Internship

Now that I can say we are in recovery mode I'd like to talk about last year and David's internship. In one of my posts last year I mentioned that we did nothing for the 4th of July and that David did not get to join us in Idaho for Christmas.... at all. Well to be honest internship year was pretty tough, not as tough as some (ie- surgery), but David was still gone plenty.

 His first rotation in the ICU was 4 weeks of 6-6pm, 6-8pm, 6-10pm, a day off, 8pm- midnight, repeat. That one was tough but I think I hated night float more (that is when he works all day and basically only comes home to sleep) because I didn't get to sleep with him and we had to be quiet while he slept at home during the day (that always stinks). Thankfully night float is only 2 weeks. HOWEVER, one of the second year internal medicine residents randomly decided to drop out of the program so David got to do a second ICU and night float rotation in November/December, along with surgery and renal. Basically he was never home so our plan to cope was to run away to Idaho for about 2 months.

His first day as Dr. Warden. So young, so naive.

Did I mention that David came home late almost all the time while on the ICU shift, especially on the 6- 8pm days. He reported his hour overages a couple of times and was then told to stop doing that. Interns and residents have new and better rules so that hospitals can't run their workers into the ground like they did in the past, but they still only do so much. These hours are even worse for those in surgery. Here are just a couple of different reasons why not reporting his overage hours sucks-
A) then David and other interns still get overworked
B) interns and residents are salaried so no bonuses and
C) they can get "talked to" like David did for reporting it.
What's interesting to me is that I'm sure there is some kind of fine that the hospital pays when they have employees who go over on their hours so I'd like to know where that money goes. Just a thought.

night float.

When we got home from Idaho David was essentially working 6 days a week 12-14 hours each day. It stunk. We have been filling out tax forms and David and I both guestimated (for one of the forms) that he works about 75 hours a week. Which like I will repeatedly say IS way better than the 80-100 hours a week that his dad used to work or the 100+ some odd hours some of our friends in surgery work, but comparing bad and horrible aren't going to make me feel better about barely ever having him around. Also he kind of got tricked out of one of his weeks of vacation last year. I won't go into detail but it was super frustrating.

Last year he even took naps. David NEVER takes naps.
The farther into this doctor stuff the more irritated I get at people being irritated at doctors (in general) or how much they make, or the tax laws that will eventually be taking a third of our money or the fact that we owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in school debt (some of those loans are at 8% and we won't get to write off ANY of the interest on our taxes). It's not all because we, or I, want to be rich because I would gladly donate a third of our money if it meant that the government didn't get it. I'm all for giving back but the government is not a charity. I guess the other thing that I get frustrated about pretty quickly is watching David and the other great men (a couple of women too :) work so hard and then to have people poo-poo that.

Sleeping at church. Poor guy. I'm sure if we were to look at his attendance last year he could have qualified as inactive. He had to work SOO many Sundays :(
I don't know how to not feel personally slighted by some of the rude comments that people make about doctors and how "rich" they are. Hello! My husband is never home and we haven't even had a couch for the last year and a half because we have been trying to save! Don't talk to me about being selfish. Or use doctors as an all-encompassing way to complain about people who are wealthy. I absolutely believe that there are doctors out there who are total jerks, but that is not unique to medicine. Everyone has choices in life. We chose a life of patience when we chose medical school. We have put in 4 more years of school and NO pay and we are about to put in 6 years of lower pay. It was our choice and I am happy with it, but I don't like being told we are selfish or "rich" with such a negative connotation.

He is super exhausted in this picture. He's about to leave for night float. Did I mention that he also kind of got roped into doing 2 extra weeks of night float last year? Yea last year just stunk.

I just really dislike people making me feel bad about our career choices. I wish people would stop complaining. Lets all complain about people who are actually worth being irritated over like worthless celebrities who make millions for being naked and holding bottles of perfume (haha I saw a perfume add the other day and WOW). I guess what I'm trying to say is I love David and I think he really is one of THE MOST altruistic people I know and have ever known. So when I see his career choice being demonized I can't help but be frustrated really fast. I'm sure it goes with the territory though because one of our friends who was in law school is struggling with similar stereotypes. Can't we all just get along? That's all rant over.

Basically last year was awful and the farther away from it we get the more I realize how stressed out, sad and lonely we all really were. This is a good moment to mention before I end this post that this year so far has been 100 times better. We (David especially) are getting some much needed rest and togetherness. Doing "hard" things is tough, but the blessing that are starting to come to us through David's sacrifices are so wonderful. We truly are so blessed. 

Defeated!

Today I finished my last CLEP test. That makes my total school credits earned in the school year 2011- 2012 54! It was crazy tough and I studied so much that I never even had questions about certain topics that I studied, frustrating yes but I passed so not as much as it could have been. That is just how CLEP tests work you are required to know just about as much as possible and will be tested on 90 questions. As I walked out of the big empty science building (which also happens to be oddly empty in sort of a creepy way) on campus for the third and final time my mind was swimming. 

All I could think about were the LONG nights when I was still struggling with thrush or several of the more difficult stretches since I had Davie when I would stay up until 3 in the morning just to get homework done. 

My own little isolated corner of the library.

Then there was this last week of studying at the library and taking Davie to a sitter for 3-4 hours of the day. Davie did great he didn't cry when I left and all of his sitters said he napped and was not fussy. THEN this weekend Davie got his very FIRST fever.... really, the timing couldn't have been worse. Thankfully though Davie was getting better and his fever was completely gone by Wednesday. I just felt so bad leaving him even for the 4 hours to study when I knew he was all sad and not feeling well. And not that I didn't before but I have a greater respect for those of you out there who have to take your babies to daycare everyday. David's mom had to do it for a while and so did mine. 

All I can say is that it is has been TOUGH but soooo worth it. I was really questioning my ability to continue with school full time since Spring semester ended but now that I successfully finished that last test I am going to continue to try and graduate with my undergrad when David graduates from medical school. I'm half way done baby Wa-Hoooo!

I did Laundry

This was one of those days where Davie decided I was not going to be able to read ANYTHING or do any school work, however he was nice enough to act entertained while I did a TON of laundry. I think it was all the clothes being waved by his head as I folded.

 Davie and I in our checkered outfits

I didn't feel like I had gotten anything done all day until David came home and said "wow you got a lot of laundry done!" That was when I looked at all the MANY piles of clothes I had folded and realized... oh yea, I guess I did!

Did I mention he created a new pile of laundry as I folded the old? I guess I will let that slide.

Projects- Post #3

The Bathroom Wallpaper Project

Before all the changes the wallpaper in the bathroom reminded me of some of the 90's style wallpaper in a trailer house or in a camper. Don't get me wrong it could have been much worse and way more ugly but that doesn't mean I had to like it.

Then I stayed up late and tore a bunch of it down

Notice the ugly dirty-gold vanity light. I cleaned that stupid thing so many times and it was still so dirty when we took it down. In the end I was so glad we just replaced it.

Once we got all the wallpaper and most the glue off the walls we had to use texture spray because there is water damage and we wanted it to be less visible. 

This border was turning out to be like the one in our kitchen so we decided to use the sander to remove it instead of spending the entire day scraping it off. I'm still wondering if that was a good idea but it was worth the risk. 

This is our toilet, which conveniently fit inside a 55 gallon trash bag, while we sprayed the walls with wall texture spray (basically really gritty spray paint). 

FINALLY painting yay!

Ugly light by the shower curtain it used to have a fish bowl like cover over it; David broke it. I can't say I was sad when I found out so we decided to get a new light and change it out. 

We put in  new vanity lights and a hand towel holder.

It just feels so fresh and clean in our bathroom now, we love it!

The new towel bar for baby Warden. What is cutest about the duck towel in this picture is David is the one who set it up so you can see the ducky, not me.

The new light by the shower curtain and the new curved shower curtain rod. If any of you have $30 and some extra space in your bathroom I would highly recommend one of these shower rods. They are amazing and they make showering feel a lot less cramped.

Funny side story. When we were shopping for a new light in the bathroom we came a crossed these. This was another one of those moments where we just had to laugh. I have always (ever since I was a little kid) thought these light kind of looked like a female body part but this double picture on the package just confirmed that I was right. In honor of David's sister we call them our Mammary lights. Also it should be dually noted that the center part of these lights are actually called a nipple, it has it in the instructions. Just a funny little fact for all y'all.

Projects- Post #1

The Kitchen Wallpaper Project

You know how as a woman once you get an idea in your head it's pretty difficult to change your mind? Maybe you don't, if that is the case you might not understand the next couple posts on here. When David and I first moved into our nice little condo I was so excited, paying mortgage instead of rent every month meant we could update and do little things to our place (like painting) and would be worth it. A year later we finally got around to some of those random things, like removing the wallpaper I had hated from the moment we bought our house. Little did I know it was a project that was going to take 3 months (plus). ***This is a LONG post with LOTS of pictures*** 

It all started in the kitchen...

Wall paper and old cabinet handles

Smile David

... you blinked

gahhhh!

There ya go! :) Thankfully the wallpaper in the kitchen, which also happened to be the most, came off by simply pulling on the edges. 

Lets remove some wallpaper in the kitchen, sounds easy enough right? Wrong again! We had to displace everything and move it to the living room.

scratching off the wallpaper glue, easily took twice as long as taking off the paper itself

There are no pictures of me because I am the one who took pictures and because we were both covered in dust and junk.

We couldn't do this all on one weekend because this was all right in the middle of David's Infection and Immunology block of class. He had a BIG quiz every Monday morning at 8am which meant he was able to do very little except study over the weekends. 

This part behind the stove was one of the worst parts of the wallpaper glue

David putting up painters tape. I was not exactly impressed by painters tape, we had a LOT of bleeding over and it pulled off plenty of dry paint when we went to take it off.

Everything in disorder

Finally getting some primer on the walls

Our oh so cute plastic cabinet pulls that were turning yellow from being touched, gross.

Ugly port light aka the "boat light" above our sink, also notice the lack of handles on the cabinets

New pulls we got offline for SUPER cheap. We only paid about $25 to replace all of them. 

New handles but still an ugly port light 

New light

cute huh?!

More tape. I decided to make the stripes 4 inches wide so that the spacing would be two pieces of paint tape right next to each other. I hoped it would make our job easier and for the most part it did.

Circus kitchen

Painting

We used these mini rollers that were about 2 inches wide. I was really nervous when we bought these because they are so small but they were great and we loved them! Much MUCH more convenient than using a big old roller or a paint brush. 

The Best part, taking the tape DOWN!!

Well except for this stuff. It could be worse but it's still annoying and I don't want to have to fix it.

Tah-Dah!!!! All done

This light is new and it was completely free. Thank you Grandma Johnson for having a garage sale! We love our light cover.

When I went to match paint to the wallpaper that had been in here the lady had to mix it 3 or 4 times because every time it would come out a different color. It had me really nervous and I was scared when we went to paint on the stripes because it looked really dark, BUT I am SOOO happy with how it turned out! In the end she gave me $10 off the can of paint because it didn't turn out quite right. 

I love this picture right here, thank you cousin Sarah. Actually thank you for the other picture I have in the kitchen as well, both have been used and loved.