Pilgrims at Oak Ridge

The teacher claimed it was so plain, I only had to use my brain. She said the past of throw was threw, The past of grow - of course- was grew, So flew must be the past of fly, And now, my boy, your turn to try. But when I trew, I had no clue, If mow was mew Like know and knew (Or is it knowed Like snow and snowed?) The teacher frowned at me and said The past of feed was - plainly - fed. Fed up, I knew then what I ned: I took a break, and out I snoke, She shook and quook (or quaked? or quoke?) With raging anger out she broke: Your ignorance you want to hide? Tell me the past form of collide! But how on earth should I decide If it's collid (like hide and hid), Or else - from all that I surmose, The past of rise was simply rose, And that of ride was surely rose, So of collide must be collode? Oh darn these English verbs, I thought The whole thing absolutely stought! Of English I have had enough, These verbs of yours are far too tough. Bolt upright in my chair I sat, And said to her ...

Our little blog is getting neglected here lately. I think the biggest reason is that I just can't seem to come up with very many coherent thoughts. Even though I'm off medicine, I'm now doing my last block of pediatrics. It's not nearly as intense as medicine, but still keeps me pretty busy. And throw in a call (last week) and my final moonlighting shift (last night) and I just haven't been able to think about much besides sleeping and trying to keep up with my regular responsibilities at home. Here are some more random thoughts: 1. The pregnancy waddle? You just can't help it. I swear, I physically try to walk normally, but I just don't. Can't. Oh well. 2. Compression stockings are a blessing. Especially for those of us who are on our feet a lot. 3. A hot bath at the end of the day is sometimes just a glorious thing. 4. I found some fabric that I really like for my diaper bag, but only have a small fat quarter of it and can't figure out the designer...

First we ate..... Then we were showered ! Our sweet church was just so generous - and check out that ever-enlargening belly!

1. I've had several moments of panic recently. I'm on pediatrics this month, which involves examining all the newborns. Several of the babies I've taken care of were actually due in March. March - you know - the same month I'm due. Yikes! 2. We've had two showers now. Our little nursery is slowly filling up with stuff. At the shower on Monday, my friend Amanda planned a craft time instead of a game. It was perfect. Everyone made our little some sort of felt food for our baby. And we got our car seat, which to me seems like one of the truly essential baby items. Now we can take our baby home from the hospital. So maybe we will be ready..... 3. Tonight is my last call until after the baby comes. Woohoo! I'm praying for a quiet night since call makes me grumpy. I'm dreading it, but am definitely looking forward to not have any calls for a while. 4. I was suddenly paranoid that maybe the baby was breech this week. The baby has been head down for a while, but I...

The curtain is finished!! I also made a sweet little bunting out of the same fabrics to put on the wall over the changing table, but mom borrowed it to use as a decoration for another shower we're having in a few weeks, so no picture of that one yet. I think I'm mostly done with the nursery sewing for now. I'd still like to make a diaper bag, but am still formulating what I want to do for that. Any suggestions?

Since the snow was even prettier on Saturday morning, I thought I'd add a few more photos I took. Here is what I woke up to: We enjoyed a beautiful, snow-filled walk after breakfast. The snow was deep enough to cover my feet!

Snow brings out my inner 8 year old. After waking up from my post call nap, I couldn't wait to go out walking in the snow. I know my brother and sister in law in Iowa will laugh at the pitiful amount that is making me happy, but it is just so exciting to finally be getting some actual accumulated precipitation. At least for 1 night.

Sometimes, I think the hardest people to have sympathy for are people who seem to be hurting themselves. Last night, for instance, we admitted a 15 year old boy who had gotten several different kinds of pills and taken them together, just for fun. Unfortunately for him, these were several kinds of sedating medicines, and so his mom brought him in because he was stumbling around and acting funny. She seems reasonable, and is at the end her rope with him. She has tried to get him into some sort of treatment facility for his drug use, but everywhere has a waiting list. All I could think this morning was that he needed a big spanking. When we talked to him about his life, I don't think anything he told us was the truth. He's several grades behind in school, but that's not his fault . He also only used these pills yesterday because he was trying to save money . (It doesn't make sense to me, either.) I seriously just wanted to shake him to get him to understand that he was r...

Just yesterday during lunch, I was talking with one of my attendings and mentioning how I had never called in sick during residency. Never. I spoke too soon. I started feeling a little bad the night before last, but by yesterday afternoon I was feeling terrible - crampy stomach pains, tiredness, nausea. I knew there was some sort of GI bug that was slowly making its way through the residents, but was hoping it would skip me. I actually got one of the other residents to see me because I wanted to make sure everything was ok with the baby. (It was.) I came right home, crashed on the couch, and tried to sip on some gatorade. Growing up, my mom always said I was her best puker because I always managed to make it to the toilet. Sadly, last night the nausea was bareable until suddenly it wasn't. I told Jeff I needed the bucket, and promptly tossed my cookies all over the floor. Poor guy - just before I threw up, our dog actually threw up and he had just finished cleaning up the dog puke ...

I was off this weekend, giving me a little more time to do some more nursery sewing. Mom and Dad picked up our nursery furniture and brought it down on Saturday, so now our nursery is starting to look like an actual nursery. There is still lots to be done and sewn, but it's nice to be finished with the crib stuff.

Apparently, people don't like to come to the hospital in bad weather. Saturday, I was on call for 24 hours, and we only did three admissions. (!!) Considering our average daily admissions are around 10 or 11 (and recently it's been more like 13 or 14), this was awesome. At least for this 33weeks-pregnant lady. There was an "ice storm", consisting mostly of rain that froze on the trees, but I guess that was enough to keep people away. You'd think that the weather shouldn't matter, that sick people come when they are sick. It seems, though, that sometimes people come to the ER because they have nothing better to do, and if you look hard enough you might be able to find something wrong with them that warrants admission. I'm not sure. Today, was another gray, dreary day. It stayed in the low 40s all day and just drizzled and rained all day. I was on again today for day call, and we only got 1 admission. I think all my other day calls this month we've had...

There are certain words you don't want to hear your doctor use when talking about you as a patient. "Interesting" is one of those words. If I'm ever in the hospital, I want whatever is wrong with me to be called "routine" or "boring," and I want the intern taking care of me to think, "Ms. Tell in room 323 is just another (insert boring disease here) and to be able to say what the plan of care is without even thinking about it. This morning, all the residents on our team trekked down to the lab to look at the "interesting" spinal fluid of a patient we are taking care of. (You definitely don't ever want anything interesting enough to warrant a trip to the lab.) He has a rare type of meningitis that only AIDS patients get. Even the lab technicians and the infectious disease specialist commented on how "impressive" his slide was. That's another word you don't want to hear. The third word that is best to avoid? My...

The last several years I've noticed a certain trend. I'd started driving with the radio turned off. I liked driving in silence. I was a little bit worried about this. You see, all during my San Diego, and St. Louis days I was an avid radio listener. All sorts of things would I listen to on the radio. Top forty stations, hard rock stations, lots of alternative "90's" rock stations, and occasionally, (but rarely) country. I even went through an NPR phase. I used to listen to talk of the nation with Juan Williams on my way to the gym after lunch. It made me feel smart and well informed. But sometime after moving to Charleston things changed. I no longer desired the audial companionship of Juan or any of my musician friends. I longed to contemplate the sounds of silence. I figured this just meant that I was getting old. I was no longer the free spirited youth rebelling against the man through my participation in rock music. I was becoming contemplative, me...

I speak Spanish just about every day. Thankfully, I studied spanish for 3 years of high school and four years in college, and spent several summers in South America, so I'm very comfortable speaking Spanish and rarely have to use the interpreter. I've never felt so completely incompetent as I did on Saturday. A patient came in with contractions and bleeding at 24 weeks. Once we figured out she was really in labor, I tried to explain that at this age there was a good chance the baby would not live and that if the baby did live, there might be lots of serious health problems. I quickly realized that I have a limited vocabulary when it comes to trying to talk about resuscitation efforts in spanish. Then I had to deliver this 24 week baby, who was breech. It was a traumatic, awful delivery and we had a tough time getting the baby out. Because of the trauma from the delivery, we knew the baby was not going to make it. After the delivery, I had to tell this mama that her baby was no...