Running in the rain

Whee ooo.  I've nearly caught up with everything that I'd put off while studying and it's a good feeling.  I've had time to do a couple of fun things:

Celebrating my roommate Dana's birthday (homemade ice cream cake - a new favourite!)


Bekki Wallace, my really good friend (since Grade 2!) got married and I got to go to her wedding reception - it was a western theme and a good time was had by all. Jeffrey and Alita came with me.


Edmonton has been super rainy - my garden is growing well but we're having  difficulty keeping up with the running.  We got caught out in a thunder storm and got DRENCHED - but had a good time.  At least you don't get sweaty when running in a downpour.

All in all, things are good.  I'm chief resident for the ID program this next year so I'm trying to do a lot of stuff for that as well.  What fun....ha ha.  Looking forward to spending a week home at the end of the month.

Finally!!!

Hmm, after feeling guilty for 6 months, I've finally decided to do a whirlwind review.

December - a very cold month in Edmonton (aka "the Frozen North", "Outer Darkness", "why do I live here") and a very cold month to move but Dana, my new roommate, and I managed it and are now established in our new house. It's lots of fun and old and drafty but there are little apples on the wallpaper in the kitchen - cool. AND it has a washer and dryer and a dishwasher HURRAY - I'm moving up in the world.

I also got to take a weekend trip to Montreal for a vaccine course. I had only about 3 hours off the whole time I was there and walked around for a little while - unfortunately it was -20 degrees celsius (-4 degree farenheit for you American luddites) and so I had to curtail my adventures somewhat and go back to study more about vaccines.


A cold view of Montreal


Yep, didn't see much of Montreal this trip - this summer I'm going back


Holiday party for work - these are the other Infectious Diseases Residents I work with

I had arranged to work over Christmas as I wanted to be home over New Year's for the big Salmon She-bang so didn't really do much for Christmas (aside from see patients in the ICU - actually it wasn't that bad). I did spend Christmas Eve with one friend and then had Christmas Dinner with some other friends the next day.

Most exciting was when I got to go home to Calgary to see everyone. I was the last of my siblings to arrive home for my 5 days of mandatory leave and I was super excited to see them and all their kids. It was great to be with all of them and the amounts of gifts exchanged were ludicrous really. So many birthdays and Christmas made for a gift marathon.


All the gift openings etc. gave great photo ops to the paparazzi


A bunch of my absolute favorite people

New Year's Eve wasn't my favorite holiday ever this year, I won't elaborate but let's just say that my theory of obsessive compulsive handwashing being adequate infection control around numerous barfy toddlers was shot to bits. I recovered in perfect time to go back to work. (Fortunately I only had to work 2 days because then I got to go on vacation HURRAY!!)

January: My friend Nancy and I went on a Florida vacation - it's kind of non-original but hey, it was warm and we had a good time!! The first week was actually spent on a cruise and then the second week on a road trip - down to the Florida Keys and then up to the Fort Lauderdale area. Some highlights:

"kissing" the Rays in Grand Caymen (apparently it's good luck!?!)



Ahh, the cruise lifestyle - Joanne style



Honduras - (I fell in love with this monkey, despite knowing how many weird viruses I could catch from it)



Nancy's new Honduran friend


Mayan ruins of Tulum in the Yucatan



The real reason the Mayans built in the Yucatan Peninsula

Waiting for the bus in Belize

Part of the old road through the Florida Keys - has anyone seen that rather terrible Schwartzenegger movie "True Lies"? - filmed close to here (keep in mind though, that the new road, from which this picture is taken, doesn't have large gaps in it)





YAY, back in Madagascar for a moment - ringtailed lemurs at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida

Whew, what a trip!!

February:

The beginning of the studying.  I did get to go to Vancouver for the annual Canadian Infectious Diseases Conference.  It was lovely to get away from the cold for a little while and I presented a short paper on an odd parasite infection I'd seen in clinic.   (Mansonella ozzardi for anyone interested)

Here's a picture of Alanoud and me going for a walk in Stanley Park (Alanoud is the other Infectious Diseases fellow in my year - her native language is Arabic and she's currently trying to teach me...it's not really going that well to be honest).  Alanoud is quite petite and I am very tall so we sort of look a bit like a circus act unfortunately.

March:  

Studying (written portion of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Exam)

April:  

Studying (oral portion of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Exam)

I am not joking, that's quite honestly all I did, except for when I was working.

May:

I took a little trip to Ottawa to take the oral portion of my exam on May 9th.  When I came out of it I was almost positive that I'd failed it - I felt like I completely bailed on one of the stations but I think in the end I did OK (despite saying HYPERreflexic when I meant HYPOreflexic and forgetting the name of the drug treatment of SIADH and a million other little things).  In any case, they passed me so I'm now, after 9 years, finally able to practice medicine in Canada without supervision.  I'm going to take the U.S. Board exam in August as well so we'll see how that goes.


Flowers to celebrate passing the exam - from the people in my division of ID - at least someone buys me flowers!!

Since then I've been trying to catch up with everything I've let slide (eg this blog) and connecting with a few friends.  I planted the garden this weekend for my funny little house and I'll probably update on the blog.  I have no cute children or pets to post pictures of on my blog so it'll have to be my tomato plants I guess.

Moving is tiresome

Moving is indeed tiresome! I'm currently trying to move everything in my little apartment, which doesn't seem so little at the moment, to the upper level of a house. My apartment is currently a complete disaster.



I'm moving in with a friend and she agrees that the new place is way nicer than where I am now. I, personally, will be very happy to not be living behind a pub anymore (the starving student lifestyle is getting a little less than endearing after 12 years of post-secondary education). It's just going to be very tricky as I am supposed to be in Montreal at a conference the same day that I'm supposed to be moving, hmmmm. Will keep you posted.

Still alive in the frozen north

Actually, it's not really that frozen - we're having a really nice fall. I just like to say that so that people feel sorry for me because I live in Edmonton. By the way, Edmonton is a perfectly nice city, I'm just getting a little sick of it after 7.2 years (and counting) and I always feel waaay out of the loop. Hmmm, part of that could be what I do for a living and the fact that I'm apparently compulsively unable to keep up-to-date with people other than those I see every day despite having several email addresses, a facebook account and a great long-distance plan. It's really quite atrocious. Anyway, for all of you (and especially John - so I won't be at the bottom of his "People who haven't blogged recently" list - he's still my most irritating little brother) this entry is an attempt to make up for the last 4 1/2 months that aren't recorded on my blog.

After a fabulous trip through East Africa and Zanzibar (see some pictures below)...

Everyone at a village in Uganda



The central bus station in Kampala, Uganda


At the Equator (Uganda)



Eating lunch in shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro (you can sort of see it in the background)





Maasai women

Alita and I in a Maasai mud hut

Real life on the Serengeti

Can you see the leopard?





The endless herds of zebra and wildebeest

The Guineafowl that stole Cathy's lunch

Pumbaa!!






The end of the safari


Zanzibar!!




I started my Infectious Diseases training on July 1. (By the way, NEVER get sick the first week of July in North America - all the doctors are completely new and haven't the slightest idea what they're doing.) I finished my 3 years of general internal medicine and so I'm now sub-specializing in Infectious Diseases (what we like to affectionately call "ID"). I started in the microbiology lab and learned all about what happens to your pee after you put that little container in that little cupboard in the wall and what happens to that big Q-tip thing after the doctor sticks it down your throat etc etc. It was kind of fun.

August was spent on the "ID consult service" which means that anytime anyone has a question about an infectious disease in the hospital they call us for advice. It gets really busy (ie. I worked about 80 hour weeks that month). It's everything from someone who had surgery who now has a wound infection to malaria in someone who was travelling to someone with a new HIV diagnosis to someone on chemotherapy who has a weird fever and rash and all sorts of other things. It's really interesting but tires me out.

(I unfortunately have no pictures of these two months - except for a bunch of weird rashes/wounds that I took pictures of to teach my med students and I don't think I'll post that!!)

September I was on the Pediatric ID consult service. Very much the same as August, but with kids and somewhat less busy but no less stressful because although kids are much healthier than adults in general, a much greater proportion of their illness is due to infectious causes AND because it's really much harder to see sick kids.

The best part of that month though was my trip to Chicago. It was my birthday gift to myself because I really wanted to see my little nephew David (and Scott and Sue Ann of course hee hee). Dang is he ever cute. We toured around, shopped, saw some fish in the aquarium, ate good food and generally had a great time. I was only gone for 5 days but it was a nice break.








The end of September I rotated back into the microbiology lab but can't say much about that because highlights were instead a trip to San Diego for the IDSA conference (Infectious Diseases Society of America) where I presented a poster and went to some great talks AND got to visit Rachel and Scott McKeon and their kids Audrey and Jonny!! It was great to see them and I had a blast playing with the kids - they were nice enough to let me stay for Scott's birthday!



Later in the month I also got to go to another conference - Alberta Society of Infectious Diseases Conference (bit of a wind fall lately by way of conferences) in Banff at a very nice hotel. It was fun - we climbed up Sulphur Mountain with Esther and Abdu, two residents I worked with in Uganda, who are now here doing an exchange in Edmonton. It was pretty cold so we got to ride the gondola back down the mountain (it was free for those who climbed up - pretty good deal!!).





I'm now back on the adult ID consult service, this time at a different hospital - our "inner-city" hospital - at least as close as you get to inner-city in Edmonton (population ~1 million) and so am seeing lots of weird and wonderful stuff. I also got to go down to Calgary last weekend for my mom's birthday (I'm trying to help her with the cleaning incident to all the renovations my parents are doing) and luckily enough got to go to Ross Blaszczyk's mission farewell talk. That was really neat!

Whew!! That's really a long blog, if you lasted this long, you're amazing and you deserve to win a prize. I'll try and be better but my life is not as exciting as all my siblings/cousins lives seem to be (or at least I don't have any kids so I can't fill up my blog with cute pictures...maybe I should get a fish or something...)
Hmmm, have to think about that.