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Whataweek what a week.

Monday through Thursday I was out at clinical at my new hospital. While they definitely do a few things differently, it wasn’t a huge adjustment from what I got used to in the summer. Most of the routines and protocols seem to be the same. It’s a smaller department but they’re still very busy.

The patient population that goes to St. Pauls is a little different than VGH even though it’s not really that far away though. (St. Pauls is right in the downtown core of Vancouver). There are a lot more no-shows and we often can’t just call them and see where they are because they don’t have phones (or addresses).

I’m on the stress lab rotation where we get the patients up on the treadmill so we can give them the tracer while their hearts are being stressed. It is not my favourite rotation because there is a lot going on at once and I don’t get to sit down at all. I will be happy when these two weeks are over.

On Friday’s we have school, even if we are out at clinical for the rest of the week. It’s the only time we get to see the other set. Our classes kind of stink on Friday but I love seeing everyone and getting to compare our clinical experiences. We had a good long gossip session at lunch today, haha. Today felt really weird, like an odd mix of a Monday and a Friday and I keep getting mixed up. 

Well this is getting long and it’s text-only so I guess I’ll just wrap up here for now. Happy Grand Final day and GO HAWTHORNE (I guess??). We’re off to Moose’s Down Under for Grand Final 2012 Aussie fun.

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I’ve slept about 22 hours in the last two nights. And I’m still beat! Being sick is the worst! I think I’m on the mend now though, my stuffed nose has turned into a cough which is better because at least I can breathe again. I seriously don’t get why our bodies would think constricting our nose so it is entirely SHUT is a good idea.

Tomorrow is the last day of our first school rotation. I am definitely looking forward to going to the hospital next week because studying and homework sucks. Well I have a bazillion labs I have to finish up then but hopefully I’ll be a good girl and just get them all finished this weekend.

OK this is really the boringest entry of all time. I’m going to bed.

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Oh glorious weekend after a long week at school. We haven’t actually gotten that much homework yet, but being at school sucks compared to working at the hospital. I am looking forward to my first rotation at St. Pauls Hospital, next next week.


For some reason we decided to cook all sorts of things this afternoon.

I made oatmeal choc chip muffins, nutella stuffed choc chip cookies, and two mushroom spinach bacon quiches (although I should have just made one, they turned out really thin). I kind of want to cut out a circle out of one of the quiche and just put it on top of the other quiche. :/

Scott made that amazing looking cheddar jalapeno bread in the middle of the picture, and also tempered some chocolate to make chocolate covered strawberries. OM NOM NOM.

Now every single dish that we have is dirty. Also I have no idea where we are going to put all of this food. Scott said we should have a bake sale.

I think my nails turned out pretty cool last week. I used my nail stickers again. I like the bare nail parts. Pretty handy that this manicure doesn’t get messed up when your nails grow!

Well……… I don’t have much more to talk about at the moment so I guess I’m off to start the dishes now.

P.S. Thank you very much for all your nice comments on my last post. I appreciate them very much. <3

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The first day back at school this year was a bit of a mess. Half the class (including me) had a schedule that said we needed to be there at 11:30, but actually we were supposed to be there at 9:30. My leisurely morning was cut very short after I got that text from my classmate saying “WHERE ARE YOU!?!”. Yeesh. I found out later that September 5th is Be Late For Something Day so really I was just being festive, I guess.

The rest of the week went a lot smoother. It was nice to see all my classmates again. Everything was back to exactly like last year, haha.

So far we’ve pretty much just had each class one time. My initial impressions:

  • Applied Physiology (17 hours per week): OMG. This class takes up half of our time at school. 9 hours of it is labs! It is going to be intense. It’s the class that is going to teach us all the stuff we directly need for work. It should really be called Nuclear Medicine 3.
  • Physics (6 hours per week): Barry is back! He’s a really good teacher and we don’t have labs so I’m not overly concerned about this class. I think we’re going to be learning a lot more about the cameras and the reconstruction that the computers do with the images we take, particularly the 3D ones.
  • Pathophysiology (5 hours per week): The study of all the diseases that nuclear medicine generally sees. The notes seem extremely disorganized so far but I think the subject matter will be super interesting.
  • Human Behaviour (2 hours per week): Our other teachers call this class “Feelings”. Our teacher is a psychologist and we are going to get marked on BREATHING. In our first class we had to write down some social norms that exist in our class, so I wrote down things like “Don’t rub your face on other people” and “Don’t lick other people’s stuff”. I wonder if those will make the typed copy she said she was going to make for us.
  • Communications (3 hours per week): Not sure about this one yet. Topics include how to write emails and how to write a resume. Also apparently we are going to have to give presentations AND BE VIDEO TAPED AND REVIEW THEM WITH OUR CLASS AFTERWARDS. OMG that is my worst nightmare. HOWEVER, the teacher seemed pretty good so maybe the class will actually be useful. He is new. His Powerpoint was very snazzy and he did speak very very well, so hopefully we can learn from him.

Yep so that’s 33 hours of class a week. This year we alternate between two weeks at school and two weeks at clinical, but the clinical weeks are not going to be much of a break because they’re going to give us a lot of work that we are expected to finish during those weeks, plus we’re pretty much going to have multiple midterms every school week. Coming home from work to study and do labs is not going to be fun.

Bummer post. I just have to remind myself that I only have to suffer through this for one more year and then I can have a career (I mean, hopefully). ONE MORE YEAR.

Magnetic nail polish. Difficult to photograph… but COOL IN REAL LIFE! Magnetic nail polish is not magnetic itself (as SOMEONE *COUGH* ROSEMARIE thought), but you probably already know that because I am way late to the magnetic nail polish trend. But anyway what you do is paint one thin coat on every nail, then one nail at a time you do a pretty thick coat and then quickly hold the special magnet that comes with the nail polish up to your nail and it rearranges itself into patterns. It looks pretty neat in real life.

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Only 22 more days left for me to complete my summer goals list!!

  1. Finally paint the cheapo wooden drawers we got from IKEA. I think I’m going to go do this RIGHT NOW.
  2. Make delicious popsicles in my new popsicle mold. once (strawberry lemonade). twice (strawberry frozen yogurt). thrice (strawberry raspberry vanilla frozen yogurt).
  3. Go swimming in the ocean for the first time in Vancouver. done!
  4. Ride the rides at the PNE. well we went on ONE ride. :/
  5. Watch fireworks. done.
  6. Finish my Settlers paintings.
  7. Sell a pair of shoes or a shirt or a painting.
  8. Go to one of the night markets in Richmond. done. twice, actually!
  9. Regularly visit the farmers market on Saturday mornings. once. twice. thrice.
  10. Read some books while I actually have the time. Insurgent (Veronica Roth), Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (Jenny Lawson), The Art of Fielding: A Novel (Chad Harbach), Geek Love (Katherine Dunn), currently reading Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn).
  11. Make a nicer looking menu planning board. done!
  12. Find a new person to play board games with. done!
  13. Try a new fruit. I guess fresh figs counts for this one.
  14. Do a successful venipuncture on a real patient. I’ve done about 75 now.
  15. Make a new blog header.
  16. Take more pictures. completely failing.

Last night was lots of fun. We drank enormous drinks that had candy in them and I ate SEVEN KINDS OF CHEESE in one meal!! (Our table shared a trio of fries [poutine, fries with gorgonzola, and truffle oil fries with parmesan], I had a three cheese grilled cheese sandwich, and my salad had feta in it). EPIC MEAL.

Scott stealing some of my drink.

I hope I can get a job at VGH next year. They are really fun/great people there.

Thinking of another challenge for me to do this month: take a photo of every dinner I have. I know I already post food pictures here and there on this blog but I only ever really post the special stuff. I think this month I’ll try to document every dinner so you can see some of our more regular dishes. We’ll see how it goes.