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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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January

February

  • I learned how to take blood pressure measurements manually and visited some nuclear medicine departments
  • My aunt and uncle came over for sushi dinner at our house, which I then dropped on the floor
  • Scott went to Melbourne for two weeks
  • I did skeleton for the 3rd and 4th day, finally broke 100 km/hr, and I got to try bobsled

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

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It’s flipping cold out!!!! Time to crank up the thermostat I think!

It’s my last week at my fall hospital placement. My placement went fine I guess but I didn’t really start to feel comfortable until this last rotation. Hopefully they are pleased with me overall. I don’t know how good my chances are to get a job there though when just last week the boss lady asked me what my name was. :/

(I have been told not to take that personally because she is bad with names, BUT STILL. Yikes for me.)

I had a good weekend. On Saturday I did homework and streamed the world cup skeleton races at Whistler on the TV at the same time. Then Scott and I went out for banh mi. It was delicious, I’ll post a review in another entry soon. We came home and Scott had to do work stuff until after midnight!!!

I was quite busy on Sunday. I got up early to make muffins and then take the bus to IKEA to get something for a Christmas present. Then I met Scott at Metrotown so we could pick out some winter boots.

Neither of us have any waterproof footwear so we decided to invest in a good pair of winter boots once and for all. Atmosphere was having a BOGO sale for Black Friday so that was good for us. We both chose North Face hiking boots. I love mine, they are so warm and cozy! Scott’s have wifi. I am glad to finally have the right type of footwear to wear to Whistler, last time I wore sneakers and had wet socks the entire weekend.

Anyway then I came home and had lunch and did more homework and made cookies and then made dinner (mac and cheese with butternut squash. caramelized onions, apples, and bacon AKA PRETTY MUCH THE BEST DINNER I KNOW HOW TO MAKE). We finished off the day with Amazing Race and then I went to bed at 9PM because I am a grandma I have to wake up at 5:30 AM for work.

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Well that’s me all caught up. Scott leaves for Australia in 5 days. Have I mentioned that Rosemarie is meeting him in Melbourne for a week??!! I soooo wish I could be there, but I’m really glad that she will get to meet some of my Aussie family. And Scott has orders to take her to all my favourite Melbourne places!

Scott will be gone pretty much the entire time that I have to be studying hardcore and writing lots of exams. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing yet. I’d better go buy some frozen pizzas….

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This semester is FLYING BY! I’ve already finished 2 out of 3 rotations, and that is great.

Epson is sending me some free ink because I called to complain about my printer saying it is empty even though I can hear ink sloshing around inside of the cartridges. The free ink is awesome, but the whole problem started because of the extreme crumpling action that the printer does every once and a while and that is not fixed at all. Blergh. I do not recommend Epson printers.

Our Halloween was very uneventful. We didn’t have any trick-or-treaters because we live in an apartment building. We didn’t carve a pumpkin this year. We didn’t dress up or go out. We didn’t even buy any Halloween candy!! WE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE ANY CANDY AT WORK!! >:(

This weekend should be plenty exciting though. 6 hours of skeleton!!! I am extremely excited. I’m not sure how fast we’ll be able to go though because it’s still quite warm up at Whistler. So I might not break 100 km/hr this time, but I hopefully learn some new stuff, and after I’ve finished the “course” my options for skeleton are much better.

Wait!! Scott did carve a pumpkin this year. At work!! He won a prize! Actually that is a pretty epic hamburger pumpkin. I am super proud of him.