Thanksgiving 2008

Farley and I decided to have Thanksgiving down here in Dominica. We are a bit weary of the meat in general, so we didn't try to hunt down a turkey (literally). Besides, I have a propane oven/stove, which is extremely difficult to manage the temperature (my oven is on or off); thus, I don't think a turkey would have turned out anyway. So, we decided to get chicken breast from Nelson's Chicken (the best chicken on the island and the only place to get chicken breast--he has a monopoly). I have never made instant potatoes or stuffing before (always from scratch at home), but I didn't have an option here. We bought the chicken early in the day, so I heated it up in the pot then made the stuffing with the chicken still in the pot. Honestly, I was shocked that the chicken tasted completely different than it does when we have it for lunch. We had some instant "Idahoian" potatoes, fresh green beans (which were the only thing that took longer than 5 minutes to make), and cranberries. I like my cranberries hot because we always make our cranberry sauce from frozen cranberries; thus, it was in a pan. Mom had sent me down black olives, which was such a treat, especially since Farley hates them! We also bought a bottle of wine, which was shockingly good. I wish the pictures looked a bit more artistic, but heck, my kitchen fits into a closet, so I'm just lucky I managed to cook all of this and have it all ready at the same time!

Above: There is our instant Thanksgiving meal.

Below: a close up of the stuffing/chicken dish.

Farley and I decided to take the night off and relax. We talked to our families, had some no bake cheesecake, and watched t.v. We can't ever really take a night off medicine, so we watched a plastic surgery show on Discovery Health, Grey's anatomy and the show with everyone's favorite OB/GYN: The Cosby Show. At one point on The Cosby Show, little Rudy said that she was board and Dr. Huxitable responded lets read a book to which she said I don't want to read. That prompted him to reply that he has 3 million dollars worth of medical text books and she couldn't find one interesting??? That just made me chuckle as I have, literally, thousands of dollars worth of books and I'm only in my second year of medical school!

Well, unfortunately, our day wasn't just no-bake-cheese cake and The Cosby Show, we had classes from 8:00-12:00 then we had an exam in Behavioral science-a ten minute full interview of a patient. I think we both did very well. Farley and I spent hours interviewing each other. We came up with some pretty interesting cases: patient with malaria and a G6PD deficiency (which mean that they can't metabolism some of the malaria medications and will get even more ill with medication), a pregnant medical student, a manic-depressant patient (Farley's shinning moment of acting), and a womanizing-old-man with erectile dysfunction and benign prostate hyperplasia (my shinning moment of acting). Well, all that fun practice helped out as we both were given great feedback from our examiners, but we don't have the final grades yet.

A few things I'm thankful for:

• Family and Friends!


• The Internet so I can communicate with my friends and family--it keeps me sane down here.


• The opportunity to be a doctor, despite my whining at times


• The semester coming to a close and getting to come home


• My health and the health of my friends and family, especially after learning about all the things that can go wrong. Heck, I'm surprised any of us are healthy there are so many things that can go wrong!


• Obviously, my Farley. Farley's picture is in the new Catalogue for Ross University School of Medicine that is sent out to all prospective student (see page 74). He looks so handsome and thoughtful in the picture. He is with Dr. "I LOVE ANATOMY", who perhaps, is the only person on campus who likes anatomy as much as Farley does (and when I say that I'm including all of the other faculty of anatomy. Farley and Dr. "I LOVE ANATOMY" are anatomy addicts).


• Which reminds me of another thing that I'm thankful for: I'm done with anatomy!

Doesn't Farley look like he is hanging on everything that Dr. "I LOVE ANATOMY" is saying. It's like Farley found a mentor who loves anatomy and teaching of anatomy as much as he does. Which is completely true, other professors are also great at teaching anatomy, but NO ONE is an enthusiastic as Dr. "I LOVE ANATOMY".