countdown

Assuming all goes as planned it is 441 days until I will be a doctor, M.D., long white coat!

I calculated that (aka googled countdown calendar and had the internet figure it out) today while I was procrastinating from studying.
I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Palliative Care

I have spent the past 2 days working with an internal medicine physician in Palliative Care. What is Palliative Care you ask?

According to wikipedia, "Palliative Care is any form of medical care or treatment that concentrates on reducing the severity of disease symptoms, rather than striving to halt, delay, or reverse progression of the disease itself or provide a cure. The goal is to prevent and relieve suffering and to improve quality of life for people facing serious, complex illness." Unlike hospice care, patients receiving palliative care don't have to have a terminal diagnosis, but many of the patients receiving palliative care are at the end of their lives.

Palliative Care medicine is an emotionally tough job and definitely takes a special individual to be able to gracefully deal with the patients and their families. After observing a few family meetings it seems as if the palliative care physician is equally there to aid in the comfort of the patient as well as to help the family deal with their issues. A family meeting is a meeting in which the physician or team of physicians, plus possibly social work,etc sit down with the family and discuss the options left open for the patient, etc. Oftentimes these conversations relate to how much do we want to do for the patient - are we full steam ahead and trying to save them or are we to a point where we are going to back off the curative care and go more for a comfort approach. There is a time in medicine when enough is a enough and it is time to give up. The art and challenge is knowing when that point is - what would the patient want? These are emotionally tough times when families fight and change their minds repeatedly. No one wants to feel they caused the death of a loved one, yet at the same time you do not want them to suffer.

In the past few days, I have sat through a few family meetings. I feel myself being pulled to a sociological perspective. I've seen a son completely ok with the passing of his mother, trying to do what is best for her to a wife not accepting that her husband's time may be rapidly upon her - caught up in paper work and trying to grasp onto something anything that she can control. Let the families talk - let them express themselves, let them ask the same questions over and over. No one is in a clear state of mind under such emotionally stressful circumstances. It is an interesting, heartbreaking, and rewarding field. These physicians help families to be ok with their decisions and help patients to be comfortable.

Today I witnessed a young woman a few years older than myself give the ok to let her mother go, while the resident I work with just had a baby. Life.

Where does all of this leave me? I'm not really sure. I haven't taken the time to process it all. Sometimes it just happens too quickly. For me this has served as a catalyst to over my vacation next month have general conversations with my parents about what they would want done in certain situations. There is no way to prepare for every scenario, just as what you would want done is different depending on what has happened and where you are in your life, but a framework is helpful.
These few days have also reminded me about living life, enjoying each and everyday, and keeping my priorities in order!

How to make won tons - sort of

1. Go to Chinatown in San Francisco


buy chinese sausage



buy chinese veggies

2. take them home and throw ingredients (pork, chinese sausage, water chesnuts, cabbage, shrimp, etc) - (i'm blanking right now on all the other things we throw in) - chop everything up in cusinart

3. sit down and wrap - scoop small amount of stuffing into the corner of a square wrapper, roll over and place a tiny drop of stuffing to seal it shut - then twist and wah la (i know not the best instructions - i think my mom and i make a new way up of wrapping them everytime we make them) It doesn't really matter as long as they stay together, they all taste the same.



and... wrap some more



Keep wrapping...



Then throw them in a pot and boil until they float



Put won tons into a pot of chicken broth and enjoy! Yum Yum

Happy Valentine's Day - A day late

Happy Valentine’s Day – a day late! I apologize for not writing recently, even though I have had the time. I must have caught a nasty virus that has made me feel as if I have been hit by a MAC truck. Nasal congestion galore, I finally have experienced first hand the lovely feeling of post-nasal drip, and a vice like headache that seems to love to grab right over both my temples. Despite getting nearly 7-8 hours of sleep a night I am still exhausted. I do think I am finally on the upswing and am starting to feel a little bit better. I think my body realized that now (during outpatient medicine) it finally had the time to be sick and was like haha here you go – I’m going to knock you on your ass for a few days so you’ll take care of me.

Anyway…Happy Valentine’s Day – a day late! “Ah falling in love, where walking is called waltzing and you hope it never stops…” A quote from a favorite blogger of mine, Corey Amaro, Here’s a link to her blog Tongue in Cheek

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, but just haven’t got around to it and wasn’t sure exactly what to say, but….since it’s Valentine’s Day (a day late) I guess it’s the perfect day to introduce all of you to that special someone in my life.

Hmm…let’s see where to start. His name is Sief (pronounced Safe). We first met during orientation to medical school. I remember our meeting because earlier in the week we had received our anatomy lab group partner’s names and my group consisted of me, Stamatis, Andrew, and Sief. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, great I can only pronounce the name of one other person in my lab group. So when Sief and I met, it triggered in my mind that he would be my lab partner and hey – I can pronounce that! It wasn’t all butterflies and hearts after that. We weren’t that stereotypical couple where you think oh how cute they were anatomy lab partners and fell in love. Umm…not quite. You see, I loved anatomy. Even though it was hard and a ridiculous amount of information to remember, I truly enjoyed dissecting the cadavers. Sief did not. He was rarely around for lab and when he was, he was much less interested than I in actually dissecting. We still became friends and that was that for a while.



Last winter, we became better friends. I would come over (he also lives in the same housing complex as myself) after a day of studying and we’d watch House or Scrubs – just hanging out. He helped me balance out the stress of medical school and taking time for myself to just relax. Sief is very good at keeping things in perspective and always taking time to remember there is another world outside this hell, I mean place called medical school. He was the balance, I needed. I guess you could say we become better friends and the rest is history. :) haha that seems so cheesy.

Lucky for me, Sief is from California. This way I don’t have to convince him to head to the west coast after graduation. He grew up in San Francisco and his family is currently in Sacramento – so even better he’s not a SoCal boy, but… he is a city boy. I torture him with my country music and am currently trying to convince him to go see Keith Urban with me in concert next year. He doesn’t talk nearly as much as I do and is still learning how to get a word in edgewise. I always ask why he forgets to tell me stuff & usually it’s because I’ve been talking too much. He laughs at his own jokes, even if I don’t. He loves politics and the news. He has a sweet tooth much like myself – which I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. He can cook. He’s not a morning person :( He can speak Arabic. He’s a wonderful listener and really easy to talk to. He’ll tell you his honest opinion if you ask. He’s one of those people who somehow seems to know everyone. We walk through the hospital together and are stopped at least 5-6 times on our way to our destination by people he knows. He always opens doors for people. I lose him every time going into Borders or somewhere because he’s still standing there holding the door.



He has a new fascination for Bean Boozled – Jelly Belly’s that look the same, but one has a nasty flavor and the other tastes good. Examples: Peach vs. vomit, licorice vs. skunk spray, etc. He truly is a kid at heart – an 80s kid at that. This is seen in his never-ending smurf collection.


I’m slowly turning him into a game person – which you may or may not know is a necessity in my family (even though my dad somehow gets away with not playing games). He can shop aka. he can pick out cute clothes for me and is willing to go to the mall with me. He and his brother are shoe people and definitely own more pairs of shoes than I do. He’s thoughtful and surprises me with small little presents on occasion. Currently, he thinks he wants to go into Emergency Medicine for residency.

There you go – my beau in a nut shell.

Time to Relax

Friday night a few of my friends & I went to the Hershey Theater to see, "Avenue Q" It is a Tony Award Winning Broadway Musical about a man fresh out of college with a Bachelor's Degree in English. He ends up without a job and lives in New York City on Avenue Q - in a not so nice neighborhood. He ultimately befriends his neighbors and learns some life lessons along the way. The catch is that the entire cast is puppets! Also, it is a tad bit liberal, which makes it that much more awesome. Some of the songs are entitled: "It Sucks to be Me," "The Internet is for Porn," and "Everyone's a little bit Racist!" There is also puppet nudity in the play! oh my!



I must say this musical was a little too far left for most of the conservative Hershians - the highlight during intermission was the lady in a fur vest grumbling about how ridiculous and stupid the play was and that it was a bunch of liberal bull crap.

I finished my month of inpatient medicine this last Friday. I have one more month of medicine - outpatient. So this weekend was a good one to go out and enjoy myself.

And Saturday a big group of us combined of Med students, old friends, and a group of Au Pair's my guy friends have met went to Philly for the day to watch a 76's game!

Let's just say that today (Sunday) - is going to be a relaxing lazy sort of day. I'm looking forward to a little cooking, cleaning, and watching tv!

Sometimes we all just need to get out and live a little. It's so easy to get caught up in the stress of school and work, but don't ever forget to take a little time now and again for yourself. Just relax, have some fun and enjoy life! In the big scheme of things will it really matter if the dishes sit in the sink for one more day (just let them soak a little longer) or the house doesn't get vacuumed until next weekend? Nah...I don't think so! :)

If you would care to see some more of Ave. Q - look below! Here are videos of the opening scene with "It Sucks to be Me" and then below that - "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist"

Time for a little fun

What goes through your mind when someone says "Let's go for a drink"?

Click on the images to enlarge!

25 random things

So there is this thing going around on facebook and usually I ignore these little chain type of things, but I decided to participate in this one - mainly because it served as a procrastination technique.

I've posted it below word to word from facebook - so you'll get the idea of how it works! Please feel free to share some randomness if you so desire.

RULES: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. Fall is by far my favorite season!
2. I’m still looking forward to someday being a doctor, but I’ve learned over the past year that I don’t like the hospital or sick people!
3. Cooking and/or baking are probably my biggest stress reliever, even though going to the gym probably should be.
4. Aside from my family & friends, what I miss the most from California is good Mexican food!
5. I no longer keep my cell phone in my back pocket because 1. I had a phone fall into a clean toilet, which I did recover, and 2. I washed one in the washing machine once when I was trying to get a stain out of my pants and forgot to take the phone out of my pocket.
6. I’ve been kicked out of a bar before.
7. I may have contracted Tuberculosis within the last month, I will have to wait until my spring PPD test to find out if I will get to take Isoniazid for the next 6-9 months of my life.
8. My favorite color is purple.
9. Some of my closest friends in medical school are the very first people I met here.
10. This is my 3^rd winter in Pennsylvania and I am proud to say that this year was the first year I’ve ever fallen on my ass due to the ice.
11. I’ve driven cross country from California to Pennsylvania and hope to drive back in 1.5 years.
12. I plan to visit all 50 states someday - I’m over ½ way there!
13. My favorite t-shirt of all time is my purple Lamb Derby t-shirt from my junior year of high school.
14. I’ve been skydiving twice, the first time with my mother.
15. My parents lied to me for over ½ my life – they told me my dad was allergic to cats, so I would stop asking for one.
16. I’ve been stung by a jellyfish – and no nobody peed on me to make the pain go away. I used vinegar instead.
17. There have been only 2 people in the world who call me Jenny. ;)
18. I love to read for fun, I just wish there was more time. Fav books: The Kite Runner, Water for Elephants, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and many many more.
19. I’m dating a guy who is nearly as bald as my dad!
20. I’m a purse person. You know how some people just love shoes and have a whole closet full. Well, that’s how I am with purses, but I do have a rule – I cannot buy a purse that costs more than the amount of money I would carry in it.
21. When I was a baby, I was so chubby and rolly polly – my parents nicknamed me the Michelin Man.
22. I’m nearly a quarter of a century and just beginning to feel like I’m learning about life.
23. There is a part of me that has always wanted to live in San Francisco for a brief period of time.
24. Like my mother I broke my nose playing softball. Let’s just assume if I ever have a daughter she will not be allowed to play softball.
25. In China, one night we stayed up the entire night decided since we were already up we should go to Tiananmen Square and see the flag raising. We didn't know until we got there along with the 1,000s of other people that it was the day celebrating the found of the army of the People's Republic of China!

And a blog post wouldn't be complete without the addition of a random photo!