Thankful

This isn't a rambling post, this is a post with a purpose. I just want to take a moment to express somewhere in writing all the things that I'm thankful for this season. It's for my own benefit really (and inspired by my thankful sister-in-law Emily) - I hope I'll refer back to it on occasion throughout the holidays and remind myself of all that I've been blessed with. So, here goes (in no particular order)...

• My happy marriage and my selfless husband (who is doing the dishes as we speak). And the fact that he supports my commitment to becoming a doctor and all of the extra work that entails for him in providing for our life together.
• My warm, well-decorated, SAFE apartment. I still don't know how we pay the rent every month, but somehow it always works out.
• The fact that "it always works out".
• My healthy, happy, adorable kittens. A small thing, but being a woman of child-bearing age who can't have children at the moment, I simply love to love them and care for them :)
• Growing up with the most loving, supportive family a kid could ask for, who always did their best to afford me every opportunity under the sun.
• The health and overall happiness of my family.
• The most loving, accepting in-law family a girl could ask for!
• Two healthy babies that are about to join our family - baby girl Villard due 12/27 and baby (???... we'll find out Friday!) Beck due 4/19.
• The fact that I was born in the richest, free-est country on the planet. I could just as easily have been born in an aluminum hut in Africa, and I never would've known the comforts that I enjoy daily.
• Having had 18 years with my wonderful great-grandmother. Most people can't say that.
• All of the PEOPLE in my life who have made my experience what it is, from friends and family to pastors, coaches, teachers, doctors, even the vendors from our wedding! It's the people you interact with and the relationships you cultivate that make your life feel "full", and I've been blessed with some WONDERFUL people in my life.
• Last but not least, I am so thankful for this incredible opportunity to become a doctor. This is no small thing, and I try to remind myself frequently what a privelage it truly is to be trusted with human lives. Blows my mind.

I hope that no matter what is going on in your life today, you can stop and take a moment to recount all of the many ways in which you too have been blessed in this life. I've certainly caught myself, on MORE THAN ONE occasion, complaining to God in my head and asking "why me?" about some petty thing that's bothering me, and counting blessings has always proven (time and time again) to be the best remedy. Give it a try. You won't be able to feel sorry for yourself for very long!

Happy Thanksgiving :)

All Grown Up

I feel so grown up now... we have two "nice" cars! This weekend was almost completely monopolized by the car purchase, but it's finally taken care of and we brought the Accord home yesterday :) AND it just so happens that Ben's friend Ray sold his truck on Saturday, so he's buying the Cavalier today! Perfect timing! So that really helped out - it took care of the tax, tags and title on the Accord plus some. We went out to Taneytown Tag & Title (aka the Nationwide Insurance office of Taneytown... weird) and met Tom after work yesterday to sign the title, pay our tax and get Maryland tags for the Accord, and then we had to drive Tom home because his wife Amy couldn't leave work in time to go with him, so we hung out and had dinner with them at their house in Fairfield, PA. So, you know, it was only an hour and a half drive home. But it was worth it of course.

Ben is very happy with his new wheels, and I am very happy with mine :) Although now I feel like he drives the mom-car and I drive the hard-ass car - I'm in the V8 Jeep SUV and he's in the 4-cylinder Honda sedan! But he's SO thrilled to be driving a manual again, he doesn't really care if he drives a car that would look better with a car seat in the back. Heheeheeeee... it's all part of my evil plan to make him a dad ;) But anyway, it is VERY nice and comfortable inside - it's fully loaded with leather and heated seats and a nice stereo and all that, and it's been kept completely immaculate (Tom bought it new, and he's quite compulsive about keeping things clean and well-maintained) so it really is a very NICE car. I'd love to be driving it, but I'm just not that into driving a stick. I don't need something extra to focus on while driving... I just want to put it in drive and go. Ben says it's very easy to drive so hopefully I won't have any problems physically operating the vehicle when it's necessary, but I'm pretty certain I don't want to make it my every-day driver. I think Ben is torn between wanting to drive the stick and wanting to have the V8 power, so he probably wouldn't care if I did decide I wanted to drive the Accord. At the end of the day, I don't really care about what I drive - I've been driving a piece of junk since I was 16 and it never bothered me (although when I first got it, boy did I love that thing!). I know Ben cares more about what he's driving, so I don't mind letting him be the one to be picky about his car. HOWEVER, when I finally get my first paycheck as an attending physician, guess who's bee-lining straight to the Lexus dealer to pick out her RX330?!?! Or WHATEVER car she darn well pleases?!?! That's right - THIS GIRL. But for these next 7 or 8 years, let's just hope these two cars hold out for us :)

Update

Quick update on the auto-saga...

Apparently the credit union doesn't think we make enough money for TWO auto loans (HA... they don't have to tell ME that!), so we had to get my dad to co-sign. Soooo we're waiting on approval again til tomorrow. HOWEVER, the good news is that Tom is NOT trading it in, so we're definitely buying it as long as it passes inspection on Monday. Which shouldn't be a problem since he just had a bunch of maintenance work done and it's only 4 years old anyway. So all that's left is the official loan approval, the official inspection-passage, and a bunch of running back and forth with checks and titles and tags and such.

Don't you love how I air all my personal financial information on the internet? That's how bored I am.

Another new car...

This is your sign that I suddenly have far more free time than any medical student should have - I've updated my blog layout :) I really do have stuff to do, but it seems so trivial and unnecessary that I'm having a hard time actually doing it. Especially when TLC is playing two episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" this hour (my newest television addiction). It's stuff that I could probably write the answer key for, but I feel like I should do it for the sake of saying I did it. And that's not because I'm super-smart or something, it's just because this course is designed to catch up the people who have never had a biochem or advanced genetics course in their life, and I spent the last two years of college taking advanced biochemistry and genetics courses and doing genetics research because of my major. So I'm finally getting some return on the course work I did in undergrad that wasn't necessary for admission to medical school - HA! I win! My fear is that I won't take it seriously enough and come test time, I'll be S.O.L. So that's why I'm trying to keep up with the work, even if it doesn't seem necessary.

As a quick aside, is anyone else getting really tired of the fact that EVERY family with more than 6 children now has a reality TV show?!?! Holy crap. Table for 12. Jon & Kate + 8. 18 Kids and Counting. Has anyone considered the CHILDREN?!?! Ugh I find it incredibly irresponsible and irritating. Almost despicable.

Mooooooooving on. We went to the credit union this morning and applied for another auto loan. We're in the process of trying to replace my Cavalier, as I mentioned before. We were trying to wait til we could pay off one of Ben's tool bills, but we got a call from Tom (the owner of the Accord) yesterday saying they had found the car they wanted to buy and were going to go to the dealership tomorrow (which is now TODAY) to see what kind of trade-in deal they could get on the Accord. Hmm. Note sure why they're suddenly trying to trade it in, because we thought we were very clear about our intent to buy it after they offered to sell it to us, but apparently they now want to see if they can get more for it at the dealership :( So we decided to go ahead and go for the loan approval so that we can make it as simple and smooth a process for them as possible to encourage them to sell it to us (as opposed to them coming to us and saying "the dealership is ready to take it now, they'll give us a few hundred more dollars for it..." etc., and then we have to say "wait wait, let us try and get the loan, hang on for a few more days...").

So, we're waiting to hear back on the approval, which should come thorugh before the end of the day today. IF we get approved, that is. We already have one auto loan through them, and we're only operating on one income, so I'm a little nervous about it. And of course, at the end of the day we may not even be getting the Accord if Tom decides to trade it in. Which, I won't lie, would be a little upsetting after we've spent the past few weeks talking to him about it and trying to figure out the details so we could buy it. We've got a buyer lined up for the Cavalier (Ben's friend Ray) to help us pay for the Accord, we've got the loan process rolling... it's gonna be a giant let-down if this doesn't work out. Especially for Ben. We fought about doing this in the beginning - I really didn't want to replace the car yet and he really didn't want to let the Accord deal pass us by - and we finally found a common ground on it and started working on making it happen, only to be shot down at the last second? I hope not. After the experience we had with the Jeep we just bought, I really don't feel super-psyched to go out and try to buy another used car from someone we don't know. In the end, it's just such a crap shoot - you just never know what they're hiding from you. It's sad to have to be so skeptical and cynical, but with car sales, I guess that's just being realistic. I'm about to go buy a brand new cheap car - some kind of Kia or something - just to have a warranty and someone to take it back to when shi* ain't right! Ugh.

So stay tuned for an update, hopefully later today, on the new car saga.

10 crazy weeks!

Hoooooooooly smokes. It's been an awful long time! I'm sure you all understand that spare time has just been VERY hard to come by in these first 10 weeks of medical school. And you eventually get to the point where so much has happened since your last post that trying to "update" your blog just seems far too overwhelming. So I won't try to do a true "update", because that would take days. Here are the highlights:

• Anatomy is OVERRRRRRRR!!! It was the most challenging course I've ever taken (which was duely reflected in my grade, of course). I know that there was room for improvement in my study habits, but I was able to maintain a much more fulfilling "life outside of school" than some of my super-stressed, crazy classmates, which is an accomplishment that I'm actually quite proud of. And I did pass, so it's all good :)

• No more cadaver dissection!!! I'm pretty darn psyched about that, I'll admit! It was fun in the beginning, and definitely a huge learning aid, but about halfway through the novelty wore off and then it was just... not so fun. We got together as a class at one of our classmate's parents' houses in Westminster and ceremonially burned our anatomy lab scrubs in a giant bonfire, which was incredibly satisfying (photos below)! All that said, let me add the disclaimer that the sacrifice made by those that donated their bodies as well as their families is something I'll be eternally grateful for - it's no small thing to willingly subject your body to that, and no small thing to put off laying your loved one to rest for months on end for the benefit of others. There's actually a service held for them once a year that I'll definitely make an effort to go to.

• Ben's old Jeep crapped out, we bought a new Jeep, it's passenger-side front wheel snapped off within two months of buying it, the dealership wouldn't budge on paying for it, so we had to go to a different dealership and use our insurance to have it fixed. $3600 in damage. I just thank the good Lord that it happened while Ben was pulling into a parking space and not while we was doing 75 mph on 95 (which constitutes about 80% of his daily commute). We have it back now, and I'm currently the principal driver on it, because...

• We've made the decision to replace my 13-year-old, 140,000-mile piece of junk, and Ben's friend Tom has offered us a GREAT deal on his 2006 Honda Accord. The only catch being that it's a stick-shift, and while I'm capable of driving a stick, I don't particularly WANT to given the amount of city driving I do (not to mention the parking garages. ACK!). So it's looking like I'm going to take over the Jeep and Ben will be driving the Accord. We have to finish paying off the tail end of one of his tool bills (from when he was a mechanic oh-so-many years ago) before we can take on the new car payment, but that'll be paid off around Christmas time. I'm so excited to finally have TWO cars that we can actually rely on, for a change. Granted, shi* happens, but at least I know that giant repairs will be LESS LIKELY to pop up on us.

• The kitties are 6 months old! They're getting so big :'( I want them to stay little forever! They're into everything, jumping up on everything, driving Ben up the wall... I'm definitely the patient one. Which isn't AT ALL surprising if you know my husband. Patience isn't exactly his middle name. But we love them :)

• I have TWO new nieces/nephews on the way! Most of you probably already know this, but it's an exciting update nonetheless. Em and I just had a shower for Amberly, which was highly successful and tons of fun. Her baby girl is due December 27th :) I'm just SO freaking excited to meet her! We haven't had a new little girl in the family for, well, 10 years now (as I choke on the words... I can't believe Lacy is 10!!!), so I've almost forgotten what little girls are like! Em is 17 weeks along now, and just *barely* starting to look the part, which is just ADORABLE :) Baby Beck is due April 19th. Their next sonogram is December 4th, when they'll find out whether we're having a niece or a nephew. I'm feeling pretty strongly that it's a girl though. We shall see! I'm so incredibly happy for both of them. And I'm so thankful that I have them around to live vicariously through them whilst I await the day when my husband finally feels "ready". Not that I'd have a baby tomorrow if he were "ready", but that's only because my logical brain knows that now isn't exactly the *best* time. But that's a topic for another blog on another day...

• I've been doing some shadowing lately, in the Emergency Department and in Shock Trauma, and I'm definitely confirming my interest in Emergency medicine! I just LOVE it so much. For so many reasons. I'm currently working on setting up some pediatrics shadowing because I do want to explore that too. And I'd also love to do some OB/GYN shadowing. I KNOW I'd love obstetrics, but I don't know that I'd love the schedule and the extensive training. So I'm not so sure about all that, but I want to get on the inside of it and see what it's really like. Oh how I love all things clinical :) Oh, speaking of which, I also got my white coat after finishing anatomy! Very exciting. So I'm feeling more "official" these days :)

I think that's the main thrust of what's been going on in my life these days. I'm now beginning a new class that is so far proving to be a HUGE relief - it's Cell and Molecular Biology, which is essentially what I majored in. I feel SO much more "at home" in this course so far. It's all familiar, so studying is more a matter of reviewing as opposed to cramming new information into my brain. It's pretty darn fabulous, I won't lie :) And neither lecture nor small group are "required" as far as attendance goes, so on most days there's no reason why I HAVE to go in to school. That could be dangerous for a slacker like myself ;) But I really am feeling more motivated this time around.

So, long story short, I *may* be able to blog on a more regular basis during this class, so stay tuned :) Now, for a brief photo tour.

Amberly at 33 weeks, with her beautiful new bassinet at her "surprise" shower ;)

My prize for completing anatomy... my first ever white coat :)

SCRUB BURNING!!! So satisfying :)

My little squiddy-pants, 6 months old! Sorry I don't have a recent pic of Lewis on this computer.

Pre-Exam Weekend

I'm taking a little break to do something "therapeutic". Well, taking a break til tomorrow - I'm done for the night. A person can only study for so long in a day. I'm probably very weak in that respect, in that I really don't have a high tolerance for studying. I never have. I'm afraid that I may have reached an educational level where I'll finally start paying for that weakness. Ugh. I did study for about 9 hours today, but i definitely took a few breaks in there. Oh well, I can only ask so much of myself. Anyway, enough with the rationalizations.

So, my first exam is Monday. It's a day-long affair - 2-hour written exam in the morning, 2-hour dry practical after lunch and 2-hour wet practical after that. The "wet" practical is identifying tagged structures in the cadavers, and the "dry" practical is identifying structures and their functions/origins/relationships/etc on computer-based slides. Waaaa-hooooo. The exam content is based on three weeks worth of lectures and labs, which quite honestly feels like nearly two months' worth. But for now I'm just thanking my lucky starts that they give us exams as frequently as they do, because any more material than this would be downright unbearable. I was finally starting to find some kind of rhythm and balance to my new life as a medical student, and this exam is just really throwing a wrench into things!

But, all in all it really hasn't been too bad. I get up around 8, drink some coffee, watch some lame TV, maybe review the day's lecture notes/powerpoints (posted ahead of time), and leave for lab by 9:15 (I've been trying out the idea of skipping morning lecture in favor of more sleep and then working through the lecture recordings after lab at my own pace). I usually get home between 12:30 and 1:00, I have time to run a few errands if necessary, watch an episode of Las Vegas (TNT at noon and 1:00 every day!), have some lunch, fool around on Facebook a little, and then watch/study the lectures from that morning. Sometimes it runs over into the evening if the lectures are particularly complex, but there are many days where I'm done by the time Ben gets home from work! Pretty sweet life, I have to say. I know it won't stay like this forever, but for now it's made for a relatively easy transition and I definitely appreciate that!

Once the exam is over, the second-years have arranged a post-exam party for us down in Federal Hill, so I'll probably drag Ben to that (it's a reason for him to celebrate too - he can finally have his wife back!). I'm looking forward to a few fun school-related things next week too - a meeting with one of our career counseling Deans who happens to be an Emergency Medicine physician, a dinner with the Pediatrics Interest Group at a professor/pediatrician's house, an info session on the MD/MPP program with UMBC (masters in public policy - seriously entertaining the idea!), and my first ICM (intro to clinical medicine) small group meeting where I believe we'll be learning how to use out stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs and fun stuff like that :) So between all the fun stuff and the exam being over, it should be a good week! And next weekend we're having crabs with all of Ben's siblings - the icing on an already fabulous cake!

So that about sums up my life these days. The kittens are still alive (though they have developed a healthy fear of the spray bottle), the apartment is still standing, we're still married... it's all good :)

HOLY SMOKES it's been a while

This may be a new record - two weeks between posts. I do apologize, but my life has changed quite a bit and blogging has become a much smaller part of it!

So the biggest change has been school. I do LOVE school. I really love it. It's the material I've been wanting to learn all along, without all the B.S. I don't care about (for the most part). Even the stuff I don't like studying is still stuff I "care" about, I just don't enjoy trying to learn it ;) Like tissue types, for instance. But the anatomy and embryology stuff has been really cool. Cadaver dissection has been by far the greatest lab experience of my life. Every structure you see sticks in your brain that much better because you're seeing it on a real live person, and just the act of dissecting it is something you don't forget, which makes it that much easier to remember the structures along the way. Sometimes it feels like I really can't control what my mind deems "worth" remembering, but apparently it has decided that cadaver lab is definitely worth the brain space because I seem to remember everything from lab very well. We have some GREAT instructors in the lab (there are at least 8 or 10 of them milling around every day) that are just excellent teachers, and the main course director who teaches many of our lectures is also AWESOME - he's been teaching the course for 15 or 20 years so he's definitely got it down to a science and he's just very good at relaying the important information. There are several other instructors who also give lectures, depending on their specialty, and they vary in their teaching abilities, but we haven't had any "bad" ones at all. Today we had a "clinical correlations" lecture - they intersperse these throughout the anatomy lectures to remind us why we're learning this stuff - from an orthopaedic trauma surgeon. Really cool. He focuses on the spine so we got to hear stories and see images from several different cases and a 2 minute clip of a microdiscectomy (removal of a herniated disc via a very small opening in the spinal column). The cases ranged from a motocross accident (broke the column clean through and severed the spinal cord - paraplegic) to breast cancer metastasis to the spine, to tuberculosis infection in the spinal column, to staph infection in the spine from dirty needles in a heroin-addicted patient. Crazy and very cool :)

We have our first exam on Monday the 12th, so I have one more week's worth of lectures after this one to cram into my brain before I have to spit it all back out. And next week is short because of labor day! YAY! Every lecture in med school seems like about 3 or 4 lecture's worth of material in undergrad, so it's definitely been an adjustment. It's much more like a full-time job than college was. I go to class 8-10, lab 10-12, lunch when I get home, and then study til ben gets home around 5 or 6, then have dinner, and then usually study a LITTLE more before bed. Of course there are little distractions along the way - I don't literally study solidly for all those hours (I'm usually forced to take at least a 45-minute nap somewhere in there when I can't keep my eyes open anymore!). But it's definitely a lot of work! Just trying to figure out the best way to study is my biggest source of stress right now. I'm just afraid I'll get behind if I don't figure it out soon, and I probably won't really know how well my current methods are working til the first exam but I don't want to bomb it in the meantime! Ugh we'll see. I don't really feel like I'm doing a very good job at the moment, I'm just not sure where to go from here.

The kitties are doing well :) Cute as ever, and growing little by little! We just love them to pieces. I'm SO glad we brought both of them home! They still can't seem to behave enough to let them sleep in the bedroom with us (I invariably wake up to Eddie pouncing on my toes or Lewis purring 2 centimeters from my face, or sitting on my head or something ridiculous like that!). But they've started using the kitty beds that we got them, which makes me very happy - it felt like a pretty giant waste of money initially when they weren't even remotely interested in them ;) Here's an updated photo...
I also got a new haircut today (and a little color as well)! I've been wanting to do this for almost a year now, but I got engaged and had to let my hair grow for the wedding, and then we decided we wanted to do a re-shoot after the wedding so I had to leave it long for that. We finally did our re-shoot last week (here's a link to some of my favs! they turned out so well! http://picasaweb.google.com/jenna.bonner529/DayAfterSession?feat=directlink) so I decided I could finally treat myself to a much needed hair appointment. It's shorter in the back and longer in the front, and it's dark brown with a reddish tint. The back is actually shorter than I've EVER had my hair I think, so it was a big step for me but I'm VERY happy with it :)

Maybe next time I'll go a tad shorter in the back to get more height out of it, but I was a little nervous this time around!

Yesterday was Ben's 25th birthday, so I gave him his wedge set that I got about a month ago but made him wait for (for you non-golfers, it's a set of three special clubs that they use for chipping the ball onto the green when it's too far to put and too close to use an iron), a license plate frame that says "I'd rather be driving a Titleist" (we saw that on the road one day and he thought it was just the coolest thing he'd ever seen so I made a mental note and found it online later - he was thrilled), a DuClaw Misfit Red t-shirt (his favorite DuClaw beer), and I took his "growler" (big 2-liter container for holding lots of beer) to DuClaw and had it filled with Misfit Red for him. And made his mom's meatloaf recipe :) It turned out alright. I think it needed more ketchup. ANYWAY, I'm having a party for him this weekend so we're having a bunch of friends over, which should be TONS of fun. Except for the fact that we're a little poor (ok, A LOT poor), but I made it BYOB to help with that aspect of it ;) We actually went out for dinner last Friday with his sisters and their husbands for his birthday, and his mom had a cookout for him this past Sunday, so we're really dragging this thing out! But he's a pretty great guy so I suppose it's worth it ;)

Speaking of the birthday boy, he's finishing up cleaning up in the kitchen (he always does the dishes when I cook because he's wonderful like that!) and is hell-bent on playing one of his new Wii games tonight (last night it was Wii sports resort, from which his arms and shoulders are now sore today... lol) - Tiger Woods Golf 10. It's gonna be a long evening, I can see it now ;) Wish I could update you even MORE, but he really wants me to play. Later kids!