Tuesday update.

I started my Psychiatry rotation yesterday. Looks like I have six weeks of pretty good quality entertainment ahead of me. That's terrible to say... but let's be honest... it's true. I mean, apparently I just missed Jesus in the ER yesterday. Dadgummit.

(Also, just so you know, Condoleezza Rice knows the truth.)

In other news, just in case you weren't aware, the heat index reached 120 in Jackson today. Humidity above 80%. ONE HUNDRED TWENTY DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. I don't know what the actual temperature was, but who cares? What difference does it make if it felt like 120!!! (You know, I don't really get that whole "heat index" thing. Maybe this is the dumbest statement I've ever made, but I mean, if it feels like 120 degrees, how is that not the temperature? What's the point of an actual temperature if that's not what it feels like? I mean, is it just humans? Was it a mere 105 degrees for Oscar Bob today? Did my plant enjoy the actual temperature or did it "feel like" 120 to my gerbera daisy? See what I mean? Dumb. If it feels like 120, it is 120 as far as I'm concerned.) This is a joke. I can't live in this oppressive sauna much longer. Where am I? Death Valley? Ethiopia? Hell?? I need popsicles.

It's SHARK WEEK!!!!

One word of advice: if you or your loved one is ever unfortunate enough to have to be in the ICU, do not, under any circumstances, feel as if it is okay to light up a cigarette inside the ICU. Good grief. I mean, I didn't think people were that stupid, but as Rhonda would say, that's what I get for thinkin'. No cigs in the ICU. Thanks.

Somebody remind me to give Oscar Bob his heartworm pill tomorrow. Gracias.

Happy Tuesday.

spray paint, escape routes, and cows

I really need to stop watching HGTV. It's making me feel like my home decor is crappy, and I've been on a home improvement rampage. I rearranged the furniture, bought a flower pot, cleaned out and reorganized the guest room and closet (tubs complete with labels... my mother wouldn't believe it.), refinished a chest of drawers (well, in the process.. we'll see how it turns out..), and bought a new bedspread (which I've needed since Grayce peed and vomited on the one I had a year and a half ago. I've been using random, unmatching blankets... My room looked like a boy's college dorm room.)

So here is my semi-finished table project. I spray-painted his table that was brown and rusty. Mama, are you proud? My mother thinks you can spray paint absolutely anything. She loves to spray paint. That's her answer to everything.. "We could spray paint it!" Seriously. Everything.

Well, it's not quite done. Who chooses the hottest week of the summer to do outside projects? Genius. It needs another coat, but until Wal-Mart re-supplies their Ivy Leaf spray paint inventory and/or the temperature drops below 100 degrees, it's on hold. I like it. I have been looking for cushions for the chairs, but you would not believe how difficult it is to find round outdoor cushions! I mean nowhere. So anyway, semi-finished. Good enough for now.

On an entirely different note, one of our locks is broken. I don't know what happened, but when I tried to unlock the deadbolt today, it resulted in this:

 
Awesome. During this process, the lock was not unlocked. So our back door is deadbolted, and I don't have a key to open it. Now, that would be fine, except that there are 3 dogs in my house right now. They needed to pee. It was 110 degrees outside. I had been awake since 5am on this lovely Saturday morning. I was not in the mood to walk 3 dogs in the suffocating heat. So I let them out the window... duh. It turned into quite the escapade. Oscar thought it was the neatest thing ever. He jumped in and out of the window about 6 times. Just back and forth. Then he got his tennis ball from the yard, came back, and dropped it inside the window for me to throw. When I finally got him back in, every time I tried to shut the window, he tried to jump back out. Ridiculous dog. Polo just went out the window as if he does that everyday. The idea scared the crap out of Grayce at first. She wouldn't go through it. I had to push her out. She's a big dog, by the way. She just turned and looked at me from outside as if I'd lost my mind. The funniest thing was about an hour later, Grayce went over to the window and pawed at it (instead of the back door). Haha.. smart dog. (By the way, I went out the window too. My flower needed watering!)

Ok, so lastly, I have this fascination with these cows. [Stop laughing.] Every day on my way to and from UMC, I pass these cows. There are tons of them, and there are lots of little baby cows. Um, calves, I guess... Anyway, during the summer, they all stand in the pond. Just stand there. I like to watch them. I don't know why. It's not like I've never seen cows before. So for a while I've wanted to take pictures of them. They're in this field with a silo-looking thing, a pond, and an old white farmhouse in the background. I mean it just looks like it should be photographed. So the other day, I decided to take a picture. I didn't even get the farmhouse. There was too much traffic on the road, so I'll have to get some better ones later. I know right now you're thinking that I've lost my mind. Who cares about cows on the side of the highway? Maybe I should start sleeping more. Yes, definitely should get more sleep...

Ok... speaking of sleep... Buenas noches, amigas.

New things

I'm getting old. I have a house plant. Yep. I do. I have two of them, actually. And I feel this huge responsibility and, well, burden to keep them alive. So far so good. One of them is called a prayer plant. It's so beautiful! It was actually a plant that Mama, Mike, Mamaw, and Pap sent when Papaw passed away. There were so many flowers and plants that the funeral home stopped taking them and put the rest on a "hold account." Basically, people bought flowers, but the actual order was held. We'll just go get them whenever we want to put new flowers out there. I swear there are enough flowers to last another 15 years.  So anyway, I brought this plant home. At first, I didn't want one. I didn't want to look at a plant and think of my Papaw's funeral everyday. I decided that it would just remind me of him, not of a certain day or place or time. It does. I think it's pretty ironic that it's a "prayer plant," considering the circumstances. It's pretty. It's homey. I like it.

So I went over to my cousin Paige's house, and she has quite the collection of house plants. I was telling her that I'm trying my hardest not to kill my one plant. So what does she do? She gives me another one! I'm pretty dadgum excited about this one. It's an aloe plant. I told Mama that I hoped someone gets burned soon so I could whip it out, break a leaf off, and use it! I know that's terrible. I just meant a small, first degree, wimpy burn. Don't worry, I'm not going to throw boiling water on any houseguests. Be not afraid. Grayce may eat it first, anyway.

I guess actually I have 3 plants. One stays outside though. I'm pretty proud of it. Mama gave me and Katie both a gerbera daisy for Easter. I don't know why. She knows I don't do plants. However, I did keep it alive for about a month. Then I went home for a month to study for the Step. Do you think Katie watered my plant? Absolutely not. AND it got put on the ground (as opposed to the table where it lives), and Polo peed on it! Repeatedly! Upon my return, my plant was pretty dead. Hers was dead too, but she wasn't as heartbroken as I was. (Who do you think had been watering her plant since Easter?) Mine had a little bit of green left in a couple of stems, so per my mother's instructions, I cut off all the dead parts and started watering it. Lo and freakin behold it came back to life! I'm thrilled. I took some pretty pictures of them before. Mine is red; Katie's was pink. Before:

Red gerbera post-rebirth:

Enough with the plants. Gah.

I thought I was going to have one more "new" thing to put on my post, but thanks to Bonnie, it'll have to wait. Project spraypaint-my-rusty-old-iron-table has been postponed. Stay tuned.

Lastly, I just want to say that I've received so many messages, comments, emails, and texts about my last post. Thank you all for your sweet words, but I just spoke the truth. My grandfather was, is, and always will be an inspiration for me.  I'm so lucky to have had such an extraordinary man in my life for so long :)

Papaw Buster

Most of you who read my blog know that my Papaw died last week. He was absolutely an amazing man. He means so much to me, and I want to share his incredible story. 

"I am now ready. I fought a good fight. I have kept the faith. There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness." 2 Timothy 4:6-8

Papaw's name was Harry, but most people apparently didn't know that. He went by "Buster." He was one of nine children born to my great-grandparents, Ma and Grandpa Arnold (Ma lived to be 102 years old!). Being the last of 7 boys, I guess they'd run out of names because he was the only one that wasn't given a middle name. His oldest sister decided she wasn't thrilled about the name Harry and announced that she would be calling him Buster. And so she did. And so did everyone else. Once when he was in the hospital, I didn't know which room he was in, and I remember saying to Matt, "Do you think I should ask the desk about Harry or Buster?" 

Papaw worked in the oil field. He was the driller. At the age of 39, he had an accident on one of those rigs that left him paralyzed. Being in medical school, I've heard so many professors and older doctors tell us that patients are not their diseases. He's not a paraplegic, he's a man who happens to be paralyzed. See the difference? Don't define the person by his illness. In Papaw's case, I don't want to define him by his condition, but I think that he is absolutely defined by his reaction to it. 

He was 39 years old with 4 young children. Paralyzed. He'd never walk again. After his accident, doctors told my grandmother that he wouldn't live until nightfall. He did. Then they said he wouldn't live until morning. He did. Then they said he'd live a few days. He did. Then weeks, months. Then doctor after doctor told him that if he lived 5 or 6 years, he'd be lucky. That'd be a long life. Wrong. He lived 42 and a half years, which is unheard of. He watched his children grow up and give him 8 grandchildren. Then he got to know his 7 great-grandchildren. He outlived the doctors that told him he'd die. I think he thought that was funny, in a twisted sort of way.

The thing about my Papaw was that in my 24 years of life, I have never once heard him complain about being in a wheelchair. He was never bitter; he never said "why me?" He never got angry. He never gave up. He never used being paralyzed as an excuse for anything. I never knew him any differently, but I never thought he was really handicapped. He could get in and out of his chair and his bed by himself. He could get in and out of his car. He drove a blue Bonneville with hand controls, and I swear that must have been the biggest car ever made. That tan, leather backseat was big enough to do cartwheels in. He was an amazing cook, known from Franklin County to Jones County for his chili and coleslaw. He did laundry. He rolled his wheelchair out into the garden and picked vegetables. He shelled peas with the rest of us. He went anywhere he wanted to go. Just about the only thing he couldn't do was walk. He had a pair of wooden "arms"--pincher things so he could get things off the top shelf by himself. He made the best of his situation. He made it clear that he did not need anyone's help, either. His independence was everything to him. He couldn't put us up on his shoulders and carry us around as children, but he could let us stand on the spokes that stuck out behind his wheelchair and ride us around. We thought that was pretty fun. Even better than a shoulder ride. 

I once heard someone ask him if he ever wished he could walk. His answer was that he could be worse off. He said that he was lucky that he still had use of his arms, so he could do anything he wanted. He went to Warm Springs, Georgia to a rehabilitation center after his accident. His roommate was a quadriplegic. Papaw helped him get in and out of bed, and he'd get him a glass of water at night and hold it up to his mouth so he could drink. Papaw says that that's where he learned that he was lucky to have his arms, that he was much better off than some people, and that he'd be alright. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure if that's the attitude I would've had. I believe that that attitude is the reason he lived so long.  He made the most out of his condition. He learned to do everything he wanted to do. I'm not kidding when I say he didn't complain. Never.

Another amazing thing about Papaw is that I have never in my entire life heard him raise his voice in anger. One of my cousins recently realized this, and none of us can remember a single time when he yelled at anyone. That's not just because he didn't yell when we, the grandkids, were around either. He lived with all of us at some point. We were always there. He didn't yell. He was the strongest, yet the most gentle man I've ever known. Now, I'm not saying he never got mad. I'm just saying that I personally have never heard him raise his voice in anger, and I think that's pretty incredible.

He taught me so many things, and many of them without even using words. He taught me with his actions, his attitude, and his heart. He taught me to be strong and to never give up. He taught me that you can do anything if you try hard enough... anything. He taught me the importance of an education. He taught me to be gentle, to be cautious with my words, and to be slow to anger. Sound familiar? James 1:19: "Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters. Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger." Papaw lived it, unlike anyone I've ever known before.

He taught me a lot about hope and perseverance. Because of him, I will never give up on my patients. I'll fight for them and give them hope. You never know what people are capable of. You never know what God's plan is. I'll carry his memory in my heart, and because of him, I'll be a better person and a better doctor. I hope that one day my grandchildren see those same things in me. 

Don't you think he's amazing? I'm so grateful that I had my Papaw for 24 years. I'm so glad that I'm old enough to see his character and understand fully what an amazing man he was. I miss him, and I always will, but I know in my heart that the next time that I see him, for the first time ever, I'll have to reach up to hug him, and that makes me smile.

"For anybody who has ever lost a loved one, and you feel like you had to let go too soon,

I know it hurts to say goodbye, but don't you know it's just a matter of time

till the tears are gonna end, you'll see them once again, and in that moment...

Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that God is love, and love has come for us all.

Every heart set free, everyone will see that God is love, and love has come for us all.

Oh, and on that day, we will stand amazed at our Savior, God, and King." 

For the first time in 42 and a half years, Papaw is walking. Isn't that beautiful? I bet he hasn't sat down yet. I imagine that when he got to those pearly gates, Jesus said something like this to him:

‎"I am the Word that leads all to freedom

I am the peace the world cannot give

I will call your name, embracing all your pain

Stand up, now, walk, and live."

blueberry crunch, hold the blueberries

I'm working on my domesticity. I hate cleaning. I like to cook, but for the last couple of years, I've been too tired to do it. There are a lot of nights that I just eat random crap until I'm not hungry anymore. One day last week I ate some grapes, 3 tomatoes, and cereal straight out of the box. Another night, I boiled some broccoli and made some toast. For the most part, if it can't be made within 10 minutes, I'm over it. I realize this is pitiful. This cannot continue throughout my adult life. So I'm working on it. My family put together this amazing cookbook last year:

I've been cooking things out of it lately. It's helping me with my domestic issue. I used to attempt to make things like my Mamaw (on the other side of my family). However, I cannot make things based on directions like "a little of this, a smidge of that, just enough to make it look good." Make it look good? Who cares what it looks like? I need it to not taste like rubber. My life revolves around science. I need an exact measurement. What the crap is a "smidge"? Please. I guess Mamaw is going to have to keep making things herself until I develop some kind of 6th culinary sense. Anyway, so this book is all of my dad's family's personal recipes. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make my great-grandmother's pineapple upside down cake from scratch... I do not make things from scratch. It turned out amazing, and I was quite proud of myself. We called my great-grandmother "Ma," and she lived to be 102 years old. Just FYI.

Ok, so I had these intentions of making Aunt Ruby's mandarin orange cake, which sounded awesome. Still does. Maybe I'll make that once I learn to read the directions. Maybe I'll rename my blog "Stupid crap I do." I feel like half my blog is just that... stupid crap I do. So this recipe isn't exactly from scratch. It involves cake mix. The key, though, is to substitute the mandarin oranges and juice for the water while making the cake batter. I read that. Then I got all my crap out. Then I forgot about the "don't put water in there" part. So I mixed the cake batter all up, con agua, re-read the directions, and realized that I wasn't going to be making mandarin orange cake today.

Fail.

So. I thought to myself... I have no icing, so I can't just make a regular cake. So I flipped through the Arnold family cookbook to find something that involved regularly-prepared cake mix and other ingredients that I happened to have. No dice. So I decided to make blueberry crunch without the blueberries. I guess I could just call it pineapple crunch, and it wouldn't sound stupid, but anyway...

Re-do:

If you've never had blueberry crunch, you're missing out. It also involves pineapples (I didn't just make that part up. I try not to be inventive when it comes to cooking. It usually doesn't turn out like I think it's going to.) You basically pour some crushed pineapples (and blueberries) in the bottom of a pan, add some sugar and butter, pour the cake batter on top, pour some more butter on top (this is really healthy) and top it with pecans. And bake. Voila! I like to add "refrigerate for a while" at the end of the directions. I'm not down with hot fruit. No cobblers for me. I like my fruit cold. It tastes much better after it's been refrigerated overnight.

So about those pecans. My dad's pal has a bunch of pecan trees. So every year, he goes and picks a million pecans and shells them and ziplocs them for me. God forbid we go to the grocery store and buy pecans like normal people. So I have 10 bags of pecans in my freezer. I mean, I'm not complaining. Pecans are expensive. Relatively. So are walnuts. It's a nut, not an imported delicacy. Geez. Why do you have to charge me $7 for a bag of nuts? That seems a little ridiculous to me. So I'll take my ziplocked pecans with a smile. Thanks, papa.

Along with  the pecans, my kitchen has just been re-stocked from The Garden. If you missed my post about my family's aversion to store-bought produce, here's the explanation for the pictures below. We are fully stocked with creamed corn, corn on the cob, pecans, green beans, squash....

...peppers, plums, tomatoes, cucumbers....

...homemade pickles, salsa, corn relish, plum jelly, pickled squash....

Seriously.

I told you that The Garden was serious business. So anyway, back to my blueberry crunch without the blueberries. It turned out fabulous.

Be back soon with mandarin orange cake--sin agua.

"I only felt like an idiot once today!"

This is going to be a long post. Just warning you. Apparently my blog is in high demand, and I don't want to let people down by leaving out any important play-by-plays in my spectacularly exciting and dramatic life. (Hey, Mom and Beth Ellen.)

First of all, it's freaking hot outside. I mean, just in case you didn't notice. Is it always this hot this early? I swear it's not. That hike to the parking lot in pants, closed-toe shoes, and a jacket is less than awesome in the afternoons. (I know what you're thinking: "take off the jacket, stupid." Well, then I lose things out of my pockets, and then I'm searching my car and retracing my steps in 110 degrees for my reference notebooks and penlights and I'm sweating and... it's just not worth it.) I think I'm going to get one of those tacky windshield reflector things so my car isn't so hot after baking in the stadium lot for 9 hours. Sorry if I've offended any proud windshield-reflector owners, but let's be honest... those things are not cool. They're tacky. Don't kid yourself.

Anyway... we are finally out of that stupid classroom! We had a "Clinician Ceremony" before we started this year. They gave us new coats with our names embroidered on them to make us feel special for a second before we spend the rest of the year feeling like incompetent dumbasses. We all went to Julep afterwards, and, well, 8:00am orientation was pretty miserable the next day. Here's part of the photo shoot.

SO. Finally! I spend time with people and not textbooks  as of a couple of weeks ago. I am starting out on Pediatrics, and I love it! Pediatricians are nice people. They don't yell at you. Thank God. Feeling stupid is bad enough; getting yelled at out loud for being stupid is ten times worse. I'll take passive aggressive over borderline verbal abuse any day. Our team sees general peds patients and a couple of specialties, including pediatric neurology! IMAGINE my nerdy excitement. It's been awesome, but we were pretty clueless for a while. Ok... who am I kidding... we're still clueless, but it's getting better. The first day of our rotation, we were on call. The first freakin day! I didn't even know where to find the charts, let alone what to write in them. I remember getting on the elevator, looking at Morgan, and saying, "That was like the 6th dumb thing I've done today." We laughed at ourselves. Yesterday, I said, "I only felt like an idiot once today!" I dare say that's improvement.

When I started this blog, I said it wasn't going to be a "med school blog." Well, it has occurred to me that med school pretty much IS my life. It's really all I have to talk about, much to the dismay of Matt Newman. I think his stomach is getting a little stronger these days, though. He doesn't cringe quite as much when I casually mention graphically detailed, interesting-only-to-me pathologies that I've discovered. Lately, he even lets me tell him about things at the dinner table, which was "against the rules" for the last couple of years. "Laura... for the love of God, let me eat first." Haha.. poor guy. He's getting more into it. It takes us 2 hours to watch "House" because he asks 200 questions, which results in  way too much use of the pause button. Thank God for DVR, right?

Fortunately, my stories are getting a bit more exciting. Usually the best ones are about the crazy things people say and do, not the medicine part of it. For example... A couple of days ago, a well-meaning lady comes up to me and says "Let me ask you a question. Mamaw always told me that insurance pays for the pillows in here. Is that still true? Or do y'all re-use 'em nowadays? Mamaw always said if you go to the hospital, you get to take them pillows because you paid for 'em anyway. So I was just wonderin'. The reason I'm askin' is 'cause I been needin' some new pillows. But I didn't wanna walk outta here with all them pillows and y'all thinkin I'm a-crazy." Too late, lady. Good grief.

Some of our stories are a little too R rated for this blog. (Ob/Gyn at a University hospital gets pretty exciting, apparently.) John got attacked by a psych patient. I would've given anything to have seen that one go down. One of the peds floors had Morgan's pager number down as "housekeeping." Housekeeping gets paged at all hours of the night, apparently. There's been crying and fainting and near-vomiting. Batson, the pediatric hospital, is under construction, so our "student lounge" is currently a cleaned-out former housekeeping closet, complete with washer and dryer hook-ups. About 3 people can fit comfortably in that room. There are 17 of us.

So anyway, it's pretty great, excluding the 5:00am alarm clock. Someone remind me why I didn't want to live in Belhaven...? Oscar Bob hates me every morning for waking him up before the sun. Speaking of which, I think it's bedtime. Have a happy Wednesday!

Step 1 is over... Hallelujah!!

Have you ever taken a test for 8 freaking hours? It truly is awful. I mean really, really, really awful. I've never been so glad to have something over with in my life. The funny thing is, I took an 8 hour exam, and I can only remember 2 of the questions. That is some serious subconscious mental blocking, my friends.

I studied for 12 hours a day (or more) for almost a month, and last Monday I took Step 1. I stayed with my Mama in Hattiesburg for the month... best decision EVER. I have the best Mama. She not only cooked me dinner every night (and none of it involved the microwave), but she also did my laundry, changed my sheets, set me up a "study space," gave me some good pep talks, and she even drove me to Mobile to take my test. We drove down on Sunday night, went to dinner, and watched the show on TLC about the guy with half a body. It was nice to just relax a little bit the night before the test (between waves of impending doom and nausea). After my test on Monday, Mama picked me up, gave me a big hug, and drove me back to Hattiesburg for some Mexican food. Thank you, Mama... I couldn't have done it without you. Someone told her the other day that it was time to cut the apron strings. This made me panicky. I said, "Please, Mama! Don't ever cut the apron strings!" Haha... I have no doubts that she won't.

This is where I spent every waking moment of May 2010.

Chelsea was pretty bored with my studies.

Now I get 2 whole weeks (that are halfway over) to enjoy the sunshine before I officially begin the life of days filled only with fluorescent lighting. I'll never have a tan again.

Ah.. now that I have some time, there's lots to catch up on. Right before our finals and boards back in April, three other girls and I threw a baby shower for our friends, Matt and Laura Miller. (Not to be confused with this Matt and Laura, whose names do not belong in the same sentence as the word "baby.") Matt is in my class, and his wife Laura has gotten to be a good friend of mine as well. They are expecting their baby boy next month!! I absolutely can't wait. She's so funny... She is having the baby at Women's Hospital and not at UMC. When asked about it, she said that there's no way she's letting a bunch of short-coats near her newborn baby! Thanks for the confidence, Laura. Just kidding. I wouldn't want my husband's friends in my L&D room either. Here are a few pictures from the shower:

Cutest cake EVER.

Rowdy bunch, we are.

Macey, Hayes, Me, and Morgan, and Matt & Laura.

Another exciting thing has happened during all this study-torture. For Mother's Day, Mama, my sister, and I went to my Mamaw and Pap's house. It was the best day of this past month. On the drive home, I realized that I hadn't thought about school or studying or the Step one single time all day. I enjoyed my family and ate Mamaw's cooking. While we were there, she told me that she was going to give me one of her sets of china. I was so excited! It's so beautiful, and more importantly, it's hers. I'm very sentimental about it. I can't wait to use it! (And yes, I plan on actually using my fine china. Life's too short to keep your china in a cabinet.) Here's what it looks like:

Isn't it pretty? My pictures just don't do it justice. I love the light blue and silver. My great-grandmother actually had a set of china identical to this one, which I think is pretty cool.

Here are a few of my favorite Mother's Day pictures. For some reason, every single time there is a holiday or some other gathering at my grandparents' house, there is a mandatory photo-shoot in the front yard, whether only a few of us are there, or if all 50 of us are there (I have quite a large family). This is usually orchestrated by my mother. At least when we're all old, there won't be any shortage of pictures from the good ol' days.

Mothers and daughters.

This is my Pap. And let me tell you one thing about this man: he can fix a mean ponytail.

Somebody give this woman an award...

Two of my absolute favorite people in the whole world...

Anyway, I guess that's about it. I am an M3!! I'm so excited to be out of a classroom and into the hospital! I start out on June 8 on Pediatrics. Cheers to the first, last, and only 2 weeks of summer--