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Hmm what have we been up to in the last 11 days? I’ve been a terrible blogger lately. SO BUSY with school stuff, all in preparation for my big vacation that is rapidly approaching (YAY!).

  • Scott made a cool loaf of bread.
  • We went to a friends house to play Ticket To Ride and eat pizza. Panago butter chicken pizza really doesn’t taste like butter chicken at all.
  • Went out for drinks at the pub after school.
  • Lifted lots of weights at the gym.
  • A FREAKING LOT OF HOMEWORK.
  • Went out for a yummy Peruvian Valentines Day dinner of fish ceviche, deep fried pork, and amazing sweet potato chips.
  • Woke up at a painful hour of the morning to make it to work on time for my hotlab rotation.
  • Had much more success putting in IVs.
  • Went to bed at 8:00 PM.
  • Watched Amour, slow but good.
  • Ate a lot of Nerds.
  • Went to the library and got a bunch of books that I won’t have time to read.
  • Chatted with Rosemarie who is now back in Fiji for her second semester.

That is actually a pretty good representation of what I’ve been up to, if you multiply the homework by 50. I just keep reminding myself “it’ll all be worth it soon”.

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I haven’t been sleeping well for the past week or so. I lie down and my mind just races. I think it’s because of a combination of having 500 things on my To Do list, and also having so much exciting stuff to look forward to!

  • 2 days until the end of this school rotation!
  • 24 days until skeleton!
  • 30 days until Scott and I go to L.A.!
  • 34 days until I am in the same country as my sister (FIJI!!!)
  • 52 days until family reunion!
  • 100 days until I’m finished school!
  • 205 days until I’m finished BCIT!!

The week right before my big trip is going to very hard. So far we have 4 midterms scheduled, a big assignment for our online class, and a huge paper due within one week. I can’t really complain though because this is very good news for my holiday… so far it looks like I won’t have to do a single piece of work while I’m gone for 3 weeks!! YAHOO!!! That makes it ALL worth it.

Scott and I have been a lot more active lately. Scott has been running almost every day for the past couple months, and I just joined a gym last week and have gone a bunch of times already. I found a good place to go that is really close to our house so it’s pretty easy to work it in to my daily routine. I’ve been lifting weights and doing cardio. The weights are so I will be totally ready for skeleton next year, and the cardio is good for my fast heart.

I figure if I write about it all on here, that will keep me motivated because I don’t want you guys to yell at me if I get lazy again!

PS I thought exercise was supposed to help you sleep but it’s not really working for Scott OR I. Yeesh.

PPS I am nominated for a 2013 Homie Award in the Healthy Cooking Blog category. I don’t really expect to make it to the next round, but it’s been pretty neat to get so many new views from people checking out all the blogs. It would mean a lot to me if you voted for me as well to keep me up near the top of the list. :D You have to register but it only takes 5 seconds. THANK YOU!!!

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We’ve had below freezing weather for the past week. The other morning there was black ice everywhere. My bus skidded up to my stop, then later slid half way down a block on the hill towards work. The bus made a lot of weird noises, and then the driver had to reverse back up the hill so he could make the right turn. Terrifying! I was gripping on to the edges of my seat.

I’ve had a pretty good first week of work. My first impressions of the hospital are really good, I feel like I fit in and I like the way the department is run (so far). However I think this has a lot to do with working with a very nice tech all week. We’ll see what my opinion is after working with a scary/mean tech.

I already posted about this on Facebook but it still makes me laugh. So there is a nuc med test called a “gastric emptying test”. Basically we make some scrambled eggs in the microwave with some radioactivity mixed in with it. Then the patient eats it, and we take short pictures every 15-30 minutes for a couple hours so we can watch the passage of the food from the stomach through the intestines. We make a graph of how long it takes for the food to empty out of the stomach into the intestines and this gives the doctors some information about how that persons stomach motility is.

ANYWAY, I was reading through this nuclear medicine manual that I guess is pretty dated, because it suggested this for doing a gastric emptying test:

In vivo labeled chicken liver: 99mTc-sulfur colloid injected in wing vein of live chicken. Chicken killed, liver removed and cooked. Fed to patient as solid-phase marker.

There are a number of things about this that makes me chuckle.

  1. LIVE CHICKEN? At the hospital? PS I have actually had this confirmed that they really used to do this.
  2. INJECTING INTO WING VEIN? OMG injecting humans is hard enough!!
  3. LIVER REMOVED AND COOKED? Hahahahhahaha brb, making some radioactive chicken pâté!

from nourishnetwork.com

I am 50% glad I don’t have to do this and 50% sad that I don’t have to do this. Hahahaha.

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Tomorrow will be my first day at another new clinical placement. I’m much less nervous than usual, at least I have a better idea of what to expect now. I’ve set out my scrubs and packed my backpack to maximize the amount of time I get to stay in bed early tomorrow morning. It’s going to be so cold!! Vancouver has been going down to BELOW FREEZING lately! :P

I spent the whole weekend doing homework so that I don’t have a lot of work to do during the week/next weekend. Worth it? I don’t know, but I definitely enjoy relaxing after school/work instead of having to do school stuff. And there is skeleton next weekend…

We did go out for sushi on Friday. It was a Groupon dinner. It was ok, but nothing special. I’d rather go to Broadway Station Sushi and that is cheaper too. You will be able to see what we ate tomorrow because I will be posting my first set of dinner pictures! I haven’t missed a day yet!

PS I AM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT L.A. AND FIJI COMING UP IN LESS THAN 2 MONTHS.

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School started today (boo). We were lucky to only have a short day though (yay). We got a bunch of labs and met a new teacher. Everything seems to be pretty much the same as last semester (yay), except we won’t be having Friday’s with the other set any more (boo).

Three new years resolutions:

  1. Take a picture of my dinner every day and post them here every second Monday
  2. Improve my grades, dazzle at clinical, get hired somewhere
  3. Be less lazy (same as last year)

Scott and I are going to see Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna tonight. I am excited!