Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

This past week, I attended a medical conference on treatments for gastrointestinal cancers (which include livers and pancreases, by the way). I learned a lot, but the most important thing I learned that day was not to implicitly trust Google Maps. The conference was held at a hotel in Crystal City (geography lesson: the Virginia border near DC), and my husband and I had checked Google Maps the night before and figured out that since it was just as long for me to drive there as to take the Metro, I should take the Metro and thus save on parking. So the morning of the GI oncology meeting, I put in the directions on my phone and rode to the directed stop, The Pentagon (which is also in Virginia across from DC). On exiting the station, I carefully chose to take the stairs that were for non-Pentagon-employees, then held out my phone in front of me like a water-divining-rod and started walking where my phone told me to go. It was tricky, because there aren't a whole lot of sidewa...

I am happy to announce that, although I still don't know exactly what I'm doing in medical oncology, I no longer feel like I'm drowning. Is that positive, or what? Some of my favorite stories: One of my patients reported that when she was first starting chemotherapy infusions, she mentioned to her doctor (Dr W, one of the two that I work with) that she was worried no one was keeping an eye on her mediport site [a mediport is an indwelling IV that can be accessed with a poke of a needle but otherwise is hidden under skin] . He responded, "What do you think the infusion nurses do, throw darts at it?" I was seeing a follow-up patient for a discussion of chemo treatment after surgery when I learned he was still on meds his surgeon had given him 3 weeks ago. I also simultaneously learned he was having bowel movements every 10 minutes. Guess what pills he was still taking? Stool softeners. When I was first orienting to the Georgetown hospital, I met with the r...

Several weeks ago, Mark and I went to the Maryland State Fair. Because I am lazy, I am blogging about it now. Well, I also have a second fair-type event that we went to much more recently (aka yesterday), so I'm just combining the two events into One blog post. I mean, the similarities: both about 1 hour away, both with educational and fun activities, both had food, both had lots of people we didn't know....Clearly, they're basically identical. It is quite possible we enjoyed the second fair more (it was a Pioneer Day celebration, which in Mormon culture refers to the people who traveled from the eastern United States to Salt Lake City in the 1840s-ish ), because it wasn't as hot, and it was free. I also get to brag that I got a "nothing-but-air" bean bag toss in the hole, and I have witnesses. Unfortunately, I couldn't repeat it (I'm inconsistent with my sport skills), but still, it was cool. On top of that, I challenged Mark to a hoop roll race-...

Have you ever had a feeling that a certain moment in your life will define your family for generations? That your grand++-children will say, wow, that girl (or dude) was tough? Maybe. Maybe not. It's certainly reminiscent of Sam's thoughts at the end of the second The Lord of the Rings , when he considers that what he and Frodo are doing is going to become legend for future people, relatives and friends and acquaintances and strangers alike. I am not carrying the One Ring. In case you were wondering. Also, I don't think strangers will ever hear about my life. But I have the distinct impression that how I survive these next few years will drastically influence my [currently nonexistent] descendants. We--my husband and I, as a team--are working through depression and anxiety, new employment and unemployment, loneliness and isolation. We're figuring out a lifestyle that will accommodate the increased cost of rent and groceries and transportation. We're refining a...

I've noticed that being a new nurse practitioner is significantly different than being a new nurse. In fact, the whole process is different. The best way I can describe it is comparing it to plants: nursing school was a lot of prep work to just vaguely understand the medical field--all of the harrowing [actually, yes, both meanings of the word. this is a great analogy, I can tell] and manuring and watering and planting--and then the New Nurse is gonna grow and experience life-outside-of-dirt and learn from all of the other Nurses, in various stages of growth, around her (or him. but it's usually her). I don't really feel like, as a new nurse practitioner, I was "emerging" from one world into another. It's more like I was already a flowering plant, but then I decided to become a flowering tree [Which, I realize, doesn't much happen in bona fide botany]. I already know what the medical field is, how the terrain lies in general, but now I'm supposed to f...

Mark and I are more settled now. We finally have a couch, we have a decent handle on groceries, and I've figured out the routine of getting to and from work. But we're still new enough to realize that living here is weird. Example: DC roads are strange--intersections at tight angles, streets that drop off the map then pick back up later, and cars that use any available section of street as a makeshift parking lot just by turning on their hazard lights and jumping out of the car. Also, the cars that park in the right hand lane, making it necessary to merge left about every 4th block. And then this sign. I don't know what it's saying Because parking at the hospital isn't an option (price- and availability-wise), and because Georgetown declined to have a metro rail line extend their direction, I take the metro for 20 minutes, then get on a 20 minute shuttle bus provided by Georgetown University, then walk 10 minutes from the university campus to the hospital. The...

On our Baltic trip, we saw loads of museums, but the ones that were most memorable were the ones we couldn't go in. Museum of the Occupation --We passed this building when we first arrived in Vilnius on our way to our hotel. We walked back to it that evening, because Mark loves military history stuff, but it was The outside of the Occupation Museum closed because it was Father's Day in Lithuania. So we tried going to it the next day, but apparently many museums in the area stay closed on Monday. Each time we tried, we walked a significant length to reach it, which made it all the more frustrating. Kiek in de Kök --Located in Tallinn, Estonia. From what our guide told us, this means "Peek in the kitchen," but it is not, in fact, a kitchen, but an artillery tower from the 15th century that is now a museum of the town's fortifications. We tried going there after first arriving in Tallinn, but since it was only an hour before it closed, the museum ...