Finished!

I completed my last day of medical school yesterday, Friday, December 16, 2011.  I am still waiting for evaluations from my rotations this fall and winter so I can't technically call myself a doctor yet. (Someone could fail me, which I cannot fathom happening, but I can't technically call myself a doctor until the grades are in).  I didn't get excited about being finished until my attending physician told me I could leave on Friday afternoon.  Then the excitement started growing.  I realized on the train ride home that much of the tension in my back, shoulders, and jaw was going away and it was all I could do to keep myself from dancing in the train.  By the time I got home, I was dancing and looking forward to doing something fun with Farley.  However, Farley was in Manhattan seeing an old college friend and got home about an hour after I did.  By then, I was tired--I didn't sleep much Thursday night as I was packing for the move home--so we had take out and watched a movie at home. I don't think it will really hit sink in that I'm done nor will I be comfortable having anyone call me Doctor until I see my diploma declaring that I've earned my Doctorate of Medicine.  Wow...Doctorate of Medicine.  I can't believe that both Farley and I have finished medical school.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I have been very fortunate to have lots of residency interviews, but that also means I've had to do tons of traveling and will continue to travel for interviews until February 2012.  I have taken planes, trains and automobiles...the only mode of transportation I'm missing is a boat!  I hate the traveling and scheduling of everything--it's so much harder than the actual interviews! Most of my trips have been, thankfully, uneventful; however, there have been a few interesting trips so far.

Chicago:

My interview in Chicago was suppose to finish at 1:30, but we didn't finish until 2:30.  I had to catch an airport shuttle at my hotel at 3:30, which was about 10 minutes from the hospital.  The residency coordinator called me a taxi at 2:30, but one did not arrive.  I stood outside the hospital (in November) for an hour and a half waiting for this cab.  I kept calling the coordinator and I called the taxi company and even another taxi company.  No one could or would help me.  Needless to say, I missed my airport shuttle.  I saw a taxi coming toward the hospital at about 4:00 and begged him to take me to my hotel to pick up my bag then to the airport.  I was told by multiple people that there was no way I'd make the flight given Chicago traffic.  However, this taxi driver said it was no problem and I was at the airport by 4:40.  I don't even think he was speeding.  He had been driving taxi in Chicago for over 30 years and knew the roads.  I made my 5:30 flight with time to stop and grab a snack.  I wish I knew his name so I could write a letter to their union or licensing board: he was amazing!

Long Island:

The LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) is great, but I had to leave my apartment at 4:00am to my interview by 8:00am and I had no idea where I was going.  I decided to take a taxi, which was very expensive, but at least I didn't have a four hour commute (I was going out to Long Island when everyone else was coming into Manhattan so the trains were not coming frequently in the direction that I wanted to go).  I did take the train back and it was mid-afternoon so it took 2.5 hour due to the frequency of the trains, but I wasn't on a schedule so it didn't matter at that point.

Philadelphia:

I took the Greyhound Bus to Philly, which I've never done before.  Port Authority (the bus terminal in Manhattan) is full of the stereotypical bus rider.  Farley talked me into taking the bus rather than Amtrak because the bus is cheaper and initially he was going to go with me just for fun (he finished his rotations a couple weeks before me due to my schedule).  He decided not to go, but I was stuck on the bus.  The bus was fine and the trip was smooth, but waiting in line had me nervous.  Once I got to Philly, I had to walk across the street and take the SEPTA (train) to the airport, where the hotel shuttle picked me up.  I had no problem getting around the public transit in Philadelphia, but I realized I'm starting to become a New Yorker: I was annoyed by the slooooow trains. The interview was out a bit early.   I was able to do the same commute (shuttle bus to airport to train to bus depot) and make it back to the bus depot in time to take the 3:00 train rather than the 5:00.  We missed the Philadelphia traffic, but there is no missing the New York City traffic.  The trip would take two hours without any traffic and we could have done it except that the last two or three miles or so took more than an hour and a half.  I left Philadelphia at 3:00pm and arrived at my apartment a little before 8:00pm.

Buffalo: 

Now this takes the cake!  I was flying on a smaller commuter plane out of New York City.  We were about 10 minutes on our way to Buffalo, when they announced that we had to return to New York City.  I couldn't hear why (which was a good thing), but the flight attendant came around and told everyone it wasn't an emergency so don't worry.  Once we landed, which by the way was very smooth, I noticed many emergency vehicles surrounding the plane and they announced that we lost two-thirds of the power on the plane. The emergency personnel surrounding the plane made me nervous.  I suspect that they were preparing in case there were problems, but thankfully, everything was okay.  All of the passengers and crew boarded a new plane and everything went well except for a bit of turbulence, which I'll admit made me more nervous than usual.  

I hope that nothing eventful happens on my upcoming flights in January and I'm thankful that all of my travels have been safe, even if not as smooth as I'd like.

December 10, 2011: Grand Central Terminal

We had a last minute call from the Realtor asking if she could do an open house in 90 minutes, so we quickly cleaned up the apartment and got ready to leave (she was 30 minutes late, which irritated me as I was asleep when she called and I rushed to have the house and myself ready in time).  Anyway, we had to find something to do for a few hours and we have been meaning to go back to Grand Central Terminal for some pictures.  

It is such a beautiful building.  I am not a good enough photographer to capture the wonder of the space.  The architectural design is amazing. I did post a few pictures, even though they really don't do the terminal justice:

If you noticed, there are many Santa Clauses in the pictures.  Every year, there is a Santa Con, where people dress up as Santa and go on a pub crawl around New York City.  They are fun for a while, but the more they drink, obviously, they get feistier they get.  There are hundreds (if not thousands of them) around the city and I can guarantee they are being naughty, not nice!

Also, the new Apple store opened in Grand Central Terminal on the 9th.  It is the largest Apple Store in the world.  I don't think it is as cool as the Apple store on 5th Ave, because the store on 5th Ave is more clean-lined and modern looking like the products.  The storefront on 5th Ave. is a giant glass box with the apple logo and downstairs to the actual store.  I think the Apple store in Grand Central Terminal, isn't as awesome because it takes away some of the grander of Grand Central Terminal.  

After having lunch, at Grand Central (on another note, they have the best food court I've seen--diverse, local and yummy), we walked down 42nd street past Bryant Park to the subway station at Times Square.  Then we headed to Soho to check out the Uniqlo's new flag ship store.  Uniqlo is a Japanese clothing company that is mid-priced and they have some cool stuff.  I think it is a cross between the Gap and Zara.  It was fun, but I didn't pick up anything (I was temped by heattech innerwear, which is basically fancy long-underwear, because I'm often cold),  Next, we headed back to Union Square and had a coffee and biscotti at Whole Foods before heading home.  It was a fun day out in Manhattan and one advantage of getting woken up for the Realtor to do a showing was that we had already cleaned the house first thing in the morning!  

December 3, 2011: Bryant Park

Farley and I decided to head into Bryant Park after Thanksgiving to look around at the shops.  I did a little Christmas shopping and we had a great time looking at the Holiday Shops.  There are multiple Holiday shops in New York, but Bryant Park is my favorite location.  I think they have the nicest and most original things.  I love seeing all of the creative people and what they have made.  There are chocolate shops, tons of jewelry stores (with semi-precious stones), candles, and many shops with leather purses made either in New York City or via free-trade agreements.  It is one of my favorite things about the holidays in New York.  They set up the shops in the fall along with the seasonal restaurant, Celsius, that we had drinks at when Dawn and Chris came to town, and the ice skating rink.     

After Bryant Park, we headed to Union Square.  They also have holiday shops, but I don't like the items as much.  Mostly we just window shopped and people watched.  However, we did have to stop back at Bryant Park on the way home to pick up more things after I spoke with the family! 

Farley and me in front of the Bryant Park Christmas Tree

The Bryant Park Tree

Thanksgiving 2011

Farley and I decided to have a quiet Thanksgiving by ourselves in New York City.  When I was a little girl, I felt it was my responsibility to make Mom a brunch (which at first, involved having Dad take me to the store for donuts).  Ever since then, I have a "traditional Thanksgiving Brunch."  Thus, I made scones, eggs, turkey bacon and clementines for brunch.  Since we had a late brunch, we had a late dinner.  Farley was so helpful: he had the "dirty hands" and did the rinsing and stuffing of the turkey while I ran around him getting everything that was needed. We did a full homemade Thanksgiving meal: Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans with butter and toasted almonds, cranberries and pumpkin bars.  

Turkey with stuffing and sweet potatoes

Farley cutting the turkey

Cleaning up!

Enjoying our yummy meal!

November 13th

We decided to sleep in a little late on Sunday and went to brunch in Astoria before heading out to Central Park.  Farley and I finally made it to central park with the leaves changing.  It was a perfect, crisp, fall day in New York.

The Central Park pond.

Another view of the Central Park pond 

Farley and I near the pond.

Farley's favorite place Bethesda Fountain

Farley and I at the Bethesda Fountain

Dawn, Farley and I at the Bethesda Fountain

A view of the mall from the top of the Bethesda Terrace 

A view of the fountain from the top of the terrace

Fall leaves in Central Park

More fall leaves in Central Park

After finishing up in Central Park, we headed down to Union Square to go to Trader Joe's.  Then we headed back to Astoria to hang out a bit before dropping Dawn and Chris at Penn Station.  We had such a wonderful weekend.

November 11th and 12th

Our friends Dawn and Chris, who we went to see in Hershey, PA in September, came to visit us for Farley's  birthday weekend.  They arrived in the mid-afternoon on November 11th and Farley just happened to get off early so he met them at Penn Station and brought them back to Queens.  Since I was still in the NICU, they decided to head to one of our favorite restaurants in the neighborhood, Mojave.  They had appetizers and drinks until I got home.  Since it was Farley's birthday, we decided to head into Manhattan to his favorite restaurant: The Heartland Brewery at Union Square. 

It was a loud Friday night at The Heartland Brewery.  I wish we would have been seated on the second level because it is a little quieter than the first, but we still had a great time.  After leaving the restaurant, we stopped by Times Square on the way home.  I didn't take any pictures of Times Square, but we had a great time walking around.  It was fun to see the looks on their faces when they saw Times Square lit up at night.  It is really something to see.  All of the lights and advertisements are so bright that you could read a book in the middle of the night there.  We headed home and had some birthday cake before heading to bed.  It was a great first night.

I made brunch on Saturday before we headed to the World Trade Center Memorial.  I'm glad that we went to see it, but it would have been my first choice place to stop and visit.  We had tickets to get into the memorial, which we had to get weeks in advance.  There is airport-like security that you must go through before you can get to the memorial.  The lines are long, but they keep moving.  

Construction on the towers still ongoing

One of the two reflection pools

Chris, me and Dawn (left to right) overlooking the memorial.

Farley in front of one of the two reflections pools. You can see the names of people who died on September 11th behind him engraved into the monument.

More of the names at the memorial.  There were several that said a woman's name and her unborn child.  It  almost had me crying just reading the names.  It was such a somber place.

 After leaving the memorial, we headed down to Battery Park City and looked over the Hudson River toward New Jersey.  We were planning on taking a walk down the river, but we could see the Statue of Liberty from where we were, so Dawn and Chris decided that we should keep moving. On the way back to the subway, we walked past Zuccotti Park and the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  They were just banging their drums and being peaceful, but a few days later they were kicked out in the middle of the night.

 We headed to Little Italy for lunch and took a walk around SoHo and Chinatown.  Next we moved onto Midtown and went to Rockefeller Plaza, before heading up to the Top of the Rock.  We headed up to Top of the Rock just before sunset.  It was the perfect time of day to go.  We took great pictures during the afternoon, at sunset and in the night.

Central Park

Central Park

Farley and me

If I remember correctly, this is mid-town on the west side.

 

In front of the Empire State Building.

The sun starting to set over New Jersey

Dusk behind the Empire State Building

The bright red lights toward the bottom and middle of the screen is Times Square.  

Sunset over Jersey

Sunset over Jersey

Central Park as the sun was setting

Central Park just after the sunset

The Empire State Building and other buildings lighting up just after sunset.

Even though the skyline is blurry, I love this picture of us!

Looking south from Top of the Rock

Another picture looking south from Top of the Rock

 After leaving Top of the Rock, we headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral and also saw the Atlas Shrugged Statue.  I think Farley did a great job taking this picture, so I had to post it even though I've posted pictures of this before.   

The sculpture of Atlas on 5th Ave.

 Next we walked down 5th Ave. until we reached Bryant Park.  I love Bryant Park in the winter.  I love the holiday shops, I love watching the ice skaters and I just love the atmosphere. They have a two-story restaurant that is open just three months a year, Celsius.  We saw it last year, but we didn't go in.  We had a great seat and could watch all the kids staking in Bryant Park.  It was so much fun.

At Celsius, the seasonal restaurant in Bryant Park.

Finally, we headed back home to Astoria.  We were going to go our for Greek, but the wait was over two-hours so we decided to go to Spiced, a fusion restaurant in the neighborhood.  By the time we got home, we were all exhausted!

NICU Rotation

I just completed a rotation in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  I've always loved working with babies, but the NICU is a little different.  These babies are so little and fragile that I was a bit intimidated by them.  I didn't want to do anything that could hurt them.  I realized that they maybe little and fragile, but they are not as fragile as I thought.  These little babies would extubate themselves, kick and hit nurses and doctors when they didn't like what was being done to them and they had little personalities, even if they were born at 24-28 weeks gestation.

There were several sets of twins in the NICU during my rotation.  There was a set of twins there were identical and feisty.  These little boys were always up to trouble and I started referring to them as the triple Bs: Badly Behaving Babies!  I had my nickname for them, but the resident had another saying to describe them: Monkey see, Monkey do.  If one decided to wiggle and pull out his intubation on Monday, the other decided to to it later in the day or Tuesday.  They also liked to removed IV and PICC lines via wiggling.  Even though these boys were born at 26 weeks gestation, I suspect that there poor Mamma felt a lot of kicks in her short (far too short) pregnancy.

There was another little guy born around 27 weeks gestation.  This little guy was something else.  He just didn't want to be intubated, or have extra support and he did just fine without it.  I was amazed by him.  So many of the other babies had so many problems, but this little guy only needed minimal support.  I loved watching him grow and see him doing so well.  He was too little to take all of his calories in orally (and was too little to suckle on a bottle so he had to be fed by an oral-gastric tube when he ate orally and the rest of his calories were taken in via is IV) and he needed a little oxygen (he had nasal cannula), but otherwise he was just feeding and growing.  It was exciting to see a little guy do so well.

We also lost a baby during my month in the NICU.  I was at this child's birth and it was such a sad event, unlike the other births I have attended.  Mom and Dad knew that he was coming months too soon, but the doctors couldn't stop the baby from coming any longer (they delayed it a week already and there is only so much you can do to delay the delivery).  The little guy only lasted a couple days.  On one hand, I think he was too little and it may have been a blessing in disguise that he passed away; however, I would never want a parent to have his/her child die.  I wish there was something that I could have done to help the family more.    I kept thinking about what the neonatologist said to the family before the baby was born, "We can just hope for the best, but sometime the best thing isn't the thing that we hoped for."

I learned so much during my time in the NICU and  enjoyed the rotation, but I don't think that I want to do NICU as a specialty.  I think I still want to be a pediatric hematologist and oncologist.  I guess like the parents of the baby that passed away I can only hope for the best.

Residency Application

Farley and I have been in the middle of the residency application process since July. The application season opens in July when you can start working on your application and the application are first delivered to the programs on September 1st.  Then the waiting begins: will they or won't they interview us.  Luckily, Farley and I have both been offered a good number of interviews and most of them are in the same city, so we will likely get to stay near each other next year.  However, we will not know until March where we will finally end up.

I think the most stressful part of the application process is arranging the transportation and the hotels for the different cities.  When I was in Chicago, I almost missed my flight back to New York City because I couldn't get a taxi.  The interviews themselves have not been too stressful.  In fact, they are somewhat fun.  I get to see a new hospital, sometimes a new city, meet new people and imagine my life in this new place.  Sometimes, I get really excited at what I see in the future and other times, not so excited.  I am hoping that I end up in one of the places that really excites me and that Farley and I end up together.  I have been so stressed out this fall (and cranky), but I have to believe that things will work out for the best.

Week Off

I had a week off after my Hematology and Oncology rotation before starting my Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  There were tons of things that I wanted to do in NYC, but I had to limit myself because I had to fly out for residency interviews (exciting and expensive).  I spent a lot of time at the gym and doing things around the house, but I decided to go to one museum on my week off: The Natural History Museum.  It was a beautiful October day so I walked rather about 25 blocks rather than taking the train directly to the museum.

A picture of the museum from across the street in Central Park.

There is a giant dinosaur on exhibit in the main entry way.  I am not a dinosaur expert, so I'm not sure what it is, but it is huge.

There is a butterfly exhibit on display.  I loved all the beautiful colors.

After seeing all of the butterflies on display, I went into the butterfly room.  The humidity was high and it was a tropical feeling area.  Once I got into the room, I thought "What were you thinking?!?!  There are insects flying all around."  But after a few minutes, I got used to it and enjoyed observing the butterflies in their environment.

After seeing the butterflies, I headed up to the fourth floor to see the largest dinosaur exhibit...IN THE WORLD.  Dinosaurs are not my favorite thing, but I  was amazed by their size.  There were different rooms of dinosaur fossils and other pre-historic animal fossils.  I posted a few of the better pictures below.

 After going through the fossil rooms, I went through the exhibits of animals from around the world.  They took skins of animals and made exhibits with the skins on molds and the environment.  I took tons of pictures, but none of them really turned out too well.  There were animals form every continent.  It was like going ton a safari, but I never left NYC.

After finishing up with the animal exhibits, I headed to the anthropology exhibits.  This was probably my favorite part of the museum.  There were some amazing pictures and artifacts.  They had things from South America, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and Native Americans from North America.

This was one of my favorite artifacts.  It is a map of the constellations from the Pacific Islanders Exhibit.  The seashells are the stars and the sailors would hold it up to the sky at night to determine where they were.

They also have an exhibit about space.  This is is a meteor!

A giant seashell that I just liked.  I dont' remember anything else about it.

 I had a great day at the museum, thankfully, I didn't have a night at the museum (like the movie).  Here is a sign from the entrance leading to the subway station just below the museum.