You be the judge:

Ta Da!!  The picture doesn't really do the color scheme justice, but even so I think you can tell it's better than yellow!  The counter top paint isn't the most durable thing in the world, so I definitely have to be careful not to let water sit on it, etc.  I kind of gave it a bit of a tattoo already - set a bag of shredded cheese on it, which then condensated (is that a word...?) and the expiration date transferred to the counter top.... whoops!  Oh well, live and learn, I'll probably have to touch up the counter paint sometime in the 3 years I'm living here anyway.
     After the painting there was a LOT of cleaning (seriously, the people who lived here before lived like filthy little pigs, and had evidently never heard of  cleaning supplies)... there was gum on my bedroom floor that was attracting ants... gross!  And after the cleaning there was unpacking.
  At this point, my living room is mostly done, as is my bedroom, and the kitchen is complete... my dining room is about as un-complete as it can get, and my office also needs a lot of work.  All in due time (by which I mean paychecks).
    Last Monday we started orientation - which so far has involved meeting a whole lot of people whose names I've already forgotten (sorry!) and doing a whole bunch of paperwork/ administrative things.  Also, listening to presentations on all sorts of super exciting topics such as EMR (electronic medical records) training, OSHA, HIPPA, safety and security, blah blah blah.  For the last two days we've been taking an ACLS course (advanced cardiac life support.... AKA how to try to not let people die who are really really trying to die).  Side note: there are a lot of acronyms in medicine, eh?  Tomorrow will be day 3 of the ACLS course, and will involve a written and practical skills test - both of which I should be studying for instead of writing this, but my brain is too fried at this point!
  So, this post wasn't a whole lot more exciting than the last one, sorry.  Things will get more interesting once I'm actually up and running doing doctor-y things.  Instead of boring you all to death (assuming anyone actually reads this thing) with the monotonous details of residency orientation I think I'll devote the next couple of posts to telling you a little more about me, and what I do outside of medicine, as well as talk about the process of actually getting to the point of being able to be called "doctor."  The process can be confusing, and I've found that a lot of people really don't understand what it's really all about.  Case in point - I recently printed some graduation photos out at a local RiteAid and when the cashier looked thru them she asked what I graduated from...
Me: Medical school.
Her: Oh, cool, so you're a nurse!
Me: No, a doctor.
See?  To a lot of people no matter what type of school you go to it's automatically assumed that girl = nurse, boy = doctor... not that there's anything wrong with being a nurse, they save our butts many times over and often know what's going on with our patients more so than we do... not to mention that it's hard work and they get little credit for doing it much of the time, but... I went to medical school, not nursing school, so... I'm a doctor, not a nurse.  (Definitely no power trip intended here, I don't mean for it to sound that way, I just want a little recognition of the extra four years of hell I went through, and the deeper financial hole I'm in as a result!).
    Anyway, I'll dedicate a few posts to (attempting to) reveal some of the mysteries of the process, so if you're a family member, a wannabe doc, or someone in the general public with a specific question you want answered, leave it in the comments and I'll do my best!  Until then I'm off to dream sweet dreams of ACLS algorithms...."Annie, Annie, are you ok!?"