Green Challenge #3

First I'll check with you about the last weeks challenge - taking the stairs. It's actually be going pretty well. Everyday I climb multiple flights of stairs, because the hospital cafeteria is in the basement and our call/work room is on the 3rd floor. We have patients on floors ranging from 4-8 and sometimes even higher. I can feel myself getting less out of breath after I've climbed sets of stairs by the end of the week, so it must doing some good for my heart. Only one little mishap. I climbed from the 8th floor to the 12th floor one day, only to find that the 12th floor was locked and you needed a key card to get access, well my ID badge wouldn't let me in, so back down the stairs I went. I took the elevator the second time because I was meeting the rest of my team.

*disclaimer* this week's green challenge is one that will probably make my largest eco-impact yet, but is also a little on what some might consider the disgusting side. You can choose to continue reading (at your own risk), because from here on out it's going to get a little bit personal (and I mean in a female kind of way)




Green Challenge #3

3. No more tampons!

What?! No more tampons? Am I insane? Nope and I'm not switching to cloth pads or anything like that (ewwww...). It's called a menstrual cup. What's a menstrual cup you ask? Well it's a little silicone or rubber cup that you put in your vagina and it stays there during the day and collects, just the way a tampon would. The difference is when you go to change your cup, you just pull it out and dump the contents in the toilet and then either rinse the little cup out or wipe it clean with some toilet paper. TaDa! No more tampons.

My personal one is a moon cup. There are different brands out there, but this is the one my mother bought me for Christmas. I had been talking about buying one for a while, but....was a little nervous and not quite ready to make the leap. I guess she decided for me. I will admit that I have tried it once and it seemed to work pretty well. This next week, I will put it through the true test of surviving through an entire period with just my moon cup.


image taken from: http://blog.gladrags.com/2009/06/

The cup sits inside and is comfortable and cannot be felt, just like a tampon. The difference though....is that now I am saving both the environment and money, because my moon cup will last up to 10 years!

Ok, ok, ok - I know what you are thinking....this has got to be gross. I mean you have to stick your hand up where?! and then you have to dump out that nastiness. I'm not going to lie to you, that it will probably be somewhat disgusting and disturbing, which I will report back next week, but I have heard that most people who try the cup, never go back.

My motivation is found in my imagination - I picture myself standing in a room and try to see a pile of tampons, applicators, boxes, etc all piled up in a big heap and try to estimate over my lifetime what that would look like. Now that's DISGUSTING! Also, I figure as a medical student I have stuck my fingers in and touched bodily fluids (with gloves on of course) much grosser than my own. Also, you know when you travel and you have to pack a big bag full of tampons, or keep extra one's in your purse, etc - not anymore. My moon cup is small and easily transportable and next month when I'm flying to costa rica will take up very little room in my suitcase compared to what a bag of tampons would take up! Yes -more room for souvenirs.


Now down to the figures:

• It's estimated that 2 billion sanitary pads & 7 billion tampons are dumped into the North American environment each year!
  

• An average American woman will contribute 10,000 pads and tampons to landfills, or approximately 300 pounds of trash in her menstruating lifetime!!!!

• In addition most tampons & pads have adhesives, additives, and bleaching products that are used in making them! These can't be good for our bodies or the environment.

And now I ask the question to you?



I'll report back next week with my findings :)

Green Challenge #2

So....I'll admit last week's change was an easy one to make and well I had been turning the faucet off while brushing my teeth for a while. This week we be a more difficult change to stick too.

A lot of people make New Year's Resolutions to get into shape, lose weight, etc. This week my green change will help me stay in shape as well.

2. No more elevators or escalators.

There are a few exceptions that I will lay out here. I will only take an elevator or escalator if:
- on rounds in the hospital the team is taking the elevators
*you see I am still low man on the totem pole and must follow the leader while
rounding on our patients in the hospital, but when visiting patients on my own, the
stairs it shall be

- I am climbing more than 10-12 flights of stairs, depending on the shoes I'm wearing
*Currently at UC Davis, our little home base is on the 3rd floor and the highest level is
12, so for this next month I will be taking the stairs A LOT

- I have 2 or more suitcases when traveling



Now....I did a little bit of research on the computer and sadly making this eco-friendly change is probably better for my health than for the environment. But I feel it is a step in the right direction and the idea behind it is good, also it will make me work and be conscious of this change constantly over the next month.

The following statistics I found on a few green blogs, one sited Otis elevators as the original source.

Per round trip (20 floors): 100 Wh. This is about how much a desktop computer and monitor use running for 30 minutes.

Per floor (one direction, 3 meters): 2.5 Wh. That is approximately 1/2 the amount of energy it takes to recharge a cellphone battery.

Over a lifetime that can add up to A LOT!

Strap on your sneakers and start walking - stop standing! Just imagine that music is playing under your feet as you walk!

Back to the daily grind

I've been lucky for the past couple of months, because my rotations have been pretty laid back and chill. Today was a hit the ground running, welcome back to the world of inpatient medicine. Well, I guess I didn't have to quite hit the ground running, but my inpatient team did. We had quite a few new patients over the weekend and a couple of them were critical patient's requring quite a bit of time.

Today was my first day of a month at UC Davis, on the family medicine inpatient service. Tomorrow is more like my first official day when I will have my own patient to follow and have a parking permit and a badge - the whole works...haha

Anyway I have a month of looking forward to 12 hr days. Rounds start at 7:30, but I have to see my patient's before that and I have sign out to the night team starting at 6pm, so I probably won't be leaving the medical center until 6:30pm. Wish me luck!

I'll blog as much as possible if interesting things happen and for sure every Sunday for the green challenge! How's it going - shutting off that water while brushing your teeth?
Not too hard of a change. And I thought of some more things that make it green - it's less energy to have to purify and pump that extra water to your faucet!

And...I am feeling much better than yesterday, but still have a little bit of a head cold.

Green Challenge #1

1. Turn the facet off while brushing my teeth.

This is a simple easy change - many of you may already be doing this, but you may not have known that this easy change can save up to 3,000 gallons of water per year!

Some random water facts for you:

- less than 1% of all the water on Earth can be used by people, the remaining 99% is either salt water or frozen (but I guess if we continue along the path that we are then we will have greater access to the frozen stuff)

- an average US household uses close to 260 gallons of water everyday.

For more water conserving facts visit: http://www.epa.gov/greenhomes/ConserveWater.htm


This is a bit of a short post, but I'm not feeling my best and tomorrow I start my rotation at UC Davis! Wish me luck on my first change :)

Happy New Years! Welcome to 2010!

It's that time of year...time to make those New Years Resolutions. I'm not going to lie, I did not stick to last years resolutions very well. I made an effort not to use paper or plastic bags at the grocery store. The whole idea of flossing...well I can't even say I made a good effort at that one. This year I have something in store for all of you readers out there. I am going on a year long challenge and....well if you want you are more than welcome to come along for the ride!

I recently read a book, Sleeping Naked Is Green, in which the writer makes an eco-friendly or green change every single day for an entire year! That is 365 green changes! Now now - I'm not that crazy.



The woman who wrote the book ended up selling her car and unplugging her refrigerator! There is no way that I have the time or the energy to make that many changes.

My plan is to go for 52 green changes, that is one per week. This I feel is much more manageable and it gives me a full week to get used to each new green change that I make and hopefully semi-solidify it into a new habit. When it comes to carbon consumption I am a real fatty -we're talking nearly 15 carbon tonnes per year. I calculated this from carbonfootprint.com and carbonfund.org
I have started working on my green changes list for a little while now to start preparing myself for the year. And I will tell you right now some changes are going to be really easy and others not so much. My goal by the end of the year is to at least attempted having a compost bin and to go on a carb(on) diet with the ultimate goal of decreasing my weight to less than 10 tonnes.

My mother thinks I'm crazy, but her and Dad make eco-friendly changes on my behalf (thank you) and we'll see if Sief and I survive the year.
When I told him that there were going to be some green changes coming around when I got back to Hershey he informed me that, "I'm not wiping my ass with a towel and then washing it!"

Every Sunday will be the day that I post my change for the week. So...get ready this Sunday will be the first change!

It shall be an interesting year! 2010 holds lots of excitement: green challenge, graduation from medical school (woo woo!!!), and moving (location To be Determined - we'll find out March 18th!

A Belated Happy Holidays!

It's been longer than I thought since I have last posted. I guess that's what happens when things get busy with interviews and the holidays! I hope everyone is enjoying a nice Christmas break with family and friends. This year was a fun year for us - the theme at our family Christmas Eve was ugly holiday attire. The new cool thing is ugly holiday sweater parties. Ugly sweaters are quite the hot commodity on ebay - oftentimes selling for $20+. We went to the thrift store and did the best we could for ugly attire.

We found my mom a turtleneck covered in Christmas presents and a shirt with lots of dangle ball things hanging off of it. My shirt - which is hard to tell it's full tackiness, is ribbed in red glitter and is a little too short for me. The best part is that someone cut the sleeves which are completely uneven and aren't even close to matching. My mom and I made earrings out of small stick on bows for presents and I had a tinsel necklace, which didn't last the entire nigth because it made my neck itch too much! Dad's vest we ended up ironing on some old material pieces we had and quickly sewed on some jingle bells.

Here's a beautiful family picture from the event!



A group shot of the cousins.



And the best for last - my Aunt Edwina!



As usual it was a fun-filled evening, filled with laughter, love, and good food.
Wishing you and yours a belated happy and safe holiday!

Quick Recap

This last week was hectic and it was nothing compared to what is coming up this week.

Quick recap - I spent 3 days in Phoenix, Arizona last week. While there, the weather was relatively cold and it RAINED!!!! Apparently they say it only rains like 5-10 times per year and of course I land when it decides to pour. Oh, well at least I'm used to it. 2 interviews in Phoenix. Sief had one. We visited with a former Penn State grad who is an Emergency medicine resident currently. I spent time with a former Penn Stater who is a family med resident about to graduate. We walked around downtown Tempe and I ate frozen yogurt! YUM. I decided that Tempe is the smoothie/frozen yogurt capital of the US. Seriously, every single store sold one or both, which is totally awesome. I have a soft spot for frozen yogurt with sprinkles. As, I was walking down the street eating my yogurt in 50 degree weather, I turn to Sief and say, "you know why they have so many places that have smoothies/ice cream/ and yogurt? It's because it's usually hot here!" He looked at me and said "you just figured that out"

Anyway...some good programs in Phoenix, we're excited.

Next stop was Houston, Texas. It's weird even though I never lived in Houston - a part of me feels like I'm going "home" when I land in Texas. I'm suddenly surrounded by familiar Texas chain restaurants and stop lights that are horizontal. I stopped at a fast food joint- Taco Cabana to get some yummy tortillas and queso. Sief joined me a day later and again we met up with another Penn State Grad. It's nice to see familiar faces along the interview trail.

I made it home last night. Only to unpack, wash clothes and....start all over again.

This week here's my schedule:
Sun- dinner in San Jose with O'Connor program
Mon - interview in San Jose
Tues - fly to San Antonio (I'm super excited about this, but will only be in San Antonio for a few hrs), drive to corpus christi, dinner with corpus residents
Wed - interview at corpus, fly to Tucson
Thurs - interview with 2 Tucson family medicine residencies on the same day, fly to Oakland
Fri - interview at San Francisco
Sat - Sief comes to Chico to visit & we go to Marianne & Conway's for a Christmas party
Sun - FUN & GAMES with the family!

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I will try to write when I get back next week. No guarantees though. Wish me luck! Let's hope I survive this week :)
I guess this is just preparing me for how tired I might feel during residency.